PLM is a widely recognized approach to reduce time to market, increase process efficiency and control product lifecycle. However, serviceoriented management is becoming increasingly popular to create new business infrastructures able to self-organize tangible and intangible manufacturing assets in a distributed and interoperable way [1]. The final scope is to manage not simply the Product but a...

Plant-pollinator interactions are often thought to have been a decisive factor in the diversification of flowering plants, but to be of little or no importance for the maintenance of existing plant diversity. In a recent opinion paper, Pauw (2013 Trends Ecol. Evol. 28, 30-37. (doi:10.1016/j.tree.2012.07.019)) challenged this view by proposing a mechanism of diversity maintenance based on pollin...

It is well known that growth and yield of horticultural crops can be greatly increased by optimizing the nutritional status of the root environment. Based on plant response, involving numerous fertilizer experiments for the different plants and substrates involved, guidelines can be proposed for optimal nutrient solution and pot substrate conditions. The main factors to be considered are sampli...

Studies of CO2 capture and storage (CCS) costs necessarily employ a host of technical and economic assumptions regarding the particular technology or system of interest, including details regarding the capture technology design, the power plant or gas stream treated, and the methods of CO2 transport and storage. Because the specific assumptions employed can dramatically affect the results of an...

A procedure was developed to isolate polyribosomes from plant cell cultures. Tobacco callus extracted in 10 mm MgCl(2), 80 mm KCl, 250 mm sucrose, and 140 mm tris-HCl (pH 8.2) yielded larger amounts of polysomes than cells extracted in higher or lower ionic strength or pH buffers. Optimal conditions for extraction of polysomes from soybean callus were identical except the most suitable pH for r...

Many energy and production facilities are operating without clear formal safety requirements, which are considered the base for good process safety management practices. Safety requirements are typically specified during process design based on identified hazard scenarios. This paper proposes a practical framework and methods to systematically synthesize safety requirements based on qualitative...

ISO 50001: 2011 provides an integrated and systematic framework to plan, implement, operate, certify, and maintain energy management systems (EMSs). Evaluation of organizations in relation to meeting the standard requirements is performed by an auditing qualitative approach. In this research, a quantitative approach has been proposed and implemented to assess organizations and rank them based o...

A better knowledge of the nitrogen nutrition of Medicago truncatula at the whole plant level and its modulation by environmental factors is a crucial step to reach a complete understanding of legume nitrogen nutrition. This study was based on the symbiotic system that is the most commonly used by the research community (M. truncatula cv. Jemalong A17 x Rhizobium meliloti strain 2011). Plant nit...

Major efforts are underway to develop fusion energy for use in electric power production in the furture. While fusion reactor concepts are being developed, appropriate attention must be given to problems relvant to the utility requirements which are likely to be encountered in the commercialization phase. In this paper the expected fusion plant availability is assessed in detail due to the impo...