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Photoelectrochemical (PEC) cells offer a promising method for producing green hydrogen through the splitting of water using solar energy. However, the cost‐effective synthesis of highly crystalline p‐type semiconductor materials for PEC cells remains a significant challenge for industrial applications. Herein, a CuInS2 photoelectrode is fabricated using a scalable and economical wet chemical spin‐coating technique. To enhance the crystallinity and photoelectrochemical activity of the photoelectrode, the grain size is precisely controlled by adjusting the atomic ratio, thickness, morphology, and Ag doping. Evaluating a novel growth mechanism of CuInS2 from Cu–In–O reveals that Ag doping significantly promotes grain growth. Consequently, the CuInS2 photocathode achieves one of the highest photoelectrochemical activities (−9.8 mA cm−2 at 0 VRHE) reported for CuInS2 photoelectrodes synthesized via wet chemical methods. Bias‐free water splitting is achieved using a CuInS2‐based photoelectrode in a photovoltaic–PEC cell configuration. These results highlight the potential of CuInS2, prepared through wet chemical methods, for cost‐effective photoelectrochemical water splitting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prominent chemical bath deposition (CBD) method leverages tin dioxide (SnO2) as an electron transport layer (ETL) in perovskite solar cells (PSCs), achieving exceptional efficiency. The deposition of SnO2, however, can lead to the formation of oxygen vacancies and surface defects, which subsequently contribute to performance challenges such as hysteresis and instability under light‐soaking conditions. To alleviate these issues, it is crucial to address heterointerface defects and ensure the uniform coverage of SnO2 on fluorine‐doped tin oxide substrates. Herein, the efficacy of tin(IV) chloride (SnCl4) post‐treatment in enhancing the properties of the SnO2‐ETL and the performances of PSCs are presented. The treatment with SnCl4 not only removes undesired agglomerated SnO2 nanoparticles from the surface of CBD SnO2 but also improves its crystallinity through a recrystallization process. This leads to an optimized interface between the SnO2‐ETL and perovskite, effectively minimizing defects while promoting efficient electron transport. The resultant PSCs demonstrate improved performance, achieving an efficiency of 25.56% (certified with 24.92%), while retaining 95.84% of the initial PCE under ambient storage conditions. Additionally, PSCs treated with SnCl4 endure prolonged light‐soaking tests, particularly when subjected to quasi‐steady‐state‐IV measurements. This highlights the potential of SnCl4 treatment as a promising strategy for advancing PSC technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multimodal emotion recognition has emerged as a promising approach to capture the complex nature of human emotions by integrating information from various sources such as physiological signals, visual behavioral cues, and audio-visual content. However, current methods often struggle with effectively processing redundant or conflicting information across modalities and may overlook implicit inter-modal correlations. To address these challenges, this paper presents a novel multimodal emotion recognition framework which integrates audio-visual features with viewers' EEG data to enhance emotion classification accuracy. The proposed approach employs modality-specific encoders to extract spatiotemporal features, which are then aligned through contrastive learning to capture inter-modal relationships. Additionally, cross-modal attention mechanisms are incorporated for effective feature fusion across modalities. The framework, comprising pre-training, fine-tuning, and testing phases, is evaluated on multiple datasets of emotional responses. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed multimodal approach, which combines audio-visual features with EEG data, is highly effective in recognizing emotions, highlighting its potential for advancing emotion recognition systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electrochemical water splitting offers an advancing approach to producing highly pure hydrogen and oxygen, motivated by the prevalence of a low‐carbon economy and the goal of a sustainable future. The customized modulation of electronic structures enables the electrocatalyst to directionally promote hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER), which is a promising shortcut to overall water splitting (OWS). Herein, 3D homologous WSeS/CoSeS heterojunction nanoarrays (WSeS/CoSeS NAs) and W‐doped CoSeS nanoarrays (W‐CoSeS NAs) are investigated. Abundant heterointerfaces within WSeS/CoSeS NAs facilitate HER kinetics, boosting mass diffusivity, and increasing carrier separation and transfer process. High‐valence W6+ doping into CoSeS prevents phase separation and stabilizes Co sites by charge offset effect, leading to enhanced OER. Consequently, the WSeS/CoSeS NAs and W‐CoSeS NAs reach 10 mA cm−2 at an overpotential of 43.8 and 233.3 mV in 1.0 m KOH electrolyte for HER and OER, respectively. Moreover, when asymmetrically engaged as an electrolyzer, this configuration exhibits extraordinary electrocatalytic performances (cell voltage of 1.51 V at 10 mA cm−2) with satisfying stability and mechanical robustness (over 1000 h at 1000 mA cm−2). The modulation and manufacture of reaction‐property‐oriented materials are experimentally and theoretically validated potential, illuminating the light of inspiration for multiple applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Object detection in maritime environments is a challenging problem because of the continuously changing background and moving objects resulting in shearing, occlusion, noise, etc. Unluckily, this problem is of critical importance since such failure may result in significant loss of human lives and economic loss. The available object detection methods rely on radar and sonar sensors. Even with the advances in electro-optical sensors, their employment in maritime object detection is rarely considered. The proposed research aims to employ both electro-optical and near-infrared sensors for effective maritime object detection. For this, dedicated deep learning detection models are trained on electro-optical and near-infrared (NIR) sensor datasets. For this, (ResNet-50, ResNet-101, and SSD MobileNet) are