ABSTRACT
Digital transformation has unveiled new prospects for increased performance and productivity in the agricultural sector to meet rising food security needs. Continuous industrialization and unexpected disruptions (e.g., workforce mobility restrictions due to the COVID‐19 pandemic) call for the adoption of agricultural robots. However, automated solutions could be associated with societal challenges in rural areas;unemployment growth has been perceived as a major threat that jeopardizes societal welfare, potentially hindering the implementation of digital technologies. In this context, human–robot synergistic systems could act as a promising socially viable alternative. Through systems thinking, this research investigates the complex interconnections and key feedback mechanisms of automation diffusion (conventional and human–robot interactive) under the socio‐economic perceptions (drivers and barriers) of agribusinesses and rural communities. Overall, this study contributes towards eliciting the mental models that underpin the transition from agricultural robots to human–robot collaboration by transforming automation‐related societal risks into opportunities for sustainable rural development.
ABSTRACT
The global economy is moving into a new era characterized by digital and green development. To examine the impact of digital industrialization development on the energy supply chain, in relation to the sustainable development of China's energy security, we discuss the nonlinear impact and transmission mechanism of digital industrialization on the supply chain of the energy industry using a panel threshold regression model based on sample data on the development of the provincial natural gas industry in China from 2006 to 2020. We found that there are multiple threshold effects of digital industrialization level development on energy supply chain length, and the results are statistically significant, i.e., digital industrialization development positively contributes to natural gas supply chain length after digital industrialization is raised to or crosses the critical threshold. Meanwhile, the heterogeneity analysis results show that there are differences in the impact of digital industrialization on the energy supply chain from sub-sectors, regional development differences, and different development periods. Therefore, we provide some factual support and experience for achieving the construction goal of "Digital China" and accelerating the digital reform of the energy supply chain as well as transforming and upgrading the economic structure.
ABSTRACT
Spurred by the expansive shared prosperity of its Belt and Road Initiative, China was winning the economic component of its Great Power Competition with the United States in Africa. Then Covid-19 spread to Africa in February 2020. By spring Africa's honeymoon with China was over. China's Covid-19 related discrimination against Africa as well as disruption in both the supply chain and the Belt and Road Initiative weakened bilateral ties. While nobody expects China to lose its place as Africa's biggest bilateral lending and trading partner, Sino-African ties are strained. Not surprisingly, Africa turned inward and focused on its fight against the invisible Covid-19 enemy. But Africa soon found itself in a new tradeoff between battling Covid-19 and violent extremism. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.
ABSTRACT
Silicon nanowires are next-generation high performance biosensor materials compatible with multiple types of biomolecules. Bioelectronic sensors, which output electrical signals for biological detection, have unique advantages in miniaturization, fast response, and portability. Despite that these nanomaterials have demonstrated high performance, complex fabrication methods that are not compatible with industrial production are usually implemented. This work deals with the development, fabrication, and testing of a rapid and cost-effective silicon nanowire biosensor that is less than one inch in width and suited for industrial mass production. The silicon nanowires are fabricated using a silver-assisted chemical etching which can be mass-producible and CMOS-compatible, tunable etch rate, and high consistency. The nanowire sensor is then fabricated using a series of nanofabrication instruments that are commonly used for semiconductor processing. The fabrication process is developed and modified to be suited for biosensing applications, and the scanning electron microscopy demonstrates that the fabricated sensor has etched vertical silicon nanowire arrays of around 350 nm in length and 1010 per 1 cm2 in density.The fabricated vertically-oriented silicon nanowire array-based sensor consists of a p-n diode. Since the diode type nanowire biosensors have not been thoroughly implemented and studied, in this work, in order to simulate and validate the operation mechanisms of the proposed biosensor, an operation protocol is proposed to characterize the sensor by measuring its current as a function of the applied voltage and calculating the derivative the current-voltage function. Then the mathematical and physical models of the device are studied, and a water-gate experiment is conducted to justify the models. In the case when the unexpected disturbance occurs, the model also provides with a method to eliminate the noise in the effective resistance of the sensor.The fabricated biosensors are then functionalized for the testing of three types of analytes including two cancer cell antibodies and the spike protein of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The results show that the developed sensors have high sensitivity and specificity against bovine serum albumin. Although still with a preliminary design, the proposed sensor has already been demonstrated to be able to detect clinically relevant concentrations of the target for the diagnosis of the disease. This technology offers the potential to complement conventional biosensor systems in applications of portable and rapid responding biosensing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
