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During recent years the paint industry has invested much effort in the development of efficient anti‐corrosive paints for the protection of metal structures. The ever‐increasing problem of pollution, and modern techniques, demand improved anti‐corrosive paints that will ensure a good and economical protection.

Prediction of increased risk of suicide is difficult. We had the opportunity to follow up 20 patients receiving electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) because of severe depression. They filled in the Antonovsky sense of coherence test (SOC) and Beck depression inventory (BDI) before and after a series of ECT treatments. Seventeen surviving patients had a mean observation time of 20.6 months, whereas the three deceased patients had 11.3 months. There was a lower mean age at onset of illness and a longer mean duration of disease in the deceased. Other clinical parameters did not differ. The surviving patients had a significant decrease on the BDI from 35 to 18 (P<0.001) and an increase on the SOC test after ECT from 2.45 to 3.19 (P<0.001), indicating both less depression and better functioning in life. The deceased had a larger change on the BDI from 32 to 13, not attaining significance because of the low number of deceased. The SOC test, however, did not increase to a purported normal level; that is, from 2.43 to 2.87. Although the SOC scale has been shown to predict mortality in substance abusers, the SOC test has not been part of earlier reviews of predictive power. Tentatively, a low pathological score on the SOC test may indicate low sense of coherence in life that might increase the propensity for suicide. These preliminary results need replication in larger studies.

Recently, blockchain technology (BT) has resolved healthcare data management challenges. It helps healthcare providers automate medical records and mining to aid in data sharing and making more accurate diagnoses. This paper attempts to identify the critical success factors (CSFs) for successfully implementing BT in healthcare.

The paper is methodologically structured in four phases. The first phase leads to identifying success factors by reviewing the extant literature. In the second phase, expert opinions were solicited to authenticate the critical success factors required to implement BT in the healthcare sector. Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method was employed to find the cause-and-effect relationship among the third phase’s critical success factors. In phase 4, the authors resort to validating the final results and findings.

Based on the analysis, 21 CSFs were identified and grouped under six dimensions. After applying the DEMATEL technique, nine factors belong to the causal group, and the remaining 12 factors fall under the effect group. The top three influencing factors of blockchain technology implementation in the healthcare ecosystem are data transparency, track and traceability and government support, whereas; implementation cost was the least influential.

This study provides a roadmap and may facilitate healthcare professionals to overcome contemporary challenges with the help of BT.

The modern company is having to become increasingly international, to look to overseas markets or even to set up operations within them. This internationalisation of the company means that some method must be found which lays down guidelines for formulating an overall international marketing strategy. If different international markets are seen as basic units of investment, the company should seek to obtain a balanced portfolio of markets, to enable it to allocate its scarce resources with maximum efficiency achieving stable growth in the long term.

A new triangular shell finite element ‘TNTE.1’ (Ten Node Triangular Element, Model 1) is presented. The formulation is based on Sanders' theory which involves the inclusion of the normal rotation Φn in the bending‐strain relations only. The element displacement functions are complete cubic polynomials for inplane displacements u and v. For out‐of‐plane displacement w, three new singular rational shape functions were added at the element corners. Thus a conforming triangular element with twenty seven degrees‐of‐freedom is obtained after eliminating the internal displacements by static condensation. The formulation of this element is new in that an integration technique is developed and applied to the element stiffness matrix and load vector. This technique is based on performing all the necessary integrations externally (i.e. outside the main computer program) and then modifying the formulation of the element matrices to account for this change. Hence, such a method allows the inclusion of higher‐order integration rules without any loss of economy, due to computer time, in the main program. Results using this element showed good agreement with other finite element and closed form solutions.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a data system to assess failure probability in small to medium‐sized enterprise (SME) reorganization.

The data system is based on information from 83 reorganized Finnish SMEs. Information is divided into four types: pre‐filing non‐financial, pre‐filing financial, reorganization submission, and reorganization plan information. Partial least squares (PLS) analysis is used in data mining to factorize information for each type of information. Logistic regression analysis is applied to assess failure probability.

Useful data system can be developed on the basis of pre‐filing non‐financial information to support reorganization decision. Pre‐filing financial information only marginally improves quality of information. Submission and reorganization plan information improve quality in terms of fit but do not significantly improve classification accuracy.

The sample is small and should be expanded in further studies. The system is developed for Finnish reorganizing firms. It can be generalized to any similar reorganization process.

The data system is useful for managers, lending specialists, investors, reorganization lawyers, and judges. It warns a SME about reorganization failure before filing petition (passive use). It is also useful in developing successful reorganization plans (active use).

This paper builds an extensive data system for assessing reorganization failure risk. It makes use of many variables that have not been analyzed in reorganization studies earlier. It deals with SMEs that is rare in reorganization studies. The paper utilizes PLS in assessing failure probability. It includes new analytical results on PLS.

Personal characteristics, such as age, marital status, education level and gender, vary among elderly residents in residential apartments. These characteristics may influence the elderly residents’ satisfaction with the facilities provided in their residential apartments. To ensure appropriate facilities management (FM) items are provided for the different categories of elderly people, it is necessary to understand their basic needs. Therefore, this paper aims to compare the satisfaction with FM items among elderly people with different personal characteristics in private domestic (PD) buildings.

A questionnaire survey was conducted among elderly people with different personal characteristics in PD buildings to collect information about their levels of satisfaction with FM items. A total of 41 FM items and four characteristics of the elderly, namely, age, gender, marital status and education, were identified in this study.

The result shows that satisfaction with natural daylight was significantly different among elderly people of different genders, while the one-way between-groups ANOVA indicate that satisfaction with the size of bedrooms, turning spaces at doors, temperature in bathrooms and/or toilets, colour, accessibility and ease of closing or opening the doors were significantly different among elderly people belonging to different age groups and of different marital status and education level.

Designers and private developers are therefore recommended to increase the sizes of bedrooms, install windows on opposite sides of walls in the flats and ensure there is an adequate light reflection ratio for wall and floor colours, to accommodate elderly people’s special characteristics.

This paper attempts to deploy a systematic and structural approach to examine Macau's strengths and weaknesses and to scan its external opportunities and threats. A fresh way to quantify the extent of perceived opportunities and threats is introduced here. This is adopted and modified from the quality management tool box, i.e. the failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) and success mode and effects analysis (SMEA).

The internal factors, i.e. its strengths and weaknesses are systematically and structurally gauged using a Likert scale of 0 to 10 (i.e. 0 representing least important or least well performed … to 10 representing most important and best performed).

Following the matching of internal factors with the external factors in the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis, a list of meaningful responses is identified as possible strategies for the Macau SAR Government. The SWOT analysis is simple to use yet powerful and flexible in responding to changes in the external environment and should be useful to organizations both in the commercial sector and government machinery.

This innovative and structured strategic formulation approach is useful to both business practitioners and management consultants.