The pursuit of happiness is an important goal for many people. However, surprisingly little scientific research has focused on the question of how happiness can be increased and then sustained, probably because of pessimism engendered by the concepts of genetic determinism and hedonic adaptation. Nevertheless, emerging sources of optimism exist regarding the possibility of permanent increases i...

The Iternet of Things(IOT) is acknowledged as one of the most significant areas of upcoming technology and is gaining vast attention from a wide range of industries, Agriculture, Education, Telehealth, etc. IoT is a combination of various resource constrained networks like WSN and MANET where the limited battery power is a serious issue. In addition to this reliability and performance of the ph...

Evidence shows that investments made in the IT (Information Technology) area have a positive effect on organizational performance, even if these benefits are difficult to measure and associated with the real intention of those investments. IT presents itself as a tool and not as a guarantee of success, as this determining factor depends on how it is used and directed towards strategic alignment...

In this work, we present a hybrid infrastructure, named NECADA, which supports the execution of a detailed simulation model representing all building processes on a supercomputer, cloud, cluster of computers or desktop environments. The aim of this infrastructure is to find optimal values for various building parameters and the associated impacts to reduce the energy demand or consumption of th...

The need for sustainable development has been widely recognized and sustainable development has become a hot topic of various disciplines even though the role of ergonomics in it is seldom reported or considered. This study conducts a systematic survey of research publications in the fields of ergonomics and sustainable development over the past two decades (1992-2011), in order to identify the...

The Biosphere Reserve (BR) concept aims at encouraging sustainable development (SD) towards sustainability on the ground by promoting three core functions: conservation, development, and logistic support. Sweden and Ukraine exemplify the diverse governance contexts that BRs need to cope with. We assessed how the BR concept and its core functions are captured in national legislations. The result...

Rural Development is a priority in Europe and it is supported by specific, financial programmes. At the same time, sustainability is the key word for the European Union to construct programmes and policies for all human activities. However, measuring sustainability of rural areas is not easy, due to their particular features. The improvement of knowledge on sustainability in rural areas is impo...