Access network is the last mile of the communication network that connects the telecom Central Office (CO) to the residential and business customers. With the proliferation of the Internet, customer demands for bandwidth-intensive services are rapidly increasing. Access network comprises a large part of the Internet. It is a major energy consumer in the Internet due to the presence of huge numb...

This article describes a low cost retrofit technology that uses collective control of multiple rooftop air conditioning units to reduce the peak power consumption of small and medium commercial buildings. The proposed control uses a thermal model of the building and air conditioning units to select an operating schedule for the air conditioning units that maintains a temperature set point subje...

BACKGROUND Nearly five percent of Americans suffer from functional constipation, many of whom may benefit from increasing dietary fiber consumption. The annual constipation-related healthcare cost savings associated with increasing intakes may be considerable but have not been examined previously. The objective of the present study was to estimate the economic impact of increased dietary fiber ...

BACKGROUND California Workers' Compensation (WC) system costs are under review. With recently approved California State Assembly Bill (AB) 749 and Senate Bill (SB) 228, an assessment of proposed pharmaceutical cost savings is needed. METHODS A large workers' compensation database provided by the California Workers' Compensation Institute (CWCI) and Medi-Cal pharmacy costs obtained from the St...

This paper utilizes a new flow measure of the true output of bank services to analyze the impact of mergers on the cost and productivity of Bank Holding Companies (BHCs) over the period 1987–1999. It shows that there are conceptual problems in the output measures used in previous studies, which may be the reason for their paradoxical findings: Bank mergers are estimated to lead to significant i...

This paper presents a critical analysis of the economic impacts of past, ongoing, and planned research of BFRL’s construction systems integration and automation technologies (CONSIAT) program. The CONSIAT program is an interdisciplinary research effort within BFRL to develop key enabling technologies, standard communication protocols, and advanced measurement technologies needed to facilitate t...

The 1,652 additional lives saved in all 38 States and the District of Columbia resulting from the increase in seat belt use would represent an increase of 11 percent above the estimate of lives saved by seat belts (15,147) for 2007. Over 50 percent of the total benefits in lives saved (842 out of the total of 1,652 lives saved), non-fatal injuries saved (22,677 out of the total of 39,486 non-fa...

BACKGROUND Gavi recommends solar refrigerators for vaccine storage in areas with less than eight hours of electricity per day, and WHO guidelines are more conservative. The question remains: Can solar refrigerators provide value where electrical outages are less frequent? METHODS Using a HERMES-generated computational model of the Mozambique routine immunization supply chain, we simulated the...