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In recent times, among all the substrates used in microfluidic systems, cellulose paper is used as a handy, low-cost substrate that has gained attention for carrying fluid on its surface over capillary pressure. Cellulose paper substrate has exhibited great potential on microfluidic devices owing to prevalent obtainability, easy fluid (sample) flow system, flexibility, and low cost. Cellulose paper is fibrous, biocompatible, and hydrophilic in nature due to the hydroxyl group of the cellulose molecule. Based on the dominance of functional hydroxyl groups, cellulose is very reactive and every single cellulose fiber acts like a microchannel on the paper substrates. Aggregation of inter- and intra-cellulose fiber chains has a strong binding affinity to it and toward materials containing hydroxyls groups. In this paper, impact of inter- and intra-cellulose fiber on the paper substrate has been discussed through an experimental study. For the addition of work a "hydrophobic penetration-on-paper substrate (Hyp-POP)" method has been shown by using TiO2 ink as a hydrophobic material to design the microfluidic channel on the Whatman cellulose filter paper (grade 1) as a paper substrate. In this experimental study, the intra-cellulose fibers of paper substrate interact through hydrogen bonds with water molecules and form a hydrophilic surface on paper substrate while TiO2 binds with intra-cellulose fibers by electrostatic forces which change the crystallinity of intra-cellulose fiber and make the surface of paper substrate; hydrophobic. Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FESEM) analysis is conceded for microfluidic channel analysis on the paper surface and EDS is carried out for TiO2 ink contents analysis. It has been experimentally observed that the printing material of TiO2 ink with 17.2% Ti content is suitable to integrate hydrophobic barrier on paper substrate for microfluidic channel fabrication. The wetting ability of Whatman cellulose filter paper (grade 1) was further evaluated by contact angle measurements (Data physics OCA 15EC). Using "Hyp-POP" method a hydrophobic pattern (width 3140 μ m) on paper substrate has been made for the flow of liquid (blue fountain ink) into a paper fluidic channel (width 1860 μ m) without any leakage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission, scheduled for launch in the mid-2030s, is a gravitational wave space observatory designed to detect sources emitting in the millihertz band. LISA is an European Space Agency flagship mission, currently entering the Phase-B development phase. It is expected to help us improve our understanding of our Universe by measuring gravitational wave sources of different types, with some of the sources being at very high redshifts (z∼20). On February 23, 2022, we organized the first LISA in Greece Workshop. This Workshop aimed to inform the Greek scientific and tech industry communities about the possibilities of participating in LISA science and the LISA mission, with the support of the Hellenic Space Center. In this White Paper, we summarize the outcomes of the Workshop, the most important aspect of it being the inclusion of 15 Greek researchers to the LISA Consortium, raising our total number to 22. At the same time, we present a road map with the future steps and actions of the Greek Gravitational Wave community with respect to the LISA mission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A thermal stability analysis method of meta-aramid insulating paper based on computer molecular dynamics technology is designed in this paper. First, the raw materials and equipment for preparing meta-aramid insulating paper were determined to prepare meta-aramid insulating paper. Then, the internal structure and morphology of meta-aramid insulating paper are analyzed for the subsequent stability analysis. Finally, the basic principle of computer molecular dynamics technology is analyzed, which is used to analyze the thermal stability of meta-aramid insulating paper, mainly from the stability of its crystal region. The experimental results show that the proposed method is effective and feasible in analyzing the thermal stability of aramid insulating paper between samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the recent years, the academic paper influence analysis has been widely studied due to its potential applications in the multiple areas of science information metric and retrieval. By identifying the academic influence of papers, authors, etc., we can directly support researchers to easily reach academic papers. These recommended candidate papers are not only highly relevant with their desired research topics but also highly-attended by the research community within these topics. For very recent years, the rapid developments of academic networks, like Google Scholar, Research Gate, CiteSeerX, etc., have significantly boosted the number of new published papers annually. It also helps to strengthen the borderless cooperation between researchers who are interested on the same research topics. However, these current academic networks still lack the capabilities of provisioning researchers deeper into most-influenced papers. They also largely ignore quite/irrelevant papers, which are not fully related with their current interest topics. Moreover, the distributions of topics within these academic papers are considered as varying and it is difficult to extract the main concentrated topics in these papers. Thus, it leads to challenges for researchers to find their appropriated/high-qualified reference resources while doing researches. To overcome this limitation, in this paper, we proposed a novel approach of paper influence analysis through their content-based and citation relationship-based analyses within the biographical network. In order to effectively extract the topic-based relevance from papers, we apply the integrated graph-based citation relationship analysis with topic modeling approach to automatically learn the distributions of keyword-based labeled topics in forms of unsupervised learning approach, named as TopCite. Then, we base on the constructed graph-based paper–topic structure to identify their relevancy levels. Upon the identified relevancy levels between papers, we can support for improving the accuracy performance of other bibliographic network mining tasks, such as paper similarity measurement, recommendation, etc. Extensive experiments in real-world AMiner bibliographic dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed ideas in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Source code is essential for researchers to reproduce the methods and replicate the results of artificial intelligence (AI) papers. Some organizations and researchers manually collect AI papers with available source code to contribute to the AI community. However, manual collection is a labor-intensive and time-consuming task. To address this