This article describes the study of the eco-impact of plastic and paper bags using the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) technique under three different options: usage and disposal criteria with the existing usage behavior to reuse and governmental policies to recycle (option1), usage and disposal criteria as per consumers’ perceptions if systems are in place (option2) and usage and disposal ...

In this paper, the authors propose a non-linear cost function based on ecological considerations for lot-size planning. The classical approaches of lot-size optimization, the Wagner-Whitin algorithm and the Part-Period Balancing heuristic, are enhanced with so-called eco-factors. These eco-enhanced approaches combined with eco-balancing help to reduce overall production costs. Simultaneously, t...

This paper mainly provides one new nature inspired Energy Conversation Optimization (ECO) method tosearch for the optimal sensor position of sensor network in the typical tunnels, fully covering the tunnel anddynamically locating the high-speed train in the tunnel. Firstly, one objective of this study is to briefly intro-duce the framework of transmitting the sensor’s data in th...

Directional distance function (DDF) is a recognized technique for measuring efficiency while incorporating undesirable outputs. This approach allows for desirable outputs to be expanded while undesirable outputs are contracted simultaneously. A drawback of the DDF approach is that the direction vector to the production boundary is fixed arbitrarily, which may not provide the best efficiency mea...

The concept of eco-efficiency is here presented as a valuable contribution to a sustainable regional development in the European Union. Eco-efficiency and dematerialization strategies are more and more established at the business level where practical and easily understandable methods and management tools have been developed and applied in the past years and decades. On this (micro) level, case...

In this report, we present the Eco aspect-oriented framework for Java. Eco’s main goals are a flexible and open design and allowing static type-checking. Eco realizes its flexibility and openness by employing a pure and well-designed object-oriented approach. Static type-checking is realized by exploiting the novel Java generics feature. In this report, we evaluate Eco with respect to these goa...

A lake ecosystem is continuously exposed to environmental stressors with non-linear interrelationships between abiotic factors and aquatic organisms. Ecosystem health depicts the capacity of system to respond to external perturbations and still maintain structure and function. In this study, we explored the effects of abiotic factors on ecosystem health of Taihu Lake in 2013, China from a syste...

Endocrine-cerebro-osteodysplasia (ECO) syndrome is a recessive genetic disorder associated with multiple congenital defects in endocrine, cerebral, and skeletal systems that is caused by a missense mutation in the mitogen-activated protein kinase-like intestinal cell kinase (ICK) gene. In algae and invertebrates, ICK homologs are involved in flagellar formation and ciliogenesis, respectively. H...

The Evidence Ontology (ECO) is a structured, controlled vocabulary for capturing evidence in biological research. ECO includes diverse terms for categorizing evidence that supports annotation assertions including experimental types, computational methods, author statements and curator inferences. Using ECO, annotation assertions can be distinguished according to the evidence they are based on s...