Evidenciação de Informações Socioambientais, Teoria Institucional e Disclosure: Um Estudo com Mineradoras Brasileiras

TCC (Graduação) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Centro Socioeconômico. Curso de Ciências ContábeisEste estudo tem por objetivo analisar o nível de evidenciação de informações socioambientais entre os relatórios anuais e de sustentabilidade das empresas brasileiras de mineração. Como método de pesquisa para atingir este tento, fez-se uso do instrumento estabelecido por Sampaio et al. (2012). Este instrumento leva em conta quatro grupos de indicadores em consonância com os procedimentos fixados pela Norma Brasileira de Contabilidade T – 15 e outras recomendações dos institutos Ethos e IBASE, além das diretrizes estabelecidas pelo Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) para o desenvolvimento dos relatórios anuais e de sustentabilidade. Para a elaboração do estudo, foram analisados dez relatórios anuais e de sustentabilidade de cinco empresas de mineração, publicados nos anos de 2008 e 2013. A seleção da amostra foi realizada através do software Economática e teve como critério o maior valor de Patrimônio Líquido no ano de 2013 entre as empresas enquadradas no segmento de mineração. Utilizou-se a escala Likert, a média, o desvio padrão, as frequências relativas e acumuladas como análise do estudo, além de fazer uma comparação com os dados obtidos. Os resultados demonstram um aumento no nível de evidenciação socioambiental nos relatórios contábeis e de sustentabilidade das empresas brasileiras de mineração

Flow-cytometric quantification of microbial cells on sand from water biofilters

Rapid quantification of absolute microbial cell abundances is important for a comprehensive interpretation of microbiome surveys and crucial to support theoretical modelling and the design of engineered systems. In this paper, we propose a protocol specifically optimised for the quantification of microbial abundances in water biofilters using flow cytometry (FCM). We optimised cell detachment from sand biofilter particles for FCM quantification through the evaluation of five chemical dispersants (NaCl, Triton-X100, CaCl2, sodium pyrophosphate (PP), Tween 80 combined with PP), different mechanical pre-treatments (low and high energy sonication and shaking) and two fixation methods (glutaraldehyde and ethanol). The developed protocol was cross-compared using other established and commonly employed methods for biomass quantification in water filter samples (adenosine triphosphate (ATP) quantification, real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR) and volatile solids (VS)). The highest microbial count was obtained by detaching the biofilm from biofilter grains and dispersing clusters into singles cells using Tween 80 and sodium pyrophosphate combined with four steps of high energy sonication (27W, for 80 s each step); glutaraldehyde was shown to be the best fixative solution. The developed protocol was reliable and highly reproducible and produced results that are comparable to data from alternative quantification methods. Indeed, high correlations were found with trends obtained through ATP and qPCR (ρ = 0.98 and ρ = 0.91) measurements. The VS content was confirmed as an inaccurate method to express biomass in sand samples since it correlated poorly with all the other three methods (ρ = 0.005 with FCM, 0.002 with ATP and 0.177 with qPCR). FCM and ATP showed the strongest agreement between absolute counts with a slope of the correlation equal to 0.7, while qPCR seemed to overestimate cell counts by a factor of ten. The rapidity and reproducibility of the method developed make its application ideal for routine quantification of microbial cell abundances on sand from water biofilters and thus useful in revealing the ecological patterns and quantifying the metabolic kinetics involved in such systems

Portfolio Issues Of Mobilization Insurance: What Went Wrong And Candidate New Offerings

Financial hardships experienced by those in the military are well documented.  Mobilization insurance has the potential to reduce the financial burdens of being called to active military duty.   Reducing the financial burden of being called to active duty can provide numerous benefits to the military and Reservists including improved recruiting, lower attrition, and reduced stress on activated Reservists. In this paper, the Ready Reserve Mobilization Income Insurance Program and the reasons for its failure are discussed.  The portfolio characteristics of the stakeholders involved in the Reserve system are analyzed in an options pricing framework and a discussion of how a new mobilization insurance product might be structured is examined. While the concept of offering such insurance is simple enough, no known academic research has analyzed the financial positions of Reserve system stakeholders

