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This purpose of this chapter is to explore the political significance of modern socially responsible investing, specifically the emergence of investor governance networks (IGNs) and the collective activism of investors.

The research for this analysis is based upon insights and methodologies from political science, specifically within international relations and the constructivist theoretical approach. Investor networks are explored as social phenomena, an expression of changing values, and the contested realm of contrasting norms within the financial sector.

The chapter shows that the development of investor networks have followed a three-stage historical progression of emergence, transformation, and expansion. The increasing collective action by investors manifest in the creation of IGNs reflects the political nature of socially responsible investment in a world where governments are reluctant to lead and act on issues of importance to all citizens, not just investors. As such, these networks are part of the emerging global public domain, a transnational arena of discourse, contestation, and action where investors play a crucial role in articulating what is acceptable behavior by corporations.

The research in this chapter explores a particular aspect of socially responsible investment – the mobilization of collective action by investors – as a political phenomena, not just as an economic one, that has evolved over time. Very little research into SRI has been done from a political science perspective, contextualizing the rise of such investment as the confluence of collective action by increasingly powerful political actors in society. As such, the chapter has value to both scholars and observers of SRI because it emphasizes that the mobilization of investor networks results from broader societal dynamics that should not be underestimated by financial specialists and citizens alike.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the characteristics of sound during gas tungsten argon welding (GTAW), which is very important to effectively monitor the welding quality in future by using the information extracted from sound.

The hardware used in the experiment is described. Then the paper researches the influence of welding techniques (gas flow, welding speed, welding current, and arc length) on arc sound and the distribution of the welding sound field. Finally, the relation between welding power and sound are studied based on Fourier transforms and recursive least square methods.

The sound pressure is affected greatly by gas flow, arc length, and current; welding sound source obeys the dipole model; the sound can be better predicted when the three orders derivative of the welding power are combined together.

This paper provides a new insight into welding sound resource model and a detailed analysis of the influence of the welding sound caused by welding techniques.

The purpose of this study is to simulate the climate change impacts on winter wheat production and evaluate the possibilities of using various varieties and shifting planting date as two climate change adaptation strategies in Kerman Province, Iran.

Two types of global circulation model and three scenarios for three periods were used. Daily climatic parameters were generated by LARS-WG (Long Ashton Research Station-Weather Generator). The CERES-wheat model was used to simulate future winter wheat growth, development and production.

The results showed that CO₂ had no effect on the phenology of winter wheat, and the negative impact of temperature on the grain yield was higher than the positive effect of CO₂ enrichment. The length of the reproductive growth period of the winter wheat was significantly shortened as affected by the negative impacts of rise in temperature. The simulated results indicated that the grain yield of common (medium maturing) variety of winter wheat will decline, ranging from −0.27 to −18.71 per cent according to future climate changes. Adaptation strategies showed that the early maturing variety had a higher and more stable grain yield under climate change conditions than medium and delayed maturing varieties. Earlier planting date (20 October) increased wheat grain yield under future climatic conditions than common (November 5) planting date. In reverse, later planting (November 20) would accelerate harmful effects of climate change on wheat grain yield.

The results highlighted the potential of early maturing variety and early planting date as the appropriate agronomical approaches for mitigating harmful impacts of climate change on winter wheat production in arid regions.

Safety is an important issue when manipulators operate in an environment where humans are present, such as the agriculture industry. An intrinsically safe mechanical system guarantees human safety when electronics or controls fail. However, industry also demands a certain operating velocity. A low inertia is the most important aspect to combine safety with a useful operating velocity, because this will limit the amount of kinetic or potential energy in the system and the required actuation forces. Low‐actuation forces limit the amount of static contact pressure between manipulator and human, a requirement for intrinsic safety. Low energy means that less contact force is required to put the manipulator to a stop in collision, an additional requirement. The goal of this paper is to find the maximum industrially applicable, manipulator mass for which intrinsic mechanical safety is guaranteed.

Observing existing and proposed manipulators in agriculture results in a required cycle time of 0.9 s, trajectory of 0.8 m and payload of 2 kg. Three important trade‐offs applying to the manipulator are identified. The first is between maximum velocity and acceleration, using cycle time and trajectory. The second is between maximum acceleration and mass, based on a measure for pain in contact pressure. The third is between maximum velocity and mass, using a collision model and the contact pressure during collision.

