Future Insights Research Articles

Moth Search: Variants, Hybrids, and Applications

Moth search (MS) is a nature-inspired metaheuristic optimization algorithm based on the most representative characteristics of moths, Lévy flights and phototaxis. Phototaxis signifies a movement which organism towards or away from a source of light, which is the representative features for moths. The best moth individual is seen as the light source in Moth search. The moths that have a smaller distance from the best one will fly around the best individual by Lévy flights. For reasons of phototaxis, the moths, far from the fittest one, will fly towards the best one with a big step. These two features, Lévy flights and phototaxis, correspond to the processes of exploitation and exploration for metaheuristic optimization. The superiority of the moth search has been demonstrated in many benchmark problems and various application areas. A comprehensive survey of the moth search was conducted in this paper, which included the three sections: statistical research studies about moth search, different variants of moth search, and engineering optimization/applications. The future insights and development direction in the area of moth search are also discussed.

Sustainable financial services: reflection and future perspectives

Sustainability transformations in global financial services aimed at addressing sustainability-related risks have been long overdue and are critical for the future development of financial services. The call for sustainability transformations in financial services arose out of the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goal agenda. The financial services sector plays an important role in providing sustainable financial services to nudge sustainability practices among firms and consumers around the world. However, efforts for sustainability transformations among financial service providers are still slow, and little research has been documented in this area. So far, no bibliometric analysis has been conducted in this area as well. Therefore, this research undertakes a comprehensive snooping review of extant sustainable financial services research in order to establish a trend of existing financial services sustainability activities to enhance future research possibilities. Our comprehensive review of the Scopus database was guided by the PRISMA protocols, including PRISMA-P and SPAR-4-SLR. Bibliometric and content analysis approaches were also employed as analytical tools within an analytical framework. This study has also employed Microsoft Excel and the VOSviewer tool in conducting performance and science mapping analyses. After article filtering for “sustainability” was conducted, a total of 103 research documents published between 1991 and 2022 were identified as usable samples, which were critically reviewed and analyzed in this study by means of content analysis. Three major themes were investigated, including—sustainable financial products, sustainable financial services delivery, and sustainable financial services marketing strategies. Our findings show a recent growth in academic publications in the area, but also indicate relatively low financial sustainability activities around the world. This research therefore aims to provide present and future innovative insights on sustainable financial services aimed at stimulating more financial institutions, financial service managers, policy makers, and academic researchers to take more action toward greater sustainability development activities in the financial services sector.

Biogas generation from biomass as a cleaner alternative towards a circular bioeconomy: Artificial intelligence, challenges, and future insights

In recent years, the growing trend of energy consumption from fossil fuels in the world has faced mankind with two major crises of environmental pollution and the increasing acceleration in the depletion of energy resources, hence the movement towards the provision of clean and renewable energy is placed as one of the main programs and strategy in the world. Biogas is a flammable mixture that is produced by fermentation of organic materials in a certain temperature range and a certain pH in anaerobic conditions by microbes. Fermentation reactions in the biogas device include sets of chemical and biological activities of two groups of acid-producing and methanogenic bacteria in the fermentation chamber, whose growth, survival, and the amount of biogas produced depends on the conditions of the fermentation environment. The produced biogas has a calorific value of 4580 to 5495 kcal/m3 for the degree of purity of 50 % to 65 % methane. This review focuses on recent developments and achievements for biogas generation from biomass towards a circular bioeconomy. Besides, the utilization of artificial intelligence to model the processes leading to the generation of biogas from biomass are highlighted, and finally, the challenges and opportunities of biogas generation from biomass are examined in detail, and solutions are mentioned to motivate researchers in this field.

