Green operations strategy of a luxury car manufacturer

This paper investigates the strategic environmental decisions of a luxury car manufacturer. Through case study research, the investigation sheds light on why and how the company is adopting green technologies. Being pressured by different stakeholders to become greener, luxury car manufacturers carry significant opportunities for environmental improvement given the nature of their manufacturing processes and products. Because of their low-volume production, manufacturers may be able to increase output and still reduce overall emissions when compared to high-volume manufacturers. In the case study company this was found to be possible only because of new ideas brought by a change in ownership. Luxury manufacturers may also be a test-bed for the development and experimentation of green technologies as part of a strategic approach to environmental initiatives. This paper contributes to the fields of green technology adoption and operations strategy in automotive manufacturing groups.

Catalyst design for biorefining

The quest for sustainable resources to meet the demands of a rapidly rising global population while mitigating the risks of rising CO2 emissions and associated climate change, represents a grand challenge for humanity. Biomass offers the most readily implemented and low-cost solution for sustainable transportation fuels, and the only non-petroleum route to organic molecules for the manufacture of bulk, fine and speciality chemicals and polymers. To be considered truly sustainable, biomass must be derived fromresources which do not compete with agricultural land use for food production, or compromise the environment (e.g. via deforestation). Potential feedstocks include waste lignocellulosic or oil-based materials derived from plant or aquatic sources, with the so-called biorefinery concept offering the co-production of biofuels, platform chemicals and energy; analogous to today's petroleum refineries which deliver both high-volume/low-value (e.g. fuels and commodity chemicals) and lowvolume/ high-value (e.g. fine/speciality chemicals) products, thereby maximizing biomass valorization. This article addresses the challenges to catalytic biomass processing and highlights recent successes in the rational design of heterogeneous catalysts facilitated by advances in nanotechnology and the synthesis of templated porous materials, as well as the use of tailored catalyst surfaces to generate bifunctional solid acid/base materials or tune hydrophobicity.

Predicting answering behaviour in online question answering communities

The value of Question Answering (Q&A) communities is dependent on members of the community finding the questions they are most willing and able to answer. This can be difficult in communities with a high volume of questions. Much previous has work attempted to address this problem by recommending questions similar to those already answered. However, this approach disregards the question selection behaviour of the answers and how it is affected by factors such as question recency and reputation. In this paper, we identify the parameters that correlate with such a behaviour by analysing the users' answering patterns in a Q&A community. We then generate a model to predict which question a user is most likely to answer next. We train Learning to Rank (LTR) models to predict question selections using various user, question and thread feature sets. We show that answering behaviour can be predicted with a high level of success, and highlight the particular features that inuence users' question selections.

DC-link voltage control strategy for reducing capacitance and total harmonic distortion in single-phase grid-connected photovoltaic inverters

High-volume capacitance is required to buffer the power difference between the input and output ports in single-phase grid-connected photovoltaic inverters, which become an obstacle to high system efficiency and long device lifetime. Furthermore, total harmonic distortion becomes serious when the system runs into low power level. In this study, a comprehensive analysis is introduced for two-stage topology with the consideration of active power, DC-link (DCL) voltage, ripple and capacitance. This study proposed a comprehensive DCL voltage control strategy to minimise the DCL capacitance while maintaining a normal system operation. Furthermore, the proposed control strategy is flexible to be integrated with the pulse-skipping control that significantly improves the power quality at light power conditions. Since the proposed control strategy needs to vary DCL voltage, an active protection scheme is also introduced to prevent any voltage violation across the DCL. The proposed control strategy is evaluated by both simulation and experiments, whose results confirm the system effectiveness.

