This study proposes a framework to integrate Sustainability within Management Systems Standards and subsequently implement and disclose Sustainable Development goals and results. Moreover, it investigates the SD goals (SDGs) and results (SDRs) that Portuguese organizations with Integrated Management Systems (IMSs) disclose to their interest parties. The study, supported by content analysis, highlights that the four more frequently disclosed SDGs are “life on land“(50.0%), “industry, innovation, and infrastructure” (47.1%), “responsible consumption and production” (47.1%), and “partnerships for the goals” (47.1%). Conversely, the four SDRs most frequently disclosed are “employment” (82.4%), “economic performance” (79.4%), “anti-corruption” (64.7%), and “occupational health and safety” (61.8%). Hence, SDGs disclosure emphasizes the environmental dimension, while SDRs disclosure highlights the social dimension (economic dimension present in both SDGs and SDRs). Finally, the disclosure of SDGs and SDRs in institutional reports presents a positive and strong correlation that is statistically significant. Overall, the contributions of this research are twofold. First, it supports the integration of the SDGs within organizations, and second, it stimulates the demonstration of their impacts on the SDGs (the SDRs).

In light of the worldwide spreading requirements related to the disclosure of non-financial information, which are aligning to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) developed by the United Nations (UN) in 2015, the study aims to analyse the influence of sustainability and other non-financial reporting on companies’ engagement in earnings management practices, through a pre-post adoption of European Directive 2014/95/EU comparative analysis for firms listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BSE) in the period 2015-2019. To conduct the investigation, the research involves the assessment and analysis of three earnings management metrics resulted by running multiple linear regression models on a sample of 31 companies listed on BSE. Research findings emphasise a decrease in the use of income smoothing practices by sampled companies in the post-adoption period 2017-2019, compared to the period preceding the implementation of the EU directive related to mandatory disclosure of non-financial information, 2015-2016. Thus, firms characterised by a higher transparency in terms of sustainability reporting are less inclined to engage in earnings management practices. This research complements the literature in the field of sustainability reporting and earnings management, providing empirical evidence on the significance and impact of publishing non-financial information.

Washing hands, social distancing and staying at home are the preventive measures set in place to contain the spread of the COVID-19, a disease caused by SARS-CoV-2. These measures, although straightforward to follow, highlight the tip of an imbalanced socio-economic and socio-technological iceberg. Here, a System Dynamic (SD) model of COVID-19 preventive measures and their correlation with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is presented. The result demonstrates a better informed view of the COVID-19 vulnerability landscape. This novel qualitative approach refreshes debates on the future of SDGS amid the crisis and provides a powerful mental representation for decision makers to find leverage points that aid in preventing long-term disruptive impacts of this health crisis on people, planet and economy. There is a need for further tailor-made and real-time qualitative and quantitative scientific research to calibrate the criticality of meeting the SDGS targets in different countries according to ongoing lessons learned from this health crisis.

Telecoupling, interactions between social-ecological systems across large, often global, distances, drives negative impacts from the forest-based carbon market. Yet, these negative impacts have been underreported; and therefore, likely vastly underestimated. We identify how these unintended negative impacts may occur and provide recommendations for the forest-based carbon market to better account for externalities by prioritising positive social impact, expanding comprehensive ecological outcomes and improving transparency of investments. We call for a carbon market that is designed to account for its global interconnectedness.

