A Sustainable Development Strategy for the Pyrenees-Mediterranean Euroregion: Basic Guidelines

L'estudi presenta té per objecte formular els requisits necessaris per posar en marxa una estratègia per al desenvolupament sostenible de l'Euroregió Pirineus-Mediterrània. Aquest és un projecte de cooperació transfronterera regional promogut per l'expresident de la Generalitat, Honorable Sr Pasqual Maragall, que, a més de Catalunya, inclou Aragó, Illes Balears, Llenguadoc-Rosselló i Migdia-Pirineus. A la Unió Europea hi ha més de 70 euroregions, que han estat en funcionant per diferents periodes de temps, després d'haver estat creat per regions o entitats locals, o ambdós

Institutional regimes for sustainable collective housing stocks

The influence of public policy, property rights and contracts on the sustainability of residential buildings remains largely unknown. This research will use the analytical framework of the housing institutional regime to study the sustainability over time of the housing stock. We aim to produce an inventory of the housing institutional regime in Switzerland, a comparison with the German and Catalan regimes, and policy suggestions to achieve a better sustainability of the housing stock.

Are sustainable companies less risky and more profitable?

The purpose of this study was to determine whether there were significant differences in accounting indicators when comparing sustainable enterprises to other similar companies that are not considered as sustainable. The Corporate Sustainability Index of BM (São Paulo Stock, Commodities and Futures Exchange) was the criterion selected to break down the samples into sustainable and non-sustainable enterprises. The accounting indicators were separated into two kinds: risk (dividend payout, percentage growth of assets, financial leverage, current liquidity, asset size, variability of earnings, and accounting beta) and return (ROA, ROE, asset turnover, and net margin). We individually analyzed the companies in the energy sector, followed by those in the banking sector, as well as the entire ISE portfolio as of 2008/2009, including all the sectors. Mann-Whitney tests were performed in order to verify the difference of the means between the groups (ISE and non-ISE). The results, considering the method chosen and the time span covered by the study, indicate that there are no differences between sustainable companies and the others, when they are assessed by the accounting indicators used here.

Real-life versus package insert: a post-marketing study on adverse-event rates of the virosomal hepatitis A vaccine Epaxal® in healthy travellers.

There are various methods to collect adverse events (AEs) in clinical trials. The methods how AEs are collected in vaccine trials is of special interest: solicited reporting can lead to over-reporting events that have little or no biological relationship to the vaccine. We assessed the rate of AEs listed in the package insert for the virosomal hepatitis A vaccine Epaxal(®), comparing data collected by solicited or unsolicited self-reporting. In an open, multi-centre post-marketing study, 2675 healthy travellers received single doses of vaccine administered intramuscularly. AEs were recorded based on solicited and unsolicited questioning during a four-day period after vaccination. A total of 2541 questionnaires could be evaluated (95.0% return rate). Solicited self-reporting resulted in significantly higher (p<0.0001) rates of subjects with AEs than unsolicited reporting, both at baseline (18.9% solicited versus 2.1% unsolicited systemic AEs) and following immunization (29.6% versus 19.3% local AEs; 33.8% versus 18.2% systemic AEs). This could indicate that actual reporting rates of AEs with Epaxal(®) may be substantially lower than described in the package insert. The distribution of AEs differed significantly between the applied methods of collecting AEs. The most common AEs listed in the package insert were reported almost exclusively with solicited questioning. The reporting of local AEs was more likely than that of systemic AEs to be influenced by subjects' sex, age and study centre. Women reported higher rates of AEs than men. The results highlight the need for detailing the methods how vaccine tolerability was reported and assessed.

