The exigency for continuous use of electrical devices has created greater demands for electricity along with more efficient transmission techniques. Energy from natural resources can be solar, thermal, vibration, friction, or Radio Frequencies (RF) signals. This state-of-the-art work provides a summary of RF energy harvesting techniques and can be used as a guide for the manufacture of RF energy scavenging modules. The use of Radio Frequency (RF) Energy Harvesting (EH) technique contributes to the development of autonomous energy devices and sensors. A rectenna system includes three main units: the receiving antenna, the impedance matching network, and the rectifier. We thoroughly analyze how to design a rectenna system with special emphasis given on the design of the rectifier. At the same time many works of the last 10 years are presented. This review article categorizes the used topologies depending on the type of antennas, IMNs, and rectifiers and comparatively presents their advantages and disadvantages.

In vitro fertilization (IVF) is a well-established and efficient assisted reproductive technology (ART). However, it requires a series of costly and non-trivial procedures, and the success rate still needs improvement. Thus, increasing the success rate, simplifying the process, and reducing costs are all essential challenges of IVF. These can be addressed by integrating artificial intelligence techniques, like deep learning (DL), with several aspects of the IVF process. DL techniques can help extract important features from the data, support decision making, and perform several other tasks, as architectures can be adapted to different problems. The emergence of AI in the medical field has seen a rise in DL-supported tools for embryo selection. In this work, recent advances in the use of AI and DL-based embryo selection for IVF are reviewed. The different architectures that have been considered so far for each task are presented. Furthermore, future challenges for artificial intelligence-based ARTs are outlined.

The Jaya optimization algorithm is a simple, fast, robust, and powerful population-based stochastic metaheuristic that in recent years has been successfully applied in a variety of global optimization problems in various application fields. The essential idea of the Jaya algorithm is that the searching agents try to change their positions toward the best obtained solution by avoiding the worst solution at every generation. The important difference between Jaya and other metaheuristics is that Jaya does not require the tuning of its control, except for the maximum number of iterations and population size parameters. However, like other metaheuristics, Jaya still has the dilemma of an appropriate tradeoff between its exploration and exploitation abilities during the evolution process. To enhance the convergence performance of the standard Jaya algorithm in the continuous domain, chaotic Jaya (CJ) frameworks based on chaotic sequences are proposed in this paper. In order to obtain the performance of the standard Jaya and CJ approaches, tests related to electromagnetic optimization using two different benchmark problems are conducted. These are the Loney’s solenoid benchmark and a brushless direct current (DC) motor benchmark. Both problems are realized to evaluate the effectiveness and convergence rate. The simulation results and comparisons with the standard Jaya algorithm demonstrated that the performance of the CJ approaches based on Chebyshev-type chaotic mapping and logistic mapping can be competitive results in terms of both efficiency and solution quality in electromagnetics optimization.

The Byzantine religious tradition includes Greek Orthodox Church hymns, which significantly differ from other cultures’ religious music. Since the deep learning revolution, audio and music signal processing are often approached as computer vision problems. This work trains from scratch three different novel convolutional neural networks on a hymns dataset to perform hymns classification for mobile applications. The audio data are first transformed into Mel-spectrograms and then fed as input to the model. To study in more detail our models’ performance, two state-of-the-art (SOTA) deep learning models were trained on the same dataset. Our approach outperforms the SOTA models both in terms of accuracy and their characteristics. Additional statistical analysis was conducted to validate the results obtained.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of educational software characteristics on software performance through the mediating role of user acceptance. Our approach allows for a deeper understanding of the factors that contribute to the effectiveness of educational software by bridging the fields of educational technology, psychology, and human–computer interaction, offering a holistic perspective on software adoption and performance. This study is based on a sample collected from public and private education institutes in Northern Greece and on data obtained from 236 users. The statistical method employed is structural equation models (SEMs), via SPSS—AMOS estimation. The findings of this study suggest that user acceptance and performance appraisal are exceptionally interrelated in regard to educational applications. The study argues that user acceptance is positively related to the performance of educational software and constitutes the nested epicenter mediating construct in the educational software characteristics. Additional findings, such as computer-familiar users and users from the field of choral music, are positively related to the performance of the educational software. Our conclusions help in understanding the psychological and behavioral aspects of technology adoption in the educational setting. Findings are discussed in terms of their practical usefulness in education and further research.