issue, we propose a method to automatically identify papers with available source code and extract their source code repository URLs. With this method, we find that 20.5% of regular papers of 10 top AI conferences published from 2010 to 2019 are identified as papers with available source code and that 8.1% of these source code repositories are no longer accessible. We also create the XMU NLP Lab README Dataset, the largest dataset of labeled README files for source code document research. Through this dataset, we have discovered that quite a few README files have no installation instructions or usage tutorials provided. Further, a large-scale comprehensive statistical analysis is made for a general picture of the source code of AI conference papers. The proposed solution can also go beyond AI conference papers to analyze other scientific papers from both journals and conferences to shed light on more domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent and forthcoming technological innovations highlight recycled paper products as a consumer market with promising potential. This study presents the examination of the recycled paper products purchasing behavior (RPPPB), as well as some of the factors that were assumed to affect these specific pro-environmental consumers' choices. Instead of the impact of the customary positive environmental attitudes, this study focused on those negative attitudes, namely Environmental Unconcern, that might be found able to inhibit RPPB. In addition, an effort was made to examine the role of an objective environmental knowledge scale, namely the Eco-literacy scale. A survey among 224 consumers residing in the Municipality of Thessaloniki, Greece was conducted. Multiple regression indicated that just Environmental Knowledge and not the Eco-literacy scale is a predictor of RPPPB. Further, SEM analysis though verified the theoretical assumption that knowledge moderates the relationship between attitudes and behavior. It was concluded that the negative direct relationship between environmental unconcern and the recycled paper products' purchasing behavior strengthens in the group of knowledgeable consumers. Implications are provided for all stakeholders that engage in the recycled paper products market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to retrieve and study the highly cited papers as well as the correlation between the citation frequency and the download frequency of the 20 traditional Chinese medicine journals in China, in order to provide the guidance for improving the influence and academic quality of these journals. Bibliometric analyses were conducted on 1103 papers of 20 traditional Chinese medicine journals from 2011 to 2020 by retrieving for the China Academic Journal Network Publishing Database (CAJD) in China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI). SPSS 17.0 software was used to analyze the correlation between the citation frequency and the download frequency via conducting regression fitting and establishing the mathematical models. The results showed that the total citations of the 1103 papers were 93051 times and the average citations were 84.36 times per paper. The total downloads of the 1103 papers were 2058442 times, and the average downloads were 1866.22 times per paper. China Journal of Chinese Materia Medica ranked first according to the number of papers, total citations and total downloads. The citations of Journal of Chinese Medicinal Materials ranked first based on the number of citations per paper. One of Li's paper had been cited the most (983 times). There were 629 (57.03%) papers whose first author was from universities. The scopes of the first authors were distributed in 29 regions and 2 special administrative regions (Macao, Hong Kong) in China. The authors from Beijing published 283 (25.66%) papers, ranking number one. The number of papers supported by funds was 882 (79.96%). The research results of correlation showed that the citation frequency and the download frequency of the highly cited papers had a highly positive correlation from both journal and paper level for whether the sample data of journals was normally distributed or nonnormally distributed. The correlation coefficients of the 20 journals at journal level and that at paper level were 0.9765 and 0.6677, respectively. The correlation was better at journal level than that at paper level, while the optimal regression fitting was all cubic polynomial. Among the 1103 papers, there were 684 (62.01%) research papers and 419 (37.99%) review papers. The main citation period of the top 15 papers was from the 2nd year to the 6th year after publication, accounting for 78.39%. Papers on clinical therapeutics research, papers on the pharmacological effects and its mechanism of traditional Chinese medicine, and papers on traditional Chinese medicine and natural medicine were the main source of the highly cited papers of the traditional Chinese medicine journals. Editors of the journals should focus on the above-mentioned research areas to select manuscripts for exploiting the excellent sources extensively, while paying attention to review papers, focusing on national major or key projects, paying attention to network spreading, stabilizing authors with quality services, in order to improve the influence and the academic quality of journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The feeding unit is an important functional part in the paper industry that requires the development of effective maintenance plan based on its reliability analysis. This study analyzes reliability of the considered unit employing trapezoidal fuzzy numbers in fuzzy λ – τ methodology with Petri net modeling. In this analysis, the collected crisp input data of each subsystem has been fuzzified using trapezoidal fuzzy numbers. Then fuzzy values of several reliability factors of feeding unit, namely, failure rate, repair time, reliability, availability, etc. at ±15%, ±25% and ±40% spread levels have been calculated. Further, the obtained fuzzy values of reliability factors have been defuzzified to analyze system behavior of feeding unit. The analysis is useful for plant maintenance and operation management to understand the behavior of feeding unit in a more realistic manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a review of the literature on rigorous definitions and constructions in quantum field theory (QFT), spanning the period of seven decades. Compared with the ideas and constructions found in the modern physics literature, we conclude that none of the existing systems of QFT axioms can cover all the physical situations. Therefore, it is still an outstanding open problem to formulate a complete definition of QFT. We argue that the question is of relevance for both physicists and mathematicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the cutting behavior of Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) composites and GNP–GFRP composites that contain varying amounts of Graphene Nano Platelets (GNP). GFRP composites are increasingly being used in a variety of industrial applications due to their excellent mechanical properties, such as high strength, stiffness, and low weight. However, their machining and cutting behavior can be challenging due to the presence of the reinforcing fibers. Therefore, the study aims to investigate the machining behavior of GFRP composites and the effect of adding GNP on their cutting behavior. The effect of different parameters such as cutting speed, feed rate and reinforcement rate on cutting forces and delamination factor is investigated. In addition, the tensile strength and fatigue behavior of the composite materials with the best and worst delamination factors were also determined. Addition of up to 0.2 wt.