Zengwei Yuan, Mingjin Cheng, Eman Alaaeldin Abdelfattah
et al.
The escalating anthropogenic biomass production leads to an unprecedented rise in biowaste generation, exceeding the decomposition capacity of natural microbial communities. This disturbance of global nutrient cycling substantially threatens the habitability and thriving of Earth's life system. To address this challenge, the newly launched 5B Initiative (Biowaste, Bioconversion, Bioproduct, Biosafety, and Bioeconomy) provides a global collaborative framework that drives a paradigm shift from waste to wealth by four synergistic objectives: characterizing biowaste generation, advancing bioconversion technology, enhancing biosafety, and facilitating the bioeconomy. Integrating above objectives, the 5B initiative plan to propose a BioCyclos model framework, that traces and optimizes biomass bioconversion processes in bioresource-biowaste-bioproduct chain to promote bioeconomy and ensure biosafety. This integrated platform positions biowaste-to-bioproduct conversion alongside nature-based solutions and thereby promotes the transition toward a circular, decarbonized, and sustainable bioeconomy while restoring and maintaining balance in Earth's nutrient cycles.
Environmental sciences, Environmental effects of industries and plants
The emergence and evolution of “Green / Sustainable Chemistry” began decades earlier than the 1990s. Beginning in the 1920s and 1930s, atom efficient catalytic processes for producing simple organic compounds started to be discovered and commercialized. In the 1940s and 1950s, oil refining processes using new catalytic methods dramatically increased the carbon efficiency of and usable variety of downstream products produced by oil refining processes, and simultaneously and dramatically decreased the waste residues and the pollution they produced. After World War II, new catalytic processes for producing a wide variety of increasingly atom efficient and/or “environmentally acceptable” downstream petrochemical products proliferated. This article will briefly recount multiple examples of those pre-1990s evolutionary developments in the petrochemical industries which produced new and highly atom efficient or environmentally acceptable catalytic processes for producing multitudes of petrochemical products that both changed modern societies, and also lead toward the modern conceptions of “Green / Sustainable Chemistry”.
History (General) and history of Europe, Chemistry
ABSTRACT The mounting global waste crisis demands forward‐looking solutions rooted in circular economy principles and sustainable material flows, as well as resource efficiency. This review examines emerging technological approaches in recycling, upcycling, and downcycling, emphasizing their roles in enhancing environmental sustainability, economic viability, and social equity. Recycling is transforming through the integration of artificial intelligence–driven sorting, advanced material separation, and chemical recycling technologies, which enable the recovery of high‐purity materials from complex waste streams. Upcycling leverages design thinking, biotechnology, and creative engineering to generate higher‐value products from waste, reducing dependency on virgin materials and contributing to sustainable production systems. Downcycling, although resulting in lower value outputs, remains essential for diverting residual waste from landfills and supplying secondary materials for industries such as construction, textiles, and agriculture. This review critically evaluates how policy instruments, market‐based incentives, and community participation shape the success of waste valorization efforts across diverse socio‐economic contexts. Comparative insights from both industrialized nations and the Global South reveal that integrated, context‐specific waste management approaches can significantly improve material recovery rates while minimizing environmental footprints. Key findings highlight the importance of harmonizing technological innovation with participatory governance and life cycle thinking. The review concludes with recommendations for advancing systems‐based modeling, expanding life cycle assessment tools, and fostering interdisciplinary collaborations to optimize the performance, profitability, and sustainability of circular waste management systems in the face of climate change and growing urbanization.
End-to-end reinforcement learning (RL) for motion control trains policies directly from sensor inputs to motor commands, enabling unified controllers for different robots and tasks. However, most existing methods are either blind (proprioception-only) or rely on fusion backbones with unfavorable compute-memory trade-offs. Recurrent controllers struggle with long-horizon credit assignment, and Transformer-based fusion incurs quadratic cost in token length, limiting temporal and spatial context. We present a vision-driven cross-modal RL framework built on SSD-Mamba2, a selective state-space backbone that applies state-space duality (SSD) to enable both recurrent and convolutional scanning with hardware-aware streaming and near-linear scaling. Proprioceptive states and exteroceptive observations (e.g., depth tokens) are encoded into compact tokens and fused by stacked SSD-Mamba2 layers. The selective state-space updates retain long-range dependencies with markedly lower latency and memory use than quadratic self-attention, enabling longer look-ahead, higher token resolution, and stable training under limited compute. Policies are trained end-to-end under curricula that randomize terrain and appearance and progressively increase scene complexity. A compact, state-centric reward balances task progress, energy efficiency, and safety. Across diverse motion-control scenarios, our approach consistently surpasses strong state-of-the-art baselines in return, safety (collisions and falls), and sample efficiency, while converging faster at the same compute budget. These results suggest that SSD-Mamba2 provides a practical fusion backbone for resource-constrained robotic and autonomous systems in engineering informatics applications.
