Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): The nexus of fintech and water productivity in 11 BRICS countries.

In the context of a global water crisis, enhancing water productivity is becoming increasingly crucial. While previous research has predominantly addressed technical and policy aspects of water management, the role of fintech in improving water productivity has not been sufficiently explored. This research investigates the impact of fintech on water productivity, considering the moderating effect of education level.

Pattern and associated factors of COVID-19 knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) among COVID-19-comorbid patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: The COVID-19 comorbid population is at higher risk of developing severe health issues like acute respiratory distress syndrome, coagulation syndrome, metabolic acidosis, and septic shock, potentially leading to patient death. Patients' knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) significantly influence their response to the pandemic and aid in enhancing health policy implementation.

Objective: To identify and evaluate the pattern and associated factors to COVID-19 knowledge, attitude, and practice among individuals with comorbidities.

Inhibitory effect of polyphenols from sumac, pomegranate and Indian almond on urease producing bacteria and jack bean urease activity.

Urinary tract infection caused by Klebsiella, Proteus and Streptococcus is a urease dependent process, hence treatment of these infections by antibacterial compounds lies in inhibition of their virulence factors. The crude methanolic extracts derived from sumac fruit, pomegranate peel and Indian almond leaves were separated into anthocyanin and non-anthocyanin fractions using solid phase cartridges. The inhibitory effect of these fractions was determined on the growth of urease producing species and jack bean urease activity.

In-vitro evaluation of virulence markers and antifungal resistance of clinical Candida albicans strains isolated from Karachi, Pakistan.

Candidiasis is a significant fungal infection with high mortality and morbidity rates worldwide. Candida albicans is the most dominant species responsible for causing different manifestations of candidiasis. Certain virulence traits as well as its resistance to antifungal drugs contribute to the pathogenesis of this yeast.

Do economic development and tourism heterogeneously influence ecological sustainability? Implications for sustainable development.

While economic development-driven anthropogenic emissions pose challenges to ecological sustainability, the international travel and tourism sector has appeared as a hot contestant to bring sustainability to the ecological systems across varying development levels. This work investigates the diversified effects of the international travel and tourism sector and economic development on ecological deterioration, in the presence of urban agglomeration and energy use efficiency, across the development levels of China's 30 provincial units from 2002 to 2019. It contributes in two ways.

Is environmental sustainability transmissible? Transportation-based environmental taxation spillovers for sustainable development.

Environmental sustainability investigation has been a hotly debated topic of the modern literature; however, past studies have primarily overlooked its transmissibility or spillover outreach across economies. Herein, we investigate the novel aspect of whether transportation-based environmental taxation spatially induces spillover impacts across Italy, Germany, and France over the 1994-2020 period by employing a simultaneous spatial equation with multi-country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium modeling (DSGEM) framework. Transportation-based environmental taxation of the domestic economy negatively impacts its own investment and consumption, while it impacts the economy of neighboring economies positively.

Technology innovations impact on carbon emission in Chinese cities: exploring the mediating role of economic growth and industrial structure transformation.

China seems ambitious to achieve a "carbon emissions peak" before 2030 and "carbon neutrality" before 2060. To deal with this emissions mitigation plan, technology innovations are regarded as a crucial factor. However, considering its rebound effect (CO emissions driving effect) through economic growth, technology innovations might not prove a promising contributor to CO reduction.

Towards sustainable environment: why green energy technology diffusion is sluggish in South Africa?

Energy security, job development, and minimal environmental damage are just a few of the reasons why green energy technologies have gained popularity. Still, developing these technologies in underdeveloped countries is sluggish due to several bottlenecks. To find and prioritize the bottlenecks to development of green energy technologies (GETs), this study has used the case of South Africa.

Intention-Based Critical Factors Affecting Willingness to Adopt Novel Coronavirus Prevention in Pakistan: Implications for Future Pandemics.

Since human beings have a long tradition of coexistence with pandemics, which may profoundly impact them, adopting preventive measures is crucial for humankind's survival. This study explores the intention-based critical factors affecting the willingness of individuals to adopt pandemic prevention. To this end, a representative sample of 931 Pakistanis filled in an online questionnaire.

Factors influencing renewable energy generation development: a way to environmental sustainability.

Since renewable energy has the paramount importance of achieving environmental sustainability, developing countries like Pakistan have been facing numerous renewable energy generation (REG) development challenges. Thus, the REG development in any country can be attributed to its crucial drivers as well as crucial barriers. This work aims to identify crucial influence factors of REG development by conducting multi-facet content analysis as well as partial least square-based structural equation modeling analysis on data collected through a questionnaire survey.

Do inward foreign direct investment and economic development improve local environmental quality: aggregation bias puzzle.

Since preceding several decades, the carbon emissions based standard Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) has been tested and supported by a plethora of studies in countries around the globe. The current study estimated the inward foreign direct investment (IFDI)-augmented EKCs for China's 27 provincial divisions employing the advanced econometric methodologies involving cross-sectional dependence, slope heterogeneity, and second generation-based estimation procedures. The study has further contributed through a modification to "Stochastic Influence by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology" (STIRPAT) in terms of including IFDI to the standard model.

