Digital Commons Network^™

Exploring Accessibility Features And Plug-Ins For Digital Prototyping Tools, Urvashi Kokate, Kristen Shinohara, Garreth W. Tigwell

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Many digital systems are found to be inaccessible and a large part of the issue is that accessibility is not considered early enough in the design process. Digital prototyping tools are a powerful resource for designers to quickly explore both low and high fidelity design mockups during initial stages of product design and development. We evaluated 10 popular prototyping tools to understand their built-in and third-party accessibility features. We found that accessible design support is largely from third-party plug-ins rather than prototyping tools' built-in features, and the availability of accessibility support varies from tool to tool. There is potential to …

Accessible Design Is Mediated By Job Support Structures And Knowledge Gained Through Design Career Pathways, Sarah Andrew, Garreth W. Tigwell

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Digital designers often do not make their work accessible (e.g., websites failing criteria set by the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), and accessible design research discusses many solutions to address this problem (e.g., teaching accessibility within university design and technical courses). However, prior research in this area typically does not acknowledge whether recommendations and resources to support accessible design are suitable for all digital designers due to different training pathways and job support structures (e.g., large-company vs. rural and self-employed designers or designers who learned their skills outside of formal education settings). We interviewed 20 digital designers from rural and …

Satdbailiff- Mining And Tracking Self-Admitted Technical Debt, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, Eman Abdullah Alomar, Ben Christians, Mihal Busho, Ahmed Hamad Alkhalid, Christian D. Newman

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Self-Admitted Technical Debt (SATD) is a metaphorical concept to describe the self-documented addition of technical debt to a software project in the form of source code comments. SATD can linger in projects and degrade source-code quality, but it can also be more visible than unintentionally added or undocumented technical debt. Understanding the implications of adding SATD to a software project is important because developers can benefit from a better understanding of the quality trade-offs they are making. However, empirical studies, analyzing the survivability and removal of SATD comments, are challenged by potential code changes or SATD comment updates that may …

Feedback Loops: Surviving The Feedback Desert, Patrick Barry

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I ask my law students the following set of parallel questions on the very first day of “Feedback Loops,” a course I have been teaching for the past couple of years: What did you get better at last year? How do you know? What should you get better at this year? How do you know?

A New Framework For Digital Taxation, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Young Ran (Christine) Kim, Karen Sam

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The international tax regime has wide implications for business, trade, and the international political economy. Under current law, multinational enterprises do not pay their fair share of taxes to market countries where profits are generated because market countries are only allowed to tax companies with a physical presence there. Digital companies, like Google and Amazon, can operate entirely online, thereby avoiding market country taxes. Multinationals can also exploit existing tax rules by shifting their profits to low-tax jurisdictions, thereby avoiding taxes in the residence country where their headquarters are located.

Recently, a global tax deal was reached to tackle these …

Drivers Of Environmental Degradation In Turkey: Designing An Sdg Framework Through Advanced Quantile Approaches, Tomiwa Sunday Adebayo, Ephraim Bonah Agyekum, Salah Kamel, Hossam Zawbaa, Mehmet Altuntaş

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Turkey is a laggard in terms of the achievement of its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and one of the primary issues it faces is environmental deterioration. Therefore, a policy-level reorientation may be needed to address this relevant issue. From this standpoint, this research assesses the impact of renewable energy (RE) use and financial development on the emissions of CO2 as well as the role of urbanization and agriculture, utilizing a dataset stretching between 1985 and 2019. By applying the innovative quantile-on-quantile regression (QQR) and non-parametric Granger causality in quantiles techniques, the study assesses the ways in which the quantiles of …

Adopting Scenario-Based Approach To Solve Optimal Reactive Power Dispatch Problem With Integration Of Wind And Solar Energy Using Improved Marine Predator Algorithm, Noor Habib Khan, Raheela Jamal, Mohamed Ebeed, Salah Kamel, Hamed Zeinoddini-Meymand, Hossam Zawbaa

