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The purpose of this paper is to introduce an effective method to discriminate seal inks with Raman microscopy.

Raman spectra could effectively avoid interference from the paper and give extra peak information in the inks discrimination and identification. Thus, a Renishaw invia confocal Raman microscope system was employed for ink analysis in this study. A total of 12 representative seal ink samples, widely used in seven Chinese provinces, were investigated using the latest model of Renishaw Raman microscope.

Four types of inks were identified and discriminated successfully. Popular pigments such as Pigment Scarlet Powder, Pigment Yellow 55, phthalocyanine blue, Bronze red C and PbCrO3 were all identified in these seal ink samples. The indicative peaks to identify and discriminate the inks were also summarised and tentatively interpreted.

More ink samples were needed to establish a useful library. Many other pigments used in inks were still unknown.

This method was proved to be fast, accurate and non-destructive, and it could be more easily applied in real cases than Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy.

This method can help scientists discriminate some inks, which can hardly be discriminated by other techniques. The results are useful for the ink analysis and discrimination in forensic (document examination and file source identification), polymer and pigment fields.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the conditions in which a saturation of the common mode (CM) choke might appear to be essential for proper design of the CM voltage filters. This paper presents a method for the determination of a CM choke flux density produced by multilevel inverters with carrier‐based modulations.

The proposed combination of secant and tangent methods allows efficient and high‐resolution determination of the CM voltage waveforms produced at the output of the multilevel inverters with commonly used carrier‐based modulations.

The presented results show that the application of a five‐level inverter with specific modulation causes a decrease of the maximum flux density, down to 15 per cent of the maximum level of the flux density reached in a two‐level inverter. The proposed, dedicated approximation method provides an accuracy of the root estimation better by about three orders for a comparable number of the function calls in comparison with Brent's method.

The presented theoretical evaluations make possible the determination of the maximum expected value of the flux density produced by multilevel inverters with various types of carrier‐based modulations, which allows a reduction in dimensions, weight and cost of CM chokes applied in CM voltage compensators.

In the paper, the new formulas that describe the placement of triangular carrier functions for commonly used multilevel inverters have been presented. In order to avoid accumulation of the estimation error, during determination of the CM voltage time integral, a dedicated, efficient method of roots approximation has been developed.

In this chapter the potential to use water-based Trombe walls to provide heated water for building applications during the summer months is investigated. Design Builder software is used to model a simple single-story building with a south-facing Trombe wall. The effects of using different thermal storage mediums within the Trombe wall on building heating loads during the winter and building cooling loads during the summer are modeled. The amount of thermal energy stored and temperature of water within the thermal storage medium during hot weather conditions were also simulated. On a sunny day on Toronto, Canada, the average temperature of the water in a Trombe wall integrated into a single-story building can reach ∼57°C, which is high enough to provide for the main hot water usages in buildings. Furthermore, the amount of water heated is three times greater than that required in an average household in Canada. The results from this work suggest that water-based Trombe walls have great potential to enhance the flexibility and utility of Trombe walls by providing heated water for building applications during summer months, without compromising performance during winter months.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to examine the impact of Mexico’s national teacher incentive program, Carrera Magisterial (CM), on educational quality and equity.Methodology – I conduct a descriptive analysis of data from two Mexican states, Aguascalientes and Sonora, to explore whether the distribution of teachers across schools and communities has changed since the implementation of CM.Findings – Although more qualified teachers tend to be disproportionately concentrated in wealthier municipalities and urban areas in both Aguascalientes and Sonora, I find some evidence that the distribution of qualified teachers has become more equitable over time in both states.Research limitations – These results suggest that CM’s design, which allows teachers to advance more rapidly through the system if they teach in low-development zones, may have increased equity in children’s access to qualified teachers. However, these trends could result from influences beyond CM, such as salary incentives to teach in less developed areas. We must also take care in extrapolating results from two Mexican states to other states with different populations and geographies.Practical implications – This research suggests that policymakers must apply a careful analysis to the design of CM, especially the allocation of points to teachers based on their students’ test scores. In particular, educators and policymakers must consider the potential movement of more qualified teachers to higher-scoring schools and classrooms.Value – Although substantial research has examined whether CM has improved educational quality in Mexico, this is one of few studies to explore the program’s impact on educational equity.

