This study provides new insight by introducing the role of fiscal decentralization and natural resources rent in affecting CO
2
emissions. For assessing this objective, this paper use panel data from ...seven highly fiscal decentralized Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries from 1990 to 2018. For empirical analysis, we use the Westerlund test and cross-sectional autoregressive distributive lag model. In order to ascertain the integration order of variables, the study utilizes the Pesaran second-generation unit-root test. The findings reveal that all the variables are stationary at first difference. The long-run results confirm that fiscal decentralization and natural resources rent improve the atmosphere by reducing CO
2
emissions. Moreover, gross domestic product and total natural resources rent increase, while improvement in institutional quality reduces CO
2
emissions. For policy implication, this study recommends that transferring the power to the local governments will further reduce CO
2
emissions and shift these countries to more environmentally friendly sources.
Solid lithium batteries (SLBs) have received much attention due to their potential to achieve secondary batteries with high energy density and high safety. The solid electrolyte (SE) is believed to ...be the essential material for SLBs. Among the recent SEs, composite electrolytes have good interfacial compatibility and customizability, which have been broadly investigated as promising contenders for commercial SLBs. The high Li+ transference number (t
Li+
${{_{{\rm Li}{^{+}}}$
) of composite electrolytes is critically important concerning the power/energy density and cycling life of SLBs, however, which is often overlooked. This Review presents a current opinion on the key factors in high t
Li+
${{_{{\rm Li}{^{+}}}$
composite electrolytes, including polymers, Li‐salts, inorganic fillers, and additives. Various strategies concerning providing a continuous pathway for Li‐ions and immobilizing anions via component interaction are discussed. This Review highlights the major obstacles hindering the development of high t
Li+
${{_{{\rm Li}{^{+}}}$
composite electrolytes and proposes future research directions for developing composite electrolytes with high t
Li+
${{_{{\rm Li}{^{+}}}$
.
Ion transfer: This Review summarizes the key factors in the Li ionic transference number of composite electrolytes for solid lithium batteries. Various strategies concerning providing a continuous pathway for Li ions and immobilizing anions via component interaction are discussed, and perspectives on the future development of composite solid electrolytes with high ionic transference numbers are proposed.
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•A mechanistically driven approach to chemical stability of Li7P3S11 solid electrolyte.•LZPSOI exhibited high ionic conductivity 3.01 mS cm−1 and improved air-stability.•The ...structure–property correlation is scrutinized by ex-situ approaches.•The high utilization of Li2S active material has been achieved.•The LZPSOI-based ASSLSBs unveiled higher initial capacity and coulombic efficiency.
The ideal solid-state electrolyte must have exceptional chemical and electrochemical stability, high ionic conductivity, lower interfacial resistance and high active material utilization. Inspired by discovering new lithium thiophosphate superionic conductors for all-solid-state Li/S batteries (ASSLSBs), we designed and explored the local structure of Li6.95Zr0.05P2.9S10.8O0.1I0.4 (LZPSOI) solid-state electrolyte, which owns a high ionic conductivity of 3.01 mS cm−1 with improved air-stability at RT. The structure–property correlation behavior of the chemical stability of LZPSOI electrolyte was sequentially premeditated by a combination of ex-situ XRD, MAS-NMR, XPS and SEM. A mechanistically driven approach has been extensively evaluated that the chemical stability of Li7P3S11 could be enhanced via oxide doping, in which S2- was partly replaced by O2– in conductive structural units to yield POS33- and P2OS64- which was confirmed by XPS and 31P MAS-NMR. The ASSLSBs assembled with LZPSOI electrolyte exhibited a remarkable initial discharge capacity of 932 mAh g−1 and a coulombic efficiency of 99.2% under 0.064 mA cm−2 at RT, compared to Li7P3S11 counterpart. The exceptional cyclic performance was benefitted from higher electronic and ionic conductivities with LiI additive and additional reaction sites, which collectively enhanced the utilization of Li2S active material. This exploration gives birth to a potential contender as a solid-state electrolyte with high ionic conductivity and chemical stability to apply for next-generation ASSLSBs.
