Traditional lessons in economics seem to have less of a place in this world when they fail to change students who are often more interested in the latest viral content and influencers. However, it could be the best day for educators who recognise this and speak now. They might turn to unexpected allies, such as pop culture icon Taylor Swift or maybe even social media influencer James Stephen Donaldson, better known to millions online as MrBeast.

Both stars are globally celebrated not only for their fame but for their remarkable business acumen. A new wave of research suggests that using their stories might be the key to engaging Generation Z students, the so-called Zoomers, in the subject of economics. Gen Z is demographically the generation born 1997 to 2012. Swift and Donaldson were born in 1989 and 1988 respectively and themselves are mid-generation Millennials (Gen Y, born 1981 to 1996). Millennials are usually considered the digital natives, individuals who grew up in a world where personal computing and communications had become almost ubiquitous.

Research in the International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education suggests that an innovative approach to teaching economics might focus on how such celebrities, which many students already admire, develop their businesses. For instance, Swift's record-breaking Eras Tour grossed more than $1 billion, while MrBeast's YouTube "empire", which includes entrepreneurial ventures such as his Feastables brand, offers real-world examples of economics in action. From pricing strategies to branding, these two have built formidable enterprises, making them ideal case studies to explain otherwise abstract economic concepts.

Educators know all too well that engaging case studies are important in navigating the treacherous world of teaching economics, where a blank space might disenfranchise even the keenest student. What sets apart a method that focuses on such well-known figures as case studies, is that they have a ready-made resonance with Gen Z. This generation was raised on digital content and stereotypically has a short attention span and yet prizes entrepreneurship and innovation.

Even in their wildest dreams, students in a typical high school economics class will be taught little more than equations and theoretical models. Even if all they had to do was stay, this can seem distant and irrelevant to many students. Call it what you want, but by incorporating Swift and MrBeast into the curriculum, the teacher's new end game is to illustrate complex economic ideas, such as supply and demand, monetization strategies, and market engagement, in the afterglow of personalities they admire and follow closely or at the very least know a lot about. It can be an epiphany.

The work hints at an educational gold rush, where this shift in focus could transform the way economics is taught and how well students understand and learn about the subject. To cut a long story shot, by moving beyond dry textbooks, a pop culture approach might draw into economics a diverse and inclusive group of students.

It doesn't take a mastermind to navigate the labyrinth of thinking on how this all might come to more than sweet nothing. Many young people already admire the entrepreneurial journeys of their favourite influencers and celebrities. If educators can demonstrate that economics is more than spreadsheet and Wall Street, then the creativity, audience engagement, and smart financial decisions of those celebrities will appear almost bejewelled and show how economics is part of all our lives, it is, in a sense, everyday alchemy.

Dahlberg, K.H., DeWind, S., Geerling, W. and Mateer, G.D. (2024) 'Behind the billions: how Taylor Swift and MrBeast can be used to teach economics', Int. J. Pluralism and Economics Education, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp.69–89.
DOI: IJPEE.2024.141777

Managing an increasingly diverse workforce is no longer a mere rubber-stamping exercise for companies, it is an essential and beneficial part of the corporate agenda. Organizations are beginning to recognise that diversity underpins success in the modern world.

A comprehensive review of more than 2500 research papers, shows that unlocking the full potential of a diverse workforce lies at the intersection of human resource management and what we might term diversity management. The review published in the International Journal of Management Practice suggests that many companies in disparate areas are yet to reach this intersection.

Federica Testa, Alessandro Hinna, and Rocco Palumbo of the University of Rome Tor Vergata, and Federico Ceschel of the University of Rome Tre, Italy, explain that diversity management refers to policies and practices that are aimed fundamentally at creating an inclusive work environment. It ensures that all employees feel valued, respected, and empowered to contribute. This inclusiveness has direct and measurable effects on motivation, performance, and innovation, the review suggests. Moreover, companies that successfully manage diversity often outperform their competitors.

Where conventional human resource management is involved in how an organization manages its people, the employment lifecycle, from recruitment and training to compensation and performance evaluation, diversity management adds critical functions. The research highlights how these might best be incorporated into business practice to the benefit of all employees and the company itself.

