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The objective of this study is to propose a functional framework for hydrological applications by treating flood hydrographs as functional data. Discrete flow data are transformed into a smoothing hydrograph curve, which can be analysed at any time interval. The concept of functional data considered the entire curve concerning time as a single observation. This chapter briefly discussed the idea of descriptive statistics, principal components and outliers in a functional framework. These methods were illustrated in the flood study at Sungai Kelantan River Basin, Malaysia. The results showed that five main components accounted for almost 73.8% of the overall flow variance. Based on the results of the factor scores, the hydrograph curves for the years 1988, 1993 and 2014 may be said to have a unique cluster of their own, while the rest of the years which consider having the same pattern. Due to various shapes and magnitudes, the hydrograph curves of 1988 and 2014 are considered outliers. In conclusion, the functional framework has shown that it is capable of representing a wide range of hydrographs and is capable of extracting additional information found in the hydrograph curve that cannot possibly be captured using classical statistical methods.

This paper aims to focus on the role of team and entrepreneurial experience for firm performance of serial entrepreneurs in the multi‐media industry.

The research assumes that serial entrepreneurs have certain advantages over novice entrepreneurs, such as the development of effective start‐up teams and entrepreneurial experience effects. Disadvantages, however, are also mentioned in the literature, and these are assumed to out‐balance the advantages, leading to mixed research findings. The hypotheses are tested on a sample of 52 European multimedia companies.

The results show a positive impact of relevant entrepreneurial experience and evidence both team advantages as well as disadvantages. Team diversity had a positive impact on performance while the extent of repeated partnerships (or relative team stability) had a negative impact on performance. Moreover, entrepreneurial experience helps to build better diverse teams but has no impact on repeated partnerships.

The degree of experience of serial entrepreneurs in the same industry matters, and suggests that more experience is better. The findings challenge a general assumption about serial entrepreneurs: that the building of superior teams creates performance differences. Team diversity drives performance and the study could also show that habitual entrepreneurs are better in building diverse teams (through a positive moderation of team diversity by entrepreneurial experience). However, relying heavily on previous partners is counter‐productive. Limitations of this study are due to self‐reported data, small sample size and survivor bias.

Entrepreneurs need to focus on opportunities and resource needs linked to these opportunities, and use their experience to build stronger teams but to resist the temptation of replicating perceived past success formula by over‐relying on previous partners. The latter is also important for stakeholders in the entrepreneurial venture.

This paper tests various assumptions and propositions about serial entrepreneurship that are rarely based on sound evidence. The role of entrepreneurial experience to build better diverse teams and the role of repeated partnerships constitute an original contribution to habitual entrepreneurship research.

Since its launch in 2005, YouTube has provided a unique platform for users worldwide to share and engage with content, leading to a rise in user-generated content (UGC), especially among youth. One of the most prevalent, yet under-explored, subgenres of UGC is the user-generated music video, where users integrate music and images with an element of performance or narrative; the current research deploys longitudinal analysis to describe the trends in youth-created music videos and how these trends have evolved in the early years of YouTube. Using a sample of 100 youth-created user-generated music videos uploaded to YouTube in 2007 and 2013, the authors investigate trends in production strategies, narrative content, and demographics. Compared to videos posted in 2007, youth-created music videos posted in 2013 featured more complicated editing techniques, less linear narratives, younger actors, more women, and were more likely to celebrate the self, mimicking the recent emergence of “selfie culture.” These findings are discussed with respect to YouTube’s role in reducing barriers to entry and providing a virtual space for youth-oriented content communities that thrive on engagement and social networking as strategies of identity development.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the impact of the agglomeration economies as pull factor of international migration between the European Union and the countries involved in the European Neighbouring Policy.

The applied research is conducted in the 1970-2000 period by using a gravitational model and estimated by linear and non-linear models with a wide fixed-effects structure.

