Análise do processo de avaliação de desempenho ambiental face às diretrizes da ISO 14031: um estudo de caso

The present dissertation aims to analyze the evaluation process of environmental performance inside an organization from the building construction section of civil construction based on the NBR ISO 14031 guidelines, which provide orientation regarding the implementation of this project towards the internal organizational management. The theoretical research has addressed concepts and historical development of environmental management inside organizations, from the emergence of the first models to the strengthening of environmental management through the standardization of the Environmental Management System caused by the publication of ISO 14001. It has also addressed the evaluation of environmental performance, the NBR ISO 14031 (concepts, types of indicators of evaluation of environmental performance, the elaboration process of such indicators, as well as its use and evaluation by the high administration). The research has an applied character, with exploratory and descriptive goals, and a qualitative approach based on case study. The data collection will be made through questionnaires, interviews, and documental analysis. Through the present research project, one expects to learn the elements taken into consideration by the organization for the elaboration and selection of indicators; to identify which interested parties contribute in the aforementioned process; to discover which sources are taken into consideration by the organization while establishing its environmental performance goals; to learn how the different kinds of environmental indicators are handled by organizations on daily basis, considering the existence of interferences on the decision making process, whether or not the interested parties are integrated, and if there is an periodical evaluation of environmental performance and how it is handled. One also expects to identify the opportunities for improvement regarding the organization that is object of study.

A dinâmica da taxa de câmbio no Brasil face às operações swap (2002-2015)

This dissertation investigates, based on the Post-Keynesian theory and on its concept of monetary economy of production, the exchange rate behavior of the Brazilian Real in the presence of Brazilian Central Bank's interventions by means of the so-called swap transactions over 2002-2015. Initially, the work analyzes the essential properties of an open monetary economy of production and, thereafter, it presents the basic propositions of the Post-Keynesian view on the exchange rate determination, highlighting the properties of foreign exchange markets and the peculiarities of the Brazilian position into the international monetary and financial system. The research, thereby, accounts for the various segments of the Brazilian foreign exchange market. To accomplish its purpose, we first do a literature review of the Post-Keynesian literature about the topic. Then, we undertake empirical exams of the exchange rate determination using two statistical methods. On the one hand, to measure the volatility of exchange rate, we estimate Auto-regressive Conditional Heteroscedastic (ARCH) and Generalized Auto-regressive Conditional Heteroscedastic (GARCH) models. On the other hand, to measure the variance of the exchange rate in relation to real, financial variables, and the swaps, we estimate a Vector Auto-regression (VAR) model. Both experiments are performed for the nominal and real effective exchange rates. The results show that the swaps respond to exchange rate movements, trying to offset its volatility. This reveals that the exchange rate is, at least in a certain magnitude, sensitive to swaps transactions conducted by the Central Bank. In addition, another empirical result is that the real effective exchange rate responds more to the swaps auctions than the nominal rate.

O PAPEL DA COMUNICAÇÃO FACE A FACE NAS ORGANIZAÇÕES NO CONTEXTO DA SOCIEDADE MIDIATIZADA

Este estudo trata da comunicação face a face nas organizações sob diferentes abordagens teóricas. Considera a perspectiva da simultaneidade dos meios, já que as empresas utilizam diversos canais para dialogar com seus públicos de interesse. Leva em conta o fenômeno da midiatização, que reestrutura o modo como as pessoas se relacionam na sociedade contemporânea. O objetivo geral da pesquisa é sistematizar papeis potencialmente exercidos pela interação face a face e conhecer algumas circunstâncias que envolvem sua prática nas organizações. Por se tratar de uma tese teórica, a pesquisa bibliográfica se apresenta como um dos principais procedimentos metodológicos; análises de casos empíricos e um estudo de caso desenvolvido na Embrapa Pantanal constituem situações ilustrativas. Conclui-se que a comunicação face a face nas empresas ocorre de forma simultânea e combinada a outros canais de comunicação, porém, ela proporciona resultados práticos e filosóficos ainda pouco explorados. É rara a utilização estratégica de contatos presenciais como mecanismo para estabelecer relacionamentos, conhecer as reações alheias e ajustar a comunicação, aliar o discurso corporativo às práticas empresariais e avaliar o contexto onde se desenvolvem as interações, o que pode ser decisivo para a comunicação organizacional.

Taking risks in the face of uncertainty:an exploratory analysis of green innovation

The relationship between uncertainty and firms’ risk-taking behaviour has been a focus of investigation since early discussion of the nature of enterprise activity. Here, we focus on how firms’ perceptions of environmental uncertainty and their perceptions of the risks involved impact on their willingness to undertake green innovation. Analysis is based on a cross-sectional survey of UK food companies undertaken in 2008. The results reinforce the relationship between perceived environmental uncertainty and perceived innovation risk and emphasise the importance of macro-uncertainty in shaping firms’ willingness to undertake green innovation. The perceived (market-related) riskiness of innovation also positively influences the probability of innovating, suggesting either a proactive approach to stimulating market disruption or an opportunistic approach to innovation leadership.

