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With the rapid development of rail transportation and energy-delivery systems, such as buried oil and gas pipelines and high-voltage transmission lines, the alternating current (AC) corrosion of buried steel pipelines is becoming more serious. This paper aims to study the corrosion behaviours of Q235 buried steel pipelines induced by the alternating stray current, with a set of indoor simulated experiment apparatuses.

The corrosion of the coating holidays of the buried steel pipelines at various AC current densities from 0 to 200 A/m² in the soil-simulating environment was revealed by the electrochemical and weight-loss methods.

The results showed that the corrosion potential of the steel shifted negatively obviously and the corrosion rate of the steel increased with the increasing of AC current density. At a low AC current density, the negative deviation of the corrosion potential of the steel was small and the increase of corrosion rate was slight. However, the negative deviation of the corrosion potential was remarkable and the corrosion rate was greatly increased at a relative higher AC current density. The geometrical shape of the corrosion images indicated the corrosion forms changed from uniform corrosion to local corrosion due to the increase of AC interference.

Investigation results are of benefit to provide a new strategy to forecast and evaluate the AC-induced corrosion of the buried pipelines which could improve the safety of pipeline transportation.

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure has gained momentum in corporate reporting. Addressing a research gap on the subject, this paper aims to explore the theories involved in ESG disclosure studies, thereby shedding light on the dominant theoretical approaches and emerging perspectives that inform this type of disclosure.

A systematic review of 142 selected accounting studies published up to June 2023 devoted to ESG – and corporate social responsibility (CSR) – disclosure was conducted. The theories underlying these studies were examined through a descriptive performance analysis complemented by a systematic qualitative text analysis using RStudio and QDA Miner software tools.

The study reveals that five dominant theories stand out among the overall 32 found: stakeholder theory first, followed by legitimacy, institutional, agency and signaling theories. Theories are often combined into an integrated theoretical framework. The findings also show an array of minor constructs – many of them unconventional – that offer fresh perspectives for studying ESG disclosure, such as upper echelons, stakeholder salience, cognitive cost and reputation theories, among others.

This paper provides an original literature contribution by offering a comprehensive overview of the mainstream and niche theoretical perspectives underpinning accounting studies focused on ESG disclosure, with a nuanced scope of discussion on the use of ESG/CSR terms.

The purpose of the study is to map the funding status of COVID-19 research. The various aspects, such as funding ratio, geographical distribution of funded articles, journals publishing funded research and institutions that sponsor the COVID-19 research are studied. To visualize the country collaboration network and research trends/hotspots in the field of COVID-19 funded research, keyword analysis is also performed. The open-access (OA) status of the funded research on COVID-19 is also discussed.

The leading indexing and abstracting database, i.e. Web of Science (WoS), was used to retrieve the funded articles published on the topic COVID-19. The scientometric approach, more particularly “funding acknowledgment analysis (FAA),” was used to study the research funding.

A total of 5,546 publications of varied nature have been published on COVID-19, of which 1,760 are funded, thus indicating a funding ratio of 32%. China is the leading producer of funded research (760, 43.182%) on COVID-19 followed by the USA (482, 27.386%), England (179, 10.17%), Italy (119, 6.761%), Germany (107, 6.08%) and Canada (107, 6.08%). China is also in lead in terms of the funding ratio (60.94%). However, the funding ratio of the USA (31.54%) is at 11th rank behind Canada (40.68%), Germany (34.18%) and England (35.87%). The USA occupies a central position in the collaboration network having the highest score of articles with other countries (n = 489), with the USA–China collaboration ranking first (n = 123). National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) is the largest source of funding for COVID-19 research, supporting 342 (19.432%) publications, followed by the United States Department of Health Human Services (DHHS) and National Institute of Health (NIH), USA with 211 (11.989%) and 200 (11.364%) publications, respectively. However, China's National Key Research and Development Program achieves the highest citation impact (80.24) for its funded publications. Journal of Medical Virology, Science of the Total Environment and EuroSurveillance are the three most prolific journals publishing 63 (3.58%), 35 (1.989%) and 32 (1.818%), respectively, of the sponsored research articles on the COVID-19. A total of 3,138 institutions produce funded articles with Huazhong University of Science Technology and Wuhan University from China at the forefront publishing 92 (5.227%) and 83 (4.716%) publications, respectively. The funded research on COVID-19 is largely available in OA mode (1,674, 95.11%) and mainly through the Green and Bronze routes. The keyword clustering reveals that the articles mainly focus on the impact, structure and clinical characteristics of the virus.

