Infrastructure's Expenditures: Changi Airport,Food Cargo and Capital's Technosphere

Urban research has long maintained that an unwavering link exists between urbanization and infrastructures, with the latter serving as structuring devices that give material and discursive shape to a city's socio‐ecological composition. But, while infrastructures’ mediative power and consequent ecological effects are well established, present scholarship tends to associate them with only a specific set of metabolisms—namely, those tied to urban (re)production—at the expense of wider capitalist projects that may exceed discrete urbanisms. Complexifying this view, this article posits that infrastructures can constitute larger systems and frameworks that help capital achieve networked forms of accumulation. Specifically, it follows recent theorizations on the technosphere—artificialized environments of interacting systems—to demonstrate how infrastructures help drive particular dispositions and modes of production and consumption beyond cities. Through documentary analyses and interviews with industry players, the article uses the emergent food cargo business at Singapore's Changi Airport as an empirical case to exemplify the enfolding of one such technosphere through infrastructures. It shows how paying heed to these technospheric formations exposes hidden expenditures—in this instance, of land, energy and labour—that not only underpin a global regime of (food) circulation, but also result in additional socio‐ecological costs often omitted in urban research.     

新加坡和日本养老保险制度比较研究

人口老龄化是当今世界各国共同面临的社会问题,如何使老年人口生活水平得到保证已成为世界各国要解决的重要课题。新加坡、日本两国在过去的几十年里,面对人口老龄化不断严重的形势,分别进行了养老保险制度的改革。对新加坡与日本养老保险制度进行比较分析,可以为我国现行养老保险制度中存在的问题提供一些解决方法和依据。     

Cost-effectiveness of sacubitril/valsartan versus enalapril in patients with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction

Background: Sacubitril/valsartan reduces cardiovascular death and hospitalizations for heart failure (HF). However, decision-makers need to determine whether its benefits are worth the additional costs, given the low-cost generic status of traditional standard of care.

Aims: To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of sacubitril/valsartan compared to enalapril in patients with HF and reduced ejection fraction, from the Singapore healthcare payer perspective.

Methods: A Markov model was developed to project clinical and economic outcomes of sacubitril/valsartan vs enalapril for 66-year-old patients with HF over 10 years. Key health states included New York Heart Association classes I–IV and deaths; patients in each state incurred a monthly risk of hospitalization for HF and cardiovascular death. Sacubitril/valsartan benefits were modeled by applying the hazard ratios (HRs) in PARADIGM-HF trial to baseline probabilities. Primary model outcomes were total and incremental costs and quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) and the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) for sacubitril/valsartan relative to enalapril

Results: Compared to enalapril, sacubitril/valsartan was associated with an ICER of SGD 74,592 (USD 55,198) per QALY gained. A major driver of cost-effectiveness was the cardiovascular mortality benefit of sacubitril/valsartan. The uncertainty of this treatment benefit in the Asian sub-group was tested in sensitivity analyses using a HR of 1 as an upper limit, where the ICERs ranged from SGD 41,019 (USD 30,354) to SGD 1,447,103 (USD 1,070,856) per QALY gained. Probabilistic sensitivity analyses showed the probability of sacubitril/valsartan being cost-effective was below 1%, 12%, and 71% at SGD 20,000, SGD 50,000, and SGD 100,000 per QALY gained, respectively.

Conclusions: At the current daily price sacubitril/valsartan may not represent good value for limited healthcare dollars compared to enalapril in reducing cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in HF in the Singapore healthcare setting. This study highlights the cost-benefit trade-off that healthcare professionals and patients face when considering therapy.     

