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1 – 10 of over 4000Borja López-Alonso, Pablo Briz, Hector Sarnago, José M. Burdio and Oscar Lucia
This paper aims to study the feasibility of proposed method to focus the electroporation ablation by mean of multi-output multi-electrode system.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to study the feasibility of proposed method to focus the electroporation ablation by mean of multi-output multi-electrode system.
Design/methodology/approach
The proposed method has been developed based on a previously designed electroporation system, which has the capabilities to modify the electric field distribution in real time, and to estimate the impedance distribution. Taking into consideration the features of the system and biological tissues, the problem has been addressed in three phases: modeling, control system design and simulation testing. In the first phase, a finite element analysis model has been proposed to reproduce the electric field distribution within the hepatic tissue, based on the characteristics of the electroporation system. Then, a control strategy has been proposed with the goal of ensuring complete ablation while minimizing the affected volume of healthy tissue. Finally, to check the feasibility of the proposal, several representative cases have been simulated, and the results have been compared with those obtained by a traditional system.
Findings
The proposed method achieves the proposed goal, as part of a complex electroporation system designed to improve the targeting, effectiveness and control of electroporation treatments and serve to demonstrate the feasibility of developing new electroporation systems capable of adapting to changes in the preplanning of the treatment in real-time.
Originality/value
The work presents a thorough study of control method to multi-output multi-electrode electroporation system by mean of a rigorous numerical simulation.
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Hadi Karimi Aliabad and Mohammadreza Baghayipour
This paper aims to propose a novel simple and efficient structure for line-start axial-flux permanent magnet (LSAFPM) synchronous motor, especially regarding the permanent magnets…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to propose a novel simple and efficient structure for line-start axial-flux permanent magnet (LSAFPM) synchronous motor, especially regarding the permanent magnets (PMs) demagnetization reduction.
Design/methodology/approach
At first, a primitive raw scheme of the new structure for the LSAFPM motor is introduced. Considering this raw scheme, the levels of irreversible demagnetization in various regions throughout the entire volume of each PM are evaluated using 3 dimensional (3D) finite elements analysis (3D FEA) in full loading condition during startup until reaching steady state. Based on the results of these analyses, the primitive structural scheme is then modified through segmenting (cutting into four pieces) each PM from where the worst irreversible demagnetization levels occurred.
Findings
As will be demonstrated by the results of 3D FEA, the proposed modified structure is not only capable of successful startup and synchronization of the motor but also it considerably reduces the PM demagnetization level. Thus, the performance of the motor is significantly improved.
Originality/value
The demagnetization of PMs is an important effect in PM synchronous motors, which can greatly affect motor performance. Therefore, it is necessary to be considered in the motor design processes. This effect becomes much more significant in the line-start PM motors because the usual high-magnitude startup induction current produces a strong armature-reaction magnetic field, which may cause the PMs to be irreversibly demagnetized. The approach proposed in this paper provides a structural solution to mitigate the PM demagnetization effect and thereby improve the performance of an LSAFPM motor through modifying the structure of the LSAFPM motor according to an FEA-based PM demagnetization analysis. As a considerable contribution, in this analysis, the variation of demagnetization level between different areas inside each PM is computed and is considered as a basis for proposing an appropriate structural modification to mitigate the PM demagnetization effect as much as possible.
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The study aims to empirically understand individuals' tendency to disclose private information online following different forms of data breach (i.e. reversible and irreversible…
Abstract
Purpose
The study aims to empirically understand individuals' tendency to disclose private information online following different forms of data breach (i.e. reversible and irreversible victimization).
Design/methodology/approach
Survey methodology is applied to measure the perception of victims of data breaches on key indicators of information disclosure.
Findings
Analysis of responses from 309 victims of data breaches show that while victims' irreversible data breach victimization experience influences both dimensions of privacy concerns, reversible data breach victimization experiences influenced only peer privacy concerns (PPCs). Furthermore, only institutional privacy concerns impacted online disclosure and fully mediate the relationship between victimization experience and online disclosure.
Research limitations/implications
The findings contribute to the privacy literature by expanding the dimension of victimization and considering their differential effect on privacy concerns. Additionally, the study uncovers the efficacy of privacy dimension on privacy recalibration following a data breach announcement.
Practical implications
For practice, the results provide insights for managers on how to manage customer restitution after a data breach. Management of the process of privacy recalibration should not be homogenous but be based on degree of consequence.
Social implications
This research provides deeper understanding of how the ascendancy of privacy breaches affect privacy management. The findings illuminate why the increasing trend in online activities is observed.
