Search results

The purpose of this study is to propose an integrated model based on expectation–confirmation model (ECM), flow theory and human–organization–technology fit framework to examine whether human, organizational and technology factors as antecedents to medical professionals' beliefs can affect their continuance intention of the cloud-based e-learning system.

Sample data for this study were collected from medical professionals at five hospitals in Taiwan. A total of 500 questionnaires were distributed, and 368 (73.6%) useable questionnaires were analyzed using structural equation modeling in this study.

Synthetically speaking, human, organizational and technology factors, as antecedents to medical professionals' continuance intention of the cloud-based e-learning system have been examined, and the results strongly support the research model with all hypothesized links being significant.

Particularly, it is worth mentioning that the application of capturing both ECM and flow theory for completely explaining three types of factors (i.e. human, organizational and technology factors) as external variables to medical professionals' cloud-based e-learning continuance intention is well documented, that is, information systems (IS) and nonIS determinants are simultaneously evaluated, and extrinsic and intrinsic motivators are both taken into consideration in this study's theoretical development of medical professionals' cloud-based e-learning continuance intention to acquire a more comprehensive and robust analysis.

The minimum wage has been regarded as an important element of public policy for reducing poverty and inequality. Increasing the minimum wage is supposed to raise earnings for millions of low-wage workers and therefore lower earnings inequality. However, there is no consensus in the existing literature from industrialized countries regarding whether increasing the minimum wage has helped lower earnings inequality. China has recently exhibited rapid economic growth and widening earnings inequality. Since China promulgated new minimum wage regulations in 2004, the magnitude and frequency of changes in the minimum wage have been substantial, both over time and across jurisdictions. The growing importance of research on the relationship between the minimum wage and earnings inequality and its controversial nature have sparked heated debate in China, highlighting the importance of rigorous research to inform evidence-based policy making. We investigate the contribution of the minimum wage to the well-documented rise in earnings inequality in China from 2004 to 2009 by using city-level minimum wage panel data and a representative Chinese household survey, and we find that increasing the minimum wage reduces inequality – by decreasing the earnings gap between the median and the bottom decile – over the analysis period.

In this study, superhydrophobic fabric is prepared with a wet-chemical coating technique that uses a coating solution synthesized by the co-hydrolysis and co-condensation of tetraethyl orthosilicate and fluoroalkyl silane (tridecafluorooctyl triethoxysilane) under an alkaline condition. The treated fabric shows stable superhydrophobicity with a water contact angle as high as 171°, and a sliding angle as low as 2°. The coated fabric has higher repellency to saline water, and its repellency increases with increases in the salt content in the solution. The contact angle is reduced with increases in liquid temperature. When the water temperature is 90°C, the contact angle on the superhydrophobic fabric is 153°. The superhydrophobic treatment slightly reduces the air permeability, but increases the water vapor permeability of the fabric. The treatment considerably increases the liquid breakthrough pressure, but has little effect on fabric pore size and thermal conductivity. The air gap membrane distillation process is used to evaluate the desalination performance of the superhydrophobic fabric. When the feed and the condenser are kept at 90°C and 20°C, respectively, the membrane distillation (MD) system with the superhydrophobic fabric yields a permeate flux of water up to 13.8 kg m^-2 hour^-1, which is slightly higher than that with the use of polymer and inorganic MD membranes reported. Superhydrophobic fabrics may thus be considered as effective MD membranes for water desalination applications.

The shipper selects a suitable shipping route and plans for a voyage in order to import and export cargo on the basis of published sailing schedules. The reliability of the sailing schedule will influence the shipper’s logistics expense, which means that the logistics costs will depend on the reliability of schedules published by container shipping companies. Therefore, it is important to consider factors which can cause delays would for container ships sailing on sea routes. The reliability of published sailing schedules can be affected by a number of different factors. This study adopts the multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) method to estimate the importance of the delaying factors in a sailing schedule. In addition, the consistent fuzzy preference relations (CFPR) method is applied to identify the subjective importance (weights) of the delaying factors. The entropy weight method combined with the actual performance of the container shipping company are both used when estimating the objective importance (weights) of the delaying factors. According to the analysis results, the criteria can be divided into four quadrants with different management implications, which indicate that instructions for chase strategy, sailing schedule control, fleet allocation, transship operation arrangement and planning for ports in routes are often ignored by container shipping companies. Container shipping companies should consider adjusting their operational strategies, which would greatly improve their operational performance.

The purpose of this paper is to simulate flow inside differentially heated rotating cavity using two different formulations; one using Navier‐Stokes (NS) equations derived in non‐inertial (rotating) frame of reference and the other using NS equations in inertial frame of reference. Then to compare the results obtained from these formulations to find their merits and demerits.

The NS equations for both non‐inertial and inertial formulations are written in artificial compressibility form before discretizing them by a high resolution finite volume method. The dual time steeping approach of Jameson is used for time accuracy in both the formulations. Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) approach is used for taking care of moving boundary problem arising in the inertial formulation. A newly developed HLLC‐AC Riemann solver for discretizing convective fluxes and central differencing for discretizing viscous fluxes are used in the finite volume approach. Results for both the formulations are first validated with test cases reported in literature. Then the results of the two formulations are compared among themselves.

Results of the non‐inertial formulation obtained by the proposed method are found to match well with those reported in literature. The results of both the formulations match well for low rotational speeds of the cavity. The discrepancies between the results of the two formulations progressively increase with the increase in rotational speed. Implicit treatment of the source term is found to reduce the discrepancies.

