Multi-criteria assessment framework for evaluation of Green Deal performance.

The European Green Deal (EGD) is a long-term and important policy to combat climate change. It contains comprehensive regulations that concern the European continent beyond individuals, companies, and cities. Moreover, achieving environmental sustainability depends on the whole world taking responsibility and concrete steps quickly. Although successful and rapid change requires collective effort and high performance across all topics, involving all countries, communities, and sectors, leaving no one behind, since the economic conditions and infrastructures of countries are different, the process of adaptation to green transformation varies. In this study, the multi-criteria decision-making approach has been used to evaluate the performance of the EU member states in terms of many different criteria under the protecting, reducing, and enabling dimensions in an integrated and comprehensive manner. In this context, the data of the EU member states obtained from Eurostat on 3 main and 15 sub-criteria were used, criterion weights were determined by the MEREC method, and then the EGD performances of the countries were revealed by the MAIRCA method. According to the results, "the primary energy consumption" and "freight transport by mode" were selected as the most significant criteria in terms of EGD compliance performance. As a result of the evaluation of the performances of the alternatives, the Netherlands had the best EGD performance which was followed by Sweden while Ireland had the worst ranking and Cyprus was the other underperforming member. Comparative analyses were conducted with the aim of testing the consistency of the proposed methodology.

The Frying Stability of Oleogel Made from Rice Bran Wax and Sunflower Oil During Intermittent Frying of Potato Chips.

There is a need for an alternative method of producing a vegetable oil with high levels of unsaturated fatty acids and physical properties similar to solid fat. The objective of current work was to cut down the amount of oil absorbed by the finished product, increase the frying stability of sunflower oil, and fry potato chips using oleogel without harming their sensory quality. Rice bran wax was applied in this experiment, at rates of 2, 4, and 6 weight percent, and the generated oleogels were then utilized for four days in a succession to fry potato chips for four hours each day. The results suggested that potato chips could be fried using the sunflower oil-rice bran wax oleogel without having an adverse effect on their texture, color, or quality. Furthermore, the produced oleogel was more robust during frying than liquid sunflower oil. During intermittent frying, SFA levels also marginally rose in all samples with the exception of 4% oleogel. The control sample, which was sunflower oil, had the lowest levels of unsaturated fatty acids and poly unsaturated fatty acids at the end of the frying operation. The percentage of oil uptake by the potato chips in the oleogels containing 4 and 2% rice bran wax, on the other hand, was lower than in the control sample. The findings suggested that oleogels could be used as a deep-fat frying medium in household, commercial, and industrial settings.

Parental use of causal language for preterm and full-term children: A longitudinal study.

Parents are often a good source of information, introducing children to how the world around them is described and explained in terms of cause-and-effect relations. Parents also vary in their speech, and these variations can predict children's later language skills. Being born preterm might be related to such parent-child interactions. The present longitudinal study investigated parental causal language use in Turkish, a language with particular causative morphology, across three time points when preterm and full-term children were 14-, 20-, and 26-months-old. In general, although preterm children heard fewer words overall, there were no differences between preterm and full-term groups in terms of the proportion of causal language input. Parental causal language input increased from 20 to 26 months, while the amount of overall verbal input remained the same. These findings suggest that neonatal status can influence the amount of overall parental talk, but not parental use of causal language.

Combining forces for causal reasoning: Children's predictions about physical interactions.

Reasoning about causal relations is essential for children's early cognitive development. The current study investigated 4-year-olds' (N = 58) reasoning about complex causal physical interactions in terms of predicting the endpoint of motion. In an online task, children were presented with four configurations that involved different interactions of forces and consequently different patterns of motion. These were Cause (one force moving an object), Enable (a secondary force promoting the motion), Prevent-180° (an opposing force hindering the motion), and Prevent-90° (two-dimensional; a perpendicular force altering the motion). Each prediction was made in terms of either the Distance or Direction of the motion, which was novel in this task compared with previous assessments. Results revealed differences between the configurations, with Cause being the easiest and Prevent-90° being the most difficult to predict. Furthermore, predictions were more accurate when options were about the motion's Direction, whereas Distance options may have aggravated reasoning. The current study extends previous findings on children's intuitive physics and causal cognition by showing that accuracy in reasoning not only is dependent on the number of forces and dimensions at work but also interacts with estimating the motion's Distance and Direction.