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The purpose of this paper is to consider Turing's two tests for machine intelligence: the parallel‐paired, three‐participants game presented in his 1950 paper, and the “jury‐service” one‐to‐one measure described two years later in a radio broadcast. Both versions were instantiated in practical Turing tests during the 18th Loebner Prize for artificial intelligence hosted at the University of Reading, UK, in October 2008. This involved jury‐service tests in the preliminary phase and parallel‐paired in the final phase.

Almost 100 test results from the final have been evaluated and this paper reports some intriguing nuances which arose as a result of the unique contest.

In the 2008 competition, Turing's 30 per cent pass rate is not achieved by any machine in the parallel‐paired tests but Turing's modified prediction: “at least in a hundred years time” is remembered.

The paper presents actual responses from “modern Elizas” to human interrogators during contest dialogues that show considerable improvement in artificial conversational entities (ACE). Unlike their ancestor – Weizenbaum's natural language understanding system – ACE are now able to recall, share information and disclose personal interests.

The pitch of the blades of an air‐screw is adjustable by means of a movable cylinder which is mounted beyond the end of the hub and moves over a fixed piston to either side of which an actuating liquid is conveyed down the hollow airscrew shaft and the cylinder has an axial extension which takes a bearing inside that shaft. The air screw shaft a4 is hollow and driven by gearing from the engine shaft a2. Inside the shaft are fitted two concentric tubes ƒ, ƒ1 of which the tube ƒ is secured to the shaft a4 by teeth ƒ2 and the mounting includes steady bearings ƒ6 which are serrated to allow oil to pass, and further steady sleeves between the two tubes are provided at ƒ3. The outer end of tube ƒ is attached to a piston g secured thereto by a nut g1. Over the piston is a cylinder h having a closed end h1 and an inner axial extension sleeve h2 which takes a bearing on the outside of the pipe ƒ on annular rings h3 and also on the inside of the shaft h4. The end of the space between the concentric tubes is closed by a plug h3. When liquid pressure is applied to either side of the piston, movement of the cylinder is transmitted to the pins m4 on the blade roots by the bolts m and links m3, the connection of the two linkages is formed as a slipper movable within a guide m5. For the purpose of ensuring oil tightness the junctions of the supply pipes j1, j2 with the supply tubes ƒ, ƒ1 are formed with spring‐held glands j4, j5, j10, j9.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the application of an acoustic micro‐imaging (AMI) inspection technique in monitoring solder joints through lifetime performance and demonstrate the robustness of the monitoring through analysis of AMI data.

Accelerated thermal cycling (ATC) test data on a flip chip test board were collected through AMI imaging. Subsequently, informative features and parameters of solder joints in acoustic images were measured and analysed. Through analysing histogram distance, mean intensity and grey area of the solder joints in acoustic images, cracks between the solder bump and chip interface were tracked and monitored. The results are in accord with associated Finite Element (FE) prediction.

At defective bumps, the formation of a crack causes a larger acoustic impedance mismatch which provides a stronger ultrasound reflection. The intensity of solder joints in the acoustic image increase according to the level of damage during the ATC tests. By analysing the variation of intensity and area, solder joint fatigue failure was monitored. A failure distribution plot shows a normal distribution pattern, where corner joints have the lowest reliability and are more likely to fail first. A strong agreement between AMI monitoring test data and FE prediction was observed, demonstrating the feasibility of through lifetime monitoring of solder joints using AMI.

The paper indicates the feasibility of the novel application of AMI inspection to monitor solder joint through lifetime performance non‐destructively. Solder joints' real life conditions can be tracked by an AMI technique, hence solder joint fatigue failure cycles during the ATC tests can be monitored and analysed non‐destructively.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the design and the multi‐mode locomotion function of the new reconfigurable modular robotic system – UBot system – which combines the advantages from the chain‐based and lattice‐based self‐reconfigurable robots.

The UBot modules the authors have designed are based on the universal joint and of cubic shape with two rotational joints and reliable automatic connecting mechanism. The modules are compact and flexible enough for locomotion and reconfiguration. The system can move in different modes to satisfy different terrains, through changing the modules' local connections and rotation of modules' joints.

The UBot system can flexibly move in the modes of cross, loop, quadruped, snake‐type and other type of locomotion modes. All the locomotion has been implemented in the physical experiments.

The UBot module is the new reconfigurable module which has two joints in one unit of regular cubic space and four reliable automatic connecting surfaces. A group of the modules is able to change its connective configuration by changing their local connections and has functionality of the corresponding traditional robotic system. Since it can travel through terrains that may not be fully characterized ahead of time, the system can be used in a large variety of tasks, such as transportation, assembly, inspection and exploration.

The purpose of this study is to explore organizational enablers of frontline employees’ (FLEs) service-sales ambidexterity (SSA) in industrial firms expanding their digital service portfolios.

The authors conducted a qualitative study of five industrial firms pursuing digital service growth and, for this purpose, collected and analyzed interview data obtained from 50 service and sales managers and FLEs across three continents.

The authors identify and explain eight organizational enablers of digital service-sales ambidexterity (DSSA), operating at the macro, micro and meso levels.

