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O artigo analisa a influência dos stakeholders na proatividade ambiental de empresas brasileiras. A pesquisa foi realizada com 112 empresas brasileiras com o objetivo de testar a hipótese de que a pressão por parte dos stakeholders influencia positivamente as atividades de gestão ambiental das empresas brasileiras. A análise fatorial agrupou os stakeholders nas categorias “mercado” e “não mercado”. Os primeiros participam diretamente da cadeia de suprimento e incluem fornecedores, clientes e concorrentes internacionais e domésticos, empregados, subcontratados e sindicatos. Os stakeholders “não mercado”, por sua vez, não participam diretamente da cadeia de suprimentos e são caracterizados pelos acionistas, governo, mídia e ONGs. Os resultados dos modelos econométricos demonstraram que os stakeholders possuem um efeito significativo e positivo sobre as ações de proatividade ambiental, envolvendo práticas de planejamento, operações e comunicação. Essa pressão é mais efetiva quando proveniente de partes interessadas com influência indireta nas organizações, os denominados stakeholders “não mercado”, demonstrando que as ideias e práticas de sustentabilidade estão cada vez mais presentes nas agendas dos atores sociais, que começam a reconhecer suas interconexões e seu poder de influenciar as empresas na adoção de práticas ambientais proativas.

This paper analyzes stakeholders influences on environmental proactivity of Brazilian companies. Research related to 112 Brazilian companies was undertaking to test the hypothesis that stakeholders pressure has a positive influences on company environmental management activities. Factorial analysis grouped the stakeholders into two categories called “market” and “non-market”. The market category involves those stakeholders which participate directly into the supply chain and includes suppliers, clients, international and domestic competitors, employees, subcontractors and unions. “Non-market” stakeholders, in turn, are those which do not participate directly in the supply chain such as shareholders, government, media and NGOs. Econometric models demonstrated that stakeholders exert significant and positive pressure on environmental proactivity actions, related planning, operations and communication practices. This pressure is more effective when coming from the so-called “non-market” stakeholders, which indirectly influence the organizations. The paper shows that sustainability ideas and practices are increasingly present on stakeholder agendas, which are starting to acknowledge their interdependences and their power to influence companies to adopt proactive environmental practices.O artigo analisa a influência dos stakeholders na proatividade ambiental de empresas brasileiras. A pesquisa foi realizada com 112 empresas brasileiras com o objetivo de testar a hipótese de que a pressão por parte dos stakeholders influencia positivamente as atividades de gestão ambiental das empresas brasileiras. A análise fatorial agrupou os stakeholders nas categorias “mercado” e “não mercado”. Os primeiros participam diretamente da cadeia de suprimento e incluem fornecedores, clientes e concorrentes internacionais e domésticos, empregados, subcontratados e sindicatos. Os stakeholders “não mercado”, por sua vez, não participam diretamente da cadeia de suprimentos e são caracterizados pelos acionistas, governo, mídia e ONGs. Os resultados dos modelos econométricos demonstraram que os stakeholders possuem um efeito significativo e positivo sobre as ações de proatividade ambiental, envolvendo práticas de planejamento, operações e comunicação. Essa pressão é mais efetiva quando proveniente de partes interessadas com influência indireta nas organizações, os denominados stakeholders “não mercado”, demonstrando que as ideias e práticas de sustentabilidade estão cada vez mais presentes nas agendas dos atores sociais, que começam a reconhecer suas interconexões e seu poder de influenciar as empresas na adoção de práticas ambientais proativas.

