In the context of the economic and political uncertainty associated with the 2019-nCoV pandemic, it is necessary to determine the socio-psychological factors involved in the transformation of the behavior of insurance consumers under the influence of a biogenic threat. This study measures financial anxiety and its impact on the insurance behavior of Russian citizens. The correlation, comparative, and regression analyses of the financial anxiety of Russian citizens cover three stages of observation: before the start of the 2019 nCoV pandemic (“FA up to 19 nCoV; N = 766), during the period of quarantine measures announced in Russia in March 2020 (“FA 19-nCoV-1”; N = 856), and after the relaxation of quarantine measures at the end of April 2020 (“FA 19-nCoV-2”; N = 963).Psychological analysis data were obtained from the online survey “Financial anxiety (in the context of insurance)”. The questionnaire is psychometrically reliable and easy to use. It includes five measurement scales: MR1—Physical manifestations of financial incentive anxiety, MR2—With money shortages and financial uncertainty, MR3—The value of insurance coverage, MP4—Financial Confidence, and MR5—Perception of insurance and investment risks. It was found that Russian citizens consider it important to have insurance coverage for a “rainy day”, and they showed confidence in the insurance market during the biogenic crisis. However, unfortunately, during the 19-nCoV-1 and 19-nCoV-2 periods, Russian citizens did not feel financially secure, unlike in the period before 19-nCoV. Women showed high scores for physical manifestations of financial anxiety and low financial confidence in the future, in contrast to men, regardless of the observation period.

High density polyethylene (HDPE) and poly(lactic) acid (PLA) blends with different ratios of both polymers, namely 30:70, 50:50 and 70:30, were produced. Polyethylene grafted maleic anhydride and a random copolymer of ethylene and glycidyl methacrylate, were also proposed as compatibilizers to modify HDPE-PLA optimal blends and were added in the amounts of 1, 3 and 5 wt.%. Blends properties have been evaluated through different aspects by performing tensile tests, scanning electron microscopy to analyze blend morphology and interfaces, and thermomechanical analysis through differential scanning calorimetry, thermo-gravimetric analyses and infrared spectroscopy. The second blend, the one with equal amounts of HDPE and PLA seems to represent a good balance between high amount of bio-derived charge and acceptable mechanical properties. This suggests a good potential of these blends, which would be a good starting point for the production of composites with lingo-cellulosic fillers.

The objective of the study was to examine the effects of perceived stress on depression and subsequently to examine the effects of depression on alcohol use disorders. The data were obtained by an electronic questionnaire survey during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic (n=1523 Slovak college students). Descriptive, regression and correlation analysis were used in the analytical processing, while the analyses included students' scores in three diagnostic tools (Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Patient Health Questionnaire for depression (PHQ 9) and Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT)), as well as gender and income characteristics. The PSS identified an increased level of perceived stress in female students, in contrast, the AUDIT showed an increased level of alcohol use disorders in male students. Differences in mental and behavioural disorders between the gender and income categories were significant in most of the analysed cases. In terms of gender-income characteristics, it was possible to confirm a significant positive effect of the PSS score on the PHQ 9 score, as well as a significant positive effect of the PHQ 9 score on the AUDIT score. As a result, efforts to reduce stress will be reflected in a reduction of depressive disorders as well as a reduction of excessive alcohol consumption among students.

The relationship between economic growth, growth volatility and financial sector development continues to attract attention in the theoretical and empirical literature. Over time, some studies hypothesize that finance has a causal linear relationship with growth. Recently several other authors contradict this claim and argue that the relationship that exists between finance and growth is nonlinear. We investigate these claims for Nigeria for the period between 1970 and 2015, using semi-parametric econometric methods, Hansen sample splitting techniques and threshold estimator. We observed no evidence of ‘Too much finance’ as claimed by many researchers in recent times. We show that the relationship between financial development and economic growth is U-shaped. This is equally true for the relationship between financial development and growth volatility. We also discuss policy implications of our findings and recommend financial innovations and decentralization of stock exchanges to boost access to financial services, in addition, improved regulation to enhance financial market efficiency.

Covid-19 pandemic lockdown has slow down the world economic system. The pandemic has cleared the roads, close factories and grounded planes causing severe economic challenges. The damaging impact of the pandemic amid lockdown has been a blessing in guise for the environment because of significant drop in pollution level as transport and industrial sectors shutdown. Transport and industrial sectors are major contributors to environmental degradation through various emissions as a result of fossil fuel consumption. Energy consumed by transport and industrial sectors will have to shift to viable, readily available, economically and environmentally friendly with no carbon build up post Covid-19 pandemic. Hydrogen energy remains the best alternative option technologies containing green house gas emission and pollutions of several forms. Hydrogen holds the potential to provide a clean, reliable, renewable and economical source of energy for meeting the growing and unending global energy needs post pandemic. The present paper explores the economic feasibility and potential of hydrogen to serve as a competitive fuel option post pandemic. In this paper, the role of hydrogen as an energy carrier hydrogen economy structure, potential of hydrogen economy, hydrogen production methods, hydrogen application and the economic and environmental importance of hydrogen as a viable fuel option post covid-19 pandemic were discussed. There will be a surge in demand and investment for hydrogen economy post Covid-19.

World Economy today depends on business investments that are propelled by Green technology, innovations and entrepreneurial activities. In recent years, developing economies in Asia, Africa and Latin America have embarked on easy capital access to Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to facilitate their economic growth. Kenya is among the Middle Level Income Countries that have gained global recognition through entrepreneurial innovations. In this study we assess the role of entrepreneurship towards poverty alleviation in Kenya. The objectives of the study were: to evaluate the role of entrepreneurship in poverty alleviation in Kenya; to identify entrepreneurship innovations and their economic contribution in Kenya and to determine the significance of entrepreneurship to Kenyan economy. Methodology of study took a parametric approach through pure desktop studies on entrepreneurship cases in Kenya. Success case studies of entrepreneurial innovations like M-pesa, M-soko and Uwezo Fund initiatives were assessed. The paper notes that activities undertaken in each of these case studies have made great contributions to poverty alleviation and economic development in both urban and rural areas of Kenya.

In this study, the efficiencies of flat-plate and U-tube solar collectors were investigated experimentally when an Al₂O₃ nanofluid was used as a working fluid and compared to those of solar collectors using water. The energy saving and CO₂ and SO₂ generated were calculated and compared to those of solar collectors using water. In addition, based on the experimental results, an economic analysis of the use of solar collectors in various countries was performed. As the concentration of the Al₂O₃ nanofluid increased, the performance of the solar collector improved. The highest efficiency for the solar collectors was shown at the concentration of 1.0 vol% with the nanoparticle size of 20 nm. The maximum efficiencies of the flat-plate and U-tube solar collectors using 1.0 vol%-Al₂O₃ nanofluid with 20-nm nanoparticles was 74.9% and 72.4%, respectively, when the heat loss parameter was zero. The efficiencies of the flat-plate and U-tube solar collectors using Al₂O₃ nanofluid were 14.8% and 10.7 higher, respectively, than those using water. When 50 EA flat-plate solar collectors were operated for one year using Al₂O₃ nanofluid, the coal use, generated CO₂, and generated SO₂ were 189.99 kg, 556.69 kg, and 2.03 kg less than those of solar collectors using water, respectively. In addition, the largest electricity cost reduction was in Germany.

Machine learning (ML) is penetrating in all walks of life and is one of the major driving forces behind the fourth industrial revolution, typically known as Industry 4.0. This study reviews the state-of-the-art ML applications in the biofuels’ life cycle stages, i.e., soil, feedstock, production, consumption, and emissions. A keyword search is performed to retrieve relevant articles from the databases of the Web of Science and Google Scholar. ML applications in the soil stage were mostly based on the use of satellite images of land for estimation of biofuels yield or suitability analysis of agricultural land. In the second stage of the life cycle, assessment of rheological properties of the feedstocks and their effect on the quality of biofuels were dominant studies reported in the literature. The production stage included estimation and optimization of quality, quantity, and process conditions. The fuel consumption and emissions stage included analysis of engine performance and estimation of emissions temperature and composition, such as NOx, CO, and CO2. This study identified the following trends: dominant ML method, the stage of life cycle getting more usage of ML, the type of data used for the development of the ML-based models, and the stage-wise frequently used input and output variables. The findings of this article are beneficial for academia and industry-related people involved in model development in different stages of biofuel’s life cycle.

Abstract: The promotion of sustainable packaging is part of the European Green Deal and plays a key role in the EU’s social and political strategy. One option is the use of renewable resources and biomass waste as raw materials for polymer production. Lignocellulose biomass from annual and perennial industrial crops and agricultural residues are a major source of polysaccharides, proteins, and lignin, and can also be used to obtain plant-based extracts and essential oils. Therefore, these biomasses are considered as potential substitute for fossil-based resources. Here, the status quo of bio-based polymers is discussed and evaluated in terms of properties related to packaging applications such as gas and water vapor permeability as well as mechanical properties. So far, their practical use is still restricted due to lower performance in fundamental packaging functions that directly influence food quality and safety, the length of shelf life and thus the amount of food waste. Besides bio-based polymers, this review focuses on plant extracts as active packaging agents. Incorporating extracts of herbs, flowers, trees, and their fruits is inevitable to achieve desired material properties that are capable to prolong the food shelf life. Finally, the adoption potential of packaging based on polymers from renewable resources is discussed from a bioeconomy perspective.

Declining water supply is the main cause of rising water fee for agricultural use. Moreover, in non-technical irrigation, poor irrigation infrastructure exacerbates water scarcity. Thus, the purpose of this study is to identify farmer willingness to pay for non-technical irrigation and its determinants. Structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 100 farmers. Contingent valuation method was employed to elicit farmer WTP and multiple linear regression was used to find its determinants. The result shows that farmer average WTP is Rp 3,055,168 /ha/year. It accounts for 20 percent of total farmer revenue and almost 20 times fee for technical irrigation. Economic and technical variables are the significant determinants of WTP while social variables seem insignificant to WTP. This result indicates high economic value of water, and to improve irrigation management we recommend establishing irrigation infrastructure gradually by mobilizing farmer resources (capital and management) and strengthening WUA.

This work deals with the numerical investigation of the delivery of potential therapeutic agents through dentinal discs (i.e. a cylindrical segment of the dentinal tissue) towards the dentin-pulp junction. The aim is to assess the main key features (i.e. molecular size, initial concentration, consumption rate, disc porosity and thickness) that affect the delivery of therapeutic substances to the dental pulp and consequently to define the necessary quantitative and qualitative issues related to a specific agent before its potential application in clinical practice. The CFD code used for the computational study is validated with relevant experimental data obtained using micro Laser Induced Fluorescence (μ-LIF) a non-intrusive optical measuring technique. As the phenomenon is diffusion dominated and strongly dependent on the molecular size, the time needed for the concentration of released molecules to attain a required value can be controlled by their initial concentration. Finally, a model is proposed which, given the maximum acceptable time for the drug concentration to attain a required value at the pulpal side of the tissue along with the aforementioned key design parameters, is able to estimate the initial concentration to be imposed and vice versa.

This conceptual article is aimed at evaluating the COVID19 impacts on the global economy and to postulating an ‘economic paradigm shift’. We argue that the existing economic, political, and trade principles have been challenged due to the global pandemic issue. We also compare the COVID19 impact on Western countries and Eastern countries with their control mechanisms. The emerging of new economies is due to the travel restrictions and disrupt of the global economies are discussed that pave a gateway to the economic paradigm shift. The article finally assesses the advent of 5G technology and its implications to face any future health threats that will lead to the next economic paradigm shift in the modern world.

Based on panel data of 31 provincial-level administrative units (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) in China from 2015 to 2019, using fixed effect model and mediation effect model, this paper makes an empirical analysis on the interaction among digital economy, industrial structure upgrade and high-quality economic development. The results show that, from the overall effect, the digital economy can significantly promote the high-quality development of the economy, and there are regular regional differences, and the relationship between the promotion intensity and the development level of the digital economy is proportional. From the mediation effect, in the relationship between digital economy and high-quality economic development, the upgrade of industrial structure has played a significant part of the mediation effect, the proportion of mediation effect is 25.17% . In addition, the mediation effect of industrial structure upgrade has obvious regional difference, the western area is the strongest, the eastern area is the second, the central area is the weakest. Based on the above research,the concrete policy suggestions are given to promote the development of digital economy and upgrade the level of industrial structure to promote the high-quality development of economy.

