Short Life Cycle Research Articles

Cluster Head Selection Method for Edge Computing WSN Based on Improved Sparrow Search Algorithm.

Sensor nodes are widely distributed in the Internet of Things and communicate with each other to form a wireless sensor network (WSN), which plays a vital role in people's productivity and life. However, the energy of WSN nodes is limited, so this paper proposes a two-layer WSN system based on edge computing to solve the problems of high energy consumption and short life cycle of WSN data transmission and establishes wireless energy consumption and distance optimization models for sensor networks. Specifically, we propose the optimization objective of balancing load and distance factors. We adopt an improved sparrow search algorithm to evenly distribute sensor nodes in the system to reduce resource consumption, consumption, and network life. Through the simulation experiment, our method is illustrated, effectively reducing the network's energy consumption by 26.8% and prolonging the network's life cycle.

An optimization approach for managing electric vehicle and reused battery charging in a vehicle to grid system under an electricity rate with demand charge

Recently, migration from internal combustion cars to electric vehicles (EVs) has received increasing attention from both public and private stakeholders as one viable solution towards energy sustainability and security. US DOE projects over 120 million Light-duty ground vehicles owned by commercial & industrial electric ratepayers (e.g., forklifts in manufacturers and warehouses, shuttles on university campuses) to be electrified. On the other hand, the short life cycle of EV batteries, where current practices require lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery packs to be replaced when capacity drops to 70%–80%, poses a serious concern over the sustainability of a large-scale EV fleet system. These batteries, however, can provide abundant source of stationary energy. This paper considers a commercial & industrial electricity ratepayer’s electric fleet system consisting of reused batteries renewable energy sources, and a supporting vehicle to grid infrastructure, and optimizes the total electricity bill that includes “demand charge”, a substantial amount of charge unique to commercial & industrial electric ratepayers compared to residential users. We propose a novel optimal EV, battery and solar activity scheduling (OEVBSAS) model to coordinate various energy sources and usage. The OEVBSAS model is tested with a case study that involves an electricity subsystem, consisting of electric campus shuttle fleet, solar panels and reused EV battery systems, at a Turkish university that is subject to “demand charge”. Computational results indicate that the integrated system, coupled with the optimal activity scheduling solution, is able to decrease the total electricity cost by more than 5% and improve the peak to average ratio by 4%.

Spatial and temporal metagenomics of river compartments reveals viral community dynamics in an urban impacted stream

Although river ecosystems constitute a small fraction of Earth’s total area, they are critical modulators of microbially and virally orchestrated global biogeochemical cycles. However, most studies either use data that is not spatially resolved or is collected at timepoints that do not reflect the short life cycles of microorganisms. To address this gap, we assessed how viral and microbial communities change over a 48-hour period by sampling surface water and pore water compartments of the wastewater-impacted River Erpe in Germany. We sampled every 3 hours resulting in 32 samples for which we obtained metagenomes along with geochemical and metabolite measurements. From our metagenomes, we identified 6,500 viral and 1,033 microbial metagenome assembled genomes (MAGs) and found distinct community membership and abundance associated with each river compartment (e.g., Competibacteraceae in surfacewater and Sulfurimonadaceae in pore water). We show that 17% of our viral MAGs clustered to viruses from other ecosystems like wastewater treatment plants and rivers. Our results also indicated that 70% of the viral community was persistent in surface waters, whereas only 13% were persistent in the pore waters taken from the hyporheic zone. Finally, we predicted linkages between 73 viral genomes and 38 microbial genomes. These putatively linked hosts included members of the Competibacteraceae, which we suggest are potential contributors to river carbon and nitrogen cycling via denitrification and nitrogen fixation. Together, these findings demonstrate that members of the surface water microbiome from this urban river are stable over multiple diurnal cycles. These temporal insights raise important considerations for ecosystem models attempting to constrain dynamics of river biogeochemical cycles.