This paper analyzes stakeholders influences on environmental proactivity of Brazilian companies. Research related to 112 Brazilian companies was undertaking to test the hypothesis that stakeholders pressure has a positive influences on company environmental management activities. Factorial analysis grouped the stakeholders into two categories called \"market\" and \"non-market\". The market category involves those stakeholders which participate directly into the supply chain and includes suppliers, clients, international and domestic competitors, employees, subcontractors and unions. \"Non-market\" stakeholders, in turn, are those which do not participate directly in the supply chain such as shareholders, government, media and NGOs. Econometric models demonstrated that stakeholders exert significant and positive pressure on environmental proactivity actions, related planning, operations and communication practices. This pressure is more effective when coming from the so-called \"non-market\" stakeholders, which indirectly influence the organizations. The paper shows that sustainability ideas and practices are increasingly present on stakeholder agendas, which are starting to acknowledge their interdependences and their power to influence companies to adopt proactive environmental practices.

Originally a response to environmental pressures, the paradigm of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a socioenvironmental strategy. The study was centered around the question: according to the two-dimensional model of Quazi and O’Brien, what is the socioenvironmental perspective of the midsize retail supermarket industry in Fortaleza? The study design was exploratory and quantitative. Information was gathered from the managers of 14 midsize supermarkets in Fortaleza using a closed structured questionnaire containing 25 items based on the model of Quazi and O’Brien. Using exploratory factorial analysis, the sampled companies were found to be clustered in the “modern view” quadrant of the model.

Since the last decades of the 20th century, efforts have been made to counter the environmental threat of using refrigerant gases with high ozone depletion and global warming potential in the refrigeration sector, leading to a proliferation in solutions that employ natural gases, such as carbon dioxide. Since the revival of this fluid as a refrigerant gas, efforts to increase the performance of carbon dioxide refrigeration systems to further affirm the potential of this refrigerant in the industry lead to the design and manufacturing of new components, such as ejectors, which can recover part of the lost expansion work.Systems employing two types of ejectors – high-pressure and liquid ejectors – were studied theoretically with the support of a refrigeration software and compared with a typical parallel compression system for three European locations with different climates – Hannover, Porto, and Seville. Hourly ambient temperature measurements were downloaded and organized in temperature bins to enable the simulation of the systems’ behaviour for each city. The addition of the high-pressure multi-ejector revealed an increase in average annual COP of 2% for Hannover and 5% for Porto and Seville while the incorporation of a liquid ejector in the parallel compression system showed an increase of 8%, 20% and 14% in annual average COP for cities of Hannover, Porto, and Seville respectively, assuming that the flooded evaporators in these systems can maintain a temperature 4˚C greater than the evaporators in a traditional parallel compression system, by increasing the global heat transfer coefficient in the heat rejection to the evaporator.Regarding the energy consumption of the compressors, the use of high-pressure multiejectors enabled electricity savings of 5%, 6%, and 7% for the cities of Hannover, Porto, and Seville respectively. The addition of liquid ejectors leads to electricity savings of 12% for Hannover, 16% for Porto, and 11% for Seville. Taking the electricity cost for each country into account and calculating the acquisition costs by dimensioning the components to be added to the parallel compression system, the electricity costs savings was compared with the operating costs to financially evaluate the investment for these refrigeration solutions. Considering the concept of time value of money, it was estimated that the payback period for the high-pressure ejector additional components is 6 years for Hannover and Porto and 4 years for Seville, while the payback period for the liquid ejector ones is 1 year for Hannover and Porto and 2 years for Seville.

En un periodo marcado por la escasez y las dificultades económicas, se apostó en España por la realización de un gran plan sanitario que afectaría a toda geografía española, llamado el Plan de Instalaciones Sanitarias. Promovido por el propio Gobierno de la época, se propuso la construcción de una red sanitaria fundamentada en la construcción de hospitales y ambulatorios, a imagen y semejanza de la modernidad de los edificios americanos. Se construyeron más de un centenar de grandes complejos hospitalarios de forma rápida, pero a la vez insuficiente. En menos de una década, una treintena de nuevos hospitales y ambulatorios formaban parte del conjunto urbano de las ciudades españolas. El desarrollo del plan duró cuatro décadas, el cual estuvo marcado por la inestabilidad en la ejecución de los proyectos, y por el esfuerzo técnico, económico y político que conllevó.

Recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) facilitates rapid, exponential, isothermal nucleic acid amplification without the need for specialized equipment. Since its development in 2006, RPA has been widely applied to detect hundreds of RNA and DNA targets, spanning point-of-care diagnostics and agricultural uses. However, its reliance on pre-assembled commercial kits limits flexibility for customization. In this study, we introduce an open-source alternative to commercial RPA kits, utilizing purified, heterologously expressed proteins to circumvent the fixed molar ratios of proprietary systems. Our method incorporates enzymes from the bacteriophage T4 homologous recombination pathway—single-stranded binding protein (gp32), recombinase (UvsX), and mediator (UvsY)—along with Moloney murine leukemia virus (MMLV) reverse transcriptase with enhanced thermal stability, and Bst and Bsu DNA polymerases. We assessed the impact of buffer composition, reagent concentrations, and reaction temperature using synthetic SARS-CoV-2 genes. Notably, gp32 concentration and buffer composition emerged as critical factors in optimizing RPA performance. Using this tailored system, we demonstrated successful detection of the SARS-CoV-2 N gene on lateral flow devices (LFDs) with cDNA from eight clinical samples, achieving results consistent with RT-PCR. This open-source RPA platform provides an adaptable and cost-effective alternative for researchers, enabling the exploration of diverse experimental conditions and offering a viable solution for those without access to commercial kits.

The urgent need to develop a more equitable bioeconomy has positioned biotechnology capacity building at the forefront of international priorities. However, in many educational institutions, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, this remains a major challenge due to limited access to reagents, equipment, and technical documentation. In this work, we describe Open Educational Resources (OER) composed of locally produced biological reagents, open source hardware and free software to teach fundamental techniques in biotechnology such as LAMP DNA amplification, RT-PCR RNA detection, enzyme kinetics and fluorescence imaging. The use of locally produced reagents and devices reduces costs by up to one order of magnitude. During the pandemic lockdowns, these tools were distributed nationwide to students' homes as a lab-in-a-box for remote teaching of molecular biology. To test their performance, a total of 93 undergraduate students tested these resources during a biochemistry practical course. 27 out of 31 groups (~87%) successfully achieved the objectives of the PCR activity, while 28 out of 31 groups (~90%) correctly identified the target using LAMP reactions. To assess the potential application in secondary school, we organized three workshops for high school teachers from different institutions across Chile and performed an anonymous questionnaire, obtaining a strong agreement on how these OER broaden teachers' perspectives on the techniques and facilitate the teaching of molecular biology topics. This effort was made possible through a close collaboration with open source technology advocates and members of DIYbio communities, whose work is paving the way for low-cost training in biology. All the protocols and design files are available under open source licenses.

The urgent need to develop a more equitable bioeconomy has positioned biotechnology capacity building at the forefront of international priorities. However, in many educational institutions, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, this remains a major challenge due to limited access to reagents, equipment, and technical documentation. In this work, we describe Open Educational Resources (OER) composed of locally produced biological reagents, open source hardware and free software to teach fundamental techniques in biotechnology such as LAMP DNA amplification, RT-PCR RNA detection, enzyme kinetics and fluorescence imaging. The use of locally produced reagents and devices reduces costs by up to one order of magnitude. During the pandemic lockdowns, these tools were distributed nationwide to students’ homes as a lab-in-a-box for remote teaching of molecular biology. To test their performance, a total of 93 undergraduate students tested these resources during a biochemistry practical course. 27 out of 31 groups (~87%) successfully achieved the objectives of the PCR activity, while 28 out of 31 groups (~90%) correctly identified the target using LAMP reactions. To assess the potential application in secondary school, we organized three workshops for high school teachers from different institutions across Chile and performed an anonymous questionnaire, obtaining a strong agreement on how these OER broaden teachers’ perspectives on the techniques and facilitate the teaching of molecular biology topics. This effort was made possible through a close collaboration with open source technology advocates and members of DIYbio communities, whose work is paving the way for low-cost training in biology. All the protocols and design files are available under open source licenses.