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The purpose of this paper is to study the relationships among the presence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) committee, politicians on CSR committee and CSR disclosure in 10-Ks using data from S&P 500 firms during 2005–2013.

The authors manually check the information of CSR committees as well as committees with CSR/sustainability functions from proxy statements (DEF 14a). CSR disclosure from 10-Ks is obtained by using a Python library named Beautiful Soup 4 to clean the rough data from the raw format files from EDGAR.

The authors find that superior sustainability governance is associated with more voluntary CSR disclosure in their 10-K reports. More importantly, they find that CSR committee members with working experiences as politicians play an important role to improve CSR disclosure. In the robustness tests, they find that CSR committee and the politicians on CSR committee are also associated with high KLD CSR score ratings.

The finding in our paper that politicians on CSR committee can enhance CSR efforts may provide practical implications to some companies. Companies may consider inviting people who have political connections and experience to serve on CSR committees.

The authors find the presence of politicians on CSR committee is associated with CSR disclosure and CSR performance. That's new to the CSR governance literature and makes contributions to CSR disclosures and CSR committee expertise and skills.

Using unique trade credit insurance data from China, we examine whether trade insurance claims are associated with audit efforts and audit quality.

The paper is based on a sample of Chinese firms to study insurance claims of trade credit insurance that affects abnormal audit fees.

In this study, we find that firms with high insurance claims pay higher abnormal audit fees. Further, our findings indicate that firms with high insurance claims have a short audit report lag and tend to select local audit firms.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the association between trade credit insurance claims and audit efforts. In addition, we contribute to the literature on the agency cost of abnormal audit fees.

The study aims to understand the role of accountant in corporate social responsibility (CSR) practice.

In this study, the authors examine whether and how chief financial officer (CFO) accounting expertise and previous work experience influence voluntary CSR disclosure, using textual analysis and natural language processing (NLP) techniques. The authors find that firms' CFOs with accounting expertise disclose more CSR issues in their 10-K reports. Overall, this study provides evidence of the impact of CFOs' professional and personal attributes on voluntary CSR disclosure in corporate annual reports. This study has important implications to investors and policy makers in the context of CSR disclosure regulations in annual reports.

Overall, this study provides evidence of the impact of CFOs' professional and personal attributes on voluntary CSR disclosure in corporate annual reports. This study has important implications to practitioners and policy makers in the context of CSR disclosure regulations in annual reports.

There is an inherent limitation of textual analysis as the tool tries to read key words from the text.

This finding is useful for policy maker and investors as CSR is known to have impact on the share price.

This paper is the first attempt to find out accountants' role in CSR activities, which has not been examined in the prior literature.

To improve the efficiency of end-of-life product’s disassembly process, this paper aims to propose a disassembly sequence planning (DSP) method to reduce additional efforts of removing parts when considering the changes of disassembly directions and tools.

The methodology has three parts. First, a disassembly hybrid graph model (DHGM) was adopted to represent disassembly operations and their precedence relations. After representing the problem as DHGM, a new integer programming model was suggested for the objective of minimizing the total disassembly time. The objective takes into account several criteria such as disassembly tools change and the change of disassembly directions. Finally, a novel hybrid approach with a chaotic mapping-based hybrid algorithm of artificial fish swarm algorithm (AFSA) and genetic algorithm (GA) was developed to find an optimal or near-optimal disassembly sequence.

Numerical experiment with case study on end-of-life product disassembly planning has been carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the designed criteria and the results exhibited that the developed algorithm performs better than other relevant algorithms.

More complex case studies for DSP problems will be introduced. The performance of the CAAFG algorithm can be enhanced by improving the design of AFSA and GA by combining them with other search techniques.

DSP of an internal gear hydraulic pump is analyzed to investigate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method.

This paper proposes a novel CAAFG algorithm for solving DSP problems. The implemented tool generates a feasible optimal solution and the considered criteria can help the planer obtain satisfactory results.

The authors study whether CEO beauty influences management guidance.

The authors calculate an attractiveness score based on facial symmetry and perform regression analyses to examine the relation between CEO beauty and management guidance.

The authors find that attractive CEOs are more likely to issue voluntary management earnings guidance. After controlling for this appearance-based self-selection, the authors document that management forecasts provided by attractive CEOs are more optimistic yet less precise. Consistent with this result, the authors find that analysts' consensus forecast error following management forecasts made by attractive CEOs is larger than such error following management forecasts made by unattractive CEOs. The authors further find that the perceived credibility of management forecasts by attractive CEOs is not different from that by unattractive CEOs.

These findings suggest that attractive CEOs are more active but less skillful in issuing management forecasts. This adds to the emerging accounting literature on the relation between facial appearance and information delivery.

