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The purpose of this paper is to explore the key factors in generating trust, and the effects of trust on the intention to cooperate in energy performance contracting (EPC), from the perspective of energy saving companies (ESCOs).

A questionnaire survey was undertaken to collect the data from the experienced project managers in ESCOs. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.

The results revealed that competence, integrity, communication, reciprocity and contract had positive effects on calculative trust and relational trust. Both calculative trust and relational trust, in turn, were found to have positive effects on the intention to cooperate.

The conclusions are derived from the Chinese cultural background and may apply to a certain geographical scope. In addition, this study focused on the perspective of ESCOs but did not consider that of facility owners.

This research would supply guidance for facility owners or users to cultivate trust from ESCOs and achieve cooperation in EPC.

Most of the existing studies have focused on the perspective of facility owners while few have attempted to investigate the perspective of ESCOs. This study contributes to the knowledge body relating to EPC by investigating the relationship between trust and the intention to cooperate from the perspective of ESCOs. In addition, most EPC studies recognized trust as a condition for the successful execution of EPC projects but failed to consider the role of trust in setting up the cooperation relationship prior to project execution.

This paper investigates how the gambling measure captures market bubble events, and how it predicts stock return and option return.

This paper proposes a gambling activity measure by jointly considering open interest and moneyness of out-of-the-money (OTM) individual equity call options.

The new measure, CallMoney, captures excessive optimism during the dot-com bubble, the oil price bubble and the pre-GFC stock market bubble. CallMoney robustly and negatively predicts both OTM and at-the-money call option returns cross-sectionally. The option return predictability of CallMoney is stronger when stock price is further from its 52-weeks high, capital gains overhang is lower, and when information uncertainty of the underlying stock is higher. CallMoney also robustly and negatively predicts cross-sectional stock returns.

The gambling measure has the advantages of being economically intuitive, model-free, easy to measure. The measure performs more robustly than existing lottery measures with respect to option and stock return predictability and more reliably captures the overpricing of options and stocks. The work helps understanding the gambling related anomalies in equity option returns and stock returns.

Building information modelling (BIM) claims to be spearheading the modern technological revolution in the global construction industry. While scholars have emphasised the cruciality of BIM, associated costs have been identified as one of the major barriers to successful BIM implementation, as is the case in Sri Lanka. Besides, lean principles (LPs) are known for increasing efficiency, quality and eliminating waste, thereby reducing overall costs. Hence, this research aims at addressing the BIM implementation barrier associated with costs by applying suitable LP, enhancing overall value by minimising value-insignificant activities.

The study adopted a qualitative research approach. 10 experts with expertise in both BIM and LP were targeted for the primary data collection through semi-structured interviews. The collected data were analysed using manual content analysis.

Research findings discovered the cost centres that can be applied to the LPs and the effective LPs that can be applied with the cost centres of BIM implementation. The theoretical implication of the study is to provide insights into a potential application of LP for BIM cost centres, whereas practical consequences include the identification of LP's potential to minimise BIM cost centres, ergo, achieving a successful BIM implementation.

This study will be the first of its kind in the Sri Lankan construction industry, intending to apply LP with BIM implementation cost centres to achieve a successful implementation. This research also has paved the way forward for further research on the application of both the BIM and LP concepts for similar construction industries in developing countries across the world and in addressing other BIM implementation barriers.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview and some recent advances in the models, analysis and simulation of thermal transport of phonons as related to the field of microscale/macroscale heat conduction in solids. The efforts focus upon a fairly comprehensive overview of the subject matter from a unified standpoint highlighting the various approximations inherent in the thermal models. Subsequently, the numerical formulations and illustrations using the current state-of-the-art are provided.

This paper is dedicated to the approximate solution to the relaxation time phonon Boltzmann equation (BE). While original contributions are pointed out and addressed appropriately, the efforts and contributions will be focussed on a relatively complete overview highlighting the field from one unified standpoint and clearly stating all assumptions that go into the approximations inherent to existing models. The contents will be divided as follows: In the first section the authors will give an overview of semi-classical phonon transport physics. Then the authors will discuss the equation of phonon radiative transport (EPRT) and its approximations—the ballistic-diffusive approximation (BDA) and the new heat equation (NHE). Next the authors derive and discuss the C-F model. A numerical discretization method valid for all models is then presented followed by results to numerical simulations and discussion.

