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The rise of digital transaction technology has been transformative for businesses however consumer attitudes to this technology can vary. The comparison of Australians, Chinese and Sri Lankans’ consumers salient attitudes toward payment methods at the Point-of-Sale (POS) provides businesses with insights into the factors impacting consumers' payment preference.

A qualitative methodology was employed for data collection from Australian, Chinese and Sri Lankan participants. A combination of focus groups and individual interviews were carried out with a total of 35 participants.

Results indicate that factors of perceived relative advantage, perceived compatibility, perceived risk, perceived rewards, perceived situations and social influence impact consumers' payment preference at POS across all three countries, however the degree of impact varies in importance across the three countries.

In the cross-cultural comparison of the consumers' payment preference, this research highlights the complex interplay of factors that shapes these payment preferences. The findings, given the growing digitization of transactions, provides banking and financial institutions with a foundational model that can be used to improve their services and business model.

Previous studies failed to distinguish between payment choice at the time of the transaction and payment preference which is repeated behaviour. This study is the first to compare the consumers' payment preference across Australian, Chinese and Sri Lankan consumers and responds to calls for additional research that generalises consumers' payment preferences across cultures.

This paper aims to support small mobile application development teams or companies performing testing on a large variety of operating systems versions and mobile devices to ensure their seamless working.

This paper proposes a “hybrid crowdsourcing” method that leverages the power of public crowd testers. This leads to generating a novel crowdtesting workflow Developer/Tester- Crowdtesting (DT-CT) that focuses on developers and crowd testers as key elements in the testing process without the need for intermediate as managers or leaders. This workflow has been used in a novel crowdtesting platform (AskCrowd2Test). This platform enables testing the compatibility of mobile devices and applications at two different levels, high-level (device characteristics) or low-level (code). Additionally, a “crowd-powered knowledge base” has been developed that stores testing results, relevant issues and their solutions.

The comparison of the presented DT-CT workflow with the common and most recent crowdtesting workflows showed that DT-CT may positively impact the testing process by reducing time-consuming and budget spend because of the direct interaction of developers and crowd testers.

To authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to propose crowdtesting workflow based on developers and public crowd testers without crowd managers or leaders, which light the beacon for the future research in this field. Additionally, this work is the first that authorizes crowd testers with a limited level of experience to participate in the testing process, which helps in studying the behaviors and interaction of end-users with apps and obtains more concrete results.

This study aims to investigate the options for additive rapid prototyping methods in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology. Additive rapid prototyping technologies, such as stereolithography (SLA), fused deposition modeling (FDM) and selective laser sintering (SLS), all commonly known as three-dimensional (3D) printing methods, are reviewed and compared with the resolution requirements of the traditional MEMS fabrication methods.

In the 3D print approach, the entire assembly, parts and prototypes are built using various plastic and metal materials directly from the software file input, completely bypassing any additional processing steps. The review highlights their potential place in the overall process flow to reduce the complexity of traditional microfabrication and long processing cycles needed to test multiple prototypes before the final design is set.

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a promising manufacturing technique in micro-device technology.

In the current state of 3D printing, microfluidic and lab-on-a-chip devices for fluid handling and manipulation appear to be the most compatible with the 3D print methods, given their fairly coarse minimum feature size of 50-500 μm. Future directions in the 3D materials and method development are identified, such as adhesion and material compatibility studies of the 3D print materials, wafer-level printing and conductive materials development. One of the most important goals should be the drive toward finer resolution and layer thickness (1-10 μm) to stimulate the use of the 3D printing in a wider array of MEMS devices.

The review combines two discrete disciplines, microfabrication and AM, and shows how microfabrication and micro-device commercialization may benefit from employing methods developed by the AM community.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the longitudinal aerodynamic characterization of an unmanned cropped delta configuration from real flight data. In order to perform this task an unmanned configuration with cropped delta planform and rectangular cross-section has been designed, fabricated, instrumented and flight tested at flight laboratory in Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK), India.

As a part of flight test program a real flight database, through various maneuvers, have been generated for the designed unmanned configuration. A dedicated flight data acquisition system, capable of onboard logging and telemetry to ground station, has been used to record the flight data during these flight test experiments. In order to identify the systematic errors in the measurements, the generated flight data has been processed through data compatibility check.