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The penetration of renewable energy resources into electric power networks has been increased considerably to reduce the dependence of conventional energy resources, reducing the generation cost and greenhouse emissions. The wind and photovoltaic (PV) based systems are the most applied technologies in electrical systems compared to other technologies of renewable energy resources. However, there are some complications and challenges to incorporating these resources due to their stochastic nature, intermittency, and variability of output powers. Therefore, solving the optimal reactive power dispatch (ORPD) problem with considering the uncertainties of renewable energy resources is a challenging task. Application of the Marine Predators …

On The Dimensionality And Utility Of Convolutional Autoencoder’S Latent Space Trained With Topology-Preserving Spectral Eeg Head-Maps, Arjun Vinayak Chikkankod, Luca Longo

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Electroencephalography (EEG) signals can be analyzed in the temporal, spatial, or frequency domains. Noise and artifacts during the data acquisition phase contaminate these signals adding difficulties in their analysis. Techniques such as Independent Component Analysis (ICA) require human intervention to remove noise and artifacts. Autoencoders have automatized artifact detection and removal by representing inputs in a lower dimensional latent space. However, little research is devoted to understanding the minimum dimension of such latent space that allows meaningful input reconstruction. Person-specific convolutional autoencoders are designed by manipulating the size of their latent space. A sliding window technique with overlapping is employed …

Power Management In Hybrid Anfis Pid Based Ac–Dc Microgrids With Eho Based Cost Optimized Droop Control Strategy, T. Narasimha Prasad, S. Devakirubakaran, S. Muthubalaji, S. Srinivasan, B. Karthikeyan, R. Palanisamy, Mohit Bajaj, Hossam Zawbaa, Salah Kamel

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One of the most critical operations aspects is power management strategies for hybrid AC/DC microgrids. This work presented power management in hybrid AC–DC microgrids with a droop control strategy. At first, photovoltaic, Wind, and battery are used as the power sources, which supply the power with uncertainties. The AC and DC microgrids are controlled by an Adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) controller and Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) controller. Simultaneously we calculate the running cost for photovoltaic, Wind, and Battery. Moreover, an optimizer based on the elephant herding optimization algorithm is formulated to reduce the cost price. This method utilizes two …

Mathematical Analysis Of The Van Der Waals Equation, Emil Prodanov

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The parametric cubic van der Waals polynomial $p V^3 - (R T + b p) V^2 + a V - a b$ is analysed mathematically and some new generic features (theoretically, for any substance) are revealed: the temperature range for applicability of the van der Waals equation, $T > a/(4Rb)$, and the isolation intervals, at any given temperature between $a/(4Rb)$ and the critical temperature $8a/(27Rb)$, of the three volumes on the isobar--isotherm: $3b/2 < V_A \le 3b$, $ 2b < V_B < 4b/(3 - \sqrt{5})$, and $3b < V_C < b + RT/p$. The unstable states of the van der Waals model have also been generically localized: they lie in an interval within the isolation interval of $V_B$. In the case of unique intersection point of an isotherm with an isobar, the isolation interval of this unique volume is also determined. A discussion on finding the volumes $V_{A, B, C}$, on the premise of Maxwell's hypothesis, is also presented.

Will Competition Reduce Attention Costs In Social Media?, Francesco Parisi

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Unlike other monopolies, social media networks almost uniformly give access to their services for free to everybody. Economists refer to these markets as “zero-price markets.” The main, and often sole, source of revenue for the network owners comes from fees that are paid by advertisers. Network owners offer access to users in exchange for users’ attention to advertisements. Economists refer to these implicit market exchanges under the heading of “attention economy.” Regulatory solutions and antitrust remedies have been considered to foster cost reduction in the market economy. This paper investigates the conditions under which an increase in competition in the …

