Production Networks Linkages, Innovation Processes and Social Management Technologies. A Methodological Approach Applied to the Volkswagen case in Argentina

The purpose of this paper -as a part of a wider research project - is to analyze the concept of production network from a methodological and theoretical viewpoint based on a three-plane perspective. These dimensions are the linkages among agents, the innovation activities, and the social management technology, including work process organization and the social agreement generation model in force. It is an experimentally methodological approach that tries to go from a theoretical conceptualization of the phenomenon to its empirical evaluation. The questions guiding this research are as follows: What are the variables and dimensions to be observed in the analysis of a group of interconnected firms in order to define a production network? Is it a unique definition or, on the contrary, does it involve a range of alternatives? What are the externalities generated by the agents who belong to one network? What is the relationship between the network’s firms’ technological behavior and their organizational counterpart? How are learning processes in the business firms linked to their own training systems? Has the social management technology some differential role in the learning process and in the development of skills? How do knowledge transmission processes manifest themselves within the “network”? What indicators are useful for the empirical identification of the different means of manifestation of the network according to the theoretical viewpoint adopted? How can those indicators be articulated in order to elaborate typologies intended for the identification of “hybrid” models? How can a complex indicator be built in order to show the different levels of circulation of intangible assets, development of learning processes and work process organization? In the first section, the conceptualization of the production “network” used in this paper is discussed. In the second section, most relevant variables and indicators are presented in order to feature the business firms and the network in terms of: a) type, quantity and quality of tangible and intangible exchanges among the agents; b) innovative capacity and learning; c) social management technology. Then we elaborate a typology of networks based on the consideration of the previous parameters. Lastly, in the fourth section, we discuss how the three dimensions interact in the case of Volkswagen and his forty main local suppliers.Innovation, production process, case study

Greenhouse Tomatoes: Process Simulation

Growing population demand and challenges brought on by climate change have spurred the need for more resilient fruit and vegetable supply chains. One agricultural technology of significant interest is the use of greenhouses for food production. Greenhouses create a stable and adaptable environment for crops such as tomatoes to grow year-round. Fresh tomatoes are the second most consumed vegetable per capita in U.S. diets, currently averaging 20.7 pounds. The growing consumption of fresh tomatoes has been the result of increasing cultural diversity in the United States. To meet the growing demand, Venlo-type greenhouses have been frequently used by growers. It provides an economical solution to produce multiple crops in various climate environments while withstanding severe weather conditions. While there have been many studies and advancements in using greenhouse technology to grow tomatoes in Europe, production has yet to be analyzed in the U.S. This study seeks to fill the gap of greenhouse tomato production by simulating growing scenarios using the openly accessible Modelica Greenhouse Library in 10 select locations across the mainland USA. Two growing scenarios were explored, a base case without CO2 enrichment and a CO2+ case with a continuous flow of CO2 being externally supplied to the system. All simulations had yields above 3-8 kg/m2/yr, which is expected of field-grown tomatoes. However, a few locations were below the expected range of 50-80 kg/m2/yr yield for greenhouse-grown tomatoes. CO2 enrichment in most cases resulted in increased fresh weight yield, reduced the use of resources which improved Product Water Use (PWU), Electrical and Thermal Energy Efficiency. Factors influencing the model such as Temperature, Supplemental Lighting, and CO2 enrichment were discussed

Production of the main celiac disease autoantigen by transient expression in Nicotiana benthamiana

Celiac Disease (CD) is a gluten sensitive enteropathy that remains widely undiagnosed and implementation of massive screening tests is needed to reduce the long term complications associated to untreated CD. The main CD autoantigen, human tissue transglutaminase (TG2), is a challenge for the different expression systems available since its cross-linking activity affects cellular processes. Plant-based transient expression systems can be an alternative for the production of this protein. In this work, a transient expression system for the production of human TG2 in Nicotiana benthamiana leaves was optimized and reactivity of plant-produced TG2 in CD screening test was evaluated. First, a subcellular targeting strategy was tested. Cytosolic, secretory, endoplasmic reticulum (C-terminal SEKDEL fusion) and vacuolar (C-terminal KISIA fusion) TG2 versions were transiently expressed in leaves and recombinant protein yields were measured. ER-TG2 and vac-TG2 levels were 9- to 16-fold higher than their cytosolic and secretory counterparts. As second strategy, TG2 variants were co-expressed with a hydrophobic elastin-like polymer (ELP) construct encoding for 36 repeats of the pentapeptide VPGXG in which the guest residue X were V and F in ratio 8:1. Protein bodies (PB) were induced by the ELP, with a consequent two-fold-increase in accumulation of both ER-TG2 and vac-TG2. Subsequently, ER-TG2 and vac-TG2 were produced and purified using immobilized metal ion affinity chromatography. Plant purified ER-TG2 and vac-TG2 were recognized by three anti-TG2 monoclonal antibodies that bind different epitopes proving that plant-produced antigen has immunochemical characteristics similar to those of human TG2. Lastly, an ELISA was performed with sera of CD patients and healthy controls. Both vac-TG2 and ER-TG2 were positively recognized by IgA of CD patients while they were not recognized by serum from non-celiac controls. These results confirmed the usefulness of plant-produced TG2 to develop screening assays. In conclusion, the combination of subcellular sorting strategy with co-expression with a PB inducing construct was sufficient to increase TG2 protein yields. This type of approach could be extended to other problematic proteins, highlighting the advantages of plant based production platforms.Fil: Marin Viegas, Vanesa Soledad. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Gobernación. Comisión de Investigaciones Científicas. Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Criotecnología de Alimentos. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Criotecnología de Alimentos. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Criotecnología de Alimentos; ArgentinaFil: Acevedo, Gonzalo Raúl. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular "Dr. Héctor N. Torres"; ArgentinaFil: Bayardo, Mariela Paula. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Estudios Inmunológicos y Fisiopatológicos. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Estudios Inmunológicos y Fisiopatológicos; ArgentinaFil: Chirdo, Fernando Gabriel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Estudios Inmunológicos y Fisiopatológicos. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Estudios Inmunológicos y Fisiopatológicos; ArgentinaFil: Petruccelli, Silvana. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Gobernación. Comisión de Investigaciones Científicas. Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Criotecnología de Alimentos. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Criotecnología de Alimentos. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Criotecnología de Alimentos; Argentin