Most solder paste printers are configured to periodically clean the stencil to maintain printing quality. However, a periodical cleaning control may result in excessive cleaning operations. The purpose of this paper is to develop a control method to schedule stencil cleaning operations appropriately.

A hybrid failure rate model of the stencil printing process with age reduction factor and failure rate increase factor is presented. A stencil cleaning policy based on system reliability is introduced. An optimization model used to derive the optimal stencil cleaning schedule is provided.

An aperiodic stencil cleaning control with good adaptability is achieved. A comparative analysis indicates that aperiodic control has better printing system reliability than traditional periodical control under the same cleaning resource consumption.

Periodical cleaning control commonly used in industrial printing process often results in excessive cleaning operations. By incorporating the printing system reliability, this paper develops an aperiodic stencil cleaning control method based on hybrid failure rate model of the stencil printing process. It helps to reduce unnecessary cleaning operations while keeping printing quality stable.

Stencil cleaning is an important operation in solder paste printing process. Frequent cleaning may interrupt printing process and increase idle time, as well as loss for performing cleaning. This paper aims to propose a method to optimize the stencil cleaning time and reduce unnecessary cleaning operations and losses.

This paper uses a discrete-time, discrete-state homogeneous Markov chain to model the stencil printing performance degradation process, and the quality loss during the stencil printing process is estimated based on this degradation model. A stencil cleaning decision model based on renewal reward theorem is established, and the optimal cleaning time is obtained through a balance between quality loss and the loss on idle time.

A stencil cleaning decision model for solder paste printing is established, and numerical simulation results show that there exists an optimal stencil cleaning time which minimizes the long-term loss.

Stencil cleaning control is very important for solder paste printing. However, there are very few studies focusing on stencil cleaning control. This research contributes to developing a model to optimize the stencil cleaning time in solder paste printing process.

The uncertainty of the interval variable is represented by interval factor, and the interval variable is described as its mean value multiplied by its interval factor. Based on interval arithmetic rules, an analytical method of interval finite element for uncertain structures but not probabilistic structure or fuzzy structure is presented by combining the interval analysis with finite element method. The static analysis of truss with interval parameters under interval load is studied and the expressions of structural interval displacement response and stress response are deduced. The influences of uncertainty of one of structural parameters or load on the displacement and stress of the structure are examined through examples and some significant conclusions are obtained.

Continua and discontinua coexist in natural rock materials. This paper aims to present an improved approach for addressing the mechanical response of rock masses based on the combined finite-discrete element method (FDEM) proposed by Munjiza.

Several algorithms have been programmed in the new approach. The algorithms include (1) a simpler and more efficient algorithm to calculate the contact force; (2) An algorithm for tangential contact force closer to the actual physical process; (3) a plastic yielding criterion (e.g. Mohr-Coulomb) to modify the elastic stress for fitting the mechanical behavior of elastoplastic materials; and (4) a complete code for the mechanical calculation to be implemented in Matrix Laboratory (MATLAB).

Three case studies, including two standard laboratory experiments (uniaxial compression and Brazilian split test) and one engineering-scale anti-dip slop model, are presented to illustrate the feasibility of the Y-Mat code and its ability to deal with multi-scale rock mechanics problems. The results, including the progressive failure process, failure mode and trajectory of each case, are acceptable compared to other corresponding studies. It is shown that, the code is capable of modeling geotechnical and geological engineering problems.

This article gives an improved FDEM-based numerical calculation code. And, feasibility of the code is verified through three cases. It can effectively solve the geotechnical and geological engineering problems.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a grey clustering evaluation model based on center-point triangular whitenization weight function to evaluate the situation of urban low-carbon transport development (LTD). The study results intend to provide some theoretical basis and tool support for transport management departments and related researchers who are engaged in low-carbon transport (LT).

The study uses analytical hierarchy process based on expert investigations to determine the weight of each criteria, classifies the grey clusters based on center-point triangular whitenization weight function, calculates the membership of each development criteria and ranks the development level of all dimensions.

The research results of case city show that low-carbon technology is in “poor” level, transport facility is in “superior” level, low-carbon policy and environmental coordination is in “intermediate” level, transport management is in “good” level and the overall LTD level is in “intermediate” level.

Reducing the carbon emissions of urban transport and achieving LT is the key to promote urban sustainable development, the scientific judgment of transport development situation is the premise of promoting LTD. Therefore, based on the practices of LT in China, the study systematically clarifies LTD from five dimensions of reflecting LTD.

From the perspective of sustainable development, the evaluation index system of LTD is built with five dimensions consisting of low-carbon technology, low-carbon policy, transport facility, transport management and environmental coordination. Then assess the LTD by using the grey clustering evaluation model based on center-point triangular whitenization weight. This paper presents a new research idea for LTD evaluation.