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Graphene paper as a new form of graphene-supported nanomaterials has received worldwideattention since its first report in 2007. Due to their high flexibility, lightweight andgood electrical conductivity, graphene papers have demonstrated the promising potentialfor crucial applications in electrochemical sensors and energy technologies amongothers. In this chapter, we present some examples to overview recent advances in theresearch and development of two-dimensional (2D) graphene papers as new materialsfor electrochemical sensors. The chapter covers the design, fabrication, functionalizationand application evaluations of graphene papers. We first summarize the mainstreammethods for fabrication of graphene papers/membranes, with the focus on chemicalvapour deposition techniques and solution-processing assembly approaches. A largeportion of this chapter is then devoted to the highlights of specific functionalization ofgraphene papers with polymer and nanoscale functional building blocks for electrochemical-sensing purposes. In terms of electrochemical-sensing applications, the emphasis ison enzyme-graphene and nanoparticle-graphene paper-based systems for the detectionof glucose. We finally conclude this chapter with brief remarks and outlook.

The complex and multilayered interdependence of health and security gets exceedingly obvious in conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV); however, its scientific study is exceptionally invisible. Political unrest increases incidence of gender-based violence (GBV). Rapes, including gang rapes, and forced insertion into the female genitalia of foreign bodies such as bottles, sticks, and weapons can lead to injury of the vagina and the development of traumatic vaginal fistulas (TVF). This paper aims to give structure to the particular characteristics of traumatic vaginal fistula in conflict settings and its immanent linkage to human security. The authors reviewed all papers concerning prevalence and causes of CRSV-caused TVF (CRSV-TVF) that were available on PubMed and GoogleScholar in February 2021. Findings were integrated into feminist theory on CRSV to identify the connecting linkages of security, health, and gender equality. CRSV-caused TVF illustrate well the complex interdependences of health and security: (1) insecurity leads to a higher prevalence of sexual violence; (2) sexual violence can serve as a weapon of war; (3) insecurity prolongs sufficient medical care; (4) vaginal fistula impede female empowerment and societal development. The multiple threads of their connection reveal several implications for the prevention and treatment of TVF. The reciprocal connection of CRSV and security exemplifies a vicious circle of health security.

This conceptual chapter discusses how requirements for teacher educator professionalism may be impacted by the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in teacher education. With the aim to continuously facilitate high-quality teacher education, teacher education institutions must evolve in alignment with the rapidly changing landscape of AI and the respective shifting educational needs. Amidst this evolution, we argue that profound AI Literacy and AI-related ethical knowledge constitute two additional and inextricably intertwined knowledge facets of teacher educator professionalism essential for an ethical and effective integration of AI into teaching practices – and thus crucial for high quality teacher education. The paper explores avenues through which these facets of teacher professional competence and quality education can be fostered on the micro, meso and macro levels of institutional education. By consolidating the specific requirements in a framework for teacher educator professionalism in the age of AI, we highlight the necessity for continuous adaptation of teacher education institutions, ongoing multidisciplinary collaboration, and the provision of periodic professional development of educators. Finally, the chapter presents a concrete practical example and future research directions in AI and education with the aim to contribute to the advancement of quality education in the AI era.

As described in this paper, we showed that the travelling ultrasonic motor technology (TWUM) suits very well mechatronics applications due to its powerful performances to compare with its electrical servomotor counterparts. However, a detailed analysis showed that several operating parameters can greatly influence the operation of TWUM in harsh environments. Based on a causal modeling of TWUM, this paper has successfully implemented a robust control ensuring a good compromise between achievable motor performances (wave amplitude and torque control) and robustness against severe variations of the mechatronic environment. In particular, torque variation has been considered and a loop shaping controller has been determined. Some preliminary experiments have validated the proposed cascaded controllers in real operating conditions. Further experimentation of on-board piezoelectric flight control actuators for hard-launch munitions working on extreme environments are under test in cooperation with Nexter-Bourges company.

