Cergy-Pontoise University

An important yet largely unexamined issue is how the interaction between deforestation and pollution affects economic and environmental sustainability. This article seeks to bridge the gap by introducing a dynamic model of pollution accumulation where polluting emissions can be mitigated and the absorption efficiency of pollution sinks can be restored. We assume that emissions are due to a production activity, and we include deforestation both as an additional source of emissions and as a cause of the exhaustion of environmental absorption efficiency. To account for the fact that the switching of natural sinks to a pollution source can be either possible, and in such a case even reversible, or impossible, we consider that restoration efforts can be either independent from or dependent on environmental absorption efficiency, i.e., state-independent versus state-dependent restoration efforts. We determine (1) whether production or deforestation is the most detrimental from environmental and social welfare perspectives, and (2) how state-dependent restoration process affects pollution accumulation and deforestation policies and the related environmental and social welfare consequences.

This research investigates the impact of both horizontal and vertical competition, on the one hand, and strategy types (commitment-based versus contingent-based equilibrium strategies), on the other hand, on the pollution accumulated by two supply chains over time. We consider a two-stage game model where two manufacturers and two retailers are involved in a wholesale price contract, to supply the demand over a finite time horizon. In the first stage of the game, the manufacturers set their respective optimal transfer prices. During the second stage, polluting emissions are created over time in proportion to demand, which is controlled by the retailers’ respective consumer prices. In this stage, the manufacturers are involved in emissions abatement. In this setup, we seek to identify the combination of market structure and strategy type that leads the two supply chains to generate the lowest pollution intensity and the highest level of abatement intensity.

We investigate how the relationship between capital accumulation and pollution is affected by the source of pollution: production or consumption. We are interested in polluting waste that cannot be naturally absorbed, but for which recycling efforts aim to avoid massive pollution accumulation with harmful consequences in the long run. Based on both environmental and social welfare perspectives, we determine how the interaction between growth and polluting waste accumulation is affected by the source of pollution, i.e., either consumption or production, and by the fact that recycling may or may not act as an income generator, i.e., either capital-improving or capital-neutral recycling efforts. Several new results are extracted regarding optimal recycling policy and the shape of the relationship between production and pollution. Besides the latter concern, we show both analytically and numerically that the optimal control of waste through recycling allows to reaching larger (resp., lower) consumption and capital stock levels under consumption-based waste compared to production-based waste while the latter permits to reach lower stocks of waste through lower recycling efforts.

We consider a stock pollution problem where the biosphere can transform from a sink to a source of pollution in the presence of self-regenerating environmental absorption efficiency. We examine the problem of controlling pollution and the capacity of the biosphere to absorb pollution: the regulator can mitigate emissions and can invest to build up the absorption capacity of pollution sinks. We examine conditions under which both measures, mitigation and absorption capacity investments, are substitute (complement) to each other, and the relative extent to which environmental self-regenerating capabilities affect these conditions. We also exhibit the possibility of an oscillatory approach to the steady state. Particular attention is paid to the situation where the social planner is impatient.

This pollution accumulation model shows that the environmental absorption capacity is impacted by economic activity. The resulting optimal control problem has two interrelated state variables: the stock of pollution and the absorption capacity of the environment. The stock of pollution decreases with environmental absorption capacity and increases with the rate of current emissions, which is controlled by a production level as well as an emissions reduction effort. However, the environmental absorption capacity is positively affected by an absorption development effort, and negatively impacted by the stock of pollution. Under specific conditions, it is shown that an optimal path, which can be either monotonic or following transient oscillations, leads to a (nontrivial) saddle point characterized by a positive environmental absorption capacity.

This paper seeks to determine how the double marginalization phenomenon affects the tradeoff between polluting emissions and abatement activities related to pollution accumulation in a supply chain composed of one manufacturer and one retailer. The environmental consequence of this inefficiency, which emerges in a noncooperative vertical setting governed by a single-parameter contract, is overlooked in the literature on pollution control. In the setup of a two-stage game, we investigate the impact of double marginalization for noncooperative equilibrium. To check whether there are differences between the dynamic and strategic effects of double marginalization on pollution accumulation, both the open-loop and feedback Nash equilibria are derived over a finite time horizon, with the cooperative solution as a benchmark.

In this paper, we suggest a two-player differential game model of transboundary pollution that accounts for time-dependent environmental absorption efficiency, which allows the biosphere to switch from a carbon sink to a source. We investigate the impact of negative externalities resulting from a transboundary pollution noncooperative game wherein countries are dynamically involved. Based on a linear-quadratic specification for the instantaneous revenue function, we assess transient path and steady-state differences between cooperative solution, open-loop, and Markov perfect Nash equilibria (MPNE). Regarding the methodological contribution of the paper, we suggest a particular structure of the conjectured value function to solve MPNE problems with multiplicative interaction between state variables in one state equation, so that third-order terms that arise in the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation are made negligible. Using a collocation procedure, we confirm the validity of the particular structure of the conjectured value function. The results suggest unexpected contrasts in terms of pollution control and environmental absorption efficiency management: (1) in the long run, an open-loop Nash equilibrium (OLNE) allows equivalent emissions to the social optimum but requires greater restoration efforts; (2) while an MPNE is likely to end up with lower emissions and greater restoration efforts than an OLNE, it has a much greater chance of falling in the emergency area; (3) the absence of cooperation and or precommitment becomes more costly as the initial absorption efficiency decreases; (4) more heavily discounted MPNE strategies are less robust than OLNE to prevent irreversible switching of the biosphere from a carbon sink to a source.