The review suggests that until recently, much of the practice in the area of diversity management has been rather piecemeal. Organizations might implement diversity initiatives in one area, such as inclusive hiring practices, but then do not necessarily follow through with that in performance evaluations, training, and even compensation structures. This fragmented approach reduces the effectiveness of diversity initiatives and risks making them seem irrelevant to the main objectives of an organization, the review suggests.

There is perhaps a growing need for a holistic strategy that brings together diversity management and human resource practices. Instead of isolated efforts, diversity must be part of all human resources functions. For instance, a company that hires diversely should ensure that its training programs are tailored to support all employees. Similarly, performance reviews should be designed with inclusiveness in mind, ensuring that no group is disadvantaged by unconscious biases or outdated criteria. There is a need for a top-down commitment across corporations that ensures diversity initiatives receive the resources and attention they ought to have, again for the benefit of all employees and the corporations themselves.

Testa, F., Ceschel, F., Hinna, A. and Palumbo, R. (2024) 'Does it make sense to manage people 'diversely'? A scoping review on human resource management practices rooted in diversity', Int. J. Management Practice, Vol. 17, No. 6, pp.635–668.
DOI: 10.1504/IJMP.2024.142039

Research in the International Journal of Information and Communication Technology describes a new approach to the encryption of digital images. The method could be used to protective sensitive information, such as medical and scientific images, online. By using chaotic systems to do the work, the approach, developed by Zhengbao Cai of the College of Information Technology in Lu'an, China, improves on existing approaches.

Digital image transmission has made encryption essential for safeguarding personal data, medical records, business, political, and military intelligence. However, traditional encryption methods, such as the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), have limitations when it comes to handling complex and dense data of the kind found in a digital image file. To work around the various problems, Cai turned to a chaotic encryption system. Such an approach uses the irregular and nonlinear dynamics of chaos theory to obscure data. The new work introduces a six-dimensional cellular neural network (CNN) that can encrypt colour more efficiently and with lower demands on computing resources than earlier chaos-based methods.

Conventional two- or three-dimensional CNNs models generate sequences of chaotic numbers that are highly unpredictable. By taking that approach to a higher dimension, Cai improves on the degree of unpredictability as well as making the encrypted output more stable when encrypting large, high-dimensional datasets like high-resolution medical scans or satellite images.

Tests demonstrate that Cai's encrypted images are much better at resisting attempt to reverse-engineer them to view the original image than conventional encryption methods.

There is a pressing need for secure, efficient, and scalable encryption methods for a wide range of digital image types. The current research with its novel combination of a six-dimensional CNN and the use of a differential evolutionary algorithm could make those sensitive digital images more secure than ever before.

Cai, Z. (2024) 'Chaotic colour image encryption based on differential evolutionary deep learning', Int. J. Information and Communication Technology, Vol. 25, No. 7, pp.57–74.
DOI: 10.1504/IJICT.2024.142166

Software development is a fast-paced environment where it is easy to get lost in the code and lose sight of the bigger picture. Research in the International Journal of Agile Systems and Management looks at how design, technology, and business might work more effectively together to help in the development of digital platforms, particularly for small and medium-sized manufacturers in Europe.

Diana Chronéer, Mari Runardotter, and Jeaneth Johansson of Luleå University of Technology, Sweden, describe the frameworks, or logics, that represent different ways of thinking. A clearer understanding of these logics can be used to guide different aspects of development in terms of the technology, the service, and the design logic. Each logic has its own priorities, but the researchers suggest that the key to success is ensuring that all three work synergistically. Achieving this synergy is, of course, easier said than done.

The team explains that the technological logic revolves around the working details of software development, the writing of code, the addition of new features, and the squashing of bugs. This logic, the team suggests, is the engine of agile development in this context, driving incremental progress and flexibility and allowing the developers to fine tune a system to meet new demands.

The demands of the design logic are entirely different. It homes in on the user experience (UX) and aims to ensure that platforms are intuitive, accessible, and effective for the people who have to use them. Design logic is user-focused and considers the wants, the needs, and the behaviour of users, which can then determine the look and feel of the platform. However, there is often conflict between the design logic and the rapid cycles of technological development, where deadlines and technical constraints can take priority over a flawless UX.

