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The recent trend of integrated risk management has resulted in corporations reassessing their risk management practices. Insurance derivatives and insurance‐linked securities are emerging as alternatives or complements to traditional resisurance capacity. Despite its theoretical benefits, the market for insurance‐linked transactions has not matured, due to problems of information asymmetry and lack of transparency. This article proposes a solution to resolve the conflicting interests preventing insurers/reinsurers and investors from more widely trading insurance risk.

This study aims to derive factors in the context of library corporate social responsibility. Interest in implementing corporate social responsibility has also increased over time because of its association with core issues of fundamental value, especially in societal, environmental and ethical practices. Therefore, corporate social responsibility can help libraries accomplish their missions and goals.

The study used data from 80 studies from the literature between 2010 and 2020 analysed and reviewed to identify the components of library corporate social responsibility. To establish library corporate social responsibility factors, thematic and weighting analyses were adopted and implemented.

The study established that library corporate social responsibility comprises four main themes: community, workplace and employees, environment, and stakeholders, which include the nine best predicted factors that play a significant role in library corporate social responsibility.

The results of this study provide implications for librarians and academics about libraries' social responsibility and its themes and factors.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to derive the factors of library corporate social responsibility. Hence, the importance of identifying library corporate social responsibility factors and component will help libraries implement the best practices of the modern concept of corporate social responsibility.

Driving safety on a wet road is closely related to the wet skid resistance of tires. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the evolution of wet skid resistance at different water film thicknesses and provide some guidance on the design of a tread pattern with improved traction on rainy roads.

Brake tests are performed in a laboratory with a viscoelastic tribotester at various water film thicknesses. The initial water film thickness is 3 mm, which decreases with an increase in the test number. Brake friction force is dynamically measured at water film thicknesses ranging from 0 mm to 3 mm.

The results show that water film thickness exerts a great influence on the forms of tire motion and slip ratio. The tire is much easier to slide on the road with thick water film and also with a considerably thin water film (about 0-1 mm) during a sharp braking process. The brake traction can be very low under this road condition despite the apparently safe quality of the road.

The authors design and establish a new viscoelastic tribotester which is used to simulate the real braking sliding process and study the tribological properties between tire rubber and road surface. The variation in the wet friction coefficient and slip ratio at different water film thicknesses have a great influence on the design of a tread pattern with improved traction on rainy roads.

Pebble Technology Corporation (Pebble) was an early entrant into the smartwatch industry. Pebble’s Founder, Eric Migicovsky, began thinking about creating a smartwatch in 2008 while still an undergraduate engineering student. After selling about 1,500 prototype watches, he was accepted into Silicon Valley’s prestigious Y Combinator business start-up program. Finding it difficult to attract investors, Migicovsky launched a crowdfunding campaign that raised a record-breaking $10.27m on Kickstarter. The case concludes shortly after Apple’s unveiling of its soon-to-be-released Apple Watch. The case provides an opportunity to evaluate Pebble’s various strategic options at the time of Apple’s announcement.

The authors observed over 30 h of video and audio recordings of speeches, interviews and other events involving Pebble’s founder, other Pebble executives, investors and competitors. These recordings are all publicly available. Whenever possible, the authors also reviewed the Twitter feeds, Facebook sites and personal websites of Pebble’s top executives over time. Similarly, the authors followed Pebble’s official website, corporate blog and Kickstarter campaign websites. The authors also drew from numerous media reports. Due to the public nature of the data, no company release is provided nor has any information been disguised in any way.

The case is designed for both undergraduate and graduate students for courses in strategic management.

This paper sets out to design and realize a highly linear, wide dynamic range and high switching efficiency integrated CMOS up‐conversion mixer for two‐step IEEE 802.1a WLAN transmitter application in 0.18‐μm deep submicron CMOS technology.

A folded current draining low‐voltage mixer architecture is explored and an extensive simulation carried out utilizing Cadence Spectre‐RF tool in optimizing the linearity, input third‐order intercept point (IIP3), the dynamic range, 1 dB compression point (P_−1dB), power dissipation and reduction of switching quad C_gs, input gate‐source capacitance, in enhancing the switching efficiency of the proposed architecture.

A highly linear, high input dynamic range, low voltage folded up‐conversion mixer architecture is realized in a significant comparable performance with respect to conventional reported architecture, indicating −8.87 dBm of OIP3 corresponding to 15.27 dBm IIP3 and 4.37 dBm of P_−1dB in 0.18‐μm CMOS technology.

The optimized mixer architecture is stringent to an up‐converter application. To be utilized as a down converter at the receiver end, parameters, namely as noise figure and conversion gain, are of additional importance.

The designed folded mixer architecture is in need of integration to a two‐step up‐conversion transmitter architecture which relaxes the injection pulling effect for a given low voltage headroom, with low power dissipation design.

In this work, an integrated folded architecture with on‐chip process, voltage and temperature compensated biasing circuit is explored and enhanced, raising awareness of adapting improved multiplier blocks in achieving optimal performance in WLAN transceiver architecture.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how absorptive capacity mediates the relationship between ambidextrous organizational learning and performance among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Based on the resource-based view (RBV) and the dynamic capability approach, this paper uses the resource-capability-performance framework to construct the theoretical model of this study and tests the theoretical model with the questionnaire survey data of 189 SMEs in mainland China.

Ambidextrous organizational learning has different effects on SMEs' performance in terms of survival performance and growth performance. Both exploitative learning and exploratory learning have positive effects on absorptive capacity, and absorptive capacity has positive influences on both the survival performance and growth performance of SMEs. Absorptive capacity plays different mediating roles in the relationships between ambidextrous organizational learning and SMEs' performance: absorptive capacity plays a partial mediating role in the relationship between exploratory learning and SME growth performance, while absorptive capacity plays complete mediating roles in other relationships.

Managers must stress the use of exploratory learning in order to promote SMEs' growth performance. However, to foster both absorptive capacity and SME performance in terms of survival and growth, managers must pay more attention to take advantage of ambidextrous organizational learning. Government as policymakers should create a favorable environment that enable SMEs to benefit much more from the deployment of ambidextrous organizational learning and absorptive capacity.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to theorize and test the mediating role of absorptive capacity in the linkage between ambidextrous organizational learning and SME performance in terms of survival and growth. Additionally, this study also is the first to provide empirical support for the impact of ambidextrous organizational learning on absorptive capacity among SMEs.