The COVID-19 crisis is just one in a series of shocks and stressors that exemplify the importance of building resilient food systems. To ensure that desired food system outcomes are less fluctuating, policy makers and other important stakeholders need a common narrative on food system resilience. The purpose of this paper is to work towards a joint understanding of food system resilience and its implications for policy making. The delivery of desired outcomes depends on the ability of food systems to anticipate, prevent, absorb, and adapt to the impacts of shocks and stressors. Based on our literature review we found four properties of food systems that enhance their resilience. We refer to these as the A B C D of resilience building:Agency, Buffering, Connectivity and Diversity. Over time, many food systemshave lost levels of agency, buffering capacity, connectivity or diversity. One of the principal causes of this is attributed to the governance of food systems. Governance is inherently political: as a result of conflicting interests and power imbalances, food systems fail to deliver equitable and just access to food. Moreover, the impacts of shocks and stressors are not evenly distributed across actors in the food system. This paper has highlighted the importance of more inclusive governance to direct food system transformation towards such higher levels of resilience. We conclude that we cannot leave this to the market, but that democratic and before all independent, credible institutions are needed to create the necessary transparency between actors as to their interests, power and influence.

Water hammer in two-phase systems, induced by direct steam condensation on subcooled water or by separation of subcooled water column, results in the most intensive pipeline pressure surges. Amplitudes of pressure spikes along the course of these dangerous transients strongly depend on the condensation and evaporation rates. The present paper provides a literature overview of thermal-hydraulic models for the prediction of water hammer phenomenon in two-phase systems, together with an original mechanistic approach for the prediction of phase transition rates, based on the shape and size of vapor-liquid interfacial area and the phase transition potential expressed through vapor and liquid phase temperature difference. Available water hammer experimental conditions were numerically simulated with the new modeling approach. Driving parameters of boiling and condensation rates at the steam-water interfaces are evaluated, and a good agreement is shown between numerical results and experimental data of bulk two-phase flow parameters during water hammer transients.

This paper analyzes the professional ethical knowledge of teachers in the use of technologies by teachers in training. It is intended to measure the correct inclusion of technologies in the classroom with the use of the Disciplinary Pedagogical Technological Knowledge model (TPACK). For this, a descriptive exploratory methodological design study was carried out. The instruments used have been the Likert scale questionnaire and the personal interview, organized into four dimensions, which are the self-perception of professional ethical knowledge, ethical knowledge of technology, pedagogical technological ethical knowledge, and disciplinary technological ethical knowledge of the future teachers. The questionnaire has been applied to a sample of 1.051 trainee teachers from a European university in the context of COVID-19 and 822 students participated in the interview. The results show the scarce training in professional ethical knowledge of teachers in training and the importance of addressing this knowledge in the twenty first century, a post-pandemic context. Another of the conclusions is the need to include the ethical component in the TPACK model to achieve correct and ethical use of digital resources in the classroom.

This review discusses the protein-based active film as antimicrobial food packaging derived from various sources such as gelatin, casein, whey and zein-based protein. The films properties that exhibit antimicrobial activity are being reviewed along with their application in food packaging industry. This paper also studies the inhibition activity by antimicrobial agents from organic and metallic sources which were incorporated into the protein-based film. Nowadays, protein-based film has emerged as one of the most extensively studied in food packaging sector as it exhibits good mechanical, optical, and oxygen barrier properties. In addition, protein-based film also showed good compatibility to polar surfaces while having effective control on the release of additives and bioactive compounds in food packaging system. This paper also detailed out information on antimicrobial food packaging in order to increase consumer awareness regarding food safety and healthy lifestyle while maintaining the quality and prolonged the shelf life of food product.

This paper seeks to draw attention to the significance of integrating hygiene practices to HIV and AIDs programs in Southern African Developing Countries (SADC)—a region severely burdened by the disease. Integrating hygiene, in particular the habit of handwashing with soap and water, can reduce mortality rates and improve the livelihoods of people living with HIV and AIDS (PLWHA)—akin to Florence Nightingale’s moment (1850s). The paper uses survey data attained from PLWHA (South Africa) as case point to provide empirical views by PLWHA regarding their views and perceptions about hygiene practices and significance. Key observations are that: PLWHA lack sufficient knowledge on handwashing practices and apparently ignorant about their exposure and extent of vulnerability to opportunistic infections. This paper concludes by making a call for integration of hygiene (especially handwashing with soap and water) as part and parcel of HIV and AIDS programs as this will positively impact livelihoods of PLWHA in SADC. The paper ends continuous monitoring of WASH programs across SADC new 90-90-90 water-sanitation-hygiene indicator scoreboard necessary for continuous monitoring of WASH programs across SADC and equally other developing countries.