% of GNP to GFRP composites resulted in an increase in cutting forces and delamination factor when drilling GFRP composites. While the cutting force and delamination factor decreased with the increase in cutting speed, the cutting force and delamination factor increased with the increase in the feed rate. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to determine the effects of drilling parameters and reinforcement ratio on cutting force and delamination factor according to full factorial experimental design. The most efficient factor on the cutting forces is found to be feed rate (84.97%), followed by the reinforced rate (6.48%) and cutting speed (6.13%). The most efficient factor on the delamination factor is determined to be feed rate for (44.49%), followed by the reinforced rate (29.20%) and cutting speed (21.73%). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nonlinear optical imaging is a versatile tool that has been proven to be exceptionally useful in various research fields. However, due to the use of photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), the wide application of nonlinear optical imaging is limited by the incapability of imaging under ambient light. In this paper, we propose and demonstrate a new optical imaging detection method based on optical parametric amplification (OPA). As a nonlinear optical process, OPA intrinsically rejects ambient light photons by coherence gating. Periodical poled lithium niobate (PPLN) crystals are used in this study as the media for OPA. Compared to bulk nonlinear optical crystals, PPLN crystals support the generation of OPA signal with lower pump power. Therefore, this characteristic of PPLN crystals is particularly beneficial when using high-repetition-rate lasers, which facilitate high-speed optical signal detection, such as in spectroscopy and imaging. A PPLN-based OPA system was built to amplify the emitted imaging signal from second harmonic generation (SHG) and coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) microscopy imaging, and the amplified optical signal was strong enough to be detected by a biased photodiode under ordinary room light conditions. With OPA detection, ambient-light-on SHG and CARS imaging becomes possible, and achieves a similar result as PMT detection under strictly dark environments. These results demonstrate that OPA can be used as a substitute for PMTs in nonlinear optical imaging to adapt it to various applications with complex lighting conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The MINimal emission FLUXes (MINFLUX) technique in optical microscopy, widely recognized as the next innovative fluorescence microscopy method, claims a spatial resolution of 1–3 nm in both dead and living cells. To make use of the full resolution of the MINFLUX microscope, it is important to select appropriate fluorescence probes and labeling strategies, especially in living-cell imaging. This paper mainly focuses on recent applications and developments of fluorescence probes and the relevant labeling strategy for MINFLUX microscopy. Moreover, we discuss the deficiencies that need to be addressed in the future and a plan for the possible progression of MINFLUX to help investigators who have been involved in or are just starting in the field of super-resolution imaging microscopy with theoretical support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The oil-immersed transformer is a crucial piece of equipment in the power system. Operating at the specified temperature is necessary to ensure the normal operation of the transformer. The insulation paper on the winding surface has a significant impact on the actual temperature of the transformers, which is often overlooked by researchers. The one-dimensional steady-state heat conduction model of the transformer is established by analyzing the heat diffusion process of winding to transformer oil. Atomic force microscope was used to observe the microsurface structure of insulation paper and copper. According to the experiment, the heat transfer resistance in the series process of heat transfer at 7 0 ∘ C is 0.0138 m2 K/W. Space thermal circuit model of transformer is established by thermoelectricity analogy method, and the simulation circuit is optimized according to the boundary conditions set up in the actual environment. The results show that the error of the hot spot temperature is closer to the measured temperature and decreases by 2.5% when considering the thermal resistance of insulation paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the prevalence of artificial intelligence technologies, big data has been utilized to higher extent in many cross-domain fields. This paper concentrates on the digital assessment of vocational education level in some specific areas, and proposes a graph neural network-based assessment model for this purpose. Assume that all vocational colleges inside a specific region are with a social graph, in which each college is a node and the relations among them are the edges. The graph neural network (GNN) model is formulated to capture global structured features of all the nodes together. The GNN is then employed for the sequential modeling pattern, and the evolving characteristics of all the colleges can be captured. Some experiments are also conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed GNN-VEL. It is compared with two typical forecasting methods under evaluation of two metrics. The results show that it performs better than other two methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on the fabrication of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanorod-based flexible, cost-effective single electrode triboelectric nanogenerator (STENG) on cellulose paper platform. In particular, the influence of surface functional groups of ZnO nanorods on the STENG output has been investigated. The STENG has been designed with chemically grown ZnO nanorod-coated paper as active triboelectric layer and Teflon/ Aluminum as counter triboelectric layer/ electrode. It has been found that post-annealing of nanorods at 125∘C improves the output voltage by twice compared to the pristine nanorods and delivers an output power of ∼ 0. 