The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm is laying the groundwork for a world in which many of our everyday devices will be connected and will interact with their surroundings to gather data and automate some operations. Among other things, such a concept necessitates seamless authentication, data privacy, security, attack resilience, simplicity of deployment, and self-maintenance. Blockchain, a technology created with the Bitcoin cryptocurrency, can provide such advantages. To create blockchain-based IoT (BIoT) applications, a full discussion of how to modify blockchain to meet the unique requirements of IoT is offered in this paper. The most important BIoT applications are detailed after a brief introduction to blockchain, with the goal of highlighting how blockchain can affect conventional cloud-based IoT applications. Then, several factors that have an impact on the design, development, and deployment of a BIoT application are covered, along with present obstacles and potential improvements. Lastly, a list of recommendations is provided to help future BIoT researchers and developers understand some of the problems that need to be solved before deploying the upcoming generation of BIoT applications.

Clay paving blocks made of natural, environmentally friendly materials have their own originality and colorful authenticity, but due to the complex technological production process, they are also relatively expensive products; therefore, their environmental resistance properties are strictly defined and controlled by the standards. The physical and mechanical properties of clay paving blocks are the key factors aiming to ensure the longevity of products and their long-term success in the market. Therefore, ensuring high physical and mechanical properties of clay paving blocks have become a most crucial challenge for the manufactures. This article considers the parameters of the technological production process of clay paving blocks manufacturing and evaluates the influence of the chemical composition of three different types of clay on the physical and mechanical properties of the paving blocks. Water absorption, linear shrinkage, freeze/thaw, acid resistance, and transverse breaking load of clay paving blocks are investigated. This study reveals the importance of raw material selection in the production process of clay paving blocks and provides the concept of main quality factors of clay.

Climate change, urban sprawl, a global pandemic, and the general trend of digitizing economies are driving the need for digital transformation of utilities. Policymakers of industry digital transformation need some aggregated metric that captures the essence of this multidimensional concept, identifies the pros and cons of current policies, and guides future directions based on cross-country benchmarking. This study develops the Industry Digital Transformation Index for the utility industry (IDTIu) as a composite indicator. IDTIu provides an aggregate score for the digital transformation of the national utility industry based on 31 indicators grouped into 8 sub-indices. IDTIu scores were calculated for 34 European countries based on 2020 data. To avoid the methodological challenges of equal weighting and expert assessments, we applied the original Benefit-of-the-Doubt (BoD) model and its two extensions for the proportion and priority of sub- indices. Our results show that (i) the full flexibility of the original BoD model leads to the expected deficiencies in ranking leaders and assigning zeros to insignificant sub-indices; (ii) BoD model with ordinal sub-index share restrictions does not allow ranking of laggards when IoT, AI, and BDA are ranked as top 3 priorities. Therefore, at the current stage of the digital transformation of utilities, we recommend the BoD model with proportional sub-index share restrictions.

The food industry is a sector of particular importance in the Hungarian economy. Besides the fact that its contribution to the national economic output is 4.6-5.0%, it is the largest market outlet for agricultural raw materials. Today's economic environment is constantly changing, and competitiveness can only be preserved with regard to efficient production. It is indispensable for the enterprises to know with which factors they can make their production more efficient, and which are the ones that can be improved in efficiency. In our study, we present the production and some typical indicators of the food sector in the European Union and Hungary. Our specific investigations are focused on the effectiveness of the dual-accounting food businesses. After determining each of the yield indicators (gross production value, material-free production value, net production value, added value), complex and partial efficiency indicators have been calculated and analyzed. Between 2013 and 2017, the yield indicators of the examined food businesses were increasing year by year despite the significant reduction in the number of enterprises by 2017 (fresher statistics currently available in Hungary). The complex efficiency indicator has been declining since 2016 which is caused by extremely high committed asset values and insufficient utilization of resources. The change in the yield indicators was followed by the change in the partial efficiency indicators. In many cases, the projection funds decreased during the period under review.