城市桥梁结构安全监测方法

城市桥梁是城市交通体系重要组成部分,文章依据桥梁退化模式,结合桥梁病害的发展表现,提出一套简便易行、安全可靠的城市桥梁结构周期性安全监测方法,以供同行参考。     

Administrative cooperation and disease control in cross-border pork production

In recent years, the continuous structural change in the value chain of modern food production has been characterised by an increasing international division of labour among manufacturing companies. A regional specialisation of primary agricultural production is especially apparent in meat production. Thus, the German–Dutch border area has developed into a region of unprecedented intensive pork production. While The Netherlands specialises in piglet production, the production of fattened pigs continues to grow in northwest Germany. As a result of this increasing transnational value chain development, German imports of Dutch piglets have risen continuously since 2000. However, this structural interweaving of pork production between The Netherlands and Germany has resulted in many new challenges for the cooperation between the various participants and in particular for the administrative authorities in the field of food and feed safety as well as efficient animal disease control. The motivation for this exploratory study stems from the lack of scientific work on this topic to date. The aim of this research is to illustrate the relevance of functioning cross-border cooperation in the food sector, using commodity flow structures and disease spread analysis. Results indicate that cross-border cooperation between authorities during a CSF epidemic can reduce the risk of recurrence and the duration by 50%.     

Farmers’ Willingness to Pay for a Tuberculosis Cattle Vaccine

We use contingent valuation (CV) and choice experiment (CE) methods to assess cattle farmers’ attitudes to and willingness to pay (WTP) for a bovine tuberculosis (bTB) cattle vaccine, to help inform vaccine development and policy. A survey questionnaire was administered by means of telephone interviews to a stratified sample of 300 cattle farmers in annually bTB‐tested areas in England and Wales. Farmers felt that bTB was a major risk for the cattle industry and that there was a high risk of their cattle getting the disease. The CE estimate produced a mean WTP of £35 per animal per single dose for a vaccine that is 90% effective at reducing the risk of a bTB breakdown and an estimated £55 for such a vaccine backed by 100% insurance of loss if a breakdown should occur. The CV estimate produced a mean WTP of nearly £17 per dose/per animal/per year for a vaccine (including 100% insurance) which, given the average lifespan of cattle, is comparable to the CE estimate. These WTP estimates are substantially higher than the expected cost of a vaccine which suggests that farmers in high risk bTB ‘hotspot’ areas perceive a substantial net benefit from buying the vaccine.     

Exchange Rate Economics

The paper summarizes the current theory of how a floating exchange rate is determined, dividing the subject into what determines the steady state and what determines the transition to steady state. The inadequacies of this model are examined, and an alternative “behavioral” model, which recognizes that the foreign exchange market is populated by both fundamentalists and chartists is presented. It is argued that the main importance of understanding the foreign exchange market for development strategy is to permit a correct appraisal of the dangers of Dutch disease. Empirically it seems that from the standpoint of promoting development it is preferable to have a mildly undervalued rate. The paper concludes by examining implications for exchange rate regimes.

Urban Politics as the Unfolding of Social Relations in Place: The Case of Sexually Transmitted Disease Investigation in Mid‐Twentieth‐Century Gay Seattle

Recent debates in urban politics stress the need to broaden conceptions of what counts as urban politics, as well as of where they take place. This means shifting attention to include more quotidian and prosaic social relations, including those taking place in spaces of civil society. We answer this call with a case study of the relations between an emerging gay male community in mid‐twentieth‐century Seattle, USA and the local public health department’s disease investigators (DIs). We focus on both the biopolitics and cultural politics of the investigation process, from the perspectives of both DIs and gay men. We point out certain tensions and paradoxes in these processes as a form of governmentality, and interpret them through a ‘noir’ cultural lens that is consistent with a notion of urban politics as the unfolding of social relations in place. We conclude by stressing how our findings and framework can augment urban political inquiry both intellectually and empirically.     