2 μ W/cm2. With annealing up to 125∘C, the optimal removal of the chemisorbed water from the defect sites of ZnO surface increases the intrinsic carrier concentration leading to maximum charge transfer and hence higher triboelectric output. On the other hand, a higher extent of oxygen accumulation from air at 150∘C lowers the intrinsic carrier concentration resulting in the reduced output. It has been proposed that the competition between the events like water removal and oxygen accumulation under different annealing temperatures can influence the STENG output largely. Finally, the optimized STENG has been demonstrated to work as wearable bio-mechanical sensors operating through bio-mechanical stimuli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an analysis of the precision of range sensors is presented. Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) data from three different sensors (HLS-LFCD-LDS, SICK TIM561, and Kinect V2), stereo data from the Realsense D435, and structured light data from both Kinect V1 for Xbox and the Xtion PRO Live were analyzed regarding the influence of range, incident angle to the surface, and surface material. In addition, a comparison with standard deviation models based on vendor-provided specifications was performed. We found that the vendor specifications are in general not specific enough to facilitate accurate sensor simulations. Therefore, we developed a data-driven model for range precision. Our model can be used to create realistic sensor simulations and to develop robot navigation algorithms weighing sensor range readings based on the precision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is a country's fiat currency that exists in a digital form. This digital currency becomes a liability on the balance sheet of a nation's central bank when it ceases to be a liability on the balance sheet of one of the nation's commercial banks and gets transferred to the central bank. Instead of printing paper money, the central bank can create CBDCs by opening electronic bank accounts at commercial banks that are backed by the full faith and credit of the nation's central bank. The goal of a CBDC is to provide the nation's government, businesses and consumers with a liquid and accessible currency that supplies privacy, transferability, convenience, and financial security. If CBDCs become highly popular, someday the world might operate with only one global CBDC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study Kauffman's model of folded ribbon knots: knots made of a thin strip of paper folded flat in the plane. The folded ribbonlength is the length to width ratio of such a folded ribbon knot. The folded ribbon knot is also a framed knot, and the ribbon linking number is the linking number of the knot and one boundary component of the ribbon. We find the minimum folded ribbonlength for 3 -stick unknots with ribbon linking numbers ± 1 and ± 3 , and we prove that the minimum folded ribbonlength for n -gons with obtuse interior angles is achieved when the n -gon is regular. Among other results, we prove that the minimum folded ribbonlength of any folded ribbon unknot which is a topological annulus with ribbon linking number ± n is bounded from above by 2 n. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To address the issues in clothing pattern style migration, this paper proposes a digital simulation and re-editing method for clothing patterns based on deep learning and somatosensory interaction. First, the proposed method encodes the black-and-white line drawing image, generating random noise images through a diffusion process, introducing color information for synthesis, and using a decoder to reconstruct a colored image. Afterwards, an improved VGG19 model is used to reconstruct content features and perform linear color transformation on style images, enabling pattern style migration through the construction of a Gram matrix and resulting in colored clothing texture patterns. Finally, a KinectV2 is utilized for fabric simulation, overlaying colorful clothing texture patterns to achieve 3D virtual dressing. The experimental results show that the proposed method improves the structural similarity index measure (SSIM) by 9–11% and the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) by 3–8% when compared to existing algorithms. The experiments provide evidence that the proposed method effectively mitigates color overflow, delivers precise image coloring, and accomplishes realistic restoration of clothing texture. Furthermore, the method offers an improved garment fit to fulfill the user's interaction requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns about sustainability challenges are growing. Companies are under pressure to rethink existing innovation paradigms. In this context, research interest in the resource-constrained innovation concept, frugal innovation, has increased. In this paper, we examine the impact of frugal innovation on the economic, social, and ecological sustainability dimensions by conducting a systematic literature review of 44 papers. We find that frugal innovation is a promising approach to promote sustainable development from an economic perspective and a social perspective. Nevertheless, positive and negative effects exist in all three dimensions. Thus, a positive relationship is not inherent but must be proactively formed. External factors can influence the impact of frugal innovation on sustainability. For future research we recommend (1) establishing a unified understanding of frugal innovation through a clear definition, (2) broadening the research focus to a global perspective, (3) assessing the impact of frugal innovation along the entire product life cycle, and (4) investigating characteristics that make frugal innovation sustainable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the healthcare industry has faced numerous challenges in ensuring efficient and reliable supply chain management. The emergence of novel supply chain-based frameworks has presented promising solutions to these challenges. This survey paper aims to explore and analyze the latest advancements in supply chain frameworks specifically tailored for the healthcare industry. We review the existing literature, identify key trends, and highlight the potential impact of these frameworks on improving patient care, optimizing inventory management, enhancing operational efficiency, and reducing costs. Additionally, we discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with the implementation of these frameworks and suggest future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a significant shift towards electronic commerce (e-commerce), as people have turned to various methods of e-commerce to deal with imposed mobility restrictions. This paper provides a bibliometric analysis of the research conducted in the field of e-commerce, focusing on studies