Hasil untuk "Economics as a science"

H. Simon

L. Roope, Richard D. Smith, K. Pouwels et al.

Incentivizing restraint in drug use The accelerating tide of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a major worldwide policy concern. Like climate change, the incentives for individual decision-makers do not take into account the costs to society at large. AMR represents an impending “tragedy of the commons,” and there is an immediate need for collective action to prevent future harm. Roope et al. review the issues associated with AMR from an economics perspective and draw parallels with climate change. A major stumbling block for both challenges is to build consensus about the best way forward when faced with many uncertainties and inequities. Science, this issue p. eaau4679 BACKGROUND Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is increasing, driven by widespread antibiotic use. The wide availability of effective antibiotics is under threat, jeopardizing modern health care. Forecasts of the economic costs are similar to those of a 2°C rise in global average surface temperature, above preindustrial levels. AMR is becoming an urgent priority for policy-makers, and pressure is mounting to secure international commitments to tackle the problem. ADVANCES Estimating the value of interventions to reduce antibiotic use requires predictions of future levels of antibiotic resistance. However, modeling the trajectory of antibiotic resistance, and how marginal changes in antibiotic consumption contribute to resistance, is complex. The challenge of estimating the resulting impact on health and the economy is similarly daunting. As with the cost of climate change, estimates of total AMR costs are fraught with uncertainty and may be far too low. Much of the uncertainty arises from the complexity of estimating the cost of changes in overall resistance levels. This cost depends on various factors: which drug and pathogen are involved, the mechanism of antibiotic resistance, the prevalence of that pathogen, the types of infections it causes and their level of transmissibility, the health burden of those infections, and whether alternative treatments are available. Effective new antibiotics are urgently needed. However, without government intervention, R&D for antibiotics is rarely profitable, and most major pharmaceutical companies have left the field. New ways are needed to make antibiotic development profitable, decoupling profits from volumes sold. OUTLOOK Analogies can be drawn between climate change and AMR, both of which have been described as a global “tragedy of the commons.” There is some consensus that we should treat carbon emissions reduction as an insurance policy against the possibility of a catastrophic climate outcome—and avoid waiting for a definitive optimum-abatement policy. A similar paradigm shift is needed to incentivize both the introduction and valuation of interventions to reduce antibiotic use and R&D of new antibiotics. Rather than taxing the price and letting the market dictate the quantity of antibiotics supplied, an alternative may be to establish a regulatory body that issues prescribers tradable permits and to allow the market to determine the price. Such an approach could create a predictable revenue stream through more-foreseeable licensing fees for important antibiotics by decoupling the return on investment from the volume used. Approaches such as this could incentivize industry to develop new antibiotics for which there would otherwise be too small a market to provide a sufficient return on investment. Reducing inappropriate antibiotic use while expanding essential access is a difficult challenge, especially in low- and middle-income countries. However, policy-makers and philanthropists are alert to the importance of AMR and increasingly are making substantial research funds available, with much of these funds devoted to the social sciences. We need economists, across many different fields, to engage with this pressing global problem. Excess antibiotic use versus access-related mortality in young children. The top map depicts excess: use of so-called “watch” and “reserve” antibiotics in standard units (SU) per 100,000 children under the age of 6. The World Health Organization’s watch group includes antibiotics that are recommended as first- or second-choice treatments for only a small number of infections, owing to greater potential to select for antibiotic resistance. The reserve group includes antibiotics that should be considered last-resort options and used only in the most severe circumstances, when all other alternatives have failed. The bottom map depicts access: simulated estimates of annual deaths from community-acquired bacterial pneumonia, expressed per 100,000 children under the age of 5, which could be averted with universal access to antibiotics. (TOP) Based on data from Y. Hsia et al., Lancet Infect. Dis. 19, 67 (2019), and population estimates from https://population.un.org/wpp/Download/Standard/Population/; (BOTTOM) Based on data and estimates from R. Laxminarayan et al., Lancet 387, 168 (2016), and population estimates from https://population.un.org/wpp/Download/Standard/Population/ As antibiotic consumption grows, bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to treatment. Antibiotic resistance undermines much of modern health care, which relies on access to effective antibiotics to prevent and treat infections associated with routine medical procedures. The resulting challenges have much in common with those posed by climate change, which economists have responded to with research that has informed and shaped public policy. Drawing on economic concepts such as externalities and the principal–agent relationship, we suggest how economics can help to solve the challenges arising from increasing resistance to antibiotics. We discuss solutions to the key economic issues, from incentivizing the development of effective new antibiotics to improving antibiotic stewardship through financial mechanisms and regulation.