Marketing verde e práticas socioambientais nas indústrias do Paraná

A preocupação das empresas com o meio ambiente e com todas as questões sociais envolvidas em seu processo tem se tornado uma constante nos últimos tempos. Devido a isso, estão surgindo novas formas de administrar os recursos disponíveis. Nesse contexto, enquadra-se o marketing verde que deve estar pautado em práticas ambientalmente corretas, com o intuito de gerar produtos e serviços mais sustentáveis, fortalecendo a imagem das empresas e diferenciando suas marcas no mercado. O intuito neste trabalho foi verificar se as grandes indústrias do Paraná estão se utilizando das práticas de marketing verde e se mantêm projetos de gestão socioambiental. Para atender a tais objetivos, elaborou-se uma pesquisa descritiva e quantitativa com 48 grandes empresas cadastradas na Federação das Indústrias do Paraná. Os resultados obtidos indicam que a maior parte das empresas possui departamento de marketing formalizado, mantém sistemas de gestão ambiental e utiliza moderadamente práticas de marketing verde.

Marketing de lugar: estado da arte e perspectivas futuras

O objetivo neste trabalho é contribuir com o repensar da natureza e do significado do marketing de lugar presente na literatura, descrevendo as três principais perspectivas influentes em seu desenvolvimento – promoção, planejamento e branding – e apresentar uma análise crítica de seu processo de evolução. No intuito de orientar o entendimento, evitar interpretações individuais e propor uma linguagem comum, a análise compreende a convergência das perspectivas em um conceito caracterizado como uma importante ferramenta de gerenciamento das trocas que ocorrem em âmbito territorial visando ao desenvolvimento socioeconômico da localidade. Como contribuição, sugere-se uma estruturação para investigações futuras identificando lacunas entre a teoria do marketing de lugar e a forma como é compreendido, assim como as dificuldades significativas para sua implementação.

Place marketing performance: benchmarking european cities as business destinations

The aim of this study is to develop a model measuring the performance of cities' marketing efforts. The model and the benchmarking methodology presented can be used by local authorities to position their marketing efforts and achievements against other (competing) cities and to identify best practices that can assist place marketers in learning how to be more efficient obtaining desired place marketing results, e.g., improved city brand image, with the available resources/budgets. The major implication for practitioners is that place marketing should be managed as a process, taking into account both the resource flows and the outputs, as well as the efficiency of this process.

El smartphone y sus implicaciones de marketing y antropológicas: la situación de España respecto al entorno internacional

Aquest treball analitza la tecnologia del Smartphone i les implicacions d’aquests dins d’Espanya en relació al màrqueting i a l’antropologia, principalment. El Smartphone s’ha convertit en un utensili que va més enllà d’un simple telèfon, convertint-se en agenda, ràdio, televisió i bastants aplicacions més. El grau de penetració d’aquest s’ha incrementat exponencial-ment, especialment en menors d’edat, i això, està modificant la nostra forma d’actuar i mantenir relacions, i per tant les opcions de màrqueting disponibles a través del mateix, presents i futures.

Iowa Turkey Marketing Council, December 31, 2001 & December 31, 2002

State Agency Audit Report

Iowa Turkey Marketing Council, December 31, 2002 & 2003

State Agency Audit Report - Independent Auditor's Reports Financial Statements

Iowa Turkey Marketing Council, Independent Auditor's Reports, Financial Statements, Schedule of Findings, December 31, 2003 & 2004

State Audit Reports

Sustainable Development and Concrete Technology, May 2004

For a variety of reasons, the concrete construction industry is not sustainable. First, it consumes huge quantities of virgin materials. Second, the principal binder in concrete is portland cement, the production of which is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions that are implicated in global warming and climate change. Third, many concrete structures suffer from lack of durability which has an adverse effect on the resource productivity of the industry. Because the high-volume fly ash concrete system addresses all three sustainability issues, its adoption will enable the concrete construction industry to become more sustainable. In this paper, a brief review is presented of the theory and construction practice with concrete mixtures containing more than 50% fly ash by mass of the cementitious material. Mechanisms are discussed by which the incorporation of high volume of fly ash in concrete reduces the water demand, improves the workability, minimizes cracking due to thermal and drying shrinkage, and enhances durability to reinforcement corrosion, sulfate attack, and alkali-silica expansion. For countries like China and India, this technology can play an important role in meeting the huge demand for infrastructure in a sustainable manner.