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The airline industry has been significantly hit by the occurrence of the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, facing one of its worst crises in history. In this context, the present paper analyses one of the well-known boarding methods used in practice by the airlines before and during the coronavirus outbreak, namely back-to-front and suggests which variations of this method to use when three passenger boarding groups are considered and a jet bridge connects the airport terminal with the airplane.

Based on the importance accorded by the airlines to operational performance, health risks, and passengers' comfort, the variations in three passenger groups back-to-front boarding are divided into three clusters using the grey clustering approach offered by the grey systems theory.

Having the clusters based on the selected metrics and considering the social distance among the passengers, airlines can better understand how the variations in back-to-front perform in the new conditions imposed by the novel coronavirus and choose the boarding approach that better fits its policy and goals.

The paper combines the advantages offered by grey clustering and agent-based modelling for offering to determine which are the best configurations that offer a reduced boarding time, while accounting for reduced passengers' health risk, measured through three indicators: aisle risk, seat risk and type-3 seat interferences and for an increased comfort for the passengers manifested through a continuous walking flow while boarding.

The Grey System Theory (GST) is an emerging area of research within artificial intelligence. Since its founding in 1982, it has seen a lot of multidisciplinary applications. In just a short period, it has garnered some considerable strengths. Based on the 1987–2021 data collected from the Web of Science (WoS), the current study reports the advancement of the GST.

Research papers utilizing the GST in the fields of economics and education were retrieved from the Web of Science (WoS) platform using a set of predetermined keywords. In the final stage of the process, the papers that underwent analysis were manually chosen, with selection criteria based on the information presented in the titles and abstracts.

The study identifies prominent authors, institutions, publications and journals closely associated with the subject. In terms of authors, two major clusters are identified around Liu SF and Wang ZX, while the institution with the highest number of publications is Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Moreover, significant keywords, trends and research directions have been extracted and analyzed. Additionally, the study highlights the regions where the theory holds substantial influence.

The study is subject to certain limitations stemming from factors such as the language employed in the chosen literature, the papers included within the Web of Science (WoS) database, the designation of works categorized as “articles” in the database, the specific selection of keywords and keyword combinations, and the meticulous manual process employed for paper selection. While the manual selection process itself is not inherently limiting, it demands a greater investment of time and meticulous attention, contributing to the overall limitations of the study.

The significance of the study extends not only to scholars and practitioners but also to readers who observe the development of emerging scientific disciplines.

The analysis of trends revealed a growing emphasis on the application of GST in diverse domains, including supply chain management, manufacturing and economic development. Notably, the emergence of COVID-19 as a new research focal point among GST scholars is evident. The heightened interest in COVID-19 can be attributed to its global impact across various academic disciplines. However, it is improbable that this interest will persist in the long term, as the pandemic is gradually brought under control.

This paper attempts to identify the strength of the relation between the quality characteristics of companies that are activating in an economy and their performance.

In the quality characteristics sphere were included almost all the elements related to company's behaviour on a market, in an uncertain environment and in the relations developed with stockholders. And what theory can better shape this relation than grey systems theory, a theory of uncertainty and of continual changes? At first, all of these qualitative characteristics that are reflecting company's activity have been divided into six categories for a better reality reflection. A performance indicator was also depicted by taking into consideration each company's managerial objectives.

By applying grey relational analysis (GRA) in a case of eight Romanian firms, the results were convincing: not only that these characteristics determine firm's evolution, but, by knowing them and acting properly on them, firm's extreme situations (such as insolvency or bankruptcy) can be avoided.

The method exposed in the paper can be used for any company for evaluating the linkage between its main characteristics and the way its performance can evolve.

The paper succeeds in identifying the linkage between the characteristics of a company at a certain point and its performance by using one of the newest developed theories: grey systems theory.

The present paper tries to give a new vision on the firm's future evolution forecasting. By taking into account some of the current values of its symptoms and applying one of the most used models in the grey systems theory, namely the GM(1,1), the predictions related to its future symptoms' values can be determined. Having these projected values and the grey economic-financial matrix, K, the future diseases that can hit a company can be depicted along with their causes. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Forecasting the future development of a firm is always an important issue in firm's survival in nowadays economy. Most of all, it is extremely important to be aware all the time about the inner and outer factors than can make a difference between a successful and a bankrupt firm. For this, here the authors have used three GM(1,1) models for forecasting the future symptoms (expressed through financial indicators) and performance indicator of a firm. Each time, based on the determined accuracy rate, a specific GM model has been chosen for every indicator's forecasting.

Considering some previous researches and findings in bankruptcy modelling and diagnosis, this paper enlarges their applicability by adding the possibility to make future predictions on the indicators' evolution and to observe and to better manage their causes. As it was expected, the GM(1,1) models used for the forecasting of the various time series variables taken into account were different from one case to another, choosing the best-specific model for each variable case conducted to more accurate data-fit, with direct results in the causes hierarchy.

By knowing the main causes that determine a certain state in firms' development and understanding them, the manager can action upon them in a manner that can make the difference between a bankrupt and a real successful firm.

The paper succeeds in enlarging the view regarding bankruptcy forecasting by adding a dynamic view over the considered variables. If, in most of the cases when facing with financial forecasting, a single model is used for predictions, here the best GM model has been chosen for each variable based on the obtained accuracy rate. The results are concluding.

Automatically extracting stance information from natural language texts is a significant research problem with various applications, particularly after the recent explosion of data on the internet via platforms like social media sites. Stance detection system helps determine whether the author agree, against or has a neutral opinion with the given target. Most of the research in stance detection focuses on the English language, while few research was conducted on the Arabic language.

This paper aimed to address stance detection on Arabic tweets by building and comparing different stance detection models using four transformers, namely: Araelectra, MARBERT, AraBERT and Qarib. Using different weights for these transformers, the authors performed extensive experiments fine-tuning the task of stance detection Arabic tweets with the four different transformers.

The results showed that the AraBERT model learned better than the other three models with a 70% F1 score followed by the Qarib model with a 68% F1 score.

A limitation of this study is the imbalanced dataset and the limited availability of annotated datasets of SD in Arabic.

Provide comprehensive overview of the current resources for stance detection in the literature, including datasets and machine learning methods used. Therefore, the authors examined the models to analyze and comprehend the obtained findings in order to make recommendations for the best performance models for the stance detection task.