Ripple Effect Research Articles

A Preliminary Discussion on Revitalizing Humanities Based General Education in the Era of Generative AI

This research aims to analyze the educational changes and issues occurring in the field of university general education, especially in the humanities curriculum, which are heavily influenced by generative AI technology, and to propose the direction and tasks that humanities based general education should pursue in the future. Chapter 2 examines cases of educational use of generative AI in current Korean universities. Chapter 3 considers the implications and ripple effects of generative AI technology from a humanities based general education perspective and analyzes what the new role of humanities based general education should be. Chapter 4 presents content and methods to substantiate humanities based general education in the era of generative AI through specific course examples. Throughout this study, the researchers have concluded that humanities based general education, which explores humanity, needs to be strengthened further in the AI era, albeit in a different way than before. In particular, it emphasizes the need for a diversified education in text criticism, analysis, and creative problem-solving centered on humanistic classics, enhancing the roles of logical, critical, and creative thinking education in an integrated manner. Additionally, the study examines some examples that are needed for an integrated humanities based general education needed in the AI era and explores the possibility of true integrated education that transcends the boundaries of humanities, science, technology, and the arts.

Exploratory Assessment of the European Union Contries’ Climatic Profile

The paper subscribes to the broad strand of literature that examines the inter- play between banking activity and climate risk, by particularly focusing on identifying and classifying European Union countries into similar, homogenous groups based on their intrin- sic pattern related to climate vulnerability and readiness to cope with the negative effects of natural disasters. By applying an unsupervised learning clustering algorithm on a novel input dataset comprising six proxy indicators for the physical risk associated with climate challenges, we reveal the climate profile of the EU countries. A direct implication of our findings consists of ascertaining which banking systems are more exposed to environmen- tal risks arising from physical sources in the home country they headquarter or in the host countries envisaged for the conduct of transnational financial activity. Results indicate that the least vulnerable EU countries to physical risks, being at the same time best performers in the process of climate risk adaptation, prevention, and management are Denmark, Lux- embourg, Germany, Sweden, and Finland. Hence, their banking systems are less exposed to the adverse consequences of the physical risks. In contrast, banks operating in Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland, and Romania are the most exposed to the ripple effects of these risks, due to countries’ increased vulnerability to climate risk and to the low degree of performance in implementing climate policies.

Balancing Costs and Care: Nonoperative Appendicitis Treatment Outcomes in Pakistan.

Dear Respected Editor, In Pakistan, approximately 110,000 cases of appendicitis are reported annually [1], highlighting the condition's prevalence and significance. Traditional management predominantly revolves around widely practiced surgical intervention, such as appendectomy. [2]. Immediate appendectomy has become the standard treatment due to the significant morbidity and mortality difference between perforated and non-perforated acute appendicitis. However, the country's healthcare landscape presents a complex challenge due to varying regional access to medical resources. This variation in healthcare infrastructure exacerbates the difficulty of effectively managing appendicitis and underscores the need for solutions that strike a balance between clinical outcomes and economic considerations. While appendectomy remains a standard surgical procedure, it comes with inherent disadvantages, chief among them being the cost burden it places on patients and healthcare systems [3]. For patients in a low- to middle-income nation like Pakistan, the financial strain associated with surgery—which includes preoperative evaluations, surgical costs, hospital stays, and postoperative care—can be challenging [4]. Furthermore, the ripple effects affect the whole healthcare system, diverting resources that may otherwise be used for other urgent medical needs. A study by Siddiqui et al. emphasizes the need for a comprehensive analysis of economic factors in appendicitis management, particularly in low- and middle-income countries like Pakistan. The challenges in countries such as Pakistan require the exploration of alternative approaches that can optimize clinical outcomes while effectively managing healthcare costs without compromising patient care. [2] The recent study by Lee et al. introduces a promising alternative to conventional appendicitis management [5]. The research focuses on nonoperative treatment approaches, such as antibiotic therapy and observation, which have gained traction for their potential benefits Further, the study shows that the majority of the patients who had nonoperative treatment did not encounter a recurrence of appendicitis and were able to avoid surgical intervention for a period of around 20 years. Furthermore, there is a lack of data indicating any long-term dangers associated with nonoperative care. One of the prominent advantages lies in the reduction of immediate healthcare expenses, which can alleviate the financial burden on both patients and healthcare systems. By presenting evidence on the effectiveness and safety of nonoperative approaches, this study opens avenues for a paradigm shift in appendicitis management in Pakistan. The potential to achieve comparable clinical outcomes while minimizing the economic burden is a compelling proposition that warrants further exploration and consideration within Pakistan's healthcare challenges.

