The pricing of infrastructure initial public offerings : evidence from Australia

This paper explores first-day returns on infrastructure entity initial public offerings (IPOs) in Australia from 1996 to 2007. While a good deal has been written on the first-day returns of industrial and mining company IPOs and Real Estate Investment Trust IPOs, first-day returns of infrastructure entity IPOs have yet to be reported in the literature. The study uses ordinary least squares regression analysis to identify factors that might influence the percentage first-day returns theoretically available to investing subscribers and factors that might influence the aggregate amount of money left to subscribers by issuers. The study finds that first-day returns, on average, are not significantly different from zero. There is evidence, however, that suggests higher dividend yields and higher percentage direct costs of capital raising influence these first-day returns. The study also finds that infrastructure entity IPOs that seek to raise more equity capital leave less money on the table for subscribing investors.

Epidemiology of acute rheumatic fever in New Zealand 1996-2005

Aim: Acute rheumatic fever (ARF) and its sequela chronic rheumatic heart disease remain significant causes of morbidity and mortality in New Zealand, particularly among Māori and Pacific peoples. Despite its importance, ARF epidemiology has not been reviewed recently. The aims of this study were to assess trends in ARF incidence rates between 1996 and 2005 and the extent to which ARF is concentrated in certain populations based on age, sex, ethnicity and geographical location.

Methods: This descriptive epidemiological study examined ARF incidence rates using hospitalisation data (1996–2005) and population data from the 1996 and 2001 censuses. Rates were compared by using rate ratios and 95% confidence intervals.

Results: New Zealand's annual ARF rate was 3.4 per 100 000. ARF was concentrated in certain populations: 5- to 14-year-olds, Māori and Pacific peoples and upper North Island areas. From 1996 to 2005, the New Zealand European and Others ARF rate decreased significantly while Māori and Pacific peoples’ rates increased. Compared with New Zealand European and Others, rate ratios were 10.0 for Māori and 20.7 for Pacific peoples. Of all cases, 59.5% were Māori or Pacific children aged 5–14 years, yet this group comprised only 4.7% of the New Zealand population.

Conclusion: ARF rates in New Zealand have failed to decrease since the 1980s and remain some of the highest reported in a developed country. There are large, and now widening, ethnic disparities in ARF incidence. ARF is so concentrated by age group, ethnicity and geographical area that highly targeted interventions could be considered, based on these characteristics.

Satellite telemetry suggests high levels of fishing-induced mortality in marine turtles

Long-term records of nesting numbers, or proxies to nesting numbers, show a precipitous decline in the size of many sea turtle populations. Population declines are most frequently attributed to fisheries bycatch, although direct quantification of this level of mortality is rare. We used satellite-tracking records for turtles in the Mediterranean Sea and Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans to identify when turtles had been captured. Evidence for capture came from a combination of an increase in good quality locations from transmitters, transmitters moving inland to coastal towns and villages, and on-board submergence data, showing that transmitters had come out of the water. A high level of mortality was calculated, confirming current concerns regarding the outlook for sea turtles.

PPFSCADA: Privacy preserving framework for SCADA data publishing

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems control and monitor industrial and critical infrastructure functions, such as electricity, gas, water, waste, railway, and traffic. Recent attacks on SCADA systems highlight the need for stronger SCADA security. Thus, sharing SCADA traffic data has become a vital requirement in SCADA systems to analyze security risks and develop appropriate security solutions. However, inappropriate sharing and usage of SCADA data could threaten the privacy of companies and prevent sharing of data. In this paper, we present a privacy preserving strategy-based permutation technique called PPFSCADA framework, in which data privacy, statistical properties and data mining utilities can be controlled at the same time. In particular, our proposed approach involves: (i) vertically partitioning the original data set to improve the performance of perturbation; (ii) developing a framework to deal with various types of network traffic data including numerical, categorical and hierarchical attributes; (iii) grouping the portioned sets into a number of clusters based on the proposed framework; and (iv) the perturbation process is accomplished by the alteration of the original attribute value by a new value (clusters centroid). The effectiveness of the proposed PPFSCADA framework is shown through several experiments on simulated SCADA, intrusion detection and network traffic data sets. Through experimental analysis, we show that PPFSCADA effectively deals with multivariate traffic attributes, producing compatible results as the original data, and also substantially improving the performance of the five supervised approaches and provides high level of privacy protection. © 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Time series analysis of the impact of tobacco control policies on smoking prevalence among Australian adults, 2001–2011

