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A three-dimensional finite element (FE) model is developed to design a vibrating bimorph piezoelectric cantilever beam with lead zirconate titanate (PZT-5H) for energy harvesting. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A parametric study of electric power generated as a function of the dielectric constant, transverse piezoelectric strain constant, length and thickness of the piezoelectric material, is conducted for a time-harmonic surface pressure load. Transversely isotropic elastic and piezoelectric properties are assigned to the bimorph layers with brass chosen as the substrate material in the three-dimensional FE model. Using design of experiments, a study was conducted to determine the sensitivity of power with respect to the geometric and material variables.

The numerical analysis shows that a uniform decrease in thickness and length coverage of the piezoelectric layers results in a nonlinear reduction in power amplitude, which suggests optimal values. The piezoelectric strain coefficient, d31 and the thickness of PZT-5H, tp, are the most important design parameters to generate high electric energy for bimorph vibration harvesting device.

The work demonstrates that, through a sensitivity analysis, the electro-mechanical piezoelectric coupling coefficient (d31) and the thickness of the piezoelectric strips (tp) are the most important parameters which have a significant effect on power harvested.

Investigates the differences in protocols between arbitral tribunals and courts, with particular emphasis on US, Greek and English law. Gives examples of each country and its way of using the law in specific circumstances, and shows the variations therein. Sums up that arbitration is much the better way to gok as it avoids delays and expenses, plus the vexation/frustration of normal litigation. Concludes that the US and Greek constitutions and common law tradition in England appear to allow involved parties to choose their own judge, who can thus be an arbitrator. Discusses e‐commerce and speculates on this for the future.

Knight's Industrial Law Reports goes into a new style and format as Managerial Law This issue of KILR is restyled Managerial Law and it now appears on a continuous updating basis rather than as a monthly routine affair.

The sources of magnetic sensors errors are numerous, such as currents around, soft magnetic and hard magnetic materials and so on. The traditional methods mainly use explicit error models, and it is difficult to include all interference factors. This paper aims to present an implicit error model and studies its high-precision training method.

A multi-level extreme learning machine based on reverse tuning (MR-ELM) is presented to compensate for magnetic compass measurement errors by increasing the depth of the network. To ensure the real-time performance of the algorithm, the network structure is fixed to two ELM levels, and the maximum number of levels and neurons will not be continuously increased. The parameters of MR-ELM are further modified by reverse tuning to ensure network accuracy. Because the parameters of the network have been basically determined by least squares, the number of iterations is far less than that in the traditional BP neural network, and the real-time can still be guaranteed.

The results show that the training time of the MR-ELM is 19.65 s, which is about four times that of the fixed extreme learning algorithm, but training accuracy and generalization performance of the error model are better. The heading error is reduced from the pre-compensation ±2.5° to ±0.125°, and the root mean square error is 0.055°, which is about 0.46 times that of the fixed extreme learning algorithm.

MR-ELM is presented to compensate for magnetic compass measurement errors by increasing the depth of the network. In this case, the multi-level ELM network parameters are further modified by reverse tuning to ensure network accuracy. Because the parameters of the network have been basically determined by least squares, the number of iterations is far less than that in the traditional BP neural network, and the real-time training can still be guaranteed. The revised manuscript improved the ELM algorithm itself (referred to as MR-ELM) and bring new ideas to the peers in the magnetic compass error compensation field.

This paper aims at establishing a new stream of academic study for virtual brands. It explains the concepts of protobrands and reverse product placement and explores some of the managerial and academic implications.

Starting from the most recent definition of the brand construct, the paper establishes that the brand concept may now be detached from physical embodiment. The extension of application of the branding domain to the fictional and computer‐synthesized worlds is extensively illustrated by examples of virtual brands from books, films, video games and other multi‐user virtual environments.

Evidence suggests that purely potential brands (protobrands) initiated in the virtual world may possess strong consumer‐based brand equity. The study shows that the equity of the protobrands may be leveraged in‐world (and can acquire legal protection) or through reverse product placement and the launch of the physical embodiment of the protobrand in the physical world (the HyperReal brand).

This is an initial conceptual paper on virtual and HyperReal brands. This study, which has no antecedents, highlights the need for further empirical inquiry. The reverse product placement phenomenon may result in academics and practitioners to revise the traditional models of building brands.

The paper introduces and defines virtual brands, both fictional and computer‐synthesized, HyperReal brands and the reverse product placement phenomenon.

Recently, reverse logistics (RL) has become more prominent due to growing environmental concerns, social responsibility, competitive advantages and high efficiency by customers because of expansion of product selection and shorter product life cycle. However, effective implementation of RL results in some direct advantages, the most important of which is winning customer satisfaction that is vital to a firm's success. Therefore, paying attention to customer feedback in supply chain (SC) and logistics processes has recently increased, so manufacturers have decided to transform their RL into customer-centric RL. Hence, this paper aims to identify the features of a mobile phone which affect consumers’ purchasing behavior and to analyze the causality and prominence relations among them that can help decision-makers, policy planners and managers of organizations to develop a framework for customer-centric RL. These features are studied based on analysis of product review sites. This paper's special focus is on social media (SM) data (Twitter) in an attempt to help the decision-making process in RL through a big data analysis approach.

This paper deals with identifying mobile phone features that affect consumer's mobile phone purchasing decisions. Using the DEMATEL approach and using experts' insights, a cause and effect relationship diagram was generated through which the effect of features was analyzed.

