4th International Research Articles

Preface: SiliconPV 2024, the 14th International Conference on Crystalline Silicon Photovoltaics

The SiliconPV 2024 conference brought together nearly 300 scientists and engineers from 27 countries, with 142 abstracts approved by reviewers and presented through 61 oral talks and 71 posters, both onsite and online. 10 submissions were retracted. The conference served as a vibrant platform for exchanging knowledge, sharing ideas, and fostering collaboration among PV experts worldwide. The silicon solar community is witnessing a remarkable period of progress and innovation. Single-junction silicon cells and modules continue to achieve significant advancements, even as they approach the theoretical efficiency limit. In recent months, new benchmarks have been reached for heterojunction and TOPCon devices, with cutting-edge strategies driving further progress. This momentum is even more evident in perovskite-on-silicon tandems, which have now achieved efficiency levels exceeding 34%. Simultaneously, the growth in module production capacities remains robust, positioning the solar manufacturing sector to scale up to the terawatt level – a critical step toward addressing global warming. Bold plans for new gigafactories are taking shape worldwide, highlighting an era of expansion. However, reaching terawatt-scale solar deployment brings its own set of challenges. Beyond manufacturing improvements, the key hurdles lie in ensuring solar technology matures into a fully sustainable industrial sector. These themes – from pioneering concepts in single-junction and tandem cells to sustainable industrial solutions, from advanced silicon materials to high-quality, dependable modules, and from innovative manufacturing techniques to optimizing energy output and costs – were central to the discussions at the SiliconPV 2024 conference held in April, 2024, in Chambéry. We are deeply grateful to the many experts who contributed to reviewing abstracts and full manuscripts, culminating in these valuable proceedings. These proceedings are not just a record of the event; they are a critical resource for the community. By exploring the insights and advancements documented here, we hope you will find inspiration to develop novel technologies that accelerate the energy transition. Together, we can shape a brighter future by ensuring clean and affordable energy is accessible to everyone.

Preface: 4th International Conference on Management and Education, Humanities and Social Sciences (MEHSS 2024)

Preface: 4th International Conference on Management and Education, Humanities and Social Sciences (MEHSS 2024)

Transmathematica 2023

Transmathematica 2023: The 5th International Conference on Total Systems was held online, using Zoom, on 24 July 2023 at 13.45 - 20.00, London time. Edited video recordings have been uploaded to the Transmathematica channel on YouTube. We now present the conference proceedings.

Preface: 6th International Conference on Global Economy, Finance and Humanities Research (GEFHR 2024)

The 2024 6th International Conference on Global Economy, Finance and Humanities Research (GEFHR 2024) has been successfully conducted in New York, USA during October 26-27, 2024. This conference aims at summarizing recent research activities relevant to the advanced development in the global economy, finance management, innovation management, business management, electronic commerce, humanities research, and social science, and facilitate communication among relevant experts. More than 70 persons have been participated in GEFHR 2024. About 40 presentations including 4 invited talks were presented. The presentations are grouped into 5 areas of particular interest: (1) Global Economy, (2) Finance Management, (3) Business Management, (4) Electronic Commerce, and (5) Humanities Research. We are indebted to all of authors for submitting their original papers. We would like to thank all members of International Board, members of Organizing Committee, and my gratitude to all those who help the success of this conference. GEFHR Organizing Committees New York, USA

Report on Participation in 24th International Conference on Solid State Ionics

Report on Participation in 24th International Conference on Solid State Ionics

Teaching how to build bridges between languages

The article presents examples of activities and tasks used during classes devoted to plurilingual education at the Centre for Foreign Language Teacher Training and European Education of the University of Warsaw. In the first part of the paper, the context in which future teachers of languages are educated at the Centre is described. The description focuses on the Plurilingual and Pluricultural Education course and the Integrated Language Didactics course, which enable students to become acquainted with the pluralistic approaches to languages and cultures and to further develop their plurilingual and pluricultural competence. These courses are an integral part of the programme of study at the Centre and it is assumed that the students will use the knowledge and skills acquired while attending them in their future work at school in order to facilitate the teaching and learning of languages. The second part of the paper is devoted to activities and tasks presented during the 10th International Conference of the EDiLiC Association. They include an awakening to languages activity, conducted as part of the Plurilingual and Pluricultural Education course at the Centre, and tasks used during the Integrated Language Didactics course for pre-service teachers of English and German or English and French.

Юбилею М. И. Глинки посвящается: о материалах XVI Международного научного форума «Диалог искусств и арт-парадигм» (Международный Центр комплексных художественных исследований при Саратовской консерватории)

The publication presents a description and brief analysis of the materials from the 16th International Scientific Forum “Dialogue of Arts and Art Paradigms”, dedicated to the anniversary of M. I. Glinka. While maintaining the general concept, which is invariant across all almanacs covering the forums of past years, the main idea is differently actualized in each one, depending on its connection to specific events and commemorative dates. This factor determines the unique combination of constant and variable components in the structure and content of the sections and the almanac as a whole.