Immersed-Boundary Fluid-Structure Interaction of Membranes and Shells

This paper presents a general and robust method for the fluid-structure interaction of membranes and shells undergoing large displacement and large added-mass effects by coupling an immersed-boundary method with a shell finite-element model. The immersed boundary method can accurately simulate the fluid velocity and pressure induced by dynamic bodies undergoing large displacements using a computationally efficient pressure projection finite volume solver. The structural solver can be applied to bending and membrane-related problems, making our partitioned solver very general. We use a strongly-coupled algorithm that avoids the expensive computation of the inverse Jacobian within the root-finding iterations by constructing it from input-output pairs of the coupling variables from the previous time steps. Using two examples with large deformations and added mass contributions, we demonstrate that the resulting quasi-Newton scheme is stable, accurate, and computationally efficient.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, paper presented at EuroDyn 202

Quantum algorithms for approximate function loading

Loading classical data into quantum computers represents an essential stage in many relevant quantum algorithms, especially in the field of quantum machine learning. Therefore, the inefficiency of this loading process means a major bottleneck for the application of these algorithms. Here, we introduce two approximate quantum-state preparation methods inspired by the Grover-Rudolph algorithm, which partially solve the problem of loading real functions. Indeed, by allowing for an infidelity $\epsilon$ and under certain smoothness conditions, we prove that the complexity of Grover-Rudolph algorithm can be reduced from $\mathcal{O}(2^{n})$ to $\mathcal{O}(2^{k_0(\epsilon)})$, with $n$ the number of qubits and $k_0(\epsilon)$ asymptotically independent of $n$. This leads to a dramatic reduction in the number of required two-qubit gates. Aroused by this result, we also propose a variational algorithm capable of loading functions beyond the aforementioned smoothness conditions. Our variational ansatz is explicitly tailored to the landscape of the function, leading to a quasi-optimized number of hyperparameters. This allows us to achieve high fidelity in the loaded state with high speed convergence for the studied examples

Adaptação às mudanças climáticas das franquias de o Boticário

Orientador: Eduardo Felga GobbiMonografia (graduação) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Tecnologia, Curso de Graduação em Engenharia AmbientalInclui referênciasO tema aquecimento global já é consenso entre os cientistas que estudam as questões envolvendo as mudanças climáticas. O planeta deve aquecer nas próximas décadas mesmo que conseguíssemos reduzir todas as emissões dos gases de efeito estufa a zero. Com o aumento da temperatura na Terra, eventos climáticos extremos como tempestades, enchentes e furacões serão cada vez mais comuns. Portanto, não é mais suficiente falar apenas em mitigação de gases de efeito estufa, temos que começar a planejar a adaptação as mudanças que estão por vir. O Brasil, um país de dimensões continentais, com diversas particularidades regionais, deve estar atento às mudanças e iniciar uma estratégia de adaptação. Adaptação às mudanças climáticas pode ser entendida como uma série de respostas aos impactos atuais e potenciais, com objetivo de minimizar os danos, e tirar proveito das oportunidades que venham a surgir. Por isto, no setor empresarial, o discurso começa a mudar, e estratégias de adaptação começam a ser elaboradas. O Grupo Boticário participou em parceria com a iniciativa Empresas Pelo Clima, da FGV, de um projeto piloto, onde o objetivo era validar a metodologia proposta e traçar um plano de adaptação a mudanças. Ao longo do trabalho, o aprendizado foi mútuo, e a troca de informações bastante produtiva. Desta maneira, o Grupo começa a elaborar sua estratégia de adaptação, e buscar diferenciais em um mercado tão competitiv