ROCKWOOL GROUP: A Circular Economy Business Model Case

This report presents a case study of the ROCKWOOL Group and its circular business model, selected by the R2π project along with 17 other cases, due to its position within the construction and building materials sector, which is one of the priority areas of the European Union’s circular economy strategy. The objective of the report is to analyse the contextual and business factors affecting the circular business model, as well as to assess the enablers and barriers to implementing such a model and to provide considerations for both business leaders and policy makers. The construction industry is a rapidly growing and important sector for future global development and yet is currently one of the most resource-intensive and wasteful, accounting for 25-30% of all waste generated in the EU1. ROCKWOOL, as a major global player in the industry, was chosen particularly for its “RockCycle” take-back and recycle programme for building insulation materials. ROCKWOOL provides customers with fire resilient thermal insulation for buildings and houses. The product is made of a natural stone material and has high fire resistance, good thermal properties, long durability and is fully recyclable. During renovation, old insulation material would typically be considered waste and would be discarded in landfills, however, with the RockCycle programme, it is recovered and recycled. Today, RockCycle is offered in 5 countries, and the company has set goals to replicate the service to 30 countries by 2030. Currently, it is a small part of ROCKWOOL’s business with estimates in Germany of roughly 5% of the volume of flat roof insulation sold during 2017 being recovered and recycled. This is, nevertheless, a significant improvement, as the majority of all companies’ used insulation is still sent to landfill. The take-back programme is characterised primarily by three circular economy business model patterns in different parts of the value chain. At end-of-cycle, the material taken back from customers is “resource recovery”, and during production, this is combined also with the “co-product recovery” of secondary materials originating from other products or industries to enter a “re-make” process and recycle them back into new insulation material. This combined circular model results in positive environmental and economic impacts over the typical linear model. Outcomes include: reduced materials ending in landfill, lower consumption of virgin materials, financial benefits to customers, revenue to the company as well as image enhancement for the compan

Expansion Strategies of U.S. Multinational Firms

Recent theoretical work tends to characterize multinational enterprises as arising through either horizontal or vertical foreign direct investment (FDI). Empirical research tends to find stronger support for the former than for the latter. In this paper, we use recent, detailed data on U.S. multinational firms to revisit the question of why multinationals go abroad. We examine three types of foreign activities of U.S. multinationals: global outsourcing, the use of export platforms, and wholesale trading. Our results suggest that vertical FDI is more common than previous research suggests, and more generally that the foreign affiliates of multinationals span a diverse set of activities that each respond to policies and characteristics of host countries in quite different ways.

Are Electronic Data Bases a Viable Audit Research Tool? Practitioners\u27 Perceptions and Recommendations

An exciting new service for the practicing audit professional is the creation of financial data bases usable for electronic research. Over the past ten years, service companies have compiled data bases of financial data and other information. Service companies make their products available through subscription to clients who want easy and instant access to data which be helpful in the decision making process. All of the Big 8 accounting firms are now subscribers to one of more of these services. They, in turn, provide access to their local offices where telephone communication facilities permit. In an attempt to determine what use is made of public access data bases in the auditing process, the authors conducted a national survey of 469 offices of Big 8 firms. The results of the survey and some suggestions for practitioners which surfaced in the responses are discussed in this article. First, to provide some basic background, a general discussion of the most often used data bases and their contents follows

