Journals
2026 EN
Yang Di · Hong Wenpeng · Jin Xu
ABSTRACT Traditional air conditioners suffer from low energy efficiency and exacerbate grid peak loads. While ice storage offers energy‐saving potential, the systematic regulation of ice packing fraction (IPF) on cooling consumption and its synergy with dynamic carbon emissions remains unexplored. This study investigates the energy use, carbon footprint, and economics of ice slurry cooling across six Chinese climate zones, revealing for the first time the regulatory effect of IPF gradients. We demonstrate that pump power consumption decreases exponentially with increasing IPF, yielding 40%–60% reductions per 5% IPF increment. Critically, carbon reduction rates plateau (8.67%–8.92%) above 20% IPF, with peak reductions reaching 22% at 30% IPF. We propose a novel “IPF‐electricity price‐dynamic carbon emission factor” collaborative framework—incorporating a viscosity‐driven pump model and a dynamic COP optimization algorithm—providing a universal approach for low‐carbon cooling transitions. Economic analysis identifies 25% IPF as the key inflection point, beyond which further concentration increases yield minimal cost savings (only 0.08%). This integrated framework quantifies economic and emission thresholds, enabling optimal, sustainable cooling management.
Journals
2026 EN
Jawad Muhammad · Javed Zafar · Ali Hamid
+1 more
ABSTRACT Nowadays, we increasingly encounter with highly complex real‐world optimization problems across various domains, including engineering, economics, healthcare, and artificial intelligence. Finding optimal or near‐optimal solutions to these problems remains a significant challenge. In the existing body of literature, numerous stochastic‐based optimization algorithms have been proposed to address such issues. However, ensuring consistent efficiency, robustness, and convergence across diverse problem landscapes remains an important concern. This paper introduces a novel and effective optimization algorithm called the Recruitment‐Based Optimization Algorithm (RBOA), which draws inspiration from institutional recruitment and hiring process. The algorithm simulates the dynamic interactions and decision‐making mechanisms involved in the selection of internal and external candidates during the recruitment process. Balancing exploration and exploitation is essential for any optimization approach and is achieved through the modeled behaviors of these two candidate types. External candidates facilitate global exploration, while internal candidates enhance local exploitation, together ensuring a comprehensive search of the solution space. Furthermore, the proposed RBOA has been effectively applied to an intelligent attack detection framework for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs), where it optimizes feature selection and classification parameters to enhance detection accuracy and reduce false alarms. In real‐world validation for VANET attack detection, RBOA achieved 97.38% accuracy and a false‐positive rate of 0.031, demonstrating its practical effectiveness in securing vehicular communications. To rigorously validate its performance, numerous benchmark functions have been used to test RBOA, encompassing multimodal, unimodal, and fixed‐dimensional optimization problems. Comparative analysis with 11 well‐established optimization algorithms reveals that RBOA consistently outperforms the compared algorithms.
Journals
2026 EN
Ashraf Nabeel · Arshad Zunaira · Din Ahmad
+3 more
ABSTRACT Plant‐based beverages (PBBs) have attracted considerable attention from the global dairy industry as a viable substitute to the milk industry due to their sustainability, nutritional value, and economics. An emerging trend is PBBs, which can be an affordable option for low‐income populations in developing nations and in areas where there is a limited supply of cow's milk. The PBB market is projected to reach a value of $7.3 billion by 2032, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.3% from 2023 to $2.8 billion in 2022. The increase of vegans around the world is the main factor propelling the PBB market's expansion. Cereals, legumes, nuts, and seeds are the sources that may be utilized for manufacturing vegetal beverages. The present possibilities and obstacles related to PBB development are explored in this review. This review summarizes novel insights on PBB, the use of novel ingredients, traditional and technologically advanced methods, health benefits, and risks related to consuming these beverages. This comprehensive review also briefly describes the production processes utilized for producing PBBs, the bioavailability of nutrients, their impact on gut microbiota, and the sustainability of PBBs for the circular economy. These insights are intended to assist scientists and food producers in choosing and refining appropriate processing techniques to enhance the nutritional attributes, shelf life, and consumer acceptability of PBBs.
Journals
2026 EN
Kim Hyejin
ABSTRACT This paper examines the effect of robots on workplace injury benefits paid in South Korea. Using the administrative data on worker's compensation, I found that the increase in robot exposure contributes to the significant decline in the average benefit amount per covered worker, mainly driven by the reduction in the number of claims, rather than the size of claims. The effects are stronger, especially for serious cases such as permanent disability.
Journals
2026 EN
Garrouste Clémentine · Juet Arthur · Samson AnneLaure
ABSTRACT We examine the causal effect of a French flu vaccination campaign on vaccination behavior. Individuals aged 65 and over receive an invitation letter with a voucher for a free flu shot, while those who are not eligible have to cover the costs themselves. Using a Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design, we find that receiving the invitation letter with the voucher leads to a significant increase in the likelihood of getting vaccinated. This effect is driven by individuals who are risk‐averse. As illustrated in our theoretical model, for them, the costs of influenza infection outweigh the costs of the vaccine's side effects.