The study's main limitation is that the results are based on the publications indexed by WoS, which has limited coverage compared to other databases. Moreover, all the funding agencies do not require or authors miss to acknowledge funding sources in their publications, which ultimately undermines the number of funded publications. The research publications on COVID-19 are also proliferating; thus, the study's findings shall be valid for a minimum period.

The funding of research on the COVID-19 is highly essential to accelerate innovative research and help countries fight against the global pandemic. The study's findings reflect the efforts made by nations and institutions to remove the financial and accessibility hurdles. It not only underscores the lead of the USA in the research on COVID-19, but also shows China as a forerunner in sponsoring the research, thus, helping to know the contribution of nations toward understanding the dynamics of pandemic and controlling it. The study will help healthcare practitioners and policymakers recognize the areas that remain the focus of sponsored research on COVID-19 and other left-out areas that need to be taken up and thus may help in policy formulation. It further highlights the impact of prolific funding agencies so that efforts may be initiated to increase the impact and thereby the returns of investment. The study can help to map the scientific structure of COVID-19 through the lens of funded research and recognize core inclinations of its development. Overall, a comprehensive analysis has been performed to present the detailed characteristics of sponsored research on emerging area of COVID-19, and it is informative, useful and one of its kind on the theme.

The study explores the funding support of research on COVID-19 and its other aspects, along with the mode of availability.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a two-degrees-of-freedom wire-driven 4SPS/U rigid‒flexible parallel trunk joint mechanism based on spring, in order to improve the robot’s athletic ability, load capacity and rigidity, and to ensure the coordination of multi-modal motion.

First, based on the rotation transformation matrix and closed-loop constraint equation of the parallel trunk joint mechanism, the mathematical model of its inverse position solution is constructed. Then, the Jacobian matrix of velocity and acceleration is derived by time derivative method. On this basis, the stiffness matrix of the parallel trunk joint mechanism is derived on the basis of the principle of virtual work and combined with the deformation effect of the rope driving pair and the spring elastic restraint pair. Then, the eigenvalue distribution of the stiffness matrix and the global stiffness performance index are used as the stiffness evaluation index of the mechanism. In addition, the performance index of athletic dexterity is analyzed. Finally, the distribution map of kinematic dexterity and stiffness is drawn in the workspace by numerical simulation, and the influence of the introduced spring on the stiffness distribution of the parallel trunk joint mechanism is compared and analyzed. It is concluded that the stiffness in the specific direction of the parallel trunk joint mechanism can be improved, and the stiffness distribution can be improved by adjusting the spring elastic structure parameters of the rope-driven branch chain.

Studies have shown that the wire-driven 4SPS/U rigid‒flexible parallel trunk joint mechanism based on spring has a great kinematic dexterity, load-carrying capacity and stiffness performance.

The soft-mixed structure is not mature, and there are few new materials for the soft-mixed mixture; the rope and the rigid structure are driven together with a large amount of friction and hindrance factors, etc.

It ensures that the multi-motion mode hexapod mobile robot can meet the requirement of sufficient different stiffness for different motion postures through the parallel trunk joint mechanism, and it ensures that the multi-motion mode hexapod mobile robot in multi-motion mode can meet the performance requirement of global stiffness change at different pose points of different motion postures through the parallel trunk joint mechanism.

The trunk structure is a very critical mechanism for animals. Animals in the movement to achieve smooth climbing, overturning and other different postures, such as centipede, starfish, giant salamander and other multi-legged animals, not only rely on the unique leg mechanism, but also must have a unique trunk joint mechanism. Based on the cooperation of these two mechanisms, the animal can achieve a stable, flexible and flexible variety of motion characteristics. Therefore, the trunk joint mechanism has an important significance for the coordinated movement of the whole body of the multi-sport mode mobile robot (Huang Hu-lin, 2016).