Combining all three trade‐offs results in an allowable arm effective inertia of 5.1 kg. Taking payload into account and converting to a realistic mass distribution results in a total mass of 9.3 kg. Compared to existing manipulators, both mass and payload are ambitious but realistic for the future development of an intrinsically safe manipulator.

Accuracy in positioning is not taken into account.

This paper combines safety criteria on maximum energy and maximum static pressure, while also taking industrial applicable operating velocity into account.

The purpose of this paper is to present a novel non-contact method of using head movement to control software without the need for wearable devices.

A webcam and software are used to track head position. When the head is moved through a virtual target, a keystroke is simulated. The system was assessed by participants with impaired mobility using Sensory Software’s Grid 2 software as a test platform.

The target user group could effectively use this system to interact with switchable software.

Physical head switches could be replaced with virtual devices, reducing fatigue and dissatisfaction.

Using a webcam to control software using head gestures where the participant does not have to wear any specialised technology or a marker. This system is shown to be of benefit to motor impaired participants for operating switchable software.

The purpose of this paper is to study the application of the planetary aerogravity‐assist (AGA) technique to the interplanetary transfer mission with low‐thrust engine, and the design and optimization approach of low‐thrust AGA trajectory.

In the research, the transfer trajectory with planetary AGA maneuver is analyzed first, the maximum atmospheric turn angle and the matching condition for AGA trajectory is derived out, which is the significant principle for AGA trajectory design and studies. Then, a design and optimization approach for interplanetary low‐thrust trajectory with AGA maneuver is developed. The complicated design problem is transformed into a parameter optimization problem with multiple nonlinear constraints by using calculus of variations and the matching condition associated with AGA trajectory. Furthermore, since the optimization problem is very sensitive to the launch date and AGA maneuver parameters, three ordinal sub‐problems are reformulated to reduce the sensitivity. Finally, a direct/indirect hybrid approach is utilized to solve these sub‐problems.

The planetary AGA maneuver is feasible and effective in decreasing the propellant consumption and flight time for interplanetary low‐thrust mission and provides better performance than pure planetary gravity assist. Moreover, the proposed approach is effective to design and optimize the low‐thrust transfer mission with AGA maneuver.

In further research, some simple preliminary design approaches for interplanetary low‐thrust trajectory with AGA maneuver are required to developed, which can provide a good initial conjecture for a hybrid optimization algorithm.

The paper provides the matching condition for interplanetary AGA transfer trajectory by analyzing some characteristics of planetary AGA maneuver, and presents an effective approach to design and optimize interplanetary low‐thrust AGA trajectory.

This paper reviews recent developments in marketing-related sustainable business practices (SBP) that macromarketing scholars have researched and debated for four decades. Such SBPs should be regarded as positive steps toward a future where business does more good than harm in society.

Using the approach of a literature review, this paper highlights the actions of entrepreneurs and firms to implement SBPs resulting from analysis of the interplay between markets, marketing and society. Such analysis is in the tradition of macromarketing scholarship.

The study identifies important developments about an important shift toward adopting SBPs among many firms, as well as among consumers − especially, in developed countries of the world.

The study suggests that taking a macromarketing view offers scholars a broad lens on current complex marketplace phenomena that will prove effective in better understanding sustainability issues.

The results of the study underline the value of macromarketing scholarship through the last four decades. By being daring enough to consider other stakeholders other than marketers and owners of firms, macromarketers have provided scholars a more holistic understanding of business’ role in society.

Today, enlightened practitioners who utilize knowledge from macromarketing scholarship can gain a competitive advantage as they navigate markets increasingly influenced by a wider set of stakeholders. Such influential stakeholders include partner firms, employees, society and local communities, NGOs, media, government, as well as the environment and future generations. Scholars can gain perspective on the phenomena they investigate with such a macromarketing lens.

The purpose of this paper is to design and test effective indoor navigation solutions for visually impaired people in situations where GPS, bluetooth or Wi-Fi signals are unavailable. The authors use the inertial measurement units (IMU), the compass and the barometer of a smart phone.

