Abstract
Industrial companies are faced today with strong competition and fast changing markets. To reduce the risk and evaluate alternatives, simulation is considered to be a good tool. Industrial company's simulation must have sufficient detail to be useful but, at the same time, take into account the external environmental behaviour. Distributed simulation has specific characteristics to study these problems but its complexity limits its use in industry as stated in the literature. To overcome these difficulties, a framework is proposed, offering communication and synchronization mechanisms, which allow the integration of simulation models in the industrial area. To promote semantic interoperability, a business language is also proposed based on the OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL). As industrial companies have a high level of complexity and autonomy, the simulation models work as agents using Agent-based Modelling and Simulation (ABMS) techniques to achieve a more realistic behaviour of the whole system.

Abstract
Recently, we are witnessing the effort of healthcare providers to move from paper-based records to electronic records, in order to reduce data access times and also to share clinical information. However, many of these electronic records projects have failed, as they are not well fitted to the healthcare professionals' practices. This paper presents a study on the impact of Information Technology in the daily routine of healthcare providers, to support the development of Electronic Health Records that are well adapted to these organizations' operational processes and are successfully adopted.

Abstract
This paper focuses on the integration of multiple computational tools towards the objective of assessing emission impacts of different routes. Data from real life GPS tracks was integrated with traffic emission modelling for multiple pollutants (NOx, HC, CO and PM10) to investigate different routing strategies. The main conclusion is that different pollutants dictate different best routes. Hence, strategies for assigning relative weights to pollutants are devised in order to be able to select the best environment-friendly route. © 2012 ACM.

Abstract
Benzene is a carcinogenic and genotoxic pollutant which mainly affects the people health through the inhalation. Nevertheless, this pollutant is not frequently measured by air-quality networks. To solve this problem, some models have been published to estimate benzene concentrations in the atmosphere. However, the lack of measures makes difficult the application of complex models in order to get a detailed spatio-temporal analysis, namely in urban areas. In this work was developed a simple semi-empirical model to predict benzene concentrations based on the ratio of benzene and carbon monoxide concentrations in order to predict the concentrations of this pollutant in large areas and periods with lack of benzene measurements but with higher impact in the human health. The model was applied to an urban area, the Metropolitan Area of Oporto, for a period of 12 years (1995-2006). Monthly correlations between benzene and carbon monoxide concentrations at Custias air-quality station are significant (p = 0.01) and higher in winter (r (s) > 0.7) than in summer (0.3 > r (s) > 0.7). Estimate of the monthly ratio of the concentration of these two pollutants range between 199 and 305. The methodology validation shows good results (r (s) = 0.81) which allow, assuming the availability of carbon monoxide data, the use of this tool for areas with low benzene recorded data. The application of this methodology in the study area shows an annual average trend decrease of benzene concentrations during the study period, which may be linked to a general trend decrease of benzene emissions in European urban areas, including the study domain.

Abstract
A method for the separation and fractionation of the major whey proteins from a whey protein concentrate (WPC80) by anion-exchange chromatography coupled to a Fast Protein Liquid Chromatography (FPLC) system is proposed. The method is based on the use of an ionic column (Mono Q) and a salt gradient elution by increasing the ionic strength of the elution buffer (Tris-HCl 20 mM plus 0 to 1 M NaCl). The proposed method was found to be suitable to fractionate the major whey proteins from the WPC80 in different fractions, namely one fraction containing all the alpha-Lactalbumin and immunoglobulins; another fraction containing all the bovine serum albumin; and two distinct fractions each containing a different variant of p-Lactoglobulin. A 60.5% (w/w) recovery of the two main p-Lactoglobulin variants was obtained.

Abstract
Six sigma may be named as a powerful and comprehensive management tool which is necessary in order to bring changes in organization and to make conformity with customer needs. Despite of other quality approaches, six sigma is not only a method, but it contains a vision, a goal and a symbol. Beside the six sigma, symmetrical valuation method is interpreted as a tool to collect strategy. This system offers a method to converge occupation's activities with strategy, and also it offers a method in order to watch the operation of strategic goals during time. Undoubtedly, the first step in reducing the risk failure of the six sigma projects is to select the optimal choices. In this paper, the effectiveness of criteria in choosing six sigma projects are identified and defined. Moreover, a case study in Poly Acryl Corp is illustrated to demonstrate the effectiveness and practicality of the fuzzy multi-criteria decision making approach to select six sigma projects. In fact, we evaluated how selecting six sigma projects and goals using the fuzzy multi-criteria decision making technique affect the organization. © 2012 CIE & SAIIE.