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Background: Nephrolithiasis, or kidney stone disease, presents a significant global health burden, with global incidence rates and treatment practices varying widely. This study aims to discuss the epidemiology, risk factors, treatment modalities, and challenges for nephrolithiasis in the lower half of the World Bank rankings; that is, in low- and lower-middle-income countries. Methods: A comprehensive literature review was conducted using PubMed for each country on the list, focusing on studies published from January 2000 onwards and reporting data on prevalence, risk factors, treatment practices, and economic implications. Results: Nephrolithiasis represents a significant burden for healthcare systems, with noteworthy geographical variability in prevalence possibly dependent on socioeconomic status and gender. Risk factors include dietary habits, climate, pollution, and infectious diseases. Treatment practices in some regions still rely on open surgery due to limited access to advanced endourological techniques, while other regions demonstrate high proactivity in research. The burden is exacerbated by inadequate healthcare infrastructure and training. Conclusions: Addressing nephrolithiasis in challenging economic circumstances requires targeted interventions, including improved access to modern treatment methods, enhanced training for healthcare professionals, and better socioeconomic and environmental conditions. Future research should focus on region-specific strategies and the development of sustainable healthcare solutions.

BRICS assemblies focus on politics and security, economics, and finance, and cultural and people -to-people exchange. Since these areas depend on global air transit and tourism, seamless movement is essential. Tourism fosters cultura l proximity and human encounters, benefiting nations and businesses. This study aims to analyse tourism and socio -economic dynamics considering globalisation and socio-economic structural factors. The study examines economic growth, travel, and financial success in BRICS nations. The panel data regression method is applied to highlight the relations between tourism and socio-economic indicators among BRICS and G7 countries. Temporal and territorial aspects and all regression studies were performed using the statistical modelling programme EViews 11. The study found inbound and outward connections between globalisation, dynamic socio-economic indicators, and each country's structural indicators. These tripartite aspects explained BRICS inbound and outward travel, but both are in constant change over time. Results show that the actual globalisation paradigm favours developed nations in the tourism sector, emerging BRICS nations show hopeful socio - economic structures, however they need to find new unique strategies to achieve a fair share of the new emerging world middle class tourism market. The old one is already taken by developed countries and they will fight to expand it.

The purpose of the study reviewed the dynamics of new and open regionalism in Asia and the Pacific regions. It was highlighted that both in the Asia Pacific and Latin America, there is considerable confusion and ambiguity surrounding the notion of what “New Open Regionalism” is all about, which questions the relevance for practical purposes. The research approach primarily reviews various relevant literature in the field of study. Studies indicated that with few institutional or government-led initiatives, Asia's rapid economic expansion offered a strong basis for intra-regional trading and investment flows as well as inter-firm linkages. In terms of originality, No study has looked at the dynamics and the many uses and conceptions of the idea and investigated the contexts in which the concepts of "openness" and "regionalism" clash. For the implications, the article clarifies the possible relationship with both open regionalism and regional integration before asking under what circumstances regionalism might serve for the advancement of multilateralism. The study concluded that in a dynamic situation, it is difficult to determine whether regionalism and multilateralism complement each other. Much is determined by the design and content of the negotiated regional trade agreements (RTAs), as well as the characteristics of the member nations.

Introduction. The article examines the issue of the digital transformation of Ukrainian businesses. Despite the existing developed sector of information technology, domestic companies have a low level of digitalization of their activity. The methodological basis of the study were general and special research methods, including methods of theoretical generalization, analysis, synthesis, comparison and others. The information base of the study was the data of the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, National Bank of Ukraine, research of international organizations, scientific papers and other open sources. Purpose. The purpose of the article is the identification of trends in the digitalization of financial and economic activities of companies in Ukraine and the development of recommendations for improving the implementation of information technology. Results. The problem of poor access of domestic enterprises to the Internet has been identified. The largest share of companies that have websites was in the field of information technology (57,1% of all companies in the industry in 2021). The volume of sold products (goods, services) received from e-commerce in Ukraine is projected to increase to UAH 736,97 billion in 2023. The tendency to increase the share of enterprises that use cloud computing services (like using software for accounting and finance, file storage, database hosting) has been determined. Conclusions. The paper develops the main ways to improve the digital transformation of Ukrainian business: 1) creation of business site (very critical for industries with a high value of having a website); 2) providing all employees with access to the Internet; 3) improving the functionality of the website (following market trends); 4) assessment of the feasibility of purchasing a cloud computing service depends on business's specific; 5) providing the opportunity for payments by smartphones and other NFC devices when making contactless payments; 6) transition to sending invoices in electronic form purchased for automated processing (depending on the customer base).