The authors have used commercial Android smart phones with IMU, compass and barometer to record a path and to give navigation instructions in an adapted way using a mobility-specific vocabulary. The method proposed is to save paths taking into account different indoor waypoints such as the stairs (change from one floor to another) and the change of direction of the trajectory of the path (e.g. one-fourth turn right or left), recording data from the IMU sensor’s, compass and barometer of the smart phone. Having this information and the characteristics of the each segment (distance, azimuth to the north and pressure) of the path, it is possible to provide functional navigation guidance to the visually impaired subject. Three different visually impaired people (one partially sighted and two fully blind) and three sighted people have tested the paths. The efficiency of the navigation is analyzed in terms of distance and time using the comparison between blind and sighted people.

The main finding is that it is possible to guide visually impaired people some hundreds of meters just using the sensors of a smart phone under certain conditions: the visually impaired person has to understand the guidance instructions and respect some strategies (e.g. not to walk diagonally across vast spaces). Additionally it is observed that the visually impaired participants walked distances, which are not much different to the optimal values. On the other hand; because of their hesitations using their white cane to find free paths, they take in some cases 50 percent more time to arrive (for a few minutes path, this time is not critical and even more efficient than looking for a guide). One thing to highlight is that even with this hesitation, the subjects arrived to the final destination.

This paper demonstrates how an IMU coupled to a compass and a barometer from a Smart Phone employing a spoken mobility language (e.g. next corridor to the left; at the end of the stairs turn right, turn left, etc.) can guide visually impaired people inside buildings.

This research project aims to investigate how country contexts pressure firms for greater reporting activity and to explore the impact of these pressures on disclosure quality.

A theoretical lens is used to based on the three pillars of institutions: regulative, normative, and cultural in order to assess qualitatively how strong each pillar is reflected in creating a context with regard to disclosure, and then to compare two disclosure ratings' reports – that of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and that of CERES – to provide a quantitative comparison of disclosure quality.

Expecting that countries with higher regulative pressures, such as France, will lead to a “minimum‐requirement” type of disclosure, while countries with more liberal markets, such as the USA, will present higher quality disclosure, counter‐theoretical evidence was found in the results, indicating that French firms exhibit higher quality disclosure than US firms on average.

The findings, although derived from a small sample limited to the banking sector, point to the possibility that higher reporting quality is more closely linked to normative and cultural pressures, and that these pressures appear to be more important in stronger regulatory contexts.

The results inform the public policy literature, seeking to explore the effectiveness of self‐regulation in face of increasing mandatory requirements. The paper also contributes to the disclosure literature, by establishing a relationship between disclosure quality and institutional context, and to the institutional theory literature by inscribing the study within the nascent stream of empirical papers in search of a methodology to compare institutional contexts across countries and their impact on firms' reporting activities.

This paper aims at advancing a pragmatist perspective on entrepreneurial opportunities as an alternative to the traditional and predominant constructivist and objectivist perspectives. To this end, this paper advances a pragmatist definition of an opportunity and draws from empirical evidence to propose a pragmatist model of opportunity conception and exploitation.

A review of the entrepreneurial opportunity and pragmatism literatures yields a definition of an opportunity as a dynamic and unfolding experience which an entrepreneur conceives as a general market need to exploit it for financial or social gain. Drawing from this definition, and with the aim of developing a pragmatist model of an opportunity, a case study approach is applied to three radically innovative services conceived and developed by three high-performance computing (HPC) centers.

In each of the three cases, an entrepreneurial HPC center conceived a new, general market need (opportunity) and then acted to exploit it. Through its action, the HPC center learned something that enabled it to address barriers, develop an improvement or otherwise reconceive the opportunity. In turn, the HPC center learned more about and advanced the opportunity, and then acted again. After launching a new service based on the opportunity, the opportunity continued to evolve in response to the HPC center’s efforts and to market forces.

The pragmatist perspective and model of an opportunity can serve as a foundation for future pragmatist research into entrepreneurship and innovation. To this end, future studies could extend the model by examining in greater detail the acting-learning-reconceiving cycle, by exploring how an opportunity evolves and is reconceived after market launch and/or by investigating opportunity conception and exploitation within other types of markets.

From a pragmatist perspective, an opportunity is not some discrete object to be discovered. It is emergent and dynamic, and to the extent that it is “created”, it is never complete or finalized. It is experienced by the entrepreneur, and it continues to evolve, even after it has been launched as a new good or service.

The paper proposes novel value by advancing a pragmatist perspective on entrepreneurial opportunities. Such a perspective is an alternative to the constructivist and objectivist perspectives that have framed research into opportunities. The paper also proposes novel value by drawing from case study findings to propose a pragmatist model of opportunity conception and exploitation.