Introducing Uncertainty Quantification to Techno-economic Models of Manufacturing Field-Grown Plant-Made Products

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew James McNulty ◽  
Kirolos Kelada ◽  
Debashis Paul ◽  
Somen Nandi ◽  
Karen McDonald

There is a growing demand for large market natural and biotechnological products, for example, consumer preferences drive plant-based meat alternatives, health risks of sugar overconsumption continue to motivate alternative sweeteners, and the COVID-19 pandemic has reinvigorated interest in countries developing in-house vaccine and medication production capabilities. The current paradigm of bioreactor-based biomanufacturing faces difficulties of scalability and a high entry barrier of capital intensity and workforce specialization. Field-grown plant-based manufacturing, as an inexpensive and readily scalable platform, is a promising strategy to meet this emerging demand. Despite some successes in field-grown bioproducts manufacturing by companies such as Ventria Biosciences, concerns of product variability have largely stymied growth in this area. Here we report on the development and use of techno-economic modeling coupled with Monte Carlo-based uncertainty quantification as an effective tool to quantify and mitigate the impact of crop variation on product quality and supply for field-grown plant-based manufacturing.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veronique Lambert-Obry ◽  
Jean-Philippe Lafrance ◽  
Michelle Savoie ◽  
Jean Lachaine

BACKGROUND Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) imposes a significant burden, with its increasing prevalence and life-threatening complications. In patients not achieving glycemic targets on oral antidiabetic drugs, initiation of insulin is recommended. However, a serious concern about insulin is drug-induced hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemia is known to affect quality of life and healthcare resource utilization. However, health economics and outcomes research (HEOR) data for economic modeling are limited, particularly in terms of utility values and productivity losses. OBJECTIVE The aim of this real-world prospective study is to assess the impact of hypoglycemia on productivity and utility in insulin-treated T2DM adults from Ontario and Quebec (Canada). METHODS This noninterventional, multicenter, 3-month prospective study will recruit patients from four medical clinics and two endocrinology/diabetes clinics. Patients will be identified using appointment lists, and enrolled through consecutive sampling during routinely scheduled consultations. To be eligible, patients must be ≥18 years of age, diagnosed with T2DM, and treated with insulin. Utility and productivity will be collected using the EQ-5D-5L questionnaire and the iMTA Productivity Cost Questionnaire (iPCQ), respectively. Questionnaires will be completed at 4, 8 and 12 weeks after recruitment. Generalized estimating equations (GEE) models will be used to investigate productivity losses and utility decrements associated with incident hypoglycemic events while controlling for individual patient characteristics. A total of 500 patients will be enrolled to ensure precision of HEOR estimates. RESULTS This study is designed to fill a gap in the Canadian evidence on the impact of hypoglycemia on HEOR outcomes. More specifically, it will generate productivity and utility inputs for economic modeling in T2DM. CONCLUSIONS Insulin therapies are expensive, and hypoglycemia is a significant component of economic evaluations. Robust HEOR data may help health technology assessment (HTA) agencies in future reimbursement decision making.


2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Alvira

<p>This article, based on an action research study performed at a Colombian middle-sized private university, proposes specific strategies to provide feedback to English as a foreign language learners and uses a Web 2.0 tool called screencasting. The findings of the study suggest that the use of coded, written, and oral feedback is widely accepted by students and yields positive results in the improvement of their writing skills at the paragraph level, and that the use of screencasting is a promising strategy that is motivational to students and increases the quality of their uptake.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fanny Nisadiyanti ◽  
Willy Sri Yuliandhari

The purpose of this study s to find out the impact of capital intensity, liquidity and sales growth on tax aggressiveness. This study uses a population in the coal mining sub-industry corporate listed on the IDX from 2016 to 2019 period. The sample selection technique used is purposive sampling, 14 coal mining sub-industry corporate were selected and the research period was 4 years. Therefore, as many as 56 samples were obtained in this study. The data analysis method used is panel data regression analysis using EViews 11 software. The results show that capital intensity, liquidity and sales growth affect tax aggressiveness simultaneously. Partially, liquidity has a positive effect on tax aggressiveness, while capital intensity and sales growth do not affect tax aggressiveness.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (18) ◽  
pp. 5778
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Dudziak ◽  
Monika Stoma ◽  
Andrzej Kuranc ◽  
Jacek Caban

New technologies reaching out for meeting the needs of an aging population in developed countries have given rise to the development and gradual implementation of the concept of an autonomous vehicle (AV) and have even made it a necessity and an important business paradigm. However, in parallel, there is a discussion about consumer preferences and the willingness to pay for new car technologies and intelligent vehicle options. The main aim of the study was to analyze the impact of selected factors on the perception of the future of autonomous cars by respondents from the area of Southeastern Poland in terms of a comparison with traditional cars, with particular emphasis on the advantages and disadvantages of this concept. The research presented in this study was conducted in 2019 among a group of 579 respondents. Data analysis made it possible to identify potential advantages and disadvantages of the concept of introducing autonomous cars. A positive result of the survey is that 68% of respondents stated that AV will be gradually introduced to our market, which confirms the high acceptance of this technology by Poles. The obtained research results may be valuable information for governmental and local authorities, but also for car manufacturers and their future users. It is an important issue in the area of shaping the strategy of actions concerning further directions of development on the automotive market.


