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Drawing on the social presence theory, this study aims to explore how supplier–customer social media interactions influence supplier observers’ trust in the customers and what mechanisms contribute to variation in trust experience.

A total of 36 semi-structured interviews were conducted with Chinese suppliers using WeChat for business-to-business interactions. Data were analyzed in three steps: open coding, axial coding and selective coding.

Findings reveal that varied trust is based not only on the categories of social presence of interaction – whether social presence is embedded in informative interactions – but also on the perceived selectivity in social presence. Observer suppliers who experience selectivity during social and affective interactions create a perception of hidden information and an unhealthy relationship atmosphere, and report a sense of emotional vulnerability, thus eroding cognitive and affective trust.

The findings contribute new understandings to social presence theory by exploring the social presence of interactions in a supplier–supplier–customer triad and offer valuable insights into business-to-business social media literature by adopting a suppliers’ viewpoint to unpack the mechanisms of how social presence of interaction positively and negatively influences suppliers’ trust and behavioral responses.

The purpose of this study is to design a spherical sensor which can detect the surge from various directions to lay the foundation of the research of surge.

This paper designed a spherical sensor to detect the impact force generated by the surge. To realize the depth and stability control of the shallow underwater vehicles, it is necessary to do research and analysis on the surge in shallow waters. The spherical sensor with novel structure was skillfully composed of 24 cantilever beam pressure-type strain sensors. It is powerful to detect the surge from various directions simultaneously.

It is proved that the spherical sensor can accurately collect the surge data from multiple directions through experiments, which laid the foundation of the anti-surge study.

Surge is not a new topic. But there is no effective tool to detect surge. The research of this paper is an attempt to provide an available tool to analyze surge. The research limitation is that the pool where the spherical sensor is installed is a little small. In the future, a bigger pool can be used.

A deep and comprehensive analysis of surge can be conducted according to the surge data detected by the spherical sensor to achieve the essential features of surge. This lays the foundation for the accurate control of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), especially fixed depth and stability control.

As the control accuracy of AUVs increases, the AUVs can perform much more difficult tasks such as port monitoring, underwater salvaging, underwater pipeline maintenance and so on. These can be applied in commercial applications or in the national defense of many countries.

A novel spherical sensor using 24 cantilever beam pressure-type strain sensors to detect the surge was designed. The spherical sensor was installed in the physical surge simulator to collect surge data and conduct an analysis of the collected data.

Managing attractiveness is a constant challenge to mobilize relationship-specific investments, especially in a business environment increasingly enhanced by social media (SM) activities. There is limited knowledge on how SM activities contribute to supplier attractiveness, so decisions about strategizing with SM and consequent resource allocations become highly uncertain. The purpose of this paper is to examine how suppliers’ SM activities influence supplier attractiveness.

Altogether, 57 senior managers were interviewed: 32 semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with senior managers in strategic decision-making roles regarding SM on the supplier side, along with 20 senior managers responsible for purchasing or looking after supplier development; one-to-one interviews were complemented by a focus group with 5 senior managers on the buyer side.

The study reveals an inverse U-shaped relationship between the intensity of the supplier’s SM activity and its attractiveness and offers a set of propositions about the influence of SM on supplier attractiveness, with special regard to the perceived risks of increased transparency and becoming “too social” on SM.

The study highlights SM management results for supplier attractiveness and their impact areas on business growth and supply chain development.

This paper provides in-depth insights into the role of SM in managing supplier attractiveness. Various effects of SM activities are identified that aim to contribute to the body of literature on supplier attractiveness as well as SM management in buyer–supplier relationships.

Despite the growing research into luxury symbolism and its influence on consumer behavior, few studies have investigated the underlying psychological processes that occur in different cultural contexts. This study investigates the relationships among luxury symbolism, psychological underpinnings of self-congruity, self-affirmation and customer loyalty, especially regarding how these relationships differ between consumers in China and those in the US.

