This book is focused on the challenges to implement sustainability in diverse contexts such as agribusiness, natural resource systems and new technologies. The experiences made by the researchers of the School of Agricultural, Forestry, Food and Environmental Science (SAFE) of the University of Basilicata offer a wide and multidisciplinary approach to the identification and testing of differ…
This book offers an in-depth analysis of the Brazilian sugarcane complex with a special focus on technological advances that promote sustainable development. It first examines the question why sugarcane-based ethanol from Brazil is considered a superior alternative to fossil fuel compared to other biofuels produced on an industrial scale and subsequently analyzes the most dynamic areas within t…
Developing future strategies for a company is an important and complex task, and forms the core issue in this book. A company’s strategy defines its future direction, specifying its desired market position and key competitive advantages both at the level of market offers and of resources. This book provides clear, straightforward advice for professionals: after a brief introduction to strateg…
This book discloses the spiritual dimension in business ethics and sustainability management. Spirituality is understood as a multiform search for meaning which connects people with all living beings and God or Ultimate Reality. In this sense, spirituality is a vital source in social and economic life. The volume examines the spiritual orientations to nature and business in different cultural t…
This volume explores the role of territory in the creation, maintenance and extension of a new type of frontier, the electronic frontier, from a social and economic point of view. It departs from the earlier concepts of borders – state, social, economic, ethnic, religious, etc. – to investigate the fluidity of borders and their shift towards an axis-based paradigm within the free-movement …
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is the optical analog of ultrasound imaging and is a powerful imaging technique that enables non-invasive, in vivo, high resolution, cross-sectional imaging in biological tissue. Between 30 to 40 Million OCT imaging procedures are performed per year in ophthalmology. The overall market is estimated at more than 0.5 Billion USD. A new generation OCT technology…
The development of Operations Research (OR) requires constant improvements, such as the integration of research results with business applications and innovative educational practice. The full deployment and commercial exploitation of goods and services generally need the construction of strong synergies between educational institutions and businesses.The IO2015 -XVII Congress of APDIO aims at …
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems, ICORES 2014, held in Angers, France, in March 2014. The 18 revised full papers presented together with an invited paper were carefully reviewed and selected from 96 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on Methodologies and Technologies and Appl…
Modern freight forwarding companies attempt to cooperate with each other to increase their efficiency. Xin Wang studies the new operational transportation planning problems that arise in the context of cooperation in both static and dynamic scenarios. To achieve the cost-savings embedded in cooperation, novel planning approaches that can help forwarders obtaining high-quality solutions are prop…
This book illustrates operation and maintenance practices/guidelines for economic generation and managing health of a thermal power generator beyond its regulatory life. The book provides knowledge for professionals managing power station operations, through its unique approach to chemical analysis of water, steam, oil etc. to identify malfunctioning/defects in equipment/systems much before the…