Digitalization in Indonesia’s Agrifood Sector in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19 has disrupted Indonesia’s agricultural food supply chain, leading to the massive mintage and exertion of digitalization in the food and agriculture (agrifood) sector. This study systematically mapped the landscape of agrifood digital technology studies and startups in Indonesia and its relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. A systematic evidence evaluation was harnessed for this study to obtain data, which were translated into thematic and interactive maps. The study shows that COVID-19 has hampered some agrifood activities but has positively accelerated the development of digital technologies in the sector. The Government of Indonesia has issued national initiatives and policies that support implementing digital technologies in the agrifood sector. The digital technologies studied and utilized in Indonesia’s agrifood industry are websites, the Internet of Things (IoT), global positioning system (GPS) and geographic information system (GIS) technology, artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and robotics. About 22.8 percent of the reviewed literature discusses the ripple effects of COVID-19 on the digitalized agrifood sector in the country. Most startups are in the form of farmers’ advisory, mechanization platforms, digital marketplace, e-commerce, traceability, food delivery, and peer-to-peer lending. Both the studies and applications are primarily concentrated on Java island and have benefited from digital technologies, such as IoT, blockchain, AI, smartphone or Android, mobile apps, GPS/GIS, and drones. Startup companies have applied strategic measures to cope with the implications of the pandemic, such as suspending some of their activities.

The nexus between pressures and ecosystem services in floodplains: New methods to integrate stakeholders’ knowledge for water quality management in Serbia

Floodplains provide a wide range of interdependent ecosystem services (ES) that more or less correlate with water quality. Any change to one component of the ecosystem can have a ripple effect on parts of or on the whole system. We tested a methodology that integrates collaborative learning and creation processes with stakeholders aimed at (1) identifying causal relationships between water quality-related ecosystem services of floodplains themselves and between ES and the pressures they encounter by using fuzzy cognitive mapping, and (2) visualizing “what-if” scenarios of the potential impact of changing pressures on selected ES, as the authors’ contribution to extending the methodology. The approach is tested on the case study of the Koviljsko-petrovaradinski rit floodplain in Serbia. Ten ES and five pressures selected as most important by stakeholders were used to create the sophisticated fuzzy cognitive model and assess the influence of pressures’ increase or decrease on given ES. Using the model, ideal (all pressures minimized) and optimal (stakeholders defined realistic level of reduction of pressures) scenarios were analyzed and mapped for the ‘Habitat provisioning’ service. The impact of maximization of each particular pressure on ES is assessed as well. The results indicate that ‘Wastewater‘ has the greatest negative influence on all ES (particularly on ‘Plant biomass grassland’); it is followed by ‘Land take’ and ‘Drought events’. If wastewater pressure is reduced to the minimum, the results obtained are similar to the optimal scenario. The proposed approach facilitates a comprehensive assessment of the floodplain’s potential to provide ES under different pressures and enhances stakeholders’ integrated understanding of the complex floodplain ecosystem and its services. This, in turn, together with the visualization of the different scenarios, enables more effective decision-making and management strategies for floodplains.