Disrupted nutrient recycling is a significant problem for Europe, while phosphorus and nitrogen are wasted instead of being used for plant nutrition. Mineral phosphate is critical raw material, which contains environmentally hazardous elements such as cadmium and uranium. Therefore, phosphorus recovery from agricultural by-product streams is critically important key priority. Phosphorus recovery from food grade animal bone by-products have been applied researched since 2002 with objective driven evolution progress towards specialized pyrolysis processing technology and animal bone char product (ABC) developments in economical industrial scale. Different animal bone by-products tested under different conditions at 400 kg/h throughput capacity in the continuously operated 3R zero emission autothermal carbonization system. The different material core treatment temperatures (between >300°C and <850°C) were combined with different residence times under industrial productive processing conditions. It has been industrial demonstrated that material core treatment temperature <850°C with 20 minutes residence time is necessary to achieve high quality ABC with useful agronomic value. The output ABC product having concentrated >30% phosphorus pentoxide (P2O5) and specific quality innovative fertilizer for agronomical efficient organic and low input farming applications as functional organic fertilizer, soil improver, growing medium and/or fertilizing product blend with high mineral phosphate fertiliser replacement value.

This paper utilizes dynamic panel threshold technology to conduct a nonlinear test on the direct effect between environmental regulation and economic fluctuations and the effect of industrial structure upgrading by taking 35 industrial sectors in China from 2003 to 2016 . The research has found that there is an inverted "U" relationship between environmental regulation and economic fluctuations, with the enhancement of environmental regulations, the economic fluctuation increases first and then decreases. The cross-terms of environmental regulation and industrial structure rationalization or industrial structure upgrading are significantly negative, which indicates that the enhancement of environmental regulation is conducive to promoting industrial structure upgrading and reducing the economic fluctuations. While the rationalization factors of industrial structure and advanced industrial structure are significantly negative, indicating that both forms of industrial structure upgrading are conducive to reducing the economic fluctuations. Environmental regulation has technical innovation thresholds for industrial structure upgrading and economic fluctuations, but there are no human capital or FDI thresholds. In the rationalization model of industrial structure, there is a nonlinear "U" relationship between environmental regulation and economic fluctuations when the proportion of scientific research expenditure is more than 1.35%. With the enhancement of environmental regulation, the economic fluctuation reduces first and then increases, and the corresponding inflection point value is 2.398% of the environmental regulation level. At the same time, the environmental regulation can indirectly reduce economic fluctuations by pushing down the industrial structure upgrades. In the advanced model of industrial structure, there is a “U” relationship between environmental regulation and economic fluctuation when the proportion of scientific research expenditure is greater than 1.26%. With continuous enhancement of environmental regulation, the economic fluctuation reduces first and then increases. The corresponding inflection point value is 1.78% of the environmental regulation level, and environmental regulation can indirectly reduce economic fluctuations by promoting the industrial structure at the same time.

Though innovations for sustainable management of natural resources have emerged over time, the rising demand for nature based health solutions and integration of endemic flora into global value chains could have adverse impacts on ecosystems. The ecological risks in the exploitation of wild medicinal plant resources are exacerbated by a myriad of agrotechnological risks and challenges that highly constrain their domestication. Successful exploitation and commercialization of medicinal plants thus require a clear understanding of their demand and production systems or value chain analysis. Accordingly there is need for innovative approaches towards their integration into global value chains. Since quality and safety, traceability, certification, as well as, consumer tastes and preferences are critical drivers in purchasing decisions by global consumers, they are inadvertently exploited to weaken Indigenous knowledge (IK), undermine common property rights and entrench value chains that favour a few elite buyers. This tend to create pervasive incentives for overexploitation of medicinal plant resources and environmental degradation. Potential solution lies in the recognition of drivers of vulnerability to environmental degradation and the innovative use of policy bricolage, feedback loops and interactions between knowledge, power and agency on one hand, and collective action and property rights institutions on the other hand. We conceptualise a framework that can mediate a transformational agenda and enhance systematic understanding of sustainability lenses in endemic medicinal plant resources value chains. This could in turn strengthen IK, enhance collective action and promote participation of local actors with positive impact on the utilisation and integration of endemic medicinal plant resources into global value chains.

A Wireless Body Area Sensor Network (WBASN) is combination of numerous sense nodes, positioned onto/close or inside a person body. Wireless Body Area Sensor Networks (WBASN) is a developing automation trend that exploits wireless sensor nodes to put instantaneous wearable well-being of ill person to improve individual’s existence. The sensor nodes might be used outwardly to observe abundant health parameters (like heart activity, blood pressure and cholesterol) of an ill person at a vital site within hospital. Hence the goal of WBASN is much crucial, enhancing the lifetime of nodes is compulsory to sustain many issues such as utility and efficiency. It is essential to evaluate time that when the first node will die it we want to refresh or change the battery reason is that loss of crucial information is not tolerable. The lifetime is termed as the time interval when a first node dies out due to battery exhaustion. In our proposed protocol life time of a network is the main concern as well other protocol related issues such as throughput, path loss, and residual energy. Bio-sensors are used for deployment on human body. Poisson distribution and equilibrium model techniques have been used for attaining the required results. Multi-hop network topology and random network node deployment used to achieve minimum energy consumption and longer network lifetime.

Ultrafast laser 3D lithography based on non-linear light-matter interactions, widely known as multi-photon lithography (MPL), offers unrivaled precision rapid prototyping and flexible additive manufacturing options. 3D printing equipment based on MPL are already commercially available, yet there is still no comprehensive understanding of factors determining spatial resolution, accuracy, fabrication throughput, repeatability, and standardized metrology methods for the accurate characterization of the produced 3D objects and their functionalities. The photoexcitation mechanisms, spatial-control or photo-modified volumes, and the variety of processable materials are topics actively investigated. The complexity of the research field is underlined by limited understanding and fragmented knowledge of light-excitation and material response. Research to date has only provided case-specific findings on photoexcitation, chemical modification, and material characterization of the experimental data. In this review, we aim to provide a consistent and comprehensive summary of the existing literature on photopolymerization mechanisms under highly confined spatial and temporal conditions, where, besides the excitation and cross-linking, parameters such as diffusion, temperature accumulation, and the finite amount of monomer molecules start to become of critical importance. Key parameters such as, photoexcitation, polymerization kinetics, and the properties of the additively manufactured materials at the nanoscale in 3D are examined, whereas, the perspectives for future research and as well as emerging applications are outlined.

Assessing the economic supply of biomass in a geospatial context while accounting for risk from natural disasters was studied. Risk levels were estimated from a component of factors which included: population density, road density, federal ownership, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ecoregions, and Presidential Disaster Declarations. The Presidential Disaster Declarations included risks due to: coastal storm, drought, fire, flood, freezing, hurricane, mud land slide, severe ices, severe storms, snow, tornado, and tropical storm. Presidential Disaster Declarations included summaries based on a short-term time period from 2000-2011, and on a long-term time period from 1964-2011. Risk categories were developed as a function of the number of disaster declarations, agricultural-to-forest land ratio, average road density, and average population density. A significant contribution of the research was the allocation of spatially explicit data using GIS technology at the 5-digit zip code tabulation area. The average area for 5-digit ZCTAs in the Eastern U.S. study region was approximately 169 kilometers². Long-term risk (1964-2011) from disaster declarations had a greater impact on the economic availability of biomass supply relative to short-term declarations (2000-2011). The greatest risk to biomass supply came from population density relative to the other risk factors studies. Of the 25,044 total ZCTAs, 12,256 ZCTAs were in locations that did not include population density ≥ 150/km², road density ≥ 14 km/km², federal ownership, and US Environmental Protection Agency Level III ecoregions. Of the remaining 12,256 ZCTAs, 26.8% were considered to be moderate-to-high risk based on short-term declarations (2000-2011) and 29.4% were considered to be moderate-to-high risk based on long-term declarations (1964-2011). Lower risk locations for procuring biomass supply for both short-term and long-term declarations, across all risk factors, were in southern Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas.

The present reality about the Nigerian economy calls for investment and development in the non-oil sector. This becomes necessary as a result of fall in the oil price in the global market. This paper examined the Bayesian Vector Autoregression (BVAR) modeling and forecasting of the dynamic interrelationship between Economic growth and revenue from the oil and non-oil sectors in Nigeria. To achieve this, annual data on Gross Domestic Product (GDP), revenue from oil and non-oil sectors were collected from Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) bulletin, the sample from 1981 to 2008 was used for analysis, while sample from 2009 to 2014 was used for model validation. Six (6) versions of Sims-Zha BVAR models were compared for out-of-sample forecast, the result revealed the superiority of the BVAR6 model over the other BVAR models. Lastly, evidence from the decomposition forecast errors revealed that revenue of oil sector contributed 7.69% to GDP while revenue from non-oil sector contributed 0.12% to GDP in Nigeria. This paper therefore recommended that the present government should encourage investment that is geared toward development in the non-oil sector, of which it has the capacity to improve the Economic growth of the Nigerian economy.

Novel bio-inspired materials have gained recently great attention, especially in medical applications. Applying sophisticated design and engineering methods, various polymer-polymer hybrid systems with outstanding performance have been developed in last decades. Hybrid systems composed of bioelastomers and hydrogels are very attractive due to their high biocompatibility and elastic nature for advanced biomaterials used in various medical applications such as drug delivery systems and scaffolds for tissue engineering. Herein, we describe the advances in current state-of-the-art design, properties and applications of polymer-polymer hybrid systems in medical applications. Bio-inspired functionalities, including bioadhesiveness, injectability, antibacterial properties and degradability applicable to advanced drug delivery systems and medical devices will be discussed in a context of future efforts towards development of bioinspired materials.

Desalinators are traditionally driven by fossil-fuels but in order to avoid greenhouse emissions, renewable energy must be used. In this paper, a coupling between multi-stage flash distillation apparatus and a parabolic trough solar collector is analyzed. The purpose of this study is to determine the economic feasibility of the system, considering four cities of Saudi Arabia and three different potable water productions. To avoid solar energy intermittency and unavailability at night, thermal storage is implemented. Whereas other researchers made parametric analyses, in this paper, the authors developed a mathematical program which was optimized with the help of GAMS software, where the capital cost of the plant was the objective function. After that, a life cycle cost analysis was carried out for each scenario. Depending on the region and water production, the costs of drinking water vary from 2.26 to 3.93 US$/m³, and from 7440 to 23825 tons of carbon dioxide emissions are avoided. As a consequence of the approach used, low costs are obtained; even though no auxiliary heater is implemented and the lowest irradiance conditions are considered. The results of this study reflect that the proposed process is competitive with respect to the traditional one.

A global revolution in information and communication technologies (ICT) has occurred over the past few decades, emerging first in industrialized countries and then in developing countries. While researchers have examined many facets of the ICT revolution, relatively little work has systematically examined the degree to which ICT has reduced natural disaster vulnerability. In this article we use cross-country data over the 1980-2013 period to estimate the relationship between newly-emerging cell phone access/use and disaster-induced fatalities. Our estimates suggest that a one-standard-deviation increase in cell phone usage reduces disaster fatalities by nearly one half. The estimated effect increases to almost three quarters for geologic events where people are typically afflicted without warning. The largest marginal benefit from cell phones in terms of saving lives come from events where there is typically no warning, thus many are caught by surprise; cell phones are used to call for help and coordinate assistance.

This paper examines the relationship between GDP per capita and waste generated in European Union countries, highlighting the importance of this relationship for understanding the environmental consequences of economic growth and formulating waste management policies. The analysis findings demonstrate that, in most cases, higher GDP is associated with higher amounts of waste, although there are exceptions to this trend. A smaller number of countries are also found where no such relationship exists. These are primarily high-income countries in the lower part of the EKC or countries in transition. Cluster analysis reveals regional differences in the relationship between GDP and waste that the economic factors and the level of development in the regions concerned can explain. Bulgaria is among the European countries with the lowest economic growth associated with a large amount of waste. The analysis, therefore, focuses on Bulgaria. The impact of GDP per capita, Human Development Index and Population Density on municipal waste in Bulgaria is studied. The aim is to identify significant relationships and dependencies between these factors and the amount of waste. Based on the results of multiple regression analysis and the findings from municipal waste management data in Bulgaria, specific actions are proposed for municipal waste management in the country. Recommendations are made for developing sustainable waste management policies and sharing best practices between regions.

