Water pollution risk associated with natural gas extraction from the Marcellus Shale

In recent years, shale gas formations have become economically viable through the use of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. These techniques carry potential environmental risk due to their high water use and substantial risk for water pollution. Using probability bounds analysis, we assessed the likelihood of water contamination from natural gas extraction in the Marcellus Shale. Probability bounds analysis is well suited when data are sparse and parameters highly uncertain. The study model identified five pathways of water contamination: transportation spills, well casing leaks, leaks through fractured rock, drilling site discharge, and wastewater disposal. Probability boxes were generated for each pathway. The potential contamination risk and epistemic uncertainty associated with hydraulic fracturing wastewater disposal was several orders of magnitude larger than the other pathways. Even in a best-case scenario, it was very likely that an individual well would release at least 200 m3 of contaminated fluids. Because the total number of wells in the Marcellus Shale region could range into the tens of thousands, this substantial potential risk suggested that additional steps be taken to reduce the potential for contaminated fluid leaks. To reduce the considerable epistemic uncertainty, more data should be collected on the ability of industrial and municipal wastewater treatment facilities to remove contaminants from used hydraulic fracturing fluid.     

Lung Cancer Risk from Radon in Marcellus Shale Gas in Northeast U.S. Homes

The amount of radon in natural gas varies with its source. Little has been published about the radon from shale gas to date, making estimates of its impact on radon‐induced lung cancer speculative. We measured radon in natural gas pipelines carrying gas from the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Radon concentrations ranged from 1,520 to 2,750 Bq/m³ (41–74 pCi/L), and the throughput‐weighted average was 1,983 Bq/m³ (54 pCi/L). Potential radon exposure due to the use of Marcellus Shale gas for cooking and space heating using vent‐free heaters or gas ranges in northeastern U.S. homes and apartments was assessed. Though the measured radon concentrations are higher than what has been previously reported, it is unlikely that exposure from natural gas cooking would exceed 1.2 Bq/m³ (<1% of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's action level). Using worst‐case assumptions, we estimate the excess lifetime (70 years) lung cancer risk associated with cooking to be 1.8×10^?4 (interval spanning 95% of simulation results: 8.5×10^?5, 3.4×10^?4). The risk profile for supplemental heating with unvented gas appliances is similar. Individuals using unvented gas appliances to provide primary heating may face lifetime risks as high as 3.9×10^?3. Under current housing stock and gas consumption assumptions, expected levels of residential radon exposure due to unvented combustion of Marcellus Shale natural gas in the Northeast United States do not result in a detectable change in the lung cancer death rates.     

Changes in Aleut Concerns Following the Stakeholder-Driven Amchitka Independent Science Assessment

There is widespread agreement that stakeholders should be included in the problem‐formulation phase of addressing environment problems and, more recently, there have been attempts to include stakeholders in other phases of environmental research. However, there are few studies that evaluate the effects of including stakeholders in all phases of research aimed at solving environmental problems. Three underground nuclear blasts were detonated on Amchitka Island from 1965 to 1971. Considerable controversy developed when the Department of Energy (DOE) decided to “close” Amchitka. Concerns were voiced by subsistence Aleuts living in the region, resource trustees, and the State of Alaska, among others. This article evaluates perceptions of residents of three Aleutian village before (2003) and after (2005) the Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation's (CRESP) Amchitka Independent Science Assessment (AISA). The CRESP AISA provided technical information on radionuclide levels in biota to inform questions of seafood safety and food chain health. CRESP used the questions asked at public meetings in the Aleut communities of Atka, Nikolski, and Unalaska to evaluate attitudes and perceptions before and after the AISA. Major concerns before the AISA were credibility/trust of CRESP and the DOE, and information about biological methodology of the study. Following the AISA, people were most concerned about health effects and risk reduction, and trust issues with CRESP declined while those for the DOE remained stable. People’s relative concerns about radionuclides declined, while their concerns about mercury (not addressed in the AISA) increased, and interest in ecological issues (population changes of local species) and the future (continued biomonitoring) increased from 2003 to 2005. These results suggest that questions posed at public meetings can be used to evaluate changes in attitudes and perceptions following environmental research, and the results are consistent with the hypothesis that the AISA answered questions about radionuclides, and lowered overall concern about radionuclides, but left unanswered concerns about the health effects of mercury.     