Stationarity Condition for AR Index Process

The stationarity conditions for an autoregressive (AR) process in general are reduced to a remarkably simple inequality if the lag coefficients are restricted to be identical. The condition is not only analytically elegant but also applicable in checking the validity of the stationarity conditions for such a restricted AR process of any order

A Portfolio Approach To Economic Development

In this paper we introduce and empirically demonstrate a new model of economic development that we call Portfolio Economic Development.  Our approach borrows from portfolio theory in finance and focuses on the risk-return nature of development projects.    The paper examines how the loss of a dominant industry group from an island economy causes significant economic problems and how those problems might be mitigated by developing the economy in a portfolio context. The approach can help planners select optimal mixes of projects for development of any economy experiencing a transitional period.&nbsp

Die Kurzschlüsse von IGBT und Diode im Active-Neutral-Point-Clamped-Dreipunktumrichter

Die Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit den auftretenden Halbleiterkurzschlüssen im Active-Neutral-Point-Clamped-Dreipunktumrichter. Sie haben den Nachteil, dass nach einem Durchbruch eines Halbleiters die Gefahr besteht, dass weitere Bauelemente zerstört werden und Folgeschäden entstehen. Daher hat die Arbeit die Aufgabe, alle möglichen Schaltkombinationen im Umrichter zur Erzeugung der drei Phasenausgangsspannungen zu untersuchen, welcher Durchbruch eines Halbleiters dabei eintreten kann, und welche Kurzschlüsse sich daraus schlussendlich ergeben werden.The work deals with semiconductor short circuits occurring in the three-level Active-Neutral-Point-Clamped converter. They have the disadvantage that after a breakdown of a semiconductor, there is the danger that further components are destroyed, and consequential damage occurs. Therefore, the work has the task of investigating all possible switching combinations in the converter to generate the three-phase output voltages, which breakdown of a semiconductor can occur, and which short circuits will finally result from it

MicroRNA Expression Profile in the Vitreous of Proliferative Diabetic Retinopathy Patients and Differences from Patients Treated with Anti-VEGF

Purpose: microRNAs (miRNAs) mediate the pathological mechanisms of diabetic retinopathy. In this study, we compared miRNA expression profiles in the vitreous between patients with proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) and patients with a macular hole as non-diabetic controls, and between PDR patients treated with antivascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) therapy and untreated PDR patients. Methods: Vitreous samples of non-diabetic and PDR patients were screened for miRNAs with quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) panels. miRNA candidates were validated in vitreous samples of a second, independent cohort. In addition, the effect of anti-VEGF therapy was investigated in the vitreous of a third study population consisting of PDR patients who had not received anti-VEGF therapy and PDR patients who had received preoperative anti-VEGF therapy. Results: During screening, seven miRNAs were found to be significantly higher in the vitreous of PDR patients, whereas two miRNAs were found to be significantly lower compared with non-diabetic controls. Validating the expression of these miRNAs in a second cohort resulted in the identification of six miRNAs that were expressed at significantly higher rates in the vitreous of PDR patients: hsa-miR-20a-5p, hsa-miR-23b3p, hsa-miR-142-3p, hsa-miR-185-5p, hsa-miR-326, and hsa-miR-362-5p. Among these six miRNAs, hsa-miR-23b-3p levels were lower in the anti-VEGF-treated group of PDR patients compared with untreated PDR patients. Conclusions: In this study, we identified six miRNAs that are expressed more highly in PDR patients and one miRNA that is expressed at a lower levels in anti-VEGF-treated PDR patients. Translational Relevance: miRNAs identified in the vitreous of PDR patients may improve our understanding of the mechanisms leading to PDR