Objective: To determine the impact of tobacco control policies and mass media campaigns on smoking prevalence in Australian adults.
Methods: Data for calculating the average monthly prevalence of smoking between January 2001 and June 2011 were obtained via structured interviews of randomly sampled adults aged 18 years or older from Australia’s five largest capital cities (monthly mean number of adults interviewed: 2375). The influence on smoking prevalence was estimated for increased tobacco taxes; strengthened smoke-free laws; increased monthly population exposure to televised tobacco control mass media campaigns and pharmaceutical company advertising for nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), using gross ratings points; monthly sales of NRT, bupropion and varenicline; and introduction of graphic health warnings on cigarette packs. Autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models were used to examine the influence of these interventions on smoking prevalence.
Findings: The mean smoking prevalence for the study period was 19.9% (standard deviation: 2.0%), with a drop from 23.6% (in January 2001) to 17.3% (in June 2011). The best-fitting model showed that stronger smoke-free laws, tobacco price increases and greater exposure to mass media campaigns independently explained 76% of the decrease in smoking prevalence from February 2002 to June 2011.
Conclusion: Increased tobacco taxation, more comprehensive smoke-free laws and increased investment in mass media campaigns played a substantial role in reducing smoking prevalence among Australian adults between 2001 and 2011.

A colostrum trypsin inhibitor gene expressed in the Cape fur seal mammary gland during lactation

The colostrum trypsin inhibitor (CTI) gene and transcript were cloned from the Cape fur seal mammary gland and CTI identified by in silico analysis of the Pacific walrus and polar bear genomes (Order Carnivora), and in marine and terrestrial mammals of the Orders Cetartiodactyla (yak, whales, camel) and Perissodactyla (white rhinoceros). Unexpectedly, Weddell seal CTI was predicted to be a pseudogene. Cape fur seal CTI was expressed in the mammary gland of a pregnant multiparous seal, but not in a seal in its first pregnancy. While bovine CTI is expressed for 24-48h postpartum (pp) and secreted in colostrum only, Cape fur seal CTI was detected for at least 2-3months pp while the mother was suckling its young on-shore. Furthermore, CTI was expressed in the mammary gland of only one of the lactating seals that was foraging at-sea. The expression of β-casein (CSN2) and β-lactoglobulin II (LGB2), but not CTI in the second lactating seal foraging at-sea suggested that CTI may be intermittently expressed during lactation. Cape fur seal and walrus CTI encode putative small, secreted, N-glycosylated proteins with a single Kunitz/bovine pancreatic trypsin inhibitor (BPTI) domain indicative of serine protease inhibition. Mature Cape fur seal CTI shares 92% sequence identity with Pacific walrus CTI, but only 35% identity with BPTI. Structural homology modelling of Cape fur seal CTI and Pacific walrus trypsin based on the model of the second Kunitz domain of human tissue factor pathway inhibitor (TFPI) and porcine trypsin (Protein Data Bank: 1TFX) confirmed that CTI inhibits trypsin in a canonical fashion. Therefore, pinniped CTI may be critical for preventing the proteolytic degradation of immunoglobulins that are passively transferred from mother to young via colostrum and milk.

Human threats to sandy beaches: a meta-analysis of ghost crabs illustrates global anthropogenic impacts

Beach and coastal dune systems are increasingly subjected to a broad range of anthropogenic pressures that on many shorelines require significant conservation and mitigation interventions. But these interventions require reliable data on the severity and frequency of adverse ecological impacts. Such evidence is often obtained by measuring the response of 'indicator species'.Ghost crabs are the largest invertebrates inhabiting tropical and subtropical sandy shores and are frequently used to assess human impacts on ocean beaches. Here we present the first global meta-analysis of these impacts, and analyse the design properties and metrics of studies using ghost-crabs in their assessment. This was complemented by a gap analysis to identify thematic areas of anthropogenic pressures on sandy beach ecosystems that are under-represented in the published literature.Our meta-analysis demonstrates a broad geographic reach, encompassing studies on shores of the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans, as well as the South China Sea. It also reveals what are, arguably, two major limitations: i) the near-universal use of proxies (i.e. burrow counts to estimate abundance) at the cost of directly measuring biological traits and bio-markers in the organism itself; and ii) descriptive or correlative study designs that rarely extend beyond a simple 'compare and contrast approach', and hence fail to identify the mechanistic cause(s) of observed contrasts.Evidence for a historically narrow range of assessed pressures (i.e., chiefly urbanisation, vehicles, beach nourishment, and recreation) is juxtaposed with rich opportunities for the broader integration of ghost crabs as a model taxon in studies of disturbance and impact assessments on ocean beaches. Tangible advances will most likely occur where ghost crabs provide foci for experiments that test specific hypotheses associated with effects of chemical, light and acoustic pollution, as well as the consequences of climate change (e.g. species range shifts).