BRIDGESTONE EUROPE: A Circular Business Model Innovation Journey

This report provides an overview of the circular business model innovation journey guided by the R2π project team for Bridgestone EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa). The team customised an innovation process to suit the specific needs of the company in order to help them explore opportunities to become more sustainable and circular. Due to confidentiality agreements, this report does not provide details of Bridgestone strategy and internal business data, rather the purpose of the report is to describe the innovation journey and tools utilised. A key challenge of the company relates to end-of-life tyres (ELT), a problem that persists in all tyre companies and in society due to the negative environmental and social impacts that this waste could result in, if not properly collected and treated. According to the European Tyre and Rubber Manufacturing Association (2018), the global tyre output is estimated at 1.5 billion units per year, which will all eventually fall into the category of end-of-life tyres.1 Over the last 18 years, recovery rates for tyres have increased in Europe, and the cost of recycling has decreased due to both efficiency in management structures and new recovery routes. This shift shows that products derived from end-of-life tyres can be legitimately recognised as a valuable secondary material. About 2.6 million tonnes of end-of-life tyres (ELT) are recovered annually in Europe and 600,000 tonnes of used tyres are either reused or sent for re-treading, so the tyre industry has promoted promising economic activities that are beneficial to the environment while also creating over 10,000 jobs2, but there is still much more to be accomplished. Therefore, Bridgestone is seeking viable business models to continue improving this situation and to continue its mission, “Serving Society with Superior Quality”3. To that end, a cross-functional team from Bridgestone and R2π was brought together in workshops to gain a deeper understanding of the current business model and context within the market as well as to innovate new business models. Based on internal and external strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats identified within their current business model and context, they generated and explored multiple options for future circular business models. Thereafter, they further detailed these options and mapped out bold steps required to achieve the new business models. Team members identified their most critical assumptions and planned out roadmaps to allow them to test these assumptions and move forward towards implementing a more sustainable and circular business mode

www.dcj.state.co.us/ors

the DCSIP Advisory Board, for financially supporting this evaluation to allow us to meet our legislative mandate to evaluate the Youthful Offender System. We would like to thank all those who assisted us in this research effort. We are especially grateful for the assistance of the administrators and staff of the Youthful Offender System, who spent time talking with us about the program and answering our interview questions. We are particularly grateful to Pam Ploughe who arranged interviews, program observations, and access to other documentation about the program. We are grateful to the many, many other individuals who were interviewed for this project including current and former state legislators, Department of Corrections and Division of Youth Services Staff, and other individuals involved with the program, including those serving offenders in Phase III in the community. Also, we would like to thank the offenders we interviewed and the families of offenders who took the time to provide input through our focus group. These contributions were invaluable to the research. Finally, we would like to thank Heather Cameron, Nicole Hetz, Kerry Lowden, Diane Pasini-Hill, and Suzanne Gonzalez Woodburn from the Office of Research and Statistics for their contributions to the design, data collection and management of this study. Thanks to Linda Harrison for her work with the complicated electronic files. As always, we would like to thank our Divisio

The Science of Sungrazers, Sunskirters, and Other Near-Sun Comets

This review addresses our current understanding of comets that venture close to the Sun, and are hence exposed to much more extreme conditions than comets that are typically studied from Earth. The extreme solar heating and plasma environments that these objects encounter change many aspects of their behaviour, thus yielding valuable information on both the comets themselves that complements other data we have on primitive solar system bodies, as well as on the near-solar environment which they traverse. We propose clear definitions for these comets: We use the term near-Sun comets to encompass all objects that pass sunward of the perihelion distance of planet Mercury (0.307 AU). Sunskirters are defined as objects that pass within 33 solar radii of the Sun’s centre, equal to half of Mercury’s perihelion distance, and the commonly-used phrase sungrazers to be objects that reach perihelion within 3.45 solar radii, i.e. the fluid Roche limit. Finally, comets with orbits that intersect the solar photosphere are termed sundivers. We summarize past studies of these objects, as well as the instruments and facilities used to study them, including space-based platforms that have led to a recent revolution in the quantity and quality of relevant observations. Relevant comet populations are described, including the Kreutz, Marsden, Kracht, and Meyer groups, near-Sun asteroids, and a brief discussion of their origins. The importance of light curves and the clues they provide on cometary composition are emphasized, together with what information has been gleaned about nucleus parameters, including the sizes and masses of objects and their families, and their tensile strengths. The physical processes occurring at these objects are considered in some detail, including the disruption of nuclei, sublimation, and ionisation, and we consider the mass, momentum, and energy loss of comets in the corona and those that venture to lower altitudes. The different components of comae and tails are described, including dust, neutral and ionised gases, their chemical reactions, and their contributions to the near-Sun environment. Comet-solar wind interactions are discussed, including the use of comets as probes of solar wind and coronal conditions in their vicinities. We address the relevance of work on comets near the Sun to similar objects orbiting other stars, and conclude with a discussion of future directions for the field and the planned ground- and space-based facilities that will allow us to address those science topics

