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This study aims to achieve superior localization and mapping performance in point cloud degradation scenarios through the effective removal of dynamic obstacles. With the continuous development of various technologies for autonomous vehicles, the LIDAR-based Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) system is becoming increasingly important. However, in SLAM systems, effectively addressing the challenges of point cloud degradation scenarios is essential for accurate localization and mapping, with dynamic obstacle removal being a key component.

This paper proposes a method that combines adaptive feature extraction and loop closure detection algorithms to address this challenge. In the SLAM system, the ground point cloud and non-ground point cloud are separated to reduce the impact of noise. And based on the cylindrical projection image of the point cloud, the intensity features are adaptively extracted, the degradation direction is determined by the degradation factor and the intensity features are matched with the map to correct the degraded pose. Moreover, through the difference in raster distribution of the point clouds before and after two frames in the loop process, the dynamic point clouds are identified and removed, and the map is updated.

Experimental results show that the method has good performance. The absolute displacement accuracy of the laser odometer is improved by 27.1%, the relative displacement accuracy is improved by 33.5% and the relative angle accuracy is improved by 23.8% after using the adaptive intensity feature extraction method. The position error is reduced by 30% after removing the dynamic target.

Compared with LiDAR odometry and mapping algorithm, the method has greater robustness and accuracy in mapping and localization.

This study aims to analyse what factors influence ethnic minority group (EMG) college students’ attitudes towards promoting online start-ups and how their different attitudes impact their final online start-up behaviours on the live streaming platform. Based on the COM-B behaviour changing model and the theory of liberal and conservative attitudes, the research model has been established in this study, and it divides influencing factors into the environmental opportunity unit and personal capability unit.

To test relationships among the environmental opportunity, personal capability and personal attitude units, the partial least squares path modelling and variance-based structural equation modelling have been applied on the SmartPLS. Meanwhile, this study considers the regional difference between China’s developed and less-developed regions and promotes multi-group analysis based on it.

Research results show that the online start-up opportunity and capability positively affect EMG college students’ liberal attitudes but reduce EMGs’ conservative attitudes. Meanwhile, this study finds four significant differences, such as the path between conservative attitude and EMG students’ online start-up behaviour and the path between online start-up capability and conservative attitude.

This paper analyses the relationship between influencing factors and EMG students’ online start-up attitudes based on the COM-B behaviour changing model, contributing to the theoretical implications. Meanwhile, considering the impact of regional differences, this paper promotes the multi-group analysis and compares EMG college students from developed regions and others from less-developed areas.

The purpose of this paper is to examine meaning in life as an important resource during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper summarized key research establishing links between meaning in life and mental health and well-being variables, reviewed the literature on meaning as a protective factor and meaning-making as a coping mechanism amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as provided focal points in cultivating meaning in life.

Studies strongly support the notion that meaning in life is essential for health and well-being. Research also suggests that meaning protects against worsening mental health, and that engaging in meaning-making is a coping process that ultimately leads to improved adjustment despite the stressors of the COVID-19 pandemic. Eight themes are also identified in cultivating skills to build meaning during adverse times.

Integrating what research has found about meaning, resilience and coping can help individuals develop practical strategies to cultivate meaning in their lives to support themselves and their communities during stressful times.

Understanding the ways in which meaning can support individuals’ health and well-being is critical during a global upheaval such as that of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors aim to explore whether and how variations on pitch levels of background music in audiovisual commercials affect consumers' judgments of the competence of the advertised brands and for which group of consumers such changes in ad backgrounds are more influential.

Consumers are presented with an audiovisual advertisement in which the pitch of background music is lowered or raised. They are subsequently asked to evaluate the music and traits of the advertised brand and indicate their predisposed styles of thinking.

Consumers tend to judge a brand in an audiovisual commercial as possessing a higher level of competence traits when the brand is accompanied by lower-pitched (vs higher-pitched) background music, which is mediated by levels of powerfulness they perceive from the background music. Consumers with holistic (vs analytic) thinking styles, who are known to devote more focused attention to background information, tend to be more (vs less) susceptible to the changes in pitch.

The current research approaches thinking styles as predisposed individual differences as in prior works in marketing. Provided that the predisposed thinking styles can be influenced by individuals' cultural backgrounds, the authors suggest cross-cultural studies as an approach to further validate the present findings.

Given the recent trends that consumers are increasingly exposed to audiovisual ads with the rapid growth of various video-based platforms (e.g. YouTube) and mobile advertising, this empirical study may assist contemporary marketers in considering an acoustic strategy for brand communication using the audiovisual advertisement. This study suggests that the pitch of ad background music can serve as a manageable strategic tool that can assist in establishing an image of a competent brand.

This research highlights a seemingly-trivial element in audiovisual advertisements, the pitch of background music, as a crucial determinant of the perceived competence of an advertised brand upon which further brand evaluations (e.g. brand trust, purchase intention) are based. An important yet overlooked effect of ad recipients' predisposed thinking styles on how consumers respond to the changes of background cues in audiovisual commercials is also proposed.

There is an increasing interest in the international management literature in cultural differences between in-country regions. Yet, the regions of any country may be merely political products and not necessarily cultural units. The goal of this article is to propose clear empirical criteria for deciding if a set of entities, such as a country's administrative regions, can be legitimate units of cross-cultural analysis and to test these criteria in an empirical study.

The authors review the literature on what constitutes a unit of cross-cultural analysis and propose empirical criteria. For instance, the regions of a given country are meaningful units of cross-cultural analysis if one can replicate (an) established dimension(s) of culture at the regional level, including some of the dimension(s)' antecedents and predictive properties. The authors apply this test in the context of the Russian Federation (RF), using an RF database (18,768 respondents from 60 administrative regions) with items borrowed from the World Values Survey.