Matrifocality and child shifting among the low income earners in Jamaica

Jamaican family structures have long felt the impact of unstable internal economic conditions and high volume of labor demands originating from England, Canada, the United States, and other larger societies. In response to the economic conditions and labor demands, increasing numbers of Jamaican women have migrated away from home, both within Jamaica and to other countries. Subsequently, many Jamaicans' households are restructured using a method called child shifting. This refers to "the relocation of children between households." Using three major theoretical paradigms: cultural diffusion, social pathology, and structural functionalism, this study explores the literature of child shifting to understand how economic conditions influence matrifocal families and in particular their child rearing practices. This study employs the structural functionalism paradigm's focus on "adaptive responses" to find plausible explanations for child shifting patterns. The primary premise of the "adaptive responses" approach is that economic marginality leads to certain adaptive responses in residential, kinship, and child rearing patterns. This study finds certain adjustment problems associated with child shifting. These include shifted children developing feelings of abandonment, of anxiety, of loss, and having difficulty trusting after the shifting occurs. These costs may outweigh the benefits of child shifting.

Environmental context of all samples from the Tara Oceans Expedition (2009-2013), about water column features

The Tara Oceans Expedition (2009-2013) sampled the world oceans on board a 36 m long schooner, collecting environmental data and organisms from viruses to planktonic metazoans for later analyses using modern sequencing and state-of-the-art imaging technologies. Tara Oceans Data are particularly suited to study the genetic, morphological and functional diversity of plankton. The present data set provides environmental context to all samples from the Tara Oceans Expedition (2009-2013), about water column features at the sampling location. Based on in situ measurements of... at the...

Methodological context of all samples from the Tara Oceans Expedition (2009-2013)

The Tara Oceans Expedition (2009-2013) sampled the world oceans on board a 36 m long schooner, collecting environmental data and organisms from viruses to planktonic metazoans for later analyses using modern sequencing and state-of-the-art imaging technologies. Tara Oceans Data are particularly suited to study the genetic, morphological and functional diversity of plankton. The present data set is a registry of all samples collected during the Tara Oceans Expedition (2009-2013). The registry provides details about the sampling location and methodology of each sample. Uniform resource locators (URLs) offer direct links to additional contextual environmental data published at PANGAEA, and to the corresponding nucleotides data published at the European Nucleotides Archive (EBI-ENA).

Remoção de fenol de efluentes aquosos utilizando floculação iônica

Oil exploration is one of the most important industrial activities of modern society. Despite its derivatives present numerous applications in industrial processes, there are many undesirable by-products during this process, one of them is water separated from oil, called water production, it is constituted by pollutants difficult to degrade. In addition, the high volume of generated water makes its treatment a major problem for oil industries. Among the major contaminants of such effluents are phenol and its derivatives, substances of difficult natural degradation, which due their toxicity must be removed by a treatment process before its final disposal. In order to facilitate the removal of phenol in wastedwater from oil industry, it was developed an extraction system by ionic flocculation with surfactant. The ionic flocculation relies on the reaction of carboxylate surfactant and calcium íons, yielding in an insoluble surfactant that under stirring, aggregates forming floc capable of attracting the organic matter by adsorption. In this work was used base soap as ionic surfactant in the flocculation process and evaluated phenol removal efficiency in relation to the following parameters: surfactant concentration, phenol, calcium and electrolytes, stirring speed, contact time, temperature and pH. The flocculation of the surfactant occurred in the effluent (initial phenol concentration = 100 ppm) reaching 65% of phenol removal to concentrations of 1300 ppm and calcium of 1000 ppm, respectively, at T = 35 °C, pH = 9.7, stirring rate = 100 rpm and contact time of 5 minutes. The permanence of the flocs in an aqueous medium promotes desorption of the phenol from the flake surface to the solution, reaching 90% of desorption at a time of 150 minutes, and the study of desorption kinetics showed that Lagergren model of pseudo-first order was adequate to describe the phenol desorption. These results shows that the process may configure a new alternative of treatment in regard the removal of phenol of aqueous effluent of oil industry.