Alexandros Gazis, Ioannis Papadongonas, Athanasios Andriopoulos
et al.
This article provides a comprehensive overview of sensors commonly used in low-cost, low-power systems, focusing on key concepts such as Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, and smart sensor technologies. It outlines the evolving roles of sensors, emphasizing their characteristics, technological advancements, and the transition toward "smart sensors" with integrated processing capabilities. The article also explores the growing importance of mini-computing devices in educational environments. These devices provide cost-effective and energy-efficient solutions for system monitoring, prototype validation, and real-world application development. By interfacing with wireless sensor networks and IoT systems, mini-computers enable students and researchers to design, test, and deploy sensor-based systems with minimal resource requirements. Furthermore, this article examines the most widely used sensors, detailing their properties and modes of operation to help readers understand how sensor systems function. The aim of this study is to provide an overview of the most suitable sensors for various applications by explaining their uses and operations in simple terms. This clarity will assist researchers in selecting the appropriate sensors for educational and research purposes or understanding why specific sensors were chosen, along with their capabilities and possible limitations. Ultimately, this research seeks to equip future engineers with the knowledge and tools needed to integrate cutting-edge sensor networks, IoT, and Big Data technologies into scalable, real-world solutions.
Quantum computing has demonstrated the potential to solve computationally intensive problems more efficiently than classical methods. Many software engineering tasks, such as test case selection, static analysis, code clone detection, and defect prediction, involve complex optimization, search, or classification, making them candidates for quantum enhancement. In this paper, we introduce Quantum-Based Software Engineering (QBSE) as a new research direction for applying quantum computing to classical software engineering problems. We outline its scope, clarify its distinction from quantum software engineering (QSE), and identify key problem types that may benefit from quantum optimization, search, and learning techniques. We also summarize existing research efforts that remain fragmented. Finally, we outline a preliminary research agenda that may help guide the future development of QBSE, providing a structured and meaningful direction within software engineering.
The field of software engineering is embedded in both engineering and computer science, and may embody gender biases endemic to both. This paper surveys software engineering's origins and its long-running attention to engineering professionalism, profiling five leaders; it then examines the field's recent attention to gender issues and gender bias. It next quantitatively analyzes women's participation as research authors in the field's leading International Conference of Software Engineering (1976-2010), finding a dozen years with statistically significant gender exclusion. Policy dimensions of research on gender bias in computing are suggested.
Dust emissions can lead to a series of environmental hazards and are thus a global concern. However, due to the difficulties of dust source identification, there are still great uncertainties in the calculation of dust yield on a global scale. The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau presents some challenges for understanding the region's calculation of the global dust budget. To address these issues, the Hoh Xil Plateau, a typical dust source on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, was selected as the study area for analyzing dust emission processes and associated influencing factors via a robust model. The results showed that dust emissions on the Hoh Xil Plateau occurred mainly in spring and winter. The wide distribution of bare land and sandy land on the Hoh Xil Plateau is the main reason for the high dust emissions. Wind speed is the dominant factor influencing annual dust emission, while precipitation and temperature were negatively correlated with the dust emission. The recession of expansive lakes in the region resulted in an increase in sandy lake-shores, which induced a potential increase in dust emissions. In addition, the effects of human activities on dust emissions were evident. Positive and negative effects on dust emission changes coexisted on the Hoh Xil Plateau and depended on the development of the county-level economy and the implementation of ecological engineering measures. We believe that this study will clarify the dust yield of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and provide valuable information for understanding the driving factors that cause variations in aeolian processes on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.
