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The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected the employee lifecycle management (ELM) sphere, leading to the adoption of new human resource (HR) technologies and policies. This study investigates the impact of megatrends, artificial intelligence, digital technologies, and innovation on ELM and human resource management (HRM) policies in China, Russia, and Indonesia. Data were collected through structured interviews and publicly available information from companies in these countries between 2021 and 2022. The study evaluates the effects of artificial intelligence (AI), digital transformation (DT), and innovations on the sustainable development of ELM and identifies differences in technological responses to ELM in companies depending on their level of digital maturity. The results show that the majority of companies have continued the process of ELM digital transformation, but the percentage varies based on the scope of activity, labor, and readiness of the country to implement new technologies. The study reveals that large companies in each analyzed country with over 10,000 employees have a greater need and opportunity to implement HR digital transformation, whereas small companies with up to 100 people can operate without automation. In addition, the findings of this study provide propositions for designing how AI and innovations contribute to ELM. This article contributes to the current debate in the literature by substantiating the positive impact of AI, digital technology, and innovation on ELM and HRM strategies, offering practical applications for companies to improve productivity. Overall, this study highlights the importance of adopting innovative HR technologies in response to global challenges and workplace trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We should rethink individual and collective positions that promote and sustain the health of the planet and people in an era of increasing uncertainty and unpredictability concerning various threats to our lives and the livelihoods of all living species on Earth. This fundamental rethink is a prerequisite before radical societal change is implemented to respond more effectively to persistent global problems than numerous ineffective responses during the last 50 years. Our positionality, which defines and is mutually defined by fundamental values and worldviews, will influence how we anticipate or discount the risk and threats to our common future. This contribution follows a period of documentary research and personal reflections at the Ecumenical Institute at the Château de Bossey, in Switzerland. The aim was to reconsider a global, conceptual framework that acknowledges pluralism and includes an ecumenic and ecological interpretation of people–environment interrelations. Given that ecumene, economy, and ecology have the same linguistic roots in ancient Greek philosophy, combining them with core principles of human ecology creates an inclusive and wholistic framework for repositioning ourselves using eco-ethical principles and equitable and just values in a world of persistent problems that threaten life on Earth. This repositioning can begin by reconnecting children and adults with natural ecosystems, and three approaches currently applied are included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces how the self-understanding of soil science has changed in relation to ideas of societal relevance and academic legitimacy. While soil science was established as an academic discipline with strong links to agriculture, this link was largely lost around 1980. This led to a perceived crisis of the discipline, which has been followed by a long process of redefining its self-understanding. Building on document analysis and qualitative interviews, this paper traces five ways in which soil scientists have re-articulated the relevance of soil science, and analyses if and how these re-articulations are linked to new kinds of research practices and new self-understandings of soil science as a discipline. We conceptualise these re-articulations of relevance as different epistemic commitments that have provided soil scientists with a repertoire of relating their research to societal and environmental problems. At the same time, we also highlight how this epistemic diversity has created tensions in the discipline's self-understanding. Related to recent calls to further integrate different kinds of soil-related knowledge, we argue that these tensions still need to be turned into productive interaction to create synergy instead of competition between different ways of articulating relevance—allowing different kinds of soil-related research to thrive, both in their distinct regimes of relevance, and in a fruitful co-production. This paper shows that studies of how ways of articulating relevance change over time can provide new insights to debates about what conditions support science in gaining societal relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world is in a period of rapid change. Climate chaos is leading to floods, droughts and exacerbating inequality. In this article, we ask, in such a context, what is the role of mathematics education and, in particular, what can mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) do in supporting teachers to respond to global challenges, and the associated injustices, within their mathematics classrooms? We review work done within critical mathematics education and develop a model for reflection on the role of the MTE. We report on work taking place in one university in the UK where, since 2015, MTEs have been encouraging teachers to address global issues