Mechanika ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (6) ◽  
pp. 455-462
Author(s):  
Dawei Zhang ◽  
Peijuan Xu ◽  
Daniele Bigoni

This paper aims to investigate uncertainties in railway vehicle suspension components and the implement of uncertainty quantification methods in railway vehicle dynamics. The sampling-based method represented by Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS) and generalized polynomial chaos approaches including the stochastic Galerkin and Collocation methods (SGM and SCM) are employed to analyze the propagation of uncertainties from the parameters input in a vehicle-track mathematical model to the results of running dynamics. In order to illustrate the performance qualities of SGM, SCM and LHS, a stochastic wheel model with uncertainties of the stiffness and damping is firstly formulated to study the vertical displacement of wheel. Numerical results show that SCM, which can be easily implemented by means of the existing deterministic model, has explicit advantages over SGM and LHS in terms of the efficiency and accuracy. Furthermore, a simplified stochastic bogie model with three random suspension parameters is also established by means of SCM and LHS to analyze the critical speed, which is affected obviously by the parametric uncertainties. Finally, a stochastic vertical vehicle-track coupled model with parametric uncertainties is built comprehensively on the basis of SCM, by which the impact behavior of wheel-rail interaction under a rail defect is investigated and the dynamic response of vehicles under the track irregularity is explored in terms of the Sperling index. It concludes that the uncertainties of parameters have a significant influence on P2 force and Sperling index from the view of the running quality.


Author(s):  
Tristan Cherry ◽  
Mark Fowler ◽  
Claire Goldhammer ◽  
Jeong Yun Kweun ◽  
Thomas Sherman ◽  
...  

The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally disrupted travel behavior and consumer preferences. To slow the spread of the virus, public health officials and state and local governments issued stay-at-home orders and, among other actions, closed nonessential businesses and educational facilities. The resulting recessionary effects have been particularly acute for U.S. toll roads, with an observed year-over-year decline in traffic and revenue of 50% to 90% in April and May 2020. These disruptions have also led to changes in the types of trip that travelers make and their frequency, their choice of travel mode, and their willingness to pay tolls for travel time savings and travel time reliability. This paper describes the results of travel behavior research conducted on behalf of the Virginia Department of Transportation before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in the National Capital Region of Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Northern Virginia. The research included a stated preference survey to estimate travelers’ willingness to pay for travel time savings and travel time reliability, to support forecasts of traffic and revenue for existing and proposed toll corridors. The survey collected data between December 2019 and June 2020. A comparison of the data collected before and during the pandemic shows widespread changes in travel behavior and a reduction in willingness to pay for travel time savings and travel time reliability across all traveler types, particularly for drivers making trips to or from work. These findings have significant implications for the return of travelers to toll corridors in the region and future forecasts of traffic and revenue.


Author(s):  
Ranjan Dutta ◽  
Jonathan J. Koehler

In this chapter, we draw on the behavioral economics literature to identify the conditions under which consumers would prefer one of three pricing schemes (pre-payment, pay-as-you-go, and post-payment). We suggest that consumer preferences for particular pricing schemes are likely to be determined by systematic relationships that exist among a variety of psychological variables. We offer nine empirical propositions that identify when consumers will prefer different pricing schemes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 101 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erica Doro ◽  
Vincent Réquillart

Abstract Food systems in developed countries face one major challenge, namely the promotion of diets that are both healthy and generate less greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE). In this article, we review papers evaluating the impact of a change in diets on both health and GHGE. We address the following questions: How big are the health and environmental impacts that could be induced by a switch to healthier diets? In monetary value, what is the relative importance of the health impact and the environmental impact? Is it possible to design an economic policy to increase global welfare that also takes into account the externalities on both health and the environment? Since the way the change in diet is modeled is a key issue, we classify papers according to the methodology used for simulating diet changes: ad hoc scenarios, optimized diets, and economic modeling. We find that it is possible to design economic policies that have positive impacts on both dimension. Because the substitutions/complementarities between food products are complex, it is not granted that a policy targeting one dimension will generate positive effects on the other dimensions. However, given the diversity of substitution and the complementarity possibilities between products, it is possible to design a policy that does improve both dimensions. A carbon-based tax policy that targets the products with a high greenhouse gas content (e.g., meat products) and reinvests the revenues collected with the tax to subsidize the consumption of fruit and vegetables, is likely to have positive effects on both dimensions.


2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (5) ◽  
pp. 686-703 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ajay T. Abraham ◽  
Rebecca W. Hamilton

Evidence of the impact of partitioned pricing is contradictory. Research indicates that partitioning a price into multiple components can result in more favorable preferences, due to a lower recalled price, or less favorable preferences, due to unfavorable surcharge evaluations. To explain these divergent effects, the authors examine the role of price presentation moderators, which reflect how managers convey prices to consumers (e.g., Is the total price present or absent?), magnitude moderators, which reflect the actual prices charged (e.g., What is the surcharge magnitude?), and contextual moderators, which reflect nonprice transaction characteristics (e.g., Is the product category hedonic or utilitarian?). A meta-analysis of 17 years of partitioned pricing research examining 149 observations in 27 papers (N = 12,878) suggests that consumers respond more favorably to partitioned pricing than to all-inclusive pricing when the total price is absent, as the price level increases, when the surcharges are typical for the product category, when the surcharges are perceived as offering high benefit, and when the product category is utilitarian.


Author(s):  
English Ratliff ◽  
Michael Vassalos ◽  
Wuyang Hu

AbstractConsistent with preferences for other food products, consumers increasingly care about a range of search and credence seafood characteristics such as: environmental effects and product form. This study utilized a dataset obtained from an online survey, and a Multivariate Ordered Probit formulation to examine the impact of: demographic characteristics, lifestyle preferences, and seafood consumption frequency on preferences for selected seafood attributes. The findings indicate that the factors influencing consumer preferences differ across the attributes examined. Although some demographic variables have a statistically significant effect on consumers’ preferences for seafood attributes other than price, their predictive power was limited regarding preferences for wild-caught, fresh seafood and the impact of sustainability on purchasing decisions. Furthermore, consumers who utilize direct marketing outlets have stronger preferences towards fresh and wild-caught seafood products.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document