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A new approach in the field of renewable energy is- the microbial fuel cells (MFCs). It is a technique to produce bioelectricity from available organic waste. It is helpful to fulfill the lighting requirements of rural areas. The aim of our research work is to construct twocompartment system and to study various parameters like performance of the different combination of electrodes, optimization of pH and temperature. In this study, using bacteria as biocatalyst, the naturally found cow dung was used to generate an open circuit voltage of 0.84 ± 0.010 V and a current of 3.51 ± 0.620 mA. Optimization of various parameters shows that among different temperature range, 37°C temperature gives the highest voltage production of 0.84 ± 0.091 V and current of 3.08 ± 0.512 mA. In case of pH there are not any significant changes were found when pH range is changed. Although, pH 4.0 is found to be more efficient as it produces voltage of 0.90 ± 0.045 V and current of 4.85 ± 0.587 mA. Furthermore, three electrogenic bacterial strains were isolated and studied for their electrogenic properties individually and among them CDB-3 was found best in their performance.

The purpose of this paper is to compare thick and thin film microstripline response to conducting overlay.

Study changes in transmission and reflection of both thick and thin film microstripline due to overlay of polyaniline (PANI) thin film on stainless steel and silver. PANI was deposited by electropolymerisation method using HCl and H₂SO₄.

Transmittance of both the thick and thin film microstripline decreases due to the PANI overlay and reflectance increases. Thin film microstripline is more sensitive to the type of conducting overlay than thick film microstripline. PANI deposited on silver is more absorbing than PANI deposited on stainless steel using HCl acid. The overlay makes the response of the microstripline more dispersive.

The increase in reflectance and decrease in transmittance can provide information about the type of overlay materials. There is need for newer materials which can replace traditional metals for microstrip components. PANI might serve this purpose.

This paper aims to investigate antecedents of using non-travel-specific social media (specifically Facebook) for travel decision-making before a leisure trip.

Based on an online survey of 426 young travel consumers from Italy and Sweden, this work applies structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis.

The study finds support for most of the conventional TAM-related constructs: perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment and intention, while ease of use is not found relevant in this context.

Results shed light on the antecedents of using non-travel specific social media in two countries. Future research might focus on validating the factors identified and add others that might shape usage in the selected countries. Future studies could further investigate possible differences arising from culture, country of origin and age. The analysis can also be extended to other countries.

The analysis might help managers in the hospitality and tourism sector by providing an understanding of the cognitive factors which determine travelers’ decision to use Facebook for trip planning. Thus, managers should get to know these factors in their effort to influence social media in hospitality and tourism settings.

The findings offer interesting perspectives on the applicability of conventional models to the context of non-travel-specific social media platforms. The exploration of cross-cultural differences also adds to the extant body of knowledge.

This study aims to determine the factors that encourage Indonesian banks to collaborate in the banking networks ATM Prima and ATM Bersama to achieve business efficiencies.

A combination of methods is used to collect both qualitative and quantitative data. Factor analysis and different testing technics are used. The data were obtained through interviews with managers of the banks involved in the two banking networks included in this study.

This research addresses ATM banking from three perspectives: banks that collaborate in ATM networks, banks that are joint ATM providers and banking customers that use ATMs. The results show that the banks in the study are more concerned about cost-effectiveness and cost-efficiencies in both the operational and investment aspects of supporting their ATM infrastructures. ATM providers place more importance on creating the most user-friendly, stable, wide-ranging and continuous system of services by collaborating with other banks in networks that provide ATM services. Customers put more importance on paying the minimum possible administration fees and the availability of specific banking services across a wide area.

This research took place over a period of only one year. This limited the depth of the data collected. A longer study using data that cover more than one fiscal year would have generated more detailed information.

This study places importance on maximizing cost-efficiencies to keep bank fees low for customers. There are significant investment and operational costs associated with setting up and operating ATMs and of adding and managing additional ATMs. This is particularly so in an era when their use is on the decline owing to the increasing use of electronic banking.

The social implications of ATM banking refer to the reduced administration fees customers pay as banks incur cost savings from collaborating on infrastructure and services. The availability of ATMs from specific banks could be replaced by one joint ATM machine that is situated in a specific area where electronic banking is not available. Banks’ customers tend to move to other banking services, and this means banks could lose a lot of their existing customers unless they can come up with unique services that are both accessible and user-friendly.