in their classrooms. One role which has emerged for an MTE is in supporting the translation of scientific work on climate change into classroom tasks. In England, the spaces for such work are being squeezed in an education system increasingly subject to conservative political forces. We conclude the article by considering possibilities for MTEs to provoke a generic questioning of assumptions, which we argue is possible even within such constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article ambitions to be an essay on possible answers to the respective interrogation through metaphorical lens monitoring the traces and trajectories of meanderings in the realm of foreign policies and diplomatic actions as being undertaken on MENA's extensive geopolitical space, as well as internal evolutions in the Middle East's states. Practically, the compound of glosses structuring and giving substance to the present paper are aiming at introducing in the narratives on the region of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) the expression cum metaphor meandering. Used in this dual hypostasis, we see meandering as rather capable to shed the necessary and intensive light on critical and relevant aspects with regard to the present journey of MENA amidst its ever numerous and diverse national, regional, and global challenges, as spread on a wide span, from internal challenges related, among other critical factors, to the reality that its inhabitants "Live in a Highly Authoritarian Region"1, to challenges originating outside but strongly impacting on MENA too, as the presentday Russia's war against the sovereign and independent Ukraine, or, equally currently, the less fortunate global geopolitical background nurtured by the weakening, up to annihilation, of the rules-based (liberal) international order. Mirroring the realities "on the ground" with regard to our subjectmatter, this essay is structured into rather numerous chapters, each with its own title and sub-title, as closer bearing witness to the meanderings in the MENA's realm of countries' internal trends, plus foreign policies and diplomacies. Undoubtedly, other interested fellow analysts could further finesse our present approach, which hopefully would remain known as a pioneering work2. Of course, one should also be aware of the magisterial verse wrote on Pioneers by Walt Whitman: "We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson, Pioneers! O Pioneers!"3 Only that, in this case per se there is a fundamental stimulus to embarking on the proposed endeavouring, one related to the very essence and sourcing of meandering: "History does not follow a straight line, and we forget this at our peril."4 Particularly, "in my own experience, in the Middle East, history rarely moved in a straight line."5 Eventually, this entire hopefully inciting background was intended to make easier the start of our very narrative, letting also "the door" open to including, here and there, some iconoclastic assertions and assessments, if useful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interrogates the opportunities and challenges of a borderless curriculum as the alternative to reimagine a better future premised on initial teacher education. The paper comes against the background that curriculum projects remain nationalised, depriving learners and educators of an opportunity to learn from the best educational practices outside their borders. The paper is located in posthumanism, where a borderless curriculum through technology can be positioned to respond positively to human tragedies such as war, systematic racism, human trafficking and conflict. Borderless curriculum involves unlearning in order to learn by harvesting best practices across borders to reimagine a comprehensive initial teacher education that addresses the lived realities of the learners globally. The paper argues that the posthuman era provides a platform for nations to share knowledge in the virtual and blended space to deconstruct prejudices while evoking living and working together across curriculum and spaces to improve initial teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizen science is currently at the forefront of environmental scientific research and public policy for its potential to improve environmental governance, restore epistemic trust and help address some of the most stressing environmental challenges. Although citizen science is gaining increasing popularity, there is little empirical evidence to support these claims and demonstrate how bottom-up citizen science shapes public trust in environmental governance and science. In this paper we reflect on three grassroot environmental citizen science initiatives in Cameroon, Japan, and the UK to identify and present an instrumental framework which includes trustee attributes and conditions that influence how epistemic trust is shaped, and which should inform citizen science and other participatory practices. We explain that citizen science is an approach which enables political processes through the construction of well-informed techno-scientific arguments, which expose deficit assumptions about the public's ability to participate in knowledge co-production process. To avoid repeating the failures of the past and risk amplifying issues of public distrust further, we provide suggestions built around key trustee attributes which can be incorporated in citizen science practices and we urge that environmental policy needs to create clear policy frameworks to enable the generation of actionable data, especially when such approaches are initiated and implemented as instrumental public participation methods. • Citizen Science is increasingly utilised