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Examining research topics in a specific area such as accounting is important to both novice and veteran researchers. The present study aims to identify the research topics in the area of accounting and to investigate the research trends by finding hot and cold topics from all those identified ones in the field.

A new dependency-based method focusing on noun phrases, which efficiently extracts research topics from a large set of library data, was proposed. An AR(1) autoregressive model was used to identify topics that have received significantly more or less attention from the researchers. The data used in the study included a total of 4,182 abstracts published in six leading (or premier) accounting journals from 2000 to May 2019.

The study identified 48 important research topics across the examined period as well as eight hot topics and one cold topic from the 48 topics.

The research topics identified based on the dependency-based method are similar to those found with the technique of latent Dirichlet allocation latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modelling. In addition, the method seems highly efficient, and the results are easier to interpret. Last, the research topics and trends found in the study provide reference to the researchers in the area of accounting.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the development process of the fire whirl in the fixed-frame facility and focus on the impacts of the fire whirl’s vortex core on the formation and flame structure of the fire whirl.

The complex turbulent reacting flame surface is captured by the large eddy simulation turbulence closure coupled with two sub-grid scale (SGS) kinetic schemes (i.e. the chemistry equilibrium and steady diffusion flamelet). Numerical predictions are validated thoroughly against the measurements by Lei et al. (2015) with excellent agreements. A double maximum tangential velocity refinement approach is proposed to quantify the vortex cores’ instantaneous location and region, addressing the missing definition in other studies.

The numerical results show that the transition process of the fire whirl is dominated by the vortex core movement, which is related to the centripetal force. The unsteadiness of the fully developed fire whirl was found depending on the instantaneous fluctuation of heat release rate. The steady diffusion flamelet scheme is essential to capture the instantaneous fluctuation. Furthermore, the axial velocity inside the vortex core is the key to determining the state of fire whirl.

Due to intensive interactions between buoyant fires and ambient rotating flow, the on-set and formation of fire whirl still remain largely elusive. This paper focused on the transition process of fire whirl between different development stages. This paper provides insights into the transition process from the inclined flame to the fire whirls based on the centripetal force.

This paper presented and compared two SGS kinetic schemes to resolve the fire whirl development process and the unsteadiness of its vortical structures. The modelling framework addresses the shortcoming of previous numerical studies where RANS turbulence closure and simplified combustion kinetics was adopted. Numerical results also revealed the fire whirl transition process and its relationship to centripetal force.

This study aims to evaluate the characteristics of climate change in Yunnan minority areas and identify an effective path to promote sustainable livelihoods based on climate change.

Taking Yunnan Province as an example, based on the expansion of the traditional sustainable livelihood framework, the authors constructed a system dynamics (SD) model of sustainable livelihood from the six subsystems of natural, physical, financial, social, human and cultural and tested the accuracy and effectiveness of the model with data from Cangyuan County. By adjusting these parameters, five development paths are designed to simulate the future situation of the livelihood system and determine the optimal path.

Climate change has exacerbated the vulnerability of people’s livelihoods. In future, each of the five development paths will be advantageous for promoting sustainable livelihoods. However, compared with Path I (maintaining the status quo), Path III (path of giving priority to culture) and Path IV (path of giving priority to economic development) have more obvious advantages. Path II (path of giving priority to people’s lives) gradually increases the development rate by promoting people’s endogenous motivation, and Path V (path of coordinated development) is better than the other paths because of its more balanced consideration.

The analytical framework of sustainable livelihoods based on the characteristics of minority areas is broadened. By constructing a SD model of the livelihood system, the limitations of traditional static analysis have been overcome and a development path for promoting sustainable livelihoods through simulation is proposed. This study offers a theoretical framework and reference method for livelihood research against the backdrop of climate change and a decision-making basis for enhancing climate adaptability and realizing sustainable livelihoods.

Product presentation plays a critical role in influencing consumers’ purchasing decisions in online shopping. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of text-image information on online product presentation pages on sales. This study also specifically explores the moderating role of celebrity endorsements in the relationship between text-image presentation information and sales.

This study is based on regression analysis using data sets from the largest online book retailer in China, Dangdang.com.

The results of this study show that there is an inverse U-shaped relationship between word count and book sales. Conversely, image quantity has a positive linear effect on book sales. Furthermore, celebrity endorsements moderate the relationship between word count and sales in two distinct ways. First, the positive effect of increasing word count from low to medium is enlarged by increasing the number of celebrity endorsers. Second, the turning point of the inverse-U relationship between word count and sales rank moves to the right as the number of endorsers increases.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to examine the effects of text-image quantity on sales across the full continuum. This study adds understanding on how information load might have distinct consequences on the processing performance of text and images. Furthermore, this study investigates how sales are impacted by the quantity of celebrity endorsers in relation to textual and pictorial information in online shopping contexts, extending our knowledge of the effectiveness of celebrity endorsements.

This paper aims to develop a robotic mirror therapy system for lower limb rehabilitation, which is applicable for different patients with individual movement disability levels.

This paper puts forward a novel system that includes a four-degree-of-freedom sitting/lying lower limb rehabilitation robot and a wireless motion data acquisition system based on mirror therapy principle. The magnetorheological (MR) actuators are designed and manufactured, whose characteristics are detected theoretically and experimentally. The passive training control strategy is proposed, and the trajectory tracking experiments verify its feasibility. Also, the active training controller that is adapt to the human motor ability is designed and evaluated by the comparison experiments.

