University of Surrey - Research Portal

The Best-Worst Method (BWM) has emerged as a powerful and efficient technique in the field of Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM), renowned for its simplicity, computational efficiency, and ability to address complex decision-making problems involving multiple conflicting criteria. As one of the leading MCDM methods, BWM has received significant attention across a wide range of disciplines and application areas. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive review and bibliometric analysis of BWM-related research from 2015 to June 2025. This study investigates the integration of BWM with other Multi-Attribute Decision-Making (MADM) techniques. It also systematically examines BWM's application in environments characterized by uncertainty and ambiguity, addressing critical methodological challenges. Furthermore, the research categorizes and evaluates real-world applications of BWM, demonstrating its practical relevance and effectiveness across various domains. The bibliometric analysis covers multiple dimensions, including document analysis to track publication growth and trends, keyword analysis to identify emerging research themes, source analysis to highlight influential journals and conferences, author analysis to recognize leading contributors, affiliation analysis to map institutional and geographical contributions, citation analysis to assess impactful studies, and application analysis to explore BWM's diverse real-world uses. By offering valuable insights into the current state of BWM research, this study provides a foundation for future research and promotes the broader adoption of BWM in decision-making processes.

This chapter summarises why there is an interest in exploring the relationship between social isolation and loneliness with inflammation. It starts by discussing different theories that explain how loneliness and social isolation could lead to inflammation, and inflammation to loneliness and social isolation. Next it summarises existing evidence on the association between loneliness and social isolation with inflammation. We also critically considers the issues with the existing evidence-base. Finally, we consider whether inflammation acts as a mediator in the relationship between loneliness and social isolation with poorer health.

We study optimal credit market policy in a stochastic, quantitative, general equilibrium, infinite-horizon economy with collateral constraints tied to housing prices. Collateral constraints imply that the competitive equilibrium is Pareto inefficient. Taxing housing or borrowing in good states and subsidizing it in recessions leads to a Pareto-improving allocation for borrowers and savers. Quantitatively, the welfare gains afforded by the optimal tax are significant. The optimal tax reduces the covariance of house prices with consumption, and, by doing so, it increases house prices on average and delivers welfare gains both in steady state and around it. We also show that the welfare gains stem from mopping up after the crash rather than the ex-ante macroprudential aspect, aligning with prior research that emphasizes the importance of ex-post measures compared to preventive policies alone.

Royals are often considered the first kind of celebrity. However, the ceremonial powers of the institution, their generational wealth, and the elevated status based on birth privileges alone separate them from now-traditional modes of celebrity. The British royal family, amidst deaths, accusations of racism, and legal cases, can be considered in crisis after thewave of positive public attention during Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's royal wedding in 2018. After their exit from the royal family, having found themselves cut off from royal funding, the couple turned to traditional forms of celebrity labour. In mainstream UK media reactions, these activities are often considered as causing or contributing towards the current crisis of the UK monarchy. This press coverage does not only express criticisms of the couple, but also reveals the expectations of royal celebrity: royals are meant to be everything traditional celebrities are not. Drawing on key public appearances and media work, media coverage and the biography Spare (2023), this article explores the ways in which royal celebrity is conceptualised in the 21st century. Media reactions demonstrate an unease with the synergy of royal status and capitalism, while simultaneously shining an accidental light on the funding of the royal family through taxpayer money, and the exploitation of other people's labour.

ACCESS exists to champion the contributions that social scientists make towards tackling environmental challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. To support this, our ‘Capacity Building’ activities form a core workstream. In September 2023 we hosted our second residential training event targeted at early career social scientists (PhD researchers and postdoctoral researchers) working in any sector. The theme for Summer School 2023 was “Supporting Early Career Climate & Environmental Social Scientists”. Sessions included a mix of keynote-style presentations, interactive workshops, and walk-and-talk sessions. The ACCESS Guiding Principles of Environmental Sustainability, Knowledge Coproduction, and Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) were embedded in the design and delivery of the event. We assessed Summer School 2023 using two data sources - applicants' characteristics (from the application forms) and delegates' experiences (from the feedback survey). Delegates valued the highly interactive programme, opportunities for peer-peer learning, and the residential setting which enabled time for more informal networking. The diversity of participants – in terms of topic, university, country and discipline – was noted as a strength of the event. Delegates also valued the transdisciplinary nature of the speakers. Overall, the ACCESS Summer School 2023 was a very successful event. The energy and enthusiasm of delegates were palpable across the three days, and their enjoyment was expressed in the overwhelmingly positive feedback received.

This comment points out that the field electron emission (FE) equation given in the text of the cited review paper is a simplified version of the original 1928 theory developed by Fowler and Nordheim. This 1920s theory severely underestimated exchange and correlation effects (usually modelled as an image potential energy). A revised theory, published by Murphy and Good (MG) in 1956, showed that including image effects leads to predictions of current density that typically are higher than 1920s theory by a factor of 100 or more. Hence, to describe FE, it is currently better working practice to use MG theory (either in its original form or in a modern form), rather than 1920s type theory.

We prove a non-existence theorem for smooth AdS(5) solutions with connected, compact without boundary internal space that preserve strictly 24 supersymmetries. In particular, we show that D = 11 supergravity does not admit such solutions, and that all such solutions of IIB supergravity are locally isometric to the AdS(5) x S-5 maximally supersymmetric background. Furthermore, we prove that (massive) IIA supergravity also does not admit such solutions, provided that the homogeneity conjecture for massive IIA supergravity is valid. In the context of AdS/CFT these results imply that if gravitational duals for strictly N = 3 superconformal theories in 4-dimensions exist, they are either singular or their internal spaces are not compact.

We classify the geometries of the most general warped, flux AdS backgrounds of heterotic supergravity up to two loop order in sigma model perturbation theory. We show under some mild assumptions that there are no AdS(n) backgrounds with n not equal 3. Moreover the warp factor of AdS(3) backgrounds is constant, the geometry is a product AdS 3 x M-7 and such solutions preserve, 2, 4, 6 and 8 supersymmetries. The geometry of M-7 has been specified in all cases. For 2 supersymmetries, it has been found that M-7 admits a suitably restricted G(2) structure. For 4 supersymmetries, M-7 has an SU(3) structure and can be described locally as a circle fibration over a 6-dimensional KT manifold. For 6 and 8 supersymmetries, M-7 has an SU(2) structure and can be described locally as a S-3 fibration over a 4-dimensional manifold which either has an anti-self dual Weyl tensor or a hyper-Kahler structure, respectively. We also demonstrate a new Lichnerowicz type theorem in the presence of alpha' corrections.