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This paper presents an overview of the current situation of the reverse logistics schemes in Brazil and the importance of the National Policy of Solid Waste enacted in 2010, the main regulatory milestone in the country. In addition, the work intends to comprehend extended producer responsibility (EPR) in Europe as an environmental principle, the representative directives related to this issue, the

Although informal knowledge networks have often been regarded as a key ingredient behind the success of industrial clusters, the forces that shape their structure and dynamics remain largely unknown. Drawing on recent network dynamic models, we analyze the evolution of business and technical knowledge networks within a toy cluster in Spain. Empirical results suggest that the dynamics of the two ne

In Western European choral traditions, the ambition of most choirs is to attain an equalized blend of sound and to perform well together with regard to timing and intonation. In order to be able to synchronize this the choir members need to cooperate musically and listen to each other. Choirs often have close bonds, both socially and with regard to their common musical aim to perform well in conce

Non-destructive microbeam-based methods were used for 2-D mapping of trace elements to gain a greater appreciation of otolith composition and spatial configuration. Based on studies of a wide variety of fish taxa, this approach more fully captures the nature of otolith chemical heterogeneity. Such variations may be due to a number of factors, including differences in crystallization, genetics, gro

Microencapsulation by spray drying of oil-in-water (o/w) emulsions provides a means to encapsulate functional lipophilic ingredients. The active ingredient is dispersed in continuous solid phase providing protection. However, the encapsulation efficiency depends on the microstructure and morphology of the dry particles influenced by several mechanisms occurring during processing such as oil drople

Purpose: Muda is a Japanese term literally meaning futility, uselessness, idleness, superfluity, waste, wastage or wastefulness. The term was introduced by the Japanese engineer Taiichi Ohno of Toyota Motor Corporation in the 1960s. Therefore, reducing and minimizing Muda is an effective way to increase the operational efficiency and productivity of an organization’s processes. In turn, the techni

Ultrathin metal oxides exhibit unique chemical properties and show promise for applications in heterogeneous catalysis. Monolayer FeO films supported on metal surfaces show large differences in reactivity depending on the metal substrate, potentially enabling tuning of the catalytic properties of these materials. Nitric oxide (NO) adsorption is facile on silver-supported FeO, whereas a similar fil

Abstract: Nanoplasmas resulting from the ionization of nano-scale particles by intense laser pulses are typically described by quasiclassical models, where electron emission is understood to take place via thermal processes. Recently, we discovered that, following the interaction of intense near-infrared (NIR) laser pulses with molecular oxygen clusters, electron emission from nanoplasmas can also

A partial exoccipital-opisthotic from the uppermost lower Campanian (Upper Cretaceous) of the Åsen locality, Kristianstad Basin, southernmost Sweden, is described and illustrated. The fossil represents the first braincase element of a plesiosaur found in Sweden. It includes the chamber for the ampulla and utriculus, openings for the caudal vertical and horizontal semicircular canals, and four fora

Å. Pleijel (1956) has proved that in the case of the Laplacian with Dirichlet condition, the equality in the Courant nodal theorem (Courant sharp situation) can only be true for a finite number of eigenvalues when the dimension is ≥ 2. Recently Polterovich extended the result to the Neumann problem in two dimensions in the case when the boundary is piecewise analytic. A question coming from the th

Controllers with a diagonal-plus-low-rank structure constitute a scalable class of controllers for multi-agent systems. Previous research has shown that diagonal-plus-low-rank control laws appear as the optimal solution to a class of multi-agent H2 coordination problems, which arise in the control of wind farms. In this paper we show that this result extends to the case where the information excha

Closed-loop positivity of feedback interconnections of positive monotone nonlinear systems is investigated. It is shown that an instantaneous gain condition on the open-loop systems which implies feedback well-posedness also guarantees feedback positivity. Furthermore, the notion of integral linear constraints (ILC) is utilised as a tool to characterise uncertainty in positive feedback systems. Ro

This essay presents a speculative work on making distinctions among different equally valid types of research relevance. The work is innovative not only because it departs from the extant monistic perspectives, where only narrow forms of relevance are acknowledged, towards a pluralist perspective, but also because it recognizes and accounts for the plurality in the perceptions of relevance among d