The IceCube Collaboration, R. Abbasi, M. Ackermann et al.

The discovery of joint sources of high-energy neutrinos and gravitational waves has been a primary target for the LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA, and IceCube observatories. The joint detection of high-energy neutrinos and gravitational waves would provide insight into cosmic processes, from the dynamics of compact object mergers and stellar collapses to the mechanisms driving relativistic outflows. The joint detection of multiple cosmic messengers can also elevate the significance of the common observation even when some or all of the constituent messengers are sub-threshold, i.e. not significant enough to declare their detection individually. Using data from the LIGO, Virgo, and IceCube observatories, including sub-threshold events, we searched for common sources of gravitational waves and high-energy neutrinos during the third observing run of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. Our search did not identify significant joint sources. We derive constraints on the rate densities of joint sources. Our results constrain the isotropic neutrino emission from gravitational-wave sources for very high values of the total energy emitted in neutrinos (> $10^{52} - 10^{54}$ erg).

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, the KAGRA Collaboration et al.

We present results from an all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves, using three different methods applied to the first eight months of LIGO data from the fourth LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration s observing run. We aim at signals potentially emitted by rotating, non-axisymmetric isolated neutron star in the Milky Way. The analysis spans a frequency range from 20 Hz to 2000 Hz and accommodates frequency derivative magnitudes up to $10^{-8}$ Hz/s. No statistically significant periodic gravitational wave signals were detected. We establish 95% confidence-level (CL) frequentist upper limits on the dimensionless strain amplitudes. The most stringent population-averaged strain upper limits reach 9.7 $\times$ $10^{-26}$ near 290 Hz, matching the best previous constraints from 250 to $\sim$1700 Hz while extending coverage to a much broader spin-down range. At higher frequencies, the new limits improve upon previous results by factors of approximately $\sim$1.6. These constraints are applied to three astrophysical scenarios: 1) the distribution of galactic neutron stars as a function of spin frequency and ellipticity; 2) the contribution of millisecond pulsars to the GeV excess near the galactic center; and 3) the possible dark matter fraction composed of nearby inspiraling primordial binary black holes with asteroid-scale masses.

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, the KAGRA Collaboration et al.

Rotating non-axisymmetric neutron stars (NSs) are promising sources for continuous gravitational waves (CWs). Such CWs can, if detected, inform us about the internal structure and equation of state of NSs. Here, we present a narrowband search for CWs from known pulsars, for which an efficient and sensitive matched-filter search can be applied. Narrowband searches are designed to be robust to mismatches between the electromagnetic (EM) and gravitational emissions, in contrast to fully targeted searches where the CW emission is assumed to be phase-locked to the EM one. In this work, we search for the CW counterparts emitted by 34 pulsars using data from the first and second parts of the fourth LIGO--Virgo--KAGRA observing run. This is the largest number of pulsars so far targeted for narrowband searches in the advanced detector era. We use the 5n-vector narrowband pipeline, which applies frequency-domain matched filtering. In previous searches, it covered a narrow range in the frequency -- frequency time derivative ($f$ -- $\dot{f}$) space. Here, we also explore a range in the second time derivative of the frequency $\ddot{f}$ around the value indicated by EM observations. Additionally, for the first time, we target sources in a binary system with this kind of search. We find no evidence for CWs and therefore set upper limits on the strain amplitude emitted by each pulsar, using simulated signals added in real data. For 20 analyses, we report an upper limit below the theoretical spin-down limit. The tightest constraint is for pulsar PSR J0534+2200 (the Crab pulsar), for which our strain upper limit on the CW amplitude is $\lesssim 2\%$ of its spin-down limit, corresponding to less than $0.04\%$ of the spin-down power being radiated in the CW channel.

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, the KAGRA Collaboration et al.

