The background for conducting country study on the challenges, needs and constraints of smallholders and family farms in the Republic of Serbia has been a wish to further strengthen the Regional Initiative on Empowering Smallholders and Family Farms and develop it towards a stronger programmatic approach at both the regional and the country level. In order to provide support to smallholders and family farms, there has been a need to develop a better understanding and knowledge platform of the main challenges, needs and constraints of smallholders and family farms in the specific country context. The objective of the country study is first to analyse the development trend and current state of smallholders and family farms, second to study the current political priorities and policies affecting smallholders and family farms, and finally, based on the conclusions made, to provide recommendations, mainly at the policy level, on how to further support the development of family farms and at the same time ensure in general inclusive growth, improved rural livelihood and the reduction of rural poverty.

At the heart of the optimization domain are mathematical modeling of the problem and the solution methodologies. The problems are becoming larger and with growing complexity. Such problems are becoming cumbersome when handled by traditional optimization methods. This has motivated researchers to resort to artificial intelligence (AI)-based, nature-inspired solution methodologies or algorithms. The Handbook of AI-based Metaheuristics provides a wide-ranging reference to the theoretical and mathematical formulations of metaheuristics, including bio-inspired, swarm-based, socio-cultural, and physics-based methods or algorithms; their testing and validation, along with detailed illustrative solutions and applications; and newly devised metaheuristic algorithms. This will be a valuable reference for researchers in industry and academia, as well as for all Master’s and PhD students working in the metaheuristics and applications domains.

The Rise of Metallurgy in Eurasia is a landmark study in the evolution of early metallurgy in the Balkans. It demonstrates that far from being a rare and elite practice, the earliest metallurgy in the world was a common and communal craft activity.

This proceedings volume examines the state-of-the art of productivity and efficiency analysis and adds to the existing research by bringing together a selection of the best papers from the 8th North American Productivity Workshop (NAPW). It also aims to analyze world-wide perspectives on challenges that local economies and institutions may face when changes in productivity are observed. The volume comprises of seventeen papers that deal with productivity measurement, productivity growth, dynamics of productivity change, measures of labor productivity, measures of technical efficiency in different sectors, frontier analysis, measures of performance, industry instability and spillover effects. These papers are relevant to academia, but also to public and private sectors in terms of the challenges firms, financial institutions, governments and individuals may face when dealing with economic and education related activities that lead to increase or decrease of productivity. The North American Productivity Workshop brings together academic scholars and practitioners in the field of productivity and efficiency analysis from all over the world. It is a four day conference exploring topics related to productivity, production theory and efficiency measurement in economics, management science, operations research, public administration, and related fields. The papers in this volume also address general topics as health, energy, finance, agriculture, utilities, and economic dev elopment, among others. The editors are comprised of the 2014 local organizers, program committee members, and celebrated guest conference speakers.

This edition contains a wide variety of information on both foreign relations and internal administration and is one of the most important historical documents surviving from the Middle Byzantine period.