related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The study aims to identify the key features, most influential papers, prevalent themes and methodologies, and the relationship between the terms used in the relevant publications. The data for the analysis was obtained from the Scopus database and consisted of 629 English-language research papers, book chapters, and review papers published between August 2020 and December 2022. BibExcel and VOSviewer software tools were utilized to assist with the selection of relevant information, perform the bibliometric analysis, and generate graphical representations of the results. The analysis indicates that China was the most productive geographical region, with the United States and India following closely behind. Sustainability journal from Switzerland was found to be the most productive in the field, followed by Frontiers in Psychology and the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services. Bina Nusantara University in Indonesia was identified as the most productive institution, with Bucharest University of Economic Studies in Romania and Zhejiang University in China following closely behind. The most influential paper was found to be by Kim (2020), followed by Dannenberg et al. (2020), and Tran (2021). To address the limitations in the current literature, future research can undertake a comparative study of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the field of e-commerce over time, as well as analyze the dominant themes both prior to and post-pandemic. Investigating the correlation between disruptive events like the COVID-19 pandemic and the factors that drive e-commerce adoption constitutes a worthy and captivating field for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current Internet of Things (IoT) technology has entered a relatively mature development stage, and more and more IoT devices can readily access the Internet. However, along with this, the IoT system still faces fragile security of device nodes, easy data tampering, and low system stability. To this end, this paper proposes a smart contract-based security model for IoT systems. The proposal is based on the super ledger Fabric blockchain platform having decentralised, tamper-proof, and programmable features. These features achieve credible authentication of IoT device nodes on the one hand and tamper-proof data storage on the other hand. Further, with these features, we gain a trustworthy environment for enhancing the security of the whole IoT system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evolutionary studies of cultural complexity often assume that group members select the best information available in the group, effectively diffusing the best innovations, whose advantages are subsequently passed on to the next generation. This would seem to describe the ideal of the scientific process — each cohort of papers in a field surfacing the best innovations, refining them and passing on to the next "layer" or cohort of scientific works. Here, we use academic journal databases to explore this "forking" (branching) process in the evolution of a scientific paradigm. We apply citation network visualization and Latent Dirichlet allocation topic analysis to three different paradigms defined pragmatically as the set of papers citing a highly influential paper in each respective case. Our three case studies indicate a founder effect in how the seminal paper is highly-embedded in the citation network, and yet peripheral to the evolution of topics in subsequent "layers" of publications within the paradigm. This and additional evidence suggest certain topics are selected and followed, while others are left behind. From these case studies, we discuss how hitherto undeveloped ideas of the past might be located in the topic space of seminal works of the same fruitful time period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How to improve the high resolution and remove the noise of composite infrared thermal wave detection image have become important research topics in machine vision. Therefore, this paper proposes a composite image enhancement algorithm based on edge adaptive total variation of direction. Using the improved adaptive directional total variation model to construct the guidance image of the guidance filter can provide better structural information for the guidance filter and conduct the guidance filter. This process is iterated to eliminate noise and ladder effect. Experimental results show that this algorithm is superior to other advanced methods in objective evaluation index and subjective vision. The algorithm proposed in this paper can not only effectively eliminate noise and ladder effect, but also highlight image details and structure information, which proves the effectiveness of this algorithm. Discover the cutting-edge algorithm for high-resolution improvement and noise elimination in infrared thermal wave detection images. Our innovative composite image enhancement technique, based on edge adaptive total variation, outperforms traditional methods. The improved directional model provides better structural information, optimizing the guidance filter process. Experimental results reveal its superiority in objective evaluation and subjective vision. This algorithm effectively eliminates noise and ladder effect while highlighting image details, validating its remarkable effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecotourism potential is a fundamental research effort needed to promote sustainable regional tourism development, and scholars have paid greater attention to it in recent years, which has led to an increase in the publication of literature on this important and widely recognized topic. However, there is still no clear picture of the development direction of research on ecotourism potential. To address this issue, this study attempts to provide a comprehensive analysis of the existing research state in this field. This paper presents a more detailed review of ecotourism potential, a bibliometric analysis of 949 articles selected from 1,027 publications retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection database, and a systematic descriptive and network analysis of the bibliometric data using the Biblioshiny tool. Here are some interesting findings: (1) research on the ecotourism potential in the academy started in 1992, with a rapid growth in the number of publications after 2013, with an overall interdisciplinary character and the emergence of a research community represented by Milcu, Balmford, Gallagher, and others; (2) ecotourism, conservation, tourism, management, and biodiversity are high-frequency keywords in this field, revealing the main research directions; (3) the development and evolution of research focus are mainly on three aspects: wildlife and biodiversity conservation, nature-based tourism and environmental values, and the modes and contributions of community participation. Future research should