An agent-based model for the assessment of the ripple effect of disaster economic losses considering firms’ adaptive behaviors

Assessing the spatial and temporal ripple effect of disaster economic loss is essential for integrated disaster risk management considering disaster countermeasures dynamically and systematically. Traditional loss estimation models based on general equilibrium theory hardly take the ripple process into account, as they just focus on the equilibrium status of economic system. However, the debate is that system will not reach equilibrium at one stroke and firms' adaptive behaviors will also change the disaster ripple losses. This paper proposes an agent-based model to investigate this phenomenon: the economic linkages among micro-agents are established based on regional input–output table and firms' production behaviors are defined according to nested production functions. The 2020 flood disaster in Hubei Province, China, is taken as an application case which demonstrated the feasibility of agent-based model for assessing the economic loss ripple effect considering firms' adaptive behaviors. Several interesting findings from the application are also drawn. (1) The speed of loss ripple is influenced by the distance to the disaster-stricken region, while the intensity of loss ripple depends on the strength of interregional industry linkages. (2) Round by round ripple effects could be found in non-disaster regions due to the lagged impacts caused by damage of production capacities in other non-disaster regions. (3) Firms' adaptive behavior reduced the ripple losses nearly by 60 % and saved CNY 5.72 billion in this case study. Notably, the gains from overproduction behavior in non-disaster regions are critical, with reducing the loss of CNY 5.8 for every CNY 1 of overproduction.

The TransIRIO model: Capturing the economic ripple effect of different economic behaviours in post-disaster emergency - Recovery - Reconstruction

Existing models for assessing the indirect economic impact of disasters typically focus on the economic impact of post-disaster reconstruction and ignore the repercussions of the periodic characteristics of disaster management; thus, these models rarely capture the full indirect economic impact of disasters. In response, this study develops the TransIRIO model, which captures the amplified impacts of emergency rescue, transportation interruption and reconstruction on demand during the emergency - recovery - reconstruction. The balancing of adaptive behaviours, such as creating an inventory buffer, price elasticity, import/export control strategies, and distribution optimization is explored, and the intelligent response behaviour of interregional industrial entities in post-disaster management is assessed. We apply the TransIRIO model to simulate the propagation of impacts across 31 provinces in mainland China following the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake. Our results found that previous assessment models that did not consider specific social activities during emergency rescue underestimated the indirect economic impact of disasters to some extent, and that underscored the importance of incorporating the spatially distributed and networked characteristics of transportation systems into supply-demand chain-based economic models. This study not only presents a novel approach to economic modelling but also provides valuable insights for policymakers and researchers engaged in post-disaster recovery planning.

A Mental Health Crisis: The Ripple Effects of COVID-19

There is little doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on people’s mental health all around the world. The impact has been felt by various groups, including health-care workers, patients, children, and marginalized communities. Coping strategies have been identified to mitigate the psychological effects of the crisis and promote resilience. These strategies include psychological first aid, telemental health, self-help resources, peer support, community mobilization, social protection, and mental health advocacy. There is still much work to be done in the field of global mental health about COVID-19. In addition to collaborative and interdisciplinary methods, attention to mental health fairness and human rights, and more integration of mental health into the COVID-19 response and rehabilitation, more robust and representative studies are required. Collaboration among policymakers, program implementers, donors, and researchers is crucial in addressing mental health issues and improving coping techniques during and after the COVID-19 epidemic. Priorities include tackling stigma and prejudice, expanding access to mental health services, and making that mental health is included into larger health and social policy. During and after the COVID-19 pandemic, it is imperative that we keep making mental health a top priority and investing in it. We can encourage well-being and resilience in people and communities all throughout the world.

The Talent Training Model of Forensic Medicine in Japan and Its Reference.

The quality of Japanese forensic experts has been widely recognized around the world, which cannot be separated from the "ripple effect" caused by the rapid rise of the modern forensic education in Japan. By continuously adopting foreign forensic education resources and teaching experience, it has finally formed a forensic professional talent training model with a clear hierarchy of basic education and professional training, as well as classroom teaching and case studies complementing each other; and it continuously improves the comprehensive quality of practitioners through domestic training and international exchange and cooperation, providing talented professionals for the development of the Japanese forensic industry. In this context, this article takes the development history of Japanese forensic medicine as the starting point to study how it gradually formed the embryonic form of forensic education in modern times. Based on this, it analyzes the characteristics of Japan's modern forensic medicine talent training model, summarizes excellent experiences for localized transformation, such as emphasizing the role of practical teaching, exerting the effectiveness of vocational skills training, and promoting international exchange and cooperation, to provide reference and inspiration for the training of relevant professional talents in China.

