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The present study aims to investigate the inverse-thermocapillary effect in an evaporating thin liquid film of self-rewetting fluid, which is a dilute aqueous solution (DAS) of long-chain alcohol.

A long-wave evolution model modified for self-rewetting fluids is used to study the inverse thermocapillary characteristics of an evaporating thin liquid film. The flow attributed to the inverse thermocapillary action is manifested through the streamline plots and the evaporative heat transfer characteristics are quantified and analyzed.

The thermocapillary flow induced by the negative surface tension gradient drives the liquid from a low-surface-tension (high temperature) region to a high-surface-tension (low temperature) region, retarding the liquid circulation and the evaporation strength. The positive surface tension gradients of self-rewetting fluids induce inverse-thermocapillary flow. The results of different working fluids, namely, water, heptanol and DAS of heptanol, are examined and compared. The thermocapillary characteristic of a working fluid is significantly affected by the sign of the surface tension gradient and the inverse effect is profound at a high excess temperature. The inverse thermocapillary effect significantly enhances evaporation rates.

The current investigation on the inverse thermocapillary effect in a self-rewetting evaporating thin film liquid has not been attempted previously. This study provides insights on the hydrodynamic and thermal characteristics of thermocapillary evaporation of self-rewetting liquid, which give rise to significant thermal enhancement of the microscale phase-change heat transfer devices.

From the sixteenth to eighteenth century, China underwent a commercial revolution similar to the one in contemporaneous Europe. The rise of market did foster the rise of a nascent bourgeois and the concomitant rise of a liberal, populist version of Confucianism, which advocated a more decentralized and less authoritarian political system in the last few decades of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). But after the collapse of the Ming Empire and the establishment of the Qing Empire (1644–1911) by the Manchu conquerors, the new rulers designated the late-Ming liberal ideologies as heretics, and they resurrected the most conservative form of Confucianism as the political orthodoxy. Under the principle of filial piety given by this orthodoxy, the whole empire was imagined as a fictitious family with the emperor as the grand patriarch and the civil bureaucrats and subjects as children or grandchildren. Under the highly centralized administrative and communicative apparatus of the Qing state, this ideology of the fictitious patrimonial state penetrated into the lowest level of the society. The subsequent paternalist, authoritarian, and moralizing politics of the Qing state contributed to China’s nontransition to capitalism despite its advanced market economy, and helped explain the peculiar form and trajectory of China’s popular contention in the eighteenth century. I also argue that this tradition of fictitious patrimonial politics continued to shape the state-making processes in twentieth-century China and beyond.

In late 2015, the El Nĩno phenomenon induced Vietnam’s worst drought in 60 years, which lasted until mid-2016 and intensified the most expansive saline intrusion in 90 years. The combination of the two hazards resulted in a large-scale disaster, which has led 18 provinces of Vietnam, most of them from the Mekong Delta, to water shortage, insanitation, human and animal diseases, food emergency need and a considerable disruption in local communities’ livelihoods. These devastating effects raise the question of what makes local households vulnerable to drought and saline intrusion. The chapter argues that vulnerability to the natural disaster is not something resulted from external threats, but rather, is derived from the interplay between social structures residing deeply inside the socio-economic systems and agency’s conditions presenting at the household level. Social structures are rules and procedures that constrain and/or enable human actions in agricultural production, risk taking and adaptation. Agency refers to the capacities of disaster-affected households in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta who cultivated third rice crop and suffered heavily from the 2015–2016 disaster. In addition to households’ lack of planning and coping capacities, the constitution of vulnerability to drought and saline intrusion can be attributed to the interaction between farmers’ choice of extra rice crops and the state’s policies and directions in agricultural and irrigation development since 1990s to date.

In this chapter, we identify three distinct transformational performance improvement (TPI) approaches commonly used to redesign work processes in health care organizations. We describe the unique components or tools that each approach uses to improve the delivery of health services. We also summarize what is empirically known about the effectiveness of each TPI approach according to systematic reviews and recent studies published in the peer-reviewed literature. Based on examination of this research, we discuss what knowledge is still needed to strengthen the evidence for whole system transformation. This involves the use of conceptual frameworks to assess and guide implementation efforts, and facilitators and barriers to change as revealed in a recent evaluation of one major initiative, the Lean Enterprise Transformation (LET) at the Veterans Health Administration. The analysis suggests ways in which TPI facilitators can be developed and barriers reduced to improve the effectiveness and sustainability of quality initiatives. Finally, we discuss appropriate study designs to evaluate TPI interventions that may strengthen the evidence for their effectiveness in real world practice settings.