In recent years, owing to the miniaturization of the fluidic environment, microfluidic technology offers unique opportunities for the implementation of nano drug delivery systems (NDDSs) production processes. Compared with traditional methods, microfluidics improves the controllability and uniformity of NDDSs. The fast mixing and laminar flow properties achieved in the microchannels can tune the physicochemical properties of NDDSs, including particle size, distribution and morphology, resulting in narrow particle size distribution and high drug-loading capacity. The success of lipid nanoparticles encapsulated mRNA vaccines against coronavirus disease 2019 by microfluidics also confirmed its feasibility for scaling up the preparation of NDDSs via parallelization or numbering-up. In this review, we provide a comprehensive summary of microfluidics-based NDDSs, including the fundamentals of microfluidics, microfluidic synthesis of NDDSs, and their industrialization. The challenges of microfluidics-based NDDSs in the current status and the prospects for future development are also discussed. We believe that this review will provide good guidance for microfluidics-based NDDSs.Copyright © 2023 Chinese Pharmaceutical Association and Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences
ABSTRACT
Work is done in an environment that is dynamic and in a continuousstate of change. In 2008, as the world was delightfully traversing a fiscal prosperity, it was suddenly hit with what could be described as one of the most devastating economic recessions a few monthslater. When the national governments, corporate organisations and individuals started to feel that innovative ways of comprehending and outlasting the economic slump in a flourishing manner through the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) had been found, the Coronavirus disease also known as COVID-19 pandemic, struck a more deadly blow on the global economy. The pandemic has changed the way work is done, the way people live, learn, and do business. The cutting-edge and specialised management of human capital central to ensuring that organisations can achieve their strategic objectives, remain competitive, and adapt to the ever-changing world of work, is under severe threat. Unemployment rate is at an all-time high level, and the race to attract and retain the best skills and create digital systems that exploit organisational and workforce potentials is keenly competed among organisations. Furthermore, the issue of employee health and well-being is dominating discussions among governments, organisations, and individual groups. This first edition of Future of Work, Work-Family Satisfaction, and Employee Well-Being in the Fourth Industrial Revolution aims at refining and sharpening the thinking, as well as equipping human resource experts, managers, owners of businesses(both large and small),skills development experts, academics,students and governments with pertinent and updated knowledge,skills and behaviours to approach the 4IR, and the post-COVID-19 era. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
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As part of this 60th anniversary edition of the Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, this paper provides a review of the impact of technology over the last decade on the role of HRM. This period was bookended by the global financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic and saw the emergence of fourth industrial revolution. The decade provided a platform and maturity of a wide range of technology-based processes requiring appropriate policies to guide and manage them. From social media and cyber-vetting, to electronic monitoring and surveillance and biometric testing, all have made a significant impact across the workplace and not least on the HRM aspect of work. The paper addresses these changes to show the significant impact on the workplace. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
With a remarkable increase in industrialization among fast-developing countries, air pollution is rising at an alarming rate and has become a public health concern. The study aims to examine the effect of air pollution on patient's hospital visits for respiratory diseases, particularly Acute Respiratory Infections (ARI). Outpatient hospital visits, air pollution and meteorological parameters were collected from March 2018 to October 2021. Eight machine learning algorithms (Random Forest model, K-Nearest Neighbors regression model, Linear regression model, LASSO regression model, Decision Tree Regressor, Support Vector Regression, X.G. Boost and Deep Neural Network with 5-layers) were applied for the analysis of daily air pollutants and outpatient visits for ARI. The evaluation was done by using 5-cross-fold confirmations. The data was randomly divided into test and training data sets at a scale of 1:2, respectively. Results show that among the studied eight machine learning models, the Random Forest model has given the best performance with R2 = 0.606, 0.608 without lag and 1-day lag respectively on ARI patients and R2 = 0.872, 0.871 without lag and 1-day lag respectively on total patients. All eight models did not perform well with the lag effect on the ARI patient dataset but performed better on the total patient dataset. Thus, the study did not find any significant association between ARI patients and ambient air pollution due to the intermittent availability of data during the COVID-19 period. This study gives insight into developing machine learning programs for risk prediction that can be used to predict analytics for several other diseases apart from ARI, such as heart disease and other respiratory diseases. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.