Many studies on learning of fuzzy inference systems have been made. Specifically, it is known that learning methods using vector quantization (VQ) and steepest descent method (SDM) are superior to other methods. In their learning methods, VQ is used only in determination of the initial parameters for the antecedent part of fuzzy rules. In order to improve them, some methods determining the initial parameters for the consequent part by VQ are proposed. For example, learning method composed of three stages as VQ, generalized inverse matrix (GIM), and SDM was proposed in the previous paper. In this paper, we will propose improved methods for learning process of SDM for learning methods using VQ, GIM, and SDM and show that the methods are superior in the number of rules to the conventional methods in numerical simulations.

Cloud computing is a standard that is fast gaining momentum in the IT world. The availability of storage capacity that can be accessed and increased as the need arises makes computing easier. Applications can also be deployed using services provided by a cloud service provider. Portability allows utilization of applications and services across various domains. Portability could be in the area of programming language, application programming interface, data storage or data migration. Clearly, the easier it is to move services across various providers, the more attractive cloud computing becomes. The study was executed by means of review of some literature available on cloud application portability. This chapter examines current trends in cloud application portability area and gives focus for future research. In the present work, the objective is to answer the following question: what is the current trend and development in cloud application portability? Papers published in journals, conferences, white papers, and reputable magazines were analyzed. Some core topic facets were used in this review for the identification of trends in cloud application portability. The finding is that discussions on virtualization and API-specific issues are not adequate. This will be of benefit to prospective cloud users and even cloud providers.

Research in the area of cooperative multi-agent robot systems has received wide attention among researchers in recent years. The main concern is to find the effective coordination among autonomous agents to perform the task in order to achieve a high quality of overall performance. Therefore, this paper reviewed various selected literatures primarily from recent conference proceedings and journals related to cooperation and coordination of multi-agent robot systems (MARS). The problems, issues, and directions of MARS research have been investigated in the literature reviews. Three main elements of MARS which are the type of agents, control architectures, and communications were discussed thoroughly in the beginning of this paper. A series of problems together with the issues were analyzed and reviewed, which included centralized and decentralized control, consensus, containment, formation, task allocation, intelligences, optimization and communications of multi-agent robots. Since the research in the field of multi-agent robot research is expanding, some issues and future challenges in MARS are recalled, discussed and clarified with future directions. Finally, the paper is concluded with some recommendations with respect to multi-agent systems.

The chapter seeks to discuss and describe the concept of product from the marketing perspective, how companies come about new product, product development options, and the various strategies available to a company to manage new and existing products. It is a conceptual paper which reviews relevant literatures from various sources. In essence, the proposed chapter will be divided into three main sections. Section 1 will introduce the concept of product, its meaning, and core components from the marketing point of view. It will also contain discussion on the various connotations of the term product, what constitute a new product, and new product adoption. Section 2 will dwell on the options available to a company on how to come up with new products including mergers, acquisition, and licensing, franchising, and proactive new product development. It will also explain the two product development strategies that companies adopt in the market place. The last section will discuss the product management strategies available to a firm either from the product life cycle way or the individual product management strategies or both. At the end, conclusions and the general context of the paper are drawn.

This paper examines the effect of major terror attacks of the twenty-first century on the forex market. The “event study” methodology is used to assess whether, following a terror attack, the currency of the country attacked experienced a negative effect. It also examines whether this effect is permanent or transitory and whether there are differences between recent and earlier attacks. Results suggest that earlier events cause substantial negative “event-day” returns for the specific currency, which seem to persist for some days. This is particularly evident in pairs involving the currency of the country attacked and “safe heaven” currencies (e.g. Yen, Swiss Franc). The paper also documents that terror attacks that occurred recently appear to have very little influence on the currency pairs examined, thus suggesting that, over time, market participants have learnt to better assess such events. Given our findings, and particularly the one suggesting that the effects of terror attacks on the foreign exchange market, and hence the economy, are transitory, it would appear that class dynamics are not likely to be affected by them; forex markets appear to be particularly efficient in dealing with such events, absorbing short-term shocks and continuing to function effectively, thus maintaining economic stability.