The third logic, the service-dominant logic, focuses on the business aspects of development its currency is value exchange and in the world of business-to-business (B2B) platforms, this means boosting collaboration, sharing services, and adding mutual value. This logic nudges the developers to think beyond the technology or the UX to see how the platform will improve the company's bottom line.

Balancing these three logics is thus key to success. A team that focuses too much on the technology might develop a sound platform that is difficult to use. Conversely, an overemphasis on design might result in a platform that looks good but fails to address key business or technical needs.

The researchers propose a new logic, a new framework, "adaptive space" to help manage the three core logics. Adaptive space is a theoretical and practical approach designed to make the ongoing interplay between the three main aspects of development visible and manageable. It maps out the competing priorities of the three logics and emphasises regular reflection and co-creation, so that different perspectives are considered holistically.

The work suggests that a new approach is not simply about improving software, but about rethinking how we build technology in an era of rapid innovation. Software development in this new paradigm would be not purely a technical or design problem, but a sociotechnical process, a blending of human and technical elements working together.

Chronéer, D., Runardotter, M. and Johansson, J. (2024) 'Logics alignment in agile software design processes', Int. J. Agile Systems and Management, Vol. 17, No. 6, pp.1–31.
DOI: 10.1504/IJASM.2024.142139

Formula 1 (F1) is the highest level of international motorsport, known for its fast, high-performance, single-seat racing cars. It is governed by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), and features a series of races, Grands Prix, held on racing circuits worldwide. The races are known for their speed, technical precision, and intense strategy.

A study in the International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management discusses how this global racing series acts as a real-time laboratory that can test and refine motoring technologies that often take a turn into the world of the road vehicles. In other words, Laura Rehberg of the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Science at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, suggests, F1 is in the driving seat when it comes to shaping the future of the automotive industry.

Rehberg has investigated the world of prototyping within F1 showing how car manufacturers and their suppliers collaborate with one of the most competitive sporting environments. Prototyping refers to the stage in development where experimental versions of components are created and tested. Often, new technologies are pushed to their limits in this environment before they ever go into production. Within F1, prototyping is high-pressure, with the requisite innovation being relentless and having the drive to cut seconds off lap times. Of course, innovation is constrained by the strict FIA regulations, but some important inventions have emerged from F1 innovation, and many of those, such as mild-hybrid vehicles, were actually driven by the regulations themselves.

It is the collaboration between original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), the carmakers, their suppliers, and the F1 teams that at the heart of Rehberg's work. The research shows that the sport has pulled away from the conventional, arms-length relationships and a change of gear has led to "collaborative prototyping," where suppliers are not merely vendors but partners, contributing to the design and testing process itself. Such integration allows for more rapid innovation and precludes many of the costly mistakes that can occur later in development when innovation moves on to the production line. Innovations in engine efficiency, vehicle aerodynamics, and materials science are all tested to the extreme in F1 and many developments that have improved times and fuel efficiency on the racing track have act as a catalyst for production cars to hit the roads.

Rehberg, L. (2024) 'Prototyping in motorsports: exploring manufacturer-supplier collaboration in Formula One', Int. J. Automotive Technology and Management, Vol. 24, No. 5, pp.100-118.
DOI: 10.1504/IJATM.2024.142122

Diet plays an important role in health. A study in the International Journal of Business and Systems Research has looked closely at the relationship between nutrition and the prevention of chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. It is worth noting that despite increasing public awareness of the link between poor diet and disease, many people struggle to make healthy choices for themselves.

The researchers, Suvendu Kumar Nayak, Sangram Keshari Swain, of Centurion University of Technology and Management, Mamata Garanayak Kalinga of the Deemed to be University, and Bijay Kumar Paikaray of the Siksha 'O' Anusandhan (Deemed to be) University, Odisha, India, point out that tracking food intake and nutritional value and making informed dietary choices can be overwhelming. This then can lead to bad habits that contribute to the risk of chronic illness.

In recognizing this gap between information and application and nutritional awareness, the researchers have proposed a new approach to offering personalized dietary advice that is tailored to individual health profiles and preferences. Their system determines a patient's nutritional needs in conjunction with their medical history and current health conditions using the K-Nearest Neighbours (K-NN) algorithm. The algorithm, trained on data from a range of people with different conditions and dietary requirements, allows it to find the optimal diet most beneficial to the current patient.

