Dual Pursuit Research Articles

Selective electrosorption of silver ions from wastewater by biomass-derived N, S co-doped hierarchical porous carbon

The recovery of precious silver (Ag) from wastewater, a dual pursuit of environmental sustainability and economic benefits, faces a formidable challenge in the selective extraction of Ag+ ions amidst a matrix of other metal ions. To address this, we developed a novel N, S co-doped hierarchical porous carbon (NSPC) derived from a renewable precursor of Camellia oleifera shell. As the electrode material for capacitive deionization (CDI), the NSPC exhibited a high electrosorption capacity of 480.5 mg g−1 for Ag+ ions under an operating voltage of 1.2 V. Owing to the strong reaction between Ag+ and S functional groups and the synergistic effect from a hierarchical porous structure and N doping, the formation of Ag2S and elemental Ag is facilitated, and the NSPC cathode could selectively remove nearly 100 % of Ag+ ions from saline water and a solution containing Ni2+, Co2+, Pb2+, Zn2+, and Fe3+ ions. Furthermore, the NSPC cathode showed a high anti-interference ability in the presence of anions (C10H14N2O82−, C4H4O62−, C5H7O5COO− and HCO3−) and excellent reusability until 9 cycles. The impressive results show that the biomass-derived NSPC has the potential for rapid and selective recovery of silver from wastewater and offers a solution for environmental remediation and metal resource recovery.

Commentary: Antibiotic Resistance, Sustainable Development 2030 and Poverty in Developing Countries

Sustainable Development - 2030 is poised for a transformative global landscape, marked by two pressing challenges: antibiotic resistance, an escalating public health crisis, and the pursuit of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to alleviate poverty and enhance living standards. This commentary explores the intricate relationship between antibiotic resistance, the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, and poverty in developing countries. Antibiotic resistance, primarily fuelled by overuse and misuse, threatens to intensify the burden of infectious diseases, particularly among vulnerable populations. Concurrently, sustainable development in these regions is beset with hurdles. Eradicating poverty, a central SDG-2030 goal hinges on addressing healthcare disparities and the impacts of antibiotic resistance. This in-depth analysis comprehensively examines the complex interplay of these factors, evaluating the challenges they pose to the SDGs-2030. It assesses the current state of sustainable development and its potential to uplift impoverished communities, highlighting the consequences of antibiotic resistance on healthcare access and the challenges related to achieving food security amid antibiotic residues. The paper explores strategies and obstacles in the dual pursuit of poverty elimination and antibiotic resistance mitigation, emphasizing the need for holistic, evidence-based solutions across social, economic, environmental, and health dimensions. These commentaries offer insights and recommendations to inspire proactive efforts towards a more equitable and sustainable future.

The Hunt for Extraterrestrial Life: Exploring the Frontiers of Astrobiology

Astrobiology, as an interdisciplinary field, is dedicated to the dual pursuit of searching for extraterrestrial life and unravelling the crucial environmental factors that gave rise to life. This article offers an inclusive overview of recent advancements in astrobiology, highlighting key developments and future directions in the discipline. Our journey begins with exploring the fundamental prerequisites for life's sustenance, with a particular emphasis on the indispensable role of water. From there, we venture into the realms of planetary environments, encompassing celestial bodies such as Mars, Europa, and Titan. Here, we unveil the latest findings regarding their potential habitability, expanding our understanding of the broader cosmic context. Moreover, we delve into life's awe-inspiring adaptability and resilience in the face of extreme conditions, drawing insights from recent discoveries that underscore life's remarkable tenacity. Finally, we engage in thoughtful discourse on the quest for extraterrestrial intelligence while acknowledging the inherent limitations in our pursuit of this profound endeavour.

Sing, Unburied, Sing: The Dual Lack and Pursuit of Love and Identity among Black People

Jesmyn Ward’s third novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, however, is Ward’s second work to have won the National Book Award for fiction. It was Sing that laid a solid foundation for Ward’s reception from the American literary circle as a powerful new voice. Sing focuses on a black family in the American south, which was nearly torn apart by poverty, drugs, and racial discrimination; Apart from the estranged kinship in the black family, represented by ghost Richie, the black group in the novel also shows a seemingly strong desire for identity. Based on Erich Fromm’s alienation theory and his theories of love, this paper gives an analysis of the alienation of the protagonist at the level of love and racial identity and focuses on the struggle of the black group to survive in the white mainstream society, which resulted in their dual lack and dual pursuit of love and identity. This paper aims to reveal Ward’s fierce criticism of racist ideology that has caused the double dilemma of survival and spirit of black people in the American South and demonstrate her deep understanding as well as support for the ideals and actions of African Americans in terms of their eagerness to integrate into the mainstream society.

