Search Results (874)

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) remains a global health crisis, with nearly 589 million adults currently affected and projections pointing toward 853 million by 2050. Despite an expanding pharmacological armamentarium, a significant proportion of patients fail to achieve adequate glycaemic control, and the limitations of existing therapies, including adverse effects, cost, and limited accessibility, underscore the compelling need for novel therapeutic approaches. Phytochemicals such as curcumin, berberine, quercetin, resveratrol, and epigallocatechin gallate possess well-documented antidiabetic activity, operating through the PI3K/Akt, AMPK (activated protein kinase), NF-κB/JNK (nuclear factor kappa-B), and GLP-1R (glucagon-like peptide-1) signalling axes to improve insulin sensitivity, suppress gluconeogenesis, protect pancreatic beta-cells, and attenuate chronic metabolic inflammation. However, their clinical utility has been fundamentally constrained by poor oral bioavailability arising from low aqueous solubility, gastrointestinal instability, extensive first-pass metabolism, and P-glycoprotein-mediated efflux. Advanced drug delivery systems, including liposomes, solid lipid nanoparticles (SLN), nanostructured lipid carriers, PLGA (Poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid)) and chitosan nanoparticles, nanoemulsions, self-nanoemulsifying drug delivery systems, and phytosomes have demonstrated the capacity to overcome these barriers, achieving five- to ten-fold improvements in systemic bioavailability and substantially enhanced antidiabetic efficacy in preclinical models. Emerging mechanistic evidence further positions gut microbiota modulation and epigenetic reprogramming as additional therapeutic axes through which nano-encapsulated phytochemicals may exert durable metabolic benefits. Nonetheless, critical translational challenges persist, encompassing nanotoxicological risks, herb–drug interactions, the absence of harmonised regulatory frameworks for nano-phytomedicine products, phytochemical raw material variability, and formidable technical and economic barriers to scalable nanoparticle manufacturing. This review synthesises the current mechanistic, formulation, and clinical evidence within a unified analytical framework and identifies the strategic priorities of rigorous clinical development, regulatory clarity, and manufacturing standardisation required to translate nano-phytomedicine science into evidence-based T2DM therapeutics. Full article

Food adulteration is a critical global threat to public health, economic stability, and social welfare. It primarily occurs in two forms: intentional and incidental. Intentional adulteration, or economically motivated adulteration, involves deliberately adding fraudulent or toxic substances such as hazardous ripening agents and harmful coloring to increase profitability. Substitution of food species is also a widely practiced form. Such adulteration can cause severe acute and chronic health issues, ranging from gastrointestinal distress to cancer and organ failure. Incidental adulteration happens through accidental contamination during processing, storage, or distribution, involving hazards such as heavy metals, mycotoxins, and pesticides. Such contaminants also lead to severe chronic diseases and dangerous allergic reactions. Food adulteration also triggers massive socio-economic consequences. Food safety incidents such as the melamine milk crisis and the horsemeat scandal caused billions of dollars in losses due to healthcare costs, product recalls, damaged brand reputation, and disrupted international trade. Global entities such as the WHO, WTO, and Codex Alimentarius have established robust legislative frameworks. However, effective enforcement remains a significant challenge in many countries. To mitigate such harmful impacts, it is essential to strengthen global surveillance systems, enhance rapid analytical detection methods, and strictly enforce compliance with existing food safety regulations. Full article

The news media in Gulf countries are among the most important institutions shaping the public’s understanding of climate action. This study aims to explore the longitudinal developments, thematic framing, and sentiment tones of Omani English-language newspapers’ sustainability discourse during the period 2015–2025. The study applied a multi-stage computational method to analyze a deduplicated corpus of 709 news articles from two English-language dailies of Oman: Times of Oman and Oman Daily Observer for a time period from 2015 to 2025. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling was used to group topics into five types of macro frames. Results show that the focus of the Omani media is very localized, and the dominant frames are “Corporate ESG, Business & Green Investment” and “Clean Energy Policy, Research & Institutional Governance”. Furthermore, a sentiment analysis of headlines using VADER showed clearly defined sentiment polarity; domestic economic transition headlines were characterized by high positive polarity, while global climate crisis headlines had a higher negative polarity. The study concludes that the press in Oman is in a strategic process of “nationalizing” the climate change issue, moving from the conventional disaster discourse to making sustainability a local opportunity for economic diversification, technological modernization, and national resilience. Full article