Remoção de fenol de efluentes aquosos utilizando floculação iônica

Oil exploration is one of the most important industrial activities of modern society. Despite its derivatives present numerous applications in industrial processes, there are many undesirable by-products during this process, one of them is water separated from oil, called water production, it is constituted by pollutants difficult to degrade. In addition, the high volume of generated water makes its treatment a major problem for oil industries. Among the major contaminants of such effluents are phenol and its derivatives, substances of difficult natural degradation, which due their toxicity must be removed by a treatment process before its final disposal. In order to facilitate the removal of phenol in wastedwater from oil industry, it was developed an extraction system by ionic flocculation with surfactant. The ionic flocculation relies on the reaction of carboxylate surfactant and calcium íons, yielding in an insoluble surfactant that under stirring, aggregates forming floc capable of attracting the organic matter by adsorption. In this work was used base soap as ionic surfactant in the flocculation process and evaluated phenol removal efficiency in relation to the following parameters: surfactant concentration, phenol, calcium and electrolytes, stirring speed, contact time, temperature and pH. The flocculation of the surfactant occurred in the effluent (initial phenol concentration = 100 ppm) reaching 65% of phenol removal to concentrations of 1300 ppm and calcium of 1000 ppm, respectively, at T = 35 °C, pH = 9.7, stirring rate = 100 rpm and contact time of 5 minutes. The permanence of the flocs in an aqueous medium promotes desorption of the phenol from the flake surface to the solution, reaching 90% of desorption at a time of 150 minutes, and the study of desorption kinetics showed that Lagergren model of pseudo-first order was adequate to describe the phenol desorption. These results shows that the process may configure a new alternative of treatment in regard the removal of phenol of aqueous effluent of oil industry.

Time series of air chemistry measurements at Georg-von-Neumayer station, Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica in the years 1982 to 1991

The first Air Chemistry Observatory at the German Antarctic station Georg von Neumayer (GvN) was operated for 10 years from 1982 to 1991. The focus of the established observational programme was on characterizing the physical properties and chemical composition of the aerosol, as well as on monitoring the changing trace gas composition of the background atmosphere, especially concerning greenhouse gases. The observatory was designed by the Institut für Umweltphysik, University of Heidelberg (UHEIIUP). The experiments were installed inside the bivouac lodge, mounted on a sledge and put upon a snow hill to prevent snow accumulation during blizzards. All experiments were under daily control and daily performance protocols were documented. A ventilated stainless steel inlet stack (total height about 3-4 m above the snow surface) with a 50% aerodynamic cut-off diameter around 7-10 µm at wind velocities between 4-10 m/s supplied all experiments with ambient air. Contamination free sampling was realized by several means: (i) The Air Chemistry Observatory was situated in a clean air area about 1500 m south of GvN. Due to the fact that northern wind directions are very rare, contamination from the base can be excluded for most of the time. (ii) The power supply (20 kW) is provided by a cable from the main station, thus no fuel-driven generator is operated in the very vicinity. (iii) Contamination-free sampling is controlled by the permanently recorded wind velocity, wind direction and by condensation particle concentration. Contamination was indicated if one of the following criteria were given: Wind direction within a 330°-30° sector, wind velocity <2.2 m/s or >17.5 m/s, or condensation particle concentrations >2500/cm**3 during summer, >800/cm**3 during spring/autumn and >400/cm**3 during winter. If one or a definable combination of these criteria were given, high volume aerosol sampling and part of the trace gas sampling were interrupted. Starting at 1982 through 1991-01-14 surface ozone was measured with an electrochemical concentration cell (ECC). Surface ozone mixing ratio are given in ppbv = parts per 10**9 by volume. The averaging time corresponds to the given time intervals in the data sheet. The accuracy of the values are better than ±1 ppbv and the detection limit is around 1.0 ppbv. Aerosols were sampled on two Whatman 541 cellulose filters in series and analyzed by ion chromatography at the UHEI-IUP. Generally, the sampling period was seven days but could be up to two weeks on occasion. The air flow was around 100 m**3/h and typically 10000-20000 m**3 of ambient air was forced through the filters for one sample. Concentration values are given in nanogram (ng) per 1 m**3 air at standard pressure and temperature (1013 mbar, 273.16 K). Uncertainties of the values were approximately ±10% to ±15% for the main components MSA, chloride, nitrate, sulfate and sodium, and between ±20% and ±30% for the minor species bromide, ammonium, potassium, magnesium and calcium.