Service and sales managers should use the identified organizational enablers to exploit the established service business and to explore new digital growth paths.

The study expands the prior understanding of SSA by advancing the concept of DSSA, unpacking its multilevel dynamics and operationalizing eight organizational enablers.

The article analyzes the challenges Slovak businesses and organizations are facing in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting human resource management solutions they apply.

The authors present a part of their research conducted in six Central Eastern European (CEE) countries. Based on timely data, the article presents socioeconomic characteristics of Slovakia and the results of the research “HRM Challenges in Times of the Covid-19 Crisis” conducted among employers in Slovakia. The survey method encompassed 247 Slovakian organizations.

The year 2020 was an extraordinary one for businesses, governments, and individuals alike. According to the results of this research, Slovak organizations were not prepared for the Covid-19 crisis. Respondents who had a pandemic action plan at the time of the breakout were hardly found. Measures taken to preserve human health directly impacted the way how work is done and organized. This poses significant challenges for both employers and employees. In general, small organizations used cost and staff reduction tools. On the other hand, some of the respondents, mainly large organizations have been using future-oriented solutions, e.g. organizational development.

In this research the authors analyzed the experiences of a Central European country, namely Slovakia. However, the experiences gained and collected here can be useful in the international arena as well.

The purpose of this paper is to obtain an insight into the effects of sliding and/or joint opening at the contraction, perimeter and concrete lift joints on the nonlinear seismic response of arch dams.

The seismic behavior of a typical thin double curvature arch dam is studied by a nonlinear finite element program developed by the authors. Joints are modeled with the use of zero thickness interface elements. Various constitutive relationships are implemented to account for sliding and opening along the joints. Effects of joint sliding parameters and foundation rock flexibility are also considered in the analyses.

The findings provide information about dynamic stress distribution through the dam body and stability of the dam as a whole and also the local stability of the most critical concrete blocks in the dam body.

Useful information for designing new arch dams or seismic evaluation of constructed dams.

This paper takes into account the stability of concrete blocks in the dam body as well as stability of the structure as a whole. Except for contraction joints, perimeter and concrete lift joints are also modeled. Practical as well as detailed models of sliding are provided for the analyses. The paper offers practical help to design and dam engineers.

Within personal leadership education courses, leadership educators should include experiences which help students develop themselves as leaders. In this article, the authors discuss results from a qualitative research study involving the analysis of Personal Growth Project (PGP) assignments in a personal leadership education collegiate course. The authors analyzed PGP assignments using the lens of the Leadership Identity Development model (Komives et al., 2005). All aspects of the developing self component of the model including deepening self-awareness, building self-confidence, establishing interpersonal efficacy, applying new skills, and expanding motivations were evident in student reflections about their PGP. The PGP assignment seems to be very effective in promoting the development of students’ leadership identity, especially in the “developing self” category of the Leadership Identity Model (Komives et al., 2005).

The purpose of this paper is to conduct an exploratory analysis of the demographic factors and investors’ characteristics, which cause changes in the extent of overconfidence level and its constituents among the individuals.

A survey has been conducted to explore the determinants of overconfidence and its constituents with the help of a well-structured close-ended questionnaire. The four constituents of overconfidence considered for the study are “better than average effect,” “planning fallacy,” “self-attribution” and “positive illusion.” The collected data are analyzed with the help of t-test, ANOVA and standard ordinary least square regression.

The results show that those who earn high, have more dependents, share the earning responsibility, have high investment frequency, less time horizon and more investment experience and invest in large cap stocks are more subject to the overconfidence. The study also concludes that gender, age and general education do not affect the level of overconfidence.

The results of the study are useful for the market regulators, financial educators, stock market advisors and individual investors in avoiding costly investment mistakes, especially when transiting from one category of demographic and investment characteristics to another category of demographic and investment characteristics.

The study is unique in itself, as it contributes an instrument to quantify the level of overconfidence among the individual investors. Moreover, the study attempts to explore the impact of all demographic and investment characteristics in one go, which makes it a valuable contribution in the existing literature.

This paper aims to examine the interrelationships between subnational conflicts in Myanmar and other variables of interests from the following four major domains: economic, human security and vulnerability of people, aggressiveness or militancy of the armed forces and global and regional climates.

Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach has been applied on annual data from 1960-2017, to deal with the problems of autocorrelation and non-stationarity of key variables.

First, an increase in crop yield, cereal productivity, food productivity and per capita availability of arable land unequivocally and significantly lower the severity of conflict in Myanmar in the long run. Second, the authors uncover strong evidence that the intensity of conflicts bears a positive relationship with the vulnerability of the people of Myanmar. Third, the authors detect that both regional and global climate variables have limited and rather inconsistent impacts on subnational conflicts in Myanmar. Finally, the authors find that the aggressiveness (militancy index) of the armed forces has significant impacts upon subnational conflicts and economic variables of Myanmar in the long run.

This paper is completely data-driven and explains the long-term dynamics of the intensity of the civil war in Myanmar. ARDL bounds testing approach has been used to examine the interrelationships between subnational conflicts in Myanmar and other variables of interests. It is a novel approach, which overcomes the problems of autocorrelation and nonstationarity and offers reliable results.