Federal University of São Carlos

About: Federal University of São Carlos is a education organization based out in São Carlos, Brazil. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Microstructure. The organization has 16471 authors who have published 34057 publications receiving 456654 citations. The organization is also known as: UFSCar & Federal University of São Carlos.

Promoting Health and Wellness in the Workplace: A Unique Opportunity to Establish Primary and Extended Secondary Cardiovascular Risk Reduction Programs

Abstract: Given the burden of cardiovascular disease (CVD), increasing the prevalence of healthy lifestyle choices is a global imperative. Currently, cardiac rehabilitation programs are a primary way that modifiable risk factors are addressed in the secondary prevention setting after a cardiovascular (CV) event/diagnosis. Even so, there is wide consensus that primary prevention of CVD is an effective and worthwhile pursuit. Moreover, continual engagement with individuals who have already been diagnosed as having CVD would be beneficial. Implementing health and wellness programs in the workplace allows for the opportunity to continually engage a group of individuals with the intent of effecting a positive and sustainable change in lifestyle choices. Current evidence indicates that health and wellness programs in the workplace provide numerous benefits with respect to altering CV risk factor profiles in apparently healthy individuals and in those at high risk for or already diagnosed as having CVD. This review presents the current body of evidence demonstrating the efficacy of worksite health and wellness programs and discusses key considerations for the development and implementation of such programs, whose primary intent is to reduce the incidence and prevalence of CVD and to prevent subsequent CV events. Supporting evidence for this review was obtained from PubMed, with no date limitations, using the following search terms: worksite health and wellness, employee health and wellness, employee health risk assessments, and return on investment. The choice of references to include in this review was based on study quality and relevance.

Industrial crystallization and precipitation from solutions: state of the technique

Abstract: Crystallization and precipitation from solutions are responsible for 70% of all solid materials produced by the chemical industry. Competing with distillation as a separation and purification technique, their use is widespread. They operate at low temperatures with low energy consumption and yield with high purifications in one single step. Operational conditions largely determine product quality in terms of purity, filterability, flowability and reactivity. Producing a material with the desired quality often requires a sound knowledge of the elementary steps involved in the process: creation of supersaturation, nucleation, crystal growth, aggregation and other secondary processes. Mathematical models coupling these elementary processes to all particles in a crystallizer have been developed to design and optimize crystallizer operation. For precipitation, the spatial distribution of reactants and particles in the reactor is important; thus the tools of computational fluid dynamics are becoming increasingly important. For crystallization of organic chemicals, where incorporation of impurities and crystal shape are critical, molecular modeling has recently appeared as a useful tool. These theoretical developments must be coupled to experimental data specific to each material. Theories and experimental techniques of industrial crystallization and precipitation from solutions are reviewed, and recent developments are highlighted.

Selective synthesis of glycerol monolaurate with zeolitic molecular sieves

Abstract: The purpose of this work, is to study the selective synthesis of glycerol monolaurate from lauric acid and glycerol as starting materials, employing commercial Beta, Y and Mordenite zeolites with different Si/Al ratio as catalysts. Reaction conditions such as the stirring rate, temperature, glycerol/lauric acid ratio and catalyst mass in the reaction medium were optimized to diminish homogeneous reaction and reaction limitations due to diffusive effects. In the case of zeolite Y, an increase in glycerol monolaurate yield and selectivity for the monoester were verified at high Si/Al ratio. This behavior seems to be related to the presence of stronger acid sites present in the material with low Al content and probably also because of the higher hydrophobicity exhibited by zeolites having higher Si/Al ratio. Mordenite catalyst, on the contrary, presented low activity and selectivity to glycerol monolaurate, which can be attributed to the diffusional limitations imposes by the monodimensional channel system to the organic substrate accessing the inner catalyst sites, restricting the reaction to the sites present at the external particle surface. Zeolite Beta exhibited the best results as catalyst to obtain the mono-derivative, presenting selectivities higher than 60% at 20% yield.