The originality of this research is that it recommends that some strategies Indonesian banks could use to become more efficient and effective, including forming ATM alliances to maximize efficiency and to achieve a competitive advantage.

The purpose of this study is to examine how consumer-brand engagement on social networking sites (SNS) is an outcome of the message orientation/vividness.

Message design is proposed to include two components, namely, orientation and vividness. The message orientation is classified as either task/instrumental or socioemotional. The message vividness is measured through content type. The consumer-brand engagement is conceptualized at three levels, namely, cognitive (comment), affective (shares) and conative (likes). A total of 1,000 posts were collected from the official Facebook pages of the 10 most popular travel brands, five each from India and the USA. These two countries were chosen as they are culturally different, with the former representing a largely collectivist culture and greater social connectivity and the latter representing primarily an individualistic culture.

The study reveals that greater message vividness, with more interactive/audio-visual content, leads to higher engagement. The task/instrumental message orientation leads to low-/medium-level engagement. Overall, a combination of high-vividness and socioemotional orientation generates maximum engagement. India and the USA depict unique effects of message orientations/vividness on the consumer-brand engagement levels, indicating cultural implications for the brand SNS messages – effectiveness.

The study’s conceptualization of consumer-brand engagement reflected through the consumers – responses to brands – SNS messages, represents new knowledge. The unique effects of message vividness and orientation on consumer-brand engagement and the variations across cultures is also a novel contribution to the extant branding literature.

The brand marketers should not only design their SNS messages with appropriate vividness/orientation but also tweak them across cultures, for maximum consumer engagement.

The study is a novel attempt to deploy the interaction process analysis framework in an SNS setting.

The role of social media in the tourism industry growth cannot be ignored, because today the internet and social media platforms are one of the most popular information channels used by potential tourists and have become one of the main sources of online travel information. This study investigates the role of content cues of tourism information quality provided in Elie Gasht firm's Instagram page on enhancing awareness of the destination brand and forming users' destination image.

A quantitative research design was used to validate the hypotheses proposed in this research. A survey was deployed using the convenience method among 187 users of Elie Gesht's Instagram page to test the theoretical model. The structural relationships in the research were examined using the partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The findings of the present research indicated that the content cues of the quality of information provided by the firm have a positive effect on enhancing destination brand awareness and in turn improve affective image and cognitive image. Eventually, the content cues of the quality of information provided by the firm impact the formation of a conative image through the affective and cognitive image of the destination.

Pragmatically, the findings of this study urge policymakers of tourism companies, managers and destination marketers to take into account the special role of the firm's social media in enhancing destination brand awareness, which in turn promotes destination brand image. Therefore, providing empirical evidence on what leads to the promotion of destination brand awareness and different types of image formation of the destination due to information content quality provided by the firm on social media, provides managerial insights for corporate marketers and tourism destinations.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge on the role of quality of tourism information content presented in the firm's social media by providing empirical evidence on enhancing destination brand awareness and destination image formation. It also helps firm managers and planners build their marketing strategies to attract more customers through social media.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and optimize the roller burnishing process parameters using the design of experiments and grey relational analysis (GRA).

In this experimental work, the carbide burnishing tool has been selected for the machining of AISI-1040 high carbon steel to get better product quality and satisfactory machining characteristics. The material surface condition while machining, burnishing tool speed, feed rate, depth of penetration and No. of passes have been selected as process constraints to conduct experimental trials.

The surface roughness (SR) and surface hardness were considered as output responses. The experimental outcomes optimized by multi-parametric optimization showed considerable improvement in the process. The roller speed and number of passes are the most significant parameters for surface hardness, whereas the surface condition and roller penetration depth have the most significance on SR.

The GRA method shows the 0.03376 improvement in grey relational grade between the experimental values and the predicted values.

The experimental outcomes optimized by multi-parametric optimization showed the considerable improvement in the process and will facilitate steel industries to enhance and improve productivity while burnishing high carbon steel (AISI-1040).

This research represents valid work, and the authors have no conflict of interests.

Internet of Things (IoT) is an up-and-coming conception that intends to link multiple devices with each other. The aim of this study is to provide a significant analysis of Green IoT. The IoT devices sense, gather and send out significant data from their ambiance. This exchange of huge data among billions of devices demands enormous energy. Green IoT visualizes the concept of minimizing the energy consumption of IoT devices and keeping the environment safe.