6th Joint International Symposium on Deformation Monitoring

6th Joint International Symposium on Deformation Monitoring

Editorial

The editorial for the 16.1&2 Special Issue, ‘6th International Dance and Somatic Practices Conference – Reconnections: Looking back, moving forward, enacting change’, welcomes readers to this issue with some Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices updates and follows with an outline of why and how this Special Issue has been curated, reflecting on the sixth Dance and Somatic Practices Conference held in July 2023. The editorial continues with a summary of each of the contributions to the issue, including papers presented at the conference, additional submissions addressing the conference themes and book reviews.

Sustainable Futures in a Changing World – Reflections from the 5th International Conference on Sustainable Futures: Environmental, Technological, Social and Economic Matters (ICSF 2024)

Sustainable Futures in a Changing World – Reflections from the 5th International Conference on Sustainable Futures: Environmental, Technological, Social and Economic Matters (ICSF 2024)

Interspike interval statistics for quadratic integrate-and-fire neurons subject to alpha-stable noise

The statistics of interspike intervals is one of the principle characteristics of the synaptic activity of neurons. This statistics can be presented with the values of the moments of these intervals. For the integrate-and-fire type models, the formalism of first passage time provides partial differential equations for a rigorous calculation of these values for neurons subject to a white Gaussian noise. However, the procedure of derivation of these equations is quite sophisticated and the results for Gaussian noise are not as trivial as they can appear if one does not look at the rigorous derivation procedure. The derivation of analogous partial differential equations for the case of alpha-stable (Lévy) noise is even more involved. In this paper, the equations providing moments of interspike intervals are derived for quadratic integrate-and-fire neurons subject to symmetric alphastable noise. The results are presumably generalizable to other integrate-and-fire type models (e.g., leakage ones). The paper was presented at the 11th International Scientific Conference on Physics and Control (PhysCon 2024), September 9–12, 2024, Istanbul, Turkey.

About the 11th International Conference on Physics and Control

This issue of Cybernetics and Physics (CAP) journal contains a part of the proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Physics and Control (PhysCon 2024) held on Sept. 9-12, 2024 at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. Brief information about PhysCon 2024 as well as the abstracts of the plenary talks and of the papers published in this issue of CAP are presented in this paper.

Proceedings of the “Safe Beginnings: 1st Regional Conference on Maternal and Child Health (MCH) in CaLaBaRZon in partnership with 14th International Conference on the MCH Handbook”

Proceedings of the “Safe Beginnings: 1st Regional Conference on Maternal and Child Health (MCH) in CaLaBaRZon in partnership with 14th International Conference on the MCH Handbook”

Summary Report of the 4th International Academic Conference on Religion and Politics: 'A New, Even More Brave World… The Hope of Faith and the Hope of Politics'

Summary Report of the 4th International Academic Conference on Religion and Politics: 'A New, Even More Brave World… The Hope of Faith and the Hope of Politics'

15th Conference on Data Analysis Methods for Software Systems. November 28–30, 2024

15th Conference on Data Analysis Methods for Software Systems. November 28–30, 2024

Preface: 5th International Conference on the Frontiers of Innovative Economics and Management (FIEM 2024)

The volume is the collection of papers presented as the 5th International Conference on the Frontiers of Innovative Economics and Management (FIEM 2024), which was held in Hong Kong, China during October 19-20, 2024. It was co-organized by Suzhou Wenyu Information Technology Co., Ltd. and Suzhou Branch of Zewang Investment Co., Ltd. This event provides an excellent international forum for sharing knowledge, the result of innovative research and methodology both in theory and practice in several scopes such as economics, business, management and related interdisciplinary subjects. The conference aims to provide an interactive platform to the researchers and practitioners from both academic societies as well as industry to meet and share cutting-edge development. This FIEM 2024 received 97 manuscripts, and more than 20 submissions had been accepted by our reviewers. By submitting a paper to FIEM, the authors agreed to the review process and understood that papers undergo a peer-review process. Manuscripts were reviewed by appropriately qualified experts in the field selected by the conference committee, who gave detailed comments and-if the submission was accepted the authors would submit a revised version that considered this feedback. All papers were reviewed using a double-blind review process: authors declared their names and affiliations in the manuscript for the reviewers to see, but reviewers did not know each other’s identities, nor did the authors receive information about who had reviewed their manuscript. Xixi Zhou, Yedda Austin Hong Kong, China

Assessing the safety of international examples of bicycle streets to identify important design elements—an expert judgement