From a unified treatment based on the introduction of an energy distribution function, the authors have derived the EPRT and its two well-known approximations: BDA and NHE. For completeness and to provide a vehicle for a general numerical discretization approach, the authors have also included analysis of the C-F model and the parabolic and hyperbolic descriptions of heat transfer along with it. The approximation of angular dependence of phonons in radiation-like descriptions of transport has been given special attention. The assumption of isotropy was found to be of paramount importance in the formulation of position space models for phononic thermal transport. For the thin film problem considered here, the NHE along with the proper boundary condition appears to be the best choice to approximate the phonon BE. Not only does it provide predictions that are in excellent agreement with EPRT, it does not require the discretization of phase space making it far more computationally efficient.

The authors hope this work will help dispel the idea that since Fourier’s law describes diffusion (under limiting assumptions) and it has shown to be ineffective in describing heat transfer for very thin films, that diffusion cannot describe heat transfer in thin films and one should look to a radiative description instead. If one considers diffusion in the sense of random motion, as invisaged by the original builders of the subject (Smoluchowski, Einstein, Ornstein et al.), instead of a temperature gradient, the idea that diffusion can govern thermal transport at this scale is not surprising. Indeed, the NHE is essentially a diffusion equation that describes the motion of particles up to the point of true randomness (isotropy) as well as thereafter.

Traffic flow prediction has always been a top priority of intelligent transportation systems. There are many mature methods for short-term traffic flow prediction. However, the existing methods are often insufficient in capturing long-term spatial-temporal dependencies. To predict long-term dependencies more accurately, in this paper, a new and more effective traffic flow prediction model is proposed.

This paper proposes a new and more effective traffic flow prediction model, named channel attention-based spatial-temporal graph neural networks. A graph convolutional network is used to extract local spatial-temporal correlations, a channel attention mechanism is used to enhance the influence of nearby spatial-temporal dependencies on decision-making and a transformer mechanism is used to capture long-term dependencies.

The proposed model is applied to two common highway datasets: METR-LA collected in Los Angeles and PEMS-BAY collected in the California Bay Area. This model outperforms the other five in terms of performance on three performance metrics a popular model.

(1) Based on the spatial-temporal synchronization graph convolution module, a spatial-temporal channel attention module is designed to increase the influence of proximity dependence on decision-making by enhancing or suppressing different channels. (2) To better capture long-term dependencies, the transformer module is introduced.

Smart senior care industry in China currently faces a series of practical difficulties such as an imbalance in the demand and supply structure, service products unable to cater to the actual needs of the elderly and a low degree of marketization. This study therefore proposes using grey relational analysis and the Fuzzy-quality function development (QFD) quality improvement method to help solve these problems.

The proposed method converts the fuzzy requirements of the elderly into the technical characteristics of technologically augmented senior care service products. It then, uses the QFD relationship matrix, combined with grey relational analysis, to analyze the relationship between the needs of elderly and the converted technical characteristics, and subsequently identifies key technical characteristics.

Results show that an improvement in the smart senior care service platform according to the differences of the elderly's preferences can significantly improve users' satisfaction with the service in addition to enhancing market competitiveness of the technologically assisted senior care service products.

A novel method to improve the need of smart senior care is proposed by considering age difference. The proposed grey relational analysis and Fuzzy-QFD quality improvement method can help improve the service quality of the smart senior care service platform.