Abstract The global population is increasing, with a predicted demand for 1250 million tonnes of animal-derived protein by 2050, which will be difficult to meet. Single-cell protein (SCP) offers a sustainable solution. This review covers SCP production mechanisms, microbial and substrate choices, and advancements in metabolic engineering and CRISPR-Cas. It emphasizes second-generation substrates and fermentation for a circular economy. Despite challenges like high nucleic acid content, SCP promises to solve the global nutrition problem.
Nutrition. Foods and food supply, Food processing and manufacture
Rashid K. Kurbanov, Arkady N. Dalevich, Alexey S. Dorokhov
et al.
Detection and mapping of Sosnowsky’s hogweed (HS) using remote sensing data have proven effective, yet challenges remain in identifying, localizing, and eliminating HS in urban districts and regions. Reliable data on HS growth areas are essential for monitoring, eradication, and control measures. Satellite data alone are insufficient for mapping the dynamics of HS distribution. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with high-resolution spatial data offer a promising solution for HS detection and mapping. This study aimed to develop a method for detecting and mapping HS growth areas using a proposed algorithm for thematic processing of multispectral aerial imagery data. Multispectral data were collected using a DJI Matrice 200 v2 UAV (Dajiang Innovation Technology Co., Shenzhen, China) and a MicaSense Altum multispectral camera (MicaSense Inc., Seattle, WA, USA). Between 2020 and 2022, 146 sites in the Moscow region of the Russian Federation, covering 304,631 hectares, were monitored. Digital maps of all sites were created, including 19 digital maps (orthophoto, 5 spectral maps, and 13 vegetation indices) for four experimental sites. The collected samples included 1080 points categorized into HS, grass cover, and trees. Student’s <i>t</i>-test showed significant differences in vegetation indices between HS, grass, and trees. A method was developed to determine and map HS-growing areas using the selected vegetation indices NDVI > 0.3, MCARI > 0.76, user index BS1 > 0.10, and spectral channel green > 0.14. This algorithm detected HS in an area of 146.664 hectares. This method can be used to monitor and map the dynamics of HS distribution in the central region of the Russian Federation and to plan the required volume of pesticides for its eradication.
Krzysztof Barbusiński, Paweł Kwaśnicki, Anna Gronba-Chyła
et al.
This work focused on the verification of the electrical parameters and the durability of side connectors installed in glass–glass photovoltaic modules. Ensuring the safe use of photovoltaic modules is achieved, among others, by using electrical connectors connecting the PV cell circuit inside the laminate with an external electric cable. In most of the cases for standard PV modules, the electrical connector in the form of a junction box is attached from the back side of the PV module. The junction box is glued to the module surface with silicone where the busbars were previously brought out of the laminate through specially prepared holes. An alternative method is to place connectors on the edge of the module, laminating part of it. In such a case, the specially prepared “wings” of the connector are tightly and permanently connected using laminating foil, between two glass panes protecting against an electrical breakdown. Additionally, this approach eliminates the process of preparing holes on the back side of the module, which is especially complicated and time-consuming in the case of glass–glass modules. Moreover, side connectors are desirable in BIPV applications because they allow for a more flexible design of installations on façades and walls of buildings. A series of samples were prepared in the form of PV G-G modules with side connectors, which were then subjected to testing the connectors for the influence of environmental conditions. All samples were characterized before and after the effect of environmental conditions according to PN-EN-61215-2 standards. Insulation resistance tests were performed in dry and wet conditions, ensuring full contact of the tested sample with water. For all modules, before being placed in the climatic chamber, the resistance values were far above the minimum value required by the standards, allowing the module to be safely used. For the dry tests, the resistance values were in the range of GΩ, while for the wet tests, the obtained values were in the range of MΩ. In further work, the modules were subjected to environmental influences in accordance with MQT-11, MQT-12, and MQT-13 and then subjected to electrical measurements again. A simulation of the impact of changing climatic conditions on the module test showed that the insulation resistance value is reduced by an order of magnitude for both the dry and wet tests. Additionally, one can observe visual changes where the lamination foil is in contact with the connector. The measurements carried out in this work show the potential of side connectors and their advantage over rear junction boxes, but also the technological challenges that need to be overcome.