The two most common types of cycling infrastructure are separated bicycle tracks and bicycle lanes. Several studies have been carried out to examine their impact on cycling safety. A relatively new type of cycling infrastructure, which is increasingly being implemented, is the bicycle street, defined as a street where bicycle traffic is prioritised and where motorised vehicles are limited in terms of volume and speed. Since bicycle streets are developed recently, the literature about their safety is scarce. Therefore, in order to provide directions for further research to the safety of bicycle streets, the present study aims to identify which design elements of bicycle streets are important to assess their safety, based on expert judgement. The expert judgement data were collected from 49 cycling safety professionals, divided over ten groups, during a workshop about the safety of bicycle streets during the 11th International Cycling Safety Conference 2023 in the Hague. The groups of cycling safety professionals categorised nine international examples of bicycle streets over three piles: ‘Safest’, ‘In between’, and ‘Least safe’. They also provided arguments about why they put a bicycle street on a specific pile. These arguments are used to identify important design elements that impact the safety of bicycle streets and are compared to existing literature. The results showed that expert judgements are considerably similar across the example bicycle streets and their design elements. The most important design elements to assess the safety are: width of the street, design to prioritise cyclists, road markings and parking. The literature shows that for some elements, general road safety knowledge exists, but that for most design elements no studies exist that examine their relation to the safety of bicycle streets in particular.

Evaluation of Novel Picolinamide Fungicides (QiI) for Controlling Cercospora beticola Sacc. in Sugar Beet

Studies were initiated to find new effective fungicides to use under field conditions to discover novel approaches for optimizing disease management in sugar beet crops. Cercospora leaf spot (CLS), a prevalent foliar disease in sugar beet crops worldwide, is caused by the fungal pathogen Cercospora beticola Sacc. This disease has become the most prevalent pathogen in sugar beet crops across nearly all European growing regions, including Hungary. The epidemic spread of this disease can cause up to 50% yield loss. The use of fungicides has been a cornerstone in managing CLS of sugar beet due to the limited efficacy of non-chemical alternatives. However, the emergence of fungicide-resistant strains of Cercospora beticola Sacc. in recent decades has compromised the effectiveness of certain fungicides, particularly those belonging to the QoI (FRAC Group 11) and DMI (FRAC Group 3) classes. Hungary is among the many countries where resistance to these fungicides has developed due to their frequent application. Picolinamides represent a novel class of fungal respiration inhibitors targeting Complex III within the Quinoine-Inside Inhibitor (QiI) group. Two innovative fungicides from this class, fenpicoxamid and florylpicoxamid (both classified under FRAC Group 21), were evaluated for their efficacy in managing CLS of sugar beet in Hungary during the 2020 and 2021 growing seasons. Both fungicides were applied as formulated products at various application rates and demonstrated superior efficacy in controlling CLS compared to untreated control plots and the reference fungicides difenoconazole and epoxiconazole. The results consistently demonstrated that all tested application rates of fenpicoxamid and florylpicoxamid effectively controlled CLS in sugar beet, exhibiting a clear dose–response relationship. Disease severity, as measured by the area under the disease progress curve (AUDPC), was significantly correlated with yield reduction but showed no significant association with root sugar content. Moreover, data from both study years indicated that picolinamide fungicides applied at a rate of 75 g ai/ha significantly outperformed difenoconazole (100 g ai/ha) in controlling the CLS of sugar beet. Additionally, higher application rates of picolinamides at 100–150 g ai/ha outperformed epoxiconazole at 125 g ai/ha in disease suppression. Fenpicoxamid is currently registered for use in cereals within Europe, and outside of Europe in Banana against Black Sigatoka (eff. Mycosphaerella fijiensis). Florylpicoxamid, while not yet registered in Europe, is undergoing approval processes in various countries worldwide for a range of crops and is continually being evaluated for potential market introduction. Additional details regarding the efficacy of florylpicoxamid against CLS in sugar beet were presented at ‘The 10th International Conference on Agricultural and Biological Sciences (ABS 2024, Győr-Hungary)’ in 2024.

From marine mixotrophs to natural forest management: papers from the 4th International Conference on Community Ecology (September 2023, Trieste, Italy)

From marine mixotrophs to natural forest management: papers from the 4th International Conference on Community Ecology (September 2023, Trieste, Italy)

International Committee on Systematics of Prokaryotes Subcommittee on the Taxonomy of Mollicutes: minutes of the closed meeting, 7 July 2024, Gran Canaria, Spain

This report documents the International Committee on Systematics of Prokaryotes Subcommittee on the Taxonomy of Mollicutes minutes for the meeting held 7 July 2024, Gran Canaria, Spain, at the 25th International Organization for Mycoplasmology Congress.