This chapter discusses the application of fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) modelling to construction management (CM) challenges and problems. It focuses on the critical issue of managing the complexity and uncertainty inherent in CM by providing a new intelligent layer that enhances classical approaches to construction modelling and management. It investigates how the myriad types of internal and external factors affecting the feasibility and performance of construction projects can be modelled using a fuzzy hybrid method that explores the complex relationships among many contributing factors and assesses and evaluates their impacts on past and future projects. This chapter proposes a hybrid modelling approach in the traditional context of cost, schedule and risk management and describes how augmenting and enhancing existing state-of-the-art tools and processes in CM can assist construction managers. This chapter provides a background on the theory of FCMs, presents foundational and current research, and explains how to apply this approach in the CM domain. This chapter also provides a detailed description of how to develop, modify and employ interactive models to specific CM challenges and problems. It includes a customisable, interactive base model and demonstrates how the model has been applied to specific CM events and issues. Examples are presented that highlight the interplay between project-specific goals and characteristics and the way these impact the interrelated and often opposing triad of cost, schedule and risk. The presented examples and practical applications make this state-of-the-art approach useful to both academic and industry practitioners.

Contract Manufacturers (CM, factory) can cultivate factory brand products by imitating Original Equipment Manufacturers' (OEM, brand owner) National Brand products, and compete with OEM through the online retailer, that is, factory encroachment. In practice, few consumers can identify the quality of those two products in the online market. Implementing blockchain technology (BTI) can help all consumers identify product quality but may change the operation decisions and incur implementation costs. This study aims to explore how will the BTI strategies affect participants' operation performance under the factory encroachment and delve into the decisions regarding NB product quality and CM encroachment.

This study constructs a three-level outsourcing supply chain comprising one contract manufacturer (CM, factory), one original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and one online retailer. By utilizing the Stackelberg game, the authors first compared the results between two strategic decisions of BTI and no-BTI by online retailers under the factory encroachment scenario. Then, the NB product quality decision and the CM's encroachment decision are also investigated.

BTI strategy can benefit all participants (triple win), which both occurs in exogenous and endogenous quality cases, and the triple win area will expand (shrink) as the BTI cost decreases (increases). In addition, the OEM will improve product quality to confront competition from the CM, and the OEM may not always benefit from the BTI, it depends on the maturity of the market. Interestingly, BTI could improve the consumer surplus when the proportion of novice consumers is low. Finally, this study also investigates the extended case that CM always encroaches into the market whether the online retailer choose BTI or not, which hurts OEM's profit and decreases the product quality.

This study sheds light on the strategic decisions of online retailers' BTI regarding supply chain members' profits, consumer surplus and social welfare under factory encroachment. It also demonstrates that the BTI strategy, under different quality decisions (endogenous and exogenous), can be more profitable for chain members and consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to compare earnings management (EM) and capital management (CM) by European banks before and after the adoption of IFRS 9. After IFRS 9, banks have more discretion in recognizing loan-loss provisions than before IFRS 9. Hence, after IFRS 9, banks could use EM and CM to a greater extent.

This paper analyzes a sample of European banks and uses regression analysis. First, this paper examines whether EM and CM changed after IFRS 9 was adopted. Next, this study examines whether any changes in EM and CM under IFRS 9 depend on regulatory quality (RQ) in the country where banks are located.

This paper has three results. First, after IFRS 9, EM increased relative to before IFRS 9. Second, after IFRS 9, CM increased relative to before IFRS 9. Third, this increase in EM was only for banks in countries with low RQ – in countries with high RQ, this study finds no change in EM after IFRS 9. Altogether, these results suggest that, first, EM and CM increased after IFRS 9 and, second, this increase in EM depended on the RQ of a bank’s country.