The team explains that by introducing a structured approach to nutrition using their approach, it might be possible to reduce the dietary risk factors associated with many chronic diseases. This could improve health for individuals but also lower the burden on healthcare systems. There is already a growing trend towards personalized healthcare, such as fitness trackers and other health apps, the addition of dietary tools will help guide those individuals who hope to improve their health in these and other ways.

Nayak, S.K., Garanayak, M., Swain, S.K. and Paikaray, B.K. (2024) 'A prototype for intelligent diet recommendations by considering disease and medical condition of the patient', Int. J. Business and Systems Research, Vol. 18, No. 6, pp.515–538.
DOI: 10.1504/IJBSR.2024.142053

Wearable technology is well known to anyone with a fitness tracker but it is also moving into critical care medicine. Research in the International Journal of Systems, Control and Communications has looked at how wearables might change the management of patients in intensive care units (ICUs). Such devices can provide continuous, real-time data for healthcare professionals following the vital signs and movements of critically ill patients. The technology might offer a more personalized and less invasive approach to treatment.

Decheng Fan of the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Junmin Li and Jingjing Fang of The Second Military Medical University, Jianbo Su of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China, explain that conventional ICU monitoring usually relies on bulky equipment such as heart monitors, devices for monitoring respiratory function, and measuring blood pressure, for instance. These methods, while effective, usually require active and regular intervention from the healthcare workers. There is also usually a need for taking samples of blood and urine etc, which is usually invasive and carries a risk of introducing infection.

Wearable technology could offer a viable alternative to the more intrusive and invasive technologies that have been used for many years. One of the biggest benefits is the non-invasive and continuous monitoring that wearables could offer. Wearables will support healthcare by transmitting personalized data to clinicians, allowing them to make decisions in real time to assist patients with complex, life-threatening conditions such as multi-organ failure.

Researchers are already working on multifunctional sensors that could be integrated into a single device to streamline the whole process of data assimilation and transmission. Such devices could be of great benefit in specialist care settings where resources are scarce, such as during a pandemic, for instance.

Fan, D., Li, J., Su, J. and Fang, J. (2024) 'Wearable sensors in critical care medicine', Int. J. Systems, Control and Communications, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp.312–324.
DOI: 10.1504/IJSCC.2024.141395

There is seemingly no endeavour untouched by the potential of algorithms and artificial intelligence. Writing in the International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems, a Czech team discusses the potential for chatbots to carry out initial job interviews with candidates.

A chatbot-mediated screening process could allow wholly unsuitable candidates to be quickly removed from the short list so that interviewers can focus on those applicants best suited to the role being sought. Such a change in the way recruitment is undertaken raises ethical issues about just how fair is screening job applicants in this way, especially given many of the known problems surrounding algorithm training bias and other issues that have been raised about artificial intelligence carrying out human jobs.

Insights from the research could help guide exactly how companies approach recruitment in the wake of these intriguing technological developments. There are three important aspects that Helena Repová, Jan Zouhar, and Pavel Král of Prague University of Economics and Business consider in their paper: procedural justice, in other words, fairness in decision-making, interactional justice, fairness in how candidates are treated, and interpersonal justice, the quality of personal interaction.

The researchers compared applicant perceptions of these forms of justice across different interview formats, including interviews conducted by humans, chatbots, and those where the interview type wasn't revealed.

Chatbots offer a clear efficiency advantage to companies in screening applicants. But, for applicants accustomed to conventional interviews, issues of fairness, or a lack thereof, are apparent. Indeed, an applicant's perception of justice in recruitment might alter their opinion of the organization itself and deter bright and well-suited applicants from applying for a position with a given company in the first place based on that company using chatbots for initial interviews. Companies could miss out on talent and the talented candidates could miss out on their dream role!

Repová, H., Zouhar, J. and Král, P. (2024) 'Attractiveness of firms with chatbot as job interviewers: does the interviewer-type matter in the first contact with candidates?', Int. J. Communication Networks and Distributed Systems, Vol. 30, No. 6, pp.711–732.
DOI: 10.1504/IJCNDS.2024.141672

A powerful algorithm that can automatically classify different singing voices by vocal characteristics is described in the International Journal of Bio-Inspired Computation. Balachandra Kumaraswamy of the B.M.S. College of Engineering in Bangalore, India, suggests that the development is an important step forward in music technology, allowing a system to quickly and accurately distinguish one voice from another without human intervention.

