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Multilevel inverters play a major role in the development of high-power industrial applications. In traditional low-level inverters (e.g. 2-level), the switching frequency is restricted and the harmonic spectrum of the system is hard to meet power requirements. Similarly, high-level inverters consist of a large number of switches, complex modulation techniques and complex hardware architecture, which results in high power loss and a significant amount of harmonic distortion. Furthermore, it is a must to ensure that every switch experiences the same stress of voltage and current. The purpose of this paper is to present an inverter topology with lower conduction and switching losses via reduced number of switches and equal voltage source-sharing technique.

Herein, the authors present a cascaded multilevel inverter having less power switches, a simple modulation technique and an equal voltage source-sharing phenomenon implementation.

The modulation technique becomes more complex when equal voltage source-sharing is to be implemented. In this study, a novel topology for the multilevel inverter with fewer switches, novel modulation technique, equal voltage source-sharing and Inductor-Capacitor-Inductor filter implementation is demonstrated to the reduce harmonic spectrum and power losses of the proposed system.

The nine-level inverter design is validated using software simulations and hardware prototype testing; the power losses of the proposed inverter design are elaborated and compared with the traditional approach.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the corporate sustainability culture of contracting firms, particularly in the Midwest. Many of the local firms operate nationally. The local corporate culture influences their regional offices. Other than convenience, the firms are selected from Midwest since their headquarters are situated in Midwest region and comprises of more number of employees than their other regional offices. This helped the research to approach more contractors for better survey and interview responses. The paper documents the study on existing management and construction practices these contractors adopt on sustainability and examines how their sustainability efforts influence the firms’ performances.

This research utilized surveys and interviews as the primary means of data collection. The data were collected from survey and interviews with selected companies operating in the Midwest region of the USA. One of the companies also operates offices across the country. Data from the interviews and surveys were analyzed using statistical analysis system software application. χ² analysis, particularly the frequency procedures using the Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel (CMH) method was the primary analysis method used to study the relationships between different factors. The CMH method compares the association between and within two groups and permits adjustments of the control variables.

The findings of this paper include the results from various Midwest commercial building contractors. The results on different aspects of sustainable practices and their success rates among the contractors are determined and discussed, and future scope of improvements are mentioned at the conclusion of this paper.

In summary, sustainable business practices are beneficial to society and favorable for the construction business. Embracing sustainable business practices has a positive impact on firm strategic performance for commercial building contractors through employee satisfaction, project opportunities, and market advantage. Sustainable business practices extend into the lives of individuals involved which exceedingly impacts society. The construction industry has advanced sustainability efforts, but there is a long way to go on the journey to being better stewards of the environment and resources.

A rival theory became apparent during the investigation that a new building consolidating all local company employees could have an impact on firm strategic performance. Third, this paper is confounded by a great recession that made project opportunities and revenue considerations analysis problematic. Some information regarding these aspects were helpful; however, expanding this paper during a more stable and typical economic period could provide additional insight.

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between environmental factors and building energy consumption of three Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified buildings at the Arizona State University, by establishing the relationships of the outside atmospheric temperature and the energy consumed in the building using real-time data generated from different sources.

K-means clustering analysis is used to calibrate and eliminate unwanted influences or factors from a set of building consumption real-time data. For further statistical analysis, the chi-square is used to verify if the results are ample to prove the findings.

Few studies have addressed building energy consumption real-time data versus LEED Energy and Atmosphere (EA) credits with the data mining technique (k-means clustering) on most of building performance analyses. This study highlighted that the calibrating energy data are a better approach to analyze energy use in buildings and that there is a relationship between LEED credits’ (EA) Optimize Energy Performance scores and building energy efficiency. However, the energy consumption data alone do not yield useful results to establish the cause and effect relationships.

Although there are several previous research studies regarding LEED building energy performance, this research study focused on the LEED building energy performance versus LEED EA credits versus environmental factors using real-time building energy data and various statistical methods (e.g. K-means clustering and chi-square). The findings provide researchers, engineers and architects with valuable references for building energy analysis methods and supplements in LEED standards.

This chapter investigates diverse policy experiences of smart village strategy in Korea. The Korean approach has been highly influenced by the European Union (EU) experience emphasizing the importance of a bottom-up territorial development. The Korean government acknowledges agriculture is not the only driver of rural jobs and wealth creation. Rather it understands that diversified non-farm activities in rural areas are essential to revitalize the rural economy. The major policies relevant to the development of rural smart village are first, establishing regional innovation system fitted for depressed regions, second, inducing agriculture to become value-added industries, third, diversifying rural economic activities and integrating industrial support, fourth, improving the welfare of rural residents by improving settlement conditions, and finally, encouraging rural–urban interaction. Since the campaign of smart rural village as a rural development strategy is closely related with the discussion of rural tourism in Korea, this study investigates past and recent streams of rural tourism strategies pursued by the central government in Korea. Along with introducing the historical development strategy in Korea, this study presents the current and possible future characteristics of rural development strategies in Korea. This study investigates the perceived role of tourism as well as recent streams of rural development policies such as 6th industrialization and smart farming in the rural development strategies. Presenting success and failure stories, this study also considers why development of rural tourism has been slow in rural areas in Korea, reviewing restraints, reservations, and problems identified during the last few decades in Korea.

We investigate the dynamics of competitive repositioning of firms in the deregulated U.S. airline industry (1979–1995) in terms of a firm's target market, strategic posture, and resource endowment relative to other firms in the industry. We suggest that, despite strong inertia in competitive positions, the direction of repositioning responds to external and internal alignment considerations. For external alignment, we examined how firms changed their competitive positioning to mimic the positions of similar, successful firms, and to differentiate themselves when experiencing intense rivalry. For internal alignment, we examined how firms changed their position in each dimension to align with the other dimensions of positioning. This internal alignment led to convergent positioning moves for firms with similar resource endowments and strategic postures, and divergent moves for firms with similar target markets and strategic postures. The evidence suggests that repositioning moves in terms of target markets and resource endowments are more sensitive to external and internal alignment considerations, but that changes in strategic posture are subject to very high inertia and do not appear to respond well to alignment considerations.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a spatial six‐link RRCCRR (where R denotes a revolute joint, and C denotes a cylindric joint) mechanism to be used as the mechanism body of a biped robot with three translations (3T) manipulation ability.

This biped RRCCRR mechanism can reach any position on the ground by a crawling mode or alternatively, a somersaulting mode. After the robot reaches a designated position, it can work in manipulation mode. Mobility, walking mode, kinematic and stability analyses are performed, respectively.

Based on this biped RRCCRR mechanism, a biped 3T lifter which can be used in industry is designed and analyzed. Finally, the proposed concept is verified by experiments on a prototype.

The work presented in this paper is one of new explorations to apply traditional spatial linkage mechanisms to the field of biped robots, and is also a new attempt to use the biped robot, that is generally used in the field of bionic robots, as a mobile manipulator robot platform in industry.

In the spring of 1995, the Electronics Bureau of Shanghai [Shanghai Dianziju] changed its name to “Shanghai Electronics State-Owned Asset Management Company” [Shanghai dianzi guoyou zichan jingying gongsi]. As one official in the former Bureau explained, it had changed its name and its function: It was no longer set up to “govern” or “manage” [guan] Shanghai's electronics sector; instead it was now an asset management company whose function was to manage the assets of the firms that it owned.¹ At the time, the transformation seemed purely cosmetic. Calling itself an asset management company instead of a government bureau was one thing, but actually acting like an asset management company was quite another. Would firms under this former Bureau be any more productive as a result of the change? Would the work-life experiences of the people actually working in these firms change at all as a result?