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After China's accession to the WTO, different formats of retailing outlets have emerged and competition within China's apparel retail market has become keener. This paper presents a comparison research on four influential retailing outlets in the current Shanghai apparel retail market: upscale shopping centers, modern shopping malls, joint discount superstores (joint ventures with foreign retail giants), and manufacturers' wholly‐owned flagship stores (factory outlets). Corresponding to each retailing outlet, Plaza 66, Grand‐Gateway Mall, Carrefour Store in Quyang Road, and Youngor Flagship Store in Nanjing Road are studied, with an investigation of apparel brands covered by each. The results identify the four retailing outlets' characteristics, and future prospects in the Chinese apparel retail market are discussed.

The press performance of a range of wool and wool blend fabrics has been investigated with the aid of a temperature adjustable hand steam iron, a domestic ironing board and a thermocouple digital temperature display.It was found that for a press duration of 10 seconds, the fabric crease angle is reduced with the increasing press temperature. The sharpest reduction in crease angle was found in the temperature range of 80°C to 120°C for all fabrics tested.At 100°C iron temperature, the fabric crease angle was reduced with increasing press duration until 20 seconds for wool fabrics and until 30 seconds for wool blend fabrics.The initial regain, or in other words, the relative humidity of the ambient atmosphere used to precondition the samples, has an important influence on the press performance. It was also found that the fabric crease recovery was greater for increasing ambient relative humidity.The fabric regain was greatly reduced during the first 10 seconds pressing time with further very slow reduction in fabric regain until 80 seconds pressing time. The regain in the upper layer of the fabric specimen was always lower than that in the lower layer.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the bull and bear regimes in Chinese stock market and empirically analyze the dynamic relation of Chinese stock price-volume pre- and post- the Split Share Structure Reform.

The authors investigate the price-volume relationship in the Chinese stock market before and after the Split Share Structure Reform using Shanghai Composite Index daily data from July 1994 to April 2013. Using a two-state Markov-switching autoregressive model and a modified two-state Markov-switching vector autoregression model, this study identifies bull or bear market and also examine the existence of regime-dependent Granger causality.

Using a two-state Markov-switching autoregressive model, the authors detect structural changes in the market volatility due to the reform, and find evidence of a positive rather than an asymmetric price-volume contemporaneous correlation. There is a strong dynamic Granger causal relation from stock returns to trading volume before and after the reform regardless of the market conditions, but the causal effects of volume on returns are only seen in the bear markets before the reform. The model is robust when using different stock indices and time periods.

The work is different from previous studies in the following aspects: most of the existing empirical literature focus on the well-developed economies, but our interest lies in the emerging Chinese market that has witnessed rapid growth in the past decade; in contrast to many works in the literature that examine the price-volume relationship during one market condition, the authors compare the relationship in a bull market with that in a bear market, using a two-state MS-AR model; the authors also employ a modified two-state Markov-switching vector autoregression model to examine the existence of regime-dependent Granger causality; as the most massive systematic reform for the Chinese stock market since its inception in 2005, the Split Share Structure Reform has a profound impact on the Chinese stock market, thus it is of vital importance to explore its effects on both the price-volume relationship and the market structure.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the recovery mechanism of poly(trimethylene terephthalate) (PTT) shape memory fabrics.

Tests were designed to study the effects of force, temperature and their combinations on the fabrics' crease recoveries. In the test a cantilever device and an ironing force which simulated people ironing their clothes were used, respectively.

Temperature was found to have little effect on the recovery of both the warp and filling of the fabrics. Crease recoveries did not improve significantly when the temperature was increased to above the polymer's glass transition. However, forces, applied in primarily compressive and tensile modes to simulate ironing and hand stroking actions, were found to be very effective in the fabrics' crease recoveries. Recoveries were 81‐87 per cent even when the applied force was very small, at 5 N/cm². When forces were applied at elevated temperatures, just below and above the polymer's glass transition, there were no significant improvements in crease recoveries. Therefore, force was the main factor in PTT shape memory fabrics' recovery mechanism for the fabrics to return to their initial shapes.

The results suggest that PTT shape memory fabric has excellent shape recoverability and easy care property and it has large application potentiality.

With continuous concerning on the toxic of element Pb, Pb-free solder was gradually used to replace traditional Sn-Pb solder. However, during the transition period from Sn-Pb to Pb-free solder, mixing of Sn-Pb and Pb-free is inevitable occurred in certain products, and in China where Sn-Pb solder was still used extensively in certain areas especially. Correspondingly, understanding reliability of Sn-Pb solder joints was very important, and further studies were needed.

Thermal shock test between −55°C and 125 °C was conducted on Sn-37Pb solder bumps in the BGA package to investigate the microstructure evolution and the growth mechanism of interfacial intermetallic compound (IMC) layer. The effects of thermal shock on the mechanical property and fracture behavior of Sn-37Pb solder bumps were discussed.

Pb-rich phase was coarsened and voids were increased at first; Pb-rich phase was refined and voids were decreased secondly with the increase of thermal shock cycles; the shear strength of solder bumps was slightly decreased after thermal shock, but was back up to 73.67MPa at 2,000 cycles; interfacial IMCs of solder bumps was from typical scallop-type into smooth, the composition of IMCs was from Cu₆Sn₅ into Cu₆Sn₅ and Cu₃S_n after thermal shock with 1,500 and 2,000 cycles; 20.0 per cent of solder bumps at 1,500 cycles and 9.5 per cent of solder bumps at 2,000 cycles were failure respectively.