utilized in both electro-optical and near-infrared space. Then, dedicated ensemble classifications are constructed on each collection of base learners from electro-optical and near-infrared spaces. After this, decisions about object detection from these spaces are combined using logical-disjunction-based final ensemble classification. This strategy is utilized to reduce false negatives effectively. To evaluate the performance of the proposed methodology, the publicly available standard Singapore Maritime Dataset is used and the results show that the proposed methodology outperforms the contemporary maritime object detection techniques with a significantly improved mean average precision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In global P2P accommodation platform operations, hosts can experience severe stress from the platform company, customers, and technological complexity. Applying sociotechnical theory, this study aims to explore platform stress in the sharing economy and verify the stressor-strain-outcome (SSO) framework. A survey of Airbnb hosts demonstrates that 'conflict with headquarters,' 'negative reviews from customers,' and 'technological complexity' influence the 'strain' of hosts. Furthermore, we verify the role of firm performance that negatively affects switching intention. It also serves as a moderator in the relationship between strain and switching intention. Focusing on platform stress, this study evaluates the concept and definition of platform stress and provides useful insights for platform business operators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highly active Ir electrocatalysts based on ultralow loading for proton exchange membrane water electrolysis (PEMWE) applications are desirable to achieve gigawatt production levels. However, no clear direction has been developed yet to achieve that scale. Here, newly‐synthesized Ir‐based jagged nanotubes (J‐IrNTs) with the ultrahigh electrode performance of 10 A mgIr−1 at 1.6 V in a PEMWE cell at Ir loadings as low as 0.05 mgIr cm−2 are reported, outperforming previously reported Ir‐based electrocatalysts. The Ir‐JrNT also exhibits only marginal degradation in stability tests. Notably, the resulting electrode of Ir‐JrNT provides enhanced intrinsic catalytic activity and high surface area for efficient electrocatalysis, with hierarchical branching composed of interconnected multiscale channels and highly corrugated surface textures, for facile mass transport. The findings demonstrate that the jagged nanotubular structure is a promising approach for overcoming the limitations associated with Ir‐based electrocatalysts and developing sustainable advanced PEMWE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ASEAN Community-based Tourism (CBT) Standard was adopted by 10 ASEAN member states in 2016 in order to collectively promote the ASEAN region as a competitive and sustainable community-based tourism destination and to enhance sustainable tourism provision through ASEAN criteria. Among the ten ASEAN member states, Lao PDR (Laos) has a unique CBT development experience through collaboration with various international development agencies that started in 1999. Such a history brought about issues when the ASEAN CBT Standard was implemented at the provincial and district levels in Laos, including the concerns of related communities on the ASEAN CBT Standard not being easily applicable considering the state of tourism development. While the adoption and application of the regional standard called the ASEAN CBT Standard is a significant collective enforcement involving the tourism industries in ASEAN, there has been a lack of studies regarding the dynamics of the implementation of regional tourism standards at the national level. In order to fill this research gap, this study utilized in-depth interviews with seven executives with significant experiences from the government, international development agency, international organization, and private sectors. Interviewees give a diversity of perspectives on the enabling factors and challenges in implementing the ASEAN CBT Standard at the national level (focusing on Laos), which showed the complexity of CBT dynamics and necessity of good governance. The results also revealed how regional standards can be further recognized, promoted, sustainable to the key stakeholders of the Laos tourism industry, better accepted and utilized by end users, and possibly better customized according to the local circumstances for sustainable tourism development. The findings of this study evidence that collaboration among key stakeholders and the expected roles of these stakeholders are critical when implementing the ASEAN CBT Standard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Future scientists in engineering fields are expected, and even demanded, to be creative and innovative. Longitudinal studies pertaining to how creativity and academic achievement grow and develop over time remain limited. Purpose: This study examines (a) relationships between the creative potential of first-year engineering students and their graduation grades as well as between the creative potential and graduation grades in nonmajor liberal arts courses, (b) the role of gender in creative potential, and (c) changes in creative potential after 4 years of college life. Method: In this exploratory study, the participants included 57 students from an engineering college in Korea. Data were first collected from 90 first-year engineering students in August 2013. More than 4 years later in October 2017, 57 of these students were contacted again for follow-up. Results: A positive relationship was found between the creative potential of engineering students and their academic achievement. Female students exhibited higher creative potential scores than the male students at both time points. Creative potential increased after 4 years, particularly in total creativity score, fluency, and originality. Conclusions: The findings from this study are different from the findings of Western engineering schools in their depiction of a positive relationship between creative potential and grades. This study indicated the possibility of developing creative potential even in adulthood. However, the results should be carefully interpreted not only because of the small sample size but also because of limitations of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking.