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Information-facilitated product recovery system (IFPRS) has captivated industry attention and has developed into a matter of consideration among the researchers because of enhanced climate concerns, jurisdictive logics and societal liabilities. Although IFPRS implementation has become an essential aspect in manufacturing industries functional in the developed nations, still, limited consideration has been given in the literature to analyze the issues to IFPRS implementation for a circular economy (CE) in emerging and developing nations. Therefore, the objective of this study is to recognize issues to implementing IFPRS for a CE in context of select manufacturing industries in India.

In this study, 24 potential issues are established from the literature and from suggestions from the experts. The issues are clubbed under five different perspectives of technical, government, organization, policy and knowledge. Further, fuzzy VIKOR technique is applied on the results obtained to prioritize the identified issues. A sensitivity analysis has been carried out to check the robustness of the framework.

The present study shows that lack of skills and expertise in IFPRS implementation for a CE (I2), deficient capital to implement a CE in IFPRS (I₉), inadequate in adopting recent IT technology (I₁₈), feasibility of IFPRS employment for a CE (I₆) and no efficient training and program to CE adoption (I₂₁) are the top five potential issues in implementing IFPRS practices for a CE in Indian manufacturing industries.

In literature, limited study has been observed on determining issues to implementation of IFPRS for a CE. A more systematic method and statistical confirmation is necessary to establish further new confronting issues. This study is limited to Indian manufacturing industries.

The main contribution of this study includes identification of issues and later prioritizing them to reflect their severity. This would help the industry practitioners to formulate strategies for handling the issues conveniently.

Acquiring a foreign language may be a lifelong endeavor, and this requires one to approach it from a lifelong learning perspective. However, learners may not always be ready for such an approach. It is important to know where learners stand in their orientations toward learning and consider this when planning educational activities. Therefore, it is necessary to determine language learners’ readiness for lifelong learning (LLL) in order to support their language development. This paper reports the findings of a study conducted to identify the LLL propensities of some Turkish and Emirati university students learning English as a foreign language in their local contexts. The study included 61 Emirati and 47 Turkish students, with a mean age of 19. Data were collected using a research tool with three sections: Demographics, the Lifelong Learning Tendency Scale (LLLTS – developed by Coskun & Demirel (2012)), and a survey with six open-ended questions. Student’s t-test, the Kruskal-Wallis test and the Mann-Whitney U-test were used to compare the quantitative data in terms of the participants’ nationalities, gender and length of study. The results showed that both Turkish and Emirati students had a moderate level of propensity for LLL. However, the Turkish students’ overall LLLTS scores as well as certain sub-skills were found to be higher than those of the Emirati students. Gender was not found to make a significant difference in the students’ LLL orientations, while motivation was found to be lower at a statistically significant level for those learning English for more than a year. Suggestions are offered for the development of language learners’ LLL skills.

Football exists and evolves in a dynamic ecosystem, displaying a massive and multidimensional influence on most contemporary societies, and football has grown into a significant industry with a plethora of stakeholders. This research is the first to comprehensively identify the key industry stakeholders and their distinct value, from the individual club perspective, and to conceptualise and test their interrelationship toward the development of a corresponding framework of club benefits.

The study applied a multilevel approach to collect and verify qualitative data. It initially developed a preliminary conceptual framework, which was first validated by an expert panel and was subsequently extensively tested in the Cyprus-specific context, which offered fertile ground for such a study. The empirical stage rested on 41 semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with very high-ranking individuals from the top nine football clubs, as well as with key industry stakeholders.

Though the examined industry is partly in line with international norms, it is also highly affected by unique characteristics that alter the various stakeholders' role, producing (even negative) value of varied typologies that is directly linked with the industry's financial, sporting, cultural and social conditions.

The research ultimately presents scholars, practitioners and policymakers with a systemic and comprehensive understanding of the individual club stakeholder value offerings, delivers a tested framework as a tool for social and business management and prescribes future avenues for research, governance and practice.

Extant studies on the subject are either partial or focus on individual stakeholders and evidently lack requisite scientific comprehensiveness. The current research bridges this significant gap in knowledge by exhaustively identifying the key industry stakeholders, explicating their relative social, economic or other value in the individual club perspective and developing a value-based stakeholder framework.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the performance of indigenous innovation in developing countries in the era of trade liberalization. It analyzes indigenous innovation from research and development (R&D) investments to innovation output and its effect on economic growth.

The sample for this study includes 20 middle-income countries across five continents for the period between 1994 and 2018. The study employs the Crepon Duguet and Mairessec CDM model in a panel data setting to do a multistage analysis of the innovation process. A vector error correction model VECM is employed to test for Granger causality between the variables investigated.

The results show that imports and foreign direct investments (FDI) have generally have short-run and long-run causal effects on domestic R&D investments. In regions where imports and FDI do not have individual causal effects on innovation output, a joint increase in each of them and R&D have both short-run and long-run causal effects. Indigenous innovation is a significant contributor to economic growth when a country can produce and export novel products.

The sample is only limited to developing economies, and due to the unavailability of data, only 20 countries were captured.

Imported products and FDI are critical to the innovation drive when such activities are targeted at enhancing indigenous innovation from R&D to the production of new products. Hence, policy formulation should encourage the absorption of foreign technologies that serve as inputs to indigenous innovation.

This paper focuses specifically on indigenous innovation and analyses the influence of foreign technologies in this effort. It tests the moderating roles of imports and FDI in the relationship between R&D and innovation output, concluding that both variables enhance the effect of R&D on innovation output.