In this second of three papers on tests of general relativity (GR) applied to the compact binary coalescence signals in the fourth Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC-4.0), we present the results of the parameterized tests of GR and constraints on line-of-sight acceleration. We include events up to and including the first part of the fourth observing run (O4a) of the LIGO Virgo KAGRA detectors. As in the other two papers in this series, we restrict our analysis to the 42 confident signals, measured by at least two detectors, that have false alarm rates $\le 10^{-3} \mathrm{yr}^{-1}$ from O4a, in addition to the 49 such events from previous observing runs. This paper focuses on the eight tests that constrain parameterized deviations from the expected GR (or unaccelerated) values. These include modifications of post-Newtonian (PN) parameters, spin-induced quadrupole moments different from those of a binary black hole, and possible dispersive or birefringent propagation effects. Overall, we find no evidence for physics beyond GR, for spin-induced quadrupole moments different from those of a Kerr black hole in GR, or for line of sight acceleration, with more than 90% of the events including the null result (no deviation) within their 90% credible intervals. We discuss possible systematics affecting the other events and tests, even though they are statistically not surprising, given noise. We improve the bounds on deviations from the GR PN coefficients by factors of 1.2-5.5 and provide illustrative translations to constraints on some modified theories. Also, we update the bound on the mass of the graviton, at 90% credibility, to $m_g \leq 1.92\times 10^{-23} \mathrm{eV}/c^2$. Thus, we see that GR holds, and many of the bounds on possible deviations derived from our events are the best to date.

E. U. Ganshina, I. L. Smirnova, S. P. Ivanova

The article studies the concept of circular economy as an alternative of traditional linear model oriented to efficient use of natural resources, cutting wastes and development of closed material cycles. The basis of circular economy is formed by the principle of maximum use of resources through recycling and repeated use of materials. Transition to circular economy can become an important strategic element for Russia, especially in conditions of such challenges as dependence on import and sanctions. The article provides analysis of data concerning recycling and import of plastics in Russia, where considerable volumes of plastic wastes cannot be used due to insufficient development of recycling infrastructure. The proposed economic model shows that transition to recycling of 95% of imported plastics can both create a serious economic potential for import substitution and result in extra economic benefits, including new sources of revenues, jobs and transition to economy of closed cycle without necessity of raw material purchase with foreign currency. In conclusion the authors underlined the necessity of complex approach to effective recycling of plastics and cutting plastic wastes within the frames of goals of sustainable development in the Russian Federation.

Primasari Fitria, Ayu Geby Gisela Syaputri, Muhammad Bahrul Ulum

This study aims to examine the extent to which World Oil Prices and Infrastructure Spending influence Indonesia's Budget Balance in 2015-2024. The data used in this study are secondary data from 2015-2024. The analysis method used is multiple linear regression analysis. The analysis results indicate that crude oil prices and infrastructure expenditure simultaneously have a significant effect on the Budget Balance, with an F-value of 5.720 and a significance level of 0.013 < 0.015. Partially, infrastructure expenditure has a significant impact on the state budget deficit, with a coefficient of β = 0.456 and p < 0.05, whereas crude oil prices do not have a significant effect (β = -0.106, p = 0.28). This is due to fluctuations in crude oil prices that do not always align with the continuously increasing trend of the state budget deficit each year. Infrastructure expenditure plays a crucial role in supporting economic growth, prompting the government to increase capital spending for development.

Raúl Vázquez-López

RESUMEN: Este trabajo tiene por objetivo principal analizar, a la luz de las fluctuaciones de los precios de los commodities, la evolución de la integración de países latinoamericanos seleccionados (Argentina, Brasil, Colombia, Chile, México y Perú) en cadenas globales de valor (CGV) durante el periodo 1998-2018. A partir de información proveniente de las matrices insumo-producto globales de la OCDE, se calculan los encadenamientos backward y forward, así como la participación y posicionamiento en CGV, de los casos seleccionados, utilizando una descomposición matemática de las exportaciones en términos de valor agregado. La representación de trayectorias de posicionamiento en CGV, para cada país en el tiempo, arroja evidencia de comportamientos inerciales y dependientes de las fluctuaciones de los precios de los commodities. Se concluye que la integración de países latinoamericanos en CGV fue acotada debido principalmente a la reprimarización de las economías y a la ausencia o fracaso de políticas de industrialización.

