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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.

Drawing on conservation of resources theory, this study aims to examine the relationship between temporal leadership (TL) and employees’ thriving at work (TW) by focusing on the positive mediating role of perception of work-goal progress (PWP), the negative mediating roles of job-based psychological ownership (JPO) and the moderating role of synchrony preference (SP).

We employed a dedicated data collection platform called Credamo for two waves of online questionnaires in China between March 2022 and April 2022. A total of 326 questionnaires were collected and analyzed to test the hypotheses.

(1) TL directly and positively affects TW. (2) TL indirectly and positively affects TW via PWP. (3) TL indirectly and negatively affects TW via JPO. (4) SP positively moderates the positive mediating effect of PWP on the relationship between TL and TW. (5) SP negatively moderates the negative mediating effect of JPO on the relationship between TL and TW.

Supervisors in organizations ought to discreetly practice TL and try to maximize the positive role of PWP and minimize the negative role of JPO.

The findings simultaneously discuss the effects of TL on TW from dark and bright perspectives. The influence of interaction between contextual and individual features on TW is also specified.

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 evaluate the cogging torque in a surface-mounted permanent magnet (SPM) machine with both uniformly and non-uniformly segmented stator cores and to find out the optimal solution of stator core segmenting.

The cogging torque with segmented stators is synthesized from a single slot model, and analytical prediction is given to analyze the cogging torque with both uniformly and non-uniformly segmented stators. Finite element method (FEM) is used to figure out the electromagnetic field and validate the analytical prediction. Moreover, models with various shapes and positions of connecting tongues between the stator core segments are explored to achieve the optimal design.

The cogging torque is found to be greatly related to the number of segments and the electrical angle between adjacent additional air gaps caused by the tolerance of stator segments. Different shapes of the connecting tongues are tested and proved to be of great importance to the flux density, both radial and tangential, and therefore affect the cogging torque. Finally, position of the connecting tongues is perceived to have little influence on the performance of machine.

By utilizing analytical prediction and FEM calculation, the optimal solution is discussed to minimize the cogging torque in the SPM machine from the perspective of the stator core segmentation.

This paper establishes formula of cogging torque with segmented stators and predicts the variation of cogging torque with analytical method. Besides, different combinations of segments are compared and measures to reduce the cogging torque produced by the segmentation are proposed.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel strategy of optimal parameters configuration and placement for sensitive equipment.

In this study, clamped thin plate is considered as the foundation form, and a novel composite system is proposed based on the two-stage isolation system. By means of the theory of mechanical four-pole connection, the displacement amplitude transmissibility from the thin plate to precision equipment is derived. For the purpose of performing optimal design of the composite system, a novel multi-objective idea is presented. Multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) algorithm is adopted as an optimization technique, which can achieve a global optimal solution (gbest), and selecting the desired solution from an equivalent Pareto set can be avoided. Maximum and variance of the four transmitted peak displacements are considered as the fitness functions simultaneously; the purpose is aimed at reducing the amplitude of the multi-peak isolation system, meanwhile pursuing a uniform vibration as far as possible. The optimization is mainly organized as a combination of parameter configuration and placement design, and the traversal search of discrete plate is performed in each iteration for the purpose of achieving the global optimum.

An important transmissibility based on the mechanical four-pole connection is derived, and a composite vibration isolation system is proposed, and a novel optimization problem is also defined here. This study reports a novel optimization strategy combined with artificial intelligence for parameters and placement design of precision equipment, which can promote the traditional view of two-stage vibration isolation.

Two-stage vibration isolation systems are widely applied to the vibration attenuation of precision equipment, but in these traditional designs, vibration participation of foundation is often ignored. In this paper, participation of foundation of equipment is considered, and a coherent new strategy for equipment isolation and foundation vibration is presented. This study shows a new vision of interdisciplinary including civil engineering, mechanical dynamics and computational science.

The purpose of this paper is to aggregate different preference information in group decision‐making process such as interval preference order, interval utility value, interval number reciprocal comparison matrix, and interval number complementary comparison matrix.

First, the consistency definitions of four kinds of uncertain preference information are defined. Then, the upper‐ and low errors are introduced to solve the inconsistent decision‐making case. Following that, the weight model for each uncertain preference is proposed, respectively.

The aggregation approach based on minimal group deviation errors is suggested in order to obtain the utmost consistent opinion. In addition, the consistency judgment level and consistency extent are defined owing to the aggregation result.

The calculation scale is large, if many decision makers will attend group decision‐making process.

A very useful approach for aggregation of the different preference in group decision‐making case.