Worry Over Technological Activities and Life Concerns

A common mental response to risk is worry. Though generally associated with fear and anxiety, worry is primarily a cognitive activity that can, under some circumstances, be beneficial for developing coping strategies to deal with stressful events. The present study reports an assessment of worry done both before and after the reactor accident at Three Mile Island (TMI). Worries over nuclear risks were assessed in the context of central life concerns such as financial, physical, and interpersonal well-being. The TMI incident elevated nuclear energy worries to a level near those of central life concerns. The productive value of worry is discussed in terms of its relationship with opportunities for personal control.     

Managing Logistics in Regional Banknote Supply Chain Under Security Concerns

We study the logistics problem faced by Regional Branches (RBs) of a central bank in managing the currency supply under security concerns. While making banknote supply decisions to Sub‐Branches (SBs), the management of RB must achieve two goals simultaneously: (i) guarantee that each SB has sufficient inventories of all denominations of banknotes to satisfy the demands from all commercial banks within its service area, and (ii) control the annual spending on this banknote supply operation. Due to security concerns, the following methods are implemented in the process of transporting banknotes: (i) the capacity of a cash truck is limited by the total face value (instead of the physical space) of banknotes, and (ii) empty decoy trucks are deployed along with the trucks filled with banknotes. After deriving a polynomial‐time strategy to guarantee an optimal solution for the special Bin‐Packing Problem faced in this study, we provide an exact formulation for the RB's supply planning problem. We also propose several polynomial‐time algorithms for deriving either optimal or near‐optimal solutions for the problem under different settings. Using the weekly demand data obtained from the central bank, we verify the performance of our algorithms, and analyze the impacts of changes in these features and in the fleet capacity on the total cost incurred by an RB under various scenarios.     

Eliciting and Classifying Concerns: A Methodological Critique

Two methodological steps in the study of peoples'concerns are elicitation and classification. Elicitation of concerns through analytical methods such as surveys can be supplemented with techniques that perform more diversively. We present two examples of how this can be accomplished: one in the expert community and one in the lay community. A classification taxonomy is a subjective choice of the researcher and it can only be evaluated against the stated objectives of the research. We present a classification schema that is explicitly oriented toward diagnosing the substantive needs of public discourses about risk decision making. To illustrate how concerns can be elicited in a social setting and how this classification tool can be applied, we report on a public participation exercise in New Jersey where citizens discussed the impacts of land application of sewage sludge at an experimental farm.     

用户隐私风险感知对平台社交账号登录方式选择的影响研究

互联网平台向用户开放社交账号登录,在方便用户登录的同时,可通过共享用户信息提升广告定向能力。本文通过构建博弈模型,在考虑用户隐私风险感知时,研究社交账号登录对平台、广告主和用户三方的影响以及平台开放社交账号登录的决策选择。研究结果表明,因用户隐私风险感知的存在,平台不一定会开放社交账号登录。当隐私敏感用户占比较高时,若社交账号登录为平台带来定向能力提升值较高,开放社交账号登录反而会降低平台收益。此外,研究还发现,若平台开放社交账号登录,不同隐私风险感知的用户占比及平台定向能力提升值都将影响平台的广告定向能力及社交账号登录的引流效果。     

具公平关切零售商的闭环供应链差别定价策略研究

将零售商公平关切行为倾向引入到闭环供应链的差别定价策略中,构建了制造商考虑和不考虑零售商公平关切行为两种差别定价决策模型,运用博弈理论对两种模型进行分析求解。研究表明闭环供应链成员的差别定价策略、收益以及废旧产品回收量均受到零售商公平关切行为的影响;制造商应考虑零售商的公平关切行为倾向做出决策,这对制造商自身是有利的,同时也增加了对废旧产品的回收量,有利于资源回收再利用;同时还发现公平关切行为倾向是零售商获取闭环供应链系统利润分配的一种有效手段,同时这种公平关切行为倾向会造成闭环供应链系统效率的损失。     