in environmental research and policy. • As a knowledge co-production mechanism has the potential to restore epistemic trust. • Restoring epistemic trust is essential for addressing environmental challenges. • We identify key cognitive and affective trustee attributes to improve trust through CS. • We stress that if these are ignored CS will erode public trust further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Progress in key social-ecological challenges of the global environmental agenda (e.g., climate change, biodiversity conservation, Sustainable Development Goals) is hampered by a lack of integration and synthesis of existing scientific evidence. Facing a fast-increasing volume of data, information remains compartmentalized to pre-defined scales and fields, rarely building its way up to collective knowledge. Today's distributed corpus of human intelligence, including the scientific publication system, cannot be exploited with the efficiency needed to meet current evidence synthesis challenges; computer-based intelligence could assist this task. Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based approaches underlain by semantics and machine reasoning offer a constructive way forward, but depend on greater understanding of these technologies by the science and policy communities and coordination of their use. By labelling web-based scientific information to become readable by both humans and computers, machines can search, organize, reuse, combine and synthesize information quickly and in novel ways. Modern open science infrastructure—i.e., public data and model repositories—is a useful starting point, but without shared semantics and common standards for machine actionable data and models, our collective ability to build, grow, and share a collective knowledge base will remain limited. The application of semantic and machine reasoning technologies by a broad community of scientists and decision makers will favour open synthesis to contribute and reuse knowledge and apply it toward decision making.

Global challenges such as climate change, food security, or public health have become dominant concerns in research and innovation policy. This article examines how responses to these challenges are addressed by governance actors. We argue that appeals to global challenges can give rise to a ‘solution strategy' that presents responses of dominant actors as solutions and a ‘negotiation strategy' that highlights the availability of heterogeneous and often conflicting responses. On the basis of interviews and document analyses, the study identifies both strategies across local, national, and European levels. While our results demonstrate the co-existence of both strategies, we find that global challenges are most commonly highlighted together with the solutions offered by dominant actors. Global challenges are ‘wicked problems' that often become misframed as ‘tame problems’ in governance practice and thereby legitimise dominant responses.

The world is in a period of rapid change. Climate chaos is leading to floods, droughts and exacerbating inequality. In this article, we ask, in such a context, what is the role of mathematics education and, in particular, what can mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) do in supporting teachers to respond to global challenges, and the associated injustices, within their mathematics classrooms? We review work done within critical mathematics education and develop a model for reflection on the role of the MTE. We report on work taking place in one university in the UK where, since 2015, MTEs have been encouraging teachers to address global issues in their classrooms. One role which has emerged for an MTE is in supporting the translation of scientific work on climate change into classroom tasks. In England, the spaces for such work are being squeezed in an education system increasingly subject to conservative political forces. We conclude the article by considering possibilities for MTEs to provoke a generic questioning of assumptions, which we argue is possible even within such constraints.

The health and well-being of children is paramount to health and well-being of society and is the foundation of health and well-being later in life. This paper presents the perspective that a complex systems approach that embeds implementation science is needed to address the rising challenges to child health and well-being in this decade (2020–2030) and beyond. Reflection on facilitators of the success of programs deemed promising to address child health and well-being in the past decade (2010–2020) is presented, to advance programs to address children’s health and well-being. A priority that needs to be addressed is developing, testing and using theories of child and family health and well-being (and related initiatives) that can be used to build on existing successes to make progress. Understanding context including further elucidating the drivers of child health and well-being at multiple levels of relevant systems (e.g., health, education, community) across the life course, and considering implications for caregivers also require greater consideration. Methods to address future challenges to child health and well-being include co-designing initiatives that support child health and well-being with children and families themselves rather than using predesigned initiatives, thoughtful outcome selection, and reporting the challenges of implementing future programs to promote learning. The approaches, priorities and methods presented can be used to design or refine interventions, models or care or community-based initiatives and provide new direction to fields of child health enquiry.