Influence of cutting parameters and tool wear on martensitic stainless steel surface integrity after a face milling process

Surface finish is one of the most relevant aspects of machining operations, since it is one of the principle methods to assess quality. Also, surface finish influences mechanical properties such as fatigue behavior, wear, corrosion, etc. The feed, the cutting speed, the cutting tool material, the workpiece material and the cutting tool wear are some of the most important factors that affects the surface roughness of the machined surface. Due to the importance of the martensitic 416 stainless steel in the petroleum industry, especially in valve parts and pump shafts, this material was selected to study the influence of the feed per tooth and cutting speed on tool wear and surface integrity. Also the influence of tool wear on surface roughness is analyzed. Results showed that high values of roughness are obtained when using low cutting speed and feed per tooth and by using these conditions tool wear decreases prolonging tool life. Copyright © 2009 by ASME.

Empirical expression of tool wear when face milling 416 SS

During a machining process, cutting parameters must be taken into account, since depending on them the cutting edge starts to wear out to the point that tool can fail and needs to be change, which increases the cost and time of production. Since wear is a negative phenomenon on the cutting tool, due to the fact that tool life is reduced, it is important to optimize the cutting variables to be used during the machining process, in order to increase tool life. This research is focused on the influence of cutting parameters such as cutting speed, feed per tooth and axial depth of cut on tool wear during a face milling operation. The Taguchi method is applied in this study, since it uses a special design of orthogonal array to study the entire parameters space, with only few numbers of experiments. Also a relationship between tool wear and the cutting parameters is presented. For the studies, a martensitic 416 stainless steel was selected, due to the importance of this material in the machining of valve parts and pump shafts. Copyright © 2009 by ASME.

Please Stop Rubbing Your Relationship In My Face(book): An Investigation of Online Romantic Social Comparison

It is well-documented that social networking sites such as Facebook set the stage for social comparison. Such comparison has been linked to a number of negative outcomes including envy, negative moods, and lower self-esteem. The present research aims to extend current understanding of online social comparison by investigating how it pertains to romantic relationships. I hypothesized that for individuals high in attachment anxiety (compared to those low in this construct), online romantic social comparison might be related to negative consequences—which, in the current project, was operationalized as lower mood/affect and state self-esteem. Further, I hypothesized that there would be an interaction between attachment anxiety and relationship insecurities on these negative outcomes, such that the expected difference of attachment anxiety would be more pronounced under conditions priming relationship insecurities, relative to a control condition. Two experiments were conducted, one of which focused on single individuals, and the second focusing on individuals who were themselves in dating relationships. The paradigms of each entailed experimental manipulation of a key relationship-related variable (for single individuals, pessimism for future relationships; for dating individuals, the presence or absence of rejection threat), subsequent exposure to romantic content from Facebook, and finally, measures of affect and state self-esteem. I discovered partial support for the hypothesis that some single individuals—particularly those with higher, rather than lower, attachment anxiety—do indeed report feeling more negative moods and lower state self-esteem following exposure to romantic online content, in contrast to single individuals who had instead viewed neutral online content. The association between attachment anxiety and negative outcome was especially pertinent if individuals had been primed to believe that their own future romantic prospects were grim, or if attention had been drawn to their singleness. Among dating individuals, less support for hypotheses was found; however, exploratory post-hoc analyses revealed a promising (albeit weak) trend indicating that reinvestigation of the current hypotheses would be prudent.

Face recognition using a unified 3D morphable model

We address the problem of 3D-assisted 2D face recognition in scenarios when the input image is subject to degradations or exhibits intra-personal variations not captured by the 3D model. The proposed solution involves a novel approach to learn a subspace spanned by perturbations caused by the missing modes of variation and image degradations, using 3D face data reconstructed from 2D images rather than 3D capture. This is accomplished by modelling the difference in the texture map of the 3D aligned input and reference images. A training set of these texture maps then defines a perturbation space which can be represented using PCA bases. Assuming that the image perturbation subspace is orthogonal to the 3D face model space, then these additive components can be recovered from an unseen input image, resulting in an improved fit of the 3D face model. The linearity of the model leads to efficient fitting. Experiments show that our method achieves very competitive face recognition performance on Multi-PIE and AR databases. We also present baseline face recognition results on a new data set exhibiting combined pose and illumination variations as well as occlusion.

Face description for perceptual user interfaces

[EN]We investigate mechanisms which can endow the computer with the ability of describing a human face by means of computer vision techniques. This is a necessary requirement in order to develop HCI approaches which make the user feel himself/herself perceived. This paper describes our experiences considering gender, race and the presence of moustache and glasses. This is accomplished comparing, on a set of 6000 facial images, two di erent face representation approaches: Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and Gabor lters. The results achieved using a Support Vector Machine (SVM) based classi er are promising and particularly better for the second representation approach.

Multiple face detection at different resolutions for perceptual user interfaces

[EN]This paper describes in detail a real-time multiple face detection system for video streams. The system adds to the good performance provided by a window shift approach, the combination of different cues available in video streams due to temporal coherence. The results achieved by this combined solution outperform the basic face detector obtaining a 98% success rate for around 27000 images, providing additionally eye detection and a relation between the successive detections in time by means of detection threads.

