Moderating Role of Country Governance in the Relationship between Technological Innovation and Inward Foreign Direct Investment

Due to the significance of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in economic development, a growing body of literature aims to analyze its determinants. In this regard, this study examines the role of technological innovation in attracting FDI and explains how country governance affects thisrelationship. For empirical analysis, we analyzed panel data from a wide range of developed and emerging economies for a period of 24 years, stretching from 1993 to 2016. We used the random effect model to obtain results after applying the Hausman test. We examined the relationshipbetween technological innovation, governance (by investigating governance indicators individually), FDI and how governance moderates the relationship between technological innovation and FDI in emerging and developed economies. The findings indicated that technological innovationin the host country is important for attracting inward FDI, regardless of the recipient country’s developmental level. For developed economies, political stability showed a strengthening effect on inward FDI. However, for both emerging and developed economies, all the other governance indicators weakened the technological innovation and FDI nexus

Performance evaluation of phosphonium based deep eutectic solvents coated cerium oxide nanoparticles for CO2 capture

The critical challenge being faced by our current modern society on a global scale is to reduce the surging effects of climate change and global warming, being caused by anthropogenic emissions of CO2 in the environment. Present study reports the surface driven adsorption potential of deep eutectic solvents (DESs) surface functionalized cerium oxide nanoparticles (CeNPs) for low pressure CO2 separation. The phosphonium based DESs were prepared using tetra butyl phosphoniumbromide as hydrogen bond acceptor (HBA) and 6 acids as hydrogen bond donors (HBDs). The as-developed DESs were characterized and employed for the surface functionalization of CeNPs with their subsequent utilization in adsorption-based CO2 adsorption. The synthesis of as-prepared DESs was confirmed through FTIR measurements and absence of precipitates, revealed through visual observations. It was found that DES6 surface functionalized CeNPs demonstrated 27% higher adsorption performance for CO2 capturing. On the contrary, DES3 coated CeNPs exhibited the least adsorption progress for CO2 separation. The higher adsorption performance associated with DES6 coated CeNPs was due to enhanced surface affinity with CO2 molecules that must have facilitated the mass transport characteristics and resulted an enhancement in CO2 adsorption performance. Carboxylic groups could have generated an electric field inside the pores to attract more polarizable adsorbates including CO2, are responsible for the relatively high values of CO2 adsorption. The quadruple movement of the CO2 molecules with the electron-deficient and pluralizable nature led to the enhancement of the interactive forces between the CO2 molecules and the CeNPs decorated with the carboxylic group hydrogen bond donor rich DES. The current findings may disclose the new research horizons and theoretical guidance for reduction in the environmental effects associated with uncontrolled CO2 emission via employing DES surface coated potential CeNPs

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Joint user grouping and power control using whale optimization algorithm for NOMA uplink system

© 2022 The Authors. Published by PeerJ. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.882Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme is proved to be a potential candidate to enhance spectral potency and massive connectivity for 5G wireless networks. To achieve effective system performance, user grouping, power control, and decoding order are considered to be fundamental factors. In this regard, a joint combinatorial problem consisting of user grouping and power control is considered, to obtain high spectral-efficiency for NOMA uplink system with lower computational complexity. To solve joint problem of power control and user grouping, for Uplink NOMA, up to authors knowledge, we have used for the first time a newly developed meta-heuristic nature-inspired optimization algorithm i.e. Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA). Further, for comparison a recently initiated Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO) and the well-known Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithms are also applied for the same joint issue.To attain optimal and sub-optimal solutions, a NOMA-based model is used to evaluate the potential of the proposed algorithm. Numerical results validate that proposed WOA outperforms GWO, PSO and existing literature reported for NOMA uplink systems in-terms of spectral performance. In addition, WOA attains improved results in terms of joint user grouping and power control with lower system-complexity as compare to GWO and PSO algorithms. The proposed work is novel enhancement for 5G uplink applications of NOMA systems

Separation of CO2 from Small Gas Molecules Using Deca-Dodecasil 3 Rhombohedral (DDR3) Membrane Synthesized via Ultrasonically Assisted Hydrothermal Growth Method

Deca-dodecasil 3 rhombohedral (DDR3) membrane has received much attention in CO2 separation from small gas molecules because of its molecular sieving property and stable characteristics. Therefore, the present work is focusing on the utilization of previously fabricated membrane (synthesized in 3 days as reported in our previous work) to study the effect of hydrocarbons and its durability at the previously optimized conditions. Subsequently, gas permeation study was conducted on the DDR3 membrane in CO2 separation from small gas molecules and it was found that the permeance of H2, CO2, N2, and CH4 decreased in the order of H2 > CO2 > N2 > CH4, according to the increase in kinetic diameter of these gas molecules. Besides, it was observed that the ideal selectivities of the gas pairs decreased in the sequence of CO2/CH4 > CO2/N2 > H2/CO2. On the other hand, it was found that the presence of hydrocarbon impurities in the gas mixture containing CO2 and CH4 has directly affected the performance of DDR3 membrane and contributed to the losses of CO2 permeability, CH4 permeability, and CO2/CH4 selectivity of 39.1%, 14.8%, and 4.2%, respectively. Consequently, from the stability test, the performance of DDR3 membrane remained stable for 96 h, even after the separation testing using CO2 and CH4 gas mixture containing hydrocarbon impurities