The main finding of this work is the fact that increasing urbanisation matters more as a pull factor than improvements in GDP per capita. The interpretation of these results may be linked with the existence of opportunities arising in cities. Besides, immigrants not only look for monetary outcomes from migrating, but also non-economic territorial features.

Few works have analysed previously the role of urbanisation on international migration flows.

The purpose of this research is to identify the cross-functional factors and their impact after exploratory factor analysis (EFA), especially in B2B context and constructing a model to interpret and quantify the influences (sales performance score) specifically to the IT/ITES companies.

Getting answer for a corporate that where its current stand in the industry is important for the strategy making, especially for the sales team. Few academic researches charted direction toward cross-functional sales factors, but getting answer whether we can quantify that sales performance and identify what is the numeric benchmark value, is difficult. For the companies to understand the need to focus on which cross-functional factors and when, is also difficult.

After 1,079+ literature study, concluded with the 25 antecedents strongly used in previous studies and 8 more on after focused group study, pilot study and discussion with the industry leaders, 35 questions addressing 33 indicators collected in 10 months duration from 310 sales professionals, 90+ IT companies. Three samples were removed as outliers using “Mahalanobis Distance Test” for multivariate analysis, dropped two variables by “Missing value Not at Random” (MNAR). Final 15 determinants of cross-functional sales performance indicators forming four best factors with very high reliability after EFA to form a future formative model and sales performance score.

(1) In this study no moderator and mediator effect are analyzed. (2) This study is the precursor to the final model construction. (3) Business down due to recession, global pandemic, terrorism, earthquake, war etc. are not considered during this analysis and study. Only the cross-functional reasons for natural business down have been considered and analyzed. (4) Exact “Sales Performance Score (SPS)” should be calculated after model forming, adjusting and confirmatory factor analysis.

(1) The major implication of this study would be for IT/ITES companies. It will be very easy for them to quantify the sales performance and measure that scientifically. (2) There will be a way to measure, predict and take measurable actions in case sales performance of the company downfalls. (3) Also the impact will be known to the top management of the company well in advance so that they can make the proper strategy. This will be very useful in current situation when measuring business outcome and make strategy well in advance is of any company's utmost priority.

Focusing on these identified factors companies can improve its sales performance. The authors contribute in creating a statistical model and computing a sales performance score, based on the final factor loading values, would be unique and unprecedented to measure the current industry performance by quantifying its standard or benchmark value for better strategic support toward the achievement of targets.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new non-parametric phase I control chart for the problem of non-linear profile outlier detection.

The proposed non-parametric method is based on a modified Hausdorff distance, which does not require a restrictive assumption on the form of profiles. By obtaining the distance between each profile and the baseline profile, the authors introduced an iterative optimization clustering algorithm to identify outliers by clustering distances.

The simulation results show that the proposed method can distinguish outliers for structural changes of non-linear profiles. The authors also present a real industrial case example to highlight how practitioners can implement and make use of the proposed control chart in outlier detection applications, and it achieves higher accuracy in the outlier detection of complex profiles.

The research results of this paper can be applied to any manufacturing or service system whose quality characteristics are characterized by non-linear profiles. This new approach provides quality practitioners a better decision-making tool for non-linear profile outlier detection.

Due to the complexity of real-world applications, the non-linear profiles monitoring problem is yet to be addressed. However, the related research still remains rare. And the authors’ proposed non-linear profile control chart, which does not require a restrictive assumption on the form of profiles, shows its applicability and superiority in simulation study and real-world case.

Among the growing number of data mining (DM) techniques, outlier detection has gained importance in many applications and also attracted much attention in recent times. In the past, outlier detection researched papers appeared in a safety care that can view as searching for the needles in the haystack. However, outliers are not always erroneous. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of outliers in healthcare services in general and patient safety care, in particular.

It is a combined DM (clustering and the nearest neighbor) technique for outliers’ detection, which provides a clear understanding and meaningful insights to visualize the data behaviors for healthcare safety. The outcomes or the knowledge implicit is vitally essential to a proper clinical decision-making process. The method is important to the semantic, and the novel tactic of patients’ events and situations prove that play a significant role in the process of patient care safety and medications.