The Ecological Quality Status Assessment of Marine and Transitional Ecosystems: New Methods and Perspectives for the Future

Worldwide legislation emphasizes the need to monitor the health of aquatic ecosystems based on the response of biological quality elements to environmental conditions. A plethora of methodologies have been suggested in this sense. Lately, substantial efforts have led to the exploration of new biological quality elements from the meiobenthic compartment and the implementation of new methodologies based on environmental DNA. Due to their short life-cycles, meiofaunal organisms respond quickly to environmental variability. Changes in population dynamics and species composition are indicative of changes in environmental conditions. Recent pioneer studies have shown that biotic indices based on benthic foraminifera and nematodes can efficiently assess the health of transitional and marine ecosystems. The use of environmental DNA, as well as other fingerprinting techniques, is increasing in biomonitoring studies, and further calibrations are still needed to implement this method. The published papers in this Special Issue represent well the wide applicability of meiobenthic groups, i.e., benthic foraminifera and nematodes, allowing us to address a key ecological knowledge gap in order to convince decision makers and stakeholders about the advantage of introducing new biological quality elements in environmental biomonitoring.

Short-lived product returns forecasting when customers are unwilling to return the product: A grey-graphical evaluation and review technique

Consumer electronics, such as mobile phones, laptops, and tablets, encounter the challenge of short product life cycles due to the rapid advancement of technology, marketing models, and rapidly changing consumer tastes. This study attempts to provide a forecasting model for a short-lived product for closed-loop supply chain planning. Importantly, we model the setting where the customers prefer to store the product instead of returning it for various reasons such as security and secondary use. We proposed a generic method that can be implemented for any technology-driven product's returns and remanufacturing process. We used the Graphical Evaluation and Review Technique to calculate the probability and quantity of product returns, the quantity of modules, parts, materials, and disposal. Then, we employed the Grey-Graphical Evaluation and Review Technique to calculate the expected time interval for core returns and the expected interval for the availability of module/parts/material for reconditioning/ remanufacturing of the product. An illustrative case study demonstrates the results of the forecasting model. Further, we analyzed the effect of customers' unwillingness to return the product on the reverse network. Our analysis asserts that the customer storing an end-of-use product has a greater impact on the probability of overall product return. Our analysis found that when customers tend to return the product instead of storing it for secondary use, the equivalence probability of returns can increase up to 91 %. In addition, we also address the effect of product return on the “ecological rucksack” of mobile phones. This can help policymakers design hassle-free return experiences and attractive customer incentives.

Establishment of a high-efficiency transformation and genome editing method for an essential vegetable and medicine Solanum nigrum.

Solanum nigrum, which belongs to the Solanaceae family, is an essential plant for food and medicine. It has many important secondary compounds, including glycoproteins, glycoalkaloids, polyphenolics, and anthocyanin-rich purple berries, as well as many ideal characteristics such as self-fertilization, a short life cycle and a small genome size that make it a potential model plant for the study of secondary metabolism and fruit development. In this study, we report a highly efficient and convenient tissue culture, transformation and genome editing method for S. nigrum using leaf segments after 8 weeks of tissue culture, with a required period from transformation initiation to harvest of about 3.5 months. Our results also show multi-shoot regeneration per leaf segment and a 100% shoot regeneration efficiency in a shoot regeneration medium. Moreover, over 82% of kanamycin-resistant plants exhibited strong green fluorescence marker protein expression, with genetic integration confirmed by PCR results and green fluorescence protein expression in their T1 progeny. Furthermore, we successfully applied this transformation method to achieve an average of 83% genome editing efficiency of SnMYB1, a gene involved in regulating the anthocyanin biosynthetic pathway of S. nigrum in response to missing nutrients. Taken together, the combination of highly efficient tissue culture, transformation and genome editing systems can provide a powerful platform for supporting fundamental research on the molecular mechanisms of secondary metabolism, fruit development, and production of important compounds by biotechnology.