Application of native PGPR as bio inoculant is an alternative sustainable agricultural practice to enhance crop productivity, grain quality, and soil fertility. In this view, a study was to examine the effect of either individual or consortium PGPR inoculation on growth, yield, and grain nutrient uptake of two teff varieties. The pot experiment was carried out in (CRD) three replication and 10 treatments. The PGPR inoculants used in this study were Pseudomonas fluorescens biotype G, Enterobacter cloacae ss disolvens, and Serratia marcescens ss marcescen and their consortium. Dukem and Magna varieties were used in this study. The results of the analysis of variance showed significant differences (P ≤ 0.001) among the treatment and most of the agronomic traits except number of fertile tillers and also significant different (P ≤ 0.01) for grain P and N uptake. The variety was significantly affected grain Mg, Zn and Fe uptake at 5 % probability level and did not significantly influence all agronomic traits of the two varieties. Furthermore, interaction effects of two factors (TM*VT) were significant differences (P ≤ 0.05) for plant height and panicle length. Individual treatments mean comparison results showed that inoculation of native PGPR consortium significantly affected most of the PGP traits at (P ≤ 0.05). The maximum traits like plant height (189cm), panicle length (66.7cm), shoot dry biomass (9.98g), root dry biomass (2.90g) and grain yield per plant (4.55g) were observed from Dz-01-196. It could be concluded that the consortium of native PGPR inoculants for plant growth, yield and grain nutrient uptake improvement performed better than their individual strain.

The characteristics of biogenic aerosols in urban area were explored by determining the composition, temporal distribution of saccharides in PM_2.5 in Shanghai. The total saccharides showed a wide range of 15.2 ng/m³ to 1752.8 ng/m³, with the averaged concentrations were 169.8 ng/m³，300.5 ng/m³，288.4 ng/m³，688 ng/m³ in spring, summer, autumn, and winter, respectively. The concerned saccharides include anhydrosaccharides (levoglucosan and mannosan), which were higher in cold seasons due to the increased biomass burning, saccharide alcohols (mannitol, arabitol, sorbitol) and monosaccharides (fructose, glucose), which showed more abundant in warm seasons attributed to the biological emissions. By PMF analysis, four emission sources of saccharides were demonstrated, including biomass burning, fungal spores, soil suspension and plant pollens. Resolution of backward trajectory and fire points showed a process of high concentrations of levoglucosan. We found that concentrations of anhydrosaccharides showed relatively stable under different pollution levels while saccharide alcohols exhibited an obvious decrease, indicated that biomass burning was not the core reason of the heavy haze pollution, however, and high level PM_2.5 pollution might inhibit effects of biological activities.

Many agricultural water uses crowd the river ecology of the river water, thus leading to irreversible habitat damage. This paper presents an agricultural economic loss calculation model that is based on river ecological basic flow (REBF) protection by introducing a typical crop water requirement coefficient. First, the water balance equation is used according to a set of REBF protection values to compute the agricultural water shortage that results in the REBF. Second, the agricultural water shortage that results in REBF protection and a typical crop water requirement coefficient are used to determine the food production generated by REBF protection. Finally, the loss of food production and the food market prices are used to determine the agricultural economic loss caused by the different protection levels of REBF. A case study of the Weihe River in China is conducted. The calculation model is used to compute the agricultural economic loss on the basis of REBF protection in the Baoji section of the Weihe River, and the change law of the agricultural economic loss that results in different levels of the REBF is discussed. In addition, changes in the canal water use coefficient and the crop structure that affect agricultural economic loss are analyzed. Results show that the spatial and temporal variations in the runoff affect the changes in time and space of the agricultural economic loss. The higher the REBF protection level, the higher the agricultural economic loss. In addition, agricultural economic loss can provide a quantitative basis for reasonable REBF protection. The size of agricultural economic loss helps the government sector in decision-making on REBF protection.

The epidemiological situation generated by COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of applying non-pharmacological measures. Among these, mass screening of the asymptomatic general population has been established as a priority strategy by carrying out diagnostic tests to limit the spread of the virus. In this article, we aim to evaluate the economic impact of mass COVID-19 screenings of an asymptomatic population through a Cost-Benefit Analysis based on the estimated total costs of mass screening versus health gains and associated health costs avoided. Excluding the value of monetized health, the Benefit-Cost ratio was estimated at approximately 0.45. However, if monetized health is included in the calculation, the ratio is close to 1.20. The monetization of health is the critical element that tips the scales in favour of the desirability of screening. Screenings with the highest return are those that maximize the percentage of positives detected.

Growth benefits of high speed rail (HSR) for enterprises are not automatic, but require a buoyant local economy and a robust strategy. Against above background, main objectives of ex-ante case study have been to investigate local socio-economic and spatial impacts of proposed HSR project around Ahmedabad station area on Mumbai-Ahmedabad HSR corridor, analyze the opportunities and challenges of HSR development and draw policy implications. Qualitative research methodology has been used to elicit the perceptions and perspectives of randomly selected 43 small, medium and large enterprises. Data has been analyzed using descriptive statistics. The study reveals that HSR induced greater human interaction will activate local economy, improve business efficiency and generate employment. Frequent travels on business trips can influence enterprises decision to settle near HSR station for easy access and likely to promote realty development. The proposed HSR project should be developed in synergy with urban dynamics of cities in transition and metropolitan service cities. Poor public transport connectivity is likely to be a major challenge in improving HSR accessibility and enhancing overall impacts of HSR, which can be improved by developing an integrated urban transport system, for which cooperation of all stakeholders and coherence with firms’ strategies is essential.

Activated carbons can be produced from biomass in a thermal process either in a direct carbonization-activation process or by first carbonizing the biomass and later on activating the biochars into activated carbons. The properties of the ACs are dependent on the type of process used for production. In this study, the properties of activated carbons produced in a one-stage and a two-stage process are considered. Activated carbons were produced by physical activation of two types of starting materials, bio chars produced from spruce and birch chips in a commercial carbonization plant and from the corresponding raw chips. The activated carbons produced were characterized regarding specific surfaces, pore volumes and pore size distributions. The un-activated bio chars had some degree of surface area 190 and 140 m²g^-1 for spruce and birch and pore volumes of 0.067 and 0.092 cm³g^-1. According to the results obtained, two slightly different types of activated carbons are produced depending if a one-stage or a two-stage carbonization and activation process is used. The ACs produced in the one-stage process had higher specific surface areas compared to the ones produced in a two-stage process (761-940 m²g^-1 vs. 540-650 m²g^-1) . In addition, total pore volumes were higher in one-stage process but development of micropores is greater compared to two-stage process. There was no significant difference in total carbon content between one-stage and two-stage process.

The livelihood of most of the fishers in Indian Sundarbans is dependent on Penaeus monodon post larvae fishing. These post larvae collectors are socially backward lacking economic security. The activity of collecting Penaeus monodon post larvae for rearing in aquaculture, destroy other aquatic species. Many other juveniles of shellfish and fin fish were destroyed in the process of collection of Penaeus monodon post larvae. The removal of juveniles before they reach maturity disturbs the ecological chain by hampering breeding processes and may cause extinction of some fish species in the long run. The present study is an attempt to estimate the economic value of juveniles destroyed in the collection of (Penaeus monodon) post larvae. In total 32 species were identified in P.monodon the post larval by-catch. The economic loss is assessed based on estimating biomass by taking a length-weight relationship from published literature. Further, the paper illustrates how does a profit enterprise is linked with natural resource exploitation. The paper explores government policy and nature conservation issues for social justice and effective conservation.In conclusion, suggestions are given to reduce the burden of livelihood on natural resources to the extent of exploitation and to strengthen institution and policy-making considering socio-ecological vulnerabilities of the area.

The COVID-19 outbreak and its economic, social and financial fallouts have generated a renewed interest in finding adequate policies and means to strengthen economic resilience to future shocks, particularly in developing countries. The latter are usually disproportionately affected by adverse shocks (compared to developed countries) and lack the adequate resources to weather these shocks. Strengthening economic resilience is now at the heart of the policy discussion both at the national and international levels. The present paper aims to contribute to this debate by investigating the effect of productive capacities on economic resilience in a panel dataset of 118 developing countries over the period 2000-2018. It constructs a regression-based economic resilience indicator, and makes use of the indicator of productive capacities recently developed by the UNCTAD. Results are quite interesting, including from a policy perspective. The development of productive capacities is associated with greater economic resilience. This is particularly the case for countries with greater trade openness, greater capital account openness, and those that promote a stable macroeconomic environment. Interestingly, development aid appears to matter for the effect of productive capacities on economic resilience. On the one hand, the magnitude of the positive economic resilience effect of productive capacities increases as countries receive higher Aid for Trade (AfT) flows. On the other hand, NonAfT flows (i.e., other development aid flows that AfT flows) hinder the possible positive contribution of productive capacities to economic resilience. These findings have important policy implications that are discussed in the paper.

This paper reports on the optimization of thin-film coating assisted self-sustainable off-grid hybrid power generation systems for cattle farming in rural areas of Bangladesh. Bangladesh is a lower middle-income country with declining rates of poverty among its 160 million people due to persistent economic growth in conjunction with balanced agricultural improvements. Most of the rural households adopt a mixed farming system by cultivating crops and simultaneously rearing livestock. Among the animals raised, cattle are considered as the most valuable asset for the small/medium-scale farmers in terms of their meat and milk production. Currently, along with the major health issue, the COVID-19 pandemic is hindering the world’s economic growth and has thrust millions into unemployment; Bangladesh is also in this loop. However, natural disasters such as COVID-19 pandemic and floods, largely constrain rural smallholder cattle farmers from climbing out of their poverty. In particular, small and medium-scale cattle farmers face many issues that obstruct them from taking advantage of market opportunities and imposing a greater burden on their families and incomes. An appropriate measure can give a way to make those cattle farmers’ businesses both profitable and sustainable. Optimization of thin-film coating assisted self-sustainable off-grid hybrid power generation system for cattle farming is a new and forward-looking approach for sustainable development of the livestock sector. In this study, we design and optimize a thin-film coating assisted hybrid (photovoltaic-battery-generator) power system by using the Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Energy Resources (HOMER, Version 3.14.0) simulation tool. An analysis of the results has suggested that the off-grid hybrid system is more feasible for small and medium-scale cattle farming systems with long-term sustainability to overcome the significant challenges faced by smallholder cattle farmers in Bangladesh.

Artificial reefs have been deployed in multiple regions of the world for different purposes including habitat restoration and protection, biodiversity and fish stock enhancement, fisheries management and recreation. Artificial reefs can be a valuable tool for ecosystem protection and rehabilitation, helping mitigate the effects of anthropogenic impacts that we face today. However, knowledge on artificial reefs is unevenly distributed worldwide, with some regions having much more quality information available and published (e.g. European Mediterranean Sea area), while others, for instance the North-East Atlantic area, do not. Here, we provide a characterization of purposely built artificial reefs in North-East Atlantic area based on all available literature (i.e. research papers and reports), highlighting the needs and gaps that are vital for establishing future perspectives for artificial reef deployment and research. In the North-East Atlantic area, sixty-one purposely built artificial reefs have been deployed since 1970, mostly between the years 1990-2009, with Spain being the country with the highest number of artificial reefs. The most reported purpose for their deployment is fisheries productivity and habitat/species protection, although, most artificial reefs are multipurpose in order to maximise the benefits of a given financial investment. The majority of artificial reefs were submerged at < 50 m, mainly between 10-20 m of depth. The most used designs were cubic blocks and complex designs made by an array of combined shapes, which mostly consist of concrete (79%). From all the analysed data on artificial reefs, 67% of the cases reported surveys to assess biodiversity after the deployment. However, in 26% of those cases, data was not available. When data was available, only 31% of cases reported long-term biomonitoring surveys (3 years or more). Based upon these findings, we noticed a general lack of scientifically robust data, including records of species and abundance of both fish and invertebrates, as well as macroalgae. Preventing an adequate determination of the best balance between shape, construction material and bio-colonization. Critiques and suggestions are discussed in the light of current available data in order to perform more efficient research, evaluation and functioning of future artificial reefs.