The outcomes of the paper is discussing a novel and integrated methodology, which can be inferring for different biological data analysis. It is discussed as integrated DM techniques to optimize its performance in the field of health and medical science. It is an integrated method of outliers detection that can be extending for searching valuable information and knowledge implicit based on selected patient factors. Based on these facts, outliers are detected as clusters and point events, and novel ideas proposed to empower clinical services in consideration of customers’ satisfactions. It is also essential to be a baseline for further healthcare strategic development and research works.

This paper mainly focussed on outliers detections. Outlier isolation that are essential to investigate the reason how it happened and communications how to mitigate it did not touch. Therefore, the research can be extended more about the hierarchy of patient problems.

DM is a dynamic and successful gateway for discovering useful knowledge for enhancing healthcare performances and patient safety. Clinical data based outlier detection is a basic task to achieve healthcare strategy. Therefore, in this paper, the authors focussed on combined DM techniques for a deep analysis of clinical data, which provide an optimal level of clinical decision-making processes. Proper clinical decisions can obtain in terms of attributes selections that important to know the influential factors or parameters of healthcare services. Therefore, using integrated clustering and nearest neighbors techniques give more acceptable searched such complex data outliers, which could be fundamental to further analysis of healthcare and patient safety situational analysis.

Solder paste printing is the most common method for attaching surface mount devices to printed circuit boards (PCB), and it has been reported that a majority of all assembly defects occur during the stencil printing process. It is also recognized that the solder paste printing process is wholly responsible for the solder joint formation of leadless package technologies such as land grid array (LGA) and quad-flat no-lead (QFN) components and therefore is a determining factor in the long-term reliability of said devices. The aim of this experiment is to determine the acceptable lower limit for solder paste volume deposit tolerances during stencil printing process to ensure both good assembly yield and reliability expectations.

Stencils with modified aperture dimensions at particular locations for LGA and QFN package footprints were designed to vary the solder paste volume deposited during the stencil printing process. Solder paste volumes were measured using solder paste inspection system. Low volume solder paste deposits were generated using the modified stencil designs to evaluate assemble yield. Accelerated thermal cycling (ATC) was used to determine the reliability of the solder joints. Failure analysis was used to determine if the failure was attributed to the low paste volume locations.

Solder joints formed with nominal paste volume survived longer in ATC compared to intentionally low volume joints. Transfer efficiency numbers for both good assembly yield and good reliability are reported for LGA and QFN devices. A lower volume limit is reported for leadless devices that should not significantly affect yield and reliability in thermal cycling.

Very little literature is available on solder paste volume tolerance limits in terms of assembly yield and reliability. Manufacturers often use ±50 or ±30 per cent of stencil aperture volume with no evidence of its effectiveness in determining yield and reliability of the solder joints.

The purpose of the article is to develop an instrument for measuring the influence of consumers' cultural values on functional food perception.

The study is quantitative in nature and builds on an earlier qualitative study that employed in-depth interviews, thematic analysis and constant comparative analysis to construct a survey instrument which initially had 53 items. The quantitative study involved an online survey that was conducted using this instrument, which resulted in 365 complete cases that included 173 Anglo-Australian, 102 Chinese and 90 Indian respondents living in Australia. The survey data were subjected to exploratory factor analysis using Principal axis factoring, with Promax rotation.

The research has validated that functional food perception is dependent upon consumers' cultural values. The results of the exploratory factor analysis provided a six-factor instrument with 32 items.

Only three ethnic groups were involved in this study and that is not entirely representative of Australia or other countries. The instrument, however, will allow researchers in the field of functional food to extend the research to other diverse communities.

The instrument will further enable functional food producers and marketers to develop effective marketing strategies based on their knowledge of the influence of cultural values on functional food perception.

The instrument developed from this study, for measuring consumers' functional food perception based on cultural values, is the first of its kind.