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This article first presents an analysis of the origin and development of modern studies on childhood in antiquity. After this historiographical context and as a prelude to the following articles, attention is focused on the treatment and potential that the children of the Ancient Near East have had for the scientific community in the last half century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology has emerged as a promising solution for enhancing the integration of electric vehicles (EVs) into the electric grid, offering benefits, such as distributed energy resource (DER) integration, grid stability support, and peak demand management, among others, as well as environmental advantages. This study provides a comprehensive review of V2G systems, with a specific focus on the role of the communication, as they have been identified as key enablers, as well as the challenges that V2G must face. It begins by introducing the fundamentals of V2G systems, including their architecture, operation, and a description of the benefits for different sectors. It then delves into the communication technologies and protocols in V2G systems, highlighting the key requirements in achieving reliable and efficient communication between EVs and the different agents involved. A comprehensive review of communication standards is described, as well as the main communication technologies, which are evaluated in terms of their suitability for V2G applications. Furthermore, the study discusses the challenges and environmental implications of V2G technology, emphasizing the importance of addressing strong and reliable communications to maximize its potential benefits. Finally, future research directions and potential solutions for overcoming challenges in V2G systems are outlined, offering useful insights for researchers, policymakers, and administrations as well as related industry stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new, unified method to measure and increase production and environmental performance in industrial SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises), which have very limited resources, by identifying areas to improve and forming related projects. This structured, easy-to-apply method is based on standard systems to measure waste production efficiency and eco-efficiency and unifies them in a single reference value. In addition, a case study is shown where the industrial eco-efficiency of the company is obtained with the developed tool [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing brands already have certain products that generate a particular experience in customer minds. Every time a customer’s interacts with of brand’s products and related touchpoints, the customer form an idea about the brand. This is how a brand experience is 9constructed in the mind of the customer. Understanding how customers perceive and respond to certain products along the experience, helps designers to better align product design with brand value, in order to guarantee a consistent brand experience. While current literature provide in deep research into customer–brand and customer-product interaction, there is a distinct lack of any substantive assessment of how customer´s interaction with branded product impact on the brand experience. To do so, this paper presents a operational hypothesis to comprehend customer responses to certain branded product. The framework combines general brand experience assessment scales and product cantered experience approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insurance companies are in the midst of massive disruptive change occurring as a result of new consumption models and technologies. Companies unable to keep up with the rapid pace of change run the risk of disappearing. Service Design has become an essential practice for firms competing in experience-centred sectors. However, Service Design is not only limited to improving customer experience: it has also been proposed as an enabler for strategic and organisational change. This paper presents a case study in which Service Design was applied to foster transformative strategy and processes in an insurance company. The experiment has shown that Service Design can help companies to identify new business opportunities, as well as assisting organisational transformations. The findings in this paper show that by adopting Design-led approaches, firms can achieve faster and more flexible New Service Development processes able to significantly reduce time to market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More and more companies are adding emotional features into the development process of their financial offer, developing new products and services based on the emotional motivations of users. However, the subjectivity of the experience and the complexity of its variables has become one of the biggest challenges for businesses today. In recent years many tools have been created in order to explore the user’s emotional perception, but there are still shortcomings. Experience design professionals have pointed out the need for further assessment work and in this paper the biometric-based multimethod tools are reviewed. Within this type, one of the most focused experience evaluation tool is analyzed: the Eyeface. A tool that consists of two devices, the Eye-tracking and Facereader. The research work concludes that the biometric-based multimethod tools will be the key element to face the ultimate integration of the emotional approach into the business world in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Circular Economy (CE) implementation is considered an instrumental strategy to help reaching the world's resource, energy, and climate mitigation targets, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030. However, major barriers must be overcome to facilitate CE implementation in industry such as cultural, market, regulatory and technological considerantions (Kirchherr et al., 2018). Improving management systems within industrial companies is crucial when implementing effective CE solutions in compliance with existing industrial standards such as quality and environmental management systems. However, it is not yet common practice yet due to the lack of standardized, suitable, and easy-to-use supporting analytical tools. This paper attempts to fill this gap by presenting Industrial Circular Economy Questionnaire (ICEQ) , a self-diagnosis questionnaire built upon the revision of industrial harmonized standards and, academic literature on business-level CE assessment tools. ICEQ , compiling a set of 165 questions for company self-CE assessment, was applied to 30 industrial companies belonging to 17 economic sectors (automotive, machining and metalworking transformation, waste management, machine tool, etc.) in the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) in Spain. The automotive sector stands out with 70% of circularity while Machining and metalworking transformation only has 34%, showing that the automotive sector is more conscious of CE since they must comply with End-of-Life Vehicles (EoLV) legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]