Hydropower Energy Simulation Using Mike 11 Model; A Case Study In South Germany's Small Run-Of-River Hydropower Plants

Renewable energy production is a basic supplement to stabilize rapidly increasing global energy demand and skyrocketing energy price as well as to balance the fluctuation of supply from non-renewable energy sources at electrical grid hubs. The European energy traders, government and private company energy providers and other stakeholders have been, since recently, a major beneficiary, customer and clients of Hydropower simulation solutions. The relationship between rainfall-runoff model outputs and energy productions of hydropower plants has not been clearly studied. In this research, association of rainfall, catchment characteristics, river network and runoff with energy production of a particular hydropower station is examined. The essence of this study is to justify the correspondence between runoff extracted from calibrated catchment and energy production of hydropower plant located at a catchment outlet; to employ a unique technique to convert runoff to energy based on statistical and graphical trend analysis of the two, and to provide environment for energy forecast. For rainfall-runoff model setup and calibration, MIKE 11 NAM model is applied, meanwhile MIKE 11 SO model is used to track, adopt and set a control strategy at hydropower location for runoff-energy correlation. The model is tested at two selected micro run-of-river hydropower plants located in South Germany. Two consecutive calibration is compromised to test the model; one for rainfall-runoff model and other for energy simulation. Calibration results and supporting verification plots of two case studies indicated that simulated discharge and energy production is comparable with the measured discharge and energy production respectively.

Responsabilidade social de uma empresa : o caso da Souza Cruz S.A. conforme a ótica de seus gerentes

A busca de um negócio sustentável leva as empresas cada vez mais a se preocuparem com todos os envolvidosna sua cadeia produtiva.Desta forma, o tema responsabilidadesocial vem ganhando terreno. Embora seja uma matéria relativamente nova no Brasil, várias empresas estão procurando estruturar e desenvolver seus programas de responsabilidade social. O presente estudo de caso procurou analisar a responsabilidade social da empresa com foco na Souza Cruz S. A. Através da percepção de diversos stakeholders, procurou-se agregar à empresa subsídios para avaliação e melhoria do programa, bem como contribuir para um aprofundamentosobre o status atual do tema por meio da análise de uma situação concreta.O trabalho analisou o programa corporativo a partir de seis dimensões, a saber: valores e transparência; público interno; meio ambiente; fornecedores; comunidade; consumidores. . Dentre os resultadosobtidos,verifica-seque os gerentespercebema organizaçãocomo socialmente responsável, embora demandem maior participação e envolvimento dos mesmos na estratégia corporativa. Os demais grupos de stakeholders pesquisados, comunidade, sindicado e fornecedores, apontam para uma baixa comunicação do programa por parte da empresa e a necessidade de uma maior participação da empresa na comunidade. De maneira geral, verificou-se que existe um programa de responsabilidade social sendo implantado, este carece de melhorias e que a empresa está desenvolvendoestratégias de negócio e um sistema de planejamento focado em fortalecer a responsabilidade social corporativa. Além disso, procura implantar instrumentos adequados de acompanhamento e monitoramento de suas práticas.

A Light, investimento estrangeiro no Brasil: uma luz sobre o ciclo privado-público-privado em 80 anos pela análise de taxa de retorno