Dairy cows are the major animals reared for milk production worldwide. Lameness is a manifestation of painful condition due to injury or disease in the foot, regarded as a major welfare problem in dairy cows. An effective lameness management requires prompt identification of lame cows. The objectives of this systematic review were to discuss the various techniques of detecting lameness, assessment of the associated pain, and the impact of lameness on dairy cow welfare. Results from the literature search yielded 534 papers, with 102 papers meeting the inclusion criteria. The eligible studies were discussed in two sections which were; (1) lameness detection systems and their application in pain assessment using four methods: gait and behavioral variables, physiological parameters, pressure nociceptive threshold and blood biomarkers; (2) impact of lameness on animal-based welfare measures. Despite the limitations in the use of automated locomotion scoring systems, results showed the technique remains a promising tool for the prompt detection of lame cows compared with manual systems (MLSS). More investigation of such systems could aid the validation of pain in cows with various degree of lameness. Further studies are required for early lameness detection and minimizing the welfare implications in dairy herds.

Adopting new information and communication technology (ICT) as a solution to increase agricultural productivity and achieve food security becomes more urgent than before, particularly with the demographical explosion and the exponential increase of population worldwide. In this survey, we analyze the literature in the last decade to examine the existing fog/edge computing architectures adapted for the smart farming domain and identify the most relevant challenges resulting from the integration of IoT and fog/edge computing platforms. On the other hand, we describe the status of Blockchain usage in intelligent farming as well as the most challenges 36 this promising topic is facing. The relevant recommendations and researches needed in Blockchain topic to enhance intelligent farming sustainability are also highlighted in this paper. This survey provides also an overview of the IoT middleware dedicated to dealing with virtual sensor data. It is found through the examination that the adoption of ICT in the various farming processes helps to increase productivity with low efforts, and costs. Several challenges are faced when implementing such solutions, they are mainly related to the technological development, energy consumption, and the complexity of the environments where the solutions are implemented. Despite these constraints, it is certain that shortly several farming businesses will heavily invest to introduce more intelligence into their management methods. Furthermore, the use of sophisticated deep learning and Blockchain algorithms may contribute to the resolution of many recent farming issues.

In this paper a new method for the estimation of SISO ARMAX models was presented. The proposed methodology lies in the context of Evolutionary system identification. It consists of a hybrid optimization algorithm, which interconnects the advantages of its deterministic and stochastic components, providing superior performance in PEM, as well as a two-stage estimation procedure, which yields only stable models. The method's main characteristics can be summarized as follows: ? improvement of PEM is implemented through the use of a hybrid optimization algorithm, ? initial ``guess'' is not necessary for good performance, ? convergence in local minima is avoided, ? computational complexity is sufficiently decreased, compared to similar methods for Evolutionary system identification. Furthermore, the method has competitive convergence rate to conventional gradient-based techniques, ? stability is guaranteed in the resulted models. The unstable ones are penalized through the objective function, ? it is successive, even in the presence of noise-corrupted measurement. The encouraging results suggest further research in the field of Evolutionary system identification. Specifically, efforts to design more flexible constraints are taking place, while the implementation of the method to Multiple Input-Multiple Output structures is also a topic of current research. Furthermore, the extraction of system's valid modal characteristics (natural frequencies, damping ratios), by means of the proposed methodology, is an additive problem of crucial importance. Evolutionary system identification is an growing scientific domain and presents an ongoing impact in the modelling of dynamic systems. Yet, many issues have to be taken under consideration, while the knowledge of classical system identification techniques and, additionally, signal processing and statistics methods, is necessary. Besides, system identification is a problem-specific modelling methodology, and any possible knowledge o

In the present paper the non-endoreversible Curzon-Ahlborn, Stirling and Ericsson cycles as models of thermal engines are discussed from the viewpoint of finite time thermodynamics. That is, it is propose the existence of a finite time of heat transfer for isothermal processes, but the cycles are analyzed assuming they are not endoreversible cycles, through a factor that represents the internal ireversibilities of them, so that the proposed heat engine models have efficiency closer to real engines. Some results of previous papers are used, and from the get expressions for the power output function and ecological function a methodology to obtain a linear approximation of efficiency including adequate parameters are shown, similar to those obtained in that previous paper used. Variable changes are made right, like those used previously.