Martin Åhlén, Suzanna Törnroth, Åsa Wikberg-Nilsson

This article introduces the Design Sensibility Approach—a sensorial and embodied process for making sense of possible futures. The approach is applied through a case study on speculative energy design in the home, conducted and adapted within a participatory workshop held at a regional art hall in Northern Sweden. It unfolds in four phases—Imagine, Make, Explore, and Reflect—across a broader timeline comprising pre-workshop, active workshop, and post-workshop stages. During the workshop, participants were invited to engage with their senses through a series of activities designed to prompt reflection on their own future energy imaginaries, which they materialized using a MakeTools kit. The results reveal three themes: emotional responses elicited from embodied experiences with energy; energy as a lifestyle; and critique of the political landscape surrounding resource extractivism in Northern Sweden. These findings inform the research question: How might the human senses be leveraged to create stronger emotional connections with future domestic energy products and systems? The article concludes by proposing concrete applications of the Design Sensibility Approach at individual, community, and governance levels, highlighting its ethical and inclusive dimensions as areas for future development.

B. Beaudreau

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, the KAGRA Collaboration et al.

The Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC) is a collection of candidate gravitational-wave transient signals identified and characterized by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration. Producing the contents of the GWTC from detector data requires complex analysis methods. These comprise techniques to model the signal; identify the transients in the data; evaluate the quality of the data and mitigate possible instrumental issues; infer the parameters of each transient; compare the data with the waveform models for compact binary coalescences; and handle the large amount of results associated with all these different analyses. In this paper, we describe the methods employed to produce the catalog's fourth release, GWTC-4.0, focusing on the analysis of the first part of the fourth observing run of Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo and KAGRA.

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, the KAGRA Collaboration et al.

The Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC) is a collection of short-duration (transient) gravitational wave signals identified by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration in gravitational-wave data produced by the eponymous detectors. The catalog provides information about the identified candidates, such as the arrival time and amplitude of the signal and properties of the signal's source as inferred from the observational data. GWTC is the data release of this dataset and version 4.0 extends the catalog to include observations made during the first part of the fourth LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observing run up until 2024 January 31. This paper marks an introduction to a collection of articles related to this version of the catalog, GWTC-4.0. The collection of articles accompanying the catalog provides documentation of the methods used to analyze the data, summaries of the catalog of events, observational measurements drawn from the population, and detailed discussions of selected candidates

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, the KAGRA Collaboration et al.

Continuous gravitational waves (CWs) emission from neutron stars carries information about their internal structure and equation of state, and it can provide tests of General Relativity. We present a search for CWs from a set of 45 known pulsars in the first part of the fourth LIGO--Virgo--KAGRA observing run, known as O4a. We conducted a targeted search for each pulsar using three independent analysis methods considering the single-harmonic and the dual-harmonic emission models. We find no evidence of a CW signal in O4a data for both models and set upper limits on the signal amplitude and on the ellipticity, which quantifies the asymmetry in the neutron star mass distribution. For the single-harmonic emission model, 29 targets have the upper limit on the amplitude below the theoretical spin-down limit. The lowest upper limit on the amplitude is $6.4\!\times\!10^{-27}$ for the young energetic pulsar J0537-6910, while the lowest constraint on the ellipticity is $8.8\!\times\!10^{-9}$ for the bright nearby millisecond pulsar J0437-4715. Additionally, for a subset of 16 targets we performed a narrowband search that is more robust regarding the emission model, with no evidence of a signal. We also found no evidence of non-standard polarizations as predicted by the Brans-Dicke theory.

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, the KAGRA Collaboration et al.

We detail the population properties of merging compact objects using 158 mergers from the cumulative Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog 4.0, which includes three types of binary mergers: binary neutron star, neutron star--black hole binary, and binary black hole mergers. We resolve multiple over- and under-densities in the black hole mass distribution: features persist at primary masses of $10\,M_\odot$ and $35\,M_\odot$ with a possible third feature at $\sim 20\,M_\odot$. These are departures from an otherwise power-law-like continuum that steepens above $35\,M_\odot$. Binary black holes with primary masses near $10\,M_\odot$ are more likely to have less massive secondaries, with a mass ratio distribution peaking at $q = 0.74^{+0.13}_{-0.13}$, potentially a signature of stable mass transfer during binary evolution. Black hole spins are inferred to be non-extremal, with 90\% of black holes having $χ< 0.57$, and preferentially aligned with binary orbits, implying many merging binaries form in isolation. However, we find a significant fraction, 0.24-0.42, of binaries have negative effective inspiral spins, suggesting many could be formed dynamically in gas-free environments. We find evidence for correlation between effective inspiral spin and mass ratio, though it is unclear if this is driven by variation in the mode of the distribution or the width. (Abridged)

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, the KAGRA Collaboration et al.