In this paper we have worked on a number of documents and articles published to find a relationship between patents and the economic growth of countries. We have found that patents and their applications are important for economic growth. The patent is not always a global indicator of all the technological knowledge produced, since a considerable number of technological know-how remains in the form of business secrets or sometimes the technology is published in scientific articles.

The ability to measure, understand, manipulate, organize, engineer and control matter on the nanoscale has been opening up the wealth of possibilities that were otherwise non - existent at higher scales. At this scale, basic research principles and tools in biology, physics, chemistry, and engineering converge and have led to all-inclusive applications of nanotechnology. Despite the innovative applications and promising potentials of nanotechnology, there are concerns about its short and long-lasting impacts on humans, nature and the environment. In an attempt to address these concerns, a number of researches have been conducted. Evaluations of studies addressing the issues of nanotechnologies and their impacts are necessary to give insights for further studies that will advance the technology for the true benefit of mankind and nature. This study, thus, provides a detailed review of studies on nanotechnology applications and the positions of stakeholders on the impact of nanotechnology. Among other things, the outcome of this survey shows that there are numerous successful applications of nanotechnology. Public perceptions are pivotal in determining the extent of revolution and transformation that nanotechnology will have on the environment. Religious beliefs and moral concerns; trust in governmental regulatory agencies and the industry; the level of inclusion of the society in the product design, development, and commercialization process is critical to the extent of acceptance of nanotechnology inventions. Expression of objective views concerning the benefits, limitations & risks, and adequate education of the public, risk regulators & all stakeholders are crucial in determining the fate of nanotechnology.

During the last few decades, income inequality in emerging Asian economies has been increased dramatically. It is widely recognized that income inequality has severely impacted population health. This study attempts to estimate the impact of income inequality on health outcomes in emerging Asian economies for a time horizon ranging from 1991 to 2019. Our empirical analysis shows that income inequality has a negative effect on life expectancy in the long run. We also find that positive changes in income inequality decrease life expectancy, but a negative change in income inequality increases life expectancy in the long run in emerging Asian economies. The symmetric and asymmetric results are robust to different measures of econometric methods. Thus, governments should pay more attention to the consequences of their economic policies on income inequality to improve health outcomes.

RESUMEN: Nudo de tensión entre vida biológica e historicidad, la animalidad recorre la serie de mataderos que la crítica argentina ha indagado como ficción soberana, pautada por el dualismo político. La polarización de 1840 plasmada en El matadero de Echeverría, con titubeos narrativos frente a voces y cuerpos animalizados del sector popular, retorna desde mediados del siglo XX en versiones de la dicotomía civilización-barbarie, que mantienen la distinción naturaleza-cultura y las coordenadas de historicidad antropocéntrica, como la crónica de Walsh que en 1967 enmienda el reparto clasista de Echeverría. El umbral crítico de la vida (Agamben) emerge en reescrituras recientes del matadero, donde el flujo del capital atraviesa no solo el cuerpo del trabajador sino lo viviente. Un cuento de Kohan (2009) y una novela de Maia (2013) descubren bajo la dicotomía la complejidad de pasajes entre animales y humanos, donde indagan las economías de relaciones entre vidas protegidas y abandonadas. Confrontando las conflictividades culturales argentina y brasileña, marcadas por el peso de economías agroexportadoras y el dualismo como control de mezclas, estos relatos de trabajadores del ganado inquieren lo difuso del borde vida-muerte tras dos siglos de progreso humanista en América Latina. ABSTRACT: Animality, a knot of tension between biological life and historicity, runs through the series of slaughterhouses that Argentine critics have investigated as sovereign fiction, guided by political dualism. The 1840 polarization embodied in Echeverría´s El matadero (The Slaughterhouse), with narrative hesitations about voices and animalized bodies of popular sector, has returned since the middle of the 20th century in versions of the civilization-barbarity dichotomy, which maintain the nature-culture distinction and the coordinates of anthropocentric historicity, such as Walsh's chronicle that in 1967 amends the class distribution of Echeverría. The critical threshold of life (Agamben) emerges in recent rewritings of the slaughterhouse, where the flow of capital passes through not only the body of the worker but also the living being. A story by Kohan (2009) and a novel by Maia (2013) discover under dichotomy the complexity of passages between animals and humans, where they investigate the economies of relationships between protected and abandoned lives. By confronting Argentine and Brazilian cultural conflicts, both marked by the weight of agro-export economies and dualism as control of mixtures, these stories of cattle workers inquire about the diffuseness of the life-death border after two centuries of humanist progress in Latin America.