This paper identifies how the adoption of IFRS 9 affected EM and CM by European banks. The main contribution of this paper is that it examines the impact of the adoption of IFRS 9 on EM and CM by European banks using data from banks’ actual financial statements.

With the increasing demand for sustainable developments, higher education should focus on teaching both sustainable buildings and infrastructure systems. This study aims to investigate the existing sustainable infrastructure (SI) teaching efforts in sustainability courses; identify best practices to integrate SI throughout bachelor’s and master’s programs under the construction management (CM) curricula; and propose guidelines for students to obtain Envision sustainability professional (ENV SP) credential during sustainability education.

This study conducted keywords search within the sustainability course descriptions under the American Council for Construction Education accredited CM curricula to locate SI topics. Additionally, this research collected inputs from the Envision Academic Committee members to develop a matrix representing the best practices for integrating SI in higher education and provided a guide with a step-by-step procedure to obtain ENV SP credentials.

This study identified a gap regarding the availability of SI education and offered best practices on how CM curricula might nurture such knowledge. Phase I highlighted that only two CM programs taught infrastructure sustainability, and three programs offered sustainability credentialing processes under a bachelor’s degree. Phase II developed a framework that offered a variety of pedagogical approaches and outlined the process for obtaining the ENV SP certificate for CM students in the freshman, sophomore, junior and senior years.

The findings of this study can facilitate CM education to create awareness among the future workforce and encourage them to establish skills pertaining to the economic, social and environmental implications while designing SI.

Industry practice has shown that technology licensing has an important effect on the R&D cooperation between firms. Different licensing methods will significantly impact a supply chain member's cooperative and price R&D decisions. However, there is scant literature investigating the decision on technology licensing and its impact on a supply chain member's price and cooperative R&D decisions. To address this gap, the authors investigate the R&D cooperation and the technology licensing in a supply chain formed of an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), a contract manufacturer (CM), and a third-party manufacturer which will compete with the OEM when the technology licensing occurs.

The authors investigate two licensing patterns, royalty licensing, fixed fee licensing together with the no licensing, within the R&D cooperative supply chain by developing two three-stage and a two-stage Stackelberg models.

Compare to the no licensing strategy, technology licensing always benefits to the OEM and the society especially when the technology efficiency and the brand power of the third-party manufacturer are more significant; the royalty licensing benefits to the OEM more when the technology efficiency and the brand power of the third-party manufacturer are higher; the fixed fee licensing benefits to the OEM more when the technology efficiency and the brand power of the third-party manufacturer are lower.

The royalty licensing is more effective for mitigating price competition intensity and helping firms to maintain higher sales margins; the fixed fee licensing induces firms' lower sales margins but increases the firms' sales quantities; in most cases, the fixed fee licensing is optimal from the perspectives of consumer and society, however, the CM's investment intention to the R&D technology with the fixed fee licensing is lower.

So far, different licensing models under the R&D cooperation have not been investigated, and the authors propose two three-stage Stackelberg models with considering the competition caused by technology licensing under the R&D cooperation to deal with the cooperative R&D and technology licensing issues.

The purpose of this paper is to discover university librarians' perceptions regarding importance of various elements of CM, and self‐assessment about the status of CM in university libraries of Pakistan.

To achieve the objectives of the study, the survey method was used with self‐completion questionnaires to collect data from throughout Pakistan. The questionnaire was sent to central libraries of 40 major accredited universities of Pakistan and 30 responses were obtained.

It was found that the university librarians are still not fully conversant with the changing scenario of CM in both theoretical and practical terms. It also appeared that the university librarians were not satisfied with the overall status of managing a collection in the majority of cases.

The paper is the first study on the overall status of collection management in Pakistan. It will invoke among professionals the need to learn and apply modern practices of collection management.