Green innovation and competitiveness: empirical evidence from Ecuadorian manufacturing

ObjetivoO objetivo desta pesquisa é explorar a inovação verde e seu papel na promoção da competitividade nas empresas manufatureiras equatorianas, com foco nas PMEs, que representam mais de 90% das unidades produtivas e da renda nacional. O sector manufatureiro no Equador regista um crescimento variável desde o início da pandemia da COVID, atraindo mais atenção tanto de profissionais, reguladores como académicos, devido à sua pegada distinta nas pessoas, nos lucros e no planeta, particularmente no contexto das economias em desenvolvimento.Desenho/metodologia/abordagemUm modelo com dois construtos de segunda ordem é desenvolvido e testado em uma amostra de 325 gestores de empresas industriais no Equador, utilizando métodos quantitativos e transversais.ResultadosApós a obtenção de métricas ajustadas e validadas, é apresentado um modelo de equações estruturais, onde é confirmada a hipótese principal, apoiando o impacto positivo da inovação verde na competitividade.Implicações práticas e sociaisA nossa investigação fornece evidências sobre como as empresas industriais que favorecem iniciativas ecologicamente inovadoras no seu planeamento a longo prazo, podem aumentar e sustentar a competitividade. Os decisores políticos poderiam então oferecer incentivos às empresas para incorporar práticas sustentáveis, com potenciais efeitos em cascata ao longo da cadeia de abastecimento, agregando competitividade aos níveis industrial e nacional.Originalidade/valorO nosso estudo visa colmatar a lacuna de conhecimento existente sobre a interação entre inovação verde e competitividade, alegando que a primeira influencia significativamente a última, num contexto de mercado emergente, com ganhos incrementais para todas as partes interessadas, conforme postulado pela teoria dos stakeholders.

The Ripple Effects of the Illegitimacy of War

Abstracts Recent data show systematic changes in the diplomacy and practice of war. Conquests, peace treaties, declarations of war, and state boundary changes have declined or disappeared. There are still wars, but they are increasingly fait accomplis, and their outcomes are often not recognized as legal. How can we explain this wide-ranging but seemingly contradictory transformation? Existing accounts, such as those based on a territorial integrity norm, do not adequately explain these changes. This paper uses norm dynamics theory to show that all of these changes can be explained as ‘ripple effects’ of war becoming illegitimate as a way to solve international disputes. The kinds of rhetorical justifications states can convincingly give for engaging in violence have changed. States are navigating this changed international social environment through legitimacy management behaviors. The paper specifies three types of ripple effect, Reframing, Displacement, and Consistency-Maintenance, corresponding to changes in what states say, the actions they perform, and how the audience reacts. We show how this theory unifies all of the existing data into a single explanatory framework. We also apply the theory to the decline of peace treaties to show how ripple effects play out in more detail.

Transfer learning for cross-modal demand prediction of bike-share and public transit

The urban transportation system is a combination of multiple transport modes, and the interdependencies across those modes exist. This means that the travel demand across different travel modes could be correlated as one mode may receive/create demand from/for another mode, not to mention natural correlations between different demand time series due to general demand flow patterns across the network. It is expected that cross-modal ripple effects will become more prevalent with Mobility as a Service. Therefore, by propagating demand data across modes, a better demand prediction could be obtained. To this end, this study explores various transfer learning strategies and machine learning models for cross-modal demand prediction. The trip data of bike-share, metro, and taxi are processed as the station-level passenger flows, and then the proposed prediction method is tested in the large-scale case studies of Nanjing and Chicago. The results suggest that prediction models with transfer learning perform better than unimodal prediction models. Fine-tuning without freezing strategy performs the best among all transfer learning strategies, and the split-brain strategy can handle the data missing problem. Furthermore, the 3-layer stacked Long Short-Term Memory model performs particularly well in cross-modal demand prediction. These results verify our deep transfer learning method’s forecasting improvement over existing benchmarks and demonstrate the good transferability for cross-modal demand prediction in multiple cities.