Micronucleus testing and nuclear abnormalities in freshwater organisms exposed acutely and chronically to titanium dioxide nanoparticles

Freshwater invertebrates are widely accepted models for ecotoxicological testing due to their global distribution, high abundance, high reproduction rates, short life cycles, rapid adaptation to laboratory conditions and high sensitivity to contaminants, including metal-based nanoparticles. Crusher invertebrates play a key role in the food chain of plant detritus in low-order forest rivers, transferring carbon and energy from the material to higher trophic. These disposers are very sensitive to water quality. Therefore, in this study, the objective was to investigate the responses of these shredder invertebrates to various metal-based nano particles in a sublethal exposure through water and food. The objectives of this work were centered on: evaluating the toxicity of titanium dioxide nanoparticles, erbium-doped titanium dioxide, and cobalt ferrites in aquatic fungi; check through antioxidant enzymes such as catalase, glutathione s-transferase and glutathione peroxidase, oxidative stress at the cellular level; test potential toxic effects at higher trophic levels using detritivorous invertebrates.

Insight into the nodal cells transcriptome of the streptophyte green alga Chara braunii S276.

Charophyceae are the most complex streptophyte algae, possessing tissue-like structures, rhizoids and a cellulose-pectin-based cell wall akin to embryophytes. Together with the Zygnematophyceae and the Coleochaetophycae, the Charophyceae form a grade in which the Zygnematophyceae share a last common ancestor with land plants. The availability of genomic data, its short life cycle, and the ease of non-sterile cultivation in the laboratory have made the species Chara braunii an emerging model system for streptophyte terrestrialization and early land plant evolution. In this study, tissue containing nodal cells was prepared under the stereomicroscope, and an RNA-seq dataset was generated and compared to transcriptome data from whole plantlets. In both samples, transcript coverage was high for genes encoding ribosomal proteins and a homolog of the putative PAX3- and PAX7-binding protein 1. Gene ontology was used to classify the putative functions of the differently expressed genes. In the nodal cell sample, main upregulated molecular functions were related to protein, nucleic acid, ATP- and DNA binding. Looking at specific genes, several signaling-related genes and genes encoding sugar-metabolizing enzymes were found to be expressed at a higher level in the nodal cell sample, while photosynthesis-and chloroplast-related genes were expressed at a comparatively lower level. We detected the transcription of 21 different genes encoding DUF4360-containing cysteine-rich proteins. The data contribute to the growing understanding of Charophyceae developmental biology by providing a first insight into the transcriptome composition of Chara nodal cells.

Competitive advantages of Najas marina L. in a process of littoral colonization in the lake Velenjsko jezero (Slovenija)

Najas marina is the dominant macrophyte species in Velenjsko jezero. It appeared in the lake in 1997 and soon prevailed over the species Myriophyllum spicatum L. and Potamogeton crispus L., which used to be the two most abundant species in the lake in the past. The physicochemical and geomorphological characteristics of the lake are discussed in relation to the attributes of Najas marina, presenting competitive advantages in this environment. Conditions in the lake such as warm water and unstable sediment enabled successful growth and life strategy of Najas marina, which is a summer-annual plant with short life cycle, quick propagation from seeds and a very extensive root system.

The Development Status and Countermeasures of Digital Media Art

This paper discusses the definition and characteristics of the art of digital media, introduces the application fields of digital media, and analyses the current situation faced by digital media art: the development of digital media art is facing the problem of rapid technological update and short life cycle; the knowledge and technology threshold of digital media art is high; the protection and inheritance of digital media art works have also attracted attention; the commercialization of digital media art is also an urgent problem. The commercialisation of art is also a problem that needs to be solved urgently. Finally, a series of countermeasures are proposed: the government and academic organisations should increase their support and investment in digital media art, and provide artists with a better creative environment and resources. Artists should strengthen their technical skills and interdisciplinary co-operation in order to adapt to new technologies and creative demands. Relevant departments should also strengthen copyright protection and market supervision to provide a good environment for the commercialisation of digital media art.

Determination of volatile profiles of woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca) during fruit maturation by HS-SPME GC-MS.