On the 27th and the 28th of October (2022), the 11th Edition of the International Colloquium of Social Sciences and Communication (ACUM 2022) and the Romanian Sociologists’ Society National Conference took place in Brașov. The event was jointly organized by the Faculty of Sociology and Communication at the Transylvania University of Braşov together with the Romanian Sociologists’ Society. Thus, two biennial scientific events were merged: the 11th edition of the international conference in social sciences and the national congress of the Romanian Sociologists Society. Over 110 papers were presented during the conference.

Transboundary challenges such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, energy transformation and the Covid-19 pandemic put vast pressures on generating solutions. They also call for updated teaching providing the required capabilities for international business (IB) and -entrepreneurship (IE) students. This paper presents a teaching initiative supporting master's students to develop an overview of such contemporary and timely challenges and global concerns. The course, developed jointly by two universities and first administered in 2020 at LUT University, combines economic, social, and environmental sustainability aspects with managerial and entrepreneurial issues on IB, triggering the students to rethink and critically address ways forward. Students develop skills and competences to tackle complex real-life problems in collaboration with others, facilitating their entrepreneurial, global mind-set and sensitivity to cultural issues in IB. Thus, the presented teaching approach and course initiative contributes to theory and practice of teaching IB, by presenting how key challenges in contemporary IB can be incorporated in international business education of universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of researching the problem is due to the growing processes of world globalization, in the conditions of which the issue of effective development of higher education has gained special relevance. Thus, the global processes taking place in the world over the past 30 years drew attention to the problems of education and proved their direct impact on the economic situation in the middle of European countries. It was established that the reaction of European countries to the world’s dynamic changes caused by global challenges was the modernization of national higher education systems and the creation of the European Higher Education Area. This is primarily related to the search for mechanisms to improve the quality of higher education and scientific research in European universities, the need for the formation of high-quality human capital and the achievement of the strategic goal of forming a «Europe of knowledge», which articulates, among others, high requirements for the level of qualifications of employees. It was established that the development of the European area of higher education has become one of the directions of modernization of the European educational system and the most successful project of the EU since its creation. It is shown that the key role in the formation of a common educational space belongs to the decisions made within the framework of the Bologna process, which determined the main trends in the further development of education and the countries of Europe and activated the beginning of the movement of national educational systems towards unified criteria and standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lithium‐ion batteries (LIBs) are regarded to be the most promising electrochemical energy storage device for portable electronics as well as electrical vehicles. However, due to their limited‐service life, tons of spent LIBs are expected to be produced in the recent years. Suitable recycling technology is therefore becoming more and more important as improper treatment of spent LIBs, especially the aged organic electrolyte, can cause severe environmental pollution and threats to human health. The organic solvents and high concentration of lithium salts in aged electrolytes are always sensitive toward water and air, which would easily hydrolyze and decompose into toxic fluorine‐containing compounds, leading to severe fluorine pollution of the surrounding environment. Hence, recycling aged electrolytes from spent LIBs is an efficient way to avoid this potential risk to the environment. However, several issues inhibit the realization of electrolyte recycling, including the volatile, inflammable, and toxic nature of the electrolytes, the difficulty to extract electrolytes from the electrodes and separators, and various electrolyte compositions inside LIBs from different applications and companies. Herein, the current progress in recycling methods for aged electrolytes from spent LIBs is summarized and perspectives on future development of electrolyte recycling are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economies and the companies operating within them are currently facing numerous challenges and threats that are caused by the COVID-19 outbreak and recovery and are prolonged by the Ukraine–Russia crisis. Both have drastically changed the way companies operate. High-growth companies (HGCs) can be an important group because of their characteristics and can provide guidelines for efficiently addressing these challenges and creating new opportunities. Our research contributes to this field, as the objective of the article is to find out whether the global challenges (i.e., the COVID-19 and Ukraine–Russia crisis) lead to a difference in the strength of the influence between the analyzed determinants—the growth factors of HGCs. For this purpose, a structural model equation (SEM) was applied and a multigroup analysis between the two data sets (before and during the global challenges) was performed on the pooled sample of n = 242 HGCs from the Republic of Slovenia. The results showed some statistically significant differences that can be explained by the time perspective and possibly by the influence of global challenges. Thus, this paper makes an important contribution to science, as a reassessment of the theories and implicit assumptions in current research is needed due to global challenges. It is also useful for policy makers who want to consider the impact of recent global challenges in their policy recommendations and for HGCs seeking sustainable high growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the longstanding debate over how to characterize the EU as a global actor, knowledge is conspicuously missing. We introduce the term Knowledge Power Europe to emphasize the importance of knowledge for the EU's foreign policy efforts, particularly as they relate to addressing the urgent and complex global challenges that have become central to the EU's global strategy. Conceptually, we show how considering the EU as a knowledge power can help overcome the limitations of other EU power concepts, and empirically, we justify our characterization by providing evidence of the use and role of knowledge in terms of what the EU is, says, and does. We conclude by discussing how a knowledge power approach can help advance an understanding of the EU's capacity for global leadership and power in global governance efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the bureaucratic processes required to establish and manage a single international capacity‐development project that brought together a funding council (AHRC), UK University (SOAS University of London) and universities and other research organisations in Myanmar and Ethiopia. Drawing from ethnographic critiques of the planning and audit practices employed in international development and in the UK University sector, we track the formal certification of partnership as enacted through due diligence and contracts, budgets and timeframes, and reconciliations and reporting. These practices point to pervasive assumptions about capacity transfer and the unequal basis of international research coalitions spanning the Global North and Global South. In this article, we challenge these assumptions by documenting how the allocation of capacity is constrained in hierarchies of time and space. For equitable partnership arrangements to be achieved, we recommend that capacity development be considered a long‐term exchange that flows from mutual reflection and learning from one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accountant's timely response to challenges is not only a guarantee of the survival and development of the profession itself but also a matter of the effective functioning of the economic system as a whole. Today, the methodical patterns of the accountant's daily work are changing, responding to the social, informational, and digital transformations of the economic environment caused by global challenges and the introduction of innovative technologies. In this case the accountant's functions can also transform and change. The article aims to determine the actual functions of the accountant and establish the essence of the influence of global challenges on them. Based on the analysis of approaches to the interpretation of accounting functions by Ukrainian and foreign scientists, a connection between accounting functions and the functions of an accountant was established. It was found that the accountant's role in the enterprise management system is represented by six functions: organization, communication, accounting, control, analytics, forecasting and planning. The accountant's functions do not exist separately but are in close interaction with each other and are divided into levels: Level 0 - system-forming functions; Level 1 - basic functions; Level 2 - management functions. It was found that accounting functions are affected by four groups of global challenges (technological, economic, political, and social). The consequences of such influence are as follows: an increase in the specific weight and value of professional judgment due to the automation of standard processes; the need to implement a more flexible and individualized work organization; the need to find competitive advantages in the global market; expanding the radius and increasing the speed of communication; increasing relevance of cooperation and communication within the professional social movement; separation of software control; expanding the number of factors to be considered; stimulation of increased planning flexibility; the need to work with nonfinancial indicators; the need to be able to react to unforeseen circumstances quickly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Climate change and related environmental events represent major global challenges and are often accompanied by the spread of misinformation on social media. According to previous reviews, the dissemination of this misinformation on various social media platforms requires deeper exploration. Moreover, the findings reported applied mainly to the context of the United States, limiting the possibility of extending the results to other settings., Objective: This study aims to assess the current state of knowledge about misinformation concerning climate change and related environmental events that are circulating on social media. More specifically, we will explore past and current themes, actors, and sources, and the dissemination of this misinformation within the Canadian context., Methods: This scoping review