Empowering females and enhancing their representation in leadership roles are critical components of sustainable development. This study uniquely explores how female directors with Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) backgrounds influence the relationship between Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices and firm performance in Malaysia, through the lens of feminist theory. Utilizing comprehensive data from 398 firm-year observations across various sectors from 2018 to 2021, the study employs advanced econometric techniques, including the Durbin-Watson test for autocorrelation, Propensity Score Matching (PSM) to mitigate selection bias, and Generalized Least Squares (GLS) to ensure robust estimation. The findings highlight that female directors with NGO experience significantly strengthen ESG integration within firms, particularly by enhancing the social dimension through improved stakeholder engagement, transparency, and ethical governance. This distinctive influence notably translates into enhanced corporate performance, closely aligning corporate strategies with broader sustainability goals. By linking feminist empowerment principles to corporate governance, female NGO directors effectively bridge civic engagement with strategic business decision-making processes. This study offers valuable insights for organizations and policymakers aiming to integrate gender diversity and NGO expertise into corporate governance frameworks, promoting sustainable, inclusive, and equitable business practices.
Samples of martensitic-hardened bearing steel 100Cr6 (AISI 52100) were exposed to hydrogen atmospheres at different gas pressures. The resulting hydrogen contents were measured, and a pressure-dependent hydrogen charging curve was established. Tensile tests on cylindrical specimens charged at various hydrogen pressures showed a pronounced reduction in strength at hydrogen contents as low as 0.75 × 10–6. Fractographic analysis revealed predominantly intergranular fracture with crack propagation along carbide-featured grain boundaries, indicating hydrogen enrichment at microstructural traps. Specimens, in which diffusible hydrogen was allowed to outgas prior to testing, largely recovered their initial strength, demonstrating that the observed embrittlement is mainly governed by diffusible hydrogen and is, to a significant extent, reversible. These findings provide insight into the pressure-dependent influence of hydrogen on the strength and reliability of bearing components operating in hydrogen environments.
Evaluating urban mobility transitions is essential to determine whether local transport interventions support broader sustainability goals. Cities increasingly implement initiatives to promote public transport, active mobility, and low-carbon transport systems. Still, assessing their impact on city-scale structural change remains challenging. Existing evaluation approaches often rely on project-level monitoring or fragmented indicators, which limits cross-city comparison and the assessment of long-term system transformation. This paper proposes a dual-track methodology to evaluate sustainable urban mobility interventions. The first track uses city-defined key performance indicators to capture local implementation processes, governance dynamics, and perceived outcomes. The second track relies on publicly available open data to assess city-scale changes in mobility indicators, including public transport accessibility, cycling infrastructure provision, and traffic-related air pollution. The methodology is applied to ten European cities using open data and satellite-based environmental indicators. Results indicate that while cities report progress at the project level, external indicators show limited short-term structural change in city-wide mobility systems. These findings highlight the value of open data as an independent evaluation layer that contextualises local results and supports transparent assessment of urban mobility transitions.
This study investigates the fatigue behavior of carbon black-filled natural rubber under combined effects of thermal preaging and testing temperature. A comprehensive experimental dataset comprising 410 fatigue tests under 36 distinct conditions is analyzed. Fatigue life is predicted as a function of displacement amplitude, preaging temperature and duration, and test temperature. Several modeling approaches are examined, including an analytical semi-empirical model, a conventional artificial neural network (ANN), an Assisted-ANN, and a Physics-Informed Neural Network (PINN). The ANN models are trained using carefully designed training, validation, and testing datasets to ensure objective performance assessment. Fatigue life is modeled in logarithmic space to improve numerical robustness and reduce sensitivity to data scatter. Model performance is evaluated using quantitative metrics such as mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and mean absolute error (MAE), as well as qualitative assessment of the predicted S–N relationships. Results show that conventional ANNs significantly outperform the analytical model in terms of prediction accuracy but may produce physically inconsistent S–N curves when trained on sparse and highly scattered data. Incorporating physics-based guidance improves robustness. With the availability of sufficient training data, the Assisted-ANN achieves the lowest overall relative prediction errors with improved physical consistency, and minimal implementation and computational effort. The proposed PINN further enforces physical consistency by constraining the local log–log slope of the S–N relationship, rather than relying on explicit fatigue damage laws or baseline model predictions. As a result, the PINN approach provides the most physically consistent predictions and superior robustness under severe data scarcity conditions. Overall, the results demonstrate that hybrid physics-guided ANN approaches offer substantial advantages for fatigue life prediction of natural rubber under complex preaging and temperature effects.
The availability of fresh water in arid regions like Jordan presents a critical challenge that requires solutions benefiting from available renewable resources in the region to develop sustainable and efficient solutions. This study presents a modernization of an existing solar-powered reverse osmosis (RO) desalination system located in the Jordan Valley, which has been operating for more than 12 years. The modification is achieved by increasing the available membrane area and utilizing the residual pressure in the system which is augmented by a booster pump by two bars approximately. For that, two additional membranes have been installed in the existing system which has three membranes. Significant performance improvements have been achieved, including a 25% increase in freshwater production, reduction of specific energy consumption from 2.2 to 1.8 kWh/m 3 , and a decrease in electrical conductivity of produced water from about 140 µS/cm to below 90 µS/cm considering the same feed water and weather conditions. The new modified system demonstrates retrofitting an ageing solar-driven RO unit to enhance water supply for irrigation providing a cost-effective and environmentally sustainable solution for freshwater scarcity in agricultural arid regions.
