Agricultural Structures and Mechanization

In our globalized world, the need to produce quality and safe food has increased exponentially in recent decades to meet the growing demands of the world population. This expectation is being met by acting at multiple levels, but mainly through the introduction of new technologies in the agricultural and agri-food sectors. In this context, agricultural, livestock, agro-industrial buildings, and agrarian infrastructure are being built on the basis of a sophisticated design that integrates environmental, landscape, and occupational safety, new construction materials, new facilities, and mechanization with state-of-the-art automatic systems, using calculation models and computer programs. It is necessary to promote research and dissemination of results in the field of mechanization and agricultural structures, specifically with regard to farm building and rural landscape, land and water use and environment, power and machinery, information systems and precision farming, processing and post-harvest technology and logistics, energy and non-food production technology, systems engineering and management, and fruit and vegetable cultivation systems. This Special Issue focuses on the role that mechanization and agricultural structures play in the production of high-quality food and continuously over time. For this reason, it publishes highly interdisciplinary quality studies from disparate research fields including agriculture, engineering design, calculation and modeling, landscaping, environmentalism, and even ergonomics and occupational risk prevention

A History of Materials and Technologies Development

The purpose of the book is to provide the students with the text that presents an introductory knowledge about the development of materials and technologies and includes the most commonly available information on human development. The idea of the publication has been generated referring to the materials taken from the organic and non-organic evolution of nature. The suggested texts might be found a purposeful tool for the University students proceeding with studying engineering due to the fact that all subjects in this particular field more or less have to cover the history and development of the studied object. It is expected that studying different materials and technologies will help the students with a better understanding of driving forces, positive and negative consequences of technological development, etc

The real exchange rate and economic performance: insights from the Malaysian experience

The real exchange rate (RER), theoretically defined as the relative price of tradable goods to non-tradable goods, plays an important role in economic performance and structural adjustment in developing and emerging market economies. However, the debate on the measurement of the RER, the economic impact of RER misalignment, and the role of RER in economic performance are far from settled. This thesis aims to contribute to this debate by undertaking an in-depth study of the Malaysian experience. Following a state-setting survey of macroeconomic policy and performance of the Malaysian economy during 1960-2020 in Chapter 2, the thesis contains three core chapters written in the form of self-contained research essays. The analysis is based on a new dataset compiled from published and unpublished Malaysian sources and international databases. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method is used in the econometric analysis. This method has the advantage of estimating long-run and short-run relationships between variables while minimising the possible endogeneity bias by reparametrising the model in error-correction form. The first core chapter (Chapter 3) investigates the source of RER movements and assesses how much RER is misaligned from the relevant macroeconomic fundamentals. The comparative analysis of RER measurement undertaken at the outset of the empirical analysis suggests that the standard IMF index that does not distinguish between tradable and non-tradable production tends to overstate RER changes. The analysis based on a theoretically consistent RER index indicates that technological progress, capital inflows, and government interventions play a significant role in Malaysia's long-term RER movement. Meanwhile, the exchange rate regime choice influenced the RER movement in the short-term. Throughout the period selected for analysis, the Malaysian economy experienced several episodes of RER misalignment, with undervaluation dominating the overall pattern. Chapter 4 analyses the impact of RER misalignment on total economic and sectoral performance covering the years 1970 to 2018. The result indicates that overall misalignment does not have an impact on economic performance. However, RER undervaluation promotes economic growth with a significant positive impact of RER undervaluation on the tradable sector driving the outcome. Chapter 5 examines the role of RER in export performance in the growing importance of global production sharing (GPS) and China's role in the global trade market. The export performance is analysed using panel data from 1992 to 2019, and the result indicated here is that RER depreciation promotes export performance in most product categories. Products exported within global production networks (GPNs) are found to be highly sensitive to the RER changes. The finding also demonstrates that China's rise in the global economy has had a significant negative impact on manufactured goods exported from Malaysia. The key findings of the three core chapters and policy recommendations are summarised in the concluding chapter

Testing of Materials and Elements in Civil Engineering

This book was proposed and organized as a means to present recent developments in the field of testing of materials and elements in civil engineering. For this reason, the articles highlighted in this editorial relate to different aspects of testing of different materials and elements in civil engineering, from building materials to building structures. The current trend in the development of testing of materials and elements in civil engineering is mainly concerned with the detection of flaws and defects in concrete elements and structures, and acoustic methods predominate in this field. As in medicine, the trend is towards designing test equipment that allows one to obtain a picture of the inside of the tested element and materials. Interesting results with significance for building practices were obtained

Texas Register

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code

Manual de riscos elétricos : introdução às redes de proteção

Tese de mestrado. Mestrado em Engenharia de Segurança e Higiene Ocupacionais. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 201