It is observed from the flight path reconstruction that the obtained biases are negligible and the scale factors are almost close to unity. The linear aerodynamic model along with maximum likelihood and least-square methods have been used to perform the parameter estimation from the obtained compatible flight data. The lower values of Cramer-Rao bounds obtained for various parameters has shown significant confidence in the estimated parameters using maximum likelihood method. In order to validate the aerodynamic model used and to increase the confidence in the estimated parameters a proof-of-match exercise has been carried out.

The entire work presented is original and all the experiments have been carried out in Flight laboratory of IITK.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance the compatibility of titanium dioxide in epoxy resins and thus the corrosion resistance of the coatings.

In this work, TiO₂ was modified by the mechanochemistry method where mechanical energy was combined with thermal energy to complete the modification. The stability of modified TiO₂ in epoxy was analyzed by sedimentation experiment. The modified TiO₂-epoxy coating was prepared, and the corrosion resistance of the coating was analyzed by open circuit potential, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and neutral salt spray test.

High-temperature mechanical modification can improve the compatibility of TiO₂ in epoxy resin. At the same time, the modified TiO₂-epoxy coating showed better corrosion resistance. Compared to the unmodified TiO₂-epoxy coating, the coating improved the dry adhesion force by 61.7% and the adhesion drop by 33.3%. After 2,300 h of immersion in 3.5 Wt.% NaCl solution, the coating resistance of the modified TiO₂ coating was enhanced by nearly two orders of magnitude compared to the unmodified coating.

The authors have grafted epoxy molecules onto TiO₂ surfaces using a high-temperature mechanical force modification method. The compatibility of TiO₂ with epoxy resin is enhanced, resulting in improved adhesion of the coating to the substrate and corrosion resistance of the coating.

To evaluate the performance of the compatibiliser of epoxidised soyabean oil‐free fatty acid prepared on the NBR/EPDM blends compared with maleic anhydride and also to explore the effect of loading the compatibiliser NBR/EPDM rubber blend with unmodified and modified polypropylene fibres on the mechanical properties of the blend.

To achieve desirable rheological and physico‐mechanical properties of NBR/EPDM rubber blend, various compositions were made by incorporating different doses of the compatibiliser of epoxidised soyabean oil‐free fatty acid prepared and maleic anhydride to form NBR/EPDM blends. The effect of loading the compatibiliser rubber blend with unmodified and modified polypropylene fibres on the mechanical properties of the blend was investigated.

The incorporation of epoxidised soyabean oil‐free fatty acid or maleic anhydride into NBR/EPDM blend greatly enhanced their compatibility improved the rheological, as well as physical properties of rubber blends. The addition of NBR to EPDM improved the motor oil swelling resistance of EPDM. Blending of the two individual rubbers without a compatibiliser generally exhibited a non‐synergistic effect with respect to the physical properties. The strain energy, tensile strength, Young's modulus and strain at yield varied linearly with composition in the presence of compatibiliser, but deviated from linearity in the absence of compatibiliser. Reinforcement of the NBR/EPDM blend with modified polypropylene fibres enhanced the physical properties more significantly than with the unmodified ones.

The compatibiliser of epoxidised soyabean oil was prepared by reacting in situ soyabean oil‐free fatty acid with per‐acetic acid.

The method developed provided a simple and practical solution to improving the rheological and physico‐mechanical properties of the NBR/EPDM rubber blend.

The method for enhancing rheological and physico‐mechanical properties of NBR/EPDM rubber blend loaded with modified polypropylene fibres was very important and showed a synergistic effect and could find numerous applications in the rubber and plastic industries.

This study aims to identify the developer’s objectives, current state-of-the-art techniques, challenges and performance evaluation metrics, and presents outlines of a knowledge-based application programming interfaces (API) recommendation system for the developers. Moreover, the current study intends to classify current state-of-the-art techniques supporting automated API recommendations.

In this study, the authors have performed a systematic literature review of studies, which have been published between the years 2004–2021 to achieve the targeted research objective. Subsequently, the authors performed the analysis of 35 primary studies.

