Organic Farming in Europe by 2010: Scenarios for the future

How will organic farming in Europe evolve by the year 2010? The answer provides a basis for the development of different policy options and for anticipating the future relative competitiveness of organic and conventional farming. The authors tackle the question using an innovative approach based on scenario analysis, offering the reader a range of scenarios that encompass the main possible evolutions of the organic farming sector. This book constitutes an innovative and reliable decision-supporting tool for policy makers, farmers and the private sector. Researchers and students operating in the field of agricultural economics will also benefit from the methodological approach adopted for the scenario analysis

A framework for the selection of the right nuclear power plant

Civil nuclear reactors are used for the production of electrical energy. In the nuclear industry vendors propose several nuclear reactor designs with a size from 35–45 MWe up to 1600–1700 MWe. The choice of the right design is a multidimensional problem since a utility has to include not only financial factors as levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) and internal rate of return (IRR), but also the so called “external factors” like the required spinning reserve, the impact on local industry and the social acceptability. Therefore it is necessary to balance advantages and disadvantages of each design during the entire life cycle of the plant, usually 40–60 years. In the scientific literature there are several techniques for solving this multidimensional problem. Unfortunately it does not seem possible to apply these methodologies as they are, since the problem is too complex and it is difficult to provide consistent and trustworthy expert judgments. This paper fills the gap, proposing a two-step framework to choosing the best nuclear reactor at the pre-feasibility study phase. The paper shows in detail how to use the methodology, comparing the choice of a small-medium reactor (SMR) with a large reactor (LR), characterised, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (2006), by an electrical output respectively lower and higher than 700 MWe

Energy performance forecasting of residential buildings using fuzzy approaches

The energy consumption used for domestic purposes in Europe is, to a considerable extent, due to heating and cooling. This energy is produced mostly by burning fossil fuels, which has a high negative environmental impact. The characteristics of a building are an important factor to determine the necessities of heating and cooling loads. Therefore, the study of the relevant characteristics of the buildings, regarding the heating and cooling needed to maintain comfortable indoor air conditions, could be very useful in order to design and construct energy-efficient buildings. In previous studies, different machine-learning approaches have been used to predict heating and cooling loads from the set of variables: relative compactness, surface area, wall area, roof area, overall height, orientation, glazing area and glazing area distribution. However, none of these methods are based on fuzzy logic. In this research, we study two fuzzy logic approaches, i.e., fuzzy inductive reasoning (FIR) and adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system (ANFIS), to deal with the same problem. Fuzzy approaches obtain very good results, outperforming all the methods described in previous studies except one. In this work, we also study the feature selection process of FIR methodology as a pre-processing tool to select the more relevant variables before the use of any predictive modelling methodology. It is proven that FIR feature selection provides interesting insights into the main building variables causally related to heating and cooling loads. This allows better decision making and design strategies, since accurate cooling and heating load estimations and correct identification of parameters that affect building energy demands are of high importance to optimize building designs and equipment specifications.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Fuzzy Transfer Pricing World: On the Analysis of Transfer Pricing with Fuzzy Logic Techniques

The arm’s length analysis of international transfer prices of multinational firms lacks sound methodological approach of the so-called function and risk analysis. In practice, such analyses are descriptive. Derived from Zadeh’s mathematical theory of fuzzy sets, this paper investigates a quantitative approach to identify the function and risk pattern of related parties of multinational companies. We illustrate our fuzzy logic approach with a simple case.

An empirical survey: Can green marketing really entice customers to pay more?

This research integrated the Social Cognition Theory and the Engel Kollat Blackwell customers’ purchasing model (EKB model) to synthetically discuss the three kinds of possible relations comprising “does negatively entice”, “does possibly entice” and “does positively entice” between green-marketing and customers’ purchasing and payment, with consideration given to environmental-protection issues. Based on the measured results, the most contributed contention of this research not only utilized three cross-analytical theories consisting of the social cognition theory (SCT) , the Fuzzy theory (FT) and the EKB model, and the novel F-ANP of the MCDM methodology to evaluate the collected data but it also manifested that Green-marketing does possibly entice customers to pay more (GMPECPM). These measured results have distinctly stunned the fundamental assumption in the traditional green-marketing research field that customers were supposed to be willing to pay more for green products and services because they were supporting green initiatives and helping environmental-protection. Further, major future research directions were also briefly demonstrated in this research as (1) the collection data have to be strengthened to gather more empirical customer feedback, corporate management comments, and professional scholars’ reports; (2) enterprises have to resoundingly establish a green-branding initiative after successfully executing green-marketing strategies.Green Marketing (G-marketing); Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM); Analytical Network Process (F-ANP).

ADJECTIVISH INDONESIAN VERBS: A COGNITIVE SEMANTICS PERSPECTIVE

There has been a deeply rooted belief that parts of speech can be discretely categorized. It is somethingwidely accepted in linguistics. There is a tendency of taking for granted of such an academic beliefTherefore it happens from time to time without being thought critically the degree of its empirical truthThose studying linguistics will sooner or later read many linguistics text books stating that once a word hasits own category, there will be no potential of the word to have another word category. Most people learninglinguistics considered it as something necessary to occur. This linguistic phenomenon is not just taken tobe true, yet it comes to be taken as something conclusive. Factually, there are Indonesian verbs behavingadjectivishly. They are, to some extent, verbs, yet to another one, they are adjectives. It is evidenced by thefact that they have the properties of adjective. These linguistic phenomena demonstrate that there are Indonesian verbs that have stronger quality of their verbness. It means that there are Indonesian verbs thaare verbier than others. Based on the data found, Indonesian transitive verbs have higher potential to behaveadjectivishly than the Indonesian intransitive ones. A certain kind of Indonesian transitive verbs can betreated adjectivishly. This finding shows that the degree of word category discreteness, particularly verb, isnot something clear and cut. There are possibilities to emerge that word categories can, to some extent, be fuzzy. The fuzzy quality can be referred to the attributions of adjective to the Indonesian transitive verbs. Imeans that categorizing word class is not as simple as we thought before

Fuzzy Interval-Valued Multi Criteria Based Decision Making for Ranking Features in Multi-Modal 3D Face Recognition

Soodamani Ramalingam, 'Fuzzy interval-valued multi criteria based decision making for ranking features in multi-modal 3D face recognition', Fuzzy Sets and Systems, In Press version available online 13 June 2017. This is an Open Access paper, made available under the Creative Commons license CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This paper describes an application of multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) for multi-modal fusion of features in a 3D face recognition system. A decision making process is outlined that is based on the performance of multi-modal features in a face recognition task involving a set of 3D face databases. In particular, the fuzzy interval valued MCDM technique called TOPSIS is applied for ranking and deciding on the best choice of multi-modal features at the decision stage. It provides a formal mechanism of benchmarking their performances against a set of criteria. The technique demonstrates its ability in scaling up the multi-modal features.Peer reviewedProo