protocol follows the methodological approach developed by Arksey and O'Malley and advanced by Levac, complemented by the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews) checklist and the best practice guidance for the development of scoping review protocols. Following the identification of the research questions and assisted by a specialized librarian, we developed search strategies for selected bibliographic databases (MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science, and GreenFILE) and for gray literature (Google and pertinent databases) searches. Bibliographic and gray literature will be searched to identify relevant publications. In total, 2 members of our team will use the review software Covidence (Veritas Health Innovation) to independently select publications to include in the review. Publications specifically addressing our research questions, peer-reviewed, evidence-based, and published from January 1, 2000, in the full-text version in English or French will be included. Data will be extracted from the included publications to chart, among other items, the years of publication, geographic areas, themes, actors, and sources of the climate change-related misinformation and conclusions reported. Our team will then synthesize the extracted data to articulate the current state of knowledge relating to our research inquiries., Results: The research questions were identified in January 2024. The search strategies were developed from January to March 2024 for MEDLINE, Embase, and Web of Science and in July 2024 for GreenFILE and gray literature. MEDLINE, Embase, and Web of Science searches were launched on March 26, 2024. The first of 2 rounds of selection of publications identified through these databases was achieved in April 2024., Conclusions: This protocol will enable us to identify the evolution of themes, actors, and sources of misinformation regarding climate change and related environmental events on social media, including the latest platforms, and to potentially identify a context particular to Canada. As misinformation is known to undermine actions and public support in the fight against climate change, we intend to facilitate the targeting of efforts to combat misinformation related to climate change in an up-to-date and contextualized manner., International Registered Report Identifier (irrid): DERR1-10.2196/59345., (©Maryline Vivion, Valérie Trottier, Ève Bouhêlier, Isabelle Goupil-Sormany, Thierno Diallo. Originally published in JMIR Research Protocols (https://www.researchprotocols.org), 31.10.2024.)

In the context of Global Goals (without poverty, zero hunger, health and well-being, quality education, gender equality, clean water and sanitations, clean and affordable energy, decent work and economic growth, industry, innovation and infrastructure, reducing inequalities, sustainable cities and communities, responsible consumption and production, climate action, aquatic life, earth life, peace, justice and efficient institutions, partenerships for achieving the objectives) it is important to join the fight to achieve these goals, advocating for the Right to a Healthy Environment. In my article I will try to analyze the way in which various institutional arrangements regarding the current climate crisis can have a pozitive impact on the environment and society.

Our present and our future are determined by massive global challenges. While the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 attempts a global answer to cope with these challenges, schooling in general and Geography teaching in particular, have to find answers for how to deal with challenges such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, water scarcity, poverty or migration. Historically, a mainly problem-oriented teaching approach shaped the learning settings on these topics, with most of the lesson time dedicated to the problem. A solution-focused teaching approach, presented here, makes the solution the main focus in terms of time, thoughts, creativity and discussion, without neglecting the challenges. This approach considers principles of Education for Sustainable Development and contributes extensively to the key competences it strives for. By means of concrete examples from Germany and India and suitable elements such as ‘stories of change’, this paper explains and reflects on this innovative teaching approach.

The energy and its entire related infrastructure are the main drivers for a economic development and for ensuring a good level of employment. As part of a global study about international energy sector, we evaluate here the impact of technological changes on the state of the energy infrastructure. This study includes a detailed analysis of the global challenges facing the energy industry. We propose scenarios for the development of a modernized energy infrastructure with an assessment of the entire energy system. Our evaluation indicators are chosen in terms of the reliability of the energy infrastructure, of its quality, of the accidents that may happen and of the consequent environmental risks. This study is particularly adapted for forecasting the necessary measures (of technical nature, of governance kind) that have to be implemented to reduce the acceleration of the infrastructure deterioration rate. Our results reveal that the use of digital and information technologies has many positive impacts on the development and on the control of an efficient consumption of energy. In addition, our predictions, due to the further modernization of the energy sector, can contribute and help in the creation of preconditions that will be highly stimulating and profitable to the growth of investments in the energy infrastructure.