Prior research on inventory control has been wide-ranging, yet the environmental implications of an (s, S) inventory policy remain uninvestigated. This paper seeks to bridge the gap by characterizing a firm’s voluntary environmental policy in the setup of an (s, S) inventory control policy. We suggest a mixed model structure wherein, due to the presence of fixed production costs, the inventory is determined continuously by sales and impulsively with ordering decisions obeying an optimal stopping process, while the uncertain sales process is controlled by continuous-time environmental goodwill-related decisions. We show that a firm should successively use voluntary environmental efforts to stimulate its sales when there is inventory and to increase backlogging to improve its production efficiency. Given the recurrent pattern of this policy, we conclude that voluntary environmental efforts under an (s, S) inventory control is not compatible with using these efforts to generate ephemeral reputation insurance.

This paper investigates the effects of prolonged high-temperature storage on thermal stability, rutting, and fatigue resistance of different pure and modified binders: pure bitumen (PB), used engine oil-modified bitumen (UEOmB), plastic bag waste-modified bitumen (WPmB), and combined used engine oil and plastic bag waste-modified bitumen (UEOPmB). To this end, all binders were prepared and stored at 163 °C for 48 h under continuous low agitation of 300 rpm. Stored and unstored binders were characterized using physical and rheological tests. Rheological derived indicators such as G*/sin δ, Shenoy's rutting parameter, G* sin δ, Low Shear Viscosity (LSV), and predicted Zero Shear Viscosity (ZSV) based on Cross and Carreau models were used to predict rutting and fatigue resistance of the binders. Results show that high-temperature storage provokes physical hardening of the binders. The results demonstrate that both pure and modified binders remain however thermally stable during storage. WPmB and UEOPmB exhibited higher critical rutting temperatures (> 75 °C) than PB and UEOmB (about 71 °C). Moreover, the inclusion of UEO influences positively fatigue resistance of the binders. It has been found that both critical rutting and fatigue temperatures of the tested binders remained unaffected by high-temperature storage.

Purpose Lower urinary tract dysfunction (LUTD) is common in parkinsonian syndromes (PS) and requires special treatment due to limitations in the use of certain drugs and the progression of the disease. Tibial nerve stimulation by transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) is a simple, well-tolerated treatment with proven effectiveness in LUTD. The aim of our study was to evaluate the efficacy on urinary symptoms in patients with a parkinsonian syndrome. Method A prospective, double-blind, multicenter, randomized study to compare the effects of TENS 20 min a day for 3 months with sham stimulation using the 3-month Patient Global Impression of Improvement (PGI-I) score in adults with PS and LUTD for whom conventional treatments had failed. The secondary endpoints studied were 3-month changes in PGI-S (Severity), Urinary Symptom Profile (USP), Qualiveen questionnaire, voiding diary (VD), post-void residue and the rate of complications. Results Between 2015 and 2020, 100 patients with a mean age of 68.6 ± 8.4 years were randomized and included in the intention to treat analysis population (ITT). Among them were 71 men and 85 patients with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease. Initially, the PGI-S was moderate to severe (score of 3–4) in 80 patients: 38 (83%) in the TENS group and 42 (82%) in the sham group. After 3 months of treatment, 68 patients felt an improvement (PGI-I 1–3): 30 (64%) in the TENS group and 38 (72%) in the sham-stimulation group (p = 0.399). There was no statistically significant difference between the 2 groups regardless of the endpoint considered. Conclusion The effect of tibial neuromodulation by TENS on urinary disorders in patients with parkinsonian syndrome after 3 months of stimulation was not significantly different from the placebo effect obtained with sham stimulation.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has revolutionized various industries by enabling automatic identification and tracking of objects. However, in practical RFID systems, collisions occur when multiple tags are present within the coverage area of a single reader, resulting in communication interference and inaccurate tag count estimation. An accurate estimation of the number of tags in RFID systems is crucial for efficient tag identification and system performance. In this paper, we propose a new accurate ultrahigh frequency (UHF) RFID tag quantity estimation technique based on belief function theory, also known as Dempster–Shafer theory (DST). DST offers a robust framework for reasoning under uncertainty and has demonstrated its effectiveness in addressing intricate information–fusion challenges. The proposed technique, operating at the physical layer, uses belief functions and mass assignment principles to model the uncertainty associated with tag collisions, enabling accurate estimation. By merging evidence from multiple sources, such as time delays and signal power levels, the method improves the reliability of the estimation process. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed technique achieves superior performance in terms of the estimation error and success rate, outperforming other estimation methods reported in the literature. Moreover, the experimental results corroborated the simulation results and demonstrated the capability and effectiveness of DST in addressing the challenges of collisions in RFID technology.