Originality/value
The study is the first to identify two dimensions of data breach victimization experience based on the breach level index (BLI). The two dimensions of victimization (i.e. reversible and irreversible privacy victimizations) were used to understand individuals' tendency to disclose private information online.
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Strong versions of the Precautionary Principle (PP) require regulators to prohibit or impose technology controls on activities that pose uncertain risks of possibly significant…
Abstract
Strong versions of the Precautionary Principle (PP) require regulators to prohibit or impose technology controls on activities that pose uncertain risks of possibly significant environmental harm. This decision rule is conceptually unsound and would diminish social welfare. Uncertainty as such does not justify regulatory precaution. While they should reject PP, regulators should take appropriate account of societal aversion to risks of large harm and the value of obtaining additional information before allowing environmentally risky activities to proceed.
The purpose of this paper is to examine what role the contract can, or should, have to frame sustainable futures.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine what role the contract can, or should, have to frame sustainable futures.
Design/methodology/approach
Theoretical discussion, implementation of action‐based scenarios method.
Findings
In a sustainable perspective, function and dysfunction of contracts relate to irreversibility to be designed as transfer, stalemate, oscillation and phase lag.
Research limitations/implications
Contracts appear as the product of a rational decision, settling the interactions between contracting parties, as well as being a symbolic act.
Originality/value
The paper discusses contracts in a long range perspective through the implementation of action‐based scenarios method.
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Tahir Naseem and Azeem Shahzad
The purpose of this study is to examine the flow and heat transfer performance of titanium oxide/water and copper/water nanofluids with varying nanoparticle morphologies by…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine the flow and heat transfer performance of titanium oxide/water and copper/water nanofluids with varying nanoparticle morphologies by considering magnetic, Joule heating and viscous dissipation effects. Furthermore, it studies the irreversibility caused by the flow of a hydromagnetic nanofluid past a radiated stretching sheet by considering different shapes of TiO2 and Cu nanoparticles with water as the base fluid.
Design/methodology/approach
In this study, the authors investigated entropy production in an unsteady two-dimensional magneto-hydrodynamic nanofluid regime using water as the base fluid and five unique TiO2 and Cu nanoparticle morphologies. Using appropriate similarity transformations, the controlling nonlinear system of partial differential equations is transformed into a system of ordinary differential equations. The shooting technique with Runge–Kutta method was then used to solve these equations quantitatively. The findings of this study are depicted graphically, and the skin friction corresponding to various nanoparticle geometries and physical parameter variations is tabulated.
Findings
To assess the reliability of the current findings, a tabular representation of the data was compared to that of previously published studies. It is noted that a reduction in thermal energy was detected as a result of the higher levels of Prandtl number (Pr). It is further analysed that the highest heat energy generation of TiO2 nanoparticles was larger than that of Cu nanoparticles. The most important finding was that the sphere-shaped Cu/H2O nanofluid had the lowest velocity and greatest temperature. Also, Cu nanoparticles in the shape of platelets generate the most entropy, while TiO2 nanoparticles in the shape of spheres generate the least.
Originality/value
To the best of the knowledge of the authors, the attempt to investigate the previously unexplored shape effects of TiO2 and Cu nanoparticles on the heat transfer enhancement and inherent irreversibility caused by hydromagnetic nanofluid flow past a radiated stretching sheet with magnetic, Joule heating and viscous dissipation effects. This study fills this gap in the existing literature and encourages scientists, engineers and businesses to do more research in this area. This model can be used to improve heat transfer in systems that use renewable energy, thermal management in industry and the processing of materials.