The present approach is useful for accurate prediction of flow feature and heat transfer characteristic in case of applications such as manufacturing of single wafer crystal for semiconductor and in numerous metallurgical processes.

The ALE formulation is used for the first time to simulate a differentially heated rotating cavity problem. The attempt to compare non‐inertial and inertial formulations is also reported for the first time. Implicit treatment of the source term leading to change in solution accuracy is one of the important findings of the present investigation.

In literature, previous studies have focused on analyzing rienforced concrete (RC) columns with idealized end conditions when subjected to fire. In nature, full fixity or free rotation at column ends is not attained. Such ends may be considered partially restrained in rotation. This paper aims to shed a new light on the effect of different degrees of rotational restraint on the lateral deformation behavior of slender heated RC columns subjected to non-linear strain distributions produced by a time-dependent temperature history.

To find the strain distribution on the cross section, an iterative technique is adopted using Newton–Raphson method. By introducing a reliable calculation procedure, the lateral deformational behavior is expressed using numerical and searching techniques. A methodology is presented to calculate the effective length factor for RC columns at elevated temperature.

The results of the proposed model showed good agreement with available experimental test results. It was also found that the variation of rotational end restraint level has a considerable effect on the lateral deformation behavior of heated slender RC columns. In addition, the effectiveness and the validity of an analytical model should be verified by simultaneously validating the axial and lateral deformations. Moreover, the effective length factor for heated column is higher than that for the corresponding column at ambient temperature.

This paper shows the impact of different boundary conditions on the behavior of heated slender RC columns. It suggests powerful techniques to determine the lateral deflection and the effective length factor at high temperatures.

This papers aims to provide a fixed cutter axis control (F-CAC) industrial robot (IR) milling for NURBS surfaces with large fluctuation, which can avoid over-cut and interference during IR milling in contrast to variable cutter axis control (V-CAC) IR milling.

After the design of a target surface, the IR reciprocating milling trajectory can be obtained using NURBS mapping projection method. A set of interpolation points of the reciprocating trajectory can be calculated using the equi-chord interpolation method. Combining with F-CAC method and curvature estimation, the IR reciprocating trajectory of the tool center point (TCP) without over-cut can be obtained. The programs corresponding to posture control using F-CAC can be generated by IR kinematics.

In contrast to the V-CAC milling method, the F-CAC method can machine successfully the NURBS surfaces with large fluctuation. The simulation and machining proves that F-CAC is feasible and effective to machine NURBS surface with large fluctuation without over-cut phenomenon. The F-CAC has wide application in carving and woodworking industry at present.

The F-CAC method is very practical and effective for IR milling of complex NURBS surfaces with large fluctuation without over-cut and interference phenomenon.

This paper investigates, theoretically and empirically, differences between blacks and whites in the United States concerning the intergenerational transmission of occupational skills and the effects on sons’ earnings. The father–son skill correlation is measured by the correlation coefficient (or cosine of the angle) between the father’s skill vector and the son’s skill vector. The skill vector comprises an individual’s occupational characteristics from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT). According to data from the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), white sons earn higher wages in occupations that require skills similar to those of their fathers, whereas black sons in such circumstances incur a wage loss. A large portion of the racial wage gap is explained by the father–son skill correlation. However, a significant unexplained racial wage gap remains at the lower tail of the wage distribution.

This study focuses primarily on the business operating departments (hereinafter, DMUs) of a case telecom company (hereinafter, the Company) in the northern and eastern areas of Taiwan. In 2007, the Company finished the first stage of its reorganization by consolidating 14 DMUs into 12. In 2011, the Company completed the second stage of its reorganization by consolidating the 12 remaining DMUs into 8. This study intends to explore the effects of each stage of the Company’s reorganization on the efficiency and ranking of the various DMUs. The results show that the DMUs became more efficient after each stage of the Company’s reorganization. Moreover, the efficiency and ranking of the new DMUs, A6, A7, and B7 increased post-consolidation. This suggests that both the first and second stages of the reorganization were necessary. The findings of this study could help the Company and other telecom companies to design strategies for the future consolidation of other units, and thereby maintain their competitiveness and continued growth.

A reliability analysis of a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) system is presented for applications with strict constant power supply requirements, such as data centers. The purpose is to demonstrate the effect when moving from a module-level to a system-level in terms of reliability, also considering effects during start-up and degradation.

In-house experimental data on a system-level are used to capture the behavior during start-up and normal operation, including drifts of the operation point due to degradation. The system is assumed to allow replacement of stacks during operation, but a minimum number of stacks in operation is needed to avoid complete shutdown. Experimental data are used in conjunction with a physics-based performance model to construct the failure probability function. A dynamic program then solves the optimization problem in terms of time and replacement requirements to minimize the total negative deviation from a given target reliability.

Results show that multi-stack SOFC systems face challenges which are only revealed on a system- and not on a module-level. The main finding is that the reliability of multi-stack SOFC systems is not sufficient to serve as sole power source for critical applications such as data center.

The principal methodology may be applicable to other modular systems which include multiple critical components (of the same kind). These systems comprise other electrochemical systems such as further fuel cell types.

The novelty of this work is the combination of mathematical modeling to solve a real-world problem, rather than assuming idealized input which lead to more benign system conditions. Furthermore, the necessity to use a mathematical model, which captures sufficient physics of the SOFC system as well as stochasticity elements of its environment, is of critical importance. Some simplifications are, however, necessary because the use of a detailed model directly in the dynamic program would have led to a combinatorial explosion of the numerical solution space.