Eighteen features were categorized in terms of cause and effect, and the interrelationships of features were also analyzed. The threshold value is calculated as 0.023, and the values lower than that were eliminated to obtain the digraph. F6 (camera), F13 (price) and F5 (chip) are the most prominent features based on their prominent score. It was also found that the F5 (chip) has the highest driving power (1.228) and acts as a causal feature to influence other features.

The focus of this article is on SM data (Twitter), so that experts can understand the interaction between mobile phone features that affect consumer's decision on mobile phone purchasing by using the results. This study investigates the degree of influence of features on each other and categorizes the features into cause and effect groups. This study is also intended to help organizational decision-makers move toward a reverse customer SC.

The purpose of this paper is to deal with material and technological aspects of SiC diodes assembly in ceramic packages. The usefulness of combinations of different materials and assembly techniques for the creation of inner connection system in the ceramic package, as well as the formation of outer connections able to work at temperatures up to 350°C, were evaluated.

The ceramic package consists of direct bonded copper (DBC) substrate with Cu pads electroplated by Ni or Ni/Au layers on which a SiC diode was assembled by sintering process using Ag microparticles. For the connections inside the ceramic package, the authors used Al/Ni and Au-Au material system based on aluminium or gold wire bonding. The authors sealed the ceramic package with glass encapsulation and achieved a full encapsulation. Outer connections were manufactured using Cu ribbon plated with Ag layer and sintered to DBC by Ag micro particle. The authors investigated the long-term stability of electrical parameters of SiC diodes assembled in ceramic package at temperature 350°C.

The authors have shown that Schottky and PiN SiC diodes assembled with different technologies and materials in ceramic package keep their I-V characteristics unchanged during ageing at 350°C for 400 h.

The SiC diodes assembled into ceramic package with Al/Ni or Au-Au inner electrical connection systems and outer connections system based on Ag microparticles sintering process of Cu/Ag ribbon to DBC substrate can work reliably in temperature range up to 350°C.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the effect of electric reverse stress currents on the performance of photovoltaic solar modules.

The effect of a reverse introduced current as a function of time is studied on the I‐V and C‐V characteristics and parameters which were extracted and analyzed using numerical analysis based on a reliable double exponential model.

The effect of an introduced reverse current for different periods simulated the effect of accumulated extreme reverse currents which may arise in solar cells and modules due to different reasons, causing dramatic changes in the shunt resistance as well as other characteristics, mainly when the time of the current application exceeded a certain limit.

The paper contributes to the research on the damaging effects of reverse currents on the normal operation of the solar cells and modules.

Contemporary literature reveals that, to date, the poultry livestock sector has not received sufficient research attention. This particular industry suffers from unstructured supply chain practices, lack of awareness of the implications of the sustainability concept and failure to recycle poultry wastes. The current research thus attempts to develop an integrated supply chain model in the context of poultry industry in Bangladesh. The study considers both sustainability and supply chain issues in order to incorporate them in the poultry supply chain. By placing the forward and reverse supply chains in a single framework, existing problems can be resolved to gain economic, social and environmental benefits, which will be more sustainable than the present practices.

The theoretical underpinning of this research is ‘sustainability’ and the ‘supply chain processes’ in order to examine possible improvements in the poultry production process along with waste management. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and ‘design science’ methods with the support of system dynamics (SD) and the case study methods. Initially, a mental model is developed followed by the causal loop diagram based on in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and observation techniques. The causal model helps to understand the linkages between the associated variables for each issue. Finally, the causal loop diagram is transformed into a stock and flow (quantitative) model, which is a prerequisite for SD-based simulation modelling. A decision support system (DSS) is then developed to analyse the complex decision-making process along the supply chains.

The findings reveal that integration of the supply chain can bring economic, social and environmental sustainability along with a structured production process. It is also observed that the poultry industry can apply the model outcomes in the real-life practices with minor adjustments. This present research has both theoretical and practical implications. The proposed model’s unique characteristics in mitigating the existing problems are supported by the sustainability and supply chain theories. As for practical implications, the poultry industry in Bangladesh can follow the proposed supply chain structure (as par the research model) and test various policies via simulation prior to its application. Positive outcomes of the simulation study may provide enough confidence to implement the desired changes within the industry and their supply chain networks.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect on time to complete a task depending on how a human operator interacts with a mobile‐robot. Interaction is investigated using two tele‐operated mobile‐robot systems, three different ways of interacting with robots and several different environments. The speed of a tele‐operator in completing progressively more complicated driving tasks is investigated also.

Tele‐operators are timed completing a series of tasks using a joystick to control a mobile‐robot. They either watch the robot while operating it, or sit at a computer and view scenes remotely on a screen. Cameras are either mounted on the robot, or so that they view both the environment and robot. Tele‐operators complete tests both with and without sensors. One robot system uses an umbilical cable and one uses a radio link.

In simple environments, a tele‐operator may perform better without a sensor system to assist them but in more complicated environments then a tele‐operator may perform better with a sensor system to assist. Tele‐operators may also tend to perform better with a radio link than with an umbilical connection. Tele‐operators sometimes perform better with a camera mounted on the robot compared with pre‐mounted cameras observing the environment (but that depends on tasks being performed).

Tele‐operated systems rely heavily on visual feedback and experienced operators. This paper investigates how to make tasks easier.

The paper suggests that the amount of sensor support should be varied depending on circumstances.

Results show that human tele‐operators perform better without the assistance of a sensor systems in simple environments.