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The purpose of this study is to analyze the corrosion behavior of 304SS in three kinds of solution, 3.5 per cent NaCl, 5 per cent H₂SO₄ and 1 M (1 mol/L) NaOH, using electrochemical noise.

Corrosion types and rates were characterized by spectrum and time-domain analysis. EN signals were evaluated using a novel method of phase space reconstruction and chaos theory. To evaluate the chaotic characteristics of corrosion systems, the delay time was obtained by the mutual information method and the embedding dimension was obtained by the average false neighbors method.

The varying degrees of chaos in the corrosion systems were indicated by positive largest Lyapunov exponents of the electrochemical potential noise.

The change of correlation dimension in three kinds of solution demonstrated significant differences, clearly differentiating various types of corrosion.

The purpose of this paper is to obtain liquid acrylate oligomers containing carboxyl groups as excellent toughening agents for epoxy resins.

Liquid acrylate oligomers containing carboxyl groups were synthesised by the solution polymerisation of butyl acrylate (BA), acrylic acid (AA) and acrylonitrile (AN) as monomers. The liquid acrylate oligomers were used as the toughening agents for epoxy resins. The chemical structure of the oligomers was characterised by ¹³C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscope. The morphology of modified epoxy networks was analysed by scanning electron microscope (SEM). The mechanical and thermodynamic properties were measured by universal testing machine and dynamic mechanical analyser (DMA).

The results show that AA and oligomer concentrations have great influence on the morphology, mechanical and thermodynamic properties of the modified epoxy networks. When the 10 wt percent oligomer containing BA and AN and AA in the ratio of 75/20/5 is used to modify the epoxy resin, the increase in impact strength of the modified epoxy network is 291.5 percent over the unmodified epoxy network due to addition of the oligomers without a sacrifice in heat‐resistance properties. Fracture surface analysis by SEM indicates the presence of a two‐phase microstructure.

The modified epoxy networks can be used as high performance materials such as adhesives, sealants and matrices of composites.

The liquid acrylate oligomers containing carboxyl and nitrile groups which were synthesised with BA, AA and AN as monomers by the solution polymerisation are novel and can greatly increase the toughness of epoxy resins without loss of thermal resistance.

In this “Info-plosion” era, recommendation systems (or recommenders) play a significant role in finding interesting items in the surge of online digital activity and e-commerce. The purpose of this paper is to model users' preference evolution to recommend potential items which users may be interested in.

A novel recommendation system, namely evolution-learning recommendation (ELR), is developed to precisely predict user interest for making recommendations. Differing from prior related methods, the authors integrate the matrix factorization (MF) and recurrent neural network (RNN) to effectively describe the variation of user preferences over time.

A novel cumulative factorization technique is proposed to efficiently decompose a rating matrix for discovering latent user preferences. Compared to traditional MF-based methods, the cumulative MF could reduce the utilization of computation resources. Furthermore, the authors depict the significance of long- and short-term effects in the memory cell of RNN for evolution patterns. With the context awareness, a learning model, V-LSTM, is developed to dynamically capture the evolution pattern of user interests. By using a well-trained learning model, the authors predict future user preferences and recommend related items.

Based on the relations among users and items for recommendation, the authors introduce a novel concept, virtual communication, to effectively learn and estimate the correlation among users and items. By incorporating the discovered latent features of users and items in an evolved manner, the proposed ELR model could promote “right” things to “right” users at the “right” time. In addition, several extensive experiments are performed on real datasets and are discussed. Empirical results show that ELR significantly outperforms the prior recommendation models. The proposed ELR exhibits great generalization and robustness in real datasets, including e-commerce, industrial retail and streaming service, with all discussed metrics.

This paper aims to inquire and argue for a renovated model of Confucian political leadership as a way of political governance rooted in a philosophy of humanity and its potential for development.

The paper is primarily critical and constructive through philosophical analysis and synthesis of ideas and insights into nature of man and political leadership in light of Confucian texts and practices.

Based on reflection and analysis, the classical model of political leadership is shown to consist of core values of virtues and visions in classical Confucianism. By conceptual reconstruction a new Confucian model is formulated in such a way in which ethics of utilities and ethics of justice and righteousness are incorporated. The author further shows how it can be realized in different functions of modernized political and economic leadership. The author finds that this move resulted in achieving an essential transformation toward a more realistic application and practice in a global world.

In so far as the new model deals with a process of normative harmonization in which it can be further enhanced by comprehensive considerations of intrinsic human values and future development of humanity as a whole, this model provides a practical method for meeting the urgent needs on different levels of leadership and management for creative and world‐oriented attitude‐building, policy‐making and strategic seminar‐course designing for graduate and executive training in contemporary business schools.

The author has innovatively constructed the new Confucian model and show how political leadership in this model has the capability and ability to persevere in seeking harmony and harmonization among traditions and nations in the global world. The author has also explained how and why morality when properly supported can be a global leading power for bringing harmony and harmonization to the world. The author has formed a new concept of political leadership force and named it the moral power in addition to but not separated in its persuasion from hard power, soft power and smart power of Joseph Nye. The author's formulation and argument for the new model with its moral power constitute a highly significant contribution to the understanding of Confucian political leadership in contemporary global contexts.

Construction process is complex and traditionally fragmented; thus, it is almost impossible to have a project completed without changes to the original plan or the construction process. The purpose of this study is to identify and examine the causes of variation orders, ascertain their effects and establish the cost and time performance implication as a result of variation orders.

This study obtained information from 90 construction stakeholders on 30 completed educational building projects to ascertain the causes and effects of variation orders on project delivery using questionnaire survey. In addition to this, a pro forma document was designed to obtain the project characteristics, cost and time data from these 30 completed educational building projects. Factor analysis was used to categorise the causes of variation orders, while severity index was used to examine their effects on project delivery. The hypothesised statement was tested using paired t-statistics to examine whether a statistically significant difference existed between variation orders, cost and time performance of the projects.