Intensive care unit of the future—insights in the Intensive care unit at the Samsung Medical Center in Seoul

Integration of live-acquired data and processing through personalized precision medicine is increasingly employed in clinical practice. The Samsung Medical Center in Seoul shows it is not only feasible but also a relevant tool for delivering fast and targeted medical attention to critically ill patients. For every patient admitted to the general ward, a modified early warning score (MEWS) is calculated. MEWS is widely used in other rapid response systems and is calculated using systolic blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, body temperature, and mental status. The value is displayed as a traffic light in the electronic medical record system. A score of 0–2 is displayed as green, 3–4 as yellow, 5–6 as orange, and a score of more than 7 as red. For patients with an orange or red light, the Samsung Medical Alarm Response Team (SMART) consisting of both physicians and nurses is activated. For patients with an orange light, nurses with long-term ICU experience perform a real-time screening. For patients with a red light, a text message alarm is sent to the entire SMART team. If an abnormal single medical alarm is observed (such as low blood pressure or extreme tachycardia), anybody can immediately call the SMART team for help. Whenever contacted by text message or phone, a member of the SMART team will visit the patient face-to-face within 10 min.

The burden of disease due to COVID-19 in Sweden: a disability-adjusted life years (DALY) study

Abstract Background Many countries have been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, including Sweden, which has been in the spotlight regarding its policies and their impact on mortality and morbidity. Therefore, it is of high interest to measure the disease burden of COVID-19 in terms of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). DALYs have two main components: the years of life lost through premature death (YLL) and the number of years lived with disability (YLD). This study aims to measure DALYs due to COVID-19 in Sweden. Methods This study used data from the nationwide multi-register observational study SCIFI-PEARL (Swedish COVID-19 Investigation for Future Insights - a Population Epidemiology Approach using Register Linkage) covering the entire Swedish population. The methodology used in the modelling and calculation of DALYs was based on the Global Burden of Disease guidelines, using Sweden-specific life tables for estimated life expectancies. Results In Sweden, 152877 DALYs were lost to COVID-19 between March 2020 and October 2021, corresponding to 1447/ 100 000, 99,3% of which was attributed to YLL. DALYs loss occurred mainly among elderly groups with 66,78 % of DALYs being attributed to individuals above 70 years old. 57,6% of the lost DALYs occurred among men that lost more DALYs compared to females in all age groups. Conclusions Similar to other countries, the burden of COVID-19 in Sweden is concentrated mainly among the elderly, which contributed to the highest DALY loss due to mortality. Yet, DALY loss remains lower for COVID-19 compared to other major non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular diseases and neoplasms. The contribution of YLD was minimal. However, YLD due to post-Covid is not well understood and long-term disability is likely still underestimated. Key messages • The burden of COVID-19 was mainly due to premature mortality in the older age groups. • More research is needed especially on post-COVID disability to derive better estimates of YLD.

Graphitic carbon nitride nanosheets as promising candidates for the detection of hazardous contaminants of environmental and biological concern in aqueous matrices.

Monitoring of pollutant and toxic substances is essential for cleaner environment and healthy life. Sensing of various environmental contaminants and biomolecules such as heavy metals, pharmaceutics, toxic gases, volatile organic compounds, food toxins, and pathogens is of high importance to guaranty the good health and sustainable environment to community. In recent years, graphitic carbon nitride (g-CN) has drawn a significantamount of interest as a sensor due to its large surface area and unique electrochemical properties, low bandgap energy, high thermal and chemical stability, facile synthesis, nontoxicity, and electron rich property. Furthermore, the binary and ternary nanocomposites of graphitic carbon nitride further enhance their performance as a sensor making it a cost effective, fast, and reliable gadget for the purpose, and opens a wide area of research. Numerous reviews addressing a variety of applications including photocatalytic energy conversion, photoelectrochemicaldetection, and hydrogen evolution of graphitic carbon nitride have been documented to date. But a lesser attention has been devoted to the mechanistic approaches towards sensing of variety of pollutants concerned with environmental and biological aspects. Herein, we present the sensing features of graphitic carbon nitride towards the detection of various analytes including toxic heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, phenolic compounds, nitroaromatic compounds, volatile organic molecules, toxic gases, and foodborne pathogens. This review will undoubtedly provide future insights for researchers working in the field of sensors, allowing them to investigate the intriguing graphitic carbon nitride material as a sensing platform that is comparable to several other nanomaterials documented in the literature. Therefore, we hope that this study could reveal some intriguing sensing properties of graphitic carbon nitride, which may help researchers better understand how it interacts with contaminants of environmental and biological concern. Graphitic carbon nitride Nanosheets as Promising Analytical Tool for Environmental and Biological Monitoring of Hazardous Substances.

