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Improving efficiency, reducing expenses, and ensuring sustainability in today’s competitive market is made possible by optimising the performance of the food supply chain (FSC). A strong decision-making framework is required to overcome obstacles including high transportation and production costs, uneven quality, and the impact on the environment. To solve these problems, this paper presents an all-inclusive multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) framework that uses enhanced relative utility and nonlinear standardisation (ERUNS) to rank alternatives, Logarithmic percentage change-driven objective weighing (LOPCOW) to determine objective weights, and subjective weight assignment by ratio analysis (SWARA) to determine subjective criterion weights. LOPCOW offers objective weights grounded in facts and indifference thresholds, whereas SWARA records decision-makers (DMs) preferences in weighing factors like sustainability and cost efficiency. The ERUNS methodology then uses utility degree assessments and matrix standardization to rank and evaluate alternatives. An improved method of assessment is to make use of intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IFS), which deal with ambiguity by adding membership, non-membership, and hesitation levels. By merging subjective and objective data, this integrated method maximizes FSC performance, provides useful insights for enhancing overall efficiency and sustainability, and offers a viable answer to contemporary difficulties. It also offers helpful insights for improving overall efficiency and sustainability, and it provides a practical response to the challenges that are now being faced.

Charcoal has a large share in the Brazilian market. The production is carried out by pyrolysis of biomass at different temperatures, between 300 and 500 °C. In this study, the corn cob pyrolysis was investigated using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR). Samples after pyrolysis were compared with raw biomass to evaluate changes in fuel characteristics. In DTG curves a reduction in the number of degradation peaks in the carbonized material was observed. The FTIR spectra allowed to identify the aromatic ring of the lignin in the charcoals structure, indicating the presence of this compound even in charcoals produced with a temperature of 500 °C. It can be concluded that the temperature of 400 °C was enough to completely degrade the hemicellulose and cellulose of the biomass, resulting the final product (charcoal) less reactive or thermally more resistant than the in natura corn cob.

• Key message Insurance might be an efficient tool to strengthen adaptation of forest management to climate change. A theoretical model under uncertainty is proposed to highlight the effect, on adaptation decisions, of considering adaptation efforts in forest insurance contracts. Results show that insurance is relevant to increase adaptation efforts under some realistic conditions on forest owner’s uncertainty and risk preferences, and on the observability or not of adaptation efforts. • Context One of the challenges of forest adaptation to climate change is to encourage private forest owners to implement adaptation strategies. • Aims We suggest the analysis of forest insurance contracts against natural hazards as a vector to promote the implementation of adaptation efforts by private forest owners. • Methods We propose a theoretical model of insurance economics under risk and under uncertainty. • Results Our results indicate that when climate change makes the probability of the occurrence of the natural event uncertain, then it may be relevant to include adaptation efforts in the insurance contract, leading to an increase in the adaptation efforts of risk-averse and uncertainty-averse forest owners. In addition, we show that the relevance of insurance as a vector to promote adaptation efforts is greater when the forest owner’s effort is unobservable by the insurer as compared to a situation of perfectly observable effort. • Conclusion Under some realistic assumptions, the forest insurance contract seems to be a relevant tool to encourage forest owners to adapt to climate change.

Many aquatic species with stylar polymorphisms have the capacity for clonal and sexual reproduction and are sensitive to the balance of the two reproductive modes when there are a limited number of mating morphs within a population. This study asked how the clonal and sexual reproductive modes perform in populations that contain only a single morph and where fitness gain through sexual reproduction is rare. In clonal aquatic Nymphoides montana, polymorphic populations normally contain two mating morphs in equal frequencies. Populations are sexually fertile and appear to be maintained by pollen transfer between the two partners. However, in a monomorphic population of N. montana where mating opportunities are unavailable, female and male function is impaired and clonality maintains the population. Here, the consequences of intraspecific variation in sexuality were explored between monomorphic and polymorphic N. montana populations in eastern Australia.Comparative measurements of male and female fertility, total dry mass and genotypic diversity using ISSR markers were made between populations with variable sexuality.Very few seeds were produced in the monomorphic population under natural and glasshouse conditions due to dysfunctional pollen and ovules. Stigma-anther separation was minimal in the monomorphic population, which may be a consequence of the relaxed selective pressures that regulate the maintenance of sexual function. However, clonal reproduction was favoured at the expense of sexual reproduction in the monomorphic population; this may facilitate the establishment of sterility throughout the population via resource reallocation or pleiotropic effects. The ISSR results showed that the monomorphic population was one large, single genotype, unlike the multi-genotypic fertile polymorphic populations. Evolutionary loss of sex in a clonal population in which a mating morph is absent was evident; under these conditions clonal growth may assure reproduction and expand the population via spreading stolons.

