Inspired by nature, significant research efforts have been made to discover the diverse range of biomaterials for various biomedical applications such as drug development, disease diagnosis, biomedical testing, therapy, etc. Polymers as bioinspired materials with extreme wettable properties, such as superhydrophilic and superhydrophobic surfaces, have received considerable interest in the past due to their multiple applications in anti-fogging, anti-icing, self-cleaning, oil–water separation, biosensing, and effective transportation of water. Apart from the numerous technological applications for extreme wetting and self-cleaning products, recently, super-wettable surfaces based on polymeric materials have also emerged as excellent candidates in studying biological processes. In this review, we systematically illustrate the designing and processing of artificial, super-wettable surfaces by using different polymeric materials for a variety of biomedical applications including tissue engineering, drug/gene delivery, molecular recognition, and diagnosis. Special attention has been paid to applications concerning the identification, control, and analysis of exceedingly small molecular amounts and applications permitting high cell and biomaterial cell screening. Current outlook and future prospects are also provided.

The study examines the moderating role of selected NIFTY 50 index companies’ board characteristics, which comprises board strength, board meetings, number of independent directors, and the board’s gender diversity, in relation to the inclusion of female directors on the board, to analyze the relationship between firm financial performance and environmental, social, governance (ESG) performance rating. A total of 50 companies listed in the NIFTY 50 index covering eight years from 2015 to 2022 constitute the panel data sample. The board’s characteristics, along with its composition plays an integral role in ESG leadership to ensure sustainable business practices. The present study may produce contributing factors that can fill the gap in the lack of literature available in terms of factors that can moderate the relationship between ESG and the financial performance of firms. The study has been applied to analyse the data and perform a robustness check. Return on equity (ROE) is used as a proxy variable for the firm’s financial performance and is considered a dependent variable. ESG is denoted as an independent variable, while the number of directors, the number of meetings, the number of independent directors, and gender diversity in terms of including female directors on the board are proxies as moderators. As a result, an unfavourable and marginally significant relationship was found between ESG and ROE in the base model (Model 1). In Model 2 marginally significant interaction between board size and ESG was found; neither board independence (Model 4) nor board meetings (Model 3) shows any moderating effects. Lastly, in Model 5, gender diversity as a moderator shows positive but marginally significant results and indicates, as a major moderator among all, that the result of the study may contribute to the existing literature and value addition, suggesting the scope of the selected firms of the NIFTY 50 index companies of India to improve their financial payoff of ESG.

Retraction published on 15 December 2025, see Environmental Research, Engineering and Management 2025 81(4) In recent years, many companies have positioned efforts to decarbonize as a central issue in their environmental strategies. On the other hand, environmental management accounting has so far provided little effective consideration of the information and measures that support the realization of such strategies. Internal carbon pricing (ICP) has the potential to be one of the few management accounting methods that can directly address the above challenges. This study focuses on the importance of ICP as a new challenging issue in environmental management accounting that contributes to decarbonization management and examines the implications of using it and how to set it up. This work examines internal carbon pricing as a mechanism to encourage greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions within the framework of management accounting in order to evaluate the direction of the development of environmental management accounting in the decarbonization era. The paper explores the functioning of internal carbon accounting schemes and their impacts through the case of Microsoft Corporation and evaluates the influence on investment decisions of ICPs, which have gained attention in recent years as a tool to encourage GHG reductions. Additionally, the configuration and integration of ICP with management systems such as budgeting are studied. The study demonstrates that ICP provides a new path for environmental management accounting in the age of decarbonization based on these factors.

This study empirically examines the motives of Indian firms’ managers to violate Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and engage in so-called fraudulent accounting. Managers’ motivations for fraudulent accounting rather than profit adjustment are empirically analyzed using data from Indian-listed companies. The sample includes 91 firms and the period of study is March 2001 to March 2022. The tests were conducted using single and multiple variables by the empirical methods used in other studies on profit adjustment. In the case of single variables, the tests are the chi-square test of independence for dummy variables and the significance test of the difference between the mean and median for continuous variables. In the case of multiple variables, the sample firms with a dependent variable of 1 and the control firms with a dependent variable of 0 are analyzed using the logit model. The estimation is done by the robust covariance method. The findings indicate that firms that engage in fraudulent accounting are significantly worse off than other firms in terms of their financial position and operating results, have significantly higher financing needs, and significantly more frequently conduct initial public offerings (IPOs).

This study was conducted to examine how the abilities of business managers affect the relationship between cost accounting systems and financial performance. The data has been obtained from social welfare organizations. Multiple regression analysis without an interaction term was first conducted as the base model followed by hierarchical multiple regression analysis to verify the increase in explanatory power by adding an interaction term. All independent variables, adjustment variables and control variables except dummy variables were centralized to facilitate the interpretation of the interaction term. A regression diagnosis was conducted after the exclusion of outliers. The statistical analysis environment R was used for the analysis. The findings of the study suggest that among the four functionalities of cost accounting systems, detailed cost ascertainment and reporting frequency may affect organizational performance through interactions with the abilities of business managers. This study may be viewed as a first step in examining the effects of the interaction between the functionality of cost accounting systems and the abilities of business managers on the financial performance of organizations.

The Indo-German bilateral trade is deemed to be a far cry of a respectable volume for two large economies. Despite the fact that both economies have pledged to increase bilateral trade, the importance that India assigns to Germany is yet to be reciprocated. Both India and Germany create an array of opportunities for one another, which remain uncharted. This paper examines the extent of trade relations and trade of both economies from global and bilateral perspectives. The purpose of this paper is not only to measure the extent of bilateral trade between these two countries over the period of 2008–2013 but also draw some conclusions about the potentialities. The paper focuses on opportunities and challenges of the bilateral trade amongst these two countries, and particularly, the challenges that hinder cooperation are elucidated in this paper.