职业生涯关注激励与高管在职消费的替代关系研究

职业生涯关注与在职消费同属企业高管隐性激励体系中的重要部分,两者不仅存在潜在的替代关系,也可能受到企业的委托代理关系和企业所处的市场环境的影响。在激励机制的理论框架下,选取2005年至2013年中国非金融类上市企业作为样本,以企业产权性质和所在省份的政府行为规范化指数等量化指标作为调节性因素,构建多元线性回归模型;按同年度、同行业的在职消费四分位水平进行组别划分,构建分类Logistic回归模型,以验证假设,并从测度方式和替代性情景两个角度实施测试,以保证研究结论稳健成立。研究结果表明,基于职业生涯关注的隐性激励减弱时,上市企业高管会寻求更多的在职消费;在具备国有产权性质和身处政府行为规范化程度较低地区的上市企业中,职业生涯关注激励与在职消费的替代关系更加突出。研究结论对深入认识代理问题、优化激励契约具有重要意义和启示。     

基于职业观念的经营者多期组合激励合同研究

本文在现有的基于职业观念的隐性激励文献研究基础上,建立经营者多期组合激励模型,进而得到最优激励,并给出此激励的特征。同时通过理论推导与实证分析证明,随着经营者工作年数的增加,基于职业观念的隐性激励减弱,显性报酬合同的激励强度随之增强。     

Environmental Hazards in the Chinese Public's Eyes

The People's Republic of China suffers each year from various environmental hazards. Although risk perception study has a 40-year history in Europe and North America, little is known about risk perception in China. Previous studies of risk perception have primarily focused on unnatural hazards, but China has experinced many natural environmental hazards. Therefore, the Chinese public's perceptions of environmental hazard risks must be considered in order to support the IDNDR program. The Chinese public's perceptions of environmental hazards are similar to those of Europeans and North Americans, but different characteristics are observed.     

Wholesale Pricing under Mild and Privately Known Concerns for Fairness

This article studies the performance of wholesale pricing when the supply chain partners' fairness concerns are private information. We find that some properties of wholesale pricing established under complete information hold under incomplete information as well. First, wholesale pricing can coordinate the supply chain, despite the information asymmetry, when fairness concerns are strong enough. Second, in the case when an equitable profit split does not imply that the retailers profit must be higher than that of the supplier, the suppliers' equilibrium offer is never rejected. Overall, the study makes two primary contributions. First, it provides a partial characterization of the equilibrium when the conditions required for coordination do not hold, that is, when fairness concerns are mild. In this case, the model predicts that the expected market price must be exactly the same as under complete information. The channel efficiency, nevertheless, is strictly lower than under complete information. The distribution‐free lower bound on channel efficiency suggests that this efficiency loss should be quite small, though. Second, it provides an experimental test of the models' predictions as well as a direct validation of the assumptions of preferences heterogeneity and mildness by obtaining the empirical distribution of the preferences.     

Prioritizing Environmental Health Risks in the UAE

This article presents the results of a comparative environmental risk‐ranking exercise that was conducted in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to inform a strategic planning process led by the Environment Agency‐Abu Dhabi (EAD). It represents the first national‐level application of a deliberative method for comparative risk ranking first published in this journal. The deliberative method involves a five‐stage process that includes quantitative risk assessment by experts and deliberations by groups of stakeholders. The project reported in this article considered 14 categories of environmental risks to health identified through discussions with EAD staff: ambient and indoor air pollution; drinking water contamination; coastal water pollution; soil and groundwater contamination; contamination of fruits, vegetables, and seafood; ambient noise; stratospheric ozone depletion; electromagnetic fields from power lines; health impacts from climate change; and exposure to hazardous substances in industrial, construction, and agricultural work environments. Results from workshops involving 73 stakeholders who met in five separate groups to rank these risks individually and collaboratively indicated strong consensus that outdoor and indoor air pollution are the highest priorities in the UAE. Each of the five groups rated these as being among the highest risks. All groups rated soil and groundwater contamination as being among the lowest risks. In surveys administered after the ranking exercises, participants indicated that the results of the process represented their concerns and approved of using the ranking results to inform policy decisions. The results ultimately shaped a strategic plan that is now being implemented.     