Surviving not living: Bird Box and mothering through trauma

Bird Box is described as a post-apocalyptic horror thriller, released in 2018, which depicts the plight of a mother raising two young children in the grip of collective trauma, and the ripple effects thereof. In this article, I draw upon key theoretical constructs from the field of trauma studies including attachment and psychoanalytic theories, in relation to the protagonist of Bird Box (Malorie) and her children, to illuminate the effects of relational, collective and transgenerational trauma on mothers and their children. In particular, I apply my reflections upon features of the film to mothering in the socio-political context of Northern Ireland, and the COVID-19 pandemic, to elucidate the complexities of mothering in these contexts. I suggest that Bird Box creates a visceral experience of mothering through trauma for viewers, which enables us to think through salient questions about the needs of mothers and children, beginning to live again in the aftermath of trauma.

'Ripple effects' of urban environmental characteristics on cognitive performances in Eurasian red squirrels.

Urban areas are expanding exponentially, leading more species of wildlife living in urban environments. Urban environmental characteristics, such as human disturbance, induce stress for many wildlife and have been shown to affect some cognitive traits, such as innovative problem-solving performance. However, because different cognitive traits have common cognitive processes, it is possible that urban environmental characteristics may directly and indirectly affect related cognitive traits (the ripple effect hypothesis). We tested the ripple effect hypothesis in urban Eurasian red squirrels residing in 11 urban areas that had different urban environmental characteristics (direct human disturbance, indirect human disturbance, areas of green coverage and squirrel population size). These squirrels were innovators who had previously repeatedly solved a food extraction task (the original task). Here, we examined whether and how urban environmental characteristics would directly and indirectly influence performance in two related cognitive traits, generalisation and (long-term) memory. The generalisation task required the innovators to apply the learned successful solutions when solving a similar but novel problem. The memory task required them to recall the learned solution of the original task after an extended period of time. Some of the selected urban environmental characteristics directly influenced the task performance, both at the population level (site) and at individual levels. Urban environmental characteristics, such as increased direct and indirect human disturbance, decreased the proportion of success in solving the generalisation task or the memory task at the population (site) level. Increased direct human disturbance and less green coverage increased the solving efficiency at individual levels. We also found an indirect effect in one of the urban environmental characteristics, indirect human disturbance, in the generalisation task, but not the memory task. Such an effect was only seen at the individual level but not at the population level; indirect human disturbance decreased the first original latency, which then decreased the generalisation latency across successes. Our results partially support the ripple effect hypothesis, suggesting that urban environmental characteristics are stressors for squirrels and have a greater impact on shaping cognitive performance than previously shown. Together, these results provide a better understanding of cognitive traits that support wildlife in adapting to urban environments.

A Study on the Perception and Awareness of Nutritional Requirements in Cab Drivers

Cabs are a vital part of urban transportation, facilitating mobility within cities, connecting people to their destinations, and contributing to the urban fabric. This study aims to explore the perception and awareness of nutritional requirements among cab drivers, a demographic often overlooked in discussions surrounding health and well-being. The study will involve data collection from 50 drivers operating in urban areas, with considerations for factors such as age, gender, years of experience, and working hours. Moreover, this research would highlight the broader societal implications of improving the nutritional health and overall wellbeing of the cab driver population, emphasizing the potential ripple effects on individual health outcomes, workplace productivity, and overall community health. In essence, this research serves as a call to action for policymakers, healthcare professionals, and community stakeholders to prioritize the nutritional needs and implement targeted interventions that empower them to make healthier choices.