Engineering a sustainable world requires to consider various systems that interact with each other. These systems include ecological systems, economical systems, social systems and tech-nical systems. They are loosely coupled, geographically distributed, evolve permanently and generate emergent behavior. As these are characteristics of systems of systems (SoS), we discuss the engi-neering of a sustainable world from a SoS engineering perspective. We studied SoS engineering in context of a research project, which aims at political recommendations and a research roadmap for engineering dynamic SoS. The project included an exhaustive literature review, interviews and work-shops with representatives from industry and academia from different application domains. Based on these results and observations, we will discuss how suitable the current state-of-the-art in SoS engi-neering is in order to engineer sustainability. Sustainability was a major driver for SoS engineering in all domains, but we argue that the current scope of SoS engineering is too limited in order to engineer sustainability. Further, we argue that mastering dynamics in this larger scope is essential to engineer sustainability and that this is accompanied by dynamic adaptation of technological SoS.
Generative AI is changing the way in which humans seek to find answers to questions in different fields including on the gig economy and labour markets, but there is limited information available about closely ChatGPT simulated output matches that obtainable from existing question and answer platforms. This paper uses ChatGPT as a research assistant to explore how far ChatGPT can replicate Quora question and answers, using data from the gig economy as an indicative case study. The results from content analysis suggest that Quora is likely to be asked questions from users looking to make money and answers are likely to include personal experiences and examples. ChatGPT simulated versions are less personal and more concept-based, including considerations on employment implications and labour rights. It appears therefore that generative AI simulates only part of what a human would want in their answers relating to the gig economy. The paper proposes that a similar comparative methodology would also be useful across other research fields to help in establishing the best real world uses of generative AI.
Prakash Saravanan, Antara Chatterjee, Gourav Dhar Bhowmick
The imperative to replace fossil fuels with renewable fuels, such as marine ecosystem-derived fuel and food, has spurred the development of a blue carbon economic model. Seaweed emerges as a pivotal element in this framework, demonstrating potential as a substantial carbon sink. Seaweed serves multiple purposes, encompassing climate change adaptation and mitigation and contributing to advancing a bioeconomy by reducing dependence on fossil fuels. Seaweed also holds promise as a source of human food, cattle feed, biofuels, renewable feedstocks, and other versatile applications. Numerous contemporary scientific publications, reputable organizations, and business resources offer illuminating insights and fresh perspectives on how seaweed can effectively contribute to the growing blue carbon economy, providing innovative tools for combating long-term climate change. This comprehensive review delves into the multifaceted potential of seaweed, concentrating on its contributions to carbon sequestration, its role as a blue carbon precursor, and the carbon-neutralization capabilities of both wild seaweeds and seaweed farming. Moreover, it explores the specific role of seaweed in the blue carbon economy, mainly as cattle feed in ruminant diets. In addition, seaweed cultivation has the potential to mitigate global climate change, promote economic development, and support sustainable livelihoods, offering a versatile solution to address pressing environmental and socioeconomic challenges. Received: 13 September 2023 | Revised: 5 November 2023 | Accepted: 2 December 2023 Conflicts of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work. Data Availability Statement Data available on request from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Author Contribution Statement Prakash Saravanan: Conceptualization, Methodology, Resources, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Visualization. Antara Chatterjee: Conceptualization, Methodology, Resources, Data curation, Writing - review & editing, Visualization. Gourav Dhar Bhowmick: Conceptualization, Data curation, Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition.
Background. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the world system of financial, economic and economic relations has been objectively evolving towards the formation of a post-industrial integral cyber-formation production method. This serves as a basis for talking about the onset of the era of the eponymous Integral Cyber Formation Society. The complexity of the tasks to be solved by the state and society in the course of the upcoming changes requires new approaches to organizing industry, including the use of cyber-social industrial ecosystems and mechanisms for sustainable ESGC development. The purpose of the study is to develop in the system paradigm the conceptual foundations of the mechanism of sustainable ESGC-development of the cluster-type cybersocial industrial ecosystem, as well as the justification of the need for multidimensional system modeling of this mechanism for the design of its relevant digital image. Materials and methods. The study was conducted in a system paradigm based on system theory and a system approach. To study the causes of historical evolutionary changes in economic and economic mechanisms, general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, and system-organizational analysis tools were used. During the analysis of the actual material and to present the results, the method of structural and logical modeling and visualization of the conceptual foundations of economic and economic systems was used. Results. The main results are: a model of the organizational mechanism of the cybersocial industrial cluster, which determines the conceptual essence of the multidimensional system modeling of the mechanism of sustainable ESGC-development of the cybersocial industrial ecosystem of the cluster type; the concept of a new, engineering approach to the design and modeling of cluster-type cybersocial industrial ecosystems based on the theoretical and methodological basis of the system paradigm. Conclusions. The proposed conceptual foundations of multidimensional system modeling of the mechanism of sustainable ESGC-development of a cluster-type cybersocial industrial ecosystem will contribute to the development of the digital industry economy and increase its efficiency.
