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Although an important facet of modernist architecture in which function plays a prominent role, building flexibility is not entirely a new concept. Its relevance transcends generations, allowing space and structure to evolve through time. This paper investigates the relationship among main building structures, infill elements, and space by studying examples in ancient Chinese architecture. It reveals the role of building owners, users, and craftsmen from a survey of historical documentation. In studying these examples, it is concluded that craftsmen in ancient China were involved not only during the construction phase but throughout the period of use as well. Thus, in select cases, the relationship between craftsmen and owners or users had been preserved for generations. Finally, this paper suggests potential strategies for the building industry and technology in the move towards sustainable development.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether, when and how customer orientation may contribute to success in introduction of new products (SINP).

With a multi-phase and multi-source data collection approach, this study tested the proposed theoretical model by applying multiple regression with SPSS Process Macro.

Customer orientation positively influences cross-functional integration (CFI), which in turn facilitates SINP; a firm’s new product introduction (NPI) strategy moderates customer orientation–CFI link.

This study empirically tests whether, why and when customer orientation may contribute to SINP. By suggesting the important role of customer orientation in improving SINP, the mediating effect of CFI and the moderating effect of NPI strategy, the current study should enrich the extant literature on customer orientation, CFI and NPI.

Faeyee Electronics was an electronics company that manufactured and sold smartphones including XS and XT types. The management of Faeyee wanted to pursue the maximum contribution margin as much as possible, especially since they were faced with limited resources. It was necessary to apply analytical tools and cost accounting concepts to study this case including cost-volume-profit analysis, learning curve analysis, regression analysis, definitions of competitive products, constrained non-linear optimization, and contribution margin.

The case uses business analytics tools and cost accounting concepts, including regression models and constrained optimization approaches, to study how to maximize business outcomes, such as contribution margin and profits when limited business resources are available. The company and individuals are disguised.

This case can be used in any junior-, senior-, masters- or MBA-level managerial accounting course. Students need to have at least one course of introduction to statistics or instructors review required statistics concepts or techniques before assigning this case. Students are exposed to the challenges of deriving learning curve models, using regression analysis to study collected data and allocating limited resources to maximize contribution margin.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between demographic diversity on boards and employer/employee relationship (EER) and to test the moderating effect of contextual factors such as a firm’s financial situation.

This paper analyzes data from over 1,000 publicly listed US firms and uses hierarchical regression.

Demographic diversity on boards of a given firm, such as ethnic diversity and gender diversity, should have positive effects on EER, which can be considered as an important dimension of overall human resource management performance in a given firm. Contextual factors such as a firm’s financial situation should moderate the relationship between demographic diversity on boards and the EER.

First, this research contributes to the current literature by showing that EER can be influenced by demographic diversity on boards, which further helps to highlight the beneficial effect of demographic diversity in top management team. Second, this study uncovers the moderating role of some contextual factors such as a firm’ financial situation. Third, this study also contributes to the corporate governance literature by studying the link between demographic diversity on boards and EER.

Based on a review of the Chinese ethic of bao (reciprocity), this paper aims to study the issue of reciprocity of trust at firm level by analyzing multiple-source data while controlling for the effects of several contextual variables.

The authors collected data from the supplier–buyer partnerships in China’s automotive industry. Hierarchical linear regression approach is adopted to test the hypotheses.

The data show that reciprocity of trust between parties involved has a significantly positive effect on the stability of the supplier–buyer partnership, and that this reciprocity also moderates the relationship between trust itself and stability. In addition, several contextual variables, i.e. the suppliers’ sensitiveness to their buyer’s need, personal contact of top managers, motivation to develop symbiotic partnership and firm location, can also have significant and positive effects on the stability of the supplier–buyer partnership.

This study presents empirical evidence on how the Chinese ethic of bao may influence the stability of the supplier–buyer partnerships, suggesting that examining this Chinese cultural element is a useful exercise. Related to this issue, the data show that the level of trust between the parties in business transactions differs, and that this difference influences the stability of the partnership. In addition, the study suggests that several other factors have significant and positive effects on the stability of the partnership. Interestingly, the data suggest that these effects are more likely to be observed when the reciprocity of trust or bao between the partners is taken into account. By demonstrating empirically the significant direct and moderating effect of bao or reciprocal trust, this study makes an important contribution to the literature on trust and the stability of the supplier–buyer partnership.

Green energy as a transportation supply trend is irreversible. In this paper, a highway energy supply system (HESS) evolution model is proposed to provide highway transportation vehicles and service facilities with a clean electricity supply and form a new model of a source-grid-load-storage-charge synergistic highway-PV-WT integrated system (HPWIS). This paper aims to improve the flexibility index of highways and increase CO₂ emission reduction of highways.

To maximize the integration potential, a new energy-generation, storage and information-integration station is established with a dynamic master–slave game model. The flexibility index is defined to evaluate the system ability to manage random fluctuations in power generation and load levels. Moreover, CO₂ emission reduction is also quantified. Finally, the Lianhuo Expressway is taken as an example to calculate emission reduction and flexibility.

The results show that through the application of the scheduling strategy to the HPWIS, the flexibility index of the Lianhuo Expressway increased by 29.17%, promoting a corresponding decrease in CO₂ emissions.