focus on the scientific references of ecotourism potential for promoting regional sustainable development. This paper sheds some light on the comprehensive bibliometric studies on ecotourism potential and improves our understanding of the evolution of this academic discourse theme over the last three decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) serve as a common aim that brings many nations together, led by the United Nations with the purpose to achieve a set of 17 targets by 2030. One very important factor in achieving these aims is finance. The advancement in financial development all around the world will be able to speed up achieving SDGs where governments, policymakers, and people will be able to grow the economic development and infrastructure of the country, provide adequate job opportunities for many people, reduce poverty, as well as improve sustainability around the world. In opposition to that, some researchers see the advancement in financial development as an activity that will jeopardize achieving SDGs as financial development might lead to the production of carbon footprints at a faster rate. Using bibliometric analysis, this paper was able to discover that there is an increase in attention and interest in the field with the rise in publications in recent years, especially in 2022. Furthermore, this paper also identifies research hotspots within the field while also finding and analyzing the most impactful authors and publications on the topic. Ultimately, this paper hopes to provide a better definition for the relationship between financial development and SDGs with the use of bibliometric analysis, where data is collected from the Scopus database and analyzed using VOSviewer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, environmental problems have attracted the attention of many craftsmen and researchers. They have developed various policies and practices to protect the environment throughout the supply chain. Since suppliers are one of the supply chain partners, paying attention to these policies by them will be very effective in keeping the supply chain green. In today's dynamic environment, there is uncertainty in all decisions of the organizations. The wood and paper industry also faces uncertainty in choosing green and environmentally friendly suppliers. These uncertainties must be taken into account when selecting suppliers. Decision-making techniques will cover uncertainty if developed in a gray environment. Many techniques have been developed in a gray environment. But using a combination of DANP and MABAC techniques in a gray environment will be very useful because of the benefits of each. Therefore, using the combination of DANP and MABAC in a gray environment in order to select a green supplier in the wood and paper industry is a gap that is felt and in this paper we try to overcome it. The research findings show that the identified criteria will be very effective in selecting the green supplier and Gray DANP–MABAC can be used for managers' decisions in the wood and paper industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Journal of Semantic Computing has published a special issue on Semantic Computing, which includes five selected papers from the 17th IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing. Semantic Computing focuses on the derivation, description, integration, and use of semantics for various resources. The papers in the special issue cover topics such as intent detection, constructing probabilistic models from knowledge graphs, unsupervised estimation of subjective content descriptions, the influence of noisy labels on question answering systems, and automatic domain-adaptive sentiment analysis. Each paper presents innovative approaches and findings in their respective areas of research. [Extracted from the article]

The author shares his theory on market creation and evolution from his perspective as an academic and a practitioner who has been involved in financial innovation for five decades. Rather than being spontaneously created, markets appear to follow a clear set of steps (the "seven-stage" process) from inception to maturity. It is critical that the benefits from transacting are greater than the costs of establishing the market — otherwise the evolution does not occur. Historical examples of the process outlined by the author can be found in commodity, equity, fixed income and environmental markets. The author provides observations and lessons that his evolutionary framework shares with financial inventive activity in new and existing products in our rapidly evolving digital world. Recent digital innovations such as the blockchain have evolved in a framework that did not require a legislative or regulatory framework (or what the author calls a "permissionless" environment). A properly designed regulatory environment can be permissionless regarding inventive activity (withness the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the United States). A permissionless environment has historical precedent in other "analog" innovations such as wheat trading in the 19th century or financial futures in the mid-1970s. Following the seven-stage process, those innovations arose from structural changes or latent economic demands. Their standards and infrastructure were only much later understood and adopted by the regulators. Given that, the author suggests that since changes now occur at hyper speed, the implications for the future shape of derivatives markets are likely to be profound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite half a century's extensive scholarly research in the decision-making process of individuals around the adoption of new innovations, innovation practitioners are still not able to capitalise sufficiently on the existing knowledge base to successfully commercialise new products. Evidence of this stems from consumers' continued rejection of new offerings at alarming rates. This makes the marketing of innovation, with a focus on influencing consumers' decision-making process, one of the most challenging corporate challenges for new product managers. To address this gap, this paper sequentially applies a systematic literature review (SLR), followed by extensive descriptive and bibliometric analyses, to reveal and assess the current state of knowledge in this field. Furthermore, the analysis identifies six prominent future research paths that could fill identified gaps in knowledge. Using the results of the bibliometric section, practitioners can pinpoint specific research areas of interest, enabling them to access and utilise findings from past studies more effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the author discusses articles within the issue on topics including the role of energy security in poverty reduction in least-developed Asian economies, effect of COVID-19 pandemic on poverty in different Asian sub-regions, and impact of natural disasters on energy poverty.