Compared with the board level test method, the impact shear test for the single solder bump is more convenient and economical and is actively pursued by the industries. The shear strength of solder bumps was slightly decreased after thermal shock, but was back up to 73.67 MPa at 2,000 cycles; 20.0 per cent of solder bumps at 1,500 cycles and 9.5 per cent of solder bumps at 2,000 cycles were failure.

There is a consensus suggesting that the theoretical underpinning associated with supply chain quality management practices remain evolutionary to current thinking. Therefore, this study aims to explore how absorptive capacity (AC) supports supply chain quality integration (SCQI) by building product and process quality within a supply chain (SC).

A comparative case study of global pharmaceutical manufacturers in a developing market was undertaken. A two-round qualitative research method was designed to collect data through 54 semi-structured interviews with pharmaceutical managers and senior managers.

The results demonstrate that AC is essential to the development of SCQI because of its ability to use valuable strategic and operational knowledge, which is important when improving consistent internal product and process quality, along with establishing a robust SC design. The authors found that AC enables companies to design their quality and continuously improve their products and processes among their SC members.

The authors acknowledge that these sets of findings are difficult to generalise to other sectors, however, the authors are confident that they can be extrapolated to other companies in the pharmaceutical industry.

The study develops a framework to support practitioners and decision makers to leverage their AC towards facilitating their SCQI practices.

This study explains the role of the AC process in relation to SCQI practices, in the context of the pharmaceutical SC. The study profiles the characteristics of dynamic capabilities to increase the companies’ competencies, processes and resources.

Fatigue damage of internal threads has gradually become the main failure mode of force sensor. To make the internal thread structure of force sensor meet the fatigue performance requirements, the design criteria of static strength and fatigue life are comprehensively considered in this paper.

The variation of static stress and fatigue life with the size of the main structure is obtained by simulation. By changing the number of thread turns, the hub height and outer diameter of the hub, the optimized design of the spoke force sensor is determined.

The experiment was carried out based on the determined optimized structure, and the results showed that the fatigue life meets the design requirements.

This research has certain guiding significance for the design and developments of high-cycle fatigue force sensors.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a non‐uniform Chebyshev distributed low‐pass filter (LPF) with dumbbell‐shaped photonic bandgap structure (PBGs), implemented in the 50 Ω microstrip line, with improved defected ground structure.

The non‐uniform distribution of PBGs and dumbbell‐shaped DGS of PBGs have been discussed in open literatures. In this study, the influence of FF of PBGs in dumbbell‐shaped PBG is represented.

By varying filling factor (FF) of the periodic structure from 0.25 to 0.8 of the dumbbell squares can generate better rejection band than uniform dumbbell LPF. Different FF of each square can produce different band rejection range and then yields the LPF with different cutoff. By using chirp adjustment of distance between PBGs, the band rejection performance can be optimized.

It can be seen that the chirped and non‐uniform dumbbell‐shaped PBGs generate excellent bandgap performances in linearly varying period (chirped devices) than those of structures with constant period (non‐chirped or uniform devices).

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a survey on research in fabric and cloth simulation using mass spring model. Also in this paper some of the common methods in process of fabric simulation in mass spring model are discussed and compared.

This paper reviews and compares presented mesh types in mass spring model, forces applied on model, super elastic effect and ways to settle the super elasticity problem, numerical integration methods for solving equations, collision detection and its response. Some of common methods in fabric simulation are compared to each other. And by using examples of fabric simulation, advantages and limitations of each technique are mentioned.

Mass spring method is a fast and flexible technique with high ability to simulate fabric behavior in real time with different environmental conditions. Mass spring model has more accuracy than geometrical models and also it is faster than other physical modeling.

In the edge of digital, fabric simulation technology has been considered into many fields. 3D fabric simulation is complex and its implementation requires knowledge in different fields such as textile engineering, computer engineering and mechanical engineering. Several methods have been presented for fabric simulation such as physical and geometrical models. Mass spring model, the typical physically based method, is one of the methods for fabric simulation which widely considered by researchers.

Rotational speed and load-carrying capacity are two mutual coupling factors which affect high precision and stable operation of a hydrostatic thrust bearing. The purpose of this paper is to study reasonable matching relationship between the rotational speed and the load-carrying capacity.

A mathematical model of relationship between the rotational speed and the load-carrying capacity of the hydrostatic bearing with double-rectangle recess is set up on the basis of the tribology theory and the lubrication theory, and the load and rotational speed characteristics of an oil film temperature field and a pressure field in the hydrostatic bearing are analyzed, reasonable matching relationship between the rotational speed and the load-carrying capacity is deduced and a verification experiment is conducted.

By increasing the rotational speed, the oil film temperature increases, the average pressure decreases and the load-carrying capacity decreases. By increasing the load-carrying capacity, the oil film temperature and the average pressure increases and the rotational speed decreases; corresponding certain reasonable matching values are available.

The load-carrying capacity can be increased and the rotational speed improved by means of reducing the friction area of the oil recess by using low-viscosity lubricating oil and adding more oil film clearance; but, the stiffness of the hydrostatic bearing decreases.