The study identified 13 main factors as causes of variation orders and the results revealed that the most frequent effects of variations were increase in construction costs, time, client dissatisfaction, increase construction project rework and demolition and project abandonment. The results also showed that variation orders had significant effects on both cost and scheduled performance of the educational building projects with average cost and time escalation of 33.95 and 29.45 per cent of the original project cost and time, respectively, for the entire projects studied, while average cost implication of variation orders is 23.79 per cent.

The findings in this study will be of assistance to government agencies and management of public works in higher institutions of learning in managing variations in construction projects. The study will also add to the current literature on the impact of variation orders on educational building projects in developing countries. Finally, it will create the much-needed awareness on the severity and implication of change or variation orders on project delivery.

The study identified and examined the causes of variation orders, ascertained their effects and established the cost and time effects of the causes of variation order on project performance. This will assist project initiators, contractors, consultants and other stakeholders to fully appreciate and understand the significant effects of variation orders on project performance.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and prioritise competencies of Indonesian third-party logistics (3PL) managers from the perspective of multinational corporations (MNCs) and local firms.

Underlined by the theory of action and job performance (competency model), the study proposes a framework that consists of management, logistics, business and information and communication technology competency categories, with 15 competencies. Data are collected from five MNCs and five local 3PL firms operating in Indonesia. The analytic hierarchy process method is used to calculate the priority weights and to prioritise the competencies.

Results indicate that both the local and MNC 3PL providers emphasise logistics as the “most important” competency category. In the “moderately important” competency group, MNCs prioritise competencies in the management competency category while local firms prioritise competencies in the business competency category.

Results obtained in this study focus on 3PL firms in Indonesian businesses, which may not be applicable to other nations and other industries.

3PL firms, industry peak bodies (e.g. Indonesian Logistics Association) and education providers can benefit from incorporating the findings of this study in developing curricula for higher education and training programmes for certification designed to improve managerial competencies.

By including the perceptions of the MNCs and local 3PL providers, this study advances the literature on 3PL managerial competencies by extending such knowledge to the global environment.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a numerical procedure for discrete identification of the missing part of the domain boundary in a heat conduction problem. A new approach to sensitivity analysis is intended to give a better understanding of the influence of measurement error on boundary reconstruction.

The solution of Laplace’s equation is obtained using the Trefftz method, and then each of the sought boundary points can be derived numerically from a nonlinear equation. The sensitivity analysis comes down to the analytical evaluation of a sensitivity factor.

The proposed method very accurately recovers the unknown boundary, including irregular shapes. Even a very large number of the boundary points can be determined without causing computational problems. The sensitivity factor provides quantitative assessment of the relationship between the temperature measurement errors and boundary identification errors. The numerical examples show that some boundary reconstruction problems are error-sensitive by nature but such problems can be recognized with the use of a sensitive factor.

The present approach based on the Trefftz method separates, in terms of computation, specification of the coefficients appearing in the Trefftz method and missing coordinates of the sought boundary points. Due to introducing a sensitivity factor, a more profound sensitivity analysis was successfully conducted.

The purpose of this paper is to bridge the knowledge gap in designing MBA strategy between China and the West by examining the content, context and process of MBA delivery. This paper challenges the assumptions and pedagogical approach underpinning the current design and delivery of MBA programmes that were originally moulded with Western management history and development in the era of globalization. There is consensus that MBA was used to train business managers; however, nowadays, people are inclined to state that MBA is used to develop global business leaders or full-fledged global competitors. How can we develop global business leaders without a global vision when designing MBA strategy?

Based on extensive literature review and critical analyses through the strategic management approach, this paper examines the status quo of current MBA programmes in the West and in China. This paper presents a conceptual framework that draws on the current MBA literature and on-going debates around management education and development in the West and in China.

The designing strategy of MBA has been originally strongly influenced by Western ideology and ethos. Therefore, the difficulties of management knowledge transfer are often explained through culture acclimatization and emphasize has been on cultural divergence rather than convergence. With synthesis between Western and Eastern management identified, we argue that the appropriateness and effectiveness of the traditional philosophy of MBA designing strategy based on Western management history has been challenged in the 21st century. The perception has fuelled criticism of business schools in the post-recession. They have come under fire for allegedly failing in their obligations to educate socially responsible business leaders (Barker, 2010). This leads to rethinking of the philosophy and vision underpinning the MBA designing strategy. A new philosophical approach – integration of Western management with Eastern philosophy has been under scrutiny, which is necessary in business education to enable future business leaders to become full-fledged competitors in the global market.

The output of this discussion helps to establish a conceptual framework which will provide strategic insight in enabling business/management school and MBA providers to address the current deficiency in MBA teaching and learning strategy and develop more appropriate arrangement when considering the design and development of a successful MBA programme in the 21st century.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a cross-platform recommendation system that recommends the most suitable public Instagram accounts to Facebook users.

We collect data from both Facebook and Instagram and then propose a similarity matching mechanism for recommending the most appropriate Instagram accounts to Facebook users. By removing the data disparity between the two heterogeneous platforms and integrating them, the system is able to make more accurate recommendations.

The results show that the method proposed in this paper can recommend suitable public Instagram accounts to Facebook users with very high accuracy.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to propose a recommender system to recommend Instagram public accounts to Facebook users. Second, our proposed method can integrate heterogeneous data from two different platforms to generate collaborative recommendations. Furthermore, our cross-platform system reveals an innovative concept of how multiple platforms can promote their respective platforms in a unified, cooperative and collaborative manner.