Research on How Precision Poverty Alleviation can Reduce Supply Chain Risks

Based on the scenario of supply chain relationship, this paper selects companies that continuously disclose information on targeted poverty alleviation from 2016 to 2020, and establishes a two-way fixed effect model to explore the impact of targeted poverty alleviation on supply chain relationships. The study found that the scale of targeted poverty alleviation by enterprises will reduce the concentration of suppliers/customers, and at the same time reduce the level of commercial credit to improve the financing constraints of enterprises, and ultimately reduce the risk of enterprise supply chain. The government-led market-oriented poverty alleviation mechanism not only brings positive benefits to the society and the public, but also helps enterprises reduce risks in the dimension of supply chain relationships and achieve the dual pursuit of social responsibility and economic goals.

Shared network and supply chain features for synergetic control of carbon and air pollutant emissions

The synergetic control of carbon and air pollutant emissions will be an unflagging effort for China in its dual pursuit of air quality improvement and carbon neutrality. The shared features of sectoral emissions from network and supply chain perspectives, as well as the evolution of these features under policy intervention remain to be investigated. This study develops four ecological networks for CO2 and SO2 emissions targeting the period 2010–2015 with strengthened emission control implemented. By fusing input-output analysis, Ecological Network Analysis and Structural Path Analysis, the shared intersectoral linkages of emissions are examined, and the key supply chains are identified. The results indicate that most sectors have control over Transportation Equipment, Electronic Equipment, and Construction, and almost all sectors have dependence on Power and Heat. Exploitative relationships induced by emission flows along supply chains are predominant, accounting for over 60% for four emission flow networks. Eight shared supply chains are identified among the top 20 that generally induce larger than 50% emissions in both 2010 and 2015. The one with the largest emissions is “Total capital formation → Construction → Nonmetals”. During 2010–2015, the critical evolution of network features is the decrease in the economy's control over Construction, dependence on Fossil Energy Mining, and emissions contained in the paths associated with exports. The findings help to more pertinently strategize on prescient regulation of key supply chains for a more effective carbon-pollution synergetic control.

Being distinctively similar: The pursuit of optimally distinctive partners in the film industry

While homophily is considered one of the primary drivers of partnership decisions, studies also demonstrate that individuals may be simultaneously drawn to partners who present distinctive qualities. Here, a tension may emerge between the pursuit of homophilous partners for fluid collaboration and the pursuit of distinctive partners that would enable the achievement of creative interaction. Drawing on the literature on optimal distinctiveness, we predict that in such cases, the dual pursuit of a similar yet different partner is satisfied by valuing different qualities at different levels of comparison. Specifically, we predict that actors are more likely to select partners who present similar qualities to themselves but sufficiently distinctive among all other available potential candidates. Utilizing a dataset on the Korean film industry from 2000 to 2018, we show that the film directors select actors based on how similar the experiences of the actors are to themselves, but the effect increases when the actor is sufficiently differentiated from the industry peers. The selection seems to follow a two-stage process where the comparison between the selector and the potential partner is initiated first, and then the comparison of the potential partner against all other potential candidates. We contribute to the literature on partnerships by showing that individuals seek optimally distinctive partners through differentiated valuation at the different levels of comparison. Furthermore, we contribute to the market categories literature by extending the theoretical discussion towards the heterogeneity of the individual audience evaluation.

A classification framework for carbon tax revenue use

ABSTRACT Carbon pricing could assist in the dual pursuit of mitigating global climate change and contributing to government coffers. The way in which a government allocates carbon tax revenues is a key factor in the public’s acceptance of carbon pricing policy and ultimately in its enduring success. To that end, this article presents an innovative, simple classification framework of carbon tax revenue usage which has four modalities to cater for various policy design features. These are: a constrained approach as opposed to an unconstrained one; a revenue-neutral recycling approach as opposed to a revenue-raising one; an approach according to public preference; and a thematic approach. Thereafter, various attributes are examined to assist policymakers in selecting an appropriate modality. The classification framework will be useful for policymakers as a quick point of reference before embarking on more complex and in-depth policy deliberations. Key policy insights Carbon pricing is the most cost-effective regulatory approach for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and is recognized as a significant contributor to government revenue. Carbon tax revenue use can be classified into four overarching modalities to cater for various policy design attributes. There is no dominating revenue use option from an economic or political viewpoint, owing to trade-offs across various fiscal policy objectives. Carbon taxes are elements of broader tax reform and therefore revenue use options should be aligned with a jurisdiction’s broader fiscal policy charter.