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The German economy is in difficult waters. Since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, there has been no end to the challenges posed by interruptions in production and supply problems. Despite the need for crisis management, politicians have pledged not to lose sight of environmental sustainability. In addition, our community itself must take more responsibility for strengthening the resilience of supply, value and innovation chains. All of this will only succeed with a greater focus on economic performance;this requires a supply-side economic policy. Drawing insight from this crisis will allow for a successful transition management and a comprehensively transformed economy.
ABSTRACT
Thirty locations in the rapidly expanding residential and commercial area of the Paschim Medinipur region in eastern India provided groundwater samples in January and May of 2020. These times of sampling occurred both before and after the region's industrial activity was shut down and agricultural activity was cut back as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see how much of an impact reduced human activity had on groundwater quality. Samples taken before the monsoons showed that fluoride levels in about 17 percent of the wells that had been impacted by high fluoride concentration levels after the monsoons had returned to safe levels for human consumption. Ion exchange processes, seasonal monsoon rainwater infiltration diluting ion concentrations including geogenic fluoride, and a decrease in anthropogenic sources during the lockdown are likely to have contributed to this. Groundwater samples taken after the monsoon season showed that 73%, 60%, and 50%, respectively, had fluoride concentrations above the allowable limit, as calculated using the total hazard index for fluoride in children, adult women, and adult men. Nitrate pollution was found to have decreased by 33.4% between the pre-and post-monsoon periods. Prior to the onset of the monsoon season, the chemical facies of the aquifers was found to have reverted from the Na-HCO3-Cl & Na-Cl to the Ca-HCO3 variety. The groundwater chemistry of this region is affected by a number of factors, including weathering of plagioclase minerals, carbonate dissolution, reverse ion exchange, & anthropogenic inputs, as shown by a number of geogenic indicators (such as molar ratios, inter-ionic relations, and graphical tools). Saturation index evaluations of post-monsoon and pre-monsoon samples corroborated these results. Groundwater pollution from Na+, K+, Cl-, NO3, and F-ions was greatly reduced during the COVID-19 lockdown as a result of the suspension of industrial and agricultural activities. Evidence suggests that the COVID-19 lockdown was accompanied by an increase in the concentration of HCO3 ions in the groundwater supply. Conclusions show that reducing human-caused pollution inputs has the potential to improve groundwater quality. Copyright © 2022, Anka Publishers. All rights reserved.
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European maritime trade continues to be primarily driven by the evolution of the European and world economy and business. Although the relationship between economic output and trade in goods appears to be changing, with a marked decline in trade in the total value of Gross Domestic Product in recent years, the demand for maritime transport services remains dependent on the performance of the world economy. While industrial activity, economic production, the number of goods, trade and maritime trade may increase at different rates, these variables remain positively correlated. In the conditions of interdependence and globalization, seaborne trade, with efficiency and profitability, is the engine of economic development and prosperity. The European market for the transport of general goods is determined by the need for such goods worldwide, the world economy, the demographic situation, industrialization, and the surplus and deficit of industrialized goods.
