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This research defines the energy intensity target of the contemporaneous metafrontier and global metafrontier in order to assist decision-makers at identifying the efficient energy intensity target. We find that the sources of energy intensity improvement under the global metafrontier are due to three reasons: managerial inefficiency, technology gap inefficiency, and global technology gap inefficiency. In addition, the measurement of the energy intensity target also extends to that of energy productivity changes. The research applies data envelopment analysis (DEA) to empirically study Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) and the Group of Seven (G7) countries and demonstrates that the BRICS group exhibits a larger scope for energy intensity improvement than the G7 group, but that both groups should still pay greater attention to energy technology promotion to improve energy intensity. A win–win strategy for the two groups to achieve this is by fully realizing energy technology transfer from high-tech to low-tech countries.

The growth in the world economy has resulted in an increase in environmental pollution and ecological destruction in many parts of the world. In particular, economic development in mainland China in recent years has seen a massive rise in environmental pollution such as particulate matter (PM2.5), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and nitrogen oxides (NO2) in many cities; as a result, there has been an increased focus on air pollution and carbon dioxide emission control in recent years. This study used 2013–2017 energy consumption data from 31 cities in China to examine overall and specific efficiencies, for which employees, fixed assets, and energy consumption were taken as the input indicators, and gross domestic product (GDP) and the PM2.5, SO2, and NO2 levels as the output indicators. It was found that from 2013 to 2017, only four cities (Beijing, Guangzhou, Nanning, and Shanghai) had total efficiency scores of 1, with all other cities needing efficiency improvements. The efficiency scores for the different pollutants varied widely, with the NO2 efficiencies being generally higher with less improvement needed, while the SO2 and PM2.5 efficiencies required significantly greater governance measures.

This paper extends a global slack-based productivity indicator and constructs a unified framework that consists of global and factor levels of total factor productivity (TFP) to evaluate the performance of regional industries, thus enabling global productivity improvement based on factor-level sources. Evaluating regional industrial performance in China during 1995–2014, the findings reveal that rapid growth of industry in China is not only driven by a huge amount of input, but also by TFP improvement, with industrial productivity driven mainly by technology progress and presenting a gradually increasing trend. Regional productivity performances are imbalanced, in which the east ranks first due to its dual advantages of input and output factors. For source identification, input and output jointly contribute to industrial productivity improvement, but output has a much higher contribution ratio to industrial productivity improvement than input, because it is mainly rooted in desirable output. Finally, on the input side, labor is the primary factor driving input productivity improvement followed by energy, while capital productivity shows very slight growth.

Greater and greater attention is being paid to air pollution problems, because of their negative impact on the environment and human health. This article measures energy efficiency, carbon dioxide emissions efficiency, and particulate matter (PM2.5) concentration efficiency to compare the energy efficiency differences between Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries and non-OECD member countries from 2010 to 2014 using a metafrontier dynamic Data Envelopment Analysis model. We calculate technology gap ratio and input and output efficiency values to measure the energy efficiencies of each economy, finding that (a) OECD countries have a technology gap ratio of 1 or very close to 1; and except for the United Arab Emirates and Singapore, both of which exhibit annual improvements, the non-OECD countries have a significant need for efficiency improvements; (b) the average technology gap ratio of OECD is higher than that of non-OECD countries; that is, while OECD countries’ technology gap ratio (TGR) changes are relatively stable, non-OECD countries’ TGRs are gradually increasing; (c) non-OECD countries have large PM2.5 concentration efficiency gaps, with the annual efficiencies in China, India, and Nepal being less than 0.2; (d) Switzerland, Denmark, France, the United Kingdom, Iceland, Luxembourg, Norway, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates all have new and traditional energy efficiency values of 1; and (e) Botswana, Algeria, and Cambodia have poor traditional energy efficiencies, but better new energy efficiencies, whereas Hungary, South Korea, Slovakia, and Slovenia have poor new energy efficiencies and better traditional energy efficiencies.

The semiconductor industry has been regarded as one of the most important industries by Taiwan due to the market share of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry in 2011 ranked second worldwide. However, the European debt crisis triggered a global economic recession in 2011, causing Taiwan’s output of semiconductors in 2010 and 2011 to show negative growth. This paper will mainly explore, from the performance evaluation perspective, the Malmquist productivity index of the Taiwan’s semiconductor industry based on a metafrontier approach. The empirical results show that the European debt crisis in 2011 had an impact on Integrated circuit (IC) design companies and IC manufacturing companies, but that there was no influence on IC packaging and testing companies when measuring static efficiency. From the viewpoint of dynamic productivity performance, the paper finds that the main reason for the negative growth of IC packaging and testing companies and IC design companies came from a backward movement in technical change, but the main reason for the negative growth of IC manufacturing companies derived from a decline in pure technical efficiency.