An Empirical Study on the Public Views of Tourist Travel Risk and Crisis Management: A Case of South Sulawesi, Indonesia

The goal of this study is to see how the Covid-19 outbreak has affected travellers' perceptions of travel risk and management. Using a sample of 156 respondents, we study visitors' perceptions of travel risk and management, as well as the impact of the epidemic on society. The data was acquired using a representative sampling strategy on social media networks and analysed using the PLS-SEM tool. According to the data, the Covid-19 epidemic has had a significant impact on travel risk and management views. The perception of travel risk and management was linked to risk management, service delivery, transportation patterns, distribution channels, avoiding overcrowded places, and hygiene and safety. The findings also revealed that travel risk and management attitudes have a moderating influence. This study's findings contribute to tourism crises and provide future research insights in the travel and tourism sector, as well as responses to improve visitors' views of travel risk and management in the post-covid recovery period.

Load Balancing Approaches in Cloud and Fog Computing Environments

Cloud and fog computing are modern technologies that handle multiple dynamic user requests. Cloud provides demand-based services to users over the internet on pay-as-you-go basis. Fog handles real-time requests that are received from smart devices. Millions of requests arrive at the cloud-fog layer, often leading to overloaded virtual machines (VMs). Load balancing (LB) is an important issue for cloud-fog systems and has been proved to be an NP-hard problem. It is essential as it distributes the load equally among VMs to properly utilize resources and improve quality of service (QoS). Therefore, this paper presents a complete classification of LB algorithms and also a comprehensive study using heuristic, meta-heuristic, and hybrid approaches in cloud and fog computing environments. The main goal of this paper is to highlight the importance of LB to overcome the challenges of the systems. This study reviews papers of the last seven years and systematically discusses them using various tables and pie charts. Finally, the paper concludes with the research gaps and future insights.

Digital Transformation of Accounting Profession: Post Covid-19 era

The accounting profession faces significant challenges and noticeable changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The rising demand for digital talent and the need to ensure critical thinking skills are applied in making decisions have become the main challenges for accountants nowadays. A drastic change from the official site to working from home due to lockdown is an issue to be discussed. Therefore, based on case studies, this paper aims to discuss the effects of COVID-19 on the accounting profession. The selection of the case studies is based on the company awarded as Best Employer and Most Attractive Graduate Employers to Work in Malaysia in recent years. By focusing on the importance of digital and critical thinking, a framework is developed to show the transformation of the accounting profession over the last 50 years and future insights for the accounting talent in the current context. The findings show that the Accountant's traditional role of preparing a complete set of accounts is still vital and relevant. However, accountants need to equip themselves with digital and critical thinking skills to become future-fit accountants in the near future, especially in the post-COVID-19 era. Keywords: Digital Skills; Critical Thinking; Accounting Profession; Covid-19; Transformation eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2022. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under the responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians), and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v7iSI8.3925

Accounting for Corporate Human Rights: Literature Review and Future Insights

AbstractThis paper examines previous literature on accounting for corporate human rights (AHR) to identify the main research themes and development, conduct critical evaluations and open up new pathways towards future research. A structured literature review was conducted using 164 relevant published journal articles. Data were from the Scopus database over the last 22 years. The majority of research on AHR focuses on strategy/management and non‐discrimination themes, with little research in other areas such as child labour. Research in this field is at an early stage, with more focus on adoption and implementation issues. There is a need for more in‐depth and grounding analysis on the power networks among participants in broader institutional systems to provide more understanding of the underlying mechanisms. This paper discusses several suggestions such as alternative accounting and networking models to support the field, debates possible remedies to overcome drawbacks and presents options for future research. Several useful practical implications are provided for academics, corporate managers and regulators to bridge the gap between accounting and human rights practices and to enhance corporate social responsibility.