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The nature and extent of our knowledge of stock market efficiency are examined. The development of “efficiency”, as a way of thinking about stock markets, is traced from Roberts…
Abstract
The nature and extent of our knowledge of stock market efficiency are examined. The development of “efficiency”, as a way of thinking about stock markets, is traced from Roberts (1959) and Fama (1965) onward. The early work successfully introduced competitive economic theory to the study of stock markets and paved the way for a flood of empirical research on the relation between information and stock prices. This literature irreversibly altered our views on stock market behavior. The theory and evidence of seemingly‐rational use of information lay in sharp contrast to prior beliefs. It was associated with a widespread increase in respect for stock markets, financial markets, and markets in general, at the time. Researchers began developing and using a variety of formal models of security prices. Nevertheless, “efficiency” has its limitations, both theoretically (as a way of characterizing markets) and empirically (by stretching the quality of the data, the estimation techniques used, and our knowledge of price behavior in competitive markets). Extensive evidence of anomalies suggests either that the market systematically misprices securities or that the theoretical or empirical limitations are binding, or both. The less interesting research question now is whether markets are efficient, and the more interesting question is how we can learn more about price and transactions behavior in competitive stock markets. The concept of an “efficient stock market” has stimulated both insight and controversy since Fama (1965) introduced it to the financial economics literature. As a construct, “efficiency” models the stock market in terms of the reaction of prices to the flow of information. Like all theory choices, modelling the market in this fashion involved tradeoffs. The benefits included opening the literature to an abundance of high‐quality researchable data, covering a variety of information, and the resulting insights obtained on the role of information in setting prices. The opportunity costs included temporarily closing the literature to alternative ways of viewing stock markets, for example by modelling public information as a homogenous good and thus ignoring factors such as differences in beliefs among investors, differences in information processing costs, and the “animal spirits” that might drive group behavior. The costs also included reliance on particular asset‐pricing models of how an “efficient” market would set prices. Not surprisingly, the ensuing deluge of research has produced some startling evidence, for and against the proposition that financial markets are “efficient”. Strongly‐conflicting views and puzzling anomalies remain. The early evidence seemed unexpectedly consistent with the theory. The theory, and its implications, also seemed clear at the time. After a period that seems short in retrospect, the growing body of evidence in favor of the efficient market hypothesis emerged as one of the most influential empirical areas of economics. Fama's (1970) review described a flourishing, coherent and confident literature. This research had an irreversible effect on our knowledge of and attitude toward stock markets, and financial markets generally. It coincided with an emergence of interest in, and respect for, all markets among economists and politicians, and influenced the worldwide trend toward “liberalizing” financial and other markets. The research consistently appeared to show an unbiased reaction of stock prices to public information. The property of “unbiased reaction” to public information, which formed the basis of the early definitions of “efficiency”, was seen to be an implication of rational, maximizing investor behavior in competitive securities markets (Fama 1965, p.4). Reduced to a basic level, the reasoning was that any systematicallybiased reaction to public information is costlessly publicly observable, and thus provides pure profit opportunities to be competed away. Characterizing the market in terms of its reaction to information is only one of many feasible ways of modelling stock price behavior, but it introduced economic theoryto the empirical studyof stock prices, which had received little serious attention from economists prior to that point. Despite the subsequent spate of anomalies, the early efficiency literature not only adapted standard economic theoryto provide the first formal economic insights into how stock prices behave, but it helped pave the way for an outporing of theoretical and empirical work on stock markets and capital markets in general. Subsequent empirical research was not as consistent with the theory. Evidence of “anomalous” return behavior now is widespread and well‐known. It generallytakes the form of variables (for example, size, day‐of‐the‐week, P/E ratio, market/book value ratio, rank of scaled earnings change, dividend yield) that are significantly but inexplicablyrelated to subsequent abnormal stock returns. Much of this evidence has defied rational economic explanation to date and appears to have caused many researchers to strongly qualify their views on market efficiency. Disagreement has not been not confined to the evidence. The literature has produced a variety of research designs, ranging from the “market model” of Fama, Fisher, Jensen and Roll (FFJR, 1969) to Shiller's (1981a,b) variance‐bounds tests. The very term “efficiency” has engendered controversy: there is a modest literature on precisely what efficiency means, on the role of transaction costs, and on whether efficient markets are logically feasible. Making sense of this literature requires careful definition of “efficiency” in this context and careful analysis of the type of evidence that has been offered in relation to it. This involves an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of both the theory of efficient markets, as a way of characterizing stock markets, and of the data and research designs used in testing it. Not surprisingly, a mixed conclusion emerges. While the concept of efficient markets was an audacious departure from the comparative ignorance and suspicion among economists of stock markets that preceded it, and provides valuable insights into their behavior, the concept has its limitations, in terms of both its internal logical coherence and its fit with the data. Section 1 ofthis survey sketches the development of the efficient market theory, reviewing the principal contributions in terms of their usefulness in guiding and evaluating empirical research. Section 2 addresses the limitations inherent in what is knowable about stock market efficiency, given the present state of theory about how security prices might behave in an “efficient” market. It argues that there are binding limitations in the theoryof asset pricing, some of which are known and others of which are unknown or even unknowable. These limitations must be borne in mind when choosing whether to interpret the data as evidence of: (1) market efficiency, under the maintained hypothesis that a specific research design, including a specific model of asset pricing used to benchmark price behavior, correctly describes pricing in an efficient market; or (2) the ability of our models and research designs to encapsulate how prices behave in an efficient market, under the maintained hypothesis of efficiency. Against this background, section 3 then provides an assessment of the accomplishments of the theory of stock market efficiency, including an interpretation of the evidence. It focuses on the nature and influence of the evidence and does not attempt to provide a comprehensive literature taxonomy. The final section offers conclusions. The principal conclusion is that the theory of efficient markets has irreversibly enhanced our knowledge of and respect for stock markets (and perhaps for all financial market or even for markets in general) but that, like all theories, it is fundamentally flawed.