Aroma is an important agronomic trait for strawberries, and the improvement of fruit flavor is a key goal in current strawberry breeding programs. Fragaria vesca (also known as woodland strawberry) has become an excellent model plant with exquisite flavor, a small genome size, and a short life cycle. Thus, the comprehensive identification of fruit volatiles and their accumulation pattern of F. vesca strawberries are very important and necessary to the fruit aroma study. This study examined the volatile profile changes from the fruits of three F. vesca genotypes during maturation using the headspace solid-phase microextraction-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (HS-SPME GC-MS) with multivariate analysis. A total of 191 putative volatile compounds were identified, while 152, 159, and 175 volatiles were detected in 20-30 dap fruits of Hawaii 4 (HW), Reugen (RG), and Yellow Wonder (YW), respectively. Aldehydes and alcohols predominated in the early time point while esters were predominant during the late time point. Ketones were the dominant compounds from F. vesca strawberries fruits at the ripe stage. Certain genotype-characteristic volatiles were identified, including eugenol, γ-octalactone, and δ-decalactone were only detected in YW, and mesifurane was found in HW. RG and YW showed very similar volatile compositions, but YW presented a greater number of volatiles and RG yielded a higher content. Differences in the volatile composition may be primarily due to genetic relationships. The metabolic changes that occurred during fruit ripening and characteristic volatiles will be a useful reference for future strawberry volatile studies. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Recent Developments in Two-Dimensional Materials-Based Membranes for Oil-Water Separation.

The industrialization witnessed in the last century has resulted in an unprecedented increase in water pollution. In particular, the water pollution induced by oil contaminants from oil spill accidents, as well as discharges from pharmaceutical, oil/gas, and metal processing industries, have raised concerns due to their potential to pose irreversible threats to the ecosystems. Therefore, the effective treating of these large volumes of oily wastewater is an inevitable challenge to address. Separating oil-water mixtures by membranes has been an attractive technology due to the high oil removal efficiency and low energy consumption. However, conventional oil-water separation membranes may not meet the complex requirements for the sustainable treatment of wastewater due to their relatively shorter life cycle, lower chemical and thermal stability, and permeability/selectivity trade-off. Recent advancements in two-dimensional (2D) materials have provided opportunities to address these challenges. In this article, we provide a brief review of the most recent advancements in oil-water separation membranes modified with 2D materials, with a focus on MXenes, graphenes, metal-organic frameworks, and covalent organic frameworks. The review briefly covers the backgrounds, concepts, fabrication methods, and the most recent representative studies. Finally, the review concludes by describing the challenges and future research directions.

Zebrafish as model organisms for toxicological evaluations in the field of food science.

Food safety has long been an area of concern. The selection of stable and efficient model organisms is particularly important for food toxicology studies. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) are small model vertebrates, and 70% of human genes have at least one zebrafish ortholog. Zebrafish have advantages as model organisms due to their short life cycle, strong reproductive ability, easy rearing, and low cost. Zebrafish embryos have the advantage of being sensitive to the breeding environment and thus have been used as biosensors. Zebrafish and their embryos have been widely used for food toxicology assessments. This review provides a systematic and comprehensive summary of food toxicology studies using zebrafish as model organisms. First, we briefly introduce the multidimensional mechanisms and structure-activity relationship studies of food toxicological assessment. Second, we categorize these studies according to eight types of hazards in foods, including mycotoxins, pesticides, antibiotics, heavy metals, endocrine disruptors, food additives, nanoparticles, and other food-related ingredients. Finally, we list the applications of zebrafish in food toxicology studies in line with future research prospects, aiming to provide a valuable reference for researchers in the field of food science.

The Effect Of Product Innovation, And Process Innovation On Competitive Advantages And Marketing Performance Of Snack Products

Small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) play an important role in Indonesia's economic growth by increasing income or employment opportunities. MSMEs contribute significantly to Indonesia's economic growth by creating jobs that produce goods and services that society needs. Every MSMEs must be able to survive and continue to grow, along with the increasing number of MSMEs every year with increasingly fierce competition. However, because MSMEs have a short product life cycle and are heavily influenced by consumer preferences. Innovation is one of the most effective strategies to maintain business and increase competitiveness. On the other hand, developing a new product is difficult because it is expensive and requires the product to have a competitive advantage over competing products. Making it difficult for MSMEs to do so because of limited capital. This is not only a problem for MSMEs in Indonesia, including Jember. This condition encourages the Government of Jember Regency to continue to strive to improve MSMEs through various activities or events that involve MSME business actors in snack products so they can market their products and improve their branding. This will certainly encourage the competitiveness and innovation of MSME snack product business actors, so that their products are unique and superior compared to their competitors. Therefore, MSME snack business actors need to optimize product innovation and process innovation to increase competitive advantage and marketing performance. Based on these phenomena and problems, the development of MSME food products in Sumbersari District, Kaliwates District, and Patrang District as central areas are opportunities to increase income and create jobs in the Jember Regency area. This study uses an associative research method with a questionnaire as a data collection instrument which is then distributed to MSME owners of snack products as respondents. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of product innovation and process innovation on the competitive advantage and marketing performance of MSME snack products in the Jember Regency.