ABSTRACT
In recent years, owing to the miniaturization of the fluidic environment, microfluidic technology offers unique opportunities for the implementation of nano drug delivery systems (NDDSs) production processes. Compared with traditional methods, microfluidics improves the controllability and uniformity of NDDSs. The fast mixing and laminar flow properties achieved in the microchannels can tune the physicochemical properties of NDDSs, including particle size, distribution and morphology, resulting in narrow particle size distribution and high drug-loading capacity. The success of lipid nanoparticles encapsulated mRNA vaccines against coronavirus disease 2019 by microfluidics also confirmed its feasibility for scaling up the preparation of NDDSs via parallelization or numbering-up. In this review, we provide a comprehensive summary of microfluidics-based NDDSs, including the fundamentals of microfluidics, microfluidic synthesis of NDDSs, and their industrialization. The challenges of microfluidics-based NDDSs in the current status and the prospects for future development are also discussed. We believe that this review will provide good guidance for microfluidics-based NDDSs.
ABSTRACT
In 1991 with the support and efforts of Dr. P.V. Narsimha Rao and Dr. Manmohan Singh economic liberalization was initiated in India. The main purpose of liberalization was expansion in investment and industrialization. As an effect of liberalization, the Indian banking industry become more cautious while disbursing loans to its borrowers and started to take precautionary majors for not converting assets into Non-Performing Assets. In 2015 Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi introduced Mudra Loan Concept under the flagship of the PMMY scheme to support non-agriculture/non-farm activities. The banks that disburse these loans are called Mudra Banks. These banks provide loans up to Rs. 10,00,000/- without any collateral security. Therefore, the chances of increasing Non-Performing Assets are at a high level. The study highlighted the reasons for increasing NPA concerning selective Mudra banks and also corrective majors or efforts to be taken by the Mudra banks to minimize the amount of NPA. NPA adversely affects the bank's financial solvency, profitability, and liquidity. NPA stops the income-generating source for the bank. The study analyzed the position of Gross Non-Performing Asset and Net Non-Performing Asset before and after covid-19 Pandemics crises concerning Mudra Banks. The study concluded that the repayment capacity of mudra loan borrowers is at a high level than any other loan borrowers also there is not much effect of the covid-19 pandemic on the repayment of mudra loans as they stood at the same place before and after the covid-19 pandemic crisis. Copyright © 2022 Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Financial liberalization has noticeably reduced the role of the state in effectively influencing the economy in post-developmental states. Yet many studies have found that the legacies of the developmental model continue to influence the policies, institutions, and socioeconomic challenges that are faced by the states that previously adopted the model. These studies, however, do not clearly identify when and how such legacies may be manifested in state behavior. This paper contributes to filling this gap in the literature by arguing that financial crises can serve as a trigger to more clearly reveal the structural evidence of the legacy in institutions that were previously established and utilized for developmental objectives. By conducting a rigorous case analysis using historical and market data on the crisis responses of South Korea's public pension fund, this paper finds that South Korea's developmental legacy remains passively embedded in the governance structure of the pension fund in non-crisis times but manifests during financial crises.
