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This chapter addresses the possible consequences of the United States Supreme Court's increasing attention to international and foreign human rights law in its death penalty jurisprudence, particularly with respect to the Eighth Amendment. I question the belief of those commentators who argue that such attention might assist with efforts to abolish the death penalty in the United States, and argue instead that the perceived threat to state sovereignty that the invocation of international and foreign human rights law poses might result in attempts to retain the death penalty as a means of reasserting state autonomy.

New contact boundary modelling is achieved with a basic set of 2 and 3 dimension contact primitives. Contact constraints are originally introduced in the variational equations and associated Newton—Raphson scheme via an external penalty formulation using primitive equations. Consequently, penalty part of external load vector and tangent stiffness matrices are developed for all contact primitives. In this way, contact prescribed boundary displacements are also taken into account. Contact treatment is then completed with Newton—Raphson elements for elastic and plastic regularized friction constitutive models. In this paper, the process is extended to elastoplastic models. Finally, we propose a self acting procedure with contact algorithms (interiority, sliding and contact loss) and related subroutines for implementation in finite element framework. We illustrate these developments by means of two‐dimensional open die forging and three‐dimensional plate coining typical benchmarks with reference to bulk elastoplastic and viscoplastic constitutive models.

The authors extend research suggesting that external funders reduce their contributions to not-for-profit (NFP) organizations in response to media-reported CEO compensation levels.

Employing a maximum archival sample of 44,807 observations from US Form 990s, the authors comprehensively assess the extent that high relative NFP CEO compensation is associated with decreases in future contributions.

The authors find that donors and grantors react negatively to high relative CEO compensation but do not react adversely to high absolute executive compensation. Contributors seem to take issue with CEO compensation when they perceive it absorbs a relatively large portion of the organizations’ total expenses, which may hinder the NFP’s mission. Additional findings suggest that excess cash held by the NFP significantly exacerbates the negative baseline relationship between future contributions and high relative CEO compensation. Finally, both individual donors and professional grantors are sensitive to cash NFP CEO compensation levels, but grantors are more sensitive to CEO noncash compensation.

The authors’ data are focused on larger NFP organizations, so this limits the generalizability of the study. Furthermore, survivorship bias potentially influences their time-series investigations because a current year large-scale decrease in funding due to high relative CEO compensation may cause some NFP firms to drop out of the sample the following year due to significant funding reductions.

The study makes three noteworthy contributions to the literature. First, the study documents that the negative association between high relative CEO compensation levels and future donor and grantor contributions is much more widespread than previous literature suggested. Second, the authors document that high relative CEO compensation levels that trigger reductions in future contributions are significantly exacerbated by excess cash held by the NFP. Finally, the authors find that more sophisticated grantors are more sensitive to noncash CEO compensation levels as compared with donors.

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the effective method of adaptation of the external penalty function to the genetic algorithm.

In the case of solving the optimization tasks with constraints using the external penalty function, the penalty term has a larger value than the primary objective function. The sigmoidal transformation is introduced to solve this problem. A new method of determining the value of the penalty coefficient in subsequent iterations associated with the changing penalty has been proposed. The proposed approach has been applied to the optimization of an electromagnetic linear actuator, and the mathematical model of the devices contains equations of the magnetic field, by taking into account the nonlinearity of ferromagnetic material.

The proposed new approach of the penalty function method consists in the reduction of the external penalty function in successive penalty iterations instead of its increase as it is in the classical method. In addition, the method of normalization of constraints during the formulation of optimization problem has a significant impact on the obtained results of optimization calculations.

The proposed approach can be applied to solve constrained optimization tasks in designing of electromagnetic devices.

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate algorithm and software for the optimization of the actuator–capacitor system taking the dynamics parameters into account. The system is applied for driving the valve of plasma gun. Two optimization strategies are proposed and pondered. The penalty function approach has been expanded in detail.

The field-circuit mathematical model of the dynamics operation consists of the strongly coupled equations of the transient electromagnetic fields and the equations of the electric circuit. The numerical implementation is based on finite element method and step-by-step Cranck–Nicholson procedure. The genetic algorithm has been used in the optimization procedure. The sigmoidal transformation has been applied to adjust the classical external penalty function method to the genetic algorithm.

The modification consists in adaptation of the penalty function to the genetic algorithm. In the proposed approach, operations involving successive iterations of increasing penalty function and operations containing genetic iterations are intertwined with each other. The differences between these two procedures are getting blurred. The proposed approach is very effective. It is possible to achieve optimal solution even more than ten times faster than using the classical method.

The proposed approach can be successfully applied to designing and optimization of different electromagnetic devices, including functional constraints.

The overuse and scarcity of resources emphasize the importance of the circular economy. The technology facilitated by Industry 4.0 stimulates the implementation of the circular economy that aims to reduce resource use and enhance operational efficiency. This study focuses on enhancing delivery efficiency in an online-to-offline (O2O) context from an Industry 4.0 technology-facilitated personal configuration perspective, that is, comparing in-house and crowdsourced delivery efficiency in China's O2O on-demand food delivery context.

The authors collect 128,152 orders from 38 restaurants of an online restaurant chain in China. The authors adopt multiple regression analysis to examine the delivery efficiency gap between in-house and crowdsourced deliverymen and the determinants of this efficiency gap.