Online data-driven concurrent product-process-supply chain design in the early stage of new product development

The ability to accelerate the discovery of product innovation ideas is critical for manufacturers with short life cycles, such as smartphones. Companies with short product lifespans require innovative strategies to improve their products based on customer needs. Three-dimensional concurrent engineering (3DCE) has the potential to speed up the process of developing new products. On the other side, the availability of online data, such as social media and intellectual property, has the potential to identify and prioritize product, technology, and supplier opportunities in a cost-effective, quick, and real-time manner. This study proposes an online data-driven concurrent product, process, and supply chain design (3DCE) for linking customer requirements to potential technology and supplier opportunities in early-stage new product development. Three case studies on the leading smartphone industry demonstrate the proposed method's feasibility and effectiveness. To identify customer requirements, opinions from social media data are collected. Product opportunities are developed using latent Dirichlet allocation to identify product topics and sentiment analysis to assess satisfaction levels. Then, a novel approach by association rule mining is developed to mine specific customer requirements for each promising topic. In the 3DCE approach, the potential technology and supplier opportunities are tailored to specific customer requirements based on intellectual property mining. Finally, this study discovers improvement ideas and potential alternative solutions for product development with an unsupervised approach. The proposed method has also been validated and aligns with successful innovation products by Apple, Samsung, and Huawei.

Challenges for recycling medium-density fiberboard (MDF)

Medium-density fiberboard (MDF) is commonly used for furniture manufactured. The increase in demand and the short relative lifecycle have increased the generated waste volume, increasing concerns about disposal. Despite being mainly composed of input from a renewable source, very little of this material is recycled. In this sense, this aim article performed a literature overview of MDF recycling technologies presenting the challenges and perspectives to overcome this problem. The relevant articles considered for this review were selected from the Web of Science and the Scopus databases. The first step for MDF recycling is its disintegration, which inevitably changes the properties of the wood fibers from MDF waste. Allied with this, the other constituents, like resin, are a challenge to a recycling process that, a priori, is more appropriately carried out only with fibers. Ideally, it would be recycling the MDF in new panels, however, due to the mentioned issues, it is not possible in its entirety, and in a continuous way (in several recycling cycles). As MDF waste is a material with caloric capacity during combustion, converting it to energy is a possibility, especially when other more sustainable alternatives are difficult. An emerging alternative is the pyrolysis and enzymolysis of MDF to obtain valued products. Further studies are needed, both for the disintegration processes to preserve the characteristics of the MDF fibers and the other constituents together with the MDF to favor its recycling. It is lacking evaluation of the economic, and principally environmental issues of each recycling alternative.

Cultivation of Arabidopsis thaliana in a Laboratory Environment

Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heynh. is one of the major model organisms used in different areas of science: plant physiology and biochemistry, developmental biology, genetic engineering, genome editing, etc. These model plants possess the following advantages: short life cycle, simple cultivation, sequenced and rather well annotated genome, and numerous available reports concerning transcriptome, proteome, metabolic pathways, and mutations. The technique of A. thaliana cultivation under laboratory conditions is an important aspect of investigations dealing with this plant as a model. Choice of the growing mode depends on the goal of investigation as well as on quantity and type of required biomaterial. The aim of this work is to review the techniques of A. thaliana cultivation and their applicability to different tasks.