Comparison Study Of An Optimized Ultrasound-Based Method Versus An Optimized Conventional Method For Agar Extraction, And Protein Co-Extraction, From Gelidium Sesquipedale, Laura Pilar Gomez Barrio, Eduarda Melo Cabral, Ming Zhao, Carlos Alvarez Garcia, Ramsankar Senthamaraikannan, Ramesh Babu Padamati, Uma Tiwari, James Curtin, Brijesh K. Tiwari

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Agar is a hydrocolloid found in red seaweeds, which has been of industrial interest over the last century due to its multiple applications in the food, cosmetic, and medical fields. This polysaccharide, extracted by boiling for several hours, is released from the cell wall of red seaweeds. However, the environmental impact coming from the long processing time and the energy required to reach the targeted processing temperature needs to be reduced. In this study, a response surface methodology was employed to optimize both conventional extraction and ultrasound-assisted extractions. Two different models were successfully obtained (R² = 0.8773 and R …

Effects Of Pretreatment And Drying On The Volatile Compounds Of Sliced Solar-Dried Ginger (Zingiber Officinale Roscoe) Rhizome, Roseline Esi Amoah, Faustina Dufie Wireko-Manu, Ibok Oduro, Firibu Kwesi Saalia, William Otoo Ellis, Alexander Dodoo, Charles Dermont, Maame Ekua Manful

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Ginger (Zingiber officinale Roscoe) rhizomes are mostly used as spice and medicine due to their high aroma intensity and medicinal bioactive compounds. However, the volatile compounds of ginger, partly responsible for its aroma and medicinal properties, can be affected by the pretreatment, drying method, and extraction processes employed. The objective of this study was to assess the effects of pretreatment and drying on the volatile compounds of yellow ginger variety at nine months of maturation. The effect of potassium metabisulfite (KMBS) and blanching pretreatment and drying on the volatile compounds of ginger using head space solid-phase microextraction with GCMS/MS …

Staff Stress And Interpersonal Conflict In Secondary Schools—Implications For School Leadership, Patrick Bruce, Carol Bruch, Victor Hrymak, Niamh Hickey, Patricia Mannix Mcnamara

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The importance of school leadership and workplace stress is a recurring theme in educationbased research. The literature reports that workplace stress in teaching is a difficult matter to resolve, with mixed outcomes from interventions. The aim of this initial scoping study was to report on the experiences of school leaders with interpersonal conflict (IPC), a known cause of this workplace stress. Accordingly, a sample of twelve school leaders working in Irish post primary schools were recruited to participate in this study using semi-structured interviews. All twelve participants reported experiencing workplace stress and linked other people as a source of this …

Hyperbranched Poly(Β-Amino Ester)S (Hpaes) Structure Optimisation For Enhanced Gene Delivery: Non-Ideal Termination Elimination, Yinghao Li, Zhonglei He, Jing Lyu, Xianqing Wang, Bei Qiu, Irene Lara-Saez, Jing Zhang, Ming Zeng, Qian Xu, Sigen Sigen A., James Curtin, Wenxin Wang

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Growing at an impressive pace, gene therapy has emerged as a prospective segment in the biotechnology field and presents a bright outlook, given the increasing investments in R&D and the mounting incidence of genetic disorders [1]. Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for gene therapy, estimated at 1.2 billion dollars in the year 2022, is projected to reach a revised size of 2.7 billion dollars by 2026, according to the Cision PR Newswire. However, the lack of efficient gene delivery vectors still hinders the large-scale manufacturing of gene therapy agents. Viral vectors, such as the adeno-associated virus, lentivirus, retrovirus, …

Modulation Of Gut Microbiota By Bioactive Compounds For Prevention And Management Of Type 2 Diabetes, Basista Rabina Sharma, Swarna Jaiswal, P.V. Ravindra

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Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a chronic metabolic disorder characterized by hyperglycemia and insulin resistance. Gut microbiota (GM) are specific groups of microbes colonized in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. They profoundly influence health, disease protection, and associated with metabolic activities, and play a vital role in the production of functional metabolites from dietary substances. Dysbiosis of GM has been linked to the onset of T2DM and can be altered to attain eubiosis by intervention with various nutritional bioactive compounds such as polyphenols, prebiotics, and probiotics. This review presents an overview of the evidence and underlying mechanisms by which bioactive …

