As Industry 4.0 offers significant productivity improvements, its relevance has grown across various organisations. While it captures the attention of both the industry and the academia, very few efforts have been made to streamline useful indicators across stages of its implementation. Such work facilitates the development of strategies that are appropriate for a specific stage of implementation; therefore, it would be significant to a variety of stakeholders. As a result, this paper aims to establish an indicator system for adopting Industry 4.0 within the context of the three stages of the innovation adoption: (i) pre-adoption, (ii) adoption, and (iii) post-adoption. First, a comprehensive review was performed with a search expanding into the literature on innovation and technology adoption. Second, the resulting indicators were filtered for relevance, redundancy, description, and thorough focus discussions. Finally, they were categorised by their stage of adoption. From 469 innovation adoption indicators found in the literature, this work identified a total of 62 indicators relevant for the Industry 4.0 adoption, in which 11, 14, and 37 of them comprised the three stages, respectively. Case studies from two manufacturing firms in the Philippines were reported to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed indicator system. This work pioneers the establishment of an indicator system for the Industry 4.0 adoption and the classification of such indicators into three stages — pre-adoption, adoption, and post-adoption — which would serve as a framework for decision-makers, practitioners, and stakeholders in planning, strategy development, resource allocation, and performance evaluation of the Industry 4.0 adoption.

Copper is the third most utilized metal and is a versatile resource with multiple beneficial uses, but it may also become toxic to aquatic life in excess amount. Thus, there is a need to develop methods to reduce the copper contamination in the environment, particularly in bodies of water. Phytoremediation using Dendrocalamus asper may offer an environment-benign and potentially effective method for copper removal though its effectiveness may take several years to materialize for this technology to become cost-effective. By growing D. asper in synthesized contaminated water and analyzing the change in the copper content of the substrate via atomic absorption spectrophotometry, the removal was found to be optimal at 20 ppm Cu and pH 5. The rate of removal was found to have an order of 2.71 and a kinetic constant of 0.0013 ppm−1.71 day−1. With this, it may be possible to estimate the treatment length of phytoremediation given an initial level of copper contamination and a target concentration.

Urban air quality is increasingly being studied as a fraction of the world’s population is living in megacities. In this study, particulate matter (PM) along Taft Avenue, Manila, the Philippines, is investigated in terms of its ability to induce genetic damage in human peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBLs). Size-segregated roadside air samples were obtained from 2015–2017 near a university gate and analyzed using in vitro micronucleus (MN) and cytokinesis-block proliferation tests. While cellular proliferation was unaffected by 0–0.1 kg/m³ of PM_1.0 and PM_2.5, PBL cells treated with PM_2.5 displayed a significantly higher micronucleus count (p = 0.03) compared to the cells treated with PM_1.0. Atomic absorption spectroscopy revealed greater amounts of Cd, Ca, Pb, K, Na, and Zn in PM_2.5 compared to PM_1.0. The results indicate that the differences in composition of the two size fractions of air particulates are associated with their genotoxicities.

Work values refer to the business ethics and personal work preferences of individuals. Using the Filipino Work Values Scale, we characterised 10 work values of 141 full-time Filipino college students. Interpersonal, intellectual-achievement and occupational work values emerged as the most salient work values among the students. The rest appeared as either “weak” (environmental, material, managerial, religious, organisational and family-centred) or “very weak” (variety). Reflective of family influence over career orientation, some of the work values correlated with parents’ educational and professional backgrounds. As student work values are considered to influence long-term career choices and employability, comprehensively characterising work values may be useful in tailoring career counselling interventions that can help improve career pathing and job placements of students.