Energy Modeling and Model Predictive Control for HVAC in Buildings: A Review of Current Research Trends

Buildings use up to 40% of the global primary energy and 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions, which may significantly impact climate change. Heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems are among the most significant contributors to global primary energy consumption and carbon gas emissions. Furthermore, HVAC energy demand is expected to rise in the future. Therefore, advancements in HVAC systems’ performance and design would be critical for mitigating worldwide energy and environmental concerns. To make such advancements, energy modeling and model predictive control (MPC) play an imperative role in designing and operating HVAC systems effectively. Building energy simulations and analysis techniques effectively implement HVAC control schemes in the building system design and operation phases, and thus provide quantitative insights into the behaviors of the HVAC energy flow for architects and engineers. Extensive research and advanced HVAC modeling/control techniques have emerged to provide better solutions in response to the issues. This study reviews building energy modeling techniques and state-of-the-art updates of MPC in HVAC applications based on the most recent research articles (e.g., from MDPI’s and Elsevier’s databases). For the review process, the investigation of relevant keywords and context-based collected data is first carried out to overview their frequency and distribution comprehensively. Then, this review study narrows the topic selection and search scopes to focus on relevant research papers and extract relevant information and outcomes. Finally, a systematic review approach is adopted based on the collected review and research papers to overview the advancements in building system modeling and MPC technologies. This study reveals that advanced building energy modeling is crucial in implementing the MPC-based control and operation design to reduce building energy consumption and cost. This paper presents the details of major modeling techniques, including white-box, grey-box, and black-box modeling approaches. This paper also provides future insights into the advanced HVAC control and operation design for researchers in relevant research and practical fields.

Resistência é a melhor estratégia contra begomovírus? Uma revisão abrangente

ABSTRACT The worldwide spread of Geminiviruses and its vector has been attributed to the high rate of recombination, mutation, presence of alternate hosts, transport of plant material, global human activity along with global trade, new agricultural practices and climate change; therefore, the most severe viral diseases among crops have grown in almost all regions of the world, including cassava viral diseases in Africa, cotton leaf curl disease in Pakistan, and multiple diseases related to tomatoes, legumes and cucurbits in India and all over the world. Begomovirus is the major and largest genus of Geminiviridae which has shown a worldwide increase in its variations and distribution by affecting previously unaffected plants. The increasing population has augmented the demand for a sustainable agriculture boost, but begomoviruses have become a continual threat to the world’s agriculture. Numerous control strategies have been used for the viral invasion of the world as pathogens but begomoviruses continually overcome the control methods, and this has generated a need to end this competition between researchers and begomoviruses. The present review summarizes all strategies used against begomoviruses and provides a comprehensive comparison among all control methods, their drawbacks, and future insights.

Climate impact assessment to the groundwater levels based on long time-series analysis in a paddy field area (Piedmont region, NW Italy): preliminary results

The analysis of the time-series of groundwater level are extremely important to observe the behaviours of groundwater over time and to identify any critical situations. The studied area is an agricultural district characterised by paddy fields, located in the eastern part of Piedmont, on the border with Lombardy. In this area long time-series of groundwater level, starting from the 1960s, have been collected in 16 wells. Water table data have a good completeness (in the majority of the cases >90%). Firstly, the groundwater hydrodynamic behaviour, based on water table levels, was investigated to highlight the response of groundwater to the recharge. A basic statistical analysis was performed (mean, median, standard deviation, maximum, minima), and then trends of water table levels were evaluated in order to better observe the long-term behaviour of groundwater. These analyses allowed to observe a groundwater hydrodynamic behaviour characterised by a repeating annual pattern (minimum in February/March and maximum in August/September) in correspondence to the period of irrigation. Moreover, trend analysis highlighted the presence of both wells with a decreasing water table (with maximum lowering of 4.3 m in 60 years) and wells with an increasing water table (with maximum rises of 2.8 m in 35 years). Furthermore, in most cases, it can be observed that all three trends analysed agree on being positive or negative. Future insights will be the comparison of these long time-series with the meteorological data, and the investigation of other factors (e.g. anthropic withdrawal, variations of cultivation practices and irrigation, geology of the subsoil) to better understand the causes of the water table fluctuations and trends.