This examines the development of the saltpeter industry in Chile after the War of the Pacific (1879–1883), a conflict between Chile and a Bolivian–Peruvian alliance. Chile’s victory meant the annexation of the territories of Antofagasta and Tarapacá, effectively controlling the production of sodium nitrate and the global saltpeter monopoly. Industrial development was reflected through changes in foreign and Chilean capitals, technologies, and work practices. In Tarapacá, the most important investments in the 19th century were British and German. In Antofagasta, Chilean, English, German, and Croatian investments were prominent in the 19th and 20th centuries. And since 1926, American capitals have occupied the spotlight. The dominant technologies were the Shanks system between 1880–1926, the Guggenheim from 1926–1954, and the introduction of Solar Evaporation in the 1950s. Work evolved from manual artisanal labor without legal protection to mechanization under social laws. Saltpeter represented, in the social and economic history of Chile, the rise of the proletariat, communal social movements, a strong labor press, and a series of strikes and massacres. From the saltpeter era sprouted powerful literature, poetry, and music throughout the 20th century until today. The nitrate industry reached its peak between 1881 and 1917. During this period, it had to confront competition from synthetic nitrate and ceased to be the main source of revenue for the national treasury of Chile. This was followed by a period of decline and crisis from 1918 to 1931, the latter intertwined with the global financial crisis. Various state and business measures made it possible for a small number of nitrate oficinas (processing plants and settlements) in Tarapacá and Antofagasta to continue operating until the nationalization of the nitrate industry in 1971. The nitrate industry took place during the first globalization of liberalism, one that brought flows of capital, migration from Europe to the American Continent, changes to marine navigation, and the opening of various markets in Asia, Europe, and Africa. Nitrate became the most effective fertilizer for agriculture and replaced guano in crop production. In order to analyze this topic, we will utilize the results of the main monographic studies, texts used for historical and political context, and works with interpretative theses about specific periods of nitrate production. Full article

This paper examines the predictive power of credit default swap (CDS) spread correlations in the context of the 2023 Credit Suisse failure. Using a two-window design, we separate a 50-week pre-crisis period from the final two-week “jump” window and evaluate whether historical market-implied dependence anticipated cross-sectional crisis repricing across Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs). We find that the magnitude of each bank’s crisis-period CDS jump is significantly related to its prior co-movement with Credit Suisse across the full sample ($r=0.80$, $p<0.001$, $n=15$), indicating that contagion followed a structured dependence pattern rather than an undifferentiated panic dynamic. The relationship holds across both regional cohorts, with the European G-SIB group displaying a considerably tighter fit ($r=0.96$, $p<0.001$, $n=8$) than the non-European group ($r=0.84$, $p=0.019$, $n=7$), consistent with geographic and institutional proximity to Credit Suisse amplifying the contagion channel. Additional empirical outputs, including stepwise-regression diagnostics and placebo/event-time checks, support the interpretation that the estimated relationship contains an economically meaningful signal while remaining partly event-driven in short horizons. Overall, the evidence suggests that rolling CDS dependence regimes may serve as a useful leading indicator for identifying institutions most likely to face disproportionate repricing pressure during a localized systemic shock. These findings are drawn from a single crisis episode and 15 peer institutions; they should be read as preliminary evidence of a potentially useful mechanism rather than as the basis for an operational early-warning system, and replication across additional crises and institutional settings is required before broader generalization. Full article