A Brazilian Traction, Light and Power Company ("Light"), formada por empreendedores canadenses em 1899, operou por 80 anos praticamente toda a infraestrutura (bondes, luz, telefones, gás) do eixo Rio-São Paulo. A empresa passou por vários ciclos políticos, desde sua fundação até sua estatização em 1979. Durante este período de 80 anos, a infra-estrutura nacional, inicialmente privada, foi gradativamente passando para as mãos do Estado. O setor voltaria a ser privado a partir dos anos 90, configurando o ciclo privado-público-privado, similar ao ocorrido nos países mais desenvolvidos. A Light, símbolo maior do capital estrangeiro até os anos 50, foi inicialmente bem recebida no país, posto que seu desenvolvimento era simbiótico, causa e conseqüência, ao desenvolvimento industrial. Dos anos 20 em diante, crescem os debates econômicos ou ideológicos quanto ao papel do capital privado estrangeiro no desenvolvimento nacional, vis-a-vis a opção do setor público como ator principal. Sempre permaneceu sob névoa quais teriam sido os lucros da Light no Brasil, e se esses seriam excessivos, acima do razoável. Outra questão recorrente se refere até que ponto os congelamentos de tarifas teriam contribuido para a crise de oferta de infra-estrutura. Através de um trabalho de pesquisa em fontes primárias, esta dissertação procura reconstituir a história da Light, sob um foco de Taxa de Retorno sob o capital investido. Foi reconstruída a história financeira da Light no Brasil, a partir da qual calculou-se, para vários períodos e para os seus 80 anos de vida, os retornos obtidos pelos acionistas da empresa. A partir dos resultados obtidos, e utilizando-se de benchmarks comparativos, foi possível mostrar que: i) ao contrário da crença vigente à época, o retorno obtido pelo maior investidor estrangeiro no setor de infra-estrutura do Brasil do Séc. XX, se mostrou bem abaixo do mínimo aceitável, e ii) o represamento de tarifas, por várias décadas, foi de fato determinante para o subdesenvolvimento do setor de infra-estrutura no Brasil.

Acumulação de competências tecnológicas e suas implicações para o aprimoramento de indicadores de performance operacional na Gradiente Eletrônica S.A. - Unidade Manaus

Esta dissertação enfoca as implicações práticas da trajetória de acumulação de competências tecnológicas para o aprimoramento de indicadores de performance operacional. Esse relacionamento é examinado na Gradiente Eletrônica S/A durante período de 1970 a 2000. Baseada em um estudo de caso individual, esta dissertação fundamenta-se em evidências empíricas, qualitativas e quantitativas, coletadas por meio de entrevistas, observação direta e documentos internos da empresa em estudo. O exame da acumulação de competências tecnológicas é feito através de uma estrutura descritiva existente na literatura, porém adaptada especificamente para a indústria de eletroeletrônicos de consumo. O exame do aprimoramento de performance é baseado num conjunto de indicadores operacionais, típicos da indústria de eletroeletrônicos. A aplicação de estruturas descritivas, para examinar as implicações da acumulação de competências tecnológicas sobre o aprimoramento de performance operacional, em empresas de eletro-eletrônicos, ainda é escassa, principalmente no nível intra firma e em economias de industrialização recente, como no Brasil. Em termos de evidência empírica, a dissertação mostra que a acumulação de competências tecnológicas evoluiu de maneira irregular, lenta, não linear e, alguns níveis, foram acumulados de forma incompleta. As evidências sugerem, ainda, que a acumulação de competências tecnológicas influenciou positivamente o aprimoramento de onze indicadores de desempenho. Contudo, os níveis desenvolvidos não foram suficientes para aprimorar, ou mesmo sustentar, outros dois indicadores de performance. Alinhando-se a recentes estudos na literatura de empresas de economias emergentes (ex.: Figueiredo, 2001), as evidências desta dissertação sugerem que a maneira e a velocidade com que a empresa acumula suas competências tecnológicas, joga um papel chave no aprimoramento de seus indicadores de performance técnica. Por conseguinte, isto pode gerar beneficios para a performance financeira, como por exemplo, a margem operacional líquida. Não obstante, a experiência da Gradiente sugere que, outros fatores, internos e externos à empresa, podem obscurecer ou mesmo minar as contribuições da acumulação de competências tecnológicas.

Ambiente interno : a participação e o envolvimento das pessoas na busca do diferencial competitivo