Corporate Social Responsibility Towards Purchase Intention Across Regional Identity: A Comparison Between South Asia and Southeast Asia During COVID-19

The study attempted to explain the role of regional identity on the relationship between perceived corporate social responsibility (PCSR) and purchase intention through customer satisfaction and brand loyalty in South and Southeast Asian regions during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. A quantitative research was conducted with a survey including a sample of 3,870 regular retail customers from six countries in South and Southeast Asia. The data were analysed to test the hypotheses using SmartPLS. It found a significant and positive chain relationship between PCSR, satisfaction, brand loyalty and purchase intention in all six countries. In a comparative analysis, regional identity significantly, strongly and positively moderated the relationship in India and Pakistan except Sri Lanka while regional identity significantly and positively but weakly moderated the relationship in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. The study is the first investigation to discover dynamic role of customers’ regional identity in making impactful CSR in a pandemic. It also made several theoretical and managerial implications with future research insights on retail consumer behaviour.

Current and Future Insights for Optimizing Antithrombotic Therapy to Reduce the Burden of Cardiovascular Ischemic Events in Patients with Acute Coronary Syndrome.

The pharmacological treatment strategies for acute coronary syndrome (ACS) in recent years are constantly evolving to develop more potent antithrombotic agents, as reflected by the introduction of more novel P2Y12 receptor inhibitors and anticoagulants to reduce the ischemic risk among ACS patients. Despite the substantial improvements in the current antithrombotic regimen, a noticeable number of ACS patients continue to experience ischemic events. Providing effective ischemic risk reduction while balancing bleeding risk remains a clinical challenge. This updated review discusses the currently approved and widely used antithrombotic agents and explores newer antithrombotic treatment strategies under development for the initial phase of ACS.

Future insights of pharmacological prevention for AKI post cardiopulmonary bypass surgery (based on PK/PD approach).

The incidence of acute kidney injury (AKI) post-cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) can cause an increase in the rate of renal replacement therapy (RRT) and mortality rate. Compared to brain and liver damage post-CPB, AKI has the highest incidence of 83%. Based on this phenomenon, various efforts have been made to reduce the incidence of AKI post-CPB, both pharmacologically and non-pharmacologically interventions. The purpose of this review is to emphasize several renal protector agents which under optimal conditions can provide significant benefits in reducing the incidence of AKI post-CPB. This article was obtained by conducting a study on several kinds of literature, including the original article, RCT study, systematic review and meta-analysis, and other review articles. There are five renal protector agents that are the focus of this article, those are fenoldopam which effectively works to prevent the incidence of AKI post-CPB, while furosemide has shown satisfactory results in patients with decreased renal function when administered in the Renal Guard (RG) system, mannitol, and nitric oxide, both of these can also effectively reduce the incidence of AKI post‐CPB by controlling its blood concentration and timing of administration, and another form of N-Acetylcysteine, namely N‐Acetylcysteine amide has better activity as a renoprotective agent than N‐Acetylcysteine itself. The benefits of these agents can be obtained by developing devices that can control drug levels in the blood and create optimal conditions for drugs during the use of a CPB machine.

What can we learn from the COVID-19 pandemic? Resilience for the future and neuropsychopedagogical insights.

What can we learn from the COVID-19 pandemic? Resilience for the future and neuropsychopedagogical insights.