In this paper, based on the idea of combining rigid parallel mechanism with wire-driven mechanism, a trunk mechanism is designed, which is composed of four spring-based wire-driven 4SPS/U rigid‒flexible parallel trunk joint mechanism in series. Its spring-based wire-driven 4SPS/U rigid‒flexible parallel trunk joint mechanism can make the multi-motion mode mobile robot have better load capacity, mobility and stiffness performance (Qi-zhi et al., 2018; Cong-hao et al., 2018), thus improving the environmental adaptability and reliability of the multi-motion mode mobile robot.

The study showcases the social impact (online attention) of funded research compared to nonfunded for the BRICS nations. The key themes achieving online attention across the funded and nonfunded publications have also been identified.

A total of 1,507,931 articles published across the BRICS nations for a period of three (03) years were downloaded from the Clarivate Analytics' InCites database of Web of Science (WoS). “Funding Acknowledgement Analysis (FAA)” was used to identify the funded and nonfunded publications. The altmetric score of the top highly cited (1%) publications was gauged from the largest altmetric data provider, “Altmetric.com”, using the DOI of each publication. One-way ANOVA test was used to know the impact of funding on the mentions (altmetrics) across different data sources covered by Altmetric.com. The highly predominant keywords (hotspots) have been mapped using bibliometric software, “VOSviewer”.

The mentions across all the altmetric sources for funded research are higher compared to nonfunded research for all nations. It indicates the altmetric advantage for funded research, as funded publications are more discussed, tweeted, shared and have more readers and citations; thus, acquiring more social impact/online attention compared to nonfunded publications. The difference in means for funded and nonfunded publications varies across various altmetric sources and nations. Further, the authors’ keyword analysis reveals the prominence of the respective nation names in publications of the BRICS.

The study showcases the utility of indexing the funding information and whether research funding increases social impact return (online attention). It presents altmetrics as an important impact assessment and evaluation framework indicator, adding one more dimension to the research performance. The linking of funding information with the altmetric score can be used to assess the online attention and multi-flavoured impact of a particular funding programme and source/agency of a nation so that necessary strategies would be framed to improve the reach and impact of funded research. It identifies countries that achieve significant online attention for their funded publications compared to nonfunded ones, along with the key themes that can be utilised to frame research and investment plans.

The study represents the social impact of funded research compared to nonfunded across the BRICS nations.

Motion capture system (MoCap) has been used in measuring the human body segments in several applications including film special effects, health care, outer-space and under-water navigation systems, sea-water exploration pursuits, human machine interaction and learning software to help teachers of sign language. The purpose of this paper is to help the researchers to select specific MoCap system for various applications and the development of new algorithms related to upper limb motion.

This paper provides an overview of different sensors used in MoCap and techniques used for estimating human upper limb motion.

The existing MoCaps suffer from several issues depending on the type of MoCap used. These issues include drifting and placement of Inertial sensors, occlusion and jitters in Kinect, noise in electromyography signals and the requirement of a well-structured, calibrated environment and time-consuming task of placing markers in multiple camera systems.

This paper outlines the issues and challenges in MoCaps for measuring human upper limb motion and provides an overview on the techniques to overcome these issues and challenges.

The study attempts to capture the comprehensive accounting framework of the inverted U-shaped Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis relevant for an emerging economy based on an emission-growth decoupling approach. The paper intends to re-examine and analyze the roles of influential production- and consumption-based drivers for the prominently observable increasing pattern of the energy-related carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from the Indian Territory.

The study adopted an annual time series structural decomposition analysis (SDA) based on a single-country input-output framework for the period 2000–2014 to identify and elaborate the contribution of the responsible drivers to the production-based carbon emission of India. The study further proceeded to analyze a decoupling index to explore the features of economic growth and carbon emissions comovement over time.

The results from the empirical exercise reflect a pattern of consistently developing relative decoupling character for most of the production-based drivers. The paper produces insightful results on the pattern of energy-related CO₂ emissions from the perspective of the EKC hypothesis and highlights the importance of consumption-based drivers as substantial contributors to the economy-wide CO₂ emissions to be controlled for effective decoupling of the aggregate production-based CO₂ from the volume of aggregate production to enhance the opportunities for sustainable economic development.

The study uniquely correlates the declining trend of the emission intensity of India's gross domestic product (GDP) and the inclining trend of the overall emissions due to ever-increasing gross output in the form of a comprehensive accounting relationship.