The main purpose of this study is to explore the carbon reduction environmental benefits that can be achieved if carbon benchmarking is applied when semiconductor manufacturers in Taiwan work to improve the technical efficiency of their carbon reduction efforts. The evaluation method used is as follows. First, a technical efficiency measurement method that is capable of considering both desirable outputs and undesirable outputs is used to measure the technical efficiency of the carbon reduction efforts and identify the benchmark firms with the best technical efficiency. Next, an attempt is made to estimate the greenhouse gas reduction that is realized by the sample if their carbon reduction efforts are accompanied by the implementation of a benchmarking system. Finally, the monetary value of the greenhouse gas reduction is estimated so as to develop a better understanding of the carbon reduction benefits for the adoption of the process outlined above. The empirical results show that using carbon benchmarking to raise the technical efficiency of carbon reduction management would, on average, boost the annual sales revenue of each decision-making unit by about US $486.6 million, while also bringing up the average annual CO2 reduction benefits per decision-making unit by US$ 11.11 million per year.

Torespondto the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, this paper investigates the minimal-carbon-footprint time-dependent heterogeneous-fleet vehicle routing problem with alternative paths (MTHVRPP). This finds a route with the smallestcarbon footprint, instead of the shortestroute distance, which is the conventional approach, to serve a number of customers with a heterogeneous fleet of vehicles in cases wherethere may not be only one path between each pair of customers, and the vehicle speed differs at different times of the day. Inheriting from the NP-hardness of the vehicle routing problem, the MTHVRPP is also NP-hard. This paper further proposes a genetic algorithm (GA) to solve this problem. The solution representedbyour GA determines the customer serving ordering of each vehicle type. Then, the capacity check is used to classify multiple routes of each vehicle type, and the path selection determines the detailed paths of each route. Additionally, this paper improves the energy consumption model used for calculating the carbon footprint amount more precisely. Compared with the results without alternative paths, our experimental results show that the alternative path in this experimenthas a significant impact on the experimental results in terms of carbon footprint.

This study reflects on environmental conservation and sustainable development via environmental efficiency by utilizing a one-stage model to measure the performances of decision-making units. Färe et al. (1989) propose the concept of undesirable output, distinguishing between output that is good and bad. O'Donnell et al. (2008) use metafrontier frameworks to compare the technical efficiency of firms and to distinguish different groups. Therefore, this study utilizes the concept of undesirable output and environmental efficiency and also combines metafrontier frameworks to evaluate and compare Japan's and Taiwan's high-tech industries. Findings show that Japan's performance is better than Taiwan's.

Nanodiamond (ND) has emerged as a promising carbon nanomaterial for therapeutic applications. In previous studies, ND has been reported to have outstanding biocompatibility and high uptake rate in various cell types. ND containing nitrogen-vacancy centers exhibit fluorescence property is called fluorescent nanodiamond (FND) and has been applied for bio-labeling agent. However, the influence and application of FND on the nervous system remain elusive. In order to study the compatibility of FND on the nervous system, neurons treated with FNDs in vitro and in vivo were examined. FND did not induce cytotoxicity in primary neurons from either central (CNS) or peripheral nervous system (PNS); neither did intracranial injection of FND affect animal behavior. The neuronal uptake of FNDs was confirmed using flow cytometry and confocal microscopy. However, FND caused a concentration-dependent decrease in neurite length in both CNS and PNS neurons. Time-lapse live cell imaging showed that the reduction of neurite length was due to the spatial hindrance of FND on advancing axonal growth cone. These findings demonstrate that FNDs exhibit low neuronal toxicity but interfere with neuronal morphogenesis and should be taken into consideration when applications involve actively growing neurites (e.g. nerve regeneration).

During exploration using electromagnetic methods, secondary electro magnetic (EM) fields due to induced currents from conductors, together with the primary EM field, are re corded with a suit able receiver at various points in space. In general, the secondary EM field at the receiver, which contains all the in for mation regarding under ground conductors, may be several orders of magnitude smaller than the primary field. Under these conditions the separation of the measured total EM field into its primary and secondary parts is difficult. For the purpose of measuring the secondary fields in the absence of the primary field, time-do main electromagnetic measurements, often referred to as transient electromagnetic (TEM) techniques are employed. Comparative numerical modeling using a single component (measuring the vertical component of the field, Hz) TEM receiver and a three-component (measuring Hx, Hy, and Hz) TEM receiver was under taken. A for ward modeling approach was used to compute the voltage response of half-space containing one or more conductive bodies ex cited by a bi-polar square wave form. Al though this method utilizes conductor scattering, it is particularly useful as a practical use for unexploded dordnance (UXO) detection. Un like single component data, results from the three-component data are unambiguous as to the location and orientation of conductors. Measurements with the addition of horizontal- component data for secondary magnetic fields lead a better indication of tar get location, and tar get size determination, orientation, and characteristics, especially for the tar gets in the horizontal plan. A three-component TEM field experiment at a well-documented well site (NCU cam pus) was con sis tent with the effects predicted by our the oretical modeling. As a result, the three-component TEM survey is an essential element for high-resolution EM engineering survey.