An infrared (IR) spectroscopic technique was used to determine the possible functional groups and chemical compounds present in commercially available ink-jet printing reactive dyes of four primary colours, i.e. Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. Although other instrumental analytical methods can help to determine the actual chemical composition of reactive dyes, the IR technique alone can still provide important structural information about the commercially available reactive dyes. Experimental results revealed that the reactive dyes under determination contained the same functional groups and chemical compounds as the reference reactive dyes.

Comfort is one of the most important attributes demanded by modern clothing consumers. It reflects the psychological feeling of a wearer, featured by three latent independent sensory factors: thermal comfort, tactile comfort, and psychological comfort. This paper presents a detailed discussion of the mechanisms influencing different thermal variables on the basis of the thermal comfort properties of 12 commercial types of uniform materials collected from different sources with various fiber content, blend composition, fabric weave, color and end uses. Results generated include thermal conductivity, air permeability and moisture permeability since it is well established that the movement of heat, moisture and air through a fabric are the major factors governing clothing thermal comfort. The initiated research is intended to enable a quantitative analysis of the comfort properties of uniform fabrics currently in use. The results will help establish comfort levels for a wide range of fabric types and assist in fabric selection during uniform product development. In addition, this study might have potential application to other clothing products as well.

The majority of Hong Kong filmmakers have pursued co-production with China filmmakers for having the Mainland market at the expense of local styles and sensitivities. To many critics, the two-part series of Ip Man and Ip Man II provide a paradigmatic case of film co-production that sell the tricks of Chinese kung fu, regurgitating the overblown Chinese nationalism against Japanese and kwai-lo. The purpose of this study is to rectify such observation of the Ip Man series.

The authors read the series deconstructively as a postcolonial text in which Hong Kong identity is inscribed in the negotiated space in between different versions of Chinese nationalism.

The analysis points to the varying subversive features in the series from which Hong Kong’s colonial experiences are tacitly displayed, endorsed and rewritten into the Chinese nationalistic discourse whose dominance is questioned, if not debased.

This paper advances new research insights into the postcolonial reinvention of kung fu film and, by implication, the Hong Kong cinema in general.

This paper aims to present the development and experimental study of a fully automated system using a novel laser additive manufacturing technology called laser foil printing (LFP), to fabricate metal parts layer by layer. The mechanical properties of parts fabricated with this novel system are compared with those of comparable methodologies to emphasize the suitability of this process.

Test specimens and parts with different geometries were fabricated from 304L stainless steel foil using an automated LFP system. The dimensions of the fabricated parts were measured, and the mechanical properties of the test specimens were characterized in terms of mechanical strength and elongation.

The properties of parts fabricated with the automated LFP system were compared with those of parts fabricated with the powder bed fusion additive manufacturing methods. The mechanical strength is higher than those of parts fabricated by the laser powder bed fusion and directed energy deposition technologies.

To the best knowledge of authors, this is the first time a fully automated LFP system has been developed and the properties of its fabricated parts were compared with other additive manufacturing methods for evaluation.

Polypyrrole (PPy)-coated fabric can be produced by means of chemical vapour deposition using pyrrole in the presence of an oxidizing agent. This electrically conductive fabric can be used as a strain sensor, and has high potential for producing wearable sensors that can detect the movements of the wearer. Since direct contact between this conductive fabric and human body will be involved, an investigation of the effect of different types of liquids such as sweat, rain water, drinking water, etc. on the electrical conductivity of fabric sensors is critical. Changes in the conductivity and surface morphology of the PPy-coated textile were analysed by placing few drops of liquid onto the fabrics. The results showed that the electrical resistance of the PPy-coated fabrics was different when the fabrics came into contact with different types of liquid. The phenomenon can be explained by both the fibre/fibre contact and yarn/yarn contact models as well as by the uniformity of the PPy-coating layer on the surface of the fibre.