The green biomass of horticultural plants contains valuable secondary metabolites (SM) which can potentially be extracted and sold. When exposed to stress, plants accumulate higher amounts of these SMs, making the extraction and commercialization even more attractive. We evaluated the potential for accumulating of the flavones cynaroside and graveobioside A in leaves of two bell pepper cultivars (Mavras and Stayer) when exposed to salt stress (100 mM NaCl), UVA/B excitation (UVA 4-5 W/m²; UVB 10-14 W/m² for 3 hours per day) or a combination of both stressors. HPLC analyses proved the enhanced accumulation of both metabolites under stress conditions. Cynaroside accumulation is effectively triggered by high-UV stress, whereas graveobioside A contents increase under salt stress. Highest contents were observed in plants exposed to combined stress. Effects of stress on overall plant performance differed significantly between treatments, with least negative impact on aboveground biomass found for high-UV stressed plants. The usage of two non-destructive instruments (Dualex and Multiplex) allowed us to gain insights in ontogenetical effects at the leaf level and temporal development of SM contents over time. Indices provided by those devices correlate fairly with amounts detected via HPLC (Cynaroside: R2 = 0.46 – 0.66; Graveobioside A: R2 = 0.51 – 0.71). The concentrations of both metabolites tend to decrease at leaf level during the ontogenetical development even under stress conditions. High-UV stress is a promising tool for enriching plant leaves with valuable SM without major effects on plant biomass. All data is available online [1].

The aim of the paper is to identify the most likely factors that determine the demand for Renewa-ble Energy Consumption (R.E.C.) in European countries. Although in Europe a high environmen-tal awareness is omnipresent, countries differ in scope and share of R.E.C. due to historical ener-getic policies and dependencies, investments into renewable and traditional energetic sectors, R&D development, structural changes required by energetic policy change, and many other fac-tors. The study refers to a set of macroeconomic, institutional, and social factors affecting energetic renewable policy and R.E.C. in selected European countries in two points of time: i.e., before and after the Paris Agreement. The Bayesian Average Classical Estimates (BACE) is applied to indicate the most likely factors affecting R.E.C. in 2015 and 2018. The comparison of the results reveals that the G.D.P. level, nuclear and hydro energy consumption were the determinants significant in both analyzed years. Furthermore, it became clear that in 2015 the R.E.C. depended strongly on the energy consumption structure, while in 2018, the foreign direct investment and trade openness played their role in increasing renewable energy consumption. The direction of changes is positive and complies with sustainable development goals (S.D.G.s).

LiFePO₄ (LFP) or Lithium-ion battery with its advantages compared to common current motorcycle battery is an appropriate alternative in substituting wet and dry cell battery. Huge amount of demand of motorcycle along with the battery in Indonesia also make it an interesting product for business. In order to assess the commercial potential for such a new technology, market share needs to be estimated as well as the techno-economic feasibility. Hence, market share prediction using the residents of Surakarta Region and techno-economic analysis using NPV, IRR and PBP indicators have been conducted in this study. Calculation using markov chain method shows that LFP battery tends to dominate the market after certain period. Techno-economic analysis also figures out that the commercialization is feasible in three conditions - first mover, even with market leader and equilibrium point. Therefore, there is a great commercial potential for LFP battery especially in Indonesia.

The paper addresses an analysis of the efficiency and profitability of the operation of a photovoltaic installation located in the geometric centre of Europe (near Białystok, Poland), where the intensity of solar irradiation is not too high compared to other European countries. It is calculated that in that place average solar irradiation being lower even by approx. 26 kWh than that for the whole Europe, which results in a 26% drop in the economic potential of the utilisation of solar energy for its conversion. A case study and an economic analysis show that without minimum funding amounting to 50% of the investment costs paid for the modernisation of a central heating system assisted by PV cells, the time of return of pecuniary expenditures exceeds 7 years. Apart from the Simple Pay-Back Time SPBT, discount indicators determined in the paper also include the net present value NPV and the internal rate of return IRR. Moreover, a direct ecological effect has been determined for such an investment.

The impact of monetary policies and their implementation by exchange rate covered the economic condition of Ghana. The social inclusion and conversion factors change the implemented policies of nations, where the real price, trade, technology, a price rate and price level of ratio take an important part of growth. The reform of the financial sector favors the free floating of the exchange rate and global trade by under the premise of flexible exchange rates. The tragedy of country growth and exchange rate toward a trajectory of growth with the growth-enhancing effect through social inclusion, conversion factors, price level ratio, exchange rate, merchant rate, export and trade services. The research study is based on secondary study and social inclusion equity indicators with public resources, building human resources and social protection for economic development has determined. The monetary policies are classified by the different evidence and trade indicators. The significant influence of growth and internal policies has affected trade and exchange rates with growth and reserve policies. The results have computed by linear regression and it proved that social inclusion and alternative conversion factors impact on the global trade and create short term binary relationship.

Results from a behavioral economic laboratory experiment are used to enhance our understanding of public health decisions made during the COVID-19 pandemic. The identification of systematic biases from optimal decision theory found in controlled experiments could help inform public policy design for future public health crises. The laboratory and the shelter-in-place decisions made during COVID-19 included elements of risk, uncertainty and ambiguity. The lab findings found individuals adopt different decision rules depending on both personal attributes and on the context and environment in which the decision task is conducted. Key observations to consider in the context of the COVID-19 decision environment include the importance of past experience, the ability to understand and calculate the odds of each action, the size and differences in economic payoffs given the choice, the value of information received, and how past statistical independent outcomes influence future decisions. The academic space encompassing both public health and behavioral economics is small, yet important, particularly in the current crisis. The objective of continued research in this area would be to develop a more representative model of decision-making processes, particularly during crisis, that would serve to enhance future public health policy design.

This review article aims at improving understanding of the theoretical discussion on technonationalism. Reviewing conventional works of the literature proposes protectionist, innovationist, and strategic industrial approaches toward high-tech industries. The findings show that technonationalism is a concept linking technology and national security, seeking geoeconomic interests in the integrated global market to exert state power for economic statecraft. The nature of industry highly relies on the global value chain, and technological innovation in the high-tech sectors occurs mainly in the private sector; thus, this article points out the issue of embracing business interests into the state’s strategic addenda as a critical criterion of technonationalism. Also, technonationalism is a narrowly defined concept with state actors involved in national security affairs and high-tech business actors.

The poultry industry is affected by many epidemics and Newcastle Disease (ND) is a constant threat, known as a devastating disease for poultry farmers around the world. According to the average death time of chicken embryos, virus strains can be classified as lentogenic, mesogenic, or velogenic. The current research will clarify the vulnerable host range as well as the epidemiology and geographic distribution of ND in Pakistan. The introduction of the virus into poultry can have serious economic consequences, including the loss of production of sick and dying poultry, the cost of control measures (such as population reduction and disinfection measures), and possible trade restrictions in the event of an outbreak. The virus is transmitted by direct contact with sick poultry or carriers. Infected birds can also spread the virus in their feces. It can also be spread through respiratory secretions, contaminated feed, equipment, water, or feces. We will also discuss vaccines that which vaccines are available for NDV in Pakistan and vaccines can fight against this disease or not? In this study, a qualitative risk analysis was carried out to assess Pakistan's vulnerability to the introduction of virulent NDV strains

The increasing amount of municipal sludge in China requires safe and effective management to protect human health and ensure environmental sustainability. Pyrolysis is a thermochemical process that that decompose organic matter at elevated temperature and under anaerobic conditions, and it has attracted an increasing attention in sludge treatment in the recent years. However, comprehensive environmental and economic assessment of sludge pyrolysis in China's context is rare, due to the small quantities of full-scale sludge pyrolysis plant. In this paper, we applied our design and operation parameters of full-scale sludge pyrolysis plants to generate the material and energy consumptions of the pyrolysis system under various of conditions, including sludge organic content and moisture content, system size, system energy distribution, and whether or not heat substitution is applied. Life cycle assessment and techno-economic assessment were then applied to investigate the environmental and economic performance of the system Our results demonstrate the significant environmental and economic impacts associated with sludge properties and system size. Generally, sludge with higher organic content and lower moisture content requires less natural gas consumption, which leads to a simultaneous improvement of the system environmental and economic performance. The system economic performance is more sensitive to the system size, and centralized sludge handling using a larger pyrolysis is more economic favorable. In the most ideal case, the average global warming potential and minimum sludge handling price of sludge pyrolysis could be as low as -32.5 kg CO₂-Eq/t DS and 188.8 $/t DS, respectively. Based on these results, we discussed the pathways that could be taken to further optimize the environmental and economic performances of the pyrolysis system.

Since the financial crisis in 2008, the U.S. economy has weakened, and the world economy has slowly developed. As the world's leading country, the United States has used many methods to restore the economy. But it does work efficiently. However, there are many issues in developed countries such as domestic social, economic, immigration in the United States/United Kingdom; those are not optimistic. Developed countries have entered a dilemma. The neoliberalism financial system has been unable to move forward. Populists have pointed out that those problems have been causing by globalization. Under the leadership of the Brexit Referendum, President Trump has caused a wave of anti-globalization. Under a series of systems such as the China-US trade war and the US-Mexico border wall repairs, the anti-globalization trend is getting stronger. This article mainly analyzes the in-depth reasons and mechanism research of globalization and anti-globalization alternately—the data obtained from an international method performance study. The results show that anti-globalization is temporary, along with globalization. There are three main factors affecting globalization: the situation of the dominant country, natural disasters, and wars. After so much literature review, I believe that the United States' globalization is gradually weakening, and globalization may return to regionalization under the United States' opposition.

Shelter-in-place policies and the closure of non-essential workplaces intended to disrupt transmission of the SARS-COV-2 virus are effective approaches to combating COVID-19. They have, however, caused record levels of unemployment in the United States, raising questions of whether mitigation is more societally damaging than the disease. Here we use a coupled epidemiological-economic model to estimate the impact on employment of an unmitigated, business-as-usual approach to the pandemic. We compared unemployment between March-August 2020 in ten Californian socio-economic systems (SESs) to unemployment forecast by a model of industrial sector inter-dependencies subjected to unmitigated outbreaks of COVID-19. We found that economic losses are unavoidable because disease-driven losses propagate economically through SESs, amplifying losses to the disease. While model forecasts are generally lower than actual unemployment, jobs savings would come at the cost of greatly increased worker mortality. The costs would also be disproportionately greater among smaller and inland SESs.

Concurrent waves of Coronavirus disease, Ebola virus disease, avian influenza A and black fungus are jeopardizing the lives in some parts of Africa and Asia. From this point of view, this review aims to summarize both socio-economic and public health implications of these parallel outbreaks along with their best possible management approaches. Various online databases were used to collect the necessary information regarding these outbreaks. Based on the reports published and analyses done so far, the long-lasting damages caused by these simultaneous outbreaks on global socio-economical and public health status can be conceived from the past experiences of outbreaks, especially the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, prolonged restrictions by the local government may lead to food insecurity, global recession, and an enormous impact on the mental health of people of all ages, specifically in developing countries. Such overwhelming effects already have been reported to be declining national growth of the economy as well as increasing political insecurity and shortage of basic needs. Although various actions have already been taken including vaccination, clinical management, and further research, social distancing, and lockdown, etc. to improve the situation, the emerging variants and associated genetic mutations may make the containment difficult worsening the situation again. Considering the current mutational dynamics of the pathogens and the past experiences, perpetual preparedness along with updated clinical management backed by epidemiological studies and innovating scientific effort are inevitable to combat the simultaneous waves of multiple infectious diseases.

Bio-separation of natural molecules as well as clinical compounds has been constantly developed in last decades. Several techniques are available but the majority of them presents drawbacks such us impossibility to be applied for industrial purposes. The main limitations for the scaling up are high costs and the fact that the devices work with microfluid dynamics. Nevertheless, magnetic bio-separation is considered the most prone to be used for large scale applications. Herein, we propose a simple magnetic separation method that is not based on microfluid dynamics, can work in a continuous- and high-flow rate and can be easily automated in order to be used for standard separation purposes. It is based on the use of an anisotropic flexible ferric magnetic strip, Teflon hoses and a pumping device. We show the modelling of the separation process along with an experimental test on iron oxide magnetic particles. The results showed that it is possible to remove, and separately collect, more than 92% of magnetic particles from a liquid solution of 100 ml in roughly 15 minutes.