Fairness And Inclusion For Users Of Surface Transport—An Exploratory Thematic Study For Irish Users, Ajeni Ari, Maria Chiara Leva, Lorraine D'Arcy, Mary Kinahan

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This paper explores the conditions of public transport with respect to user accessibility, design of infrastructure, and safety from a gendered perspective. Our investigation aims to understand the factors that direct a citizen’s choice of whether or not to use public transport. Our discussion is focused on gender disparities among user experiences, so we confine our focus to that of women’s perspectives and their experiences with public transport use. A framework for our discussion was formed with consideration of the theoretical aspects of fairness, justice, and gender in transport, as well as user statistics. We identified several spaces where public …

Impact Of Dry, Particle-Size Fractionation On Protein And Amino Acid Content Of Three Seaweed Species, Laura Healy, Xianglu Zhu, Milica Pojic, Mahesa Poojary, James Curtin, Uma Tiwari, Carl Sullivan, Brijesh K. Tiwari

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Market demand for “clean and green” food products is increasing, and so there is growing opportunity for the seaweed aquaculture industry to take a position as a key food producer in this area. In this study, in order to investigate the impact of dry fractionation on seaweed protein qualities, dried and milled seaweed powder from three seaweed species was sieved into 6 fractions (F1 to F6) of different particle size from >710 μm toμm. True protein, total protein and amino acid profiles were analyzed to evaluate the protein content and quality of three brown seaweed species commercially harvested in Ireland; …

Biological Properties And Health-Promoting Functions Of Laminarin: A Comprehensive Review Of Preclinical And Clinical Studies, Shanmugapriya Karuppusamy, Gaurav Rajauria, Stephen Fitzpatrick, Henry Lyons, Helena Mcmahon, James Curtin, Brijesh K. Tiwari, Colm O’Donnell

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Marine algal species comprise of a large portion of polysaccharides which have shown multifunctional properties and health benefits for treating and preventing human diseases. Laminarin, or β-glucan, a storage polysaccharide from brown algae, has been reported to have potential pharmacological properties such as antioxidant, anti-tumor, anti-coagulant, anticancer, immunomodulatory, anti-obesity, anti-diabetic, anti-inflammatory, wound healing, and neuroprotective potential. It has been widely investigated as a functional material in biomedical applications as it is biodegradable, biocompatible, and is low toxic substances. The reported preclinical and clinical studies demonstrate the potential of laminarin as natural alternative agents in biomedical and industrial applications such as …

Data Driven Bayesian Network To Predict Critical Alarm, Joseph Mietkiewicz, Anders Madsen

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Modern industrial plants rely on alarm systems to ensure their safe and effective functioning. Alarms give the operator knowledge about the current state of the industrial plants. Trip alarms indicating a trip event indicate the shutdown of systems. Trip events in power plants can be costly and critical for the running of the operation.This paper demonstrates how trips events based on an alarm log from an offshore gas production can be reliably predicted using a Bayesian network. If a trip event is reliably predicted and the main cause of it is identified, it will allow the operator to prevent it. …

Cell Death Induced In Glioblastoma Cells By Plasma-Activated-Liquids (Pal) Is Primarily Mediated By Membrane Lipid Peroxidation And Not Ros Influx, Sebnem Gunes, Zhonglei He, Evanthia Tsoukou, Sing Wei Ng, Daniela Boehm, Beatriz Pinheiro, Paula Bourke, Renee Malone, Patrick J. Cullen, Wenxin Wang, James Curtin

