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The purpose of the study reported in this paper was to prepare modified C.I. Pigment Red (PR) 170 to reduce production cost and improve application performance. The structure of the modified pigment was characterised. The colour strength, thermal stability, mobility, aqueous dispersability and ultraviolet (UV) resistance of modified pigments were studied.

Silica fume was added into the diazonium salt solution under acidic condition, followed by the activation to generate new surface. Subsequently, coupling component was dropwise added to the system to form the modified pigments evenly on the surface of silica fume in situ. The structure and properties of the modified pigment were studied by fourier transform infrared spectoscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), thermal gravity analysis (TG-DTA), UV-visible diffuse reflectance spectra (UV-Vis DRS), and commission internationale de L‘Eclairage (CIE L*a*b*) colour measurements.

The morphology and particle size of the modified pigment were controlled by the modification of the silica fume, and the organic pigment and silica fume formed a core–shell structure. The properties of the modified pigment including colour strength, thermal stability, mobility, aqueous dispensability and UV resistance were improved significantly.

The effect of the amount of silica fume on the thickness of the organic pigment layer and the effect of the thickness of the organic pigment layer on the properties of the modified pigment need to be studied further.

This paper shows a feasible method of the modification of the PR170 with the silica fume, and the modification can improve the properties of the PR170. The use of silica fume to modify organic pigment can realise the reuse of solid waste and reduce the production cost of the organic pigment.

This modification method of the organic pigment is adaptive and it can be adjusted to the modification of other species of the organic pigment.

The modification of the PR170 with the silica fume was carried out in its preparation process, which synchronised the preparation and modification of the organic pigment. The properties of the modified pigment were improved, which were beneficial for their application in inks and coatings.

This article aims to develop an accurate and efficient meshfree Galerkin method based on the strain smoothing technique for linear elastic continuous and fracture problems.

This paper proposed a generalized linear smoothed meshfree method (LSMM), in which the compatible strain is reconstructed by the linear smoothed strains. Based on the idea of the weighted residual method and employing three linearly independent weight functions, the linear smoothed strains can be created easily in a smoothing domain. Using various types of basic functions, LSMM can solve the linear elastic continuous and fracture problems in a unified way.

On the one hand, the LSMM inherits the properties of high efficiency and stability from the stabilized conforming nodal integration (SCNI). On the other hand, the LSMM is more accurate than the SCNI, because it can produce continuous strains instead of the piece-wise strains obtained by SCNI. Those excellent performances ensure that the LSMM has the capability to precisely track the crack propagation problems. Several numerical examples are investigated to verify the accurate, convergence rate and robustness of the present LSMM.

This study provides an accurate and efficient meshfree method for simulating crack growth.

This paper aimed to explain why individuals still tend to disclose their privacy information even when privacy risks are high and whether individuals disclose or withhold information following the same logic.

This study develops a configurational decision tree model (CDTM) for precisely understanding individuals' decision-making process of privacy disclosure. A survey of location-based social network service (LBSNS) users was conducted to collect data, and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was adopted to validate the hypotheses.

This paper identified two configurations for high and low disclosure, respectively, and found that the benefits and the risks did not function independently but interdependently, and the justice would play a crucial role when both the benefits and the risks were high. Furthermore, the authors found that there were asymmetric mechanisms for high disclosure and low disclosure, and males focused more on perceived usefulness, while females concerned more about perceived enjoyment, privacy risks and perceived justice.

This paper further extends privacy calculus model (PCM) and deepens the understanding of the privacy calculus process from a configurational perspective. In addition, this study also provides guidance for future research on how to adopt the configurational approach with qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to revise and improve relevant theories for information systems (IS) behavioral research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how signals of uncertainty in the media affect retail investor decisions and initial public offering (IPO) underpricing through theoretical and empirical methods.

The authors construct a theoretical model of the influence of media signals on IPO pricing, which describes the micro process in which uncertain signals in media influence retail investors’ decisions and IPO underpricing. Besides, the authors take 516 small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) listed in A-share from July 2009 to December 2012 as samples for empirical tests and establish an in-depth learning model for text analysis with Java programming to measure Chinese media tone. Finally, the results of the model analysis are verified by empirical results.

The results show that authoritative media with high credibility can reduce the uncertainty of information sources attract more investors’ attention and improve the valuation and demand of retail investors. The higher the media credibility is the higher the IPO underpricing rate is. The uncertain tone of the media will increase the decision-making cost of investors reduce the valuation expectation and demand of the secondary market and lead to a lower IPO underpricing rate.

The authors study the influence of the uncertainty of media source and media content on the degree of IPO underpricing of SMEs. This is a useful supplement to the Chinese media tone research system that is still in the exploration stage. The research has reference value for government regulation and investor decision-making.

Pressure-based methods have been demonstrated to be powerful for solving many practical problems in engineering. In many pressure-based methods, inner iterative processes are proposed to get efficient solutions. However, the number of inner iterations is set empirically and kept fixed during the whole computation for different problems, which is overestimated in some computations but underestimated in other computations. This paper aims to develop an algorithm with adaptive inner iteration processes for steady and unsteady incompressible flows.

In this work, with the use of two different criteria in two inner iterative processes, a mechanism is proposed to control inner iteration processes to make the number of inner iterations vary during computing according to different problems. By doing so, adaptive inner iteration processes can be achieved.

The adaptive inner iterative algorithm is verified to be valid by solving classic steady and unsteady incompressible problems. Results show that the adaptive inner iteration algorithm works more efficient than the fixed inner iteration one.

