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The extent of national export volume attributable to the small firm sector within the UK does not compare favourably with that of certain other European countries/ particularly Germany and Italy. In an attempt to enhance the export competitiveness of this firm sector recent policy, research and management attention has been devoted to influences underlying export development. This article contributes to this knowledge by reviewing extensive research studies that have reported on one aspect of this topic: the international orientation of the decision maker within the small firm.

Far too much weight seems to have been given to the Local Government Board circular which mentioned public libraries as institutions whose expenditure should be examined with a view to effecting economies. This, to the ordinary person, would seem to call on library committees to exercise special care to prevent unnecessary expenditure, and more particularly to see that capital expenditure on new buildings and extensions is not made. The first of these requirements has been common for years; had there been wasteful expenditure, and if librarians had not carefully financed their resources, half the libraries in England would have been bankrupt long ago. The second requirement is just, and would be accepted even by the most unbridled library enthusiast. But local bodies have not been content so to read the circular. They have frequently interpreted it to mean that “libraries must mark time,” are “of small value in peace and less in war,” and the war is being made an excuse by old‐standing opponents of public culture to do as much damage as possible to the library movement.

With the developments of e-commerce markets, novel recommendation technologies are becoming an essential part of many online retailers’ economic models to help drive online sales. Initially, the purpose of this paper is to undertake an investigation of apparel recommendations in the commercial market in order to verify the research value and significance. Then, this paper reviews apparel recommendation techniques and systems through academic research, aiming to acquaint apparel recommendation context, summarize the pros and cons of various research methods, identify research gaps and eventually propose new research solutions to benefit apparel retailing market.

This study utilizes empirical research drawing on 130 academic publications indexed from online databases. The authors introduce a three-layer descriptor for searching articles, and analyse retrieval results via distribution graphics of years, publications and keywords.

This study classified high-tech integrated apparel systems into 3D CAD systems, personalised design systems and recommendation systems. The authors’ research interest is focussed on recommendation system. Four types of models were found, namely clothes searching/retrieval, wardrobe recommendation, fashion coordination and intelligent recommendation systems. The forth type, smart systems, has raised more awareness in apparel research as it is equipped with advanced functions and application scenarios to satisfy customers. Despite various computational algorithms tested in system modelling, existing research is lacking in terms of apparel and users profiles research. Thus, from the review, the authors have identified and proposed a more complete set of key features for describing both apparel and users profiles in a recommendation system.

Based on previous studies, this is the first review paper on this topic in this subject field. The summarised work and the proposed new research will inspire future researchers with various knowledge backgrounds, especially, from a design perspective.

Every day, small and big incidents happen all over the world, and given the human, financial and spiritual damage they cause, proper planning should be sought to deal with them so they can be appropriately managed in times of crisis. This study aims to examine humanitarian supply chain models.

A new model is developed to pursue the necessary relations in an optimal way that will minimize human, financial and moral losses. In this developed model, in order to optimize the problem and minimize the amount of human and financial losses, the following subjects have been applied: magnitude of the areas in which an accident may occur as obtained by multiple attribute decision-making methods, the distances between relief centers, the number of available rescuers, the number of rescuers required and the risk level of each patient which is determined using previous data and machine learning (ML) algorithms.

For this purpose, a case study in the east of Tehran has been conducted. According to the results obtained from the algorithms, problem modeling and case study, the accuracy of the proposed model is evaluated very well.

Obtaining each injured person's priority using ML techniques and each area's importance or risk level, besides developing a bi-objective mathematical model and using multiple attribute decision-making methods, make this study unique among very few studies that concern ML in the humanitarian supply chain. Moreover, the findings validate the results and the model's functionality very well.

The production of sleeve grouting in prefabricated construction is routinely plagued by a variety of factors, and lack of mass data and complex environmental conditions over time make problems inevitable. Thus, a dynamic risk control system is a valuable support for the successful completion of the sleeve grouting process. This study aims to develop an entropy-based sleeve grouting risk dynamic control system.

First, static risk assessment was conducted through the structured interview survey using the entropy weight method, followed by a dynamic risk control technique, where indicators were simulated through system dynamics containing causal loop diagrams and stock-and-flow diagrams.

Finally, three types of risk control models, namely, “tortuous type”, “stable type” and “peak loop type”, were developed in the entropy-based sleeve grouting risk dynamic control system and simulated using system dynamics in a real case.

Compared to traditional sleeve grouting risk management, the developed system enabled dynamic control over time.