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The purpose of this paper is to examine the underlying mechanism and physico‐chemical requirements of chemo‐responsive shape change/memory polymers and to explore the future trend of development and potential applications.

Working mechanism in chemo‐responsive shape change/memory polymers is firstly identified. And then the physico‐chemical requirements for the representative polymers are characterized.

The different working mechanisms, fundamentals, physico‐chemical requirements and theoretical origins have been discussed. Current research and development on the fabrication strategies of chemo‐responsive shape change/memory polymers have been summarised. The future trend and potential applications have been explored and estimated.

This review examines physico‐chemical requirements and theoretical origins necessary to achieve chemo‐responsiveness, and then discusses recent developments and future trends.

Shape change/memory polymers can be used in the broad field of bio‐ and/or medicine.

Breakthroughs and rapid development of chemo‐responsive shape change/memory polymers will significantly improve the research and development of smart materials, structures and systems.

This paper aims to examine the effectiveness of control mechanisms in promoting collaborative performance by exploring the moderating effects of formal institutions (government support and legal enforcement in this study) and informal ties (business ties in this study) on the relationship between control mechanisms and collaborative performance.

A conceptual model is developed with the direct effects of contractual execution and relational norms on collaborative performance and the moderating effects of government support, legal enforcement and business ties on the above relationships. Hierarchical regression analysis is used to test the hypotheses based on 393 responses from Chinese computer and computer components distributors.

The empirical results generally support the conceptual model. First, consistent with most previous studies, both contractual execution and relational norms contribute to collaborative performance. Second, government support and business ties weaken the role of contractual execution, whereas legal enforcement strengthens it. Third, business ties enhance the effects of relational norms, and, unexpectedly, government support also fosters the relationship between relational norms and collaborative performance.

First, this study solves the problem of conflicting findings on the relationship between contract and performance by examining the effect of contractual execution, rather than contract design, on collaborative performance. Second, this study contributes to institutional theory by examining the moderating role of formal institutions. Third, this study deepens the understanding of the role of business ties by exploring its moderating effect on the relationship between control mechanisms and collaborative performance.

The purpose of this research is to propose and test a model that aims to identify key determinants which could alleviate the loss of brand trust and loyalty caused by brand name change using the resistance to change theory (RCT).

Because of the causal nature of the research, the quantitative research methodology was considered as best suitable. An online questionnaire was administered on a sample composed of 313 consumers.

The paper provides empirical insights regarding the fact that consumers’ resistance to the brand name substitution is the main determinant of the transfer of consumers’ trust from the old to the new brand. Finally, loyalty transfer heavily relies on trust transfer.

Because of the convenience sample used, the research results may lack generalisability. Furthermore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed hypotheses based on different brand name change cases.

The paper includes implications for the alleviation of consumers’ resistance to the brand name substitution, a main determinant for the loss of brand trust and loyalty in the case of brand name change.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how consumers’ resistance to the brand name change can be diminished. Overall, our research supports the use of the RCT for a better understanding of brand name change-related issues.

Under the Directive 2011/24/EU, medical tourism and cross-border health are interrelated terms regarding the freedom to move to get the most accessible medical treatment into EU Member State within the defined procedures for reimbursement. Little known empirically regarding the efficiency of the cross-border health/medical tourism industry. This study aims to measure its efficiency in Europe for the years 2010-2014, by using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA).

Data obtained from OECD and the European Core Health Indicators (ECHI), which is collecting the data through Eurostat. Eurostat collects data on health-care activities and provides data on hospital discharges, including the hospital discharges of non-residents and these include hospital discharges of in-patients and day care patients. The analysis uses “DEA.P, 2.1 for windows” by Coelli (1996).

The results show that the Members States health systems were very efficient in handling non-residents in-patients; however, when managing day cases/outpatients, the efficiency scores dropped.

The findings would have significant associations affecting intentions to revisit clinics and the destination country. In addition, will be useful to those seeking a better understanding of the cross-border health and medical tourism industry efficiency.

Extending the findings of the European Commission report (2015c) by examining how well medical tourists are informed about the decision they are making, would be of perceived value. These are important indicators at European level by helping each Member State to measure its medical tourism services.

Due to greater returns to high skill and desirable amenities, high-skilled workers are increasingly agglomerating in metropolitan areas and form path dependence. This chapter explores whether the land supply policy of China constraining big cities' urban construction land quota strengthens the spatial divergence of human capital. Using city-level land supply data, population census data, and land transaction micro data, we find that the higher the degree of a city's land supply lagging behind land demand, the greater the enlargement effect of the initial share of population with college degrees on the increase in share of population with college degrees. Further research reveals that the main mechanism causing this phenomenon is the rapidly rising housing prices hindering low-skill labor flows to big cities.

As the cost of completing a transaction, the green merger and acquisition (M&A) premium paid on mergers can influence whether the acquisition creates value or not. However, studies linking M&A premiums to firm value have had mixed results, even fewer studies have examined the effect of green M&A premiums on bidders’ firm value. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether and how green M&A premiums affect firm value in the context of China’s heavy polluters.