Paracrine Diffusion of PrPC and Propagation of Prion Infectivity by Plasma Membrane-Derived Microvesicles

Cellular prion protein (PrPc) is a physiological constituent of eukaryotic cells. The cellular pathways underlying prions spread from the sites of prions infection/peripheral replication to the central nervous system are still not elucidated. Membrane-derived microvesicles (MVs) are submicron (0.1–1 µm) particles, that are released by cells during plasma membrane shedding processes. They are usually liberated from different cell types, mainly upon activation as well as apoptosis, in this case, one of their hallmarks is the exposure of phosphatidylserine in the outer leaflet of the membrane. MVs are also characterized by the presence of adhesion molecules, MHC I molecules, as well as of membrane antigens typical of their cell of origin. Evidence exists that MVs shedding provide vehicles to transfer molecules among cells, and that MVs are important modulators of cell-to-cell communication. In this study we therefore analyzed the potential role of membrane-derived MVs in the mechanism(s) of PrPC diffusion and prion infectivity transmission. We first identified PrPC in association with the lipid raft components Fyn, flotillin-2, GM1 and GM3 in MVs from plasma of healthy human donors. Similar findings were found in MVs from cell culture supernatants of murine neuronal cells. Furthermore we demonstrated that PrPSc is released from infected murine neuronal cells in association with plasma membrane-derived MVs and that PrPSc-bearing MVs are infectious both in vitro and in vivo. The data suggest that MVs may contribute both to the intercellular mechanism(s) of PrPC diffusion and signaling as well as to the process of prion spread and neuroinvasion

Effect of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor and angiotensin receptor blocker initiation on organ support-free days in patients hospitalized with COVID-19

IMPORTANCE Overactivation of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) may contribute to poor clinical outcomes in patients with COVID-19. Objective To determine whether angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor or angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) initiation improves outcomes in patients hospitalized for COVID-19. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS In an ongoing, adaptive platform randomized clinical trial, 721 critically ill and 58 non–critically ill hospitalized adults were randomized to receive an RAS inhibitor or control between March 16, 2021, and February 25, 2022, at 69 sites in 7 countries (final follow-up on June 1, 2022). INTERVENTIONS Patients were randomized to receive open-label initiation of an ACE inhibitor (n = 257), ARB (n = 248), ARB in combination with DMX-200 (a chemokine receptor-2 inhibitor; n = 10), or no RAS inhibitor (control; n = 264) for up to 10 days. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES The primary outcome was organ support–free days, a composite of hospital survival and days alive without cardiovascular or respiratory organ support through 21 days. The primary analysis was a bayesian cumulative logistic model. Odds ratios (ORs) greater than 1 represent improved outcomes. RESULTS On February 25, 2022, enrollment was discontinued due to safety concerns. Among 679 critically ill patients with available primary outcome data, the median age was 56 years and 239 participants (35.2%) were women. Median (IQR) organ support–free days among critically ill patients was 10 (–1 to 16) in the ACE inhibitor group (n = 231), 8 (–1 to 17) in the ARB group (n = 217), and 12 (0 to 17) in the control group (n = 231) (median adjusted odds ratios of 0.77 [95% bayesian credible interval, 0.58-1.06] for improvement for ACE inhibitor and 0.76 [95% credible interval, 0.56-1.05] for ARB compared with control). The posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitors and ARBs worsened organ support–free days compared with control were 94.9% and 95.4%, respectively. Hospital survival occurred in 166 of 231 critically ill participants (71.9%) in the ACE inhibitor group, 152 of 217 (70.0%) in the ARB group, and 182 of 231 (78.8%) in the control group (posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitor and ARB worsened hospital survival compared with control were 95.3% and 98.1%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In this trial, among critically ill adults with COVID-19, initiation of an ACE inhibitor or ARB did not improve, and likely worsened, clinical outcomes. TRIAL REGISTRATION ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT0273570

Traduire les textes bouddhiques

Historique de la traduction des textes bouddhiques en Occident et réflexions sur les problématiques rencontrées, en prenant l'exemple des textes tibétains