The A.C.Q.U.A. (Advisable Conscious Quality Use from Assisi) project, promoted by the Climate and Energy and Heritage Design courses of the Planet Life Design Master Program, addresses the theme of the recovery and regeneration of ancient wash-houses in the context of energy, environmental sustainability and innovation, a way of understanding cultural heritage in the wider sense of heritage community through the active participation of all the actors involved: universities, institutions, businesses, students and citizens. The proposal, tested in the municipalities of Assisi and Ruviano (ITALY), involves the creation of a "Community Wash House", a new way of carrying out the usual domestic act of washing clothes in the open air, next to the places where this rite was traditionally performed, in technologically innovative constructions that use renewable energy sources and encourage a reduction in household consumption of water and energy. This project is part of the training of professionals in the new inter-university course that combines knowledge of the tools of technical and scientific design with historical and cultural perspectives in a perspective of sustainable redevelopment of existing structures in the area and the use of alternative energy sources with low climate impact, calculated using the statistics of the Copernicus CDS.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) play an important role in many fields, including medical education, practice, and research. Many medical educators started using ChatGPT at the end of 2022 for many purposes. The aim of this article was to explore the potential uses, benefits and risks of using ChatGPT in integrated pharmacotherapy of infectious disease module education. This study was an experimental study with content analysis of the potential applications of the ChatGPT model for integrated pharmacotherapy of infectious diseases module education was performed. The findings of this study shows that there are many potential uses, benefits and risks associated with the use ChatGPT. In conclusion, medical and health sciences educators can use ChatGPT as a guide in many aspects related to the integrated pharmacotherapy of infectious disease curriculum development, syllabus design, lecture notes preparation and exam preparation with caution.

Avocado (Persea americana Mill.) plant fruits are well-known for their high nutritional value, unique test, and healthy oil. It has a history of about 10,000 years. Avocado fruit offers many health benefits, and its production is rapidly increasing. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s recent data suggest that the Avocados produced in the world in 2019 was twice that of 2010 (3778010 tons). Avocado’s global Gross Production Value was about 5.812 billion USD in 2018, and it is likely to increase rapidly because of the increasing demand for Avocado fruits. Avocado oil is also used in the cosmetic industry because of its therapeutic properties, and it boosts the economic value of the Avocado industry. Avocado fruits have a rough green-gold skin; however, fruits are called ‘the green gold’ because of their massive global demand in the worldwide market and a lucrative business. The cultivation of Avocado has tremendous potential in increasing the rural economy, rural agriculture-based employment and reducing the poverty rate of growers. On the other hand, the Avocado industry is highly criticised because of deforestation, massive water utilisation, polluting water bodies with insecticides and fertilisers, posing a threat to other plant species, and environmental pollution. However, it doesn’t preclude the importance of Avocado. Cameroon’s average temperature is about 23 °C, which is considered optimal for Avocado propagation and commercial cultivation. Cameroon Association of Active Youths (CAMAAY) want to explore the possibilities of engaging Cameroon youths in Avocado cultivation. This review is aimed to provide an overview of Avocado. The review also highlights Avocado cultivation related issues from one health and sustainability perspective in line with the global goals.

This research suggests a multi-stakeholder framework to increase the use of fintech in Africa, which would help the continent boost its financial inclusion and reach its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The study evaluates previous research and frameworks that have been created to aid in the adoption of fintech by several stakeholders in developing nations, some of which have been tested in African nations with limited success. To begin with, the study suggests the use of the World Bank’s Maximising Finance for Development (MFD) approach through the prioritization of national ownership, creation of an enabling environment for private sector investment, partnering with multilateral development banks and other stakeholders, fostering innovation and digital literacy, and focusing on cost-effective, non-government guaranteed financing. In the same vein, in line with the G20’s High-Level Principles for Digital Financial Inclusion, the adoption of financial technologies and digital financial services in Africa can be promoted through the creation of a country-specific strategy. Each government can create a regulatory environment that encourages innovation and competition, improve its digital infrastructure, increase its digital literacy and awareness, and collaborate with private sector stakeholders to expand financial inclusion. Furthermore, The Better Than Cash Alliance’s strategy to increase fintech adoption can also be implemented through partnership with businesses, international organizations, and other nations. By joining the Alliance, countries can enact rules and regulations that facilitate fintech adoption, promote awareness and education, and design and execute national digital payment infrastructure with the help of fintech companies. Finally, the mSTAR initiative suggests collaborating with USAID, in order to provide support to underrepresented populations, incorporate digital financial services, increase public-private collaboration, and educate and train policymakers, practitioners, and technologists. By implementing these strategies, African nations can accelerate the adoption of fintech solutions and increase financial inclusion.