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The year 2022 got off to a relatively optimistic start for Indonesia’s economic managers. Notwithstanding the serious health and social outcomes inflicted by the Covid pandemic, the government had successfully minimised the economic fallout. It could reasonably contemplate a period of sustained economic recovery and rising prosperity in preparation for the 2024 national elections. However, the outlook began to deteriorate in the face of heightened global economic volatility and uncertainty: the economic and geostrategic ramifications of the Ukraine War, a sudden slowdown in the global economy, rising interest rates, historically high and volatile prices for some key commodities, international trade and transport disruptions, uncertainty about China’s current economic trajectory and persistent if (so far ) manageable Covid challenges. Nevertheless, the Indonesian economy is continuing its steady post-Covid progress: the return to 5% growth in late 2021 continued through to second quarter 2022, inflation remains moderate and living standards are slowly recovering. However, there are potentially major macroeconomic challenges on the horizon. In fiscal policy, there are many demands on the budget, yet there is limited fiscal space, and much of the increased budget revenue this year is again being allocated to subsidies. In monetary policy, there is concern that, as in many countries, the monetary authorities could be ‘behind the curve’ of rising inflationary pressures. In his 16 August 2022 speech, President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) emphasised the importance of the industrial sector and of ‘downstreaming’ as a means of accelerating industrial growth. Against this backdrop, and the sector’s sluggish growth for much of this century, the paper also surveys recent patterns of industrialisation and prospects for the future.Alternate :Para pelaku ekonomi Indonesia memulai tahun 2022 dengan optimisme. Tanpa mengesampingkan dampak serius kesehatan dan sosial yang diakibatkan oleh pandemi Covid, pemerintah telah berhasil meminimisasi keruntuhan ekonomi. Pemerintah dapat berfokus pada pemulihan ekonomi secara berkelanjutan dan peningkatan kemakmuran sembari menyongsong Pemilihan Umum 2024. Namun demikian, prospek ekonomi kembali memburuk di tengah naiknya gejolak ekonomi global dan ketidakpastian: ramifikasi ekonomi dan geostrategi dari perang di Ukraina, perlambatan mendadak perekonomian global, kenaikan suku bunga, tinggi dan bergejolaknya harga barang bagi beberapa komoditas utama, disrupsi perdagangan internasional dan transportasi, ketidakpastian mengenai arah ekonomi China dan persistensi tantangan-tantangan Covid. Perekonomian Indonesia meneruskan pertumbuhannya yang stabil pasca Covid: kembalinya pertumbuhan ke tingkat 5% pada akhir 2021 terus berlanjut ke Triwulan II – 2022, inflasi realtif rendah dan tingkat kelayakan hidup mulai pulih kembali. Namun, ada potensi tantangan makroekonomi besar di depan mata. Pada kebijakan fiskal, terdapat banyak permintaan untuk belanja, namun hanya sedikit ruang fiskal, dan banyak kenaikan penerimaan anggaran tahun ini dialokasikan untuk subsidi. Pada kebijakan moneter, terdapat kekuatiran bahwa otoritas moneter berada di belakang kurva kenaikan tekanan inflasi, sebagaimana terjadi juga di banyak negara lain. Pada pidato di 16 Agustus 2022, Presiden Joko Widodo menekankan pentingnya sektor industri dan hilirisasi sebagai alat akselerator pertumbuhan industri. Dengan latar belakang ini dan lambatnya pertumbuhan sektor industri sepanjang abad ini, tulisan ini juga mensurvei pola industrialisasi terkini serta prospek masa depannya.
ABSTRACT
The South Korean economic miracle is often used as an example of the consolidation of business and government in the interests of national prosperity. Thanks to rapid industrialization and the implementation of an export-oriented economic model, the Republic of Korea (ROK) acquired the status of a developed country already in the mid-1990s. An important factor of South Korea's success at the global level is the fact that the foreign economic relations of the ROK have been closely intertwined with access to world markets, technologies, and investments. However, the economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and global geopolitical differences have been testing even the most stable economies. Since the South Korean economy has been deeply integrated into international trade and finance, it has become very vulnerable to outside challenges. The strengthening of partnership cooperation with the US requires that President Yoon's administration dramatically diversify foreign economic ties. Of special interest here are Russian-South Korean economic ties and their prospects. At present, the two countries' economic partnership is facing a major test in the form of sanctions pressure on the Russian Federation. As for domestic challenges for South Korea, the new administration of President Yoon has inherited many unresolved problems that have only been worsening - primarily unemployment (especially among young people), inflation, a housing crisis, and the country's ag: ing population. In this article, the authors analyze current foreign and domestic challenges facing the ROK economy. In addition, emphasis is placed on issues of Russian-South'Korean economic relations.
