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The purpose of this study is to present the significance of Joule heating, viscous dissipation, magnetic field and slip condition on the boundary layer flow of an electrically conducting Boussinesq couple-stress fluid induced by an exponentially stretching sheet embedded in a porous medium under the effect of the magnetic field of the variable kind. The heat transfer phenomenon is accounted for under thermal radiation, Joule and viscous dissipation effects.

The governing nonlinear partial differential equations are transformed to the nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODEs) by using some appropriate dimensionless variables and then the consequential nonlinear ODEs are solved numerically by making the use of the well-known shooting iteration technique along with the standard fourth-order Runge–Kutta integration scheme. The impact of emerging flow parameters on velocity and temperature profiles, streamlines, local skin friction coefficient and Nusselt number are described comprehensively through graphs and tables.

Results reveal that the velocity profile is observed to diminish considerably within the boundary layer in the presence of a magnetic field and slip condition. The enhanced radiation parameter is to decline the temperature field. The slip effect is favorable for fluid flow.

Till now, slip effect on Boussinesq couple-stress fluid over an exponentially stretching sheet embedded in a porous medium has not been explored. The present results are validated with the previously published study and found to be highly satisfactory.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the scholarly contribution of literature published on the much-hyped term fake news and associated terms such as misinformation, disinformation and post-truth in various disciplines, which contributes heavily to information disorder.

The study conducted a bibliometric inquiry of literature published in Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases (2001-2020) and steered in-depth quantitative content analysis of top-cited publications. The data mining covers 1,776 and 1,056 publications from WoS and Scopus databases, respectively. Bibliometrix R-package, VOSviewer Software tool and Microsoft Excel were used for analysis.

The study concluded that the past seven years (2014–2020) are the most productive period in studying fake news and its associated terms due to the unprecedented rise of social media and digital media. The prominent themes of the study were conducted in political, health, technology, media and social media space, whereas the output is minor in the pure science field. It is also inferred that both databases are contributing consistently in the domain of fake news literature.

The study helps in expansion of knowledge based on the research topic as well as in understanding the evolution of fake news in support of further research in this area.

Mapping scholarly contributions of scientific research provides a guiding approach and helps counter the information chaos stimulated by fake news phenomena in the digital era.

In India, more than 21.9% of the total population is below the poverty line, which compelled the government to initiate several policies for alleviating poverty and food insecurity. It can be argued that often non-poor households may become food insecure due to their irrational expenditure behaviour. The widespread consumerism and commercialism in rural India as a result of globalization often drive rural households to spend more on non-food items than food items. As a result, it is frequently observed that non-poor farmers excluded from the social security programs are highly malnourished as a result of food insecurity, which pushes them back into the poverty trap. This study reviews critically the methodologies applied to measure household poverty and food insecurity and examine the relationship between the two using primary data collected from two villages of the Balasore district of Odisha whose major livelihood relies on agriculture using the m-logit model for data analysis. Results show even households living above the poverty line suffer from the problem of food insecurity. About 20.5% of the non-poor are food insecure in the study villages. The study also finds a location-specific spatial autocorrelation of Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) and headcount ratio among the districts of the state using Moran's I. Hence, there is a need for properly targeted policy interventions and to revise the methodologies applied to measure household poverty and identify beneficiaries so that non-poor households are not deprived of food security programmes.

This study investigates the impact of business strategy on earnings management practices for financial and non-financial firms in Oman. To assess the research objective, 430 firm-year observations from 2015 to 2019 were employed in the study. Using regression analysis, the findings suggest that differentiation strategy positively affects earnings management in financial sector firms. In addition, cost leadership strategy positively affects earnings management in non-financial sector firms. This indicates that business strategy is associated with company leaders managing their earnings while they are trying to survive through competition. These findings are useful for regulators, as they can introduce mechanisms to curb earnings management practices and instil more faith in investors.