Aleksandr Kulikov, Pavel Ilyushin, Konstantin Suslov
et al.
This paper analyzes the key defining features of modern electric power distribution networks of industrial enterprises. It is shown that the requirements set by industrial enterprises with respect to power quality parameters (PQPs) at the points of their connection to external distribution networks of utilities have been becoming increasingly strict in recent years. This is justified by the high sensitivity of critical electrical loads and distributed generation facilities to distortions of currents and voltages from a pure sine wave. Significant deviations of PQPs lead to significant damage at the consumer end due to the shutdown of electrical equipment by electrical and process protections as a result of overheating and increased wear and tear of individual elements of process lines. This necessitates the implementation of continuous monitoring systems at industrial enterprises, or sampling-based monitoring of PQPs at the boundary bus with an external distribution network. When arranging sampling-based monitoring of PQPs at certain time intervals, only those parameters that are critical for specific electrical loads should be calculated. We provide a rationale for the transition from the monitoring of a set of individual PQPs to a generalized PQP with the arrangement of simultaneous monitoring of several parameters. The joint use of the results of simulation and data from PQP monitoring systems for PQP analysis using the sampling-based procedure produces the desired effect. We present an example of a sequential decision-making process in the analysis of a generalized PQP based on Wald’s sequential analysis procedure. This technique makes it possible to adapt the PQP monitoring procedure to the features of a specific power distribution network of an industrial enterprise. We present the structural diagram of the device developed by the authors, which implements the sampling-based monitoring procedure of the generalized PQP. We put forward an approach for determining the average number of sampling data points required to make a decision about the power quality in the implementation of the sequential analysis procedure.
Engineering machinery, tools, and implements, Technological innovations. Automation
The Ministry of Economy has an interest and demand in exploring how to increase the set of [legally registered] small family farmers in Ukraine and to examine more in details measures that could reduce the scale of the shadow agricultural market in Ukraine. Building upon the above political economy background and demand, we will be undertaking the analysis along the two separate but not totally independents streams of analysis, i.e. sustainable small scale (family) farming development and exploring the scale and measures for reducing the shadow agricultural market in Ukraine
The diversity of religious products, potential customers, and overall turnover consistently attract capitalist production's attention. The provision of services and goods for the maintenance of spirituality and its sustainability constitutes the simplest, the most common, the most general, and the most natural relationship between religious systems and the economy. All sorts of sacredness attributable to the product have become a fundamental product entry for producers who are willing to get a market share in the economy of religion, along with all other product qualities that are diversifying and differentiating. It is difficult to classify marketed religious products because of their various beliefs, meanings, and uses. However, the classification of holy products is essential to understand the structure of the religious product market. This study classifies religious products with two approaches: various religious products depending on the supply and demand affiliation of the belief system and religious products based on their purposes and representations.
Hydrogen is a clean, renewable energy source, that when combined with oxygen, produces heat and electricity with only water vapor as a biproduct. Furthermore, it has the highest energy content by weight of all known fuels. As a result, various strategies have engineered methods to produce hydrogen efficiently and in quantities that are of interest to the economy. To approach the notion of producing hydrogen from a biological perspective, we take our attention to hydrogenases which are naturally produced in microbes. These organisms have the machinery to produce hydrogen, which when cleverly engineered, could be useful in cell factories resulting in large production of hydrogen. Not all hydrogenases are efficient at hydrogen production, and those that are, tend to be oxygen sensitive. Therefore, we provide a new perspective on introducing selenocysteine, a highly reactive proteinogenic amino acid, as a strategy towards engineering hydrogenases with enhanced hydrogen production, or increased oxygen tolerance.