Due to social transformation in China, more than 100,000,000 people are migrating within the country. Many parents are forced to leave their children behind when they migrate. In 2008, 58,000,000 children were living as left‐behind children, mainly in the rural parts of China (Zhang, 2009).Migration and its accompanying stressors may affect the mental health of the left‐behind children. This unique literature review of Chinese literature summarises the present state of knowledge and reviews the influential factors. Possible approaches to intervention and system reforms are discussed.A literature review was performed of published studies between 2001 and 2008. Databases used were Fujian Medical University Library Interface, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang Data, and VIP Information. The Chinese word for ‘left‐behind’ was used as a key word. Books, book chapters, monographs and studies on caring were searched electronically and by hand. Altogether, 53 items were found, discussed and grouped together. Migration affected the mental health of the left‐behind children in a passive way, especially their emotions and social behaviour.There is still controversy over how serious mental health problems are among children who have been left behind. Life events, personality, coping strategies and social suppor t can be regarded as four main factors that are predictive of mental health, which provides theoretical guidance for intervention. Suppor t and prevention of mental health problems in schools, in families and in primary care should be developed and studied.

The purpose of this paper is to examine challenges faced by senior construction managers in managing cross‐cultural complexity and uncertainty. The rationale was to identify the key strategies that are considered essential for managing cross‐cultural complexity and uncertainty.

Interviews with 20 senior construction managers, ten in Kenya and ten in the UK, were recorded, transcribed and entered into the qualitative research software NVivo. Validity and reliability were achieved by first assessing the plausibility in terms of already existing knowledge on some of the cultural issues raised by participants. The findings were presented to the participants through workshops and group discussions.

The emerging key issues suggested that project leaders need to learn how to control their own characteristics and to use them selectively. An effective multicultural construction project team should focus on team output and attributes that characterise a multicultural team as a social entity.

Findings indicate that the role of construction project managers has significantly changed over the past two decades. In order to deal with cross‐cultural uncertainty, project leaders must have superior multicultural and interpersonal skills when managing global multicultural heavy engineering projects.

The research shows that leaders of global construction project teams need a good understanding of their culture, environment and the value of their individual contributions.

Gas evolution within lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) gives rise to safety concerns that question their applicability. The gas evolution is not only the result but also the inducement of performance deterioration of LIBs. In this paper, the growth characteristics and dynamic behavior of gas bubble on the electrode surface are studied, and the interference mechanism of gas evolution on Li-ion diffusion or Li-ion conduction within LIBs is discussed and validated by the numerical simulations.

First, the mathematical models and simulation method are established. The growth and flow of gas bubble in the serpentine channel on electrode surface, which results from the gas-liquid flow and the effects of surface tension, is modeled by using the multi-phase Navier-Stokes and the volume of fluid method. Integrating Butler–Volmer and Fick’s law, the mathematical model of ions transport in the electrochemical cell is set-up. Second, the motion of gas bubble is tracked, and the variations of bubble shape and characteristic parameters with time are obtained by the computed fluid dynamics (CFD) method.

Based on the CFD results, the battery models and electrochemical simulations are carried out to analyze the ionic transport characteristics. The results show that the microstructural morphology such as the serpentine channel shape and size on electrode surface are important aspects for the gas bubble growth and the local ionic transport. Li ions significantly accumulate at one side of the gas obstacle, hindering the ionic diffusion normally. When the gas bubble blocks the electrolyte, the passage of ions from the positive to the negative is interrupted, and the open circuit zone of the electrochemical cell is formed.

The gas evolution within LIBs is not only a result but also an inducement of its performance deterioration. The primary issues in this study are the growth characteristics and dynamic behavior of gas bubble on the electrode surface, providing the knowledge for the interference mechanism of gas evolution on ionic transport and ultimately leads to significant increase of battery resistance.

The widespread use of the internet and the rapid development of the internet of things in information technology have increased the need for network-enabled marketing. It is important to service a broad class involving logistics, buyer, seller and end-users. During various phases of the sales, purchases and marketing process, IoT will influence decision-making. Electronic commerce is a new form of trade under the development of modern information technology.

In this paper, the integrated neutrosophic framework based on the internet of things (INF-IoT) has been proposed to support marketers and companies to make a powerful marketing strategy using identified data from IoT devices.

The experimental results show that the proposed method has high performance and very efficient.

This approach may reduce business activity to its core components, which include, in the simplest case, a value proposal, distribution channels and customers, and explain how a network of multi-actors generates a product and services, distributes and uses the value in production. Furthermore, an efficient interface is provided by the logistic module to maintain an order list.