The quality of an educational system is reflected not only in the instructive performances of the educational actors, but also in the degree in which it ensures an adequate professional integration. The undergraduate of today, the graduate of tomorrow needs an as accurate as possible information regarding the labour market, which cannot be achieved only by individual means, but also by resorting to carrier counselling services. The motivation of this research is closely connected to the improvement of the level of communication between the two aspects – on the one hand the academic one, by its finite products, and the economic one, on the other hand – and the opportunities that the cooperation between the two aspects might offer: adjusting the demand-supply ratio on the labor market and above all, stopping massive emigration of young graduates of higher education.

Does the choice of proxy for stock market development matter? This paper suggests that the growth effect of stock market development is sensitive to the choice of proxy and using alternative financial development indicators have practically no influence on the results. We found that using either the stock market capitalization to GDP ratio or the stock market returns; have a positive and significant effect on growth. However, we cannot make same conclusion when one uses either the ratio of total value of trades on the major stock exchanges to GDP or stock market turnover ratio to proxy for stock market development as the coefficient on these variables were found to be statistically insignificant. The indexes extracted from principal component analysis confirm the sensitivity of the effect to the choice of proxy. This finding suggest that stock market development is a conceptual terms, thus, representing it with single indicators make it impossible to identify which stock market development indicators have a significant positive growth effects.

This paper aims to research whether there is link between FDI inflows and Economic growth in the Republic of Seychelles Island. The ordinary least square results obtained shows that in the impact of FDI inflows on economic growth is low. Small Island Developing States attracts less FDI inflow because they are limited to few resources that attracts overseas firms which results in retarded development. The research lighted that impact of foreign direct investment on host countries does not only depend on the quality and quantity of the FDI inflows but some other variables such as the internal policies and the management skills, market structures, economic trends among others.

Bio-economy is a major area of the strategy that can afford the European Union to achieve growth: (i) smart, through the development of knowledge and innovation; and (ii) sustainable, based on a greener, more efficient economy in resource management. We believe that the progress of bio-economy cannot be achieved without the harnessing of intellectual capital. Our research aimed to emphasize the benefits of the dynamics of the intellectual capital growth on the evolution of the bio-economy. Thus, the information published by Eurostat (European Statistic Institute) during a period spanning seven years (2011-2018) was used to assess the influence exerted by the conduct of the harness of intellectual capital related to sustainability as well as for the reporting of indicators relevant to appreciating an economic progress and sustainability (renewable waste material, share of renewable energy and energy intensity of the economy). The ultimate goal was represented by the generation of a regression model to see what factor influences mostly the progress of the bio-economy at European and Romanian level. Significant dependency relationships were identified. The results remain robust even after the introduction of certain control variables, such as gross domestic product rate, food production, population growth, urbanization growth and inflation. Our paper sets out to contribute to expanding the specialty literature by highlighting the involvement of intellectual capital as a factor in optimizing sustainability growth and, at a methodological level, by using a multiple regression.

At the Atsumi Wind Farm in Aichi Prefecture, Japan, damage to wind turbines occurred frequently due to terrain-induced turbulence. In the present study, numerical analyses of terrain-induced turbulence were conducted by reproducing the topography in the vicinity of the wind turbine sites in high resolution and using RIAM-COMPACT natural terrain version, which is based on large eddy simulation (LES). The results of the diagnoses indicated that, in the case of south-easterly wind, terrain-induced turbulence is generated at a small terrain feature located upstream of Wind Turbine (WT) #2, which serves as the origin of the turbulence. At the Atsumi Wind Farm, a combination of the series of wind diagnoses and on-site operation experience led to a decision to adopt an "automatic shutdown program" for WTs #1 and #2. Here, "automatic shutdown program" refers to the automatic suspension of wind turbine operation upon the wind speed and direction meeting the conditions associated with significant effects of terrain-induced turbulence at a wind turbine site. The adoption of the "automatic shutdown program" has successfully resulted in a large reduction in the number of occurrences of wind turbine damage, thus, creating major positive economic effects. 1) a reduction in the repair costs by 9.322 million yen per year per wind turbine, 2) an increase in the availability factor by 8.05%, and 3) an increase in the capacity factor by 1.7%.

The last few years have witnessed an explosion of research on Sustainable development. Most of this research is concentrated on the developed countries related to the issues not compatible with developing countries. This paper fills the gap and reviews the literature related to developing and emerging economies and their environmental and social constraints under Renewable energy and sustainable development (RESD). It also investigates how RESD can be implemented in the presence of serious issues pertaining to population increase, shortage of energy supply, lack of transportation, shortage of clean water, less food production and bad environmental systems and these are coupled with war, and hunger and political instability. The main contribution of this paper is to present extensive discussion in the context of hypotheses of economic growth and its association with energy consumption, and renewable energy options for sustainable development.

The aim of this study is to empirically examine the link between foreign direct investment (FDI) and domestic investment (DI) in South Africa over the period of 41 years (1975-2016). Accurately, it attempts to determine whether FDI crowds in or crowds out DI in South Africa. DI is sub-divided into private domestic investment (credit to domestic private sector) and public corporation investment (state owned enterprises). We used the Autoregressive Distributed Lag-Error Correction Model (ARDL-ECM) technique to ascertain long run and short run effects concurrently after establishing that the variables were stationary (using the PP test). The results of the unit root test shows that all variables are integrated of order zero I(0) or integrated of order one I(1), indicating that the series of variables are stationary in the level or first difference form. The findings revealed that variables are cointegrated in the long run. The ARDL model found a negative link between FDI and domestic investment. The result implies that FDI crowds out domestic investment. Moreover, the long run estimate revealed that domestic investment is crowded in by government investment expenditure (GINV). Other findings uncovered that, GDP crowds out private domestic investment while crowding in public corporation investment. Moreover, the long run estimate revealed that domestic investment is crowded in by gross domestic savings (SAV). On the other hand, the real exchange rate (EXCR) crowds out private domestic investment while crowding in public corporation investment. Trade openness (TRA) crowds out domestic investment. Additionally, the short run estimate uncovered that private domestic investment is crowded out by FDI, EXCR, and TRA whereas GINV, GDP and SAV is crowding in private domestic investment. Other findings discovered that, in the short run, public corporation investment is crowded out by FDI, GDP, EXCR and TRA, while GINV and SAV crowd in public corporation investment. The CUSUM confirms that the models are structurally firmness.

(1) Background: Pedestrian injuries (PIs) represent a significant proportion of road traffic injuries. We aimed at investigating the incidence and mortality of PIs in different age groups and Socio-demographic Index (SDI) categories between 1990 and 2017. (2) Method: Estimates of age-standardized incidence and mortality along with trends of PIs by SDI levels were obtained from the Global Burden of Disease from 1990 to 2017. We also calculated forecasts until 2040. (3) Results: Globally, PIs incidence increased by 3.31% (–9.94 to 16.56) in 2017 compared to 1990. Men have a higher incidence of PIs than women. Forecasted incidence was 132.02 (127.37 to 136.66) per 100,000 population in 2020, 101.52 (65.99 to 137.05) in 2030 and reduced further to 71.02 (10.62 to 152.65) by 2040. Globally across all SDI categories, there was a decreasing trend in mortality due to PIs with the global estimated percentage reduction of 37.12% (–45.19 to –29.04). (4) Conclusions: The results show that PIs are still a burden for all SDI categories despite some variation. Although incidence and mortality are expected to decrease globally, some SDI categories may require particular attention in addition to specific vulnerable age groups. Further studies addressing incidence and mortality patterns in vulnerable SDI categories are needed.

The study's motivation is to gauge the nexus between economic policy uncertainty and financial innovation for the period 2004M1 to 2018M12 in BRIC nations. For establishing a long-run cointegration study applied Autoregressive Distributed Lagged (ARDL) and asymmetry effects of economic policy uncertainty investigated following nonlinear framework known as NARDL. Furthermore, directional causality is established by performing a non-granger causality test. Cointegration test results of Fpss, Wpss, and tBDM confirmed the long-run association between EPU and financial innovation. On the other hand, the Wald test results proved asymmetry effects furring from EPU to financial innovation both in the long-run and short-run. Referring to asymmetry effects that positive and negative shocks in financial innovation, the study revealed that negative linkage between shocks in EPU and financial innovation in the long-run but short-run effects are insignificant. Furthermore, financial innovation measured by R&D investment exhibits positive linked with shocks in EPU, implying that uncertainty induces innovation in the economy. Refers to directional causality estimation, the study revealed evidence supporting the feedback hypothesis between EPU and financial innovation in all sample countries.

Technological advancements and innovations have profoundly changed the lives of people giving rise to smart environments, cities, and societies. As homes are the building block of cities and societies, smart homes are critical to establishing smart living and are expected to play a key role in enabling smart cities and societies. The current academic literature and commercial advancements on smart homes have mainly focused on developing and providing smart functions for homes to provide security management and facilitate the residents in their various activities such as ambiance management. Homes are much more than physical structures, buildings, appliances, operational machines, and systems. Homes are composed of families and are inherently complex phenomena underlined by humans and their relationships with each other, subject to individual, intragroup, intergroup, and intercommunity goals. There is a clear need to understand, define, consolidate existing research, and actualize the overarching roles of smart homes, the roles of smart homes that would serve the needs of future smart cities and societies. This paper introduces our data-driven parameter discovery methodology and uses it to provide, for the first time, an extensive, rather fairly comprehensive, analysis of the families and homes landscape seen through the eyes of academics and the public using over a hundred thousand research papers and nearly a million tweets. We develop a methodology using deep learning, natural language processing (NLP), and big data analytics methods and apply it to automatically discover parameters that capture a comprehensive knowledge and design space of smart families and homes comprising social, political, economic, environmental, and other dimensions. The 66 discovered parameters and the knowledge space comprising 100s of dimensions are explained by reviewing and referencing over 300 articles from the academic literature and tweets. The knowledge and parameters discovered in this paper can be used to develop a holistic understanding of matters related to families and homes facilitating the development of better, community-specific, policies, technologies, solutions, and industries for families and homes, leading to strengthening families and homes, and in turn, empowering sustainable societies across the globe.

In the context of economic and political uncertainty associated with the 2019-nCoV pandemic, it is necessary to determine the socio-psychological factors in the transformation of the behavior of insurance consumers under the influence of the biogenic threat. This study is devoted to measuring financial anxiety and its impact on the insurance behavior of Russian citizens. Correlation, comparative and regression analyzes of financial anxiety of Russian citizens cover three stages of observation: before the start of the 2019 nCoV pandemic (“FA up to 19 nCoV; N = 766), during the period of quarantine measures announced in Russia in March 2020 (“ FA 19- nCoV-1 "; N = 856) and after the relaxation of quarantine measures at the end of April 2020 (" FA 19-nCoV-2 "; N = 963). Psychological analysis data were obtained from the online survey "Financial anxiety (in the context of insurance)". The questionnaire is psychometrically reliable and easy to use, including 5 measurement scales: MR1. Physical manifestations of financial incentive anxiety, MR2. With money shortages and financial uncertainty, MR3. The value of insurance coverage, MP4. Financial Confidence, MR5. Perception of insurance and investment risks. Russian citizens considered it important to have insurance coverage on a “rainy day” and showed confidence in the insurance market during the biogenic crisis. But, unfortunately, Russian citizens during the 19-nCoV-1 and 19-nCoV-2 periods did not feel financially secure in the future, unlike the period before 19-nCoV. ”Women showed high scores for physical manifestations of financial anxiety and low financial confidence in the future, in contrast to men, regardless of the observation period.

Reactive transport (RT) couples bio-geo-chemical reactions and transport. RT is important to understand numerous scientific questions and solve some engineering problems. RT is highly multidisciplinary, which hinders the development of a body of knowledge shared by RT modelers and developers. The goal of this paper is to review the basic conceptual issues shared by all RT problems, so as to facilitate advance along the current frontier: biochemical reactions. To this end, we review the basic equations to point that chemical systems are controlled by the set of equilibrium reactions, which are easy to model, but whose rate is controlled by mixing. Since mixing is not properly represented by the standard advection-dispersion equation (ADE), we conclude that this equation is poor for RT. This leads us to review alternative transport formulations, and the methods to solve RT problems using both the ADE and alternative equations. Since equilibrium is easy, difficulties arise for kinetic reactions, which is especially true for biochemistry, where numerous frontiers are open (how to represent microbial communities, impact of genomics, effect of biofilms on flow and transport, etc.). We conclude with the basic 10 issues that we consider fundamental for any conceptually sound RT effort.