The transport sector plays an important role in society at large. This article aimed to provide a state-of-the-art literature review in the area of sustainable transport. Data for the analysis were collected from the Web of Science database from 2000 to 2022. A total of 1238 bibliometric records of publications were collected. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were undertaken in the article. The analysis results showed five main research areas: 1—sustainable urban/public transport and mobility; 2—transport emissions and fuels; 3—sustainable supply chain/logistics management models; 4—performance and metrics in sustainable transport; and 5—future and policy. The limitations of the research carried out, which mainly concern the methodological section, should also be borne in mind. These include the selected publication base and search criteria, such as the year or language of publication.

The European Mediterranean appears to be an active key player for the production and circulation of screendance. Focusing this research on the pre-pandemic state of screendance in Italy, France, Greece and Spain and employing a methodology of one-to-one interviews, this text examines the art policies that have been in place for potentially supporting the production of screendance, the ways that spectatorship and social engagement kept on growing and the predictions for the yet-to-come evolution of the form in a context disassociated from, yet applicable to the on-going pandemic. Although screendance is understood differently among the interviewees – curators of major festivals such as DAN. CIN. LAB., Festival International De Vidéo Danse De Bourgogne, COORPI/La Danza in 1 minuto, Cinematica Festival, Stories We Dance International Videodance Contest, Choreoscope - The International Dance Film Festival of Barcelona and the formerly known Athens Video Dance Project – International Dance Film Festival – the aim of this research is to create knowledge regarding the heterogeneous landscape of screendance in the European Mediterranean as well as a broader understanding of the shifting Mediterranean culture.

The World Federation of Music Therapy (WFMT) Research and Ethics Commission conducted a scoping project to gather information about music therapy practices in international development contexts. Seventeen music therapists with experience in international development projects (out of 55 approached) responded to 14 questions about their work. Their responses indicated that work is generally short-medium term project work, often with follow up visits or online contact when possible to support sustainability. Work is commonly in the areas of disability or with refugees/displaced persons and often has a strong skills-sharing component to support ongoing project impact.

The article focuses on the recent debate, about gift and the non-market economies, born especially around the new lecture of classical texts of Marcel Mauss and Karl Polanyi. The article is meant to show that the renewed interest is rooted in the contemporary crisis of relationships, of social ties, and in the effects of commodification of the utilitarian market economies. The theme of the gift is a narrative and theorethical tool to rethinking about the exchange and the social relationships throughout, both from the affective and private point of view than economical and collective too.

The ethics in economy is not only a corrector, but also must be initiator if we want to achieve essence of our existence - the human being as “Homo ethicus”, as well as, which is more important for mankind - to achieve a human being as “Homo homine ethica ethicus est”. This remark points on two things. First: we came to the stage where we become aware about the fact that our economies are dehumanized. The second: that’s the reason why we must return to ethics and pull out from it that universal values which will make the managers of natural recourses more ethically awarded, so they will be able to start managing production without endangering bio potentials anymore. Previous remark lead us to conclusion that, no matter if the idiom “business ethics” is oxymoron or not, the present ethics is more a list of rules of conduction or, more precisely, etiquette. This clearly points that this kind of ethics of economy and in economy is not adoptive to the imperative of Bioethics: Don’t misuse recourses if you want to feed yourself and those for which you create the existence! This is so because always when we talk about ethics and ethicizing of those which managing the base of existence, de facto, are discussions about choosing the appropriate model of capitalism. The problem of these “discussions” is that we almost always forget to explain: is the chosen model of capitalization of society applicable considering the local specifics and needs of community? Therefore, the imperative of Bioethics, in this context, is to teach the ethics how to think about bio resource and bio heritage, even if we stop talk of some kinds of ethics and ethicizing of economies and of those which managing with it, because if we reconsider the reactions of the population, it is clear that they are seek of talking about it. But also, it’s recognizable the fact that they who talks just show that the essential thinking about Bioethics is absent and that the Bioethics, de facto, is a tabby. This fear from true talking and essential declaring origins from fear that thinking about the biohumanization of economy consequently will result with change of awareness and conscience about ethics, in general.

Given the collateral activity developed and the economic background of the present author I took the approach of a topic that includes aspects from both fields, namely “Corporate Social responsibility- optional or regulatory”. Through the paper I will try to summarize the pros and cons of regulation, mandatory of corporate social responsibility and to review, present the ways in which countries with advanced economies in European Union and the EU itself have addressed this issue.

