Effect of the Policies to Prevent Drug Shortage and Stabilize Drug Prices in Medical Institutions

Objective To evaluate the effect of some policies to prevent drug shortage and stabilize drug prices,and to provide reference for improving relevant policies.Methods With a combination of random stratified sampling and quota sampling,532 medical institutions in 20 provinces were selected to carry out questionnaire surveys.Then,a comparative analysis was made to study the changes of drugs on the shortage list and drugs on non-shortage list before and after the release of the policy of ensuring supply and stabilizing prices.Results and Conclusion The policy played an important role in curbing the growth of drug shortage in the medical institutions,but it did not curb the growth of drugs on non-shortage list.Besides,the drugs on non-shortage list showed an overall fluctuation and upward trend.Meanwhile,from the perspective of drug prices,the price stability problem of drugs on the shortage list and on the non-shortage list became more serious,and the average price increase was 256% and 239%,respectively.The implementation of policies related to the supply and price stability of drugs prevents the growth trend of drug shortages in the list of medical institutions,which has been recognized by most medical institutions.However,there is an increasing trend in the number of drugs on non-shortage list.In addition,the price increase of drugs on both the shortage list and non-shortage list is severe.Some medical institutions report that they have difficulties in using the information reporting system of drug shortage and the classification,grading and the alternative use of drug shortages.It is recommended to strengthen the management of price stabilization of drugs on the shortage list.Further attention should be paid to the supply and price stabilization of drugs on non-shortage list.At the same time,trainings in the classification and substitution of drug shortage and information reporting system should be actively organized,thus comprehensively improving the capabilities of medical institutions at all levels to deal with the problem of drug shortage.

Computation of PoA for Selfish Node Detection and Resource Allocation Using Game Theory

The introduction of new technologies has increased communication network coverage and the number of associating nodes in dynamic communication networks(DCN).As the network has the characteristics like decentralized and dynamic,few nodes in the network may not associate with other nodes.These uncooperative nodes also known as selfish nodes corrupt the performance of the cooperative nodes.Namely,the nodes cause congestion,high delay,security concerns,and resource depletion.This study presents an effective selfish node detection method to address these problems.The Price of Anarchy(PoA)and the Price of Stability(PoS)in Game Theory with the Presence of Nash Equilibrium(NE)are discussed for the Selfish Node Detection.This is a novel experiment to detect selfish nodes in a network using PoA.Moreover,the least response dynamic-based Capacitated Selfish Resource Allocation(CSRA)game is introduced to improve resource usage among the nodes.The suggested strategy is simulated using the Solar Winds simulator,and the simulation results show that,when compared to earlier methods,the new scheme offers promising performance in terms of delivery rate,delay,and throughput.

Price transmission in hog and feed markets of China

There is an increasing demand for feed as the industrialization of hog production in China. Land scarcity limits China＇s ability to continue increasing its hog production without feed imports, particularly soybean, and the feed markets are increasingly integrated into the global market. This study performs an analysis of price transmission between the hog price in China and feed prices, specifically domestic maize price and international soybean price, from January 2000 to April 2014. We identified a long-term stable equilibrium relationship between the three markets. However, further analyses show that there is no significant Granger causality between hog and feed market, and the long-run equilibrium partially results from Granger causality between the international soybean market and domestic maize market. This suggests that the domestic hog market has been distorted by different policies. The results also indicate that the efficiency of price transmission is very low and it takes about 11 months to correct one-half of any long-run disequilibrium for the hog market in China. Therefore, to stabilize hog price in China, only market intervention to regulate the maize and soybean markets would be insufficient and comprehensive measures need to be taken into account such as hog production modernization, agricultural insurance, epidemic surveillance etc.

Preface Dr. QI Huibin

Corrosion is a damage or a change of state of materials caused by interactions between materials and environmental factors, which, together with fracture and wear, have become the three major reasons for the failure of structural materials. Normally, corrosion takes place or originates on or from the surface of materials. Therefore, surface technology （such as coating） is one of the important measures to mitigate and control the process of corrosion.

Hu Stresses Price Stability, Expansion of Social Security

Chinese President Hu Jintao has stressed the need to stabilize commodity prices, extend the coverage of the social security network and boost employment to ensure the country develops in a comprehensive,

Stability vs.Optimality in Selfish Ring Routing

We study asymmetric atomic selfish routing in ring networks, which has diverse practical applications in network design and analysis. We are concerned with minimizing the maximum latency of source-destination node-pairs over links with linear latencies. We show that there exists an optimal solution that is a 9-approximate Nash equilibrium, significantly improving the existing upper bound of 54 on the instability factor. We present fast implementation of the best response dynamics for computing a Nash equilibrium. Furthermore, we perform empirical study on the price of stability, narrowing the gap between the lower and upper bounds to 0.7436.