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This paper presents a new multi-agent decision support system with the purpose of aiding bilateral contract negotiators in the pre-negotiation phase, through the analysis of their possible opponents. The application area of this system is the electricity market, in which players trade a certain volume of energy at a specified price. Consequently, the main output of this system is the recommendation of the best opponent(s) to trade with and the target energy volume to trade with each of the opponents. These recommendations are achieved through the analysis of the possible opponents' past behavior, namely by learning on their past actions. The result is the forecasting of the expected prices against each opponent depending on the volume to trade. The expected prices are then used by a game-theory based model, to reach the final decision on the best opponents to negotiate with and the ideal target volume to be negotiated with each of them.

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This research evaluates IRCA registered auditors' perspectives of the added value of ISO 9001:2015 to the organizations that adopt it and are certified accordingly, bringing P a more independent perspective than previous studies based on quality managers or consultants' views. Supported by a worldwide survey among IRCA registered auditors and the adoption of a Covariance based- Structural Equation Modelling (CB-SEM) approach the results point out that the auditors' judgment regarding the ISO 9001:2015 value is influenced by their perceptions (regarding the document) and experience (auditing). The research results highlight the importance of selecting auditors with the appropriate ISO 9001:2015 knowledge and experience to assess ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management Systems (QMSs) within the certification process, therefore, contributing to the business and processes performance improvement and sustainable outcomes.

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This paper presents a practical physical-layer security scheme based on coding methodologies combined with self-jamming to combat advantaged eavesdroppers, i.e., eavesdroppers that may possess an equal or even better channel than the legitimate receiver. We introduce a strengthened security gap notion, where reliability is assured by typical bit-error rate (BER) measurements, but secrecy is guaranteed by considering the entire distribution of messages upon reception, instead of average measures. Relying on this new security gap notion, we then propose a scheme that combines concatenated coding with self-jamming by the legitimate receiver for effective security and reliability even when eavesdroppers possess a channel with equal or better conditions than the legitimate receiver.

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