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This chapter draws on a study on Adivasi identities in a context of protracted violence and conflict in India. The chapter examines the ethical issues that emerged during the research with young people, through a critical exploration of researcher positionality and power. The chapter is informed by a naturalistic inquiry into community interactions and youth voice in an area of civil unrest in India, and specifically, with young people from the historically marginalised Adivasi community. I reflect on my theoretical transition to poststructuralism in the doing of this research, enriched by postcolonial and feminist perspectives, which emphasises the centrality of context and the inextricability of the researcher from the researched. By critically reflecting on my power and positionality as an adult researcher, I question how the particular context of the young participants, my presence and participation within it produced particular responses, understandings and identities of young people. These understandings are entangled with ethical challenges in relation to the navigation of the research context, gendering and hierarchisation within local community relations. In encountering these complexities, my ethical positioning raises questions about ‘representation’ in the capturing of youth voices in the Indian context. The chapter suggests an articulation and linking of the ethical tensions to a substantiation of the theoretical and methodological framings of research, informed through the research context and the researcher’s positionality.

This chapter examines the case of threshold concepts, as an example of a theory being developed and applied within higher education research. It traces the origins and meaning of the term, reviews its application by higher education researchers and discusses the issues it raises and the critiques it has attracted. This case is of particular interest, as the idea of threshold concepts is little more than a decade old, yet in that time it has attracted considerable attention.

Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.

There is extensive literature on the effect of military expenditure on economic growth. However, there is also a wide gap in the literature on the relationship between productivity and innovation, which is considered the driving force of economic growth and military expenditures. To this end, this study examines the effect of military expenditures on economic growth, innovation and labor productivity for the period 1995–2019 in most militarized countries.

The tests used in the study's empirical analysis are techniques that take into account cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity. The stationarity of the variables was tested with the Pesaran’s (2007) unit root test. Then, empirical findings were revealed based on the analysis through Westerlund’s (2008) cointegration test and Emirmahmutoglu and Kose’s (2011) panel causality test.

According to the empirical results, there is a long-run relationship, in other words, a cointegration between military expenditures and productivity, innovation and economic growth. Additionally, there are causality relationships between military expenditures and productivity, innovation and economic growth.

These results support the arguments of military Keynesianism and the Benoit hypothesis.

Despite the widespread theoretical debate, no empirical study tests the effect of military expenditure on productivity and innovation to the author's best knowledge. Hence, this study aims to fill this gap in the literature. Moreover, the fact that the econometric method used is based on second generation tests and the timeliness of the period range makes the study's findings more significant.

This article addresses the health problems of Puerto Rico by looking at them from the perspective of food and agriculture, underlining that there is a substantial policy divide between agricultural policy and health. This reframing insists that we attend to the relationships between agriculture and food policy in order to offer new ways to think about the prevalence of so-called “lifestyle diseases” in Puerto Rico.

This study draws on a forensic research strategy that follows the framing of food and agriculture policies through a three-step diagnosis process using a mixed method approach. This three-dimensional analysis focuses on (1) history, (2) statistics, and (3) policies and legislations.

The disconnection between health and agriculture policies materializes (1) throughout 19-20^th century agricultural developments, (2) across the current agriculture organization, and, (3) through legislations and policies. A dominant understanding of agriculture as a predominantly economic and trade-driven sector fuels this policy divide.

This article calls for a new policy imagination that will allow for a re-conceptualization of agriculture policies as health policies. In order to bring forward this policy imagination, this article suggests returning to ideas that precede the production and articulation of the policy divide through a re-appropriation of Latin American indigenous knowledge and ideas. As such, the Andean concept of Buen Vivir represents a particularly promising path explored in this article.

Unika is a prototype robot — the product of work by Unimation in the US and Kawasaki in Japan — which by means of vision can detect the deviation between a taught standard path and the actual welding seam. The robot system can then correct the path taken by the welding gun manipulator.

The Corporation of the City of London are about to appoint a Public Analyst, and by advertisement have invited applications for the post. It is obviously desirable that the person appointed to this office should not only possess the usual professional qualifications, but that he should be a scientific man of high standing and of good repute, whose name would afford a guarantee of thoroughness and reliability in regard to the work entrusted to him, and whose opinion would carry weight and command respect. Far from being of a nature to attract a man of this stamp, the terms and conditions attaching to the office as set forth in the advertisement above referred to are such that no self‐respecting member of the analytical profession, and most certainly no leading member of it, could possibly accept them. It is simply pitiable that the Corporation of the City of London should offer terms, and make conditions in connection with them, which no scientific analyst could agree to without disgracing himself and degrading his profession. The offer of such terms, in fact, amounts to a gross insult to the whole body of members of that profession, and is excusable only—if excusable at all—on the score of utter ignorance as to the character of the work required to be done, and as to the nature of the qualifications and attainments of the scientific experts who are called upon to do it. In the analytical profession, as in every other profession, there are men who, under the pressure of necessity, are compelled to accept almost any remuneration that they can get, and several of these poorer, and therefore weaker, brethren will, of course, become candidates for the City appointment.

Adaptive bump inlet can adaptively change the shape of inlet bump surface according to the flight speed of aircraft, ensuring that the inlet has good inlet-engine match performance in a wide speed range. This paper aims to use a composite flexible skin reinforced by shape memory alloy (SMA) fiber as the deformable structure at bump surface to realize the adjustable bump surface of adaptive bump inlet.

According to the deformation and load-bearing requirements of adaptive bump, SMA is applied to the design of adaptive bump inlet due to its characteristic of super-elasticity. A kind of SMA fiber is studied. A composite flexible skin reinforced by SMA is proposed, and its mechanical properties are analyzed. On this basis, an adaptive bump inlet is designed in which the composite flexible skin reinforced by SMA is used as bump surface, and the shape of the bump surface is adjusted by way of pressuring. The design scheme and specific parameters of the adaptive bump are given.

An adaptive bump surface that meets the design requirements of the inlet is designed, which can effectively adjust the inlet throat area with a throat area change rate of 20%.

An adaptive bump inlet with composite flexible skin as a deformable structure at bump surface is designed, and SMA is applied as the reinforcing fiber.