Day after day, even small companies and multinationals brands need to compete in a worldwide market. All kind of global strategies have to involve production and regional market knowledge. Still being essential for company have a complete view of it market and it right position to gain competitive advantage. In a global market, get possible for the companies be in touch with last generation technologies and equipment's and all kind of research. Companies like that should develop products focused in customer's desire, even those extremely strict. Specifically in our country, as hard as we could think, the companies have access to credit lines, to the fiscal incentives offered by the states that alliance with the market potential are making possible the appearance of a lot companies and the growth of the companies already existent. However, these resources alone don't produce results to the company if it doesn't possess an internal organization able to assimilate the new market situation. The companies have to be able to apply the maximum resources offered by new technologies and understand how a communications facility means solution for many internal problems. In short terms, technology, financial resources, research and knowledge are available, however, the human resources might be prepared and developed in order to become the whole knowledge in profits. According 'JURAN' and his Total Quality Control philosophy the human resources playing fundamental role in the process, and in my opinion a company is something like a ship where all must be prepared to hold the rudder. I will develop a basic job looking for productivity and company's development through the people's involvement, focused in process of motivation, creativity and staff valorization. I believe that there no good production process without those requirements. Based on real case of a automotive parts and foundry company, located in Bento Gonçalves - RS, this work will look for to organize it mainly in its Industrial Division, adopting in participate administration where, through a information system and personnel involvement we will seek all favorable conditions to politics and strategies in get the growth of company.

Melhoria do pilar "manutenção planejada" da TPM através da utilização do RCM para nortear as estratégias de manutenção

O atual ambiente competitivo, onde baixo custo, alta qualidade e um grau crescente de customização são exigências para a sobrevivência das empresas, tem influenciado as ações dos profissionais de manutenção com vistas ao aprimoramento das políticas de manutenção. Como resultado, tem-se na área de manutenção industrial, uma grande quantidade de métodos, software, modelos e ferramentas de gestão disponíveis. Dentre eles, dois métodos se destacam: o RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance ou Manutenção Centrada em Confiabilidade), de origem norte-americana, e a TPM (Total Productive Maintenance ou Manutenção Produtiva Total), de origem japonesa. A TPM promove a integração total entre homem, máquina e empresa, onde a manutenção dos meios de produção passa a constituir uma responsabilidade de todos. A utilização da TPM contempla a implementação de pilares de sustentação, sendo um deles, a manutenção planejada. Entretanto, a TPM não especifica a estratégia a ser adotada pela manutenção planejada. O RCM é uma metodologia lógica de procedimentos que objetiva estabelecer uma manutenção preditiva e preventiva para alcançar, de maneira efetiva e eficiente, os níveis de segurança e confiabilidade requeridas para cada equipamento. Considerando um ambiente com a TPM já implementada, o objetivo deste trabalho é a melhoria do pilar Manutenção Planejada da TPM através da utilização do RCM para nortear as estratégias de manutenção em empresas industriais. A sistemática proposta é ilustrada através de um estudo de caso na indústria de conformação de metais.

Mudança estratégica: o caso da expansão do Boticário

The aim of this research was to detect how strategy changes took place in a successful organization. This was an unique case study focused on O BOTICÁRIO, a cosmetic and perfumery company in the state of Paraná, Brazil. Some information (from primary data) was obtained through interviewing members of the retail development department. Extra information was taken from articles about the company and interviews with members of the board of directors published in newspapers and magazines. The analysis was carried out in an explanatory-descriptive way, with a qualitative approach. The data, other than serving to characterize the company, was used for a number of purposes. They were: to introduce information about strategy changes in the company; to identify factors that gave rise to these changes; to identify the effects of these changes on the organization; to classify the strategy changes. The data revealed that the company is highly receptive to changes. Amongst the factors that caused strategy changes the following two factors stand out: the flexibility that the company presents in adapting to environmental variations and, overall, the interdependency that exists between changes. Confirming the systemic character of organizations, it was found that the changes lead to new changes. When qualifying the strategy changes, it was discovered that the incremental changes were more related to process evolution, i.e., comprehending transformations directly related to the activities to which the changes are associated with. The discontinuous changes, on the contrary, involved transformations throughout the whole company. Of all the changes that were analyzed only two were considered to be truly strategy revolutions. This confirms the idea that organizations usually choose to search for established strategic paths. The strategy changes analyzed produced a resistance level. This resistance was directly proportional to the level of discontinuance that the change had. It was verified, however, that all changes were considered beneficial to the company. The study concludes that other factors are also responsible for the fast expansion of the company. The most important of these are: the constant lauching of new products; the identification of the company with environmental issues; the policy towards employees; the strong marketing strategy; the quality of its products; the excellence on its services; the treatment of consumers; the use of franchise shops; the training provided to all the franchise network and as well as to the employees; and the seek to hire the best professionals to supervise its services. However, it can¿t be omitted that particular cause of O BOTICÁRIO¿s success is the intuition and the feeling of its President.