In the context of global challenges, the issue of modification of mechanisms of socio-economic interaction of economic entities, the search for a new, innovative mechanism of interaction of economic entities during socio-behavioral restrictions becomes actualized. The article is aimed at analyzing the process-based socio-economic interaction of industrial economic entities, which involves a study of the subject composition, interaction options and desired results during the implementation of various business processes by industrial economic entities. The main features of socio-economic interaction, as well as the list of entities of socio-economic interaction of industrial enterprises are presented. It is proposed to consider the socio-economic interaction of industrial economic entities within business processes, since each business process is characterized by its subject composition, intensity of interaction, place of implementation, direction of interaction, etc. Differentiation of interaction within business processes will allow to identify its features and options of influence, and determining further on the impact of global challenges on each business process will make it possible to adjust the results of interaction between entities depending on scenarios of global challenges and offer a selective strategy for mutual coordination of actions of economic entities directed towards counteracting global challenges. In the terms of further research, it is planned to determine the degree of interaction of various entities with the enterprise, namely: suppliers, consumers, competitors, the State (direction and strength of regulation, control, assistance to the enterprise, the possibility and instruments of the enterprise’s influence on the decisions of the authorities), etc., as well as define the nature of the change of entities, options and composition of interaction under the influence of global challenges and analyze the communicative aspects of interaction of entities.

In recent decades, the growing awareness of the exhaustibility of our planet’s resources has placed sustainability at the centre of current global policies that, to cope with the complex international situation, have set goals for sustainable development, promoting actions that provide ecological, digital and social innovation. The increasing contamination of digital technology in the urban context has led to reflections on urban reformulation processes and innovative actions promoting the global transition process. The new urban and territorial approach is moving towards a new paradigm of integration between artificial and natural, technology and sustainability, digital and ecology. Testimony to this transition is the transdisciplinary approach in the design and experimentation of the international practice of Carlo Ratti Associati (CRA).

Abstract Lithium‐ion batteries (LIBs) are regarded to be the most promising electrochemical energy storage device for portable electronics as well as electrical vehicles. However, due to their limited‐service life, tons of spent LIBs are expected to be produced in the recent years. Suitable recycling technology is therefore becoming more and more important as improper treatment of spent LIBs, especially the aged organic electrolyte, can cause severe environmental pollution and threats to human health. The organic solvents and high concentration of lithium salts in aged electrolytes are always sensitive toward water and air, which would easily hydrolyze and decompose into toxic fluorine‐containing compounds, leading to severe fluorine pollution of the surrounding environment. Hence, recycling aged electrolytes from spent LIBs is an efficient way to avoid this potential risk to the environment. However, several issues inhibit the realization of electrolyte recycling, including the volatile, inflammable, and toxic nature of the electrolytes, the difficulty to extract electrolytes from the electrodes and separators, and various electrolyte compositions inside LIBs from different applications and companies. Herein, the current progress in recycling methods for aged electrolytes from spent LIBs is summarized and perspectives on future development of electrolyte recycling are presented.

There is a wide consensus that bioeconomy must be sustainable, circular, respect the ecological boundaries of the planet and be economically viable. These concepts have been mostly generated by the European Union in the early years of this century. This article outlines some of the critical stages that allowed the bioeconomy concept to evolve in the European Union (EU), led by the inspiring personality and leadership of Christian Patermann. In the second part, the authors put forward some challenges, triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic and by the increasing geopolitical instability, that bioeconomy should take on board and discuss among stakeholders. These discussions are expected to develop evolving strategies able to adapt to the changing needs and circumstances of our word.