This chapter proposes a model for discovering suspicious financial operations such as money laundering. To achieve this, the authors reviewed research papers on money laundering and financial institutions’ cases and problems, especially those related to financial transfers. They also collected primary data through face-to-face semi-structured interviews with financial companies’ owners and experts in financial transfers to identify hypotheses that help discover suspicious transfers. The chapter discusses the six big data analysis cycle phases from problem discovery to model deployment to identify suspicious transfers. The chapter uses hypothetical data and models to discuss the results and focuses on exchange companies willing to analyze financial operations. The chapter proposes tools that exchange companies can use to monitor and prevent suspicious transfers including data visualization and machine learning algorithms.

The current study investigates the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown restrictions on air quality in an industrial town in Himachal Pradesh (HP) (India) and recommends policies and strategies for mitigating air pollution.

The air quality parameters under study are particulate matter₁₀ (PM₁₀), PM_2.5, SO₂ and NO₂. One-way ANOVA with post-hoc analysis and non-parametric Kruskal–Wallis test, and multiple linear regression analysis are used to validate the data analysis results.

The findings indicate that the lockdown and post-lockdown periods affected pollutant levels even after considering the meteorological conditions. Except for SO₂, all other air quality parameters dropped significantly throughout the lockdown period. Further, the industrial and transportation sectors are the primary sources of air pollution in Paonta Sahib.

Future research should include other industrial locations in the state to understand the relationship between regional air pollution levels and climate change. The findings of this study may add to the discussion on the role of adopting clean technologies and also provide directions for future research on improving air quality in the emerging industrial towns in India.

Very few studies have examined how the pandemic-induced lockdowns impacted air pollution levels in emerging industrial towns in India while also considering the confounding meteorological factors.

This study aims to present a model for detecting and predicting creative accounting in companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE).

The authors conduct this research in three stages. First, the authors review the literature to determine the dimensions, components, indicators and techniques of creative accounting. Second, the authors conduct semi-structured interviews with experts using the fuzzy Delphi technique to obtain screening and reach a consensus. Finally, the authors develop a model to predict creative accounting by classifying the financial statements of the sample companies into two groups based on the use or non-use of creative accounting techniques, measuring the indicators determined in the previous stage, running various machine learning algorithms and choosing the superior algorithm.

The results indicate the usefulness of accounting information for detecting and predicting creative accounting and the relevance of several financial attributes as important predictors. The results also indicate the superiority of extremely randomized trees over other algorithms in predicting creative accounting and suggest that the primary purpose of creative accounting in Iran is earnings management. Contrary to the political cost hypothesis, large Iranian companies use creative accounting to inflate profits.

The present research also has several limitations that must be considered, and caution must be exercised in interpreting and generalizing the findings as specified in the revised manuscript.

This study’s implications are significant for policymakers, standard-setters and practitioners. By recognizing the detrimental effects of creative accounting on financial transparency within companies, policymakers can address existing gaps in accounting standards to minimize the potential for earnings manipulation. Consequently, strengthening internal and external mechanisms related to a firm’s financial performance becomes achievable. The study provides evidence of the need for audit firms to recognize the importance of creative accounting and consider creative accounting in their audit plans to prevent insufficient or even misleading disclosure by companies that extensively use creative accounting practices in their financial reporting. Moreover, knowledge of creative accounting techniques can help auditors assess audit and detection risks and serve as a valuable guide for reducing audit costs and improving audit quality.

Given that creative accounting practices distort the true or real accounting results, curbing creative accounting practices reduces corporate failures and could lead to the reduction of job losses and other social consequences.

This study uses a unique database in Iran to determine a model for predicting creative accounting using a mixed-method methodology, qualitative and quantitative, to identify creative accounting techniques and run various machine learning algorithms.

The study finds the determinants of women empowerment measured in terms of domestic decision-making in a developing economy perspective by considering rural women in India. Women empowerment simply means giving opportunities to women to enable them to be socially and financially independent. Empowerment of women through investment in their education and health has a positive effect on economic growth. Almost 70% of Indian population lives in rural areas. If women in these areas are educated and empowered, they can contribute to the economic growth either directly or indirectly by improving health and education of the future generations. This study indicates that an employed woman, having her own income source, higher educational level, knowledge of legal rights, higher educational level of the mother of the woman, having property in her own name, more freedom of movement during her school days, having high self-esteem and belonging to a relatively affluent background, increases domestic making power of the women, and thus empowerment. Some possible policies are suggested for developing economies.