Bio-surfactants are surface-active molecules which are produced by the wide range of microbes including bacteria, fungi, and yeast. This study was conducted to identify bio-surfactants by Bacillus subtilis combined with use of cheap substrates and industrial wastes (Mustard cake, Whey and Soya cake) which are found locally in Nepal. Bacillus subtilis, one of the most potential bio-surfactants producer; was isolated from soil sample of hydrocarbon contaminated site. Isolates were grown in a Minimal Salt Media (MSM) with 10% (v/v) mustard oil cake, whey and soya cake separately. The presence and potential of surfactant was determined by the oil spreading technique, emulsification index (%E24) and surface tension measurement. It was revealed that the surface tensions of cell free extract were 54.41, 60.02 and 56.64 mN/m for from mustard cake, whey and soya cake respectively as compared to distilled water (72.09) at 25oC. The emulsification index values are was found to be highest in engine oil from the bio-surfactant extracted from mustard cake, soya cake and whey respectively. Similarly, mustard oil showed the lowest value of emulsification index. The highest emulsification activity was shown in mustard oil i.e. 1.13 from the cell free extract from mustard oil and lowest in engine oil i.e., 0.07, by the extract from soya cake medium, when measured in spectrophotometer at 540 nm. In conclusion, strain of Bacillus subtilis was found to be the potential surface active agent producers on the mustard oil cake, which can be useful medium for various environmental, food and industrial processes.

We present a new method of estimating fitness of countries and complexity of products by exploiting a non-linear non-homogeneous map applied to the publicly available information on the goods exported by a country. The non homogeneous terms guarantee both convergence and stability. After a suitable rescaling of the relevant quantities, the non homogeneous terms are eventually set to zero so that this new method is parameter free. This new map reproduces the findings of the method proposed by Tacchella et al. [1], and allows for an approximate analytic solution in case of actual binarized matrices based on the Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) indicator. This solution is connected with a new quantity describing the neighborhood of nodes in bipartite graphs, representing in this work the relations between countries and exported products. Moreover, we define the new indicator of country net-efficiency quantifying how a country efficiently invests in capabilities able to generate innovative complex high quality products. Eventually, we demonstrate analytically the local convergence of the algorithm.

Forestry and the wood-based sector, including the wood industry, which is an important element of economic systems and a source of budget revenues for many countries in the world, found itself in the first quarter of 2020 in a situation of a serious threat of a prolonged crisis as a consequence of the pandemic. In this perspective, it is necessary to review existing sector strategies and look for new solutions to ensure first survival, then functioning and finally development of entities forming the wood market. In the scientific research, which is the subject of this work, an attempt was made to multi-criteria analysis of the selection of the optimal anti-crisis strategy for actors from forestry and the wood-based sector in the face of a pandemic. Preparatory studies were conducted on the example of Poland, where both forestry and the wood industry belong to the dominant sectors of the economy, conducting them at the turn of March and April 2020. The research was referred to the primary wood raw material market in Poland, which is the main link in the value chain, created first by the dominant owner: Państwowe Gospodarstwo Leśne "Lasy Państwowe" - the “State Forests” National Forest Holding (SFNFH), and then forest service entrepreneurs, to entities representing the wood industry. The work uses a concept modified for the purposes of the author's research scenario, based on the method of multi-criteria hierarchical analysis AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process). The best possible decision was to be searched that would allow the selection of the optimal anti-crisis strategy for enterprises - actors of the sector concerned. Based on the collected results and their expert discussion, recommendations for sectoral policy for forestry and the wood-based sector were then formulated. The proposed solutions are located against the background of a dispute between the concept of institutional intervention and a model taking into account the effects of market factors. The work is both cognitive (optimization and adaptation of the research method) and practical up-to-date. An accurate development strategy for forestry and the wood-based sector is urgently needed and necessary to implement as quickly as possible.

We present the design and overall development of an eight degrees of freedom (DOF) based Bioinspired Quadruped Robot (BiQR). The robot is designed with a skeleton made of cedar wood. The wooden skeleton is based on exploring the potential of cedar wood to be a choice for legged robots’ design. With a total weight of 1.19 kg, the robot uses eight servo motors that run the position control. Relying on the inverse kinematics, the control design enables the robot to perform the walk gait-based locomotion in a controlled environment. The robot has two main aspects: 1) the initial wooden skeleton development of the robot showing it to be an acceptable choice for robot design, 2) the robot’s applicability as a low-cost legged platform to test the locomotion in a laboratory or a classroom setting.

The Circular Economy of plastics is a promising concept that has the potential to reduce pollution and close the loop on plastic waste. However, further research is needed to develop more efficient and environmentally friendly methods of recycling plastic. This review article discusses the Circular Economy of plastics, its potential benefits and drawbacks, and the challenges that need to be addressed to make it a reality. Some case studies are also examined to explore how the Circular Economy of plastics has been implemented across the globe.

The goal is to reduce poverty, the method used is a literature study to see the effect of using Financial Technology (Fintech) on financial inclusion, method to see the effect of financial inclusion on poverty. From the results of the tests, the use of Fintech can increase financial inclusion, thereby encouraging poverty alleviation. It can be seen that the Financial Inclusion variable has a significant and negative effect on the poverty variable. This shows that countries that have high levels of financial inclusion are generally estimated to have low poverty rates. Increasing a country's financial inclusion can reduce poverty.

The article presents the methodology for classifying economic regions with regards to selected factors that characterize a region, such as: the economic structure of the region, and thus the share of individual sectors in the economy; employment; the dynamics of the development of individual sectors expressed as an increase or decrease in production value; the population density in the region and also the level of occupational safety. Cluster analysis, which is a method of multidimensional statistical analysis available in Statistica software, was used to solve the task. The proposed methodology was used to group Polish voivodships with regards to the speed of economic development and occupational safety in the construction industry. Data published by the Central Statistical Office was used for this purpose, such as the value of construction and assembly production, the number of people employed in the construction industry, the population of an individual region and the number of people injured in occupational accidents.

In this work we identify combinations of technological activities that signal the presence local capabilities in a country to successfully export a product. We use country-level patent and trade data to generate a multi-layer network, and we apply maximization of entropy to generate synthetic data to effectively divide signal from noise. We show that in several sectors the signal far exceed the noise. Our exercise provides robust evidence of the presence of synergies between technologies to explain trade performances in specific markets. This can be highly useful for policy makers, to inform industrial and innovation policies.

The Needleman-Wunsch process is a classic tool in bioinformatics, being a dynamic programming algorithm that performs a pairwise alignment of two input biological sequences, either protein or nucleic acid. A distance matrix between the tokens used in the sequences is also required as input. The distance matrix is used to generate a positional pairwise similarity matrix between the input sequences, which is in turn used to generate a dynamic programming matrix. The best path through the dynamic programming matrix is navigated using a traceback procedure that maximises similarity, inserting gaps as necessary. Needleman-Wunsch can align both nucleic acids or proteins, which use alphabets of size 4 and 20 tokens respectively. It can also be applied to any other kind of sequence where distance matrices can be specified. Here, we apply it to chains of Pousseur’s Scambi electronic music fragments, of which there are 32, and which Pousseur categorised by their sonic properties, thus permitting the consecutive construction of distance, similarity and dynamic programming matrices. Traceback through the dynamic programming matrix thus produces contrapuntal duet compositions in which two Scambi chains are played in the maximally euphonious manner, providing also an illustration of the principles of biological sequence alignment in sound.

For water-stressed regions like Iran improving the effectiveness and productivity of agricultural water-use is of utmost importance due to climate change and unsustainable demands. Therefore, a hydro-economic model has been developed here for the Zarrine River Basin with the central concept of that demands are value-sensitive functions, where quantities of water-uses at different locations and times have a changeable economic benefits. To do this, the potential crop yields and the surface and groundwater resources, especially Boukan Dam inflow are simulated using the hydrologic model, SWAT, based on predicted climatic scenarios i.e. quantile mapping-downscaled projections. Then, to allocate the agricultural water based on the agro- economic crop water productivity (AEWP) of crops, a basin-wide water management tool, MODSIM, is customized. Next, a simulation- optimization model has been developed using a coupled CSPSO-MODSIM, to optimize the total AEWP, considering climatic impact and crop pattern scenarios, for 2020-2038, 2050-2068 and 2080-2098 periods. Finally, the optimum crop pattern and crop water irrigation depths are presented for different RCPs and periods. The results indicated that this approach will improve considerably the AEWPs and decrease the agricultural water-use up to 40%. Thus, this integrated model is able to support water authorities and other stakeholder in a water-scarce basin, as is the study area.

Iron deficiency anemia (IDA) is highly prevalent in the Cote d’Ivoire, and has severe health and economic consequences. In this paper, we apply a health economic model to quantify the burden of IDA, and the contribution of nation-wide mandatory iron fortification of wheat flour and voluntary iron fortification of condiments to the reduction of this burden. The analysis for the population from six months to 64 years builds on published reviews and publicly available datasets, and is stratified by age-groups and socio-economic strata. Without the impact of these fortification strategies, the annual burden of IDA is estimated at 242,100 disability adjusted life years (DALYs) and 978.1 million USD. Wheat flour and condiment fortification contributed to a reduction of the IDA burden by approximately 5% each. In places with high prevalence of malaria and environmental factors, such as the Côte D’Ivoire, policy makers should combine nutritional intervention with infectious disease prevention and environmental factors. The findings of this study provide additional input for policy makers about the magnitude of the impact and can support the conception of future fortification strategies.

Delipidation is a method of defatting that is generally associated with the removal of residual lipids or lipid groups from matrices in which they are present in minute quantities. The bio-delipidation of protein-rich poultry slaughterhouse wastewater (PSW) pre-treated with a dissolved air flotation (DAF) system was developed using microbial lipases from bacterial strains isolated from the PSW. The efficacy of the bio-delipidation system was quantitatively characterised by comparing the quality parameters i.e., fats, oil and grease (FOGs), turbidity, total suspended solutes (TSS), total chemical oxygen demand (tCOD) and protein concentration of the DAF pre-treated PSW and bio-lipidized samples. As hypothesised, the bio-delipidation system was able to effectively reduce the levels of these quality parameters when crude lipases of Bacillus cereus AB1 (BF3) and Bacillus cereus CC-1 (B30) strains were used. Strain-dependent quality characteristics were also observed in bio-delipidized samples. The study successfully managed to complement physical reduction techniques (DAF) with biological strategies (bio-delipidation) for improved PSW quality, with potential industrial applications.

This study compares lifestyles behaviour in Italian and Latvian university students, to assess if there are differences for sex, age, university or studies specialties. An online questionnaire investigating 8 lifestyle dimensions has been compiled by 156 (43,6 % females) from Italy and 105 from Latvia (82,9% females). Answers were collected between April and December 2020. Presence of smokers are negligible. The questionnaire showed to have a good internal consistency (Cronbach α =.929). On the total group, significant statistically differences were found for all the dimensions regarding age, sex, study specialty and university. Physical activity was associated with healthier lifestyles choices. Geographical-induced differences were found (eating and sleep behaviours, alcohol awareness) as well as socio-economic differences. Female students shown to be more stressed than males. Occupational wellness increased by age. Sport students shown more health awareness. Many of the differences found in the total group disappeared when comparing only sport students of the two university, showing females increasing their scores. This result can be explained by a masculinization effect of sport.

Agricultural land conversion (ALC) is an incentive–driven process. In this paper we further investigate the inter–relationship between land economic value (LEV) and ALC. To achieve this goal, we calculated LEV for agricultural and non-agricultural (housing) uses in two areas in East Java, Indonesia. The first area represents suburban agriculture, facing rapid urbanization and experiencing high rate of ALC. The second area represents rural agriculture with zero ALC. Furthermore, we identified factors affecting LEV in both areas for both uses. The resut of this study show that agricultural land yielded higher economic benefit in rural area. Conversely, comparing to agricultural land, housing creates 7 times higher value in urban area. Moreover, agricultural land shown to create higher profit after converted. Ironically, the similar comparison doesn’t exists in rural area. Agricultural land only yielded 19% more value, indicate that agricultural land can be easily converted. It is also proven by the growing number of new urban core in the periphery area. There are several factors affecting land economic value, for agricultural use, soil fertility, accessibility, and cropping pattern are important variables. While accessibility and location in urban area increases land value for housing.