Does health insurance coverage reduce informal payments? Evidence from the \u201cred envelopes\u201d in China

BackgroundRepresenting a major threat to both equity and efficiency of health systems, the corrupt practice of informal payments is widely found in developing and transition countries. As informal payments are more likely to occur in health systems characterized by a high out-of-pocket payment rate, it is argued that formalized prepaid health insurance programs may help to curb such practice.MethodsUsing panel data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey, this study examined the association between changes in health insurance coverage on patient’s behavior proxied with informal payments.ResultsThe statistical results reveal that health insurance status in fact increases the probability of patients making informal payments to physicians. However, this association varies among population groups and insurance programs, particularly between social health insurance and private health insurance status.ConclusionsIn a health system characterized by unequal allocation of medical resources, the dual pursuit of cost saving and quality of care may drive patients to make informal payments for personal gains. This study argues that health policy interventions aimed at curbing informal payments must be based on a thorough understanding of their complex socioeconomic causes and attack the perverse incentives in a coherent and bona fide manner.

Dual Pursuit for Subspace Learning

In general, low-rank representation (LRR) aims to find the lowest rank representation with respect to a dictionary. In fact, the dictionary is a key aspect of low-rank representation. However, a lot of low-rank representation methods usually use the data itself as a dictionary (i.e., a fixed dictionary), which may degrade their performances due to the lack of clustering ability of a fixed dictionary. To this end, we propose learning a locality-preserving dictionary instead of the fixed dictionary for low-rank representation, where the locality-preserving dictionary is constructed by using a graph regularization technique to capture the intrinsic geometric structure of the dictionary and, hence, the locality-preserving dictionary has an underlying clustering ability. In this way, the obtained low-rank representation via the locality-preserving dictionary has a better grouping-effect representation. Inversely, a better grouping-effect representation can help to learn a good dictionary. The locality-preserving dictionary and the grouping-effect representation interact with each other, where dual pursuit is called. The proposed method, namely, Dual Pursuit for Subspace Learning, provides us with a robust method for clustering and classification simultaneously, and compares favorably with the other state-of-the-art methods.

Scientific Landscape of Citizen Science Publications: Dynamics, Content and Presence in Social Media

Citizen science (CS) aims primarily to create a new scientific culture able to improve upon the triple interaction between science, society, and policy in the dual pursuit of more democratic research and decision-making informed by sound evidence. It is both an aim and an enabler of open science (OS), to which it contributes by involving citizens in research and encouraging participation in the generation of new knowledge. This study analyses scientific output on CS using bibliometric techniques and Web of Science (WoS) data. Co-occurrence maps are formulated to define subject clusters as background for an analysis of the impact of each on social media. Four clusters are identified: HEALTH, BIO, GEO and PUBLIC. The profiles for the four clusters are observed to be fairly similar, although BIO and HEALTH are mentioned more frequently in blogposts and tweets and BIO and PUBLIC in Facebook and newsfeeds. The findings also show that output in the area has grown since 2010, with a larger proportion of papers (66%) mentioned in social media than reported in other studies. The percentage of open access documents (30.7%) is likewise higher than the overall mean for all areas.

Bricolage in Social Entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurs face unique challenges in their dual pursuit of social and financial value creation to address pressing societal problems. While social entrepreneurs' behaviour and actions have been highlighted as an important source of creativity and innovation, this issue has largely been underresearched in the field of entrepreneurship. This paper explores the role of social entrepreneurs' bricolage behaviour in enabling their enterprises to scale their operations. The authors test their hypothesis on a unique database of 123 social enterprises using an online survey. They find a positive relationship between entrepreneurial bricolage and the scaling of social impact. The paper concludes with study implications, post hoc analyses and limitations and directions for future research.

Breaking the Deadlock through Law & Economics: How Can We Reconcile the Effectiveness of the French Law of Security Interests with French Insolvency Law?

The aim of this article is to demonstrate that: • security interests are an advantage for secured creditors and, rather than being disadvantageous to the borrower, they are disadvantageous to other, unsecured creditors of the business; • French law of security interests can facilitate companies' access to credit (and thereby be effective) provided that the security interests of secured creditors survive the commencement of insolvency proceedings (procedure collective - a type of insolvency proceeding under French law which places the operation of the business under judicial control, gathers all of the creditors together and prevents them from bringing individual claims against the defaulting entity) against the debtor and therefore are resistant to the claims of other creditors during insolvency proceedings; • respecting the rights of secured creditors means that : - secured creditors are not treated less favourably during a rescue procedure of a debtor (that is to say, either a safeguard procedure - procedure de sauvegarde - or receivership - redressement judiciaire -) than if they had been in a position to enforce their security, which means that a rescue procedure is only justified if it allows greater value to be preserved than a legal liquidation procedure (liquidation judiciaire) which would force the business to cease trading; and - the preferential rights of secured creditors in relation to other creditors is actually respected during a rescue procedure; that is to say that shareholders and unsecured creditors absorb the losses of the business which is the subject of the rescue procedure before secured creditors. This means that such secured creditors must not be affected by insolvency proceedings while the shareholders and unsecured creditors retain any right and/or interest in the company (provided that the value of the encumbered assets remains greater than the sum of the debt owed to the secured creditors); • therefore: - for the purposes of approving the reorganisation plan, secured creditors should not sit in the same creditor committees as unsecured creditors (contrary to the provisions of French insolvency law); and - the French legislature must ensure that the sum of the privileges are not so sizeable that they drain the rights of secured creditors of all substance. It is only on these conditions that the dual pursuit of the effectiveness of the law of security interests and the ex ante effectiveness of insolvency law becomes viable in such a way as to make it easier for businesses to access credit; and • provided that judicial institutions are sufficiently modernised, it is entirely possible and is in the best interests of society to reconcile the pursuit of ex post effectiveness in insolvency law – that is to say preserving the debtor’s pool of assets by preventing secured creditors from enforcing their security rights during the insolvency proceedings when such measure would lead to a diminution in value of the assets - with the pursuit of effectiveness in the law of security interests. The French version of this article was previously published in the Revue Trimestrielle de Droit Financier - Corporate Finance and Capital Markets Law Review, n°4-2013/n°1-2014 under the title “Sortir de l'impasse grâce a l'analyse economique du droit: Comment rendre a la fois le droit des suretes reelles et le droit des entreprises en difficulte efficaces?”.

