Toward sustainable and smart cities in Africa: A review and challenges

The paper presents the main challenges to be overcoming in order in the future cities we have sustainable and smart cities in Africa. The analysis highlines confirm the existence of huge challenges, problems and restriction about social, economics, and environmental and political issues in Africa. This paper analysing the main constraints to urban development in the African Continent and confirms that smart cities only will be possible in Africa when the current problems of sustainable development (economic, social, environmental and political) are overcoming. However, the paper allows us understand why this is the first paper on the literature to address the topic of smart cities in Africa. Should be noted that in this continent there are at least two of the world's largest cities in terms of inhabitants and the growth of population rate of the African continent is about 2.5%. So, this is a world problem to minimize. The concern about the problems of sustainable development in this region and how to promote it towards sustainable cities competes to all and the follow way will affect all of the world sustainable development.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Towards sustainability in European agricultural firms

European agricultural activity plays an important role in European and world food security through the agricultural production, supply and international trade. The main aim of this paper was analyses the agricultural sustainability of the twenty-nine Member States of the European Union in terms of economics, environmental, social and political activity. Information and data comes from FADN database from the European Commission. The methodology includes the min-max approach and multivariate methods, namely, Component Principal Analysis and Cluster analysis. The results confirm three groups of European countries, namely, the North and Central countries; the New Member States and the Mediterranean counties. The results also confirm that European agriculture firms and respective countries had a medium sustainability. The main conclusion highlines confirms the importance of the sustainability as a tool to better adjust agricultural policies among the European Member States.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Caracterização de Genótipos de Cebola Quanto ao Conteúdo de Quercetina.

bitstream/CPACT-2010/12918/1/documento-277.pd

Smart and sustainable cities in the Mediterranean region: The contribution of short supply chains of food

The cities around the world in general, and in the Mediterranean area in particular, are facing tremendous challenges at the environmental, social, economic, and institutional levels, due to the urbanization trend, environmental climatic changes and challenges due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, cities need to be sustainable and smart in the future. An economically important and innovative sector in urban areas is food security. Nowadays, most of the literature explores the concept of smart cities from the point of view of information and communications technology, indeed, the connection with the sustainability aspects of the food supply chain and the ways to operationalize that, remains unsolved. This paper tries to overcome this gap in the literature. The main aim is to analyze the contribution of the short supply chain of food in terms of sustainability in smart cities, regarding current urban trends in cities in general and in Mediterranean areas in particular. The methodology was based on a literature review and includes quantitative and qualitative analysis. The results confirm the existence of positive impacts in the short supply chains of food in urban areas in terms of sustainability. Despite the existence of a considerable number of papers about smart cities and ICT-related topics, the benefits from society of short supply chains of food, and the linkage among the topics and subjects, remain unreferred to or with a limited knowledge exchange. The conclusions of this paper will be helpful for public decision makers to implement policies in order to promote the sustainability of Mediterranean cities.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Structural modification of TiO2 nanorod films with an influence on the photovoltaic efficiency of a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC)

Structural modification of TiO2 nanorod films with an influence on the photovoltaic efficiency of a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC). Lijian Meng a,b)∗, Can Lic) and M.P. dos Santos d) a). Departamento de Física, Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto, Rua Dr. António Bernardino de Almeida, 431, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal. b). Centro de Física, Universidade do Minho, 4800-058 Guimarães, Portugal. c). State Key Laboratory of Catalysis, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 457 Zhongshan Road, Dalian 116023,China. d). CEFITEC,Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia,FCT,Universidade Nova de Lisboa,2829-516Caparica,Portugal/Escola de Ciências e Tecnologia,ECT,Universidade de Évora,7000-671Évora,Portugal Abstract TiO2 nanorod films have been deposited on ITO substrates by dc reactive magnetron sputtering technique. The structures of these nanorod films were modified by the variation of the oxygen pressure during the sputtering process. Although all these TiO2 nanorod films deposited at different oxygen pressures show an anatase structure, the orientation of the nanorod films varies with the oxygen pressure. Only a very weak (101) diffraction peak can be observed for the TiO2 nanorod film prepared at low oxygen pressure. However, as the oxygen pressure is increased, the (220) diffraction peak appears and the intensity of this diffraction peak is increased with the oxygen pressure. The results of the SEM show that these TiO2 nanorods are perpendicular to the ITO substrate. At low oxygen pressure, these sputtered TiO2 nanorods stick together and have a dense structure. As the oxygen pressure is increased, these sputtered TiO2 nanorods get separated gradually and have a porous structure. The optical transmittance of these TiO2 nanorod films has been measured and then fitted by OJL model. The porosities of the TiO2 nanorod films have been calculated. The TiO2 nanorod film prepared at high oxygen pressure shows a high porosity. The dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have been assembled using these TiO2 nanorod films prepared at different oxygen pressures as photoelectrode. The optimum performance was achieved for the DSSC using the TiO2 nanorod film with the highest (220) diffraction peak and the highest porosity

Rotação de culturas. XXIII. Efeitos das culturas de inverno sobre o rendimento de grãos e sobre algumas características agronômicas de plantas de soja, num período de nove anos.

bitstream/item/133654/1/ID12354-1988-1989sojaresultados-p88-99.pdfTrabalho apresentado na XVII Reunião de Pesquisa de Soja da Região Sul, Porto Alegre, 1989

Rotação de culturas. VII. Efeito dos cultivos de inverno sobre o rendimento de grãos e em algumas características agronômicas das plantas de soja, no período agrícola de 1979 a 1985.

bitstream/item/133859/1/ID12342-1984-1985sojaresultados-p62-76.pdfTrabalho apresentado na XIII Reunião de Pesquisa de Soja da Região Sul, Porto Alegre, 1984

Factors affecting banking performance in Pakistan: An empirical investigation

Pakistan is one of the economically emerging countries in South Asia. The current trends of Pakistan’s economy are on the path to outshining the former year’s growth rate. The unrelenting performances in the agriculture and services sector and outperformance of the large-scale manufacturing sector. Inflation and the fiscal deficit were confined, whereas revenue growth has surpassed last year’s level. However, Pakistan’s populace is 200 million. However, not many individuals bank with a regulated banking system. The financial system in Pakistan introduced a new phenomenon of the Islamic Banking system that is not a recent idea but has been in the mainstream now for more than a decade. There are several factors internally and externally that stimulate the performance of banks. In this paper, we have tried to investigate how these factors influence the performance of banks in Pakistan. We have used the ROE measure as a dependent variable to evaluate banks' profitability. We have taken the size, age, equity and financial development of the banks. Some external/country-specific factors are also taken into consideration as independent variables. This paper uses panel data from six banks in Pakistan for seven years (2010 to 2017).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio