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Self-sustenance of India in oil and coal has consistently turned down, so electric vehicles are the future need of the society and environment. The heart of an electric vehicle is a battery; its degradation and safety are prime important issues to avoid accidents. Therefore, setting such a mechanism that improves the performance of a battery is a requirement of the society. The main objective of this article was to compare various aging parameters of a battery used in the electric vehicle, in terms of their effects, monitoring methods, and benefits for battery aging. It also aimed to illustrate the information out of touch that can be used for future research. This helps to maintain the clean environment by reducing pollution and economical benefit to the society.

Since the 1970s, due to the combination of the declining birthrate and rising longevity, the speed of population aging in Japan has been more dramatic than in any other developed country. Consequently, the growth of the working population, which had been faster than the growth of the total population, has gradually become slower in recent years than the latter in Japan. Moreover, similar rapid demographic changes are taking place at various speeds in all prefectures. By introducing demographic variables into empirical models of regional economic growth, which is based on prefecture-level panel data for the period 1980–2010, this paper shows that the recent demographic changes in Japan have had significant effects on its regional economic growth: the contribution of the growth rate difference between the working population and the total population to per capita Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP) growth rate, i.e., the demographic bonus, has disappeared. In addition, the growth rate of the aged population (65 years old and over) has had a very significant negative effect on per capita GRDP growth rate, while the growth rate of the young population aged 0–14 has had a significant positive effect. The findings of this study imply that Japan’s population aging and other ongoing demographic changes will continue to depress economic growth in all prefectures. Given the low probability of a significant rise in the birth rate and the rapid increase in the local labor supply, it is important for all prefectures in Japan to raise the quality of their labor-force and improve productivity. Meanwhile, effectively attracting young skilled workers to migrate from other regions/countries should be a key policy issue for both local and central governments in Japan.

Causal reasoning is a hard task that cognitive agents perform reliably and quickly. A particular class of causal reasoning that raises several difficulties is the cancellation class. Cancellation occurs when a set of causes (hypotheses) cancel each other's explanation with respect to a given effect (observation). For example, a cloudy sky may suggest a rainy weather; whereas a shiny sky may suggest the absence of rain. In this work we extend a recent neural model to handle cancellation interactions. Simulation results are very satisfactory and should encourage research.

The current interest in complex networks is a part of a broader movement towards research on complex systems. Motivation of this work raises the two challenging questions: (i) Are real networks fundamentally random preferential attached without any deterministic attachment for both un-weighted and weighted networks? (ii) Is there a coherent physical idea and model for unifying the study of the formation mechanism of complex networks? To answer these questions, we propose a harmonious unifying hybrid preferential model (HUHPM) to a certain class of complex networks, which is controlled by a hybrid ratio, d/r, and study their behavior both numerically and analytically. As typical examples, we apply the concepts and method of the HUHPM to un-weighted scale-free networks proposed by Barabasi and Albert (BA), weighted evolving networks proposed by Barras, Bartholomew and Vespignani (BBV), and the traffic driven evolution (TDE) networks proposed by Wang et al., to get the so-called HUHPM-BA, HUHPM-BBV and HUHPM-TDE networks. All the findings of topological properties in the above three typical HUHPM networks give certain universal meaningful results which reveal some essential hybrid mechanisms for the formation of nontrivial scale-free and small-world networks.

The rapid and persistent improvement in the performance and cost of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) with respect to their capabilities for capturing, processing, displaying, communicating and storing information provide abundant opportunities. This paper aims to explain the causes and effects of the phenomenon in which manufacturing firms integrate ICTs in their established manufacturing products. The study of this phenomenon is based on structured interviews with executives of 37 large Swedish manufacturing firms. The results show that the phenomenon is wide-spread among manufacturing firms, that the number of products that integrate ICTs is growing relative to firms' total product portfolios, and that the revenues from these products are increasing. Competition is a significant reason why firms integrate ICTs into their goods, but firms also want to reap the rewards of the value provided. Important here is that firms often find it necessary to transform aspects of the way they do business (business model) in order to create a better fit between activities that create value for their customers and activities that produce profits for themselves. They also try to find innovative ways to be rewarded for the value they deliver, mainly based on the provision of services.

Theories are inconclusive about the various impacts of the introduction of basket securities on the underlying stocks. We explore those effects for the first time around the launch of options on exchange traded funds (ETFs), employing the listing of the options on the S&P 500 Depository Receipts (SPDRs) in January 2005. With known factors controlled respectively, we find that the introduction of the SPDRs options leads to lower trading volume, higher bid–ask spread, higher systematic and total risks, and lower prices for the underlying stocks, consistent with the theory that the advent of basket derivatives alters the mix of various types of portfolio traders in the related markets when they are fully integrated.

New findings challenge our understanding of the alpha virus structure and fusion mechanism. It is evident from recent work in electron cryomicroscopy, cryoEM, that the external domains of the membrane-anchored glycoproteins, E1 and E2, form a shell at some distance above the membrane. From there, the glycoproteins protrude further outwards as three-lobed spikes. They present a receptor-binding site residing in E2 at their outermost domains, distal to the center of the spike. The ectodomain of the fusion protein, the E1, has an elongated shape, as revealed by X-ray crystallography. Fitted in the cryoEM structure of the virus, the C-terminal and central parts of the E1 ectodomain fill the major portion of the shell, while the fusion peptide loop hides under the receptor-binding domain in the spike. With this structural background, the alphaviruses represent an intriguing new fusion principle, differing in many aspects from the established influenza model. This mechanism is now on its way to be revealed.