This paper attempts to analyze diverse techniques associated with energy-efficient protocols in green IoT pertaining to machine-to-machine (M2M) communication. Here, it reviews 73 research papers and states a significant analysis. Initially, the analysis focuses on different contributions related to green energy constraints, especially energy efficiency, and different hierarchical routing protocols. Moreover, the contributions of different optimization algorithms in different state-of-the-art works are also observed and reviewed. Later the performance measures computed in entire contributions along with the energy constraints are also checked to validate the effectiveness of entire contributions. As the number of contributions to energy-efficient protocols in IoT is low, the research gap will focus on the development of intelligent energy-efficient protocols to build up green IoT.

The analysis was mainly focused on the green energy constraints and the different robust protocols and also gives information on a few powerful optimization algorithms. The parameters considered by the previous research works for improving the performance were also analyzed in this paper to get an idea for future works. Finally, the paper gives some brief description of the research gaps and challenges for future consideration that helps during the development of an energy-efficient green IoT pertaining to M2M communication.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first work that reviews 65 research papers and states the significant analysis of green IoT.

Embedded passives account for a very large part of today's electronic assemblies. This is particularly true for products such as cellular phones, camcorders, computers, and several critical defence devices. Market pressures for new products with more features, smaller size and lower cost demand smaller, compacter, simpler substrates. An obvious strategy is to reduce the number of surface mounted passives by embedding them in the substrate. In addition, current interconnect technology to accommodate surface mounted passives imposes certain limits on board design which constrain the overall system speed. Embedding passives is one way to minimize the functional footprint while at the same time improving performance. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a thin film technology based on ferroelectric‐epoxy polymer‐based flake‐free resin coated copper capacitive (RC3) nanocomposites to manufacture multilayer embedded capacitors.

This paper discusses thin film technology based on RC3 nanocomposites. In particular, recent developments in high capacitance, large area, thin film passives, and their integration in system in a package (SiP) are highlighted.

A variety of RC3 nanocomposite thin films ranging from 8 to 50 microns thick were processed on copper substrates by liquid coating. Multilayer embedded capacitors resulted in high capacitances of 16‐28 nF. The fabricated test vehicle also included two embedded resistor layers with resistances in the range of 15 Ω to 100 kΩ. To enable high performance devices, an embedded resistor must meet certain tolerances. The embedded resistors can be laser trimmed to a tolerance of <5 percent, which is usually acceptable for most applications. An extended embedded passives solution has been demonstrated, both through its high wireability designs and package performance, to be perfectly suited for SiP applications.

This case study designed and fabricated an eight layer high density internal passive core and subsequently applied fine geometry three buildup layers to form a 3‐8‐3 structure. The passive core technology is capable of providing up to six layers of embedded capacitance and could be extended further.

A thin film technology based on ferroelectric‐epoxy polymer‐based flake‐free RC3 nanocomposites was developed to manufacture multilayer embedded capacitors. The overall approach lends itself to package miniaturization because capacitance can be increased through multiple layers and reduced thickness to give the desired values in a smaller area.

A road network provides arterial arrangement to facilitate business, transport, social integration and economic progress of any nation. During the last seven decades after independence, road transport infrastructure in India has expanded manifold, both in terms of spread (total length and density of road) and capacity (number of on-road registered vehicles, and volume of passenger and freight traffic handled). But, with the enrichment of road transport network in India, the number of traffic accidents and total cost for maintaining the road infrastructure also keeps on increasing. It becomes necessary to evaluate state-wise performance of the Indian roads using some mathematical tools. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

In this paper, using preference ranking organization method for enrichment of evaluations (PROMETHEE) and geometrical analysis for interactive aid (GAIA) approaches, an attempt is made to appraise the state-wise performance of Indian roads based on 12 critically important criteria. A geographic information system method and a hue-saturation-value color coding scheme are also employed to identify the influence of individual criterion on the overall rank of 29 Indian states.

It is observed that amongst all the considered states, the road conditions in the states of Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh are really satisfactory, whereas Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are the lagging states requiring governmental intervention and support to enhance their road network infrastructure.

This analysis would help the decision makers to identify the strengths and deficiencies of each Indian state with respect to its road conditions so that proper promotional and growth actions can be implemented.

From the review of the existing literature, it is quite evident that till date, no research work has been conducted in order to evaluate the performance of roads, and their conditions and characteristic features in the Indian context. In this paper, the state-wise performance of the Indian roads is appraised based on several identified parameters using a combined PROMETHEE-GAIA approach.