Internet of Things (IoT) provides a huge business value for customers, organizations, and governments due to the developments of so many applications in different sectors like energy and healthcare. Nevertheless, as a new emerging technology, IoT faces several security concerns that are more challenging than conventional Internet because of its limited resources as well as its complex ecosystem. Toward this end, we first highlight IoT security challenges and briefly discuss its security goals like confidentiality and integrity. Second, we discuss the most common attacks against IoT, along with their violated security goals. We also review the existing frameworks of security and privacy guidelines for IoT and illustrate their shortcomings. Third, we propose a novel framework for securing IoT objects, the key objective of which is to assign different Security Level Certificates (SLCs) for IoT objects based on their hardware capabilities and protection measures. Objects with SLCs, therefore, will be able to communicate with each other or with the Internet in a secure manner. The proposed framework is composed of five main phases. In phase 1, we classify IoT assets into four components: (i) physical objects, (ii) protocols, (iii) data at rest, and (iv) software, which includes operating systems, middlewares, and applications. We also classify IoT objects into five categories based on their hardware capabilities. In phase 2, we propose security and privacy guidelines for previously mentioned IoT assets, along with their protection measures. In phase 3, we classify protection measures into five SLCs, and then we assign different SLCs for IoT objects. In phase 4: we develop a communication plan between objects based on their SLCs. In phase 5, we propose a four-step method to seamlessly integrate our objects with legacy objects ( objects are not developed according to our framework). Fourth, the feasibility and application of this framework are illustrated using smart homes as a case study. Finally, we investigate how our framework would lessen several attacks and threats against IoT like routing attacks and physical damage. We also provide qualitative arguments to show that this framework could be utilized to solve some of IoT security challenges such as tight resource constrains. Moreover, we discuss the shortcomings of our suggested framework.

The food system represents a key industry for Europe and particularly Germany. However, it is also the single most significant contributor to climate and environmental change. A food system transformation is necessary to overcome the system's major and constantly increasing challenges in the upcoming decades. One possible facilitator for this transformation are radical and disrup-tive innovations that start-ups develop. There are many challenges for start-ups in general and food start-ups in particular. Various support opportunities and resources are crucial to ensure the success of food start-ups. One aim of this study is to identify how the success of start-ups in the food system can be supported and further strengthened by players in the innovation ecosystem in Germany. There is still room for improvement and collaboration toward a thriving innovation ecosystem. A successful innovation ecosystem is characterised by a well-organised, collaborative, and supportive environment with a vivid exchange between the members in the ecosystem. The interviewees confirmed this, and although the different actors are already cooperating, there is still room for improvement. The most common recommendation for improving cooperation is learning from other countries and bringing the best to Germany.

Rice blast, caused by Magnaporthe oryzae, poses significant threat to rice production. Rice blast susceptibility has been observed in Japanese rice varieties with excellent eating quality. Enhancing blast resistance is essential to ensure minimal use of agricultural chemicals. Two types of blast resistance are observed: true resistance, which is a type of qualitative resistance expressed by a major gene, and field resistance, which is a type of quantitative resistance expressed by multiple micro-acting genes. ‘Resistance collapse’, in which a variety with a true resistance gene becomes diseased by blast fungus races compatible with the resistance gene, has been observed. Varieties carrying blast-resistance genes, such as Pb1 (panicle blast resistance 1), have been developed through DNA marker-assisted selection. In this review, we focus on the Pb1, which expresses strong quantitative resistance to panicle blast and has been widely used in Japan without showing ‘resistance collapse’ for 40 years. Pb1 is an ‘adult plant resistance gene’ that does not exert strong selection pressure on the blast population during the leaf blast stage, thus preventing the selective multiplication of Pb1-compatible blast strains. This epidemiological mechanism prevents ‘resistance collapse’. Interdisciplinary research and breeding are required to sustainably use genes that induce high field resistance.

Africa was the only continent not to achieve the 2015 Millennium Development Goal of 50% poverty reduction. This paper asks whether Africa will fare better in meeting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) addressing poverty and hunger by 2030. To answer this question we examine literature, including our field research published over the last thirteen years. We find that ‘sustainable development’ is a failed concept immersed in the contemporary global economic system that favors growth over ecosystem stability and patriarchal systems of governance that undervalue women’s capacity for sustainability in their care-work as food providers. We examine barriers to women’s farming (climate change, gender bias, limited access to land, technology, finance) and provide examples of women’s innovative strategies for overcoming these barriers in their care practices toward family and community well-being and ecosystem health. We conclude that sustainability is only possible through transformation of thinking away from approaches that value profit over people and ecosystems and toward gender-based approaches for achieving the goals laid out in the SDGs through holistic, integrative systems of ecosystem fit.