Globalization, urbanization, and new policies are changing land use, environment, and rural life. Policy makers need means to understand changes and their impacts for making wise decisions. This paper explores a methodological landscape-level approach for assessment and monitoring of changes in land use, forest cover and society, its drivers and impacts. It is based upon experience from case studies in Asia and Africa. The paper suggests that such approaches should address major issues of land use change including its drivers and impacts, generate policy relevant and accurate information, be cost-efficient and practical to implement, make appropriate use of modern knowledge, and engage stakeholders and decision makers. Technically, the approaches should cover all land types, objectively describe current land use and trends, enable verification, and be robust and flexible to address upcoming needs.

Visualization of virus particles and morphological features depends on the resolution of microscopes. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is the starting point for obtaining the best resolution of images. Two different techniques are available and described in this paper. Firstly, negative staining of viral suspensions provides detailed information of virus particles' structure. It is a technique that can be quickly performed and is able to accommodate the highest magnifications of virus particles. Secondly, ultra-thin sections of virus-infected tissues or cell cultures, combined with a positive staining technique can provide information regarding the localization of viruses inside or around cells. These two complementary techniques for investigating the structure of a virus and its parasitic life cycle are presented in this paper.

Coloured wastewaters are a consequence of batch processes in both dye-manufacturing and dye-consuming industries. Dyes are widely used in a number of industries, such as textile and leather dyeing, food, cosmetics, paper printing, gasoline, with the textile industry as the largest consumer. Dyeing as a fundamental operation during textile fibre processing causes the production of more or less coloured wastewaters, depending on the degree of fixation of dyes on substrates, which varies with the nature of substances, desired intensity of coloration, and application method. Dye bearing effluents are considered to be a very complex and inconsistent mixture of many pollutants ranging from dyes, dressing substances, alkalis, oils, detergents, salts of organic and inorganic acids to heavy metals.Thus after dyeing wastewaters are characterized not only by intensive and difficult for removal colour but also by high pH, suspended and dissolved solids, chemical and biochemical oxygen demands. Ion exchange is a very versatile and effective tool for treatment of aqueous hazardous wastes including dyes. The role of ion exchange in dye effluents treatment is to reduce the magnitude of hazardous load by converting them into a form in which they can be reused, leaving behind less toxic substances in their places or to facilitate ultimate disposal by reducing the hydraulic flow of the stream bearing toxic substances. Another significant feature of the ion exchange process is that it has the ability to separate as well as to concentrate pollutants. Taking into account high capacity and selectivity of ion exchange resins for different dyes, they seem to be proper materials for dyes sorption from textile effluents. The aim of the paper is to study the removal of the acid, reactive and direct textile dyes such as C.I. Acid Orange 7, C.I. Reactive Black 5 and C.I. Direct Blue 71 on the commercially available anion exchangers (Lewatit MonoPlus MP 62, Lewatit MonoPlus MP 64, Lewatit MonoPlu