Over the last three decades, special economic zones (SEZs) have given new impetus to the ever-growing export-oriented industrialization in developing countries. Where various economies have benefited from SEZs, many zones have ended up becoming enclaves with trifling advantage. The SEZs in Pakistan have experienced the same fate and failed to contribute to exports, employment and creating linkages with the domestic economy. Recently under China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), SEZs are proposed to be set up in Pakistan; with a hope to fuel the stuttering economy. However, it is pertinent to first understand the local context and device policies considering stakeholders' perspectives. This study aims to identify the factors for the successful implementation of SEZs derived from the regional context of Pakistan. In-depth interviews are conducted from most relevant stakeholders, who have been involved in the development of SEZs. The results pointed towards the removal of political influence over zones and government taking the lead role in deciding the types of industry to be invited in these zones. Each zone should have a clear vision of development based on its regional advantage. The zone promotions should be based on competitiveness rather than fiscal incentives. Joint ventures and PPP to be encouraged inside the zones for sustainable operations.

The present paper investigates the effect of poverty on foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in developing countries. It complements the important extant literature on the effect of FDI inflows on poverty by examining the issue the other way around. The analysis is conducted using a sample of 117 countries over the period 1980-2017, and the two-step system Generalized Methods of Moments (GMM) technique. It has relied on two indicators of poverty, namely poverty headcount ratio and poverty gap. Findings indicate that over the full sample, poverty influences negatively FDI inflows, including through its adverse effect on human capital (that is, both education and health). Unsurprisingly, low-income countries (considered as poorest countries in the full sample) experience a higher negative effect of poverty on FDI inflows than other countries. On another note, participation in international trade matters for the effect of poverty on FDI inflows. In fact, an increase in poverty levels results in lower FDI inflows in countries that experience low workers' productivity, a less developed financial sector, and a low level of infrastructure development. Furthermore, the effect of poverty on FDI inflows does not depend on the prevailing economic growth rate. Finally, the analysis has revealed the existence of a non-linear effect of poverty on FDI inflows for the poverty headcount indicator, but not for the poverty gap indicator. The non-linear effect of poverty headcount on FDI inflows is such that a rise in poverty headcount ratio results in lower FDI inflows, but an additional increase in poverty more than further discourages FDI inflows. The conclusion discusses the implications of these findings.

The In this paper, a universal method has been developed, which is a combination of an optimization method and a method for assessing the marginal utility. At present, the problem of optimal load distribution in the power system between a hydropower plant (HPP) and thermal power plants (TPP) is solved using the equality of the differential incremental rate characteristics of fuel consumption at TPP and water consumption at HPP by the Lagrangian multiplier method. In this case, the number of iterations can be five or more. The proposed approach is based, first of all, on the correct representation of the differential characteristics and calculation of a hydro resource price for the operational control of the HPP. Based on the comparison of water volume at a HPP and fuel amount at combined heat and power plants (CHPP) used for generation of 1 kW power, it is possible to determine a water price for a HPP. As a result of implementing the developed method for the HPP, a price of sold electricity in the flexible energy market will be comparable with the price for sold electricity produced at CHPPs, being equal to approximately 120 rubles/MW∙h.

As the EU is moving towards a low carbon economy and seeks to further develop its renewable energy policy, this paper quantitatively investigates the impact of plausible energy market reforms from the perspective of bio-renewables. Employing a state-of-the-art biobased variant of a computable general equilibrium model, this study assesses the perceived medium-term benefits, risks and trade-offs which arise from an advanced biofuels plan, two exploratory scenarios of a more 'sustainable' conventional biofuels plan and a 'no-mandate' scenario. Consistent with more recent studies, none of the scenarios considered present significant challenges to EU food-security or agricultural land usage. An illustrative advanced biofuels plan simulation requires non-trivial public support to implement whilst a degree of competition for biomass with (high-value) advanced biomass material industries is observed. On the other hand, it significantly alleviates land use pressures, whilst lignocellulose biomass prices are not expected to increase to unsustainable levels. Clearly, these observations are subject to assumptions on technological change, sustainable biomass limits, expected trends in fossil fuel prices and EU access to third-country trade. With these same caveats in mind, the switch to increased bioethanol production does not result in significant market tensions in biomass markets.

Malaria is endemic in Nigeria and remains a major public health problem, taking its greatest toll on children under age 5 and pregnant women, although it is preventable, treatable, and curable. This study investigates the Impact of socio-economic factors and indoor mosquito control on malaria prevalent among pregnant women in Nigeria using logistic regression. To achieve this, secondary data obtained from 2015 Nigeria Malaria Indicator survey, executed by the National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) and the National Population Commission (NPopC), with a nationally representative sample of more than 8,000 consisting of 7,745 households. The results from the logistic regression with odds ratio revealed that pregnant women are more like to be affected by malaria fever (though not significant) compared to women that are not pregnant. The income levels of the household does not significant reduce the incidence of malaria fever among pregnant women in Niger. Concerning the malaria presenting measure, only dwelling sprayed by private company significantly reduce the incidence of malaria fever among pregnant women (P-value=0.020<0.05) compared to dwelling sprayed by government and NGOs and also to Insecticide Treated Net. Also pregnant women in the urban centers are less likely to have malaria fever compared to pregnant women in rural communities in Nigeria. Also, pregnant women with atleast a secondary school level of education are less likely to be affected by malaria fever compared to pregnant women with no formal education. The fitted logistic model passed the goodness-of-test fit; the classification test for the logistic model was correctly classified at about 67.02%. Therefore, this study recommends that government and NGOs should intensify their efforts in the area of dwelling spraying, awareness campaign of the danger of malaria fever among pregnant women and infants, engaged in effective distribution of insecticide treated net in order to reduce the incidence of malaria fever among pregnant women living in rural communities in Nigeria.

Lead, known as a metal with high neurotoxicity to children, cadmium, which is a carcinogenic and bioaccumulative contaminant, and arsenic, a class 1 carcinogenic according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, are toxic elements (TEs) whose relevant route of exposure may be diet. We determined the bio-accessible fraction of lead, cadmium, and arsenic from the diet of preschool children from two day care centers (DCC). A cross-sectional study was conducted with 64 one–four-year-old children from two DCCs where the 24-h duplicate diet samples were collected. The diet samples were analyzed by ICP-MS for lead, cadmium, and arsenic total concentrations (n = 64) and their bio-accessibility were analyzed for a subsample (n = 10). The dietary intake (DI) mean for lead, cadmium, and arsenic were 0.18 ± 0.11 µg kg⁻¹ bw, 0.08 ± 0.04 µg kg⁻¹ bw, and 0.61 ± 0.41 µg kg⁻¹ bw, respectively. All DI calculated for TEs, considering total intake, were found lower than the tolerable limits (TL) (European Union, or World Health Organization, WHO, when applicable) except for one child’s Pb intake. Bio-accessibilities ranged between 0% to 93%, 0% to 103%, and 0% to 69%, for lead, cadmium, and arsenic, respectively. Although DI for TEs has been found lower than TL, these reference values have been recently decreased or withdrawn since it was for lead and arsenic whose TL were withdrawn by WHO.

Water management can improve the quality of valuable ecosystem services but can be costly to implement and the management costs are covered by national taxes collected by water users. Based on 30 valuation studies of water quality improvement from the Environmental Valuation Information System (EVIS) database provided by Korea Environment Institute (KEI), a meta-regression analysis was employed to measure the benefits that major river basins provided to the society. We compare these benefits to the costs, namely River Management Funds (RMFs) which are financial resources to support a variety of projects for managing and improving upstream water quality. Based on benefit-cost comparison, this study evaluates the efficiency of water resource management in South Korea. This study also provides policy options that are helpful to maintain the sustainability of water resource by improving the planning and performance of water management in the long run.

The aim of the present study was to assess the efficacy of All Cosmos Industries (ACI) bio-organic and bio-chemical fertilizers and ACI N-Fixer (N-Bio Booster) on the paddy yields based on the field trial plots at Langkat, Medan, Indonesia. This application of ACI bio-organic fertilizer (NPK 5/5/5) and ACI bio-chemical (NPK 15/15/15) fertilizer and ACI N-Fixer tests were conducted at the paddy farm at Langkat from May-October 2018. This study employed a factorial randomized complete block design which consisted of two factors, namely: Factor I with four types of fertilizers while Factor II consisted of two paddy varieties (Inpari 30 and Inpari 32). Overall, the filled grains in the ACI treatments are significantly (P< 0.05) higher than those in the control treatments that used Normal Chemical Compound NPK. Overall, total weight per meter² (368-617g) in ACI treatments are also significantly (P< 0.05) higher than those (319-371g) in the control treatments. At harvesting time at 105 days after transplanting, significantly higher (P< 0.05) colony counts (13-15 x 10⁶ CFU/mL) (for ACI treatments), than those (8 x 10⁶ CFU/mL) in the controls positively indicated higher total yields of paddy grains per hectare. It was found that the application of ACI bio-organic and bio-chemical fertilizers and ACI N-Fixer can improve paddy yields of the two rice varieties, between 16.4-38.2% (up to 5.75 MT/ha), in the field trial plots at Langkat. These commercial fertilizers play an imperative role in refining the soil fertility and thereby can increase the yield of rice production. Therefore, it is highly recommended that ACI bio-organic and ACI bio-chemical fertilizers and ACI N-Fixer (N-Bio Booster) can be employed to increase the paddy yield in this region.

The excessive use of synthetic insecticides in modern agriculture has led to the contamination of the environment and the development of insect resistance. In this study, we evaluated the potential of tangerine (Citrus reticulata L.) peel essential oil (EO) as a natural insecticide against greenhouse whitefly (Trialeurodes vaporariorum W. (Homoptera: Aleyrodidae)), a common pest in greenhouse production. Petroleum ether (PET) and n-hexane (HEX) were used as solvents to extract essential oil (EO) from tangerine peels. The yield of EO was 1.59 % and 2.00 % (m/m) for PET and HEX, respectively. The insecticidal activity of EO was evaluated by measuring the mortality rate (MR) of greenhouse whiteflies at different time intervals. The results showed that PET and HEX extracts of tangerine EO effectively controlled the greenhouse whitefly. With both solvents, it was observed that with doses of 12.5% (v/v), similar results were achieved as with the positive control (corresponding to the commercial insecticide imidacloprid). Additionally, the FTIR analysis found that the EO contained d-limonene, which may be the source of its insecticidal properties. Therefore, tangerine peel essential oil is an excellent natural insecticide candidate for controlling greenhouse whiteflies effectively and sustainably.

(1)Background: To perform a simulation-based analysis of 2019 COVID-19 outbreak and how would the electronic commerce indursty help China’s economy resilient. (2)Methods: As the epidemic continues, it is possible to use Computable General Equilibrium model to simulate the economic consequences and analyse the role of electronic commerce industy in COVID-19 outbreak. (3)Results: Estimates and models produced at the time of the outbreak suggested that COVID-19 could have a catastrophic effect on China’s economy. National statistics were examined for anomalies that corresponded to the timing of COVID-19 outbreak and, where possible, the size of any gain or loss found estimated. Our analysis suggests that the electronic commerce industry could help China’s economy to recover by stimulating consumption, improving technological level and expanding investment. (4)Conclusions: This exercise holds important lessons for estimating the electronic commerce’s role of similar events – such as pandemic influenza – and measures to recover the economy. We suggest that electronic commerce industry should be paid more attention in economic development, especially in epidemic time. The implications of our findings are discussed in the light of a prospective epidemic.

The concept of green energy is now at the forefront of development discourse, with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 7, 11, and 12 all aimed at promoting green energy consumption to combat the three planetary crises: climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. Similarly, issues regarding Africa’s natural resource curse have caused a stir in the growth and development literature for some time now and there is no sign that it will die out. This study, the first of its kind, simultaneously assesses the impact of green energy consumption and Africa’s natural resources rents on economic growth by applying the Feasible Generalized Least Square (FGLS) estimator and the dynamic panel models of the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) and Mean Group (MG) estimators on data from 1990 to 2020 for 24 selected African countries. The results show that green energy consumption has a short-run growth-limiting effect and a long-run growth-enhancing effect in Africa. The study also found evidence of the natural resource curse phenomenon in Africa. The study, therefore, calls for the advancement and usage of green energy for both domestic and industrial production in Africa. The study further calls for a revamp in the global tax policy to curb illicit financial activities and strengthening institutional quality for transparency and accountability in the entire value chain of natural resource management in Africa.