Factors Affecting the Effectiveness of Internal Control in Chinese SMEs

SMEs represent economic vitality and can reflect the degree of development of a country's economy; the more developed the economy, the greater the number of SMEs. However, the survival environment of SMEs is complicated, resulting in short life cycle and weak risk resistance. Fortunately, China's SME business environment is getting better and better. At this time, if SMEs want to survive in the competition and develop in the survival, they just need to improve their own business management and risk prevention ability. And internal control is one of the important management tools and functions to enhance market competitiveness.Internal control for SMEs is equivalent to capillaries for people. Any organ or part of a human being is covered with capillaries, and internal control is also ubiquitous throughout the entire life cycle of SMEs, covering and soaking in all aspects, whether at the strategic level, or at the business level; at the financial level or at the management level; at the start-up stage, or at the growth, maturity and transformation stages; at the governance level, or at the management and business levels; at the sales department, or at the production department; all have internal control. Therefore, internal control in SMEs is no longer a multiple choice question of whether to design and implement, but a must-answer question of how to reasonably design and effectively implement.High quality internal control is not something that can be achieved overnight, nor is it something that is set in stone. In other words, the design and implementation of internal control is a dynamic process of change. The demand and supply factors for internal controls in economic activities and business management are not static, but are constantly changing, and these changes, in turn, often require changes in internal controls. Moreover, internal controls should not be passively accepted, but actively created according to the needs. The question discussed in this study is: What are the practical difficulties in establishing an effective internal control system in SMEs? Based on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Theory and Demand and Supply Theory, and using the interview method, this study interviewed managers of 32 SMEs in China from their business objectives to the five elements of internal control, using the SPADER (Situation, Problem, Alternative, Decision, Executive, Review.) and PDCA (Plan, Do, Check and Act) cycles in operations management and quality management as research ideas. And found that currently all Chinese SME owners have recognized the necessity and importance of internal control to varying degrees, but firstly, they do not know how to do it, secondly, there is not sufficient urgency, and thirdly, it is difficult to realize systematically, in addition, due to financial and capacity constraints, they are not in a condition to give the corresponding resource allocation and investment.

Developing a project-controlling model in telecommunications companies

Subject. The article considers the investment project management system. Objectives. The aim is to develop a project-controlling model in telecommunications companies. Methods. The study employs logical and systems approaches, general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, and comparative analysis. Results. We developed a project-controlling model for companies operating in the telecommunications sector, including the description of key input data to the system; the main stages of project development and control. The paper presents recommendations on the development of a project management reporting system and a decision management subsystem. Conclusions. The advantages of the proposed project-controlling model include the ability to manage a balanced set of heterogeneous (financial and non-financial) goals that cover all project perspectives, from technology to finance; the use of risk management approaches and tools to identify project weaknesses, bottlenecks, and external threats; the formation of a system of benchmarks that enables to track the impact of emerging deviations at the level of current goals on the achievement of project’s strategic goal; the use of preventive control to predict deviations; periodic analysis of real possibilities of project implementation to prevent its inefficiency. The proposed model can be applied at telecommunications sector enterprises, and at enterprises of other industrial sectors characterized by high uncertainty of the external environment, a short product life cycle, and requiring regular investments.

An overview of the SWOT analysis in India's pharmaceutical supply chain

PurposeThe Indian pharmaceutical industry has contributed significantly to global healthcare by securing superior-quality, inexpensive and reachable medicines worldwide. However, supply chain management (SCM) has been challenging due to constantly shifting requirements for short lifecycles of products, the convergence of industry and changeable realities on the ground. This study aims to identify, assess and prioritize the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities of the pharmaceutical SCM environment in India.Design/methodology/approachThe paper employs a Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat (SWOT) analysis and recognizes strategies to utilize the advantages of the strengths and opportunities, rectify weaknesses and resolve threats.FindingsA variety of strategies that could have a positive effect on the Indian pharmaceutical business are presented. Findings and suggested strategies can significantly advance knowledge, enhance understanding and contribute to the growth of a successful SCM for the Indian pharmaceutical sector.Originality/valueThis paper would act as a roadmap to greater comprehension of the market leaders and market leaders' operating climate. The findings from this study will offer academic scholars and business practitioners deeper insights into the environment of SCM.