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Since first identified in 1879, plasma, the fourth state of matter, has been developed and utilised in many fields. Nonthermal atmospheric plasma, also known as cold plasma, can be applied to liquids, where plasma reactive species such as reactive Oxygen and Nitrogen species and their effects can be retained and mediated through plasma-activated liquids (PAL). In the medical field, PAL is considered promising for wound treatment, sterilisation and cancer therapy due to its rich and relatively long-lived reactive species components. This study sought to identify any potential antagonistic effect between antioxidative intracellularly accumulated platinum nanoparticles (PtNPs) and PAL. We found …

Application Of Climate-Smart Forestry – Forest Manager Response To The Relevance Of European Definition And Indicators, Euan Bowditch, Giovanni Santopuoli, Boyżdar Neroj, Jan Svetlik Jan Svetlik, Mark Tominlson, Vivien Pohl, Admir Avdagić, Miren Del Rio, Tzetvan Zlatanov Tzetvan Zlatanov, Höhn Maria, Gabriela Jamnická, Yusuf Serengil, Murat Sarginci, Sigríður Júlía Brynleifsdóttir, Jerzy Lesinki, João C. Azevedo

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Climate change impacts are an increasing threat to forests and current approaches to management. In 2020, Climate-smart Forestry (CSF) definition and set of indicators was published. This study further developed this work by testing the definition and indicators through a forest manager survey across fifteen member European countries. The survey covered topic areas of demographics, climate change impacts, definition and indicators assessment, as well as knowledge and communication. Overall, forest managers considered the threat of climate change to their forests as high or critical and 62% found the CSF definition clear and concise; however, the minority suggested greater simplification or …

Use Of Hydrothermal Carbonization And Cold Atmospheric Plasma For Surface Modification Of Brewer’S Spent Grain And Activated Carbon, Krystian Krochmalny, Halina Pawlak-Kruczek, Norbert Skoczylas, Mateusz Kudasik, Aleksandra Gajda, Renata Gnatowska, Monika Serafin-Tkaczuk, Tomasz Czapka, Amit Jaiswal, A. Vishwajeet, Amit Arora, Tomasz Hardy, Mateusz Jackowski, Michał Ostrycharczyk, Łukasz Nied´Zwiecki

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This paper presents results that show the effect of hydrothermal carbonization and subsequent cold plasma jet treatment with helium and argon on the structure and sorption properties of a material—spent brewery grain. Treatment of activated carbon, with a cold atmospheric plasma jet, was used comparatively. The effect of activation on the pore structure of the materials was carried out by the volumetric method at low pressure (N2, 77 K). The specific surface area as well as the total pore volume, average pore size, and pore size distribution were determined using different theoretical models. A high improvement in the sorption capacity …

Development Of Modular And Adaptive Laboratory Set-Up For Neuroergonomic And Human-Robot Interaction Research, Marija Savkovic, Carlo Caiazzo, Marko Djapan, Arso M. Vukic´ Evi, Milos Pusica, Ivan Macˇ Užic

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The industry increasingly insists on academic cooperation to solve the identified problems such as workers' performance, wellbeing, job satisfaction, and injuries. It causes an unsafe and unpleasant working environment that directly impacts the quality of the product, workers' productivity, and effectiveness. This study aimed to give a specialized solution for tests and explore possible solutions to the given problem in neuroergonomics and human-robot interaction. The designed modular and adaptive laboratory model of the industrial assembly workstation represents the laboratory infrastructure for conducting advanced research in the field of ergonomics, neuroergonomics, and human-robot interaction. It meets the operator's anatomical, anthropometric, physiological, …

Measurement Of Orientation And Distance Change Using Circularly Polarized Uwb Signals, Janusz Przewocki, Max Ammann, Adam Narbudowicz

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The article proposes methodology to use circularly polarized (CP) ultra-wideband (UWB) signals for simultaneous measurement of orientation and distance changes between transmitter and receiver. The proposed technique uses the rotational Doppler effect on CP pulsed communication. The amplitude of a CP signal is immune to polarization misalignment in the presence of rotation; however, the phase is subjected to a frequency-invariant shift proportional to the rotation angle. This significantly distorts the pulse shape in the time domain and can be used for the measurement of the rotated angle. By combining the technique with the well-known localization capability of UWB systems, one …