The identification of informal settlements in urban areas is an important step in developing and implementing pro-poor urban policies. Understanding when, where and who lives inside informal settlements is critical to efforts to improve their resilience. This study aims to analyse the capability of machine-learning (ML) methods to map informal areas in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, using very-high-resolution (VHR) imagery and terrain data. Fourteen indicators of settlement characteristics were derived and mapped using an object-based ML approach and VHR imagery. These indicators were categorised according to three different spatial levels: environ, settlement and object. The most useful indicators for prediction were found to be density and texture measures, (with random forest (RF) relative importance measures of over 25% and 23% respectively). The success of this approach was evaluated using a small, fully independent validation dataset. Informal areas were mapped with an overall accuracy of 91%. Object-based ML as a hybrid approach performed better (8%) than object-based image analysis alone due to its ability to encompass all available geospatial levels.

Objective: To recommend how physicians can best respond to families whose hopes for a miracle via divine intervention influence their medical decisions, like, for example, making them not want to withdraw ventilatory support in cases of poor neurologic prognosis because they are still hoping for God to intervene. Methods: Auto-ethnographic analysis of chaplaincy experience in this clinical context yields a nuanced 90-second, point-of-care spiritual intervention physicians can use to address the religious aspect of families who base medical decisions on their hopes for a miracle via divine intervention. Explanation of how spiritual intervention dovetails with existing physician communication protocol for responding to families hoping for a miracle. Results: Spiritual intervention for religious aspect of miracle-hoping families is integrated into existing physician communication protocol for responding to families hoping for a miracle with recommendations for utilization of existing communication technology when necessary. Conclusion: Properly addressing the religious dimension of families hoping for a miracle may be helpful for physicians interested in decreasing their own stress levels, improving outcomes for this clinical context, and ensuring that unintentional discrimination does not perpetuate racial disparities in end-of-life care.

The UK economy is overly reliant on unsustainable production and consumption practices, depleting finite resources at rates that will increase production costs, business risk and economic instability. This over-consumption produces emissions and waste that cause climate change and environmental degradation, impacting on the wellbeing of people in the UK and beyond. The Resource Recovery from Waste programme (RRfW) promotes a transition towards waste and resource management in a circular economy that restores the environment, creates societal benefits and promotes clean growth by engaging relevant actors in the transition process. RRfW collaborates with academia, government, and industry to co-produce a shared vision and approach to realise such a transition. Reflecting insights from RRfW’s government engagement, this article presents a positive outlook for changing the UK economy and society. It envisions a long-term future for waste and resource management that maximises the value of materials by circulating them in the economy for as long as possible. Four themes and an approach are proposed, including recommendations for regulatory instruments and a stable policy framework. It recommends further collaborative research to capitalise on opportunities for economic growth, innovation and resilient infrastructure whilst contributing to quality jobs and welfare in all four UK nations.

The increasing social pressure for decarbonization has placed businesses under considerable scrutiny to actively reduce carbon emissions. A critical step towards achieving this objective is to shift conventional production and consumption systems to more sustainable alternatives. Thus, there is the emergent need to understand the patterns and drivers of the transformative business models (BMs) that underpin that shift. This study adopts a mixed-methods approach that integrates different literature streams--including Sustainability Transitions Theory (STT), Strategic Niche Management (SNM), and the Business Models approach--and stakeholders’ interviews to investigate the key elements of business models that lead towards sustainable practices. This research examines the organizational arrangements of European start-ups operating between 2014 and 2020. The transformation towards decarbonized production and consumption is characterized by efficient combination of business strategies that incorporate advanced technologies (ATs), such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and its algorithms, along with sustainable elements, resulting in transformative business models. By exploring the driving elements behind the transition to low-carbon approaches, this study fills a significant gap in the existing literature on business models. The findings from this research also hold relevance for policymakers to promote decarbonization.