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This study aims to empirically explore whether there is causality and in which direction, i.e. whether financial development generates economic growth or whether financial development merely follows economic growth in transition European countries, including Russian Federation and Turkey, during 1998-2015.

The study uses different techniques such as pooled OLS, fixed and random effects and the Hausman–Taylor model with instrumental variables.

The regression results show a positive relationship between financial development indicators and real GDP per capita growth, thus supporting the hypothesis that finance leads economic growth. The result also shows that financial crisis has a negative effect on real GDP per capita growth. Furthermore, these findings show that government spending and inflation have a negative impact on real GDP per capita growth. The study also shows that financial development plays growth-supporting role in real GDP per capita growth in 20 European countries in transition, including Russian Federation and Turkey.

As financial development generates real GDP per capita growth, on the basis of the results of the study, a course of action that involves institutional improvement and incentivizing competition in the financial sector is recommended to the Central Banks’ policymakers in transition economies. These will in turn lead to higher real GDP per capita growth.

The study is original in nature and makes effort to promote financial development in transition European countries, including Russian Federation and Turkey. The findings of this study will be of value to Central Banks and other policymakers.

Lockheed has proposed the development of a liquid hydrogen‐fueled, experimental airline to carry cargo between the United States, Western Europe and the Middle East.

This study aims to assess the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on growth in presence of host country characteristics, namely, economic stability, human capital, financial development and trade openness, in the fastest emerging Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS) economies, considered to be significant FDI destinations.

The panel data for the variables under study, collected from World Investment Reports published by World Bank, are analyzed using feasible generalized least squares method to examine the relationship between the dependent and explanatory variables over the period 1987–2018. The interaction effect has been studied to examine the growth impact of FDI in presence of host country characteristics.

The findings revealed that FDI does not exert a significant impact on the economic growth of BRICS individually but has a significant growth impact only in presence of host country characteristics. FDI on interacting with financial development, trade openness and human capital exerts a positive impact on the economic growth of BRICS economies, and on interacting with economic instability (inflation), FDI has a negative impact on growth.

The study has implications for policy makers of BRICS countries who are suggested to work toward the development of financial markets, trade liberalization and human capital development to realize the positive growth impact of FDI.

Very few studies have been conducted to examine the growth effect of FDI in BRICS economies, which are considered to be the fastest-growing economies and dominant players in the global investment landscape. Assessing the interaction of FDI with absorptive capacities/host country characteristics to study its growth impact in BRICS using long data and robust panel data methodology is an original contribution of this paper toward the existing body of knowledge.

Concrete is a building material widely used for the infrastructural development. Cement is the binding material used for the development of concrete. It is the primary cause of CO₂ emission globally. The purpose of this study is to develop sustainable concrete material to satisfy the present need of construction sector. Geopolymer concrete (GPC) is a sustainable concrete developed without the use of cement. Therefore, investigations are being conducted to replace the cement by 100% with high calcium fly ash (FA) as binding material.

High calcium FA is used as cementitious binder, sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and sodium silicates (Na₂SiO₃) are used as alkaline liquids for developing the GPC. Mix proportions with different NaOH molarities of 4, 6, 8 and 10 M are considered to attain the appropriate mix. The method of curing adopted is ambient and oven curing. Workability, compressive strength and microstructure characteristics of GPC are analysed and presented.

An increase of NaOH in the mix decreases the workability. Compressive strength of 29 MPa is obtained for Mix-I with 8 M under ambient curing. A polynomial relationship is obtained to predict the compressive strength of GPC. Scanning electron microscope analysis is used to confirm the geo-polymerisation process in the microstructure of concrete.

This research work focuses on finding some alternative cementitious material for concrete that can replace ordinary portland cement (OPC) to overcome the CO₂ emission owing to the utilisation of cement in the construction industry. An attempt has been made to use the waste material (high calcium FA) from thermal power plant for the production of GPC. GPC concrete is the novel building material and alternative to conventional concrete. It is the ecofriendly product contributing towards the improvement of the circular economy in the construction industry. There are several factors that affect the property of GPC such as type of binder material, molarity of activator solution and curing condition. The novelty of this work lies in the approach of using locally available high calcium FA along with manufactured sand for the development of GPC. As this approach is rarely investigated, to prove the attainment of compressive strength of GPC with high calcium FA, an attempt has been made during the present investigation. Other influencing parameter which affects the strength gain has also been analysed in this paper.

The purpose of this paper is to detail progress on the European Commission supported FP7 ASPIS project that is undertaking a multi‐faceted approach to develop novel and improved nickel‐gold (ENIG) solderable finish chemistries and processes in order to overcome issues such as “black pad” that are known to cause reliability issues.

The ASPIS project has four key and discrete approaches; research into “black pad” formation mechanisms, development of new aqueous chemical deposition methods, formulation of new processes based on ionic liquids and the development of prognostic screening tools to enable early prediction of reliability issues.

Key factors influencing “black pad” formation include immersion gold bath pH value, concentration of citrate and thickness of the immersion gold layer. In addition, copper substrate preparation is also important. Work to develop new metal deposition processes using ionic liquids has also been demonstrated and may provide a viable alternative to more conventional aqueous based chemistries, thereby enabling some of the conditions that lead to “black pad” to be avoided.