Contextual Determinants of Ambidextrous Learning: Evidence From Industrial Firms in Four Industrialized Countries

Ambidextrous organizations exploit existing technologies to enable incremental innovation while exploring new opportunities to foster radical innovation. Whether this dual pursuit is effective in furthering performance goals, however, remains inconclusive in the literature. Departing from the ambidexterity literature, which acknowledges in general the performance implication of ambidextrous learning, this study advances our understanding by inquiring into its contextual effect, i.e., to examine its boundary conditions, using environmental dynamism and firm size as moderating factors. Based on a sample of 1740 firm-year observations in manufacturing industries across four industrialized nations (U.S., United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan) during the 1999–2003 period, the empirical evidence shows that environmental dynamism necessitates ambidextrous learning and enhances its consequent performance effect and that large firms also perform better by acting ambidextrously. The configurational model sheds further light on the combined weight of firm and industry effects, giving support to the notion that large firms with ambidextrous learning, in the presence of environmental dynamism, perform better than small ambidextrous firms. As prior studies mostly overlook the context-bound nature of ambidextrous learning, this study not only revisits the performance implication of ambidextrous learning on a global basis but also points out the theoretical sensitivity of organizational learning to different settings.

Preserving Cultural Heritage: Introduction

When Library Trends devoted its first issue to preservation (Tauber, 1956), the state-of-the-art term was conservation, and the articles dealt with binding, treatments, stack maintenance, and “discarding” (weeding). The focus was almost entirely on libraries, except for an article by Hummel and Barrow on treatment for library and archival material (Hummel & Barrow, 1956). The next Library Trends issue devoted to preservation was published twenty-five years later (Lundeen, 1981), and although conservation was still the preferred term, the range of topics was broader. To binding and treatment were added new areas: administration, education, paper chemistry, disaster preparedness and prevention, microforms, and the conservation and preservation of sound recording and photographic collections. The focus was still squarely on libraries, with little mention of archives. This 1981 issue does, however, show the first signs of an interest in international collaboration and some cross-fertilization of ideas in Buchanan’s article on disaster prevention (Buchanan, 1981). In the last twenty-five years, “preservation” scholarship has evolved to a dual pursuit: the idea that we need to preserve and the theoretical issues concerning preservation—what to save, how to save it, and how such decisions are made. Also, preservation is now equated with history and memory, thus cultural heritage preservation is currently a subject of considerable interest to a wide range of stakeholders. It is increasingly being perceived that the issues of the archives, library, art, and historic preservation fields have much in common, certainly more than was apparent in the past, and each field can learn from the others. Some of these issues emerge from the attempt to define from varying perspectives the concepts of cultural property ownership that were developed in colonial times; from the expropriation of cultural heritage for political and ideological aims; from changing understandings about intellectual property rights in an

Prospects for Agricultural Trade after the Uruguay Round: Discussion

in large part because of the United States' active participation. With agricultural trade reform high on the U.S. agenda, the dual pursuit of multilateral and regional reform has important implications for U.S. agriculture. Two useful papers by Josling and Tweeten examine various aspects of the multilateral and regional approaches to trade reform. In general, both papers have taken a pragmatic stance by recognizing that regional approaches can contribute to a more integrated trading system but that multilateral reform is needed to reinforce

International Trade in Commerce with Liberal Arts: One Instructor's Dual Pursuit

International Trade in Commerce with Liberal Arts: One Instructor's Dual Pursuit

Some relations between stimulus patterns and performance in a continuous dual-pursuit task.

Some relations between stimulus patterns and performance in a continuous dual-pursuit task.