The RF regions pass the authors’ test. At the regional level, the selected items yield an individualism-collectivism (IDV-COLL) dimension that is similar to its nation-level counterpart in the revised Minkov-Hofstede model in terms of concept and antecedents (wealth differences and geographic latitude) and outcomes that are relevant in business (innovation rates and quality of governance). The authors also find other patterns that confirm the properties of RF regions as meaningful units of cultural analysis.

The authors’ criteria and the test based on them are suitable for large countries, with significant geo-climatic variety and ethnic diversity, but may be inapplicable in small countries with less diversity. It is questionable if the latter countries contain enough cultural variation to justify a cross-cultural analysis of their sub-national regions.

The authors’ criteria can be used in future research in any large country to decide if its regions justify a cross-cultural analysis in the field of management and business or any other field.

Cultural differences within a country are important as they may inform political and management decisions. Yet, to demonstrate that those differences are real, and not imaginary, one needs a methodology like the authors’.

The study contributes to the discussion of the meaningfulness of in-country regions as cultural units for cross-cultural analysis in international business by focusing on the RF.

The pursuit of happiness as a fundamental human goal is an ancient and widely discussed concept. Recent studies have noted that Gen Zers experience higher levels of stress than previous generations. At the same time, findings of the global study show that while Gen Zers are not overly optimistic, they are realistic, somewhat flexible and adaptable to situations, socially connected, and engaged and committed to making a difference in the world. While these qualities may at least partly mitigate stress levels and contribute to Gen Z's happiness, resilience should be cultivated in Gen Z.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between fiscal policy (tax revenues and government expenditure) and economic happiness. The panel data are used from 2012 to 2016 for 18 countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The study adopted the Barro (1990) model of endogeneity growth to characterize the relationship between fiscal policy and economic happiness. The study estimated the model by using the pooled ordinary least squares method, the fixed effects method and the random-effects method. In addition, the study used the dynamic estimate of this relationship rather than the conventional static estimate through the generalized method of moments’ method. This leads to overcoming the endogeneity problem between the dependent variable and the independent variables.

The main findings indicated that there is a negative and statistically significant relationship between nondistortionary taxes and economic happiness. Also, there is no relationship between public expenditure and economic happiness, whether productive or nonproductive. The results confirmed a positive and significant relationship between other revenues and economic happiness. The current study recommended the diversification of other public revenue sources to increase its contribution to public expenditure financing and the restructuring of the tax system, particularly nondistortionary taxes. These taxes must be replaced by other revenues or by distortionary taxes to increase economic happiness.

The research represents a strong starting base that can help researchers to conduct more studies on economic happiness by using different measures and comparing their results to find out the determinants of happiness. The relationship between economic happiness and fiscal policy with its different aspects requires more studies, especially the relationship between taxes and economic happiness in our region. The study of the relationship between public expenditure and economic happiness according to economic activities can guide decision-makers to direct the expenditure toward economic activities that achieve the happiness of their citizens. Enriching this study requires the availability of fiscal data for the entire MENA region for longer periods, which allow us to divide the countries of the region into petroleum and nonpetroleum countries, but the scarcity of data is one of the limitations of the study.

The governments of MENA countries should diversify other public revenue sources to increase the financing public expenditure by the expense of tax revenues, especially nondistortionary taxes, which would increase the economic happiness of their citizens.

This study is one of the rare studies that investigate the relationship between fiscal policy and economic happiness at the global level. This study contributed to filling the gap of this issue in the MENA region and enriching global literature through the experience of the MENA region. Moreover, this study investigated all aspects of fiscal policy, in contrast to other studies that focused on one of its aspects. The weakness in these studies is because of the lack of correlation between the sources of revenues and the face of their spending.

Identity, positioning and possibilities intersect differently for South Asian women in white academia. Within a broader migrant community that defines Australian life, these identities and positioning imply great possibility, but pursuing such pathways within academia is a walk on the last strand of resilience. This paper explores this tension of possibilities and constraints, using hope theory to highlight the cognitive resistance evident in the narratives of three South Asian women in Australian academia.

The authors use collaborative autoethnography to share their narratives of working in Australian universities at three different stages of careers, utilising Snyder's model of hope theory to interrogate their own goal-setting behaviours, pathways and agentic thinking.

The authors propose that hope as a cognitive state informs resistance and enables aspirations to contribute within academia in meaningful ways whilst navigating the terrain of inequitable structures.

The authors' use of hope theory as a lens on the intersectional experiences of career making, building and progression is a new contribution to scholarship on marginalised women in white academe and the ways in which the pathways of resistance are identified.

This study aims to differentiate maladaptive personality domains through crime-related characteristics among convicts incarcerated in central jails of Punjab (CJP). In total, 552 respondents were taken from nine CJP.

Data were collected through the Personality Inventory for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-5 Short Form (PID-5 SF) (Maples et al., 2015), and forced-choice questions were designed to measure crime-related characteristics.

Confirmatory factor analysis showed that PID-5 SF exhibited a good to excellent construct validity based on the DSM-5 criteria of using three facets to measure a domain (APA, 2013). Multivariate analysis showed that convicts who have committed different crime types and have criminal records exhibit different personality domains.

In addition to the literature, the data from all CJP, Pakistan, was collected and tested so that need for personality-oriented intervention could be identified for the prison setting. This also highlights that the usefulness of PID-5 SF is not only in identifying maladaptive personality among incarcerated convicts but also in differentiating between different crime-related characteristics.