Managing Interacting Criteria: Application to Environmental Evaluation Practices

The need for organizations to evaluate their environmental practices has been recently increasing. This fact has led to the development of many approaches to appraise such practices. In this paper, a novel decision model to evaluate company’s environmental practices is proposed to improve traditional evaluation process in different facets. Firstly, different reviewers’ collectives related to the company’s activity are taken into account in the process to increase company internal efficiency and external legitimacy. Secondly, following the standard ISO 14031, two general categories of environmental performance indicators, management and operational, are considered. Thirdly, since the assumption of independence among environmental indicators is rarely verified in environmental context, an aggregation operator to bear in mind the relationship among such indicators in the evaluation results is proposed. Finally, this new model integrates quantitative and qualitative information with different scales using a multi-granular linguistic model that allows to adapt diverse evaluation scales according to appraisers’ knowledge

La potestad comprobadora de la Administración en relación con periodos impositivos prescritos

[ES]Una de las cuestiones históricas y más controvertidas jurisprudencialmente hablando en el ámbito del procedimiento tributario es la cuestionable potestad de la Administración tributaria de comprobar y calificar hechos, magnitudes, negocios o actos producidos en ejercicios prescritos con transcendencia tributaria en ejercicios no afectados por la prescripción. En el siguiente trabajo, a través de este particular tema, se tratará de indagar en un tema general, como es el del objeto de la denominada prescripción del derecho a liquidar, conectando las categorías dogmáticas generales con problemas reales que suscita la aplicación del Derecho positivo

Dudas en los primeros compases de la reforma de la LGT

The object of this study is to describe the first interpretative doubts that have arisen in relation to the reformed General Taxation Act, in relation to the scope of the Administration’s verification powers with respect to carryforwards registered in lapsed tax periods. The Act partly amending the General Taxation Act intends to settle the disputes arising in this regard. However, as will be seen, it fails to give a totally precise and unequivocal response as, in our opinion, the latest reform of the General Taxation Act specifically raises interpretative and dogmatic issues, and constitutionality doubts, which will be examined below. First of all, we will discuss the current regulations governing the Administration’s verification duties, in relation to the carryforwards set off in an audited financial year, arising from a financial year already lapsed at the commencement date of inspection proceedings. We will subsequently analyse where the Administration may bring action for verification only when the taxpayer applies the carryforwards of subsequent years, reducing the debt accrued in these tax periods, or whether it may also bring action for tax periods in which the taxpayer only «drags along» these carryforwards without detriment to the tax credit in the audited financial year. Finally, if this latter hypothesis is upheld, we will examine the potential unconstitutionality of section two of the single transitional provision of Act 34/2015.El objeto del presente trabajo de investigación es exponer las dudas interpretativas que han surgido en los primeros compases de la reforma de la Ley General Tributaria en relación con el alcance de la potestad comprobadora de la Administración respecto de bases imponibles negativas acreditadas en periodos impositivos afectados por el instituto de la prescripción. La Ley de modificación parcial de la Ley General Tributaria ha querido zanjar la polémica surgida en torno a este tema. Sin embargo, como veremos, no parece que se haya dado una respuesta totalmente precisa y contundente al respecto, pues a nuestro juicio, la última reforma de la Ley General Tributaria plantea en este concreto tema problemas interpretativos, dogmáticos y dudas de constitucionalidad que se abordan en este trabajo. En este sentido, y en primer lugar, abordaremos la actual regulación normativa de la función comprobadora de la Administración en relación con las bases imponibles negativas que han sido objeto de compensación en un ejercicio objeto de inspección y que tienen su origen en un ejercicio ya prescrito a la fecha de inicio de las actuaciones inspectoras. Posteriormente analizaremos si la acción comprobadora de la Administración puede accionarse solo cuando el obligado tributario aplica las bases imponibles negativas en años posteriores minorando la obligación de esos periodos impositivos, o también puede ejercitar su acción en relación con los periodos impositivos en que el obligado tributario únicamente «arrastra» esas bases sin lesión ni perjuicio del crédito tributario del ejercicio objeto de comprobación. Finalmente, de aceptarse esta última hipótesis valoraremos la posible inconstitucionalidad del apartado segundo de la disposición transitoria única de la Ley 34/2015

The Role of the university in eco-entrepreneurship: evidence from the eurobarometer survey on attitudes of European entrepreneurs towards eco-innovation