Journals
2026 EN
Quaife Matthew · Chiandet Giulia
ABSTRACT Previous research shows that choices are influenced by how probabilities are presented, that we value losses more than gains, and that we misunderstand cumulative probabilities over time. These factors are important when designing discrete choice experiments (DCEs) because almost all include some representation of probability over a time period. Contraceptive choice is one of the most common health choices and requires people to trade‐off between efficacy, side effects, and modality. We used a DCE to explore whether people chose differently when faced with positive or negative framings of contraceptive effectiveness or valued 1‐year or 3‐year cumulative risks differentially. We developed a simple eight‐task DCE with three attributes: effectiveness, administration frequency, and (non‐)hormonal nature. Participants saw effectiveness as either positively or negatively, and with numerically equivalent 1‐year and cumulative 3‐year effectiveness values. We used mixed multinomial logistic regression models with interaction terms and explored preference heterogeneity. The negative frame increased sensitivity to effectiveness by 18% ( p = 0.04) and sensitivity to cumulative effectiveness over 3 years was 10% less than over 1 year ( p = 0.01). Preferences were heterogenous with respect to attributes but not framing effects. Attribute framing substantially affected preferences for effectiveness, and decisions around risk presentation should be reported transparently.
Journals
2026 EN
Wydick Bruce · Camacho Gianna · Piraino Patrizio
ABSTRACT Children born with severe congenital conditions in low‐income countries rank among the most disadvantaged among the global ultra‐poor. We study the impact of clubfoot and its treatment across multiple dimensions of human flourishing on data collected from 564 children in Ethiopia. Working with Hope Walks, an organization that funds clubfoot interventions in numerous countries, we use a quasi difference‐in‐differences approach that generates counterfactual outcomes from the nearest‐age siblings of children born with clubfoot, nested within a family‐level fixed effect. We find that clubfoot status (early treatment) results in an impairment (restoration) of −1.44 σ $\sigma $ (0.91 σ $\sigma $ ) in physical mobility, −1.17 σ $\sigma $ (0.79 σ $\sigma $ ) in mental health, −1.07 σ $\sigma $ (0.64 σ $\sigma $ ) in social inclusion, −0.48 σ $\sigma $ (0.98 σ $\sigma $ ) in an education index, −0.76 σ $\sigma $ (0.42 σ $\sigma $ ) in religious faith, and −1.32 σ $\sigma $ (0.94 σ $\sigma $ ) in an aggregate index of human flourishing (allp < 0.05 $p< 0.05$ ). We attribute the large, broad, and significant impacts from clubfoot treatment to (i) a highly effective medical intervention that is (ii) carried out in an impoverished setting with scarce existing support for children born with disabilities, which (iii) broadly generates spillover effects across key development outcomes.
Journals
2026 EN
Graham Carol · Mujcic Redzo
ABSTRACT This paper reports the first large‐scale longitudinal links between one of the least known dimensions of wellbeing—hope—and long‐term outcomes in a range of life arenas. Hope has agentic properties which are relevant to people's future outcomes. Following 25,000 randomly sampled Australian adults over a period of 14 years from 2007 to 2021 ( N > 115,000), we find a strong link between hope and better contemporary and future outcomes. Individuals with high levels of hope had improved later wellbeing, education, economic and employment outcomes, perceived and objective health, and are less likely to be lonely. Hope is associated with higher resilience, ability to adapt, and internal locus of control. It also serves as a psychological buffer during bad times. Respondents with high levels of hope were less likely to be influenced by negative life events and adapted more quickly and completely after these major events. Better understanding the drivers and consequences of hope can ultimately inform public policy to improve people's lives.
Journals
2026 EN
Shrestha Vinish
ABSTRACT This study investigates geographical disparities in the implementation and effectiveness of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by linking them to the historical legacy of racial oppression in the American South. Using a cross‐border regression discontinuity design that leverages variations in racial oppression intensity, we find that bordering counties in states with less oppressive regime experienced significantly greater benefits from the ACA compared to neighboring counties in more oppressive states. This divergence in insurance outcomes, which did not exist before the ACA, underscores the influence of historical racial regimes on contemporary policy efficacy. Furthermore, we demonstrate that political preferences from the Jim Crow era are correlated with the observed variations in ACA effectiveness. Our findings suggest that the racialization of the ACA is deeply rooted in the historical context of racial oppression in the American South.
Journals
2026 EN
Schouwenaar Chantal · Koning Pierre · KrabbeAlkemade Yvonne
+2 more
ABSTRACT With populations aging, long‐term care (LTC) needs and costs rise, intensifying the reliance on informal care. Since spouses predominantly provide such care, it is crucial to understand the transition dynamics from widowhood to institutional LTC, which is the main driver of the public LTC costs in most OECD countries. Our study examines the causal effect of widowhood on the onset of needs for institutional LTC. For this we use recently developed event‐time models that accommodate for variation in treatment time and dynamic effects of treatment. Our results show that partner loss significantly increases the need for institutional LTC. The average effect of partner loss on the need for institutional LTC peaks at a 1.5 percentage point rise 3 months after widowhood and disappears after 10 months. The effect is strongest for individuals with psycho‐geriatric disorders, the oldest old and the frail. Addressing the immediate need for institutional LTC after widowhood remains critical for effective aging‐in‐place strategies.