A bibliometric review on maritime inspection analysis: Current and future insights

This study conducts a comprehensive bibliometric review of 123 papers, authored by 359 scholars, on maritime inspection analysis published in 77 scientific journals. The bibliographical data are analyzed in R software using the Bibliometrix tool. The most influential publications, journals, authors, and institutions are identified using citation analysis metrics. Three underlying research clusters are identified using the bibliographic coupling methodology: (i) analytic approach-based, (ii) research methodology-based, and (iii) research field-based clusters. Indeed, research collaboration networks are demonstrated at the institution, author, and country levels to address current tendencies in maritime inspection analysis. Besides the compliance solution studies, the future insights of inspection regimes along with green and smart shipping are extensively discussed. The study has great potential to encourage the forthcoming initiatives and research on inspection analytics and digitalization in maritime, offshore, logistics, and relevant fields.

Radiolabeling of functional oligonucleotides for molecular imaging.

Molecular imaging has greatly advanced basic biology and translational medicine through visualization and quantification of molecular events in a cellular context and living organisms. Nuclear medicine, including positron emission tomography (PET) and single-photon emission tomography (SPECT), is one of the most representative molecular imaging modalities which is widely used in clinical theranostics. Recently, numerous molecular imaging agents have been developed to improve the quality and expand the applicable diseases of molecular imaging. Based on the choice of specific imaging agents, molecular imaging is capable of studying tumor biological activities, detecting tumor metastasis, and imaging Alzheimer’s disease-related amyloid proteins. Among these imaging agents, functional oligonucleotides-based imaging probes are becoming increasingly important due to their unique features. Antisense oligonucleotides, small interfering RNA, and aptamers are privileged molecular tools in precision medicine for cancer diagnosis and treatment. These chemically synthesized oligonucleotides without batch-to-batch variations are flexible to incorporate with other molecules without affecting their functionalities. Therefore, through the combination of oligonucleotides with radioisotopes, a series of molecular imaging agents were developed in the past decades to achieve highly sensitive and accurate biomedical imaging modalities for clinical theranostic. Due to the nature of oligonucleotides, the strategies of oligonucleotide radiolabeling are different from conventional small molecular tracers, and the radiolabeling strategy with rational design is highly correlated to the imaging quality. In this review, we summarize recent advancements in functional oligonucleotide radiolabeling strategies and respective molecular imaging applications. Meanwhile, challenges and future development insights of functional oligonucleotide-based radiopharmaceuticals are discussed in the end.

The Synthesis and Assembly of a Truncated Cyanophage Genome and Its Expression in a Heterogenous Host.

Cyanophages play an important role in regulating the dynamics of cyanobacteria communities in the hydrosphere, representing a promising biological control strategy for cyanobacterial blooms. Nevertheless, most cyanophages are host-specific, making it difficult to control blooming cyanobacteria via single or multiple cyanophages. In order to address the issue, we explore the interaction between cyanophages and their heterologous hosts, with the aim of revealing the principles of designing and constructing an artificial cyanophage genome towards multiple cyanobacterial hosts. In the present study, we use synthetic biological approaches to assess the impact of introducing a fragment of cyanophage genome into a heterologous cyanobacterium under a variety of environmental conditions. Based on a natural cyanophage A-4L genome (41,750 bp), a truncated cyanophage genome Syn-A-4-8 is synthesized and assembled in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We found that a 351–15,930 bp area of the A-4L genome has a fragment that is lethal to Escherichia coli during the process of attempting to assemble the full-length A-4L genome. Syn-A-4-8 was successfully introduced into E. coli and then transferred into the model cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942 (Syn7942) via conjugation. Although no significant phenotypes of Syn7942 carrying Syn-A-4-8 (LS-02) could be observed under normal conditions, its growth exhibited a prolonged lag phase compared to that of the control strain under 290-millimolar NaCl stress. Finally, the mechanisms of altered salt tolerance in LS-02 were revealed through comparative transcriptomics, and ORF25 and ORF26 on Syn-A-4-8 turned out to be the key genes causing the phenotype. Our research represents an important attempt in designing artificial cyanophages towards multiple hosts, and offers new future insights into the control of cyanobacterial blooms.