新加坡Green Mark标准的亲生物性 指标研究：基于气候响应视角

亲生物性是提高人居环境的健康与福祉、应对气候 变化的重要理论,在绿色建筑设计中引入亲生物性对于提升城 市中植物的固碳潜力具有重要作用。绿色建筑设计中亲生物性 设计策略的选择受到当地气候特征的影响,但当前关于地域性 亲生物性设计策略和绿色建筑评价标准的研究尚缺乏。通过文 献综述,从气候响应的视角梳理亲生物性理论,总结归纳湿热 气候下的亲生物性设计策略框架。新加坡Green Mark标准是 热带和亚热带地区领先的绿色建筑评价系统,构建亲生物性设 计策略框架并对其进行案例分析,归纳新加坡Green Mark标 准在条文分类、分值权重、策略选择3个方面引入亲生物性指 标的具体方法。总结的框架和方法不仅可为中国地域性绿色建 筑评价标准的制定和发展提供参考意见,还可为后续湿热气候 下的绿色建筑亲生物性指标评价框架的制定奠定理论基础。     

新加坡政府在中小企业发展过程中的作用

新加坡有18万家商业企业,中小企业占99%,所雇用员工占劳动人口的65%。中小企业的兴衰,与国家经济紧密相连,对国家发展有举足轻重的影响。新加坡中小企业发展中存在的问题,主要是流动资金不足;劳动力成本高;创新能力弱,缺少科技支撑等。新加坡政府在中小企业发展过程中,在政策、技术、培养人才上给予支持,发挥了重要作用。研究新加坡政府的有关政策和做法,以期对中国中小企业发展有借鉴作用。     

Challenge to ICT manpower planning under the economic restructuring: Empirical evidence from MNCs in Singapore and Taiwan

The study evaluates the issues related to the manpower planning for developing the information, communication and technology (ICT) industry under the economic restructuring in Singapore and Taiwan. Using data collected from 211 multinational companies (MNCs) operating in these two countries, we measured recruitment difficulty and attrition rate experienced by MNCs, and evaluate the extent of ICT skill shortages among the companies surveyed. We found some impact of the nation-pushed ICT manpower planning and development on easing the recruitment difficulty overall at firm level. However, a high attrition rate especially of the low-medium ICT professionals identified in this study may be related to an imbalanced approach taken by the governments to focus on developing high level of science and technology and ICT skills. Implications to the two countries examined and other latecomer countries such as China, India and Vietnam are discussed.     

新加坡工业园区管理体系的分析及对中国的启示

中国开发区的建设已经进入了一个新阶段,但部分开发区的建设发展不尽人意。因此,本文以新加坡作为一个视角研究工业园区的管理体系的创新,得出一些有建设性的策略提升中国工业园区管理的创新体系。     

Singapore Technologies Electronics——Committed to Growth in China

About ST Electronics Headquartered in Singapore,ST Electronics has almost 40 years of experience providing electronics,communications and ICT(information communications technologies)solutions to governments and commercial enterprises worldwide. Our strength lies in our ability to harness leading-edge technologies into products and solutions,     

从新加坡会计准则谈我国会计准则的国际协调

本文简要介绍了新加坡会计准则的制定、颁布和实施的情况,新加坡会计准则的特点以及新加坡在会计国际协调方面的做法,试图提出适合于解决我国的会计国际协调问题的方法。     

Conduct of Conduits: Engineering,Desire and Government through the Enclosure and Exposure of Urban Water

This article scrutinizes the relationship between governmental reform and infrastructural change in Singapore. Focusing on the role of engineers, it is argued that neoliberal decentralization has occurred through the physical reconfiguration of drainage. Neoliberalization is conceived as a localized technical response to a public health crisis resulting from infrastructural enclosure, which is orchestrated on and through the material‐ecological environment. A closed drainage system consisting of trapezoidal canals and concrete culverts had produced an ideal breeding environment for dengue‐carrying mosquitoes, undermining the state's centralized approach to water governance. This article reorients Michel Foucault's analytics of government around engineering and the ‘milieu’ to consider how drainage infrastructure was consequently opened up to an emerging civil society to relieve pressure on the state and allow greater public participation in the surveillance and management of canals, pipes and culverts. Alongside landscape architects, engineers would increasingly turn to naturalized waterways and open catchment policy to encourage citizens to form an affective bond with water and to inculcate principles of individual ownership and responsibility through physical contact. The article contends that with the proliferation of integrated resource management systems, governmental power is increasingly exercised through the liveliness as well as the fetishization of urban infrastructure.