Against a backdrop of rising macroeconomic uncertainty, the digital economy has become a key driver of regional economic resilience. However, research on this relationship still requires further refinement for the Yellow River Basin, a special region characterized by ecological redline constraints and a dense concentration of resource-based cities. Using panel data from 78 prefecture-level cities over the period 2008–2019 and treating the global financial crisis as an exogenous shock, this study employs two-way fixed effects, mediation, and spatial Durbin models to examine the mechanisms and spatial patterns of the digital economy’s impact on economic resilience, while also incorporating heterogeneity analyses with regional characteristics of the Yellow River Basin for further investigation. The results show the following: (1) The digital economy expanded rapidly while resilience declined, with significant spatial divergence in both. (2) The digital economy positively affects resilience and is robust to various checks. (3) Industrial upgrading, innovation, and entrepreneurship serve as mediating channels. (4) The digital economy exerts spatial spillover effects on economic resilience at the basin-wide level. (5) The impact of the digital economy on resilience is moderated by ecological redline policies and resource dependence—western and resource-based cities gain the most, while eastern cities show negative spillovers from intensified factor competition. This study provides empirical evidence and policy insights for formulating differentiated digital transformation strategies in the Yellow River Basin. Full article

This study examines the determinants of conditional volatility in energy-sector equity returns and their implications for sustainable energy resilience, energy security, and investment stability. Using a multi-stage econometric framework, the analysis investigates how global financial, commodity, and macroeconomic shocks are transmitted to volatility dynamics across heterogeneous energy companies. The dataset includes domestic and international firms, enabling a comparative assessment of volatility behavior and risk-transmission mechanisms under different market and institutional conditions. The empirical framework combines ARMA models for return dynamics, EGARCH/GARCH specifications for conditional volatility estimation, and OLS regressions with HAC standard errors to identify key determinants of volatility, including market indices, commodity prices, exchange rates, and major geopolitical and economic events. The findings reveal strong volatility persistence across all assets and asymmetric responses to market shocks in most cases. Global market conditions, particularly lagged MSCI World returns, significantly affect volatility, whereas commodity effects related to oil, gas, and coal remain heterogeneous across firms. Event-based regressors show that systemic shocks, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the European energy crisis, increase volatility, although geopolitical effects depend on firm-specific exposure. The results contribute to the sustainability literature by linking energy-sector financial volatility with market resilience, energy security, and stable investment conditions for the energy transition. Full article

Macroeconomic forecasting has become increasingly challenging in environments characterized by structural breaks, nonlinear dynamics, and elevated economic uncertainty. Traditional econometric forecasting models frequently experience substantial predictive deterioration during periods of financial crises, geopolitical instability, and rapidly evolving macroeconomic conditions due to their reliance on assumptions of parameter stability and linear economic relationships. In response to these limitations, this study proposes an integrated causal machine learning framework designed to improve macroeconomic forecasting performance under structural instability and uncertainty. The proposed framework combines structural break detection techniques, machine learning algorithms, causal inference methodologies, and Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) tools within a unified empirical architecture. More specifically, the study integrates Bai–Perron structural break analysis, Markov-Switching regime identification, Double Machine Learning (DML), Causal Forest estimation procedures, and SHAP-based explainability techniques. The empirical analysis employs a U.S. macroeconomic time-series dataset covering major crisis episodes, including the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2022 inflation shock. The dataset combines inflation, monetary, financial, energy-market, and uncertainty indicators obtained from publicly available U.S. macroeconomic databases. The empirical findings demonstrate that causal machine learning models significantly outperform conventional econometric frameworks such as VAR and TVP-VAR models, as well as standard machine learning algorithms including Random Forest (RF), XGBoost, and LSTM networks. The Double Machine Learning framework generates the strongest forecasting performance across all forecasting horizons, economic regimes, and robustness specifications. The results further reveal that macroeconomic relationships are highly regime-dependent and strongly influenced by uncertainty indicators, financial volatility, oil price shocks, and monetary policy dynamics. Explainability analysis additionally shows that uncertainty measures and energy market variables become dominant drivers of inflation forecasts during crisis periods characterized by elevated instability. The study contributes to the growing literature on macroeconomic forecasting by bridging econometric forecasting theory, causal inference methodologies, machine learning techniques, and explainable artificial intelligence within a unified forecasting framework. The findings provide important implications for central banks, policymakers, and financial institutions seeking more adaptive, transparent, and robust forecasting systems under uncertain macroeconomic environments. Full article