The findings of this study reveal that crowdsourced deliverymen exhibit higher delivery efficiency, in terms of a shorter delivery time, than in-house deliverymen. In addition, the authors find that platforms providing monetary incentives or implementing late delivery penalties enlarge this efficiency gap. Furthermore, the authors show that external factors, such as working on weekends and bad weather conditions, contribute to the narrowing of this performance efficiency.

The study's findings suggest that platforms should use advanced technologies facilitated by Industry 4.0 to optimize their personnel configuration to enhance their delivery efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. The effective approaches include using financial incentives and improving working schedules.

The authors' findings contribute to the online fulfillment literature by focusing on delivery efficiency in the O2O context from the Industry 4.0 technology-facilitated personnel configuration perspective. The authors examine how internal and external factors moderate the performance efficiency between these two types of deliverymen.

The core of the successful implementation of the integrated project delivery (IPD) mode is to establish a high-quality relationship of cooperation, trust and sharing among participants. This paper proposes recommendations to improve the relationship quality of participants from the owner's perspective. The results provide the theoretical basis and practical guidance for the popularization and application of the IPD mode.

This paper analyzes the dynamic relationship among participants in IPD mode based on supply chain theory and similarity theory. A tripartite game model of the owner, designer and the contractor is constructed to obtain the evolutionary equilibrium strategies under different parameter constraints. Then, numerical simulations under various scenarios are conducted to explore the dynamic evolution and the influencing factors of the relationship quality among the participant in the IPD mode.

The results show that (1) the relationship quality under certain conditions gradually improves as the project progresses until stable and high-quality cooperation is formed and (2) the owner's positive supervision cost, the distribution coefficient of incentive and punishment of participants and the scale of incentive pool are important factors influencing the relationship quality.

This study incorporates the following three innovations. First, analyzing the relationship quality among the participants of IPD mode based on supply chain theory. Second, the evolutionary game theory is applied to the relationship quality analysis. Third, conclusion innovation. The authors conclude that the relationship quality may progress, decrease or cycle with the progress of the project and targeted recommendations are presented based on the results.

Legislative action was historically the means by which U.S. states abolished capital punishment, but such action ceased for decades following the Supreme Court's 1976 Gregg decision that reaffirmed the constitutionality of the death penalty. Despite the fact that several legislatures have considered abolition bills in the modern era, only three states successfully enacted such legislation. It is my purpose in this study to analyze why states are currently struggling to pass abolition legislation and to determine which factors contribute to success. I conduct a comparative, qualitative case study of New Jersey, the first state to legislatively abolish since 1976, and Maryland, a similar state whose abolition effort recently failed. I analyze the content of legislators’ debates about the abolition bills in committee and on the legislature floor, as well as news coverage of the abolition efforts in each state's largest newspapers. I reach two primary conclusions. First, an abolition bill is more likely to be passed by Democrats than Republicans, but unified Democratic control of the government is not a sufficient condition for abolition. Second, arguments about the risk of wrongful executions and the deleterious collateral consequences of the death penalty process on the family members of murder victims are powerful sources of political support for abolition, especially where doubts about the deterrent effect of the death penalty are widespread. This study reaffirms the central importance of the innocence frame in the modern death penalty debate, and it presents the first scholarly analysis of the collateral consequences frame. These findings may help activists in the abolition movement more effectively frame their arguments to appeal to legislators.

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the algorithm and computer code for the structure optimization of the outer rotor permanent magnet brushless DC motor and to execute optimization of selected motor structure using the non‐deterministic procedure.

The mathematical model of the device includes the electromagnetic field equations with the nonlinearity of the magnetic core taken into account. The numerical implementation is based on the finite element method and stepping procedure. The genetic algorithm has been applied for the optimization. The computer code has been elaborated.

The elaborated computer software has been applied for the optimization and design of BLDC motors. The elaborated algorithm has been tested and a good convergence has been attained.

The presented approach and computer software can be successfully applied to the design and optimization of different structure of BLDC motors.

The purpose of this paper was to examine changes in the contents of Canadian corporate codes of ethics over a period of two decades from an institutionalization perspective.

The paper tracks changes in the contents of the codes of large Canadian corporations longitudinally by analyzing their contents at two points over two decades, in 1992 and 2012. In particular, the paper tests three hypotheses related to the institutionalization of codes.

It was found that the codes have become more prescriptive, they are more concerned with social responsibility and are more likely to identify their moral and legal authority. Overall, the findings support an institutional interpretation of the observed changes.

While large corporations are critical in establishing new and innovative management practices, their selection as the study population limits the generalizabilty of the findings. Another limitation of this paper is that it used an a priori determined set of items to analyze the contents of the codes and while this was needed to facilitate the comparison across time, it also meant that some important items were not clearly identified.

Codes of ethics are the foundation of ethics programs in corporations and their contents could be critical in the development of a culture of ethics in corporations. This paper makes a valuable contribution to research on business ethics by analyzing the codes of ethics of the largest corporations in Canada at two points over two decades. The need to track changes in corporate codes of ethics over time has been advocated by several researchers, but longitudinal studies in this area are rare.