Sample data were collected through surveys administered to 653 participants (327 in China and 326 in the US). A multi-group structural equation model was adopted to examine the conceptual model and proposed hypotheses.

The results show that luxury symbolism positively influences self-consistency, social consistency, social approval and self-esteem, and subsequently impacts self-affirmation and customer loyalty. However, for US consumers, self-esteem and social approval have significantly negative impacts on self-affirmation, while for Chinese consumers, social approval has no significant impact on self-affirmation. The authors also find that interdependent self-construal positively moderates the relationship between luxury symbolism, and social approval and social consistency. Independent self-construal positively moderates the relationship between luxury symbolism and self-consistency, and negatively influences the relationship between luxury symbolism and self-esteem.

Based on the theory of self-congruity and self-affirmation, this study fills a literature gap by revealing the psychological underpinnings regarding luxury symbolism and customer loyalty. It extends extant studies in luxury consumption by introducing self-construal (independent self vs interdependent self) as an important cultural moderator in luxury symbolism. This paper provides insights for luxury practitioners to create efficient marketing strategies by satisfying consumers' psychological needs in different cultures.

In this paper, the standard Peridynamic Timoshenko beam model accounting for the shear deformation is chosen to describe the thick beam kinematics. Unfortunately, when applied to very thin beam structures, the standard Peridynamics (PD) encounters the shear locking phenomenon, leading to incorrect solutions.

PD differs from classical continuum mechanics and other nonlocal theories that do not involve spatial derivatives of the displacement field. PD is based on the integral equation instead of differential equations to handle discontinuities and other singularities.

The shear locking can be successfully alleviated using the developed selective integration method. In particular, this technique has been implemented in the standard PD, which allows an accurate result for a wide range of slenderness from very thin to thick (10 < L/t < 10³) structures. It can also accelerate the computational time for particular dynamic problems using fewer neighboring integration particles. Several numerical examples are solved to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for modeling beam structures.

The paper highlights the severe shear locking phenomenon in the Peridynamic Timoshenko beam available in the literature, especially for very thin structures. A new alternative for the alleviation of shear locking in the Peridynamic Timoshenko beam, using selective integration. Hence the developed Peridynamic Timoshenko beam model is effective for thin and thick structures. A new peridynamic formulation for the low-velocity impact beam models is presented and validated.

1. The paper highlights the severe shear locking phenomenon in the Peridynamic Timoshenko beam proposed in the literature, especially for very thin structures.

2. The developed Peridynamic Timoshenko beam model based on selective integration is effective for thin and thick structures.

3. A new peridynamic formulation for the low-velocity impact beam models is presented and validated.

The paper highlights the severe shear locking phenomenon in the Peridynamic Timoshenko beam proposed in the literature, especially for very thin structures.

The developed Peridynamic Timoshenko beam model based on selective integration is effective for thin and thick structures.

A new peridynamic formulation for the low-velocity impact beam models is presented and validated.

Autonomous obstacle avoidance is important in unmanned surface vehicle (USV) navigation. Although the result of obstacle detection is often inaccurate because of the inherent errors of LIDAR, conventional methods typically emphasize on a single obstacle-avoidance algorithm and neglect the limitation of sensors and safety in a local region. Conventional methods also fail in seamlessly integrating local and global obstacle avoidance algorithms. This paper aims to present a cooperative manoeuvring approach including both local and global obstacle avoidance.

The global algorithm used in our USV is the Artificial Potential Field-Ant Colony Optimization (APF-ACO) obstacle-avoidance algorithm, which plans a relative optimal path on the specified electronic map before the cruise of USV. The local algorithm is a multi-layer obstacle-avoidance framework based on a single LIDAR to present an efficient solution to USV path planning in the case of sensor errors and collision risks. When obstacles are within a layer, the USV uses a corresponding obstacle-avoidance algorithm. Then the USV moves towards the global direction according to fuzzy rules in the fuzzy layer.