The development of reliable and efficient techniques for making precise targeted changes in the genome of living organisms has been a long-standing objective of researchers throughout the world. In plants, different methods, each with several different variations, have been developed for this purpose, though many of them are hampered either by providing only temporary modification of gene function or unpredictable off-target results. The recent discovery of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPRs) and the CRISPR-associated 9 (Cas9) nucleases started a new era in genome editing. Basically, the CRISPR/Cas system is a natural immune response of prokaryotes to resist foreign genetic elements entering via plasmids and phages. Through this naturally occurring gene editing system, bacteria create DNA segments known as CRISPR arrays that allow them to "remember" foreign genetic material for protection against it and other similar sequences in the future. This system has now been adopted by researchers in laboratory to create a short guide RNA that binds to specific target sequences of DNA in eukaryotic genome, and the Cas9 enzyme cuts the DNA at the targeted location. Once cut, the cell's endogenous DNA repair machinery is used to add, delete, or replace pieces of genetic material. Though CRISPR/Cas9 technology has been recently developed, it has started to be regularly used for gene editing in plants as well as animals to good success. It has been proved as an efficient transgene-free technique. A simple search on PubMed (NCBI) shows that among all plants, 80 different studies published since 2013 involved CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing in rice. Of these, 20, 13, and 24 papers have been published in 2019, 2018, and 2017, respectively. Furthermore, 20 different studies published since 2014 utilized CRISPR/Cas9 system for gene editing in wheat, where five of these studies were published in 2019 and seven were published in 2018. Genomes of othe

The regional integration policy in Latin America was based on the premises of the Initiative for the Integration of the Regional Infrastructure of South America (IIRSA), seen as a development strategy adopted by the regional political elites and as an instrument of Brazilian foreign policy. Focusing on the projects undertaken in the Amazon Hub, the article analyses the integration strategy and its impact on environmental regulation. The paper highlighted the role played by the developmentalism goals in the region regarding the environmental regulation, adopting a model of integration encompassing a reduction of natural resources stock, which is a strategic feature for sustainable development policies. This chapter results from descriptive research, based on secondary data and official documents available from the involved institutions. They analyze the Brazilian government's neo-developmentalism goals to understand how the environmental agenda in Pan Amazon was affected.

type:Article, Most land plant species have their roots colonized by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). These symbiotic associations are often found in the roots of field crops. The biological basis and practical significance of this symbiosis have been extensively studied, and the molecular mechanisms underlying the initial colonization process and the nutrient exchange between the host plant and the AMF have been elucidated. However, developmental processes and turnover of elements of the mycorrhiza, and the resulting changes in mycorrhizal function, are not well understood. The enigmatic nature of the development-function relationship is probably due to the short life span of the infection unit, which has largely been overlooked in studies investigating mycorrhizal function at the macroscopic level. This paper outlines the concept of the infection unit and functional expression patterns in terms of the transient aspects of the micro-symbiont during its life cycle in this symbiosis.

Although educational research acknowledges that social perception processes are relevant for understanding but also evaluating situations, the topic of impression management (IM) has achieved only little attention so far. Individuals have discussed rather as passively exposed to the mechanism of social interaction and perception processes. This contribution changes perspectives and addresses the question of conscious impression management within classes. The chapter asks whether students use self-presentation tactics in order to deliberately navigate the impression their teachers should have of them. By means of an empirical study, country- and gender-specific differences with regard to impression management were found. Likewise, students with a high educational aspiration and good school grades scored higher or at least differently on impression management than students with a low educational aspiration level and low school grades. And students with a high educational aspiration but low grades try to overcome this discrepancy by means of personally adapting to the teachers’ expectations. Even though the influence mechanism of impression management on school success cannot conclusively be answered, this paper opens new perspectives on the scientific discourse of social inequality as well as teaching quality and discusses implications for teacher education.

The materials and chemistry used to manufacture hydraulic fracture fluids are often confusing and difficult for the practicing hydraulic fracturing engineer to understand and optimize. Many times the failure of a particular fracturing treatment is blamed on the fluid because that is a major unknown from the design engineer's viewpoint. Many of the components and processes used to manufacture the fluid are held proprietary by the service company which adds to the confusion and misunderstanding. This paper makes an attempt to describe the components used in fracturing fluids at a level that the practicing frac engineer can understand and use. The paper is intended as a companion paper to the Fracturing Fluids design paper which describes how to use the fluids and viscosity generated by the fluids to design a fracturing treatment.