Environmental Hazards in the Chinese Public's Eyes

The People's Republic of China suffers each year from various environmental hazards. Although risk perception study has a 40-year history in Europe and North America, little is known about risk perception in China. Previous studies of risk perception have primarily focused on unnatural hazards, but China has experinced many natural environmental hazards. Therefore, the Chinese public's perceptions of environmental hazard risks must be considered in order to support the IDNDR program. The Chinese public's perceptions of environmental hazards are similar to those of Europeans and North Americans, but different characteristics are observed.     

日本环境政策分析

日本在环境保护方面是一个富有特色的国家,它曾创造了经济的奇迹,又在短时期内摆脱了"公害大国"的形象,并长期保持环境保护和经济发展"双赢"的局面,可以说也创造了环境保护的"奇迹".从日本环境政策的调整过程入手,简要分析了其主要内容以及各种管理手段等.     

Concerns,Challenges, and Directions of Development for the Issue of Representing Uncertainty in Risk Assessment

In the analysis of the risk associated to rare events that may lead to catastrophic consequences with large uncertainty, it is questionable that the knowledge and information available for the analysis can be reflected properly by probabilities. Approaches other than purely probabilistic have been suggested, for example, using interval probabilities, possibilistic measures, or qualitative methods. In this article, we look into the problem and identify a number of issues that are foundational for its treatment. The foundational issues addressed reflect on the position that “probability is perfect” and take into open consideration the need for an extended framework for risk assessment that reflects the separation that practically exists between analyst and decisionmaker.     

考虑政府补贴和公平关切的双渠道绿色供应链决策研究

基于一个制造商和一个零售商组成的双渠道绿色供应链,建立Stackelberg博弈模型,对比分析政府不补贴和政府补贴两种情形下零售商公平关切对供应链最优定价、绿色度决策及供应链成员利润的影响。结果表明：政府不补贴时,零售商公平关切增强会降低产品批发价格、销售价格和绿色度,减少制造商利润;零售商利润则随着其公平关切增强既存在增加也存在减少的情况,具体与产品绿色化效率有关。相比之下,政府补贴时,产品绿色度更高,制造商和零售商的利润更大;零售商公平关切增强可以增加制造商和零售商的利润,但并不影响产品销售价格、绿色度和社会福利。基于此,政府补贴不仅能够增加供应链利润,还能协调零售商公平关切对产品定价与绿色度决策的影响。     

电信服务与手机捆绑销售模式下考虑公平的均衡策略

本文以电信服务与手机捆绑销售模式为背景,研究了手机制造商主导下公平关切对手机制造商和服务运营商进行捆绑分销合作时的价格和补贴决策、利润分配以及补贴契约协调的影响。首先,分别给出了集中决策和补贴契约下捆绑销售渠道的最优均衡结果;然后,分析了补贴契约下手机制造商的公平关切对手机制造商和服务运营商的均衡策略、渠道各方利润以及整体利润的影响;进一步地,对捆绑销售模式下的补贴契约进行了协调性分析。研究结果表明：不利不公平厌恶将促使手机制造商制定一个较高的零售价格,从而恶化捆绑销售渠道的整体效益;有利不公平厌恶将促使手机制造商制定一个较低的零售价格,从而改善捆绑销售渠道的整体效益;然而,无论是否考虑手机制造商公平关切心理行为,补贴契约始终不能促使捆绑销售渠道实现协调;此外,手机制造商一味追求较高的利润分配比,并不一定能给自身带来更多利润,反而会降低整体利润。