Abstract
Central areas of large cities offer in general many advantages to their inhabitants. Typically, a large number of products, services, and opportunities are available in those urban zones, thus increasing life quality. Unfortunately, these benefits are associated with increasing transportation activities that can cause serious problems, such as traffic congestion, excessive energy consumption, and pollution. This paper aims at presenting a new transport system that consists of transporting freight in long-haul passenger vehicles. Two mixed integer mathematical programming models are presented: one for total cost minimization and the other for the travel time minimization. The problem under study was considered as a multi-commodity network flow problem with time windows, multi transport-lines, and multiple vehicles. Three heuristics based on mixed integer programming (MIP) were designed to solve it: size reduction, LP-and-fix, and a combination of these two procedures. The proposed approaches were validated in a case study designed around the intercity passenger transport system, in Ceará, Northeast of Brazil. Several operational scenarios were evaluated, taking into account the available freight capacities. The developed MIP heuristics produced high-quality solutions, in reasonable computational times, with the LP-and-Fix algorithm outperforming the other approaches. © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Abstract
This paper describes the functional principle of a non-isolated gate driver with truly differential inputs (TDI) and the benefits of its application in GaN HEMT high-voltage resonant half-bridge DC-DC converters (LLC). This innovative gate driver is able to overcome the driving issues associated with DC ground-shift or AC noise between controller and driver IC ground potentials, enabling its application even in high-side driving as a replacement of isolated gate drivers. Test results obtained in a GaN HEMT based 600 W/400 V/300 kHz half-bridge resonant converter are provided. © VDE VERLAG GMBH · Berlin · Offenbach.

Abstract
Digital tools with an emphasis on the so-called apps are a current topic whose potential, in school context, is still little explored. On the other hand, the formative evaluation is also very little explored and is of particular importance in the context of inclusive education, as an extended vision, in which all students have specificities. The review of the literature in the context of the cross-referencing of the two topics - formative evaluation and the use of apps - presents good indicators of how technology can complement the formative evaluation, guarantee a greater rooting of the same and guarantee performance more aligned with education inclusive, taking into account the profile of the student after leaving compulsory schooling. In this context, a descriptive and analytical study was carried out, using a survey on the use of digital tools and formative evaluation. The results obtained allowed us to conclude that the school environment will have to evolve, above all, to the level of material resources. This evolution is less pressing at the level of human resources and attitudes that promote the use of formative assessment techniques (FATs) and apps. Thus, there is an opportunity to improve existing applications in order to allow greater aid of formative evaluation, by attenuating its greater limitations. Due to the evolution of the applications, the prospects of gaining more use of the apps and FATs are widened. © 2020, The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Abstract
Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) enable a growing number of Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications with large geographical coverage, low bit-rate, and long lifetime requirements. LoRa (Long Range) is a well-known LPWAN technology that uses a proprietary Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS) physical layer, while the upper layers are defined by an open standard-LoRaWAN. In this paper, we propose a simple yet effective method to improve the Quality-of-Service (QoS) of LoRaWAN networks by fine-tuning specific radio parameters. Through a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) problem formulation, we find optimal settings for the Spreading Factor (SF) and Carrier Frequency (CF) radio parameters, considering the network traffic specifications as a whole, to improve the Data Extraction Rate (DER) and to reduce the packet collision rate and the energy consumption in LoRa networks. The effectiveness of the optimization procedure is demonstrated by simulations, using LoRaSim for different network scales. In relation to the traditional LoRa radio parameter assignment policies, our solution leads to an average increase of 6% in DER, and a number of collisions 13 times smaller. In comparison to networks with dynamic radio parameter assignment policies, there is an increase of 5%, 2.8%, and 2% of DER, and a number of collisions 11, 7.8 and 2.5 times smaller than equal-distribution, Tiurlikova's (SOTA), and random distribution, respectively. Regarding the network energy consumption metric, the proposed optimization obtained an average consumption similar to Tiurlikova's, and 2.8 times lower than the equal-distribution and random dynamic allocation policies. Furthermore, we approach the practical aspects of how to implement and integrate the optimization mechanism proposed in LoRa, guaranteeing backward compatibility with the standard protocol.

Abstract

Abstract
E-commerce facilitates the internationalization of companies at a low cost and enables companies to create a close relationship with their target audience. Often, to increase their sales volume, companies activate recommendation systems in their online stores. This study aims to investigate whether the usage of similar product recommendation systems influences future consumer purchases. Hence, a questionnaire survey was conducted, which had 160 answers. Thus, the factor “moment at which the product suggestions appear” is a variable which has a significant impact regarding online purchases (leading to, for example, impulse purchases). Regarding the form of the suggestions (esthetics, typography or colour), this has the greatest impact of the variables we analysed. Still further, a statistically significant association (chi square test) was found between occupation of the consumer (being a student or having a specialized profession) and making online purchases.