The MR actuators produce continuously variable and compliant torque for robotic joints by adjusting excitation current. The reference limb joint position data collected by the wireless motion data acquisition system can be used as the motion trajectory of the robot to drive the affected limb. The passive training strategy based on proportional-integral control proves to have great trajectory tracking performance through experiments. In the active training mode, by comparing the real-time parameters adjustment in two phases, it is certified that the proposed fuzzy-based regulated impedance controller can adjust assistance torque according to the motor ability of the affected limb.

The system developed in this paper fulfills the needs of robot-assisted mirror therapy for hemiplegic patients.

The purpose of this paper is to study the tribological properties of (C₉H₈N)₄(H₂O)₄[Zr₈P₁₂O₄₀(OH)₈F₈] (designated as ZrPOF-Q1) used as an additive in lithium grease.

The tribological properties of ZrPOF-Q1 as an additive in the lithium grease were evaluated with a four-ball tester. To understand the lubrication mechanism, post-test characterization of the contact tracks was performed via three-dimensional (3D) optical profiler, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS).

The results reveal that ZrPOF-Q1 exhibits good performance in anti-wear, friction-reducing and load-carrying capacity. The action mechanism is estimated through analysis of the worn surface with SEM, EDS and 3D. The results indicate that ZrPOF-Q1 can adhere on the substrate, protecting the rubbed surfaces from a direct contact, even under high load for a long-time test. ZrPOF-Q1 can adhere on the substrate, protecting the rubbed surfaces from a direct contact, even under high load for a long-time test.

This work illustrates that ZrPOF-Q1 as an additive can improve lubricating performance. These tribological properties make ZrPOF-Q1 a promising candidate for lubricant additive.

The purpose of this paper is to build cyber-physical-psychological ternary fusion crowd intelligence network and realize comprehensive, real, correct and synchronous projection in cyber–physical–psychological ternary fusion system. Since the network of crowd intelligence is the future interconnected network system that takes on the features of large scale, openness and self-organization. The Digital-selfs in the network of crowd intelligence interact and cooperate with each other to finish transactions and achieve co-evolution eventually.

To realize comprehensive, real, correct and synchronous projection between cyber–physical–psychological ternary fusion system, the authors propose the rules and methods of projection from real world to the CrowdIntell Network. They build the mental model of the Digital-self including structure model and behavior model in four aspects: identity, provision, demand and connection, thus forming a theoretical mental model framework of Digital-self.

The mental model is excepted to lay a foundation for the theory of modeling and simulation in the research of crowd science and engineering.

This paper is the first one to propose the mental model framework and projection rules and methods of Digital-selfs in network of crowd intelligence, which lays a solid foundation for the theory of modeling, simulation, intelligent transactions, evolution and stability of CrowdIntell Network system, thus promoting the development of crowd science and engineering.

Allocation of complex crowdsourcing tasks, which typically include heterogeneous attributes such as value, difficulty, skill required, effort required and deadline, is still a challenging open problem. In recent years, agent-based crowdsourcing approaches focusing on recommendations or incentives have emerged to dynamically match workers with diverse characteristics to tasks to achieve high collective productivity. However, existing approaches are mostly designed based on expert knowledge grounded in well-established theoretical frameworks. They often fail to leverage on user-generated data to capture the complex interaction of crowdsourcing participants’ behaviours. This paper aims to address this challenge.

The paper proposes a policy network plus reputation network (PNRN) approach which combines supervised learning and reinforcement learning to imitate human task allocation strategies which beat artificial intelligence strategies in this large-scale empirical study. The proposed approach incorporates a policy network for the selection of task allocation strategies and a reputation network for calculating the trends of worker reputation fluctuations. Then, by iteratively applying the policy network and reputation network, a multi-round allocation strategy is proposed.

PNRN has been trained and evaluated using a large-scale real human task allocation strategy data set derived from the Agile Manager game with close to 500,000 decision records from 1,144 players in over 9,000 game sessions. Extensive experiments demonstrate the validity and efficiency of computational complex crowdsourcing task allocation strategy learned from human participants.

The paper can give a better task allocation strategy in the crowdsourcing systems.

Science of the Crowd is a new paradigm. The research on the relationship between provision and requirement arising from the behavior of the crowd under the interconnected environment is a promising topic. This paper aims at studying a new type of interconnected architecture.

This study is a pioneer work on the establishment of a new type of interconnected architecture – rim chain. The rim chain aims at supporting prompt matching between provision and requirements.

The analytical results suggest that requirements can be fulfilled in accordance with six degrees of separation. In other words, the matching between the requirements and provision takes place with six hops in the rim chain framework.

Knowledge graph is used to implement the rim chain.

This paper proposes an intact framework for building life cycle energy estimation (LCEE), which includes three major energy sources: embodied, operational and mobile.

A systematic review is conducted to summarize the selected 109 studies published during 2012–2021 related to quantifying building energy consumption and its major estimation methodologies, tools and key influence parameters of three energy sources.

Results show that the method limitations and the variety of potential parameters lead to significant energy estimation errors. An in-depth qualitative discussion is conducted to identify research knowledge gaps and future directions.

With societies and economies developing rapidly across the world, a large amount of energy is consumed at an alarming rate. Unfortunately, its huge environmental impacts have forced many countries to take energy issues as urgent social problems to be solved. Even though the construction industry, as the one of most important carbon contributors, has been constantly and academically active, researchers still have not arrived at a clear consensus for system boundaries of life cycle energy. Besides, there is a significant difference between the actual and estimated values in countless current and advanced energy estimation approaches in the literature.