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Environmental pollution begins with the industrial era and increases after the Second World War with the rise of technology. In the 1970s, man began to become aware of the seriousness of this progressive and irreparable damage. Ecology and related sciences are developed and actions are implemented everywhere to manage or alleviate the damage. Pollution can directly alter the components of an ecosystem, water, air or soils, but it can also occur due to the presence of unusual physical or physicochemical phenomena, such as heat or ionizing radiation. Its effects are manifested mainly by damage to ecosystems and therefore damage to the health of human beings, animals, plants, land or water (Nebel, 1999;Clark, 2003). Today the ecological disasters of London, Donora, Minamata, Chernobyl, Bophal, the Persian Gulf, the Danube originating in Baia Mare or those of oil in the seas are well known (Baxter, 1991). In Peru, we know of the environmental damage of the City of Oroya, Lake Junin, the Choropampa spill, and urban contamination by lead dust from deposits of mineral concentrates in Callao. According to the Pan American Health Organization, there are 20,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Amazon Basin (Martin, 2020). Gold miners and illegal loggers are exposing indigenous communities to considerable health risks, a situation that could have severe consequences given the poor response capacity of hospitals and health services in the region. Therefore, the spread of the virus in these communities could imply a tragedy that, in addition to the human losses, could, in turn, affect traditional knowledge and produce negative effects on the governance of the region. As a result, there could be even more deforestation in the future. Differential policies to serve ethnic populations in the region are an urgent need (Bermudez et al., 2020;Velez et al., 2020a). That is why this research set out to establish the Influence of industrialization on environmental health: Historical vision from the industrial revolution to the COVID19 pandemic.
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This article offers a critical contribution to debates around access to medicines and the global politics of pharmaceutical production in Africa. Specifically, we seek to account for a normative shift within these debates whereby the promotion of local pharmaceutical production in Africa has once again come to be viewed as a central modality for achieving access to health across the continent. While the onset of this normative shift has been highlighted by the global Covid-19 pandemic, in this article we argue that its antecedents can be traced to a more incremental process of global and regional normative change that has been in motion since the late 1990s. To illustrate this, we narrow our empirical focus onto the East African Community (EAC) and the regional initiatives its members have pursued to promote local pharmaceutical production capacities since 2012. We draw and build upon the literature on norm localization to emphasize how the emergence and distinctiveness of this policy reflected the complex way in which policy actors within the EAC sought to localize and combine separate (and somewhat competing) changing global norms around access to health and industrial policy. The article also points to the tensions and unintended consequences which emerged from this complex process of norm localization and the challenges of implementing this strategy within the institutional landscape of the EAC. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of European Journal of International Relations is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)
ABSTRACT
Based on China’s provincial panel data during 2012–2019, this paper performs an empirical analysis of the dynamic effect and regional difference of industrialization and urbanization on the energy intensity in China by separating the energy intensity into three levels including low, middle and high and using the dynamic panel data with system GMM estimation. The results show that the energy intensity will increase by 0.4298% for every 1% increase in the industrialization level on the premise of keeping other variables unchanged. For every 1% increase in the urbanization level, the energy intensity will increase by 0.5674% on average. For every 1% increase in energy intensity in the previous period, the energy intensity in that year will increase by 0.7968% on average. Moreover, there are regional differences in the effects of industrialization and urbanization on the energy intensity in areas with different energy intensities. In addition, all of the factors including the development level of the regional economy, energy price, and technological innovation have different effects on the energy intensity in China. Meanwhile, there exist the rebound effects of the technological innovation in China, and the energy price has an induced effect on the technological innovation. Undoubtedly, industrialization and urbanization jointly promote the increase in energy intensity. At the same time, the level of economic development, energy prices and technological innovation are also reasons for the differences in the energy intensity among regions. Therefore, in order to effectively reduce energy intensity while carrying out technological innovation, promoting high-quality development and increasing income, it is necessary to improve the internal quality of industrialization and urbanization, and to promote new resource-saving and environmentally friendly methods of industrialization and urbanization.