The majority of Serbian population in 1941 was made of peasantry, and that fact did not change either in the period of the occupation, that is, until the end of the war. Serbian village had been emptied, from one part, by taking away of our master of houses in the slavery, but it changed its social image, from another part, thanks to the return of part of people from the towns into village due to bombing and expel of Serbs from other parts of Yugoslavia. Out of the agrarian character of Serbian society the importance of agriculture was coming out. The village coped with the burden of maintaining of other population of Serbia in towns, working class and other occupations. The importance of village is arising from the magazines, newspapers and radio broadcasts dedicated to village in the occupation-quisling's policy, first of all, due to the nutrition of military formation and pressures of the Germans to increase the export of agricultural products. Nedić's policy toward village could not succeed in the conditions of German-quisling's pillage of village and backward economy of Serbia in general.

What are the perspectives for the Central and Eastern European countries to join the eurozone in a not too distant future? Shortly the things are open. Some of the Maastricht criteriawould be more difficult to accomplish by several countries in this area in a short or mediumterm because the fiscal policy might be needed to support economic recovery. One possiblecourse of action would be that the European Central Bank financially supports the Centraland East European countries that really need this help, treating them as membres “defacto”of the euro zone. Considering the data presented we can say that the nominalconvergence with the European Union, concerning the emerging economies of Central andEastern Europe is well underway and it will continue for many years, given the gaps inmany of these countries.

Economic production and, more generally, most global societies, are overwhelmingly dependant upon depleting supplies of fossil fuels. There is considerable concern amongst resource scientists, if not most economists, as to whether market signals or cost benefit analysis based on today’s prices are sufficient to guide our decisions about our energy future. These suspicions and concerns were escalated during the oil price increase from 2005 – 2008 and the subsequent but probably related market collapse of 2008. We believe that Energy Return On Investment (EROI) analysis provides a useful approach for examining disadvantages and advantages of different fuels and also offers the possibility to look into the future in ways that markets seem unable to do. The goal of this paper is to review the application of EROI theory to both natural and economic realms, and to assess preliminarily the minimum EROI that a society must attain from its energy exploitation to support continued economic activity and social function. In doing so we calculate herein a basic first attempt at the minimum EROI for current society and some of the consequences when that minimum is approached. The theory of the minimum EROI discussed here, which describes the somewhat obvious but nonetheless important idea that for any being or system to survive or grow it must gain substantially more energy than it uses in obtaining that energy, may be especially important. Thus any particular being or system must abide by a “Law of Minimum EROI”, which we calculate for both oil and corn-based ethanol as about 3:1 at the mine-mouth/farm-gate. Since most biofuels have EROI’s of less than 3:1 they must be subsidized by fossil fuels to be useful.

The article focuses on the recent debate, about gift and the non-market economies, born especially around the new lecture of classical texts of Marcel Mauss and Karl Polanyi. The article is meant to show that the renewed interest is rooted in the contemporary crisis of relationships, of social ties, and in the effects of commodification of the utilitarian market economies. The theme of the gift is a narrative and theorethical tool to rethinking about the exchange and the social relationships throughout, both from the affective and private point of view than economical and collective too.

The article focuses on the recent debate, about gift and the non-market economies, born especially around the new lecture of classical texts of Marcel Mauss and Karl Polanyi. The article is meant to show that the renewed interest is rooted in the contemporary crisis of relationships, of social ties, and in the effects of commodification of the utilitarian market economies. The theme of the gift is a narrative and theorethical tool to rethinking about the exchange and the social relationships throughout, both from the affective and private point of view than economical and collective too.

The global carbon emissions budget over the next decades depends critically on the choices made by fast-growing emerging economies. Few studies exist, however, that develop country-specific energy system integration insights that can inform emerging economies in this decision-making process. High spatial- and temporal-resolution power system planning is central to evaluating decarbonization scenarios, but obtaining the required data and models can be cost prohibitive, especially for researchers in low, lower-middle income economies. Here, we use Nicaragua as a case study to highlight the importance of high-resolution open access data and modeling platforms to evaluate fuel-switching strategies and their resulting cost of power under realistic technology, policy, and cost scenarios (2014–2030). Our results suggest that Nicaragua could cost-effectively achieve a low-carbon grid (≥80%, based on non-large hydro renewable energy generation) by 2030 while also pursuing multiple development objectives. Regional cooperation (balancing) enables the highest wind and solar generation (18% and 3% by 2030, respectively), at the least cost (US$127 MWh ^−1 ). Potentially risky resources (geothermal and hydropower) raise system costs but do not significantly hinder decarbonization. Oil price sensitivity scenarios suggest renewable energy to be a more cost-effective long-term investment than fuel oil, even under the assumption of prevailing cheap oil prices. Nicaragua’s options illustrate the opportunities and challenges of power system decarbonization for emerging economies, and the key role that open access data and modeling platforms can play in helping develop low-carbon transition pathways.