The algorithm with adaptive inner iteration processes is first proposed in this paper. As the mechanism for controlling inner iteration processes is based on physical meaning and the feature of iterative calculations, it can be used in any methods where there exist inner iteration processes. It is not limited for incompressible flows. The performance of the adaptive inner iteration processes in compressible flows is conducted in a further study.

The purpose of this study is to assess the retrieval performance of three search engines, i.e. Google, Yahoo and Bing for navigational queries using two important retrieval measures, i.e. precision and relative recall in the field of life science and biomedicine.

Top three search engines namely Google, Yahoo and Bing were selected on the basis of their ranking as per Alexa, an analytical tool that provides ranking of global websites. Furthermore, the scope of study was confined to those search engines having interface in English. Clarivate Analytics' Web of Science was used for the extraction of navigational queries in the field of life science and biomedicine. Navigational queries (classified as one-word, two-word and three-word queries) were extracted from the keywords of the papers representing the top 100 contributing authors in the select field. Keywords were also checked for the duplication. Two important evaluation parameters, i.e. precision and relative recall were used to calculate the performance of search engines on the navigational queries.

The mean precision for Google scores high (2.30) followed by Yahoo (2.29) and Bing (1.68), while mean relative recall also scores high for Google (0.36) followed by Yahoo (0.33) and Bing (0.31) respectively.

The study is of great help to the researchers and academia in determining the retrieval efficiency of Google, Yahoo and Bing in terms of navigational query execution in the field of life science and biomedicine. The study can help users to focus on various search processes and the query structuring and its execution across the select search engines for achieving desired result list in a professional search environment. The study can also act as a ready reference source for exploring navigational queries and how these queries can be managed in the context of information retrieval process. It will also help to showcase the retrieval efficiency of various search engines on the basis of subject diversity (life science and biomedicine) highlighting the same in terms of query intention.

Though many studies have been conducted highlighting the retrieval efficiency of search engines the current work is the first of its kind to study the retrieval effectiveness of Google, Yahoo and Bing on navigational queries in the field of life science and biomedicine. The study will help in understanding various methods and approaches to be adopted by the users for the navigational query execution across a professional search environment, i.e. “life science and biomedicine”

This study reduces carbon emission in logistics distribution to realize the low-carbon site optimization for a cold chain logistics distribution center problem.

This study involves cooling, commodity damage and carbon emissions and establishes the site selection model of low-carbon cold chain logistics distribution center aiming at minimizing total cost, and grey wolf optimization algorithm is used to improve the artificial fish swarm algorithm to solve a cold chain logistics distribution center problem.

The optimization results and stability of the improved algorithm are significantly improved and compared with other intelligent algorithms. The result is confirmed to use the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region site selection. This study reduces composite cost of cold chain logistics and reduces damage to environment to provide a new idea for developing cold chain logistics.

This study contributes to propose an optimization model of low-carbon cold chain logistics site by considering various factors affecting cold chain products and converting carbon emissions into costs. Prior studies are lacking to take carbon emissions into account in the logistics process. The main trend of current economic development is low-carbon and the logistics distribution is an energy consumption and high carbon emissions.

The purpose of the work reported in this paper is to prepare hybrid pigments fabricated by depositing pigment yellow 12 (PY12) on the surface of silica gel to improve the application performance of the resulting pigments. The particle size distribution, optical properties, thermal stability, water dispersibility and flowability of the pigments with and without silica gel modification were studied.

The hybrid pigments were synthesised with different amount of silica gel. The modified pigments were characterised by Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, thermal analysis, scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy.

The particle size distribution of the modified pigments was found to have been altered significantly. This can be explained by the interaction between pigments and silica gel, which prevented self-aggregation of pigment particles and hence improved the properties of pigments.

Only silica supports and pigment yellow 12 were evaluated. Other pigments could also be studied.

Modification of pigment particles with smaller particle size can increase the efficiency of the modified pigment, in terms of colour shade and tinting strength, due to better particle size distribution.

The paper demonstrates that inorganic core can prevent self-aggregation of pigment particles, and the application properties of such pigment depend on the resulting degree of dispersion of pigment particles.

In order to be a true global leader, Chinese firms must be able to be trailblazers in both emerging and advanced markets.

Five major Chinese companies are studied: Each of the five leaders has shown interest in building an organization that can nurture innovation that is more than incremental.

Each of the five companies needs a clear long-term vision that will guide innovation and point to where these companies should place their slow-to-pay-off R&D bets.

The agility to take advantage quickly as opportunities emerge–by practicing frequent experimentation, promptly divesting failed projects and rapidly scaling up investments in successful ones–has been an important ability that has contributed to the success of the five companies.

Breakthrough product innovation will be an important competence for the future success of these five Chinese companies. Some of the five companies have developed a growing appetite for external collaboration to drive innovation.

Given the rapid growth of the Chinese cruise market, several Chinese cities are attempting to become a hub for cruise ships. The aim of this study is to evaluate the competitiveness of those cities with regard to hosting cruises. It employs a cloud model that transforms the qualitative description of competitive indicators into quantitative measurement and assesses the competitive advantage and specialization of the top homeports in China. Questionnaires are delivered to experts from eight cruise ports in China and the cloud model based on 14 evaluation factors is used to analyze the competitiveness of the ports under investigation. The result shows that the city’s scale, population, and development have been the main factors for assessing the competitiveness of port cities. The research provides insight about the Chinese cruise port cities’ competitiveness, which is particularly useful for future development decision and marketing strategies of ports and prospective destinations.