Everyone's singing voice is shaped by a range of physiological characteristics such as their vocal folds, lung capacity and diaphragm, the shape of their nose and mouth, the tongue and teeth, and more. Add to that the emotional delivery and stylistic choices a singer might make, and each of us sounds unique. It is fairly easy for us to tell singers apart, even if the singing is within a complex and textured musical environment. However, using machine learning to distinguish voices has remained challenging. Kumaraswamy's system performs well and could be employed in a wide range of contexts such as music cataloguing, streaming, recommendation, music production, and even for legal purposes such as copyright control.

The new approach takes four steps to distinguish between singers. The first is pre-processing in which an advanced convolutional neural network (CNN) identifies and isolates the vocals from a complex audio recording, discarding instrumentation and other non-vocal sounds.

The second step is feature extraction whereby key characteristics of the voice are obtained from the audio track and various metrics, such as the zero crossing rate (ZCR), which measures the frequency of signal changes, capture the characteristics of the singer's voice.

The third step involves an algorithm identifying the vibration patterns of the notes being sung and so can create a profile distribution of the harmonics to map the timbre, or texture, of the voice.

The final step used yet more neural networking in the form of bidirectional gated recurrent units (BI-GRU) and long short-term memory (LSTM) networks to analyse the vocal data. These two models can process sequences and so reveal the flow of a singer's performance over time. This last step is key to the success of Kumaraswamy's approach.

At this point in the development of the system, the neural networks used require extensive computational resources and large datasets for training. For now, this might limit scalability. However, such issues can be addressed with optimisation of the way the algorithms are applied and the training data used.

Kumaraswamy, B. (2024) 'Improved harmonic spectral envelope extraction for singer classification with hybridised model', Int. J. Bio-Inspired Computation, Vol. 24, No. 3, pp.150–163.
DOI: 10.1504/IJBIC.2024.141676

The sale of refurbished products, refurbs, represents a delicate balancing act for companies attempting to retain a share of their market and to incorporate recycling strategies into their approach. A study in the European Journal of Industrial Engineering discusses this balancing act in the context of new and refurbished sales, where consumers weigh affordability against quality.

According to Yeu-Shiang Huang of National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, Chih-Chiang of Zhaoqing University, China, and Yi-Hsiang Tsao of the National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, businesses must decide how to stay competitive while addressing environmental concerns. The team has used game theory to model the kinds of decisions that retailers must make and offers them tips on that balancing act.

Selling refurbished as opposed to brand-new products, especially electronic gadgets and devices, represents a classic dilemma in economics. Refurbished products are usually sold at lower cost and so offer less profit for the retailer, but they might be more attractive to the consumer because they have eco-friendly credentials. Refurbs can thus undercut the sales of brand-new items. As such, manufacturers themselves remain hesitant in their adoption of remanufacturing, despite its environmental benefits. But, for retailers, offering refurbished goods can lead to a new class of sale.

The researchers have modelled the strategic interactions between manufacturers and retailers to look at how manufacturers set the official price for the wholesale cost of their new products, while retailers respond by adding refurbs to the mix and setting the best price for those and for the brand-new products they sell.

The research emphasises that it is the environmental rather than the economic that is at stake. Strict recycling laws mean that there is a drive towards refurbishment and recycling that the retailers can be happy with, but the original manufacturers may well not be. Indeed, if retailers can take control of recycling and remanufacturing and connect directly with the end consumers of refurbs, the manufacturers' share might shrink at least until the refurbished products have become wholly obsolete and can only be recycled for components and materials and a new product must enter the market. Retailers by working to their own economic strategy might thus play a critical role in driving sustainable practices.

Huang, Y-S., Fang, C-C. and Tsao, Y-H. (2024) 'A study on pricing and recycling strategies for retailers with consideration of selling new and refurbished products', European J. Industrial Engineering, Vol. 18, No. 6, pp.791–816.
DOI: 10.1504/EJIE.2024.141720