Using 323 deals between 2008 and 2019 among China’s heavy polluters, this paper estimates with correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis.

Green M&A premiums are negatively associated with firm value. The results are more significant when firms adopt symbolic rather than substantive corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies. Robustness and endogeneity tests corroborate the findings. The negative relation is stronger when acquiring firms have low governmental subsidy and environmental regulation, when firms have overconfident management, when firms are state-owned and when green M&A occurs locally or among provinces in the same region. This study also analyzes agency cost as an intermediary in the relationship between green M&A premium and firm value, which lends support to the agency-view hypothesis.

This study provides systemic evidence that green M&A premiums damage firm value through agency cost channel and the choice of CSR strategies from the perspective of acquirers. These findings enrich the literature on both the economic consequences of green M&A premiums and the determinants of firm value and provide a plausible explanation for mixed findings on the relationship between green M&A premiums and firm value.

A computational fluid dynamics code for the calculation of laminar hypersonic multi‐species gas flows in chemical non‐equilibrium in axisymmetric or two‐dimensional configuration on shared and distributed memory parallel computers is presented and validated. The code is designed to work efficiently in combination with an automatic domain decompositioning method developed to facilitate efficient parallel computations of various flow problems.

The baseline implicit numerical method developed is the lower‐upper symmetric Gauss‐Seidel scheme, which is combined with a sub‐iteration scheme to achieve time‐accuracy up to third‐order. The spatial discretisation is based on Roe's flux‐difference splitting and various non‐linear flux limiters maintaining total‐variation diminishing properties and up to third‐order spatial accuracy in continuous regions of flow. The domain subdivision procedure is designed to work for single‐ and multi‐block domains without being constrained by the block boundaries, and an arbitrary number of processors used for the computation.

The code developed reproduces accurately various types of flows, e.g. flow over a flat plate, diffusive mixing and oscillating shock induced combustion around a projectile fired into premixed gas, and demonstrates close to linear scalability within limits of load imbalance.

The cases considered are axisymmetric or two‐dimensional, and assume laminar flow. An extension to three‐dimensional turbulent flows is left for future work.

Results of a parallel computation, utilising a newly developed automatic domain subdivision procedure, for oscillating shock‐induced combustion around a projectile and various other cases are presented. The influence of entropy correction in Roe's flux‐difference splitting algorithm on diffusive mixing of multi‐species flows was examined.

U.S. state governments own a large array of fixed assets and lease a great number of parcels of private real properties for public uses. The purpose of this paper is to explore the public asset management system of the U.S. state governments. First, this paper analyzes the major, current public asset management systems and the public procurement systems created by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Based on the analysis, this paper constructs a comprehensive public asset management system that consists of six cornerstones. Second, this paper verifies the comprehensive public asset management system using the data collected from thirty-seven surveyed state governments. The data analysis demonstrates that the comprehensive public asset management system is supported. However, each cornerstone of the comprehensive public asset management system presents different strengths. Third, this paper suggests that further research may delve into particular areas of capital asset management at the state government level to identify critical issues and to provide appropriate resolutions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and improve a new method of unstructured rotational dynamic overset grids, which can be used to simulate the unsteady flows around rotational parts of aircraft.

The computational domain is decomposed into two sub-domains, namely, the rotational sub-domain which contains the rotational boundaries, and the stationary sub-domain which contains the remainder flow field including the stationary boundaries. The artificial boundaries and restriction boundaries are used as the restriction condition to generate the entire computational grid, and then the overset grids are established according to the radius parameters of artificial boundaries set previously. The deformation of rotational boundary is treated by using the linear spring analogy method which is suitable for the dynamic unstructured grid. The unsteady Navier-Stokes/Euler equations are solved separately in the rotational sub-domain and stationary sub-domain, and data coupling is accomplished through the overlapping area. The least squares method is used to interpolate the flow variables for the artificial boundary points with a higher calculating precision. Implicit lower-upper symmetric-Gauss-Seidel (LU-SGS) time stepping scheme is implemented to accelerate the inner iteration during the unsteady simulation.

The airfoil steady flow, airfoil pitching unsteady flow, three-dimensional (3-D) rotor flow field, rotor-fuselage interaction unsteady flow field and the flutter exciting system unsteady flow field are numerically simulated, and the results have good agreements with the experimental data. It is shown that the present method is valid and efficient for the prediction of complicated unsteady problems which contain rotational dynamic boundaries.

The results are entirely based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and the 3D simulations are based on the Euler equations in which the viscous effect is ignored. The current work shows further applicable potential to simulate unsteady flow around rotational parts of aircraft.

The current study can be used to simulate the two-dimensional airfoil pitching, 3-D rotor flow field, rotor-fuselage interaction and the flutter exciting system unsteady flow. The work will help the aircraft designer to get the unsteady flow character around rotational parts of aircraft.

A new type of rotational dynamic overset grids is presented and validated, and the current work has a significant contribution to the development of unstructured rotational dynamic overset grids.