We report the observation of gravitational waves from two binary black hole coalescences during the fourth observing run of the LIGO--Virgo--KAGRA detector network, GW241011 and GW241110. The sources of these two signals are characterized by rapid and precisely measured primary spins, non-negligible spin--orbit misalignment, and unequal mass ratios between their constituent black holes. These properties are characteristic of binaries in which the more massive object was itself formed from a previous binary black hole merger, and suggest that the sources of GW241011 and GW241110 may have formed in dense stellar environments in which repeated mergers can take place. As the third loudest gravitational-wave event published to date, with a median network signal-to-noise ratio of $36.0$, GW241011 furthermore yields stringent constraints on the Kerr nature of black holes, the multipolar structure of gravitational-wave generation, and the existence of ultralight bosons within the mass range $10^{-13}$--$10^{-12}$ eV.

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, the KAGRA Collaboration et al.

We search for gravitational-wave background signals produced by various early Universe processes in the Advanced LIGO O4a dataset, combined with the data from the earlier O1, O2, and O3 (LIGO-Virgo) runs. The absence of detectable signals enables powerful constraints on fundamental physics. We derive gravitational-wave background energy density upper limits from the O1-O4a data to constrain parameters associated with various possible processes in the early Universe: first-order phase transitions, cosmic strings, domain walls, stiff equation of state, axion inflation, second-order scalar perturbations, primordial black hole binaries, and parity violation. In our analyses, the presence of an astrophysical background produced by compact (black hole and neutron star) binary coalescences throughout the Universe is also considered. We address the implications for various cosmological and high energy physics models based on the obtained parameter constraints. We conclude that LIGO-Virgo data already yield significant constraints on numerous early Universe scenarios.

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, the KAGRA Collaboration et al.

LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA form a network of gravitational-wave observatories. Data and analysis results from this network are made publicly available through the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center. This paper describes open data from this network, including the addition of data from the first part of the fourth observing run (O4a) and selected periods from the preceding engineering run, collected from May 2023 to January 2024. The public data set includes calibrated strain time series for each instrument, data from additional channels used for noise subtraction and detector characterization, and analysis data products from version 4.0 of the Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog.

Kristina Spasić, Bojana Novićević Čečević, Ljilja Antić

The new industrial era has brought new opportunities and chances for the entire business development. Smart machines, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, big data are taking over many jobs and roles, thus leaving room for the development of new skills and abilities. The rapid technological development in terms of automation and digitization has made machines replace human work. In this sense, it is a matter of time when technology will replace traditional accountants. (Management) accountants who want to adapt and survive in the digital world have to improve their offer and change the focus from data calculation to interpretation of results and business management. Thus, by applying new digital information technology tools, management accounting can provide quality information for determining the costs of products and services, performance measurement, planning and control, strategic and operational decision-making and the like. The general objective of this paper is to review the potential impact of digital information technologies on the usefulness of cost accounting systems and organizational performance in healthcare institutions in the Republic of Serbia with the help of statistical analysis of the relationship between the selected variables. The results of the analysis show that digital technologies have a great impact on the usefulness of the cost accounting system. Also, the largest number of respondents pointed out that improved IT systems have a positive effect on increasing organizational performance.

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, the KAGRA Collaboration et al.

Among the various candidates for dark matter (DM), ultralight vector DM can be probed by laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors through the measurement of oscillating length changes in the arm cavities. In this context, KAGRA has a unique feature due to differing compositions of its mirrors, enhancing the signal of vector DM in the length change in the auxiliary channels. Here we present the result of a search for $U(1)_{B-L}$ gauge boson DM using the KAGRA data from auxiliary length channels during the first joint observation run together with GEO600. By applying our search pipeline, which takes into account the stochastic nature of ultralight DM, upper bounds on the coupling strength between the $U(1)_{B-L}$ gauge boson and ordinary matter are obtained for a range of DM masses. While our constraints are less stringent than those derived from previous experiments, this study demonstrates the applicability of our method to the lower-mass vector DM search, which is made difficult in this measurement by the short observation time compared to the auto-correlation time scale of DM.