试述用人单位在职业病防治中易忽视的问题及对策

用人单位是《职业病防治法》所规定的各项职业病防治措施的主要落实者,是劳动者职业健康及其相关权益保护的第一责任人。明目张胆违反《职业病防治法》的用人单位减少了,但在具体工作中,办事不严、忽视、执行不到位的情况依然存在。文章列举了这些问题并提出了解决措施。     

节点影响力下的改进SIR传播模型

研究不同影响力的节点在复杂网络信息传播过程中产生的作用，对于分析舆论传播、预防谣言扩散、引导信息传递等方面具有重要意义。针对传统易感-感染-移出（Susceptible-Infected-Recovered，SIR）模型认为网络中所有节点性质相同，在信息传播中具有相同的接触感染率和恢复率的问题，提出了节点影响力下的改进SIR传播模型——NI-SIR（Node Influence SIR），并对其阈值推导过程展开深度分析。首先，将复杂网络中的节点按照影响力的不同进行分类，不同类别的节点赋予其不同的接触感染率及恢复率，达到模拟真实信息传播过程的目的；其次，对NI-SIR模型的阈值进行推导，从而为进一步判断疾病是否流行或信息扩散的趋势打下理论基础；最后，通过在真实数据集的实验对比，证明NI-SIR模型的偏差率明显低于传统SIR模型，在真实网络中有更好的适用性。     

市政道路路面病害成因分析及应对策略探讨

市政道路由于设计结构、设计荷载、养护管理和施工质量等一系列因素,路面出现严重的大面积病害。本文笔者将从设计角度谈谈市政道路路面病害的成因及简述其应对措施。     

Comparative financing analysis and political economy of noncommunicable diseases

The pandemic of chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) poses substantial challenges to the health financing sustainability in high-income and low/middle income countries (LMICs). The aim of this review is to identify the bottle neck inefficiencies in NCDs attributable spending and propose sustainable health financing solutions. The World Health Organization (WHO) introduced the “best buy” concept to scale up the core intervention package against NCDs targeted for LMICs. Population- and individual-based NCD best buy interventions are projected at US$170 billion over 2011–2025. Appropriately designed health financing arrangements can be powerful enablers to scale up the NCD best buys. Rapidly developing emerging nations dominate the landscape of LMICs. Their capability and willingness to invest resources for eradicating NCDs could strengthen WHO outreach efforts in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, much beyond current capacities. There has been a declining trend in international donor aid intended to cope with NCDs over the past decade. There is also a serious misalignment of these resources with the actual needs of recipient countries. Globally, the momentum towards the financing of intersectoral actions is growing, and this presents a cost-effective solution. A budget discrepancy of 10:1 in WHO and multilateral agencies remains in donor aid in favour of communicable diseases compared to NCDs. LMICs are likely to remain a bottleneck of NCDs imposed financing sustainability challenge in the long-run. Catastrophic household health expenditure from out of pocket spending on NCDs could plunge almost 150 million people into poverty worldwide. This epidemiological burden coupled with population ageing presents an exceptionally serious sustainability challenge, even among the richest countries which are members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Strategic and political leadership of WHO and multilateral agencies would likely play essential roles in the struggle that has just begun.     

Economic burden associated with inadequate antidepressant medication management among patients with depression and known cardiovascular diseases: insights from a United States–based retrospective claims database analysis

Abstract

Aims: The current study examined the association between insufficient major depressive disorder (MDD) care and healthcare resource use (HCRU) and costs among patients with prior myocardial infarction (MI) or stroke.

Methods: This was a retrospective study conducted using the MarketScan Claims Database (2010–2015). The date of the first MI/stroke diagnosis was defined as the cardiovascular disease (CVD) index date and the first date of a subsequent MDD diagnosis was the index MDD date. Adequacy of MDD care was assessed during the 90 days following the index MDD date (profiling period) using 2 measures: dosage adequacy (average fluoxetine equivalent dose of ≥20?mg/day for nonelderly and ≥10?mg/day for elderly patients) and duration adequacy (measured as the proportion of days covered of 80% or higher for all MDD drugs). Study outcomes included all-cause and CVD-related HCRU and costs which were determined from the end of the profiling period until the end of study follow-up. Propensity-score adjusted generalized linear models (GLMs) were used to compare patients receiving adequate versus inadequate MDD care in terms of study outcomes.

Results: Of 1,568 CVD patients who were treated for MDD, 937 (59.8%) were categorized as receiving inadequate MDD care. Results from the GLMs suggested that patients receiving inadequate MDD care had 14% more all-cause hospitalizations, 4% more all-cause outpatient visits, 17% more CVD-related outpatient visits, 13% more CVD-related emergency room (ER) visits, higher per patient per year CVD-related hospitalization costs ($21,485 vs. $17,756), higher all-cause outpatient costs ($2,820 vs. $2,055), and higher CVD-related outpatient costs ($520 vs. $434) compared to patients receiving adequate MDD care.

Limitations: Clinical information such as depression severity and frailty, which are potential predictors of adverse CVD outcomes, could not be ascertained using administrative claims data.

Conclusions: Among post-MI and post-stroke patients, inadequate MDD care was associated with a significantly higher economic burden.