Controlling weed infestation through chemicals (herbicides & pesticides) is essential for crop yield. However, excessive use of these chemicals has caused severe agronomic and environmental problems. ...According to accurate weed detection, an appropriate dose of herbicides is recommended in site-specific weed management (SSWM) applications, which may ultimately promote chemical saving while enhancing its effectiveness. In this context of SSWM, an accurate detection and recognition system needs to be established for recognizing weeds and crops to carry out precise agrochemical treatments in real-time applications. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other robots offer potential in precision agriculture (PA) applications by monitoring farmland on a per-plant basis, as they have the capability of acquiring high-resolution imagery providing detailed information for the distribution of crops and weeds in the field. In this regard, UAVs offer a cost-efficient solution for providing excellent survey capabilities. In this study, a deep learning system is developed for identifying weeds and crops in croplands. The developed system was implemented and evaluated using high-resolution UAV imagery captured over two different target fields: pea and strawberry; the developed system was able to identify weeds with an average accuracy of 95.3%, whereas the overall average accuracy (crops and weeds) was 94.73% for both the fields. The average kappa coefficient of the developed system was 0.89. The developed deep learning system outperformed the existing machine learning and deep learning-based approaches on comparison and can be embedded into a precision sprayer for adopting the SSWM strategy.
The changing climate scenarios harshen the biotic stresses including boosting up the population of insect/pest and disease, uplifting weed growth, declining soil beneficial microbes, threaten ...pollinator, and boosting up abiotic stresses including harsh drought/waterlogging, extremisms in temperature, salinity/alkalinity, abrupt rainfall pattern)) and ulitamtely affect the plant in multiple ways. This nexus review paper will cover four significant points viz (1) the possible impacts of climate change; as the world already facing the problem of food security, in such crucial period, climatic change severely affects all four dimensions of food security (from production to consumption) and will lead to malnutrition/malnourishment faced by low-income peoples. (2) How some major crops (wheat, cotton, rice, maize, and sugarcane) are affected by stress and their consequent loss. (3) How to develop a strategic work to limit crucial factors, like their significant role in climate-smart breeding, developing resilience to stresses, and idiotypic breeding. Additionally, there is an essence of improving food security, as much of our food is wasted before consumption for instance post-harvest losses. (4) Role of biotechnology and genetic engineering in adaptive introgression of the gene or developing plant transgenic against pests. As millions of dollars are invested in innovation and research to cope with future climate change stresses on a plant, hence community base adaptation of innovation is also considered an important factor in crop improvements. Because of such crucial predictions about the future impacts of climate change on agriculture, we must adopt measures to evolve crop.
This study aims to analyze the effects of natural resources, human capital, financial development, industrialization, technological progress, and international trade on the economic growth of the ...Next Eleven countries between 1990 and 2019. The novelty of this study lies in its approach to explore the indirect economic growth impacts of human capital development via the transmission channel of the natural resource utilization in these counties. The econometric methods involved are robust for accounting the cross-sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity concerns in the data. The results authenticate the resource curse hypothesis since higher natural resources rent are found to inhibit economic growth of the Next Eleven nations. In contrast, human capital development, financial development, industrialization, technological innovation and international trade participation are found to synthesize economic growth. Besides, another interesting finding in this study shows that human capital and natural resources jointly exert positive impacts on economic growth. Hence, it can be said that human capital development assists to mitigate the resource curse impacts in the case of the Next Eleven countries. Therefore, these findings necessitate the pertinence of boosting investments in human capital development, enhancing the strength of the financial sector, expediting industrialization, facilitating technological innovation, and amplifying international trade volumes for achieving higher economic growth in the Next Eleven countries. More importantly, human capital development should be prioritized for transforming the curse of the natural resources into blessing for these nations.
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•Resources curse hypothesis is tested for Next 11 countries.•Natural resources rent deteriorate economic growth.•Human capital directly and indirectly synthesize economic growth.•Human capital development can overcome resource curse.