Rss-Based Indoor Localization System With Single Base Station, Samir Salem Al-Bawri, Mohammad Tariqul Islam, Mandeep Jit Singh, Mohd Faizal Jamlos, Adam Narbudowicz, Max Ammann, Dominique M.M.P. Schreurs

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The paper proposes an Indoor Localization System (ILS) which uses only one fixed Base Station (BS) with simple non-reconfigurable antennas. The proposed algorithm measures Received Signal Strength (RSS) and maps it to the location in the room by estimating signal strength of a direct line of sight (LOS) signal and signal of the first order reflection from the wall. The algorithm is evaluated through both simulations and empirical measurements in a furnished open space office, sampling 21 different locations in the room. It is demonstrated the system can identify user’s real-time location with a maximum estimation error below 0.7 m …

Dominant Frequency Component Tracking Of Noisy Time-Varying Signals Using The Linear Predictive Coding Pole Processing Method, Jin Xu, Mark Davis, Ruairí De Fréin

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The linear predictive coding pole processing (LPCPP) method proposed in our previous work overcomes the shortcomings of the LPC method, especially its sensitivity to noise and the filter order. The LPCPP method is a parameterised method that involves processing the LPC poles to produce a series of reduced-order filter transfer functions to estimate the dominant frequency components of a signal. This paper analyses the ability of the LPCPP method to track the frequency changes of noisy, time-varying signals in real-time. Linear chirped frequency modulation signals are used in a series of experiments to simulate signals with different rates of frequency …

Generalized Regression Neural Network And Fitness Dependent Optimization: Application To Energy Harvesting Of Centralized Teg Systems, Adeel Feroz Mirza, Syed Kamran Haider, Abbas Ahmed, Ateeq Ur Rehman, Muhammad Shafiq, Mohit Bajaj, Hossam Zawbaa, Pawel Szczepankowski, Salah Kamel

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The thermoelectric generator (TEG) system has attracted extensive attention because of its applications in centralized solar heat utilization and recoverable heat energy. The operating efficiency of the TEG system is highly affected by operating conditions. In a series-parallel structure, due to diverse temperature differences, the TEG modules show non-linear performance. Due to the non-uniform temperature distribution (NUTD) condition, several maximum power points (MPPs) appear on the P/V curve. In multiple MPPs, the true global maximum power points (GMPP) are very important for optimum action. The existing conventional technologies have slow tracking speed, low productivity, and unwanted fluctuations in voltage curves. …

Bias Impedes Progress In Physical Biology, Consciousness Studies And Quantum Gravity, Maurice Goodman

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If scientists hope to make progress in consciousness studies they needs to accept that biased judgments have a major influence on the sciences, how we divide them up, how they are funded and this, in turn, has a profound impact on progress. The imbalance in funding, resulting from bias, in favour of the life and health sciences needs to be addressed as does why perversely little of this funding is devoted to a physics explanation of self-organisation and life on the mesoscopic scale? While life (the cell) is an outstanding example of self-organisation on the mesoscopic scale we need to …

The Dynamic Impact Of Biomass And Natural Resources On Ecological Footprint In Brics Economies: A Quantile Regression Evidence, Abraham Ayobamiji Awosusi, Tomiwa Sunday Adebayo, Mehmet Altuntaş, Ephraim Bonah Agyekum, Hossam Zawbaa, Salah Kamel

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Many emerging economies, including the BRICS economies, are having difficulty meeting the Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs) objectives. Consequently, this research discusses the creation of an SDG framework for the BRICS economies, which can be utilized as a model for other blocs. To achieve this purpose, this research probes into the effect of biomass energy usage on ecological footprint in the BRICS economies between 1992 and 2018, considering the roles of gross capital formation, natural resources, and globalization. The novel Methods of Moments-Quantile-Regression (MMQR) approach with fixed effects is used, the outcomes of which reveal that in all quantiles (10th to …