Modern industrial engineers are continually faced with the challenge of meeting increasing demands for high quality products while using a reduced amount of resources. Since systems used in the production of goods and deliveries of services constitute the vast portion of capital in most industries, maintenance of such systems is crucial (Oyarbide-Zubillaga, Goti, & Sánchez 2008). Several studies compiled by Mjema (2002) show that maintenance costs represent from 3 to 40 % out of the total product cost (with an average value of a 28%). Within maintenance, the Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM) techniques are very important. Nevertheless, and comparing it to the Preventive Maintenance (PM) optimization problem, relatively few papers related to CBM have been developed: According to Aven (1996), one of the reasons to justify this fact is that CBM models are usually by its nature rather sophisticated compared to the more traditional replacement models. Within this maintenance strategy, Das & Sarkar (1999) distinguish two CBM subtypes, On-Condition Maintenance (OCM) and Condition Monitoring (CMT). OCM is based on periodic inspections, while CMT performs a continuous monitoring on the hardware through instrumentation. Considering the described context, this paper focuses on the problem of CMT optimisation in a manufacturing environment, with the objective of determining the optimal CMT deterioration levels beyond which PM activities should be applied under cost and profit criteria in a multi-equipment system. The initiative considers the interaction of production, work in process material, quality and maintenance aspects. In this work the suitability of discrete event simulation to model or modify complex system models is combined with the aptitude that multiobjective evolutionary algorithms have shown to deal with multiobjective problems to develop a maintenance management and optimisation approach. An application case where the activities applied on a system that produce

The paper deals with modeling of human-like reaching movements. Several issues are under study. First, we consider a model of unconstrained reaching movements that corresponds to the minimization of control effort. It is shown that this model can be represented by the wellknown Beta function. The representation can be used for the construction of fractional order models and also for modeling of asymmetric velocity profiles. Next, we address the formation of boundary conditions in a natural way. From the mathematical point of view, the structure of the optimal solution is defined not only by the form of the optimality criterion but also by the boundary conditions of the optimization task. The natural boundary conditions, defined in this part of the paper, can also be used in modeling asymmetric velocity profiles. Finally, addressing the modeling of reaching movements with bounded control actions, we consider the minimum time formulation of the optimization problem and (for the n-th order integrator) find its analytical solution.

Electric vehicle fleets and smart grids are two growing technologies. These technologies provided new possibilities to reduce pollution and increase energy efficiency. In this sense, electric vehicles are used as mobile loads in the power grid. A distributed charging prioritization methodology is proposed in this paper. The solution is based on the concept of virtual power plants and the usage of evolutionary computation algorithms. Additionally, the comparison of several evolutionary algorithms, genetic algorithm, genetic algorithm with evolution control, particle swarm optimization, and hybrid solution are shown in order to evaluate the proposed architecture. The proposed solution is presented to prevent the overload of the power grid.

In East Africa, an estimated 70% of wildlife populations are dispersed outside protected areas on community land. The way of life of the pastoralists, essentially support the thriving of wildlife. However, pastoralism is slowly transiting to more sedentary forms of livestock production. The region‘s wildlife populations future now largely depends on the conservation of habitats and migratory corridors on private and communally owned lands with competing land uses. Community wildlife conservancies are one of the approaches of decentralizing wildlife management and curbing biodiversity and habitat loss at the livestock-wildlife interface environments. Further, conservancies present an avenue for restoration of degraded grazing lands and improving pastoral livelihoods. This paper reviews the community-based conservation unfolding in northern Kenya using the case of Naibung’a Wildlife Conservancy in Laikipia County. Conservancies through land zoning and range rehabilitation have contributed to improved security of wildlife, people and their livestock. Conservancies’ success depends on continued investment in vegetation recovery, grazing management, livestock marketing and benefit sharing. The perceived threats facing conservancies are pasture scarcity, cattle rustling and human-wildlife conflicts. Conservation objectives and human livelihoods in Africa are closely interlinked and lessons learnt in Naibung’a Wildlife Conservancy could particularly be useful to other similar initiatives in Africa.

This work is devoted to the presentation and realization of a digital control card (maximum power point tracking) which serves to improve the performance of a photovoltaic generator (GPV). This makes it possible to increase the profitability of the latter, on the one hand, and the stability of electrical networks, on the other hand. The command card has been developed using simple circuits, and tested on a system that includes a photovoltaic panel powering a resistive load under changing weather conditions. The aim of this paper is to implement three well-known MPPT algorithms (Hill-Climbing, Pertube & Observe and Incremental Conductance), using a PIC microcontroller type 16F877A.