This study examines the impact of the Russian–Ukrainian war on global financial stability, focusing on currency crises, exchange-rate dynamics, and economic vulnerability during 2003–2024 with an outlook for subsequent years. The objective is to assess how geopolitical shocks, combined with global monetary tightening, influenced the frequency and intensity of currency crises across developed and emerging economies. The study applies a quantitative comparative methodology based on a modified Exchange Market Pressure Index (EMPI) using monthly IMF data on exchange rates, reserves, interest rates, and depreciation dynamics. Currency crises are identified through threshold-based criteria, enabling cross-country and temporal comparison. A conceptual framework explains how geopolitical risk affects currency markets, financial stability, and macroeconomic performance. The findings show that crisis episodes were more frequently concentrated around the Great Recession, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Russian–Ukrainian war. Emerging economies were more vulnerable, experiencing stronger capital outflows, sharper currency depreciation, and more frequent crises, while developed economies were affected mainly through inflation and energy price shocks. The war intensified financial fragmentation, increased safe-haven flows toward the US dollar, gold, and Swiss franc, and raised systemic risks in debt, banking, and corporate sectors. The study concludes that differentiated macroeconomic strategies, stronger external buffers, and enhanced international financial coordination are necessary to reduce risks and preserve currency stability. Full article

The article provides a wide-range review of issues concerning the evolving of infrastructure for the purpose of transport system decarbonization, which is one of the crucial directions on the path to achieving carbon neutrality. Transport systems contribute, according to various statistics, between 20 and 25% of global carbon dioxide emissions, making the development of sustainable infrastructure one of the crucial issues for achieving net-zero goals. By synthesizing 135 studies published between (2022) and (2026), the paper investigates research on following key fields: (1) low-emission conveyances, infrastructure for their refueling, and its availability; (2) policy and strategies for transport decarbonization and plans concerning technologies for low-carbon means of transport, (3) management systems for organization of transportation, including Intelligent Transport Systems and smart mobility; (4) crisis management in green transport systems—investigations and solutions connected to ensuring the systems’ continuity in critical situations; and (5) research on the costs of transportation decarbonization, economic analysis and optimization of costs associated with the development of low-emission transport. The analyzed literature shows the extraordinary importance of the transport decarbonization problem and presents a wide range of conducted studies and applications being implemented. The findings indicate fields, for which the complexity and completeness of works seem to be satisfactory, but also show sectors within which certain research gaps do still exist. The outcomes of the work indicate policy and technological pathways that can lead to improving the sustainability of infrastructure for decarbonized transport systems, together with some proposals of the scope of research directions that should be carried out. Full article

This scientometric and bibliometric study analyzes global research trends on polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA)-producing microorganisms and their applications in bio-based packaging between 2014 and 2025. Using the Scopus database and advanced tools such as Bibliometrix in RStudio and VOSviewer, scientific output and international collaboration networks were evaluated. The results demonstrate exponential growth in publications, driven by the urgent need to mitigate the petrochemical plastics crisis and develop biodegradable alternatives within the circular economy. Multidisciplinary analysis reveals a thematic shift from basic physiological and taxonomic studies towards complex applications in metabolic engineering, synthetic biology, the optimization of low-cost substrates such as industrial effluents, multi-omics tools, gene editing with CRISPR-Cas9, and, as an emerging exploratory approach, quantum modeling to optimize cell performance. Despite significant progress, critical technological gaps were identified related to challenges in downstream processing, the management of mixed microbial communities, and insufficient funding for the characterization of physicochemical and biocompatibility properties. It is concluded that, to ensure the commercial scalability and sustainability of PHAs, future research must prioritize overcoming these economic and technological bottlenecks, fostering strategic collaboration between academia and the biotechnology industry. Full article