Fast and robust face finding via local context

[EN]In visual surveillance face detection can be an important cue for initializing tracking algorithms. Recent work in psychophics hints at the importance of the local context of a face for robust detection, such as head contours and torso. This paper describes a detector that actively utilizes the idea of local context. The promise is to gain robustness that goes beyond the capabilities of traditional face detection making it particularly interesting for surveillance. The performance of the proposed detector in terms of accuracy and speed is evaluated on data sets from PETS 2000 and PETS 2003 and compared to the object-centered approach. Particular attention is paid to the role of available image resolution.

The ENCARA system for face detection and normalization

[EN]Facial image processing is becoming widespread in human-computer applications, despite its complexity. High-level processes such as face recognition or gender determination rely on low-level routines that must e ectively detect and normalize the faces that appear in the input image. In this paper, a face detection and normalization system is described. The approach taken is based on a cascade of fast, weak classi ers that together try to determine whether a frontal face is present in the image.

A sexualidade nos idosos. Contributo para a avaliação das atitudes face à sexualidade nos idosos e a sua relação com a religião e nível cognitivo

O presente estudo teve como objectivo principal conhecer melhor aspectos relacionados com a sexualidade na 3ª idade. A escala utilizada foi construída por nós, tornando-se num elemento chave para esta pesquisa. A escala de atitudes face à sexualidade no idoso foi relacionada com algumas características sociodemográficas: género, idade, estado civil, escolaridade e religião. Da análise realizada ressaltam evidências de uma atitude conservadora face às questões da sexualidade na 3ª idade. Através de uma amostra de 120 idosos com idades compreendidas entre os 60 e os 97 anos de idade, constatámos que os homens e as mulheres distinguem-se significativamente no que respeita às atitudes face à sexualidade, exibindo os homens uma atitude global mais positiva e liberal (M = 25.82). Os resultados evidenciaram um efeito significativo da variável escolaridade sobre o nível cognitivo, revelando que quanto maior a escolaridade do idoso na nossa amostra, maior é o nível cognitivo. Relativamente ao estado civil, os casados revelaram uma atitude global mais positiva perante a sua sexualidade (M = 31.98) comparativamente aos viúvos (M = 27.26) e aos divorciados (M = 23.67). A religião apenas se mostrou associada com a escala de atitudes face ao cristianismo, evidenciando aqueles que são praticantes, uma atitude mais positiva em relação ao cristianismo. Na nossa amostra, também podémos constatar que quanto maior é o nível cognitivo, mais positiva é a atitude face à sexualidade. Com base nos pontos de corte do MMSE verificou-se que 75% dos idosos da nossa amostra não apresentava qualquer défice cognitivo. Comparados os grupos, sem e com défice cognitivo, constatou-se que o grupo de idosos sem défice cognitivo exibe uma atitude mais positiva face à sexualidade que o grupo com défice cognitivo. Pretendemos que de alguma forma este estudo contribua para dar a conhecer as atitudes dos idosos face à sua sexualidade bem como esperamos que os nossos resultados permitam uma reflexão sobre possíveis estratégias de intervenção no sentido de promover uma sexualidade bem vivida por esta faixa etária. / The present study aimed to better understand the main aspects related to sexuality in the 3rd age. The scale used was built by us, becoming a key element in this research. The scale of attitudes towards sexuality in the elderly was related to sociodemographic characteristics: gender, age, marital status, education and religion. From the analysis point out evidence of a conservative approach in relation to issues of sexuality in the 3rd age. Using a sample of 120 elderly aged 60 and 97 years old, found that men and women differ significantly with regard to attitudes towards sexuality, men showing a more positive overall attitude and liberal (M = 25.82). The results showed a significant effect on the education variable cognitive level, revealing that the higher the education of the elderly in our sample, the higher the cognitive level. With regard to marital status, married people showed a more positive overall attitude towards their sexuality (M = 31.98) compared to widowed (M = 27.26) and divorced (M = 23.67). The only religion was associated with the scale of attitudes to Christianity, showing those who are practitioners, a more positive attitude toward Christianity. In our sample, we can also see that the higher the cognitive level, the more positive attitude towards sexuality. Based on the MMSE cutoffs found that 75% of older people in our sample did not show any cognitive deficit. Comparing the groups with and without cognitive impairment, it was found that the group of elderly people without cognitive impairment display a more positive attitude towards sexuality that the group with cognitive impairment. We intend that somehow this study contributes to publicize the attitudes of the elderly compared to their sexuality and we expect our results allow a discussion on possible intervention strategies to promote a sexuality lived well by this age group.

An incremental learning algorithm for face recognition

[EN]In face recognition, where high-dimensional representation spaces are generally used, it is very important to take advantage of all the available information. In particular, many labelled facial images will be accumulated while the recognition system is functioning, and due to practical reasons some of them are often discarded. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for using this information. The algorithm has the fundamental characteristic of being incremental. On the other hand, the algorithm makes use of a combination of classification results for the images in the input sequence. Experiments with sequences obtained with a real person detection and tracking system allow us to analyze the performance of the algorithm, as well as its potential improvements.