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Crises and global challenges are pervasive in contemporary politics and societies worldwide. Climate change, economic recessions, humanitarian crises, health emergencies, wars and international conflicts put tremendous pressure on the functioning of democratic political systems and other government models. This study is located in the special issue for the 25th anniversary of the British Journal of Politics and International Relations. Leveraging an original longitudinal dataset covering more than 700 governments and 400 elections in 21 democracies dating back to the 1940s, we show that completing the constitutionally mandated term is increasingly difficult for ruling parties in Western Europe. Short-termism raises serious questions about democratic governments’ ability to manage global challenges effectively. Considering the potentially detrimental consequences of short-termism, we contribute to the scientific examination of the politics of global challenges, shedding light on effective and ineffective management strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The World Future Day is a 24-h round-the-world global conversation about the futures and represents a new kind of futures method. Launched for the first time by the Millennium Project in 2014, it is an open large-scale global participatory discussion among self-selected future-oriented people from around the world. The work introduces the main characteristics of the WFD method, the protocol of analysis, first considerations about its strengths and weaknesses, and the main results of the 2021 application on March 1. The results are reported in form of suggestions and solutions aggregated in clusters and macro-clusters related to some of the global challenges facing humanity and set a common agenda for further discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the normative promise of recognition theory in International Relations has become increasingly inadequate to the cross-cutting and intersecting issues characteristic of a globalised and fragmented world. Engaging in critical readings of cosmopolitan forms of recognition theory, the critique of sovereignty and Markell's influential critique of recognition theory, I suggest that the increasing ontological specificity of recognition theory in IR has come at the expense of its ability to develop links between different areas of international politics. The result is a failure to deal with recognition's simultaneity, or the co-existence of analytically distinct and internally coherent recognition orders that is characteristic of the international. Building on this insight, I argue that a more historically-sensitive and materialist approach to recognition can be grounded in the concept of multiplicity. By opening recognition up to processes of interaction, and not merely reproduction, multiplicity frames the international more clearly as a historical presupposition, rather than a limit, of recognition. Furthermore, placing recognition struggles within the state, international institutions or transnational movements in relation to each other ensures that IR can contribute to the further development of recognition theory by situating recognition struggles at the intersection of different moral geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The entire world has been suffering from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic since March 11, 2020. More than a year later, the COVID‐19 vaccination brought hope to control this viral pandemic. Here, we review the unknowns of the COVID‐19 vaccination, such as its longevity, asymptomatic spread, long‐term side effects, and its efficacy on immunocompromised patients. In addition, we discuss challenges associated with the COVID‐19 vaccination, such as the global access and distribution of vaccine doses, adherence to hygiene guidelines after vaccination, the emergence of novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) variants, and vaccine resistance. Despite all these challenges and the fact that the end of the COVID‐19 pandemic is still unclear, vaccines have brought great hope for the world, with several reports indicating a significant decline in the risk of COVID19‐related infection and hospitalizations. Highlights: 1.Vaccination plays a pivotal role in reducing the death toll of the COVID‐19 infection.2.The immunity provided by vaccines is still disputable leading to some challenges like the asymptomatic spread; therefore, staying strict to hygiene guidelines is necessary.3.Hence, COVID‐19 vaccines' related long‐term side effects are still unknown; cautions should be taken when injected to various individuals of the community.4.COVID‐19 vaccines' effectiveness are strongly related to their effect on emergent COVID‐19 variants, but until now approved vaccines can still show some protective effects against new variants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The acceleration of science and technology development and the expansion of international communications in the twenty-first century have presented the world with numerous complexities and uncertainties in terms of global, regional, and national governance and policymaking. The Millennium Project identified the most significant challenges facing the millennium and their long-term prospects, as well as provided solutions to incorporate these perspectives into decision-making through the use of futures studies and broad participation of futurists and researchers. The Millennium Project's 15 global challenges are briefly discussed in this paper, utilizing previous studies (mostly published by the Millennium Project) and a descriptive-analytical research method. It first discusses the benefits of foresight in decision making. The strategies and activities proposed by global experts to integrate global perspectives and foresight with global decision making will then be reported based on the Millennium Project results. Finally, after reporting on some countries' efforts to integrate foresight and decision making, some suggestions for how to link foresight and long-term perspectives with policy making in Iran are made. The findings of this paper can leverage incorporation of foresight into policy formulation and governance, as well as develop what is referred to as 'anticipatory governance' for Iran's context.