The refugee rentier state seeks to manipulate mass population movements to obtain economic and political/strategic ‘rents’, asserting itself in a way that challenges the premises of Global South marginality, disempowerment and exclusion within the international system. This article develops the concept of the refugee rentier state, which it understands as a political economy framework for analysing how host states transform refugee populations into sources of bargaining power within asymmetric systems of global governance, while showing how this “trading” feeds into economic vulnerabilities and exclusions associated with forced labour arrangements. It shows how refugee hosting can function as a strategic asset through which states extract economic and political/strategic rents from wealthier counterparts. Drawing on Turkey’s engagement with the European Union in the European refugee “crisis”, the article examines how refugee rentier strategies operate within, rather than outside, established migration governance regimes, giving rise to economic informality and partial labour market integration. In applying the rentier state model to EU–Turkey interactions, it situates refugee rentierism within the structural logic of EU migration externalisation and the institutional weaknesses of international refugee protection, while considering how they feed into the vulnerability of displaced populations, and specifically exposure to economic exclusion and marginalisation within transit countries. Full article

The post-COVID-19 tourism recovery exposes a structural divergence between economic resilience and environmental sustainability. Traditional tourism planning metrics consistently fail to diagnose how macroeconomic growth dynamics decouple from environmental pressures, leaving policymakers without empirical tools to identify structural vulnerabilities or prevent carbon-intensive recoupling during post-crisis transitions. This study integrates macroeconomic, environmental, and digital data across a global panel to map actionable pathways for sustainable tourism transitions. Employing a multi-stage methodology, the analysis first utilizes K-Means clustering (n = 80) to isolate the structural fixed effects of baseline destination archetypes driving a K-shaped recovery. Second, using a synchronized environmental panel (n = 41), a Decoupling Index evaluates eco-efficiency elasticity to test the alignment between tourism value recovery and aviation-induced CO₂ emissions. Third, regression analysis of an elite digital cohort (n = 18) measures dynamic exogenous catalysts, revealing that digital attractiveness, proxied by the global digital nomad market share, is a significantly stronger accelerator of recovery (β = 55.59, p = 0.019) than traditional physical air connectivity (β = −46.48, p = 0.036). Synthesizing these insights, a 2 × 2 Strategic Decision Matrix (n = 41) classifies destinations into Sustainable Leaders, Mass-Market Traps, Value Pivoters, and Vulnerable Laggards. The empirical results demonstrate that pre-pandemic structures do not deterministically dictate recovery (p > 0.05, Partial η² ≤ 0.077), yet rapid financial recovery often masks deep atmospheric vulnerabilities, with specific absolute decoupling leaders achieving exceptional value expansion alongside strict carbon contraction (e.g., Saudi Arabia, DE = −0.35; El Salvador, DE = −0.26). This framework provides a data-driven roadmap for policymakers to utilize “soft” digital infrastructure to transition from carbon-intensive, volume-dependent models toward value-optimized, low-emission ecosystems. Full article

Public Relations (PR) is the strategic role of communication between an organization or public actor and the publics on whose recognition, trust and consent its operation depends. The field encompasses media relations, internal and employee communication, public affairs and government relations, crisis and reputation management, community relations and corporate social responsibility, investor relations, marketing communications, political communication, digital and platform engagement, and the communication of activist and non-governmental organizations. PR scholarship draws on sociology, political philosophy, organizational studies, rhetoric and media studies to examine how organizations construct, sustain and contest their legitimacy in the public sphere. The dominant theoretical framework of the late twentieth century, the Excellence Theory developed by James Grunig and colleagues, defined PR as the symmetrical management of relationships with strategic publics; the field has since broadened to include relational, dialogic, rhetorical, situational, contingent and critical approaches, alongside frameworks grounded in stakeholder theory, institutional analysis and emerging work on public legitimacy. Contemporary PR operates within a hybrid media environment shaped by digital platforms, algorithmic visibility, generative artificial intelligence and the structural erosion of institutional trust. It is simultaneously a professional industry of significant global economic scale and a contested civic function whose democratic role, ethical foundations and disciplinary boundaries remain the subject of active scholarly debate. Full article