Environmental management in Brazil: is it a completely competitive priority?

Current studies indicate a need to integrate environmental management with manufacturing strategy, including topics like cross-functional integration, environmental impact, and waste reduction. Nevertheless, such studies are relatively rare, existing still a need for research in specific regional contexts. At the same time, the results found are not unanimous. Due to these gaps, the objective of this article is to analyze if environmental management can be considered a new competitive priority for manufacturing enterprises located in Brazil. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with Brazilian companies certified by ISO 14001. Sixty-five valid questionnaires were analyzed through Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). The first conclusion is that environmental management presents a preventive approach in the sample analyzed, focused on eco-efficiency, what potentially do not to create a competitive advantage. This preventive approach inhibits environmental management from being regarded as a new competitive manufacturing priority, in the full sense as defined by the literature. Another important result is that environmental management, although following a preventive focus, may influence positively the four manufacturing priorities: cost, quality, flexibility and delivery. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Groups of services delivered by Brazilian branchless banking and respective network integration models

Over the last decade, Brazil has pioneered an innovative model of branchless banking, known as correspondent banking, involving distribution partnership between banks, several kinds of retailers and a variety of other participants, which have allowed an unprecedented growth in bank outreach and became a reference worldwide. However, despite the extensive number of studies recently developed focusing on Brazilian branchless banking, there exists a clear research gap in the literature. It is still necessary to identify the different business configurations involving network integration through which the branchless banking channel can be structured, as well as the way they relate to the range of bank services delivered. Given this gap, our objective is to investigate the relationship between network integration models and services delivered through the branchless banking channel. Based on twenty interviews with managers involved with the correspondent banking business and data collected on almost 300 correspondent locations, our research is developed in two steps. First, we created a qualitative taxonomy through which we identified three classes of network integration models. Second, we performed a cluster analysis to explain the groups of financial services that fit each model. By contextualizing correspondents' network integration processes through the lens of transaction costs economics, our results suggest that the more suited to deliver social-oriented, "pro-poor'' services the channel is, the more it is controlled by banks. This research offers contributions to managers and policy makers interested in understanding better how different correspondent banking configurations are related with specific portfolios of services. Researchers interested in the subject of branchless banking can also benefit from the taxonomy presented and the transaction costs analysis of this kind of banking channel, which has been adopted in a number of developing countries all over the world now. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Integration of processes induced air flotation and photo-Fenton for treatment of residual waters contaminated with xylene

Produced water in oil fields is one of the main sources of wastewater generated in the industry. It contains several organic compounds, such as benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene and xylene (BTEX), whose disposal is regulated by law. The aim of this study is to investigate a treatment of produced water integrating two processes, i.e., induced air flotation (IAF) and photo-Fenton. The experiments were conducted in a column flotation and annular lamp reactor for flotation and photodegradation steps, respectively. The first order kinetic constant of IAF for the wastewater studied was determined to be 0.1765 min(-1) for the surfactant EO 7. Degradation efficiencies of organic loading were assessed using factorial planning. Statistical data analysis shows that H2O2 concentration is a determining factor in process efficiency. Degradations above 90% were reached in all cases after 90 min of reaction, attaining 100% mineralization in the optimized concentrations of Fenton reagents. Process integration was adequate with 100% organic load removal in 20 min. The results of the integration of the IAF with the photo-Fenton allowed to meet the effluent limits established by Brazilian legislation for disposal. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Computational framework to support integration of biomolecular and clinical data within a translational approach

Background The use of the knowledge produced by sciences to promote human health is the main goal of translational medicine. To make it feasible we need computational methods to handle the large amount of information that arises from bench to bedside and to deal with its heterogeneity. A computational challenge that must be faced is to promote the integration of clinical, socio-demographic and biological data. In this effort, ontologies play an essential role as a powerful artifact for knowledge representation. Chado is a modular ontology-oriented database model that gained popularity due to its robustness and flexibility as a generic platform to store biological data; however it lacks supporting representation of clinical and socio-demographic information. Results We have implemented an extension of Chado – the Clinical Module - to allow the representation of this kind of information. Our approach consists of a framework for data integration through the use of a common reference ontology. The design of this framework has four levels: data level, to store the data; semantic level, to integrate and standardize the data by the use of ontologies; application level, to manage clinical databases, ontologies and data integration process; and web interface level, to allow interaction between the user and the system. The clinical module was built based on the Entity-Attribute-Value (EAV) model. We also proposed a methodology to migrate data from legacy clinical databases to the integrative framework. A Chado instance was initialized using a relational database management system. The Clinical Module was implemented and the framework was loaded using data from a factual clinical research database. Clinical and demographic data as well as biomaterial data were obtained from patients with tumors of head and neck. We implemented the IPTrans tool that is a complete environment for data migration, which comprises: the construction of a model to describe the legacy clinical data, based on an ontology; the Extraction, Transformation and Load (ETL) process to extract the data from the source clinical database and load it in the Clinical Module of Chado; the development of a web tool and a Bridge Layer to adapt the web tool to Chado, as well as other applications. Conclusions Open-source computational solutions currently available for translational science does not have a model to represent biomolecular information and also are not integrated with the existing bioinformatics tools. On the other hand, existing genomic data models do not represent clinical patient data. A framework was developed to support translational research by integrating biomolecular information coming from different “omics” technologies with patient’s clinical and socio-demographic data. This framework should present some features: flexibility, compression and robustness. The experiments accomplished from a use case demonstrated that the proposed system meets requirements of flexibility and robustness, leading to the desired integration. The Clinical Module can be accessed in http://dcm.ffclrp.usp.br/caib/pg=iptrans webcite.