Under the constraints of given passenger service level and coupling travel demand with train departure time, this study optimizes the train operational plan in an urban rail corridor to minimize the numbers of train trips and rolling stocks considering the time-varying demand of urban rail passenger flow.

The authors optimize the train operational plan in a special network layout, i.e. an urban rail corridor with dead-end terminal yard, by decomposing it into two sub-problems: train timetable optimization and rolling stock circulation optimization. As for train timetable optimization, the authors propose a schedule-based passenger flow assignment method, construct the corresponding timetabling optimization model and design the bi-directional coordinated sequential optimization algorithm. For the optimization of rolling stock circulation, the authors construct the corresponding optimization assignment model and adopt the Hungary algorithm for solving the model.

The case study shows that the train operational plan developed by the study's approach meets requirements on the passenger service quality and reduces the operational cost to the maximum by minimizing the numbers of train trips and rolling stocks.

The example verifies the efficiency of the model and algorithm.

This report explored enriched notions and dimensions of quality massive open online courses (QMOOCs). The purpose of this paper is to visualize the quality measures adjacent to MOOCs and understanding distinctive outlooks to approaching them. It was also of interests to envisage how and in what routines those notions and dimensions interrelated.

Exploratory-design was employed to qualitatively establishing conceptual and operational frameworks first through reviewing processes and focus-group discussions. QMOOCs were reflected by four dimensions: scientifically provable, technically feasible, economically beneficial and socio-culturally adaptable. Besides, QMOOCs involved six notions (6P: presage, process, product, practicability, prospective and power) and affected knowledge, skills and professionalism (KSP). Quantitatively, QMOOCs, 6P and KSP were the moderating, independent and dependent variables, respectively. Associated data were accumulated through survey by distributing 600 questionnaires randomly to 708 Universitas Terbuka faculty members; 299 of them were completed.

Nine hypotheses were scrutinized utilizing structural-equation model and eight were validated by the analysis. It was statistically inferred that product was alluded as the prime notion to QMOOCs followed by process, practicability, presage and power; prospective was excluded. Professionalism, knowledge and skill were influenced by QMOOCs. Importance-performance analysis (IPA) and customer-satisfaction index were emulated (and applied) to quantify respondents opinion and relevance degree of those engaged notions and dimensions. IPA analysis revealed four prominent notions (corresponding, functional, well-defined and learner-focused) and one dimension (technically feasible).

Qualitative framework was imperfectly confirmed by the quantitative upshot. Further inquiry is crucial searching for plausible validation how this consequence was marginally distinctive in conjunction with authenticating QMOOCs.

The present study seeks to shed further light on the effectiveness of Basu (1997) and Khan and Watts' (2009) differential timeliness metrics in detecting predictable differences in conservatism following corrections of restated earnings.

Using cross-sectional and time-series analyses for companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange during 2009–2013, the results indicate lower conservatism for restating firms as compared to their counterparts during prerestatement period.

Using cross-sectional and time-series analyses for companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange during 2009–2013, the results indicate lower conservatism for restating firms as compared to their counterparts during prerestatement period. In contrast, our findings are indicative of higher conservatism among these restating firms during the years of restatements. Moreover, the time-series approach captures a higher conservatism for the restating firms during restatement years than prerestatement periods. Overall, these results provide insight into the usefulness of the metrics used in the restatement setting.

Similar to recent papers, the present study seeks to shed further light on the ability of Basu-based coupled with Khan–Watts-based measures of conservatism to detect situations in which companies' earnings are known to be significantly restated.

This paper aims to present a detailed mechanical design of a seven-degrees-of-freedom mobile parallel robot for the tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding and machining processes in fusion reactor. Detailed mechanical design of the robot is presented and both the kinematic and dynamic behaviors are studied.

First, the model of the mobile parallel robot was created in computer-aided design (CAD) software, then the simulation and optimization of the robot were completed to meet the design requirements. Then the robot was manufactured and assembled. Finally, the machining and tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding tests were performed for validation.

Currently, the implementation of the robot system has been successfully carried out in the laboratory. The excellent performance has indicated that the robot’s mechanical and software designs are suitable for the given tasks. The quality and accuracy of welding and machining has reached the requirements.

This mobile parallel industrial robot is particularly used in fusion reactor. Furthermore, the structure of the mobile parallel robot can be optimized for different applications.

Economic theories on structural change focus on factors such as fluctuations in relative prices and income growth. In addition, China’s reform and opening up has also been accompanied by increasing openness, significant fluctuations in investment rates, and frictions in the labor market. Existing literature lacks a unified theoretical framework to assess the relative importance of all these determinants. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

To incorporate all of the potential determinants of China’s structural change, the authors build a two-country four-sector neoclassical growth model that embeds the multi-sector Eaton and Kortum (2002) model of international trade, complete input-output structure, non-homothetic preference and labor market frictions. The authors decompose the sectoral employment shares into six effects: the Baumol, Engel, investment, international trade, factor intensity and labor market friction effects. Using the data of Chinese economy from 1978 to 2011, the authors perform a quantitative investigation of the six determinants’ effects through the decomposition approach and counterfactual exercises.

Low-income elasticity of demand, high labor intensity, and the existence of the switching costs are the reasons for the high employment share in the agricultural sector. Technological progress, investment and international trade have comparatively less influence on the proportion difference of employment in the three sectors.

Therefore, to examine the impact on China’s structural change, in addition to Baumol effect and the Engel effect, it is also necessary to consider the impact of three more factors: international trade, investment and switching costs. Therefore, the authors decompose the factors that may influence China’s structural change into the Baumol, Engel, investment, international trade, factor intensity effect and switching cost effects. The authors evaluate these six effects using the decomposition approach and counterfactual exercises.