Agricultural production is vital for the stability of the country's economy. Controlling weed infestation through agrochemicals is necessary for increasing crop productivity. However, its excessive ...use has severe repercussions on the environment (damaging the ecosystem) and the human operators exposed to it. The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has been proposed by several authors in the literature for performing the desired spraying and is considered safer and more precise than the conventional methods. Therefore, the study's objective was to develop an accurate real-time recognition system of spraying areas for UAVs, which is of utmost importance for UAV-based sprayers. A two-step target recognition system was developed by using deep learning for the images collected from a UAV. Agriculture cropland of coriander was considered for building a classifier for recognizing spraying areas. The developed deep learning system achieved an average F1 score of 0.955, while the classifier recognition average computation time was 3.68 ms. The developed deep learning system can be deployed in real-time to UAV-based sprayers for accurate spraying.
Extrapulmonary tuberculosis (TB) can rarely be transmitted to others. The disease mostly affects adults and immunocompromised individuals. A 26-year-old male presented with weight loss and occasional ...chest pain with a deep breath, but he was otherwise normal. The patient had a history of severe dry coughs, night sweats, fever, confusion, and dizziness for >3 weeks. The patient was initially misdiagnosed with an allergic cough and was treated with anti-allergic medications. Due to small and sticky effusion, the thoracentesis procedure failed, and the patient was referred to a thoracic surgeon for an open decortication. Pleural biopsy (PB) was negative for acid-fast bacilli, but the report showed necrotizing granulomatous inflammation. The patient was started on anti-TB treatment according to the WHO guidelines. The patient gained about 6% of the body weight at the end of the intensive phase and about 15% of the body weight at the end of the continuation phase. His chest pain subsided. Chest radiography showed improvement. The patient recovered, and no relapse occurred. This study recommends that a patient with dry coughs, night sweat, and fever for >3 weeks should be followed up with a chest X-ray for at least the next 3 months.
Excessive use of agrochemicals for weed controlling infestation has serious agronomic and environmental repercussions associated. An appropriate amount of pesticide/ chemicals is essential for ...achieving the desired smart farming and precision agriculture (PA). In this regard, targeted weed control will be a critical component significantly helping in achieving the goal. A prerequisite for such control is a robust classification system that could accurately identify weed crops in a field. In this regard, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can acquire high-resolution images providing detailed information for the distribution of weeds and offers a cost-efficient solution. Most of the established classification systems deploying UAV imagery are supervised, relying on image labels. However, this is a time-consuming and tedious task. In this study, the development of an optimized semi-supervised learning approach is proposed, offering a semi-supervised generative adversarial network for crops and weeds classification at early growth stage. The proposed algorithm consists of a generator that provides extra training data for the discriminator, which distinguishes weeds and crops using a small number of image labels. The proposed system was evaluated extensively on the Red Green Blue (RGB) images obtained by a quadcopter in two different croplands (pea and strawberry). The method achieved an average accuracy of 90% when 80% of training data was unlabeled. The proposed system was compared with several standards supervised learning classifiers and the results demonstrated that this technique could be applied for challenging tasks of crops and weeds classification, mainly when the labeled samples are small at less training time.
Cancers such as lung, breast, colon, and prostate have been linked to dysregulation of SRPKs. In preclinical studies, inhibition of SRPKs has been shown to reduce the growth and survival of cancer ...cells, suggesting that SRPKs may be potential therapeutic targets. Research is ongoing to develop small molecule inhibitors of SRPKs, identify specific SRPKs that are important in different cancer types, and explore the use of RNA interference (RNAi) to target SRPKs. In addition, researchers are examining the potential of using SRPK inhibitors in combination with other cancer therapies, such as chemotherapy or immunotherapy, to improve treatment outcomes. However, more research is needed to fully understand the role of SRPKs in cancer and determine the most effective ways to target them. In the present review, we shed light on the role of SRPKs in most common cancers, its role in cancer resistance, and targeting it for cancer treatment.
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