The outcomes of this study are: (1) devising a thematic taxonomy based on the identified developers’ challenges, where mashup-oriented APIs and time-consuming process are frequently encountered challenges by the developers; (2) categorizing current state-of-the-art API recommendation techniques (i.e. clustering techniques, data preprocessing techniques, similarity measurements techniques and ranking techniques); (3) designing a taxonomy based on the identified objectives, where accuracy is the most targeted objective in API recommendation context; (4) identifying a list of evaluation metrics employed to assess the performance of the proposed techniques; (5) performing a SWOT analysis on the selected studies; (6) based on the developer’s challenges, objectives and SWOT analysis, presenting outlines of a recommendation system for the developers and (7) delineating several future research dimensions in API recommendations context.

This study provides complete guidance to the new researcher in the context of API recommendations. Also, the researcher can target these objectives (accuracy, response time, method recommendation, compatibility, user requirement-based API, automatic service recommendation and API location) in the future. Moreover, the developers can overcome the identified challenges (including mashup-oriented API, Time-consuming process, learn how to use the API, integrated problem, API method usage location and limited usage of code) in the future by proposing a framework or recommendation system. Furthermore, the classification of current state-of-the-art API recommendation techniques also helps the researchers who wish to work in the future in the context of API recommendation.

This study not only facilitates the researcher but also facilitates the practitioners in several ways. The current study guides the developer in minimizing the development time in terms of selecting relevant APIs rather than following traditional manual selection. Moreover, this study facilitates integrating APIs in a project. Thus, the recommendation system saves the time for developers, and increases their productivity.

API recommendation remains an active area of research in web and mobile-based applications development. The authors believe that this study acts as a useful tool for the interested researchers and practitioners as it will contribute to the body of knowledge in API recommendations context.

This paper aims to present a comparison of numerical methods for determining the contact pattern of Gleason-type bevel gears. The mathematical model of tooth contact analysis and the finite element method were taken into consideration. Conclusions have been drawn regarding the usefulness of the considered methods and the compatibility of results. The object of the analysis was a bevel gear characterised by an 18:43 gear ratio and arc tooth line, and manufactured according to the spiral generated modified-roll method.

The mathematical model of tooth contact analysis consists of both the mathematical model of tooth generating and the mathematical model of operating gear set. The first model is used to generate tooth flanks of the pinion and the ring gear in the form of grids of points. Then, such tooth surfaces are used for the tooth contact analysis performed with the other model. It corresponds to the no-load gear meshing condition. The finite element method model was built on the basis of the same tooth flanks obtained with the former model. The commercial finite element method software Abaqus was used to perform two instances of the contact analysis: a very light load, corresponding to the former no-load condition, and the operating load condition. The results obtained using the two models, in the form of the contact pattern for no-load condition, were compared. The effect of heavy load on contact pattern position, shape and size was shown and discussed.

The mathematical models correctly reproduce the shape, position and size of the contact pattern; thus, they can be reliably used to assess the quality of the bevel gear at the early stage of its design.

Determination of the correct geometry of the flank surfaces of the gear and pinion teeth through the observation of contact pattern is a fundamental step in designing of a new aircraft bevel gear.

A possibility of the independent use of the mathematical analysis of the contact pattern has been shown, which, thanks to the compatibility of the results, does not have to be verified experimentally.

Your company may find itself traveling down several different paths at once to reach its goals. The secret of success lies in making sure the roads are compatible. At one time, selecting the right options was a matter of chance. Today, finding the winning combination is almost a science.

This paper aims to complement a more conventional positive accounting theory (PAT)‐based study of accounting method choice in Egyptian firms by examining three alternative computational reasons for depreciation method choice: simplicity; compatibility with industry norm; and suitability for class of asset.

The paper draws on a questionnaire survey, sent to Egyptian companies, in which managers were asked to indicate their reasons for choosing depreciation methods as well as the actual depreciation methods used.

The paper finds that technical reasons were frequently given in survey responses from managers. However, the available evidence on the actual depreciation methods used by their firms and industries is in fact more consistent with PAT‐based theories of accounting choice than with such alternatives. This suggests that the responses to the survey reflected managers' rationalisations of decisions made for self‐interested purposes.

Most recent work on managerial decisions concerning accounting choices utilises data gathered from databases of published financial information and is undertaken within a PAT context. This study extends that approach by utilising the results of a questionnaire distributed in Egypt to test some additional hypotheses that reflect possible technical accounting reasons for justifying depreciation methods.