The presented method offers a solution for obstacle avoidance in a complex environment. The USV follows the global trajectory planed by the APF-ACO algorithm. While, the USV can bypass current obstacle in the local region based on the multi-layer method effectively. This fact was validated by simulations and field trials.

The method presented in this paper takes advantage of algorithm integration that remedies errors of obstacle detection. Simulation and experiments were also conducted for performance evaluation.

This paper aims to improve the adaptability and control performance of the controller, a proposed seeker optimization algorithm (SOA) is introduced to optimize the controller parameters of a robot manipulator.

In this paper, a traditional proportional integral derivative (PID) controller and a fuzzy logic controller are integrated to form a fuzzy PID (FPID) controller. The SOA, as a novel algorithm, is used for optimizing the controller parameters offline. There is a performance comparison in terms of FPID optimization about the SOA, the genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO) and ant colony optimization (ACO). The DC motor model and the experimental platform are used to test the performance of the optimized controller.

Compared with GA, PSO and ACO, this novel optimization algorithm can enhance the control accuracy of the system. The optimized parameters ensure a system with faster response speed and better robustness.

A simplified FPID controller structure is constructed and a novel SOA method for FPID controller is presented. In this paper, the SOA is applied on the controller of 5-DOF manipulator, and the validation of controllers is tested by experiments.

The design and performance of X-band high power 3-bit phase shifter which has been fabricated in 0.25µm GaN HEMT technology are presented.

Each bit of this phase shifter design is based on high-pass/low-pass topology.

For all eight states, the insertion loss is 12.5 ± 2.5 dB from 8-10 GHz and the input return loss is better than 9 dB over 8-10 GHz. The 3-bit phase shifter achieves a RMS phase error of 1o at 8.5 GHz and a RMS amplitude error less than 1.1dB. The measured continuous wave power data demonstrates typical input RF power handing capability of 32 dBm at 8 GHz.

This is to the authors’ knowledge the first published results of 3-bit AlGaN/GaN phase shifter.

This case is mainly about the development journey of Tujia, a unicorn in China's accommodations-sharing sector, as well as the development status of the sector. On December 1, 2011, Tujia.com—China's first medium- and high-end vacation apartment booking platform—was formally launched, and it announced the first round of capital injection in less than half a year after its launch. It completed D and D+ round of financing on August 3, 2015, securing $300 million with an estimated value exceeding $1 billion. The completion of this financing round meant that Tujia formally entered the $1 billion club composed of “unicorn” Internet companies. In June 2016, it announced the strategic M&A of Mayi; in October 2016, it announced its strategic agreement with Ctrip.com and Qunar.com for the M&A of their apartment and homestay businesses. The completion of these transactions manifested the matrix with the four major platforms Tujia, Mayi, Ctrip, and Qunar. Since then, Tujia has become the absolute pacesetter in China's online accommodations-sharing sector.

The purpose of this paper was to solve the shortage of carrying energy in probing robot and make full use of wind resources in the Antarctic expedition by designing a four-wheel land-yacht. Land-yacht is a new kind of mobile robot powered by the wind using a sail. The mathematical model and trajectory of the land-yacht are presented in this paper.

The mechanism analysis method and experimental modeling method are used to establish a dual-input and dual-output mathematical model for the motion of land-yacht. First, the land-yacht’s model structure is obtained by using mechanism analysis. Then, the models of steering gear, servomotors and force of wing sail are analyzed and validated. Finally, the motion of land-yacht is simulated according to the mathematical model.

The mathematical model is used to analyze linear motion and steering motion. Compared with the simulation results and the actual experimental tests, the feasibility and reliability of the proposed land-yacht modeling are verified. It can travel according to the given signal.

This land-yacht can be used in the Antarctic, outer planet or for harsh environment exploration.

A land-yacht is designed, and the contribution of this research is the development of a mathematical model for land-yacht robot. It provides a theoretical basis for analysis of the land-yacht’s motion.