There is an increasing social and political awareness of the importance of sustainable innovations. Strategic partnerships between policy makers, businesses, researchers and citizens are key to developing, implementing and applying eco-innovation, essential for the transition to a competitive green economy. Within this innovation ecosystem, universities can play a central role in creating viable alternative models that are driven by environmental sustainability. Based on evidence from the first survey on Eco-innovation in Europe- ‘The Eurobarometer 315 Survey on Attitudes of European Entrepreneurs towards Eco-Innovation’, the present paper examines the impact of university collaboration on eco-innovating small firms. It also considers how technology push, demand side factors and the regulatory framework, drive eco-innovation in European SMEs. This paper has several implications for managers, as well as for policy makers. For managers, it should be stressed that collaboration with universities is essential to drive all types of eco-innovations. Our findings also suggest that national government should foster cooperation with universities following EU example (eg. European Innovation Partnership in EcoAP), as national policies based on subsidies and fiscal incentives appear to be ineffective

Study of biomolecules adsorption on carbon nanotubes for their application as biosensors

Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs) are a new material with electric, mechanical and electrochemical properties that make them interesting for different applications. Due to their high superficial area, the CNTs are very sensitive to molecules adsorbing on them. This property makes them a very good candidate for integrating into biosensors. In this context, the control of the non specific adsorption of molecules different from the one wanting to detect, is a parameter to be known and controlled. Along this Master Final Project, the adsorption of streptavidin, a biomolecule widely used in biomedical research, on the surface of Single Walled NanoTubes (SWNTs) have been studied. The highly specific biotin-streptavidin system have been used for specifically binding the streptavidin to the surface of the nanotube and to control the degree of specific / non specific adsorption. SWNTs with different functional groups at the surface have been considered. The horseradish peroxidase (HRP)-catalyzed oxidation of 3,3’-5,5’-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) have been used as colorimetric test to determine the presence of streptavidin onto the SWNTs. The non specific adsorption of the protein has been intended to be prevented. Among the great variety of surfactants and molecules used to prevent the adsorption, polyethylene glycol (PEG), Tween20® and Pluronic® F-127 have been used. No complete blockage have been achieved. Once the adsorption of that protein over the surface of SWNTs has been known, it has been used to detect DNA hybridization, binding on strand to the nanotube in a specific way. The detection of the hybridization have been carried out optically by a fluorescent probe on the complementary strand

Emerging therapeutic strategies to enhance HDL function

Epidemiologic studies indicate a strong inverse correlation between plasma levels of high-density lipoproteins (HDL) and cardiovascular disease (CVD). The most relevant cardioprotective mechanism mediated by HDL is thought to be reverse cholesterol transport (RCT). New insights in HDL biology and RCT have allowed the development of promising agents aimed to increase HDL function and promote atherosclerosis regression. In this regard, apo-AI analogs and CETP inhibitors dalcetrapib and anacetrapib have aroused a great interest and opened new expectations in the treatment of CVD

1H-Pyrazolo[4,3-g]benzothia­zol-7-amine

The mol­ecule of the title compound, C8H6N4S, is almost planar [maximum deviation from the mean plane = 0.020 (1) Å for the S atom]. In the crystal, a supra­molecular three-dimensional arrangement arises from N—H⋯N hydrogen bonds and weak aromatic stacking interactions along the a axis [centroid–centroid separation = 3.582 (2) Å]

CRiSOL: Opinion Knowledge-base for Spanish

El presente trabajo se centra en la clasificación de polaridad de comentarios de hoteles en español (COAH) y presenta un nuevo recurso léxico, CRiSOL. Este nuevo recurso toma como base la lista de palabras de opinión iSOL, a la cual incluye los valores de polaridad de los synsets de SentiWordNet. Debido a que SentiWordNet no es un recurso para español, se ha tenido que usar como pivote la versión española de WordNet incluida en el Repositorio Central Multilingüe (MCR). Se ha desarrollado un clasificador de la polaridad no supervisada para evaluar la validez de CRiSOL. Los resultados obtenidos con CRiSOL superan los obtenidos por los lexicones base iSOL y SentiWordNet por separado, lo cual nos anima a seguir trabajando en esta línea.In this paper we focus on Spanish polarity classification in a corpus of hotel reviews (COAH) and we introduce a new lexical resource called CRiSOL. This new resource is built on the list of Spanish opinion words iSOL. CRiSOL appends to each word of iSOL the polarity value of the related synset of SentiWordNet. Due to the fact that SentiWordNet is not a Spanish linguistic resource, a Spanish version of WordNet had to be used. The Spanish version of WordNet chosen was Multilingual Central Repository (MCR). An unsupervised classifier has been developed with the aim of assessing the validity of CRiSOL. The results reached by CRiSOL are higher than the ones reached by iSOL and SentiWordNet, so that encourage us to continue this research line.Esta investigación ha sido parcialmente financiada por el Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER), el proyecto ATTOS (TIN2012-38536-C03-0) del Gobierno de España y el proyecto AORESCU (P11-TIC-7684 MO) del gobierno autonómico de la Junta de Andalucía. Por último, el proyecto CEATIC (CEATIC-2013-01) de la Universidad de Jaén también ha financiado parcialmente este artículo