Heterogeneous links among urban concentration, non-renewable energy use intensity, economic development, and environmental emissions across regional development levels.

This study examined the long-run and short-run heterogeneous links among urban concentration, non-renewable energy use intensity, economic development, and environmental emissions index across the regional development levels of 31 Chinese provinces. By employing the augmented mean group method and Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality, the following results are drawn: Firstly, a bidirectional positive linkage was existent between the economic development and urban concentration in both the long-run and short-run across regional development levels. Secondly, a unidirectional positive linkage emerged from non-renewable energy use intensity to environmental emissions index, with the most influential effect in EER China (highest development level).

Stylized heterogeneous dynamic links among healthcare expenditures, land urbanization, and CO emissions across economic development levels.

This research examines the heterogeneous dynamic links among healthcare expenditures, land urbanization, and CO emissions across the development levels of China. To this end, data of 27 Chinese provinces are considered from 1999 to 2018. Theoretically, this research developed a healthcare expenditures-augmented Stochastic Impacts of Regression by Population, Affluence, and Technology (STIRPAT) model to incorporate healthcare expenditures as a determinant of affluence.

Dynamic interactive links among sustainable energy investment, air pollution, and sustainable development in regional China.

This research investigates the dynamic interactive associations among sustainable investment in the energy sector, air pollution, and sustainable development. To this end, it employs a "one-step" system-generalized method of moments (GMM) and "one-step" differential-GMM estimators, covering the period between 1996 and 2017. In this context, it utilizes the simultaneous equations of the dynamic panel data model for panel data of 27 Chinese provinces and municipalities.

Surface Remeshing: A Systematic Literature Review of Methods and Research Directions.

Triangle meshes are used in many important shape-related applications including geometric modeling, animation production, system simulation, and visualization. However, these meshes are typically generated in raw form with several defects and poor-quality elements, obstructing them from practical application. Over the past decades, different surface remeshing techniques have been presented to improve these poor-quality meshes prior to the downstream utilization.

Perception-based influence factors of intention to adopt COVID-19 epidemic prevention in China.

Background: The researches investigating the influence factors of epidemic prevention are not only scarce, but also provide a gap in the domain of perception-based influence factors of intention to adopt COVID-19 epidemic prevention.

Objective: This work has attempted to examine the perception-based influence factors of individuals' intention to adopt COVID-19 epidemic prevention in a modified behavioral framework.

Theoretical Framework: A behavioral framework composed of the theory of reasoned action and the theory of planned behavior is developed to incorporate some additional perception-based influence factors.

Empirics on heterogeneous links among urbanization, the intensity of electric power consumption, water-based emissions, and economic progress in regional China.

This study investigates the heterogeneous causal linkages between urbanization, the intensity of electric power consumption, water-based pollutant emissions, and GRP in regional China by developing an urbanization-augmented "Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology" (STIRPAT) model. A whole country panel of 29 provinces as well as region sub-panels of China, for the period 1999 to 2018, are estimated employing common correlated effects mean group approach (CCEMGA), which offers robustness against heterogeneous characteristics and cross-sectionally dependent series. From the theoretic modeling aspect, the intensity of electric power consumption and urbanization have been introduced as the determinants of water-based pollutant emissions in the STIRPAT modeling framework.

Revealing heterogeneous causal links among financial development, construction industry, energy use, and environmental quality across development levels.

This work investigates the dynamic heterogeneous causal links among financial development, construction industry, energy use, and environmental quality across the development levels, for 30 Chinese provinces during the period 2001-2016. For this purpose, a model of environmental quality has been constructed introducing the financial development and construction industry as endogenous factors. A Pedroni's cointegration is employed and found the long-run cointegrating mechanism among the variables of interest.

Modeling heterogeneous dynamic interactions among energy investment, SO emissions and economic performance in regional China.

Massive investments in energy industry may either promote or mitigate the air pollution which is likely to influence the economic performance. In light of this, the current work is an empirical examination of heterogeneous dynamic causal interactions among energy investment, sulphur dioxide (SO) emissions and economic growth in regional China. A modified STIRPAT model is developed to introduce energy investment as a determinant of technology.

Dynamic causality among urban agglomeration, electricity consumption, construction industry, and economic performance: generalized method of moments approach.

This paper is a maiden empirical attempt to analyze the dynamic causal linkages among urban agglomeration, electricity consumption, construction industry, and economic performance, making use of simultaneous structural equations. A national panel of 30 provinces and three sub-national panels of China, for time span 2000 to 2016, have been estimated employing system and difference generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator. A construction industry-augmented model of economic growth has been proposed, incorporating construction industry and urban agglomeration as exogenous shocks to the aggregate production and electricity consumption as the input of production function.

Non-albicans Candida species: Emergence of neglected pathogens among population of Karachi.

Candida albicans was considered as the principal cause of opportunistic candidiasis but nowadays, neglected non-albicans Candida (NAC) species are evolving as more virulent and drug resistant strains. This research was intended to assess pervasiveness of candidiasis mainly caused by NAC species in Karachi city. A total of 562 clinical isolates of Candida spp.