With 3D products being widely applied, more attention has focused on studying stereo image super-resolution (SR). Current stereo image SR studies mainly aim to improve the performance by the additional information from a pair of low-resolution stereo images. However, it is challenging for stereo image SR to fully exploit self-similarity information from its own image and parallax information between stereo image pairs. In line with these challenges, this paper presents a Two-Branch Network (TBNet) to integrate self-similarity information and parallax information for SR. In the TBnet, a stereo parallax transfer module with an encoder–decoder structure was first proposed to sufficiently transfer multi-scale parallax information and preserve the stereo consistency between stereo images. This paper further presented a residual pyramid self-attention module to employ self-similarity information to take advantage of self-predictive power. Finally, extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of our model over the state-of-the-art performance in terms of objective and perceptual quality and the accuracy of disparity estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional requirement verification methods often fail to fully consider the modeling of time-dependent behaviors during system execution, which may lead to inconsistent system requirements, thereby compromise software reliability and correctness. To address this limitation, this paper proposes the Scenario-Specific Verification Method for System Requirements Consistency via Time Modeling. The Scenario-Specific Verification Method converts use case descriptions and problem graphs into Clock Constraint Specification Language (CCSL) constraints, transformed into clock graphs for verifying requirement consistency. The resulting constraints are solved with the Z3 solver to validate correctness, thereby enhancing system reliability. The novel time modeling approach provides techniques for verifying temporal dependencies in requirements. A case study demonstrates the efficiency and accuracy of the Scenario-Specific Verification Method in detecting inconsistencies. The main contributions include that a technique is demonstrated to formalize use case descriptions as CCSL constraints, improving on natural language and a method is presented utilizing CCSL time modeling and clock graphs to analyze requirements for consistency. Overall, an innovative solution for requirement verification using time modeling is offered by this paper, contributing to the enhancement of system development process reliability and correctness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amid the pandemic infection, people are bound to use contactless mobile payment (M-Payment) services. M-Payment is a payment method using an application in a mobile device, such as a mobile phone, and gadget. Owing to the convenience, reliability and contact-free feature of M-Payment, it has been diffusely adopted to reduce the direct and indirect contacts in transactions, allowing social distancing to be maintained and facilitating the stabilization of the social economy. Consequently, it has become one of the day's most important topics. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to provide a systematic literature review (SLR) on the applications of M-payment services in financial strategies, focusing on the pandemic crisis. 19 papers were collected and divided into three groups for further analysis. The results showed that M-Payments applications in financial strategies during the pandemic crisis could help reduce the spread of infection risks by hastening the transition to touchless habits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global financial crisis that followed Lehman Brothers' declaration of bankruptcy in September 2008 critically highlighted the significance of research on systemic risk and macro-prudential supervision. Accordingly, this paper mainly analyzed the relationship between financial crises and the article output in financial crisis research through the application of bibliometrics. The occurrence of a financial crisis leads to changes in the output of articles on crisis and risks. Hence, we focused on bibliographic coupling (e.g., co-authorship, co-occurrence), data classification by risk type in this study (e.g., market risk, credit risk) and citation analysis (e.g., top 1% cited paper). Meanwhile, the analysis indicated the most relevant disciplines in financial crisis research. For example, the number of top 1% cited articles and citations, MARKET RISK documents and citations published the most papers. In other words, the market risk is valued in the financial risk literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 25 years, Asia's economic rise has been extraordinary. Its share of global gross domestic product (GDP) has risen from 5.8% to 22.9%. The first phase of high economic growth — up to 1995 — saw Asia enter the global supply chain primarily with labor-intensive/low-cost manufacturing. Domestic consumption was a fairly low share of GDP; Asia was manufacturing mainly for consumption in the US and Europe. As such, it was primarily a rule-taker. In the second phase — from 1995 to 2020 — it gradually turned into an economic force joining the US and Europe in shaping the global economy, exercising significant influence upon the value chain, the cycles of the global economy, transport and logistics, the global capital markets and consumption patterns (consumer preferences and tastes). While not yet among the leading rule-makers, it had become difficult for policymakers (public and private) to make decisions without Asia's consent. To form an opinion of today's emerging third phase — post 2020 — the intriguing question is whether the Asian countries have adopted what may be termed Anglo-American economic thinking (basically, the primacy of the market). Or whether behind the curtain, the Asian economy works in its own way diverging from the American and British economic schools. Since demographics and sheer economic scale mean that Asia will dominate the global economy in the years to come, the nature of the Asian economy will be of crucial importance for the future global economy. The conclusion of this paper is that "Asia" in many respects differs — and fundamentally so — from market economy principles. How this prospect should be interpreted is also evolving, as circumstances change. Certainly, the repercussions of COVID-19 have not been the same in the US, Europe, East Asia and South Asia — and this may suggest that socio-political structures have a stronger impact on economic outcomes than economic theory teaches, thus calling into question the global validity of market economy principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to increasing environmental regulation and customers' demand for environmentally friendly products, organizations have been required to adopt sustainable manufacturing practices by implementing clean technology (Cleantec) to manufacture green products. By adopting environmental practices, organizations can also achieve qualitative and quantitative benefits that help them remain competitive in the market while meeting governmental environmental policies, such as lowering energy and the cost of materials. The significant number of articles addressing sustainability in manufacturing published in the past few years attests to the importance of the topic. However, not many studies have been developed to understand the decision-making process in sustainable manufacturing. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to conduct a systematic literature review on the application of multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) methods in sustainable manufacturing. A total of 158 papers, published between 2009 and 2018, met the criteria set in the research methodology. The 158 papers were then analyzed and classified into seven categories: (i) SM domain, (ii) activity within the organization, (iii) decision goals, (iv) decision-makers involved (group or individual), (v) uncertain data, (vi) SM aspects (social, environmental, and economic), and (vii) MADM methods. Among the results, we identified that AHP is the most applied MADM method and, regarding the activities of the organization, MADM methods have been the most frequently applied to strategy management and supply chain. We also identified a tendency to consider uncertain and imprecise data in the decision-making process. Another result is that all the three domains — economic, environmental and social — were considered in most of the papers, followed by the combination of the economic and environmental perspectives. In the conclusion, some recent trends and future research directions are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traffic speed is an essential indicator for measuring traffic conditions. Real-time and accurate traffic speed prediction is an essential part of building intelligent transportation systems (ITS). Currently, speed prediction methods are characterized by insufficient short-term prediction accuracy and stability, nonlinear, nonstationary, strong fluctuation and relatively small sample size. To better explore the traffic characteristics of the road networks, a hybrid prediction model based on wavelet transform (WT) of the autoregressive moving average model (ARIMA) and gate recurrent unit (GRU) was constructed. First, this model decomposes the original traffic speed data into low-frequency data, and high-frequency data by WT. Second, the ARIMA and GRU models are used to model data predictions in two frequency bands, respectively. Finally, the prediction result of the predicted value is fused. In addition, in this paper, traffic speed data of four sections in Guangzhou from 1 August to 31 September 2016 are taken as examples to test the validity, applicability, and practicability of the model. The results show that compared with ARIMA, LSTM, GRU, RNN, and other single models and hybrid models, the prediction method proposed in this paper has higher prediction accuracy and can provide a more scientific decision-making basis for urban traffic management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the commercialization of the 5G network, the number of research papers related to 6G IoT has increased rapidly due to researchers' growing interest in next-generation technologies, 6G networks, and IoT technology. Due to the rapidly growing number of research papers in this area, it is difficult to grasp the overall research directions and topics. Therefore, this study has suggested a method of efficiently identifying the topics of 6G-related papers using data mining and presents the topics discovered through this technique. As a result, we extracted nine topics from 623 papers on 6G IoT using the LDA model technique, and we described the studies related to each topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unreliable suppliers may pose a substantial threat to supply chains, especially when they hold private information of their reliability. We consider a dyadic supply chain where the information of supplier reliability (in the form of random production yield) is asymmetric. We propose a new mechanism-design model and derive the buyer's optimal procurement contract menu offered to suppliers with private information. We prove that the contract menu is as simple as offering two different inflated order amounts and setting the procuring price sufficiently low to let the suppliers earn zero reservation profits. These results are derived analytically under uniform distribution. We test them numerically under beta distribution and find them hold as well. However, the informational rent will become positive when the supplier's reservation profit is positive. Positive informational rent is also found when we consider another structure of the supplier's production cost. This paper provides some new insights into supply chain management under asymmetric information of uncertain supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including water-related ecosystem services, plastic pollution abatement willingness, and water user fees' impact on pollution reduction, among other related topics.

This article explores the properties of 2D defective Mo1.33C MXene, a material that shows promise in electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding. The researchers tested a defect-containing Mo1.33C MXene "paper" and found positive results compared to other MXene and graphene-based materials. The article provides information on the preparation of the MXene and the experimental methods used for characterization and testing. The research suggests that Mo-based defective MXene could have applications in EMI shielding. [Extracted from the article]

Crowdsourcing is an emerging approach in software development, where software is developed by unknown, heterogeneous people around the globe, via an open call by the employer. Crowdsourcing, when used with agile, faces challenges because of the different development methodologies. Agile development methodology has practices that involve face-to-face frequent interaction, whereas crowdsourcing is a distributed development with no or limited face-to-face interaction. Both concepts are actively being used in the software development industry due to their benefits. However, there is a need to explore the integration of both methodologies for an effective and efficient software development. In this regard, the first step is to identify the challenges of integrating crowdsourcing and agile. In this paper, we intend to identify the possible challenges that may be faced while executing agile along with crowdsourcing. For this, we have conducted a Systematic Literature Review. Five main categories of challenges are presented which are: team issues, coordination and communication issues, organizational issues, project-related issues and task-related issues. A list of possible challenges of Agile–Crowd Software Development (ACSD) is presented in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]