the development of digital technologies and their popularity in e-commerce is undeniable. However, consumers need to have a certain level of digital skills. The main aim of the paper was to examine and evaluate the development of consumers’ digital skills in the European Union and to identify the potential significant impact on online shopping. The EU countries studied experienced an increasing trend in both internet users and online consumers over the period under review, with Romania and Estonia experiencing the most significant year-on-year increases in internet users and online consumers respectively. The trend of consumers with digital skills was volatile and in some EU countries it was decreasing year-on-year. When comparing the share of online consumers and the share of consumers with digital skills, it was not possible to generalize the results as in some countries the values were at comparable levels, but in selected countries the share of consumers with digital skills was higher than the share of online consumers and in other countries the opposite was true. The results showed the existence of a significant impact of the level of digital skills on online shopping and also of the use of the internet for online shopping. The results obtained can provide a basis for online retailers to promote the increase of consumers’ digital skills, which will ultimately lead to the growth of e-commerce.

The objective of this paper is to analyze the impact of infrastructure financing on economic growth in emerging markets through the application of both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. In this study, the research will employ both primary and secondary data to investigate the impact of different structures of infrastructure financing on the performance of the economy through interviews with the stakeholders and policy documents alongside quantitative data from the World Bank and the IMF. The quantitative analysis employs the econometric models to establish the effect of infrastructure investment on the GDP growth of the selected countries, India, China, Brazil, and Nigeria. Additional secondary qualitative data obtained from interviews with policymakers and financial specialists from Brazil, India, and South Africa offer more practical information regarding the efficiency of the discussed financing approaches. This paper is therefore able to conclude that appropriate management of infrastructure investments, particularly those that involve the PPP, are central to the development of the economy. However, certain drawbacks such as the lack of regularity of data and the disparity in the effectiveness of financing instruments by the regions are pointed out. The research provides policy implications to policymakers and investors who wish to finance infrastructure in the emerging economy to enhance economic growth in the long run.

Breast cancer was a prevalent form of cancer worldwide. Thermography, a method for diagnosing breast cancer, involves recording the thermal patterns of the breast. This article explores the use of a convolutional neural network (CNN) algorithm to extract features from a dataset of thermographic images. Initially, the CNN network was used to extract a feature vector from the images. Subsequently, machine learning techniques can be used for image classification. This study utilizes four classification methods, namely Fully connected neural network (FCnet), support vector machine (SVM), classification linear model (CLINEAR), and KNN, to classify breast cancer from thermographic images. The accuracy rates achieved by the FCnet, SVM, CLINEAR, and k-nearest neighbors (KNN) algorithms were 94.2%, 95.0%, 95.0%, and 94.1%, respectively. Furthermore, the reliability parameters for these classifiers were computed as 92.1%, 97.5%, 96.5%, and 91.2%, while their respective sensitivities were calculated as 95.5%, 94.1%, 90.4%, and 93.2%. These findings can assist experts in developing an expert system for breast cancer diagnosis.

Benzoxazine resin, a new type of phenolic resin, has many advantages, such as a strong molecular design, no small molecular release in the curing process, excellent thermal stability and mechanical properties, and a high residual carbon ratio. Thus, it is important for electronic communication industry matrix material. To meet the needs of high-frequency and high-speed communication technology for low-dielectric polymer resin, the low-dielectric modification of benzoxazine resin is of great significance to the high frequency and high-speed propagation of the signal, which attracts a wide range of materials researchers’ attention. In this paper, we review a series of studies on the low dielectric modification of benzoxazine resin in recent years, including the synthesis of new monomers, inorganic - organic hybridization, copolymerization with other resins, and low molecular weight benzoxazine resin research trends.