Non-deceptive counterfeiting involves producing and selling counterfeit products without misleading consumers about their authenticity. This practice intensifies price competition for genuine brands while contributing either to brand dilution or network externalities. Using a two-period game modeling approach, we analyze how genuine products should adjust their advertising and pricing strategies in response to non-deceptive counterfeiting. Our findings reveal that in the presence of brand dilution, manufacturers should reduce advertising investments and prices to remain competitive. However, when counterfeiting generates network externalities, the optimal response depends on market conditions and managerial effectiveness. In some cases, a survival strategy (reducing advertising and/or prices) may be necessary to maintain profitability. In other cases, a differentiation strategy (raising advertising and prices) can lead to profit gains. Regardless of the approach adopted, manufacturers must improve the targeting, content, and effectiveness of advertising to further differentiate their offerings and reduce positive spillover effects to counterfeit products.
People with serious mental illness and/or substance use disorders are at high risk of chronic physical diseases like diabetes and hypertension and related acute complications but may face barriers to chronic disease management (including medication management and laboratory testing). We describe patterns of service use and chronic disease management among people with diabetes and/or hypertension treated for comorbid serious mental illness and/or substance use disorders. We used linked British Columbia administrative health data from April 1, 2020 to March 31, 2022 to conduct a retrospective cohort study among adults with diabetes and/or hypertension and used standardized differences to compare how health service use and chronic disease management varied for those treated for comorbid serious mental illness and/or substance use disorders. People treated for comorbid serious mental illness and/or substance use disorder had high service use (more primary care visits, ED visits, and hospitalizations) but received less recommended lab testing and medication management for diabetes or hypertension. These findings show people treated for serious mental illness and/or substance use disorders receive inequitable chronic disease management, despite frequent primary care use. Reshaping care to address underlying barriers will be crucial to improving chronic disease management in this population.
We characterize the simplicity of reduced crossed product C*-algebras in terms of stabilizer subgroups. Specifically, we prove that if G is a countable group and X is a minimal G-flow, then the reduced crossed product C*-algebra C(X) ×_λG is simple if and only if there is a point in X with a C*-simple stabilizer subgroup. Further, these conditions are equivalent to a generic point in X having a C*-simple stabilizer subgroup. We also provide an example demonstrating that this result does not extend to uncountable groups. This completely resolves a question of Ozawa.
Delivering reliable low-carbon electricity in regions with variable solar resources remains a major challenge for off-grid and decentralized systems. This study presents a seasonally resolved assessment of a hybrid solar–biomass cogeneration system integrated with thermal energy storage, designed to deliver a constant 100 kW net electrical output and approximately 595 kW of useful heat throughout the year. Seasonal operation is achieved by adjusting biomass input and thermal energy storage management based on solar availability. Simulations based on five years of solar radiation data for Salamanca, Spain, were conducted to evaluate the system’s energy performance, technoeconomic feasibility, and life cycle environmental impacts within a gate-to-gate operational boundary. The results show that the overall CHP efficiency varies from 34.6% in summer to 44% in winter, with an annual average efficiency of 39.2%. Summer operation provides the most favorable economic performance, with the lowest levelized cost of electricity (0.219 €/kWh), the lowest levelized cost of heat (0.0369 €/kWh), and the highest net present value (€2.06 million), while winter operation ensures higher system efficiency at the expense of increased biomass consumption, higher electricity generation costs, and greater environmental burdens. Climate change potential ranges from 0.247 to 0.522 kg CO2-eq/kWh across seasons. The results demonstrate that solar–biomass hybridization combined with thermal energy storage can provide stable, dispatchable, and low-carbon cogeneration under strong seasonal variability, offering a promising solution for decentralized renewable energy supply.
Street view imagery has become an essential source for geospatial data collection and urban analytics, enabling the extraction of valuable insights that support informed decision-making. However, synthesizing street-view images from corresponding satellite imagery presents significant challenges due to substantial differences in appearance and viewing perspective between these two domains. This paper presents a hybrid framework that integrates diffusion-based models and conditional generative adversarial networks to generate geographically consistent street-view images from satellite imagery. Our approach uses a multi-stage training strategy that incorporates Stable Diffusion as the core component within a dual-branch architecture. To enhance the framework’s capabilities, we integrate a conditional Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) that enables the generation of geographically consistent panoramic street views. Furthermore, we implement a fusion strategy that leverages the strengths of both models to create robust representations, thereby improving the geometric consistency and visual quality of the generated street-view images. The proposed framework is evaluated on the challenging Cross-View USA (CVUSA) dataset, a standard benchmark for cross-view image synthesis. Experimental results demonstrate that our hybrid approach achieves an 11.75
