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The way of doing retail business and its form has changed substantially during the course of the last 20 years or so. Under the influence of technology, new retail forms have emerged, as well as the new ways of doing business. Modern retail uses advanced tools in sales processes, all for the purpose to make it easier for customers and to speed up the sales process. The objectives of the digital retail transformation are: the increase of efficiency of sales, time savings when purchasing, costs reductions and higher level of organization and productivity. As a complex marketing strategy, instore technology is changing retail business, and it has become an integral part of modern retail logistics. By providing digitalised services to customers through their integration, digital retail tools contribute to major changes in the trading business. Trading companies are forced to keep up with the social habits and modern technological tools. By implementation of new technological solutions in retail, to customers are offered simpler and more modern ways of selling. However, it is the customers who decide on the use of these tools in retail, so it is necessary for trade companies to listen to the habits of customers. In the paper are explored and analysed some of the examples of a retail digital transformation, such as: using of QR codes, buying when using the augmented reality (A-commerce), trade without cash desks and sellers, purchase by means of use of virtual googles, purchase when using virtual assistants, or by omnichannel. There are also some of the examples of trading companies that successfully use these sales tools.

Biomonitoring of aquatic system is an important tool for the evaluation of aquatic life of fauna and flora as well as ecosystems. Biomonitoring help to reveal the current condition of environmental health, presence of any kind of stressors in aquatic system. Monitoring water quality in the 21st century is a growing challenge due to excessive utilization of chemicals in different forms in our daily life. Water quality plays a vital role as indicator of environmental pollution in aquatic bodies. Discharge of domestic and industrial waste and surface run-off containing various pollutants in water bodies are becoming major threat to the aquatic ecosystem as well as human being. Contamination of water can be accidental or intentional and the consequences are drastic unless the appropriate measures are adopted on the spot. Thus, it’s very important to quick detection of the possible contaminants and pollutants in aquatic bodies for maintaining the good environmental health and ecosystem. This review provides compiled information regarding the various tools and technologies for monitoring water quality including the biological and physico-chemical parameters which are very much essential in tailing the quality status of water bodies and beneficial in developing management strategies also. The real time monitoring techniques are the advanced methods to monitor the changes both qualitatively and quantitatively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents detailed characterization of the chemical and physical properties of particulate matter emitted by a 2.0-L BMW lean-burn turbocharged gasoline direct injection engine operated under a number of combustion strategies that include lean homogeneous, lean stratified, stoichiometric, and fuel-rich conditions. We characterized particulate matter number concentrations, size distributions, and the size, mass, compositions, and effective density of fractal and compact individual exhaust particles. For the fractal particles, these measurements yielded fractal dimension, average diameter of primary spherules, and number of spherules, void fraction, and dynamic shape factors as function of particle size. Overall, the particulate matter properties were shown to vary significantly with engine operation condition. Lean stratified operation yielded the most diesel-like size distribution and the largest particulate matter number and mass concentrations, with nearly all particles being fractal agglomerates composed of elemental carbon with small amounts of ash and organics. In contrast, stoichiometric operation yielded a larger fraction of ash particles, especially at low speed and low load. Three distinct forms of ash particles were observed, with their fractions strongly dependent on engine operating conditions: sub-50 nm ash particles, abundant at low speed and low load, ash-containing fractal particles, and large compact ash particles that significantly contribute to particulate matter mass loadings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]