Angela Martinez Dy and Heatherjean MacNeil
This paper intervenes in existing literature on entrepreneurship and inequalities by proposing a novel reframing of intersectionality as a threshold concept, an important idea…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper intervenes in existing literature on entrepreneurship and inequalities by proposing a novel reframing of intersectionality as a threshold concept, an important idea that enables us to deepen and progress the understanding of complex subjectivities.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing from education studies, intersectionality is explored through the five key features of threshold concepts: (1) transformative, (2) irreversible, (3) integrative, (4) bounded and (5) troublesome. We offer a set of reflection questions for what we call “doing intersectionality.”
Findings
We develop a metacritique of the way in which the concept of intersectionality has thus far been treated in feminist theory and applied in entrepreneurship studies – namely, as the culmination of thinking about difference and inequality, decoupled from its roots in collectivist analysis and Black and anti-racist feminism. The paper invites scholars of entrepreneurial inequalities to both engage and look beyond an intersectional lens to better elucidate the range of historically emergent social hierarchies and systems of power that shape their phenomena of interest.
Originality/value
Through reframing intersectionality as a threshold concept, this paper challenges entrepreneurship researchers to view intersectionality as a foundational starting point for the conceptualisation of complex interactions of social structures, and the structural inequality and power relationships present within their research, rather than a destination.
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Petr Slobodian, Pavel Riha, Robert Olejnik and Jiri Matyas
The synergistic effect of functionalization of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (CNT) using KMnO4 oxidation and initial tensile deformation on the electrical resistance of nanotube…
Abstract
Purpose
The synergistic effect of functionalization of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (CNT) using KMnO4 oxidation and initial tensile deformation on the electrical resistance of nanotube network/polyurethane composite subjected to elongation was studied.
Design/methodology/approach
Though the initial deformation irreversibly changed the arrangement of carbon nanotube network, subsequent cyclic elongation confirmed stable resistance values. The increased strain-dependent resistance of stimulated nanotube network/polyurethane composite was demonstrated by monitoring vibration of tambour leather after a bead impact and finger flexion.
Findings
The results showed a tenfold composite resistance increase for the composite prepared from KMnO4 oxidized nanotubes, quantified by a so-called gauge factor, from a value of about 20 in comparison to the network prepared from pristine nanotubes. This is a substantial increase, which ranks the stimulated composite among materials with the highest electromechanical response.
Originality/value
The results in this paper are new and have not been published yet. The paper combines different ideas which are developed together. It presents a new concept of synergistic effect of CNT oxidation and application of pre-strain simulation. Oxidation and pre-strain increases by several times the sensitivity of the tested composites which are predetermined for use as strain sensors of various sizes and shapes.
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Johannes Liebrich and Christian Kreischer
Superconductors offer several advantages compared with conventional conductors. However, it is not clear at this stage whether these types of conductors provide the same…
Abstract
Purpose
Superconductors offer several advantages compared with conventional conductors. However, it is not clear at this stage whether these types of conductors provide the same durability. For this reason, tape conductors under mechanical forces need to be studied in detail. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between critical temperature and axial mechanical stress of GdBaCuO tape conductors.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper investigates the influence of axial mechanical stresses on the critical temperature of superconductors. For these investigations, a multi-physical test rig was developed, which makes it possible to perform these types of investigations. With the presented measurement methodology, the influence of mechanical stresses on the tape conductor can be determined.
Findings
The investigations show a correlation between the critical temperature and the acting mechanical stresses. The analytically presented approach to describe the transition temperature is valid for the investigated samples. In addition, it is determined that the effects are not reversible, and therefore, permanent damage to the tape conductor is observed.
Originality/value
The presented investigations make it possible to create more accurate models of GdBaCuO tape conductors. This enables to extend the superconducting state space, which so far depends on three critical quantities, by the quantity of the axial stress.
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