Working capital management requires a careful attention by the corporate managers because it plays an important role in corporate stability. Social belongingness of managers induced them to learn from their society, colleagues and from overall industrial movement. They also learn from their peers which have more strategical efficiency. In line with these arguments, the objective of current study is to explores the peer influence on corporate working capital management practices. To making analysis, ten-years data (2009-2018) of non-financial publicly listed firms at PSX were collected and the cash conversion cycle (CCC) uses as a proxy variable of working capital management (WCM). To estimate the regression, an econometric technique named the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) was used. The empirical findings suggest the significant impact of peer WCM on corporate WCM. It also suggests the significant impact of other variables that determine the WCM. This study recommends social learning policy to corporate managers. They can learn from their peers to manage the working capital. Most previous studies discuss the peer influence on investment decisions, corporate cash holding and financing policy, etc., but no study explores such a relationship specifically in the Pakistani non-financial sector data set.

Poultry eggs are a critical source of protein, vitamins, and minerals for people worldwide; facing the current global egg shortage is a significant concern. The shortage results from various factors, including avian flu outbreaks, changes in consumer demand, and supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The economic crisis caused by the pandemic has also impacted the availability and affordability of eggs, particularly in low-income countries. The global egg shortage has implications for public health, particularly for vulnerable populations who rely on eggs for essential nutrients. One Health, an approach that recognizes the interconnectedness of human, animal, and environmental health, provides a useful framework for understanding and addressing the egg shortage. One Health approaches to the egg shortage involve collaboration between agriculture and environmental sectors to address the root causes of the lack and ensure the sustainable production and distribution of eggs. Addressing the global egg shortage requires a multifaceted approach considering the complex social, economic, and environmental factors. One Health perspectives offer a way to understand and address the interconnected factors contributing to the shortage to ensure access to affordable, nutritious eggs for all in a healthy way

The procedures for the extraction and separation of lipids and nutraceutics from microalgae using classic solvents have been used many times. However, these production methods usually require expensive and toxic solvents. Based on our studies involving the use of eco-sustainable methodologies and alternative solvents, we select ethanol (EtOH) and cyclopentyl methyl ether (CPME) for extracting bio-oil and lipids from algae. Different percentage of EtOH in CPME favors the production of an oil rich of SFA useful to production biofuel or rich of compounds bioactive. The proposed method for obtain a rich extract of saturated or unsaturated fatty acids from dry algal biomass is disclosed is eco-friendly and allows a good extraction yield. The method is compared both in extracted oil percentage yield and in extracted fatty acids selectivity to extraction by supercritical carbon dioxide.

The subject of this paper is to analyse the Math Principia of Economic 3D Black Holes in Roegenian economics. This idea is totally new in the related literature, excepting our papers. In details, we study two special problems: (i) math origin of economic 3D black holes, (ii) entropy and internal political stability depending on national income and the total investment, for economic RN 3D black hole. To solve these problems, it was necessary to jump from macroeconomic side to microeconomic side (a substantial approach so different), to complete the thermodynamics-economics dictionary with new entities, to introduce the flow between two macroeconomic systems, to study the Schwarzschild type metric properties on an economic 4D system, together with Rindler coordinates, Einstein 4D PDEs, and economic RN 3D black hole. In addition, we introduce some economic Ricci type flows or waves, for further research.

Sustainability in material purchasing is a growing area of research. Goods purchasing decisions strongly affect transportation path flows, vehicle consolidation, inventory levels and related obsolescence costs. Within a global sourcing context, companies experience the need of new decision making approaches capable to consider a large variety of factors, also linked with society and environment. Environmental impact assessment has become a key requirement for materials purchasing and transportation decisions since global warming is a rising concern both in academic and industrial researches. In fact, it is well known that the freight transport industry is responsible for large amounts of carbon emissions contributing to global warming. In this paper, we initially analyse and compare the environmental economic policies established by the International Governments in relation to the carbon trading systems adopted. Then, we develop a multi-objective lot sizing approach useful in practice to define the sustainable quantity to purchase when a Cap and Trade mitigation policy is present. We further analyse the model behaviour according to different carbon price values by demonstrating that carbon prices are still far too low to motivate managers towards sustainable purchasing choices.

Bio-economy is a major area of the strategy that must enable the European Union to achieve growth: smart, through the development of knowledge and innovation; and sustainable, based on a greener, more efficient economy in resource management. We believe that the progress of bio-economy cannot be achieved without the harnessing of intellectual capital. Our research aimed to emphasize the benefits of the dynamics of the intellectual capital growth on the evolution of the bio-economy. The aim of this analysis was to study the established link between the Energy Intensity of the Economy (EIE) and a number of factors that can measure the intellectual capital, such as: Market Capitalization of Bitcoin, Patent applications listed by European Patent Office and the Turnover from Innovation as a proportion of the total Turnover. The ultimate goal was represented by the generation of a regression model to see what factor influences mostly the progress of the bio-economy at European and Romanian level.

The major aim of this study was to investigate and explores the linkage between economic growth, electricity access, energy use and population growth in Pakistan. To check the variables stationarity, Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and Phillips-Perron unit root test was applied and an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to co-integration was applied to investigate the dynamic causality link among the study variables. These tests shed light on the long-run connection among the variables; further, the results revealed that electricity access to population, electricity access to urban population, energy usage, population growth, and urban population growth had a significant impact on economic growth, while the electricity access to rural population and rural population growth has a negative impact on the economic growth in Pakistan. According to these findings, study commends that government of Pakistan pay further attention to increase its electricity production from different sources including, hydroelectric, solar, oil and gas and nuclear in order to fulfill the country’s demands. By using ARDL bounds testing approach, this study filled the literature gap regarding economic growth, electricity access, energy use and population growth in Pakistan.

This article investigates if public investments in rural basic infrastructure represent the best strategy for boosting the local economy of rural communities from Romania. The article focuses on one specific program implemented under the Cohesion policy in the framework of the National Plan for Rural Development called Measure 322. Geographically, the research included a sample of rural communes from the North-Western Region of Romania. Moreover, the study also looks at other determinants of local economic development (LED) than infrastructure investments, with a focus on certain feature characterizing Romanian rural communities such as population size, isolation from urban centers, connection with European and national roads networks, educational stock, etc. The research included three steps, namely the construction of the LED Index, a cvasi-experimental research, and a regression model. Our main findings seem to suggest that while investments in infrastructure help the development gap between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries remains relatively the same. In terms of determinants of LED, percentage of population with a university degree and connection to a European road are the most significant in the Romanian rural context.

This is a paper on Political Economic and Economic Policies into the European Green Deal framework and the Spanish recovery plan, with special attention to the tourism sector. First, there is a literature review, combining the scientific production with professional and institutional literature, to understand the topic development, from the former restrictive point to the current view at large. Second, it is offered a case study about the green jobs opportunity, according to wellbeing economics, for the Spanish tourism sector renewal. The paper provides valuable information to improve sectorial recovery plan, to coordinate the policymakers and the business managers and entrepreneurs.

During the last two decades, energy poverty has captured a growing attention of researchers and policymakers due to its strong association with economic poverty and poor economic performance. This study uses a broad set of macro level indicators and makes the first attempt to measure energy poverty and its impact on economic growth of Pakistan over the period 1990 to 2017. In particular, our energy poverty indicator considers four main dimensions of energy poverty, namely, energy services, clean energy, energy governance and energy affordability. Our main results show that though the overall energy poverty has reduced in Pakistan during the selected sample period, the country shows an increasing dependence on polluted energy supply in order to meet its growing demand of energy. In second stage of the investigation, we test the neoclassical growth theory where we incorporate energy poverty along with human capital as source of economic growth. Our cointegration results reveal a strong relationship between energy poverty and economic growth that is also dynamically stable in short run. These strong negative linkages between energy poverty with economic growth for the sample economy complement the previous literature on the subject.

Open Inertia Modelling (OpInMod) is a modelling framework designed to create unit commitment and economic inertia dispatch optimisation problems. Present energy system modelling generators do not consider power system inertia in unit commitment and economic dispatch modelling to assess future energy system pathways. However, maintaining sufficient power system inertia in power systems is the foundation for power frequency controllability. The work at hand describes the functionality and approaches of open source tool OpInMod. The softwares universal design approach increases reuse potential. OpInMod is distributed with a set of examples to test and understand OpInMod

Pyrolysis has been applied in the human economy for many years, and it has become a significant alternative to the production of chemical compounds, including biofuels. The article focuses mostly on recent achievements in the technical and processing aspects of pyrolysis. This review provides an overview of the recent advanced pyrolysis technology used in gas, bio-oil, and biochar production. The key parameters to maximize the production of specific chemical compounds were discussed and considered during the construction of the reactors. The emphasis is put on optimizing the process parameters, technical requirements, and renewable energy use in the process and conception to improve the efficiency of product production. The application of pyrolysis gas, oil, and biochar as valuable chemical compounds are related to the intensifying effects of climate change, biofuel production, and waste management in accordance with the principles of sustainable development.

The purpose of this paper is to test the Kuznets Environmental Curve (KEC) hypothesis for 10 MENA (Middle East and North Africa) countries during the period 1987-2017. To do this, the translogical functional form has been adopted to estimate the relationship between Toxic Gases (TG) emissions, energy consumption and GDP per capita. The results confirm the presence of KEC, GDP per capita and energy consumption have a positive influence on TG emissions, and the presence of a feedback relationship between GDP per capita and energy consumption. As a result, the environmental framework of the selected countries improves as their level of growth has become more advanced. In addition, to reduce TG emissions, MENA countries are expected to significantly increase the use of renewable energy and a more efficient energy policy.

This article presents description of social structures such as, for example, states, in the context of their consideration as systems. Moreover, it seeks to develop K. Marx’s model in terms of systematic approach, as well as to justify the application of the Fibonacci sequence to systems in general and, in particular, to social systems. The description covers a wide range of issues, ranging from the assertion of the basic principle of living systems as patterns in resources flows to description of functions of various aspects of states and their economics in terms of objective needs of such structures. In addition, this article justifies synergetic effect based on proposed model, and the way this effect is applied to state systems. Moreover, it includes the description of main changes of socio-economic formations throughout the history as a natural development of social systems, including possible modern stages. The fundamental tool of this description is description of essence of the mechanism of property rights and its formation options. The differences of two extreme directions of such development are also described on the basis of the objective factor of resource provision. Special attention is given to the concept of surplus value as a feature of social production systems.

The COVID-19 outbreak has severely affected the social and economic conditions across this globe. Little is known about the relationship of COVID-19 with countries’ economic and socio-demographic status. Publicly available data on COVID-19 test rate, attack rate, case fatality rate, and recovery rate were analyzed in relation to country’s economic status, population density, median age, and urban population ratio. We also conducted multinomial logistic regression analysis to predict the influence of countries’ social and economic factors on COVID-19. The results revealed that the median age had significant positive correlation with attack rate (r=0.2389, p=0.003), case fatality rate (r=0.3207, p=0.000) and recovery rate (r=0.4847, p=0.000). The urbanization has positive significant correlation with recovery rate (r=0.1957, p= 0.016). The multinomial logistic regression analysis revealed low-income countries are less likely to have an increased recovery rate (p=0.000) and attack rate (p=0.016) compare to high-income countries. The lower-middle-income and upper-middle-income countries are less likely to have an increased recovery rate (p=0.000 and p=0.001, respectively) compared to high-income countries. Based on the result of this study, these economic and socio-demographic factors should consider in designing appropriate preventive measures as a next step. The low and lower-middle-income countries should invest more in health care services to lower the case fatality rate and increase test and recovery rates as part of pandemic preparation like COVID-19. As the number of COVID-19 attacks, death and recovery rates are constantly changing; however, the intensive study is required to obtain a clear picture.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes the COVID-19 disease has wreaked havoc on the world community in terms of every imaginable parameter. The research output on COVID-19 has been nothing short of phenomenal, especially in the medical and biomedical sciences, where the search for a potential vaccine is being conducted in earnest. Much of the advanced research has been distributed in the leading medical journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), where the latest research is distributed on a daily basis. The purpose of this paper is to provide some perspectives on 44 interesting and highly topical research papers that have been published in JAMA, at the time of writing, within the past two weeks. The diverse topics include public health, general medicine, internal medicine, oncology, paediatrics, geriatrics, and biostatistics.