Because of differences in knowledge structure, judgment level, and individual preference, decision makers express their judgment preferences via differently structured decision‐making processes. Owing to the complexity and uncertainty of decision‐making problems and the fuzziness of human thought, it is unrealistic to depict complex problems in the certain preference style. For decision‐making preference structures, group decision‐making aggregation approaches include the aggregation on the same kind of preference structure and the different kinds of preference structures. The study on the aggregation of the same kind of preference structure has received a deal of attention, but study into the aggregation of the different kinds of uncertainty preference structures is still a new field.

The purpose of this paper is to research attribute reduction and decision making by gray dual‐information, taking into account the attribute reduction of attribute decision unknown for the interval gray numbers.

The authors obtain the attribute weights considering the consistency of experts’ judgment matrixes and the decision matrixes with gray information. They propose some experts’ attribute reduction ideas based on interval gray numbers of rough set. With the help of experts’ decision information, they consider attribute uncertainty ratio and attribute value ratio to reduce attribute. Finally, a numerical example shows its feasibility.

Some experts’ attribute reduction ideas are proposed based on interval gray numbers of rough set. With the help of experts’ decision information, attribute uncertainty ratio and attribute value ratio to reduce attribute can be considered.

Attribute reduction is keeping classified information systems under the same conditions and deleting redundant and irrelevant or unimportant attributes in order to solve the problem of decision making. This paper considers the attribute reduction based on gray dual‐information.

The rapid advances in the technologies of mobile computing and wireless communications have facilitated the use of applications and services on handheld devices. Sharing of living experience (SOLE) is one such service, through which users can share their experience of daily activities such as shopping, entertainment, and traveling. This paper seeks to study SOLE in more detail.

The paper presents an application framework for a context‐aware SOLE which considers location, preferences, and other useful information for a seamless user experience. SOLE leverages on the service‐oriented middleware, Coalition. Entities of interest are represented as services registered with Coalition, which are organized using location information. This facilitates location‐based selection of entities for associating or retrieving experiences. In addition, Coalition incorporates the contexts of users in the discovery and delivery of experience information. Besides, to cater for resource constraints of mobile devices, the concept of “proxy” is introduced.

A detailed study of SOLE, namely, its design as well as its interaction with the middleware, information providers and information consumers, is provided. As a proof of concept, a prototype of SOLE for mobile phone users is also provided. The experiments show the ease of using SOLE and its acceptable performance in practice.

SOLE is generic and scalable, by not assuming a specific application scenario; flexible, by allowing the user to choose where to store the experience data and to specify his audience; and context‐aware by considering the contexts of the user such as location and preferences in the experience sharing process.

The application of massive open online courses (MOOCs) helps integrate sustainable development goals (SDGs) into architectural curricula. The essence of MOOC development is building an education platform that promotes the sharing and continuing of global education resources.

This study establishes a four-dimensional evaluation model based on the four characteristics of MOOCs. The quadrilateral area evaluation method is used to create an evaluation radar chart to comprehensively evaluate satisfaction and demand in the traditional teaching model of architectural technology. This study discusses whether the curriculum is suitable for the development of MOOCs and how to optimize the sustainable pedagogical mode according to its characteristics to meet future teaching needs and realize the sustainable development of education.

Satisfaction evaluation found that current education is not open enough from the students' perspective; therefore, MOOCs enhance students' participation and significantly reduce future learning costs. Through demand evaluation, it was found that both teachers and students believed that the lack of direct and effective communication between them and the difficulty in ensuring the learning effect were problems that must be addressed in MOOCs.

This study focused on the sustainability of MOOCs in curriculum development. It emphasizes the combination of MOOCs' teaching modes and the course itself and provides specific guidance and suggestions for improving the course. It uses an evaluation method for objective analysis and visualization.

The facility in an emergency system could be immobilized because of the huge destructive power of an irregular emergency and the uncertainty of the time, place and scale of occurrence. So facility failure scenarios must be considered at the time of location. The purpose of this paper is to establish a location model based on the worst facility failure, the objective of which is to minimize the cost and cover the demand maximally. It is demonstrated that location choice, considering facility failure, has significant meaning when considering economic benefit and covering the demand.

A bi‐level programming model which studies the facility location is established by using the methods of scenario analysis and robust optimization. It is compared with a classic location model, without considering facility failure, from the points of view of economic benefit and maximal covering demand.

Compared to the classic location model, without considering facility failure, it is demonstrated that the location model which considers facility failure can save more costs from the economic benefit point of view and, from the maximal covering of the demand point of view, has a higher covering ratio. So facility failure scenario should be considered in the location of an emergency facility.

The paper studies facility location based on the worst scenario, from the two aspects of economic benefits and maximal covering demand.