This paper summarises the work carried out in the first year of a three‐year project and so the outputs to date are relatively limited. The project is continuing for another two years, when further progress will be made. It is hoped to report this progress in a future update paper.

The ASPIS project has undertaken multiple approaches to the development of new high reliability nickel gold finishes and this combination of approaches should offer synergies over more discrete traditional methodologies. As well as undertaking a detailed analysis of the mechanisms causing reliability problems, radical new formulation and prognostic approaches are also being developed.

This chapter develops a conceptual taxonomy of five emerging digital citizenship regimes: (1) the globalised and generalisable regime called pandemic citizenship that clarifies how post-COVID-19 datafication processes have amplified the emergence of four intertwined, non-mutually exclusive and non-generalisable new technopoliticalised and city-regionalised digital citizenship regimes in certain European nation-states’ urban areas; (2) algorithmic citizenship, which is driven by blockchain and has allowed the implementation of an e-Residency programme in Tallinn; (3) liquid citizenship, driven by dataism – the deterministic ideology of big data – and contested through claims for digital rights in Barcelona and Amsterdam; (4) metropolitan citizenship, as revindicated in reaction to Brexit and reshuffled through data co-operatives in Cardiff; and (5) stateless citizenship, driven by devolution and reinvigorated through data sovereignty in Barcelona, Glasgow and Bilbao. This chapter challenges the existing interpretation of how these emerging digital citizenship regimes together are ubiquitously rescaling the associated spaces/practices of European nation-states.

THE combined effect of Sections III and IV is a gain of up to 3 per cent t.h.p. at moderate speeds, over the best systems without a blower, in spite of the detrimental effect of heating of the air due to compression. The blower absorbs about 10 per cent b.h.p. which is additionally recovered as useful thrust. Pressure air cooling does not permit the economical use of materially smaller matrices.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a procedure to simulate impact-driven liquid jets by computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The proposed CFD model is used to investigate nozzle flow behavior under ultra-high injection pressure and jet velocities generated by the impact driven method (IDM).

A CFD technique was employed to simulate the jet generation process. The injection process was simulated by using a two-phase flow mixture model, while the projectile motion was modeled the moving mesh technique. CFD results were compared with experimental results from jets generated by the IDM.

The paper provides a procedure to simulate impact-driven liquid jets by CFD. The validation shows reasonable agreement to previous experimental results. The pressure fluctuations inside the nozzle cavity strongly affect the liquid jet formation. The average jet velocity and the injection pressure depends mainly on the impact momentum and the volume of liquid in the nozzle, while the nozzle flow behavior (pressure fluctuation) depends mainly on the liquid volume and the impact velocity.

Results may slightly deviate from the actual phenomena due to two assumptions which are the liquid compressibility depends only on the rate of change of pressure respected to the liquid volume and the super cavitation process in the generation process is not taken into account.

Results from this study will be useful for further designs of the nozzle and impact conditions for applications of jet cutting, jet penetration, needle free injection, or any related areas.

This study presents the first success of employing a commercial code with additional user defined function to calculate the complex phenomena in the nozzle flow and jet injection generated by the IDM.

This paper aims to examine the non-linear impact of inflation on financial development, and the moderating role of GDP in the relationship between inflation and financial development in a panel of 125 countries.

It employs the dynamic common correlated effects (CCE) that can control for heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence. This technique enables us to conduct both panel and country-specific analyses.

Though there is no significant evidence that inflation has a non-linear impact on financial development in the panel, the country-specific estimations reveal that inflation has a non-linear impact on financial development in 66 countries. The results also show that GDP mitigates the detrimental effect of inflation on financial development in 45 countries. An insight into the non-linear relationship between inflation and financial development is crucial for policy decision-making. Besides, knowledge of the moderating role of GDP in the relationship between financial development and inflation is fundamental for policy formulations.

Although the extant literature has shown that the inflation rate plays a negative role in financial development, the literature overlooked the non-linear relationship between the two variables. Besides, the studies have not considered the role of GDP in moderating the impact of the inflation rate on financial development. This study fills these gaps in the existing body of finance literature.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of financial development on the economic growth of jurisdictions with systemically important Islamic finance.

The authors use several estimation methods. The primary analysis is based on the LSDVC method using a sample of 23 countries covering the period of 2000–2019.

The findings suggest that the financial sector may not be a significant factor in determining economic growth, or that it may decrease it depending on the proxy used. These results are in line with recent studies and robust across different estimation specifications and methods used.

Finance practitioners may reconsider the way they conduct their daily activities as their impact on economic growth is fading away. Similarly, policymakers should consider the role that financial development plays in economic growth alongside other factors that may influence its impact. It may be necessary to examine the moderating effects of institutional development on the relationship between finance and growth and consider the channels through which financial development can contribute to economic growth. Additionally, it would be useful to study the impact of Islamic finance on economic growth using different data sources.

Although the topic has been explored using different data sets and focusing on different samples, it has not been explored considering the impact of Islamic finance development on economic growth. Given the global appeal of the Islamic finance industry, it is worth investigating its significance for economic growth.