To mitigate the temperature increase in urban environments and reduce its impact on energy consumption and the quality of the environment, urban retrofitting technologies have been developed and applied worldwide. High albedo in urban surfaces and additional vegetation are the most efficient strategies to accomplish these goals. The objective of this study is to estimate the weight of these strategies, both individually and integrated, on the cooling potential of two Latin American cities. To do this, 36 low and high urban density scenarios were simulated with the ENVI-Met software. The simulation models were calibrated using air temperature curves which were monitored during the summer periods from 2010 to 2013. A Principal Components Analysis was carried out to establish possible associations between the proposed mitigation strategies and then the weight of anthropogenic heat was evaluated according to the configuration. The results show that the integrated mitigation strategies in urban areas -i. e. increase vegetation and albedo on horizontal surfaces- has a great potential to mitigate urban warming, showing a more significant impact on low-density urban configuration. The contribution of anthropogenic heat mainly produced by motorized transport and air conditioning systems, is a crucial input data for the urban microclimate simulations. Its impact on the urban densification processes may cancel out the benefits derived by the application of the mitigation strategies considered.

Load forecasting is very important to manage the electrical power systems. Load forecasting can be analyzed in three different ways as short-term, medium-term and long-term. Long-term load forecasting (LTLF) is in need to plan and carry on future energy demand and investment such as size of energy plant. LTLF is affected by energy consumption, national incoming per year, rates of civilization, increasing population rates and moreover economical parameters. Some of the forecasting models use mathematical formulas and statistical models such as correlation and regression analysis. In this study, a new effective expert-supported dynamic programming algorithm (ESDP) has been improved. Additionally, adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) and mathematical modeling (MM) are used to forecast long term energy demand. ANFIS is one of the famous artificial intelligence and has widely used to solve forecasting problems in literature. In addition to numerical inputs, ANFIS has linguistics inputs. The results obtained from ESDP, ANFIS and MM are compared to show availability. In order to show error levels mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and (MAE) are used. The obtained results show that the proposed algorithms are available.

AbstractThe ethylene glycol oxidation reaction on nickel and ruthenium modified palladium nanocatalysts was investigated with electrochemical, spectroelectrochemical, and chromatographic methods. These carbon‐supported materials, prepared by a revisited polyol approach, exhibited high activity towards the ethylene glycol electrooxidation in alkaline medium. Electrolysis coupled with high performance liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (HPLC‐MS) and in situ Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIRS) measurements allowed us to determine the different compounds electrogenerated in the oxidative conversion of this two‐carbon molecule. High value‐added products such as oxalate, glyoxylate, and glycolate were identified in all electrolytic solutions, whereas glyoxylate was selectively formed at the Ru45@Pd55/C electrode surface. In situ FTIRS results also showed a decrease in the pH value in the thin layer near the electrode as a consequence of OH− consumption during the spectroelectrochemical experiments.

AbstractService unavailability of transmission lines, due to the direct and indirect lightning strikes, is evaluated as a challenging issue within electric companies. The lightning event can produce dangerous overvoltage, equipment failures, and power supply interruptions. Here, externally gapped line arresters (EGLAs) performances installed on a 63 kV transmission line are modelled using EMTP‐ATP to investigate their capability to withstand current and energy discharged by lightning strokes during back flashover phenomena. Frequency behaviour of the grounding system impedance, first and subsequent lightning current parameters effects on insulators back flashover and lightning flashover failure rate have been considered by Monte‐Carlo method. Then, extensive analysis has been carried out to study the absorbed energy of the EGLA and its expected life. The results show the dependency of failure rate and the EGLA expected life on the soil resistivity and lightning strike parameters. The selected EGLA must be provided sufficient lightning protection to the transmission line based on its absorbed energy capability, the soil and lightning parameters and be complied with the discharge energy capability requirement specified by the utility company.