A result is obtained showing how global stability of equilibrium, under the standard tâtonnement dynamic, arises in large economies having a continuous, diffuse distribution of consumers, as well as many goods.

This paper identifies thematic topics that individual and institutional investors discuss about firms and investigates whether, and for which type of investors, companies incorporate in their disclosures the investors’ information needs. We use latent Dirichlet allocation to identify firm‐related topics discussed by investors and compare these topics with the content of subsequent firm disclosures. We find a positive association between the proportion of text dedicated to several firm‐related topics discussed by investors and the proportion of text on the same topics in firms’ subsequent MD&A disclosures. We also find that firms integrate much more in their disclosures institutional investors’ information needs, compared with those of individual investors. For a subset of topics, stronger associations occur for more profitable and high‐growth firms, and for firms experiencing more negative sentiment from institutional investors, subject to lower proprietary costs, and utilizing alternative communication channels. Overall, our findings extend the research on the link between individual and institutional investors’ request for information and the content of corporate disclosure.

A growing number of retailers and brands use uncertain price promotions to increase their sales. This research introduces the “looking a gift horse in the mouth” effect by probing these promotions as a potential liability. Findings from a field study and five experiments reveal that consumers who receive an inferior prize in an uncertain price promotion have a lower brand appraisal and repeated purchase behavior than those (i) who receive the same prize for sure, (ii) who receive the higher‐value prize in the uncertain promotion, and (iii) who are not even offered any price promotion. We propose, and examine, mixed emotions as a possible reason for this dilution in brand appraisal. The findings offer important insights and managerial implications for practitioners by proposing a revisit of the design of uncertain price promotions to regulate the mood and perception of risky low‐win consumers.

We introduce a new set of relations in the tautological Chow rings of the moduli space of stable curves of genus g. These relations are obtained by computing the Poincaré-dual class of empty loci in the Hodge bundle in terms of the standard generators of the tautological rings. In particular, we use these relations to obtain a new expression for the Chern classes of the Hodge bundle. We prove that the $(g-i)$th Chern class of the Hodge bundle, can be expressed as a linear combination of tautological classes constructed from stable graphs with at most i loops. In particular, the top Chern class can be expressed with trees. This property was expected as a consequence of the DR/DZ equivalence conjecture by Buryak–Guéré–Rossi.

The marble industry in Afghanistan generates significant waste due to a lack of skilled labor and advanced machinery, which is often discarded in landfills. Previous studies suggest that marble waste can be utilized in construction, particularly in cement-based structures. This research investigates using marble waste in concrete as a replacement for cement and sand to address environmental concerns and promote sustainability. A comparative study replaced marble waste with a calcareous filler from Omya SAS. The marble waste, collected from a mining site in Nangarhar, Afghanistan, consisted of 29% particles smaller than 63 μm and 71% sand particles. The waste marble (WM) was added to concrete as a replacement for cement and sand at 3.5%, 4%, and 4.5% by volume. Limestone filler (LF) replaced only cement in the concrete mix. The reference concrete mix aimed for a C25/30 strength. The results showed slight improvements in concrete workability with increasing waste marble content. The optimal WM dosage was 4%, which led to a 9% reduction in compressive strength and a 7% drop in splitting tensile strength. However, this dosage reduced concrete density, improving transfer properties and resulting in cheaper, lighter concrete. The 4% WM dosage corresponds to 7.5% cement and 12% sand replacement.

Continuous time Fourier transform is defined in the form of a complex function integral, where the complex function computes product of continuous and complex exponent functions. In this chapter, classical integrals that include special functions (distributions) are solved in detail. The “integral” implies that functions being transformed are continuous (including quasi-continuous special functions), that is to say, non-sampled.

Continuous time Fourier transform is defined in the form of a complex function integral, where the complex function computes product of continuous and complex exponent functions. In this chapter, classical integrals that include special functions (distributions) are solved in detail. The “integral” implies that functions being transformed are continuous (including quasi-continuous special functions), that is to say, non-sampled.

In the field of mathematics, aside from elementary and algebraic functions, there is a large group of special functions. In this chapter, a few of special functions that are more often used in signal processing are introduced. Namely, complex exponential, sinus cardinal, Heaviside step (a.k.a. unit step), sign, ramp, rectangular, and triangular functions are briefly studied. A bit more space is devoted to Dirac delta function (distribution) $\delta (t)$ and its properties. For the sake of transition to mathematics for signal processing, the traditional “x” variable is replaced with “t” implying time domain progression.