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Alcohol consumption represents a widespread behavior with detrimental effects on both individuals and society. Understanding the factors influencing offspring alcohol consumption is crucial for identifying potential risk factors and informing prevention and intervention strategies. Existing empirical literature underscores the intricate interplay of biological, environmental, and social factors in shaping offspring alcohol consumption. Building upon this foundation, this study investigates the determinants of health risk preferences, such as alcohol consumption, among South African offspring, utilizing a dataset comprising the 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014 waves of the National Income Dynamic Study (NIDS). Logistic regressions are employed to model the determinants of offspring alcohol consumption, while ordered logits are utilized to assess the impact of parental drinking on offspring drinking frequency. The findings indicate that parental drinking significantly influences offspring alcohol intake. Specifically, daughters' alcohol consumption is influenced solely by maternal drinking, whereas sons are affected by both parents' alcohol consumption. Furthermore, while daughters from currently disadvantaged backgrounds may exhibit higher tendencies towards alcohol consumption, those with mothers from such backgrounds and fathers from more affluent backgrounds are less likely to engage in such behavior. Additionally, the results suggest that male offspring from higher-income brackets are less likely to consume alcohol, yet sons of wealthy fathers are more likely to adopt such lifestyles., Competing Interests: No potential conflicts of interest have been disclosed by the author regarding this article, its research, authorship, and/or publication., (© 2024 The Authors.)

The BRICS countries-Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa-are committed to achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 13, which focuses on mitigating climate change. To attain this goal, it is crucial to emphasize the significance of ICT, renewable energy sources, industrialization, and institutional quality. This study contributes to the literature by examining the potential role of these factors in environmental sustainability in the BRICS economies from 2000 to 2021, utilizing cross-sectional augmented autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) estimation and other novel econometric techniques. Accordingly, the study suggests that BRICS governments and policymakers prioritize the use of ICT in the industrial and institutional sectors to achieve faster environmental sustainability in the short-run, as per the CS-ARDL results. However, the study advises caution in the long-term as the interaction between ICT and renewable energy sources, industrialization, and institutional quality may not favour environmental quality. Although the renewable energy sources interaction with ICT may not yield immediate progress, strong measures need to be taken to ensure that short-term gains are not nullified. In conclusion, the study highlights the potential of ICT, renewable energy sources, industrialization, and institutional quality in achieving environmental sustainability in the BRICS countries, while recommending cautious measures in the long run to safeguard the progress made., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

This study draws ardent attention to the Sustainable Development Goal 13 (climate change mitigation) of the United Nations by investigating the CO 2 emissions-energy consumption-militarisation-economic growth nexus for South Africa (SA) from 1960 to 2019. The researcher applied frequency domain causality and the novel dynamic autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) simulation approaches to achieve the research objective. The main findings reflected that (i) there is a long-run equilibrium relationship between the variables; (ii) there is no causality between militarisation and energy consumption; (iii) unidirectional causality runs from militarisation to economic growth; (iv) there is no causality between militarisation and CO 2 emissions; and (v) unidirectional causality runs from energy consumption to economic growth. The dynamic ARDL simulations' main results suggest that (i) in the short-run, a positive and insignificant relationship exist between militarisation and CO 2 emissions. Conversely, a negative and significant relationship was recorded in the long-run. Thus, the treadmill theory of destruction is not valid for SA. (ii) In the short-run, economic growth has a positive and significant impact on CO 2 emissions, while in the long-run, economic growth has a negative and significant impact on CO 2 emissions. This implies the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis holds for SA. Overall, this research suggests a synergy between defence, energy, growth, and environmental policies in the short- and long-run to promote and maintain environmental quality in SA., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

This study examines the convergence in renewable energy consumption over the period 2000-2018 by using a convergence algorithm developed by Phillips and Sul. We used 183 countries which were sub-divided into five regions, namely: Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA); Middle East and North Africa (MENA); Europe and Central Asia (ECA); East and South Asia and the Pacific (ESAP); and America. The possible influencing determinants of the convergence/divergence clubs for the regions were also investigated by utilising multinomial logit regression. The determinants were majorly classified into macroeconomic, socio-economic, and institutional quality variables, which were computed via principal component analysis by using six governance indicators. The results show an absence of panel convergence and a weak speed of convergence for the regions. The final club formation results obtained from the iteration procedure show that 6 clubs (for SSA), 2 (for MENA and ECA), 5 (for ESAP), and 3 (for America) were formed for the regions. The determinants of renewable energy consumption play both significant and insignificant roles in the likelihood of a country belonging to a particular convergence club in each of the regions. This study found that at the regional level, the process of convergence in renewable energy consumption is yet to echo desirable emanations of renewable energy consumption policies sharing similar characteristics, but the narrative differs when clustering algorithms form clubs for each region. This implies that at regional levels, achieving convergence clubs in renewable energy consumption for environmental sustainability is possible, most especially when realistic policies around macroeconomic, socio-economic and institutional quality variables are taken into account., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Temperature-resolved molecular emission spectroscopy is described as a thermal analysis method for the analysis of solids and liquids. The technique uses an electrically heated graphite cup to decompose and/or vaporize the sample. The vapors are carried by a stream of argon into a cool hydrogen diffusion flame. Both the quantity and the nature of the decomposed species can be determined. The technique is particularly useful for the determination of sulfur, phosphorus, or nitrogen. Calibration curves for sulfur show the expected parabolic shape, and those for phosphorus are linear. The detection limit for elemental sulfur was determined to be approximately 50 ng. The evolution of sulfur is shown to be related to the decomposition temperature which is characteristic of the sulfur-containing species. Reproducibility of the decomposition temperatures is typically ±2%.

Chromatographic and spectroscopic techniques were used to investigate the degradation products from bulk oxidative and thermal stability testing of a substituted tricyclophosphazene high-temperature lubricant. Analytical investigation into the degraded lubricant revealed oligomerization to be the dominant mode of degradation, resulting in most of the observed viscosity increases. GC/MS, FT-IR, and (31)P NMR data confirmed the existence of a cyclotetramer structure in the degraded fluid, while GPC analysis indicated the possibility of a much smaller amount of higher oligomers. The poor reproducibility observed for the oxidation results is likely due to the influence of trace contaminants or the relative degree of retention of ionizable volatile products that could act as oligomerization catalysts.