Railway Infrastructure Cybersecurity: An Overview

The railway infrastructure constitutes a type of operational technology (OT)-based critical infrastructure, which is expected to work 24x7, 365 days a year, and where the life expectancy of operational equipment often exceeds 30 years. In this domain, an operational anomaly compromising the OT system can cause a train accident or interrupt traffic, with potentially significant impact in terms of business as well as for passenger safety. Due to their relevance, railways are strategic assets of national interest and, consequently, targets of interest for cybercriminals and cyberwarfare activities. For instance, service interruptions may trigger ripple effects resulting in product shortages and widespread supply chain disruptions, with severe impacts for both the economy and national security. In a bid to optimise and streamline operations. the railway industry has recently started taking a series of significant steps towards digitization, with infrastructures experiencing a significant paradigm shift which, for instance, makes it possible to have centralised interlockings and Radio Block Centre (RBC) for an entire country, with geographical redundancy, ensuring the utmost availability and punctuality by moving the control logic to the cloud. Nevertheless, these developments must always be carried on within the scope of established cybersecurity standards and frameworks. This paper presents an analysis of the state of the art on railway cybersecurity, focused on the existing solutions based on the application of the CENELEC “Technical specification 50701 - Railway Application – Cybersecurity”, which is currently the latest European specification addressing railways, being designed to help suppliers, integrators, and operators to implement a cybersecurity risk assessment plan, the necessary controls, and the management of the complete system life cycle. Special attention will be paid to the conduit between the rail signal interlocking system, that controls the line signalling, and the Automatic Train Supervision (ATS) that runs in the Operational Control Centre (OCC), as this has been identified by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) as one of the most critical systems identified by the operators of essential services.

Inter-city housing spillovers and monetary policy in China

While a great deal of effort over the past few decades has been devoted to the study of housing spillovers, much of the work has failed to grasp the critical role played by monetary policy. This study aims to investigate the full version of housing spillovers across monetary policy and local housing markets by introducing a hybrid structural vector autoregression (VAR) followed by a “two-sector” spillover account. Using monthly data for national M2 and city-level housing prices in China, we find that monetary policy has since 2019 played a key role in combating housing systemic risk by lowering inter-city ripple effects. At the same time, the pivotal position of Shenzhen in coordinating monetary policy with residential markets deserves explicit emphasis.

Mudra's Ripple Effect: Examining the Spillover Impact on Indian Economy

Mudra's Ripple Effect: Examining the Spillover Impact on Indian Economy

Trust in Transit: External Migration Control and Migrants’ Perceptions of Humanitarian Borderwork in the Sahel

The Sahel region has become a focal point for externalisation policies seeking to prevent the onward travel of migrants bound for North Africa and Europe. In this context, humanitarian actors are increasingly called upon to implement migration control policies or to address migrants’ vulnerabilities during journeys characterised by ‘extended temporariness’. This paper builds upon the concepts of the humanitarian border and institutional trust to develop a typology of organisations and to explore how migrants in transit perceive these forms of humanitarian borderwork. By employing the concept of trust as an analytical prism to examine social navigation, risk-assessments and the felt externalisation of migration control, we argue that transit migrants’ mistrust in humanitarian organisations is a ripple effect of the externalisation process. This leads to cumulative ripples, such as protection gaps for individuals travelling from West to North Africa. The article compares two key locations for West African transit migration in Niger and Mali, exhibiting similar characteristics but differing in the extent and visibility of external migration-related programming. Through qualitative content analysis of interviews conducted with 90 transit migrants between 2020 and 2021, we identify the perceived involvement of organisations in migration control and the phase in the migration trajectory as key factors influencing (mis)trust in organisations. We further trace the effects of (mis)trust on migrant strategies, including exit, risk-acceptance, and self-protection. The results highlight the far-reaching impacts of different externalisation environments on migrant safety and strategies, as well as on the ability of humanitarian organisations to provide protection in vulnerable migration situations.

Russian humanitarian policy: problems and solutions

The article examines some problems of Russia’s humanitarian policy and humanitarian cooperation. According to the author, domestic humanitarianism does not go beyond the boundaries established by the Helsinki Final Act. The formulation of tasks and directions of domestic humanitarian policy contained in strategic planning documents is reduced only to a description of the methods and conditions of communication, leaving the specifics of humanitarian activities and humanitarian instruments outside the scope of strategic planning documents, thereby complicating its institutionalization. The author believes that the goal of humanitarian cooperation may be the formation of a global structure of support for domestic foreign policy initiatives, representing a dense network of interactions that provides ripple effects, expanding Russia’s influence and forming new dependencies. But achieving such a goal is impossible without putting forward a clear alternative to the modern world order, which will reflect not only the interests of Russia, but also of countries that disagree with the Western-centric world order.