This paper proposed a new model to capture the evolution of the HESS, which provides highway transportation vehicles and service facilities with a clean electricity supply and achieves energy transfer aided by an energy storage system, thus forming a new model of a transportation energy system with source-grid-load-storage-charge synergy. An evaluation method is proposed to improve the air quality index through the coordination of new energy generation and environmental conditions, and dynamic configuration and dispatch are achieved with the master–slave game model.

This paper aims to explore the potential of ultrasonic additive manufacturing (UAM) to incorporate the direct printing of electrical materials and arrangements (conductors and insulators) at the interlaminar interface of parts during manufacture to allow the integration of functional and optimal electrical circuitries inside dense metallic objects without detrimental effect on the overall mechanical integrity. This holds promise to release transformative device functionality and applications of smart metallic devices and products.

To ensure the proper electrical insulation between the printed conductors and metal matrices, an insulation layer with sufficient thickness is required to accommodate the rough interlaminar surface which is inherent to the UAM process. This in turn increases the total thickness of printed circuitries and thereby adversely affects the integrity of the UAM part. A specific solution is proposed to optimise the rough interlaminar surface through deforming the UAM substrates via sonotrode rolling or UAM processing.

The surface roughness (Sa) could be reduced from 4.5 to 4.1 µm by sonotrode rolling and from 4.5 to 0.8 µm by ultrasonic deformation. Peel testing demonstrated that sonotrode-rolled substrates could maintain their mechanical strength, while the performance of UAM-deformed substrates degraded under same welding conditions ( approximately 12 per cent reduction compared with undeformed substrates). This was attributed to the work hardening of deformation process which was identified via dual-beam focussed ion beam–scanning electron microscope investigation.

The sonotrode rolling was identified as a viable methodology in allowing printed electrical circuitries in UAM. It enabled a decrease in the thickness of printed electrical circuitries by ca. 25 per cent.

The purpose of this paper was to synthesise a thermally expandable microsphere (TEMS) with fast thermal response property and small expansion temperature range, and investigate the factors affecting the expansion properties of the microspheres.

A new kind of TEMS with fast thermal response property was synthesised by suspension polymerisation method, using acrylonitrile, ethyl methacrylate and methacrylic acid as the main monomers; Mg(OH)₂ as the main dispersing agent; and isooctane or n-hexane or n-pentane as the blowing agent.

The TEMS possessed the best expansion capacity when encapsulated isooctane and n-hexane were about 18.5 Wt.%. The expansion process of the TEMS could be finished by raising the temperature to 18°C from the expansion onset, much less than the reported 30-50°C. The morphology of the TEMS turned from sphere to irregular concave shape following the content increase of the blowing agent.

A new kind of TEMS composed of acrylonitrile/ethyl methacrylate/methacrylic acid as the polymer shell was synthesised. These TEMS showed the fastest thermal response speed reported.

Since researchers have utilized text signals to develop a mass of within-document visualization analysis tools for reading aid in a long document, there is an increasing need to study the relationship between readers’ behavior of using text signals for navigation and their reading performance in the tools. The purpose of this paper is to combine the text signals using behavior and reading performance in two kinds of analysis tools to verify their relationship and discover whether there is any efficient reading strategy when using text signals to navigate a long document.

The methodology is a case study. The authors reviewed related literature first. After explaining the design ideas, interface and functions of THC-DAT and BOOKMARK, which are two reading tools utilizing two main kinds of text signals, one utilizing topics and the other utilizing headings for reading aid, a case study was presented to collect click data on the text signals of participants and their reading effectiveness (score) and efficiency (time).

The results confirm that the text signals using behavior for navigation has a significant impact on reading efficiency and no impact on reading effectiveness in both BOOKMARK and THC-DAT. The discrete degree of clicks behavior on text signals has an impact on reading efficiency. The using behavior of different types of text signals has different impacts on reading efficiency.

Using text signals for navigation time evenly can help improve reading efficiency. And a basic strategy suggested to readers is focusing on reducing their time to find answers when using text signals for navigation in a long document. As to utilizing the two different kinds of text signals, readers can have different strategies. Accordingly, personalized recommendation based on interval of adjacent clicks will help to improve computer-aided reading tools.

This paper combines the text signals using behavior for navigation and reading performance in two kinds of visual analysis tools, studied the relationship between them and discovers some efficient reading strategies when using text signals for navigation to read a long document.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the difference between experts and novices when reading with navigational table of contents (N-TOC). Experts refer to readers with high level of domain knowledge; novices refer to readers with low level of domain knowledge.

The authors performed a controlled experiment of three reading tasks (including fact finding task, partial understanding task, and full-text understanding task) on an N-TOC system for 35 post-graduates of Wuhan University who have rich experience in reading with N-TOC. Participants’ domain knowledge was measured by pre-experiment questionnaires; reading performance data including score, time, navigation use, and evaluation of N-TOC were collected.

The results showed that there was significant difference in neither navigation use nor participants’ evaluation, but domain experts performed significantly better in both score and time of all tasks than domain novices, which revealed an “illusion of control” phenomenon that rich experience in reading with N-TOC enabled domain novices to achieve the same performance as domain experts. In addition, this research found that N-TOC was not suitable for domain novices to solve full-text understanding task because of “cognitive overload” phenomenon.

This study makes a good contribution to the literature on the effect of domain knowledge on reading performance during N-TOC reading and how to provide better digital reading service in the field of library science and information science.