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This study aims to explore Taiwan's potential for bioenergy production using feedstocks grown on set-aside land and discusses the consequent effects on Taiwan's energy security plus benefits and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission.

The Modified Taiwan Agricultural Sector Model (Modified TASM), based on price endogenous mathematical programming, was used to simulate different agricultural policies related to bioenergy production. To do this simulation, the TASM model was extended to include additional bioenergy production possibilities and GHG accounting.

Taiwan's bioenergy production portfolio depends on prices of ethanol, electricity and GHG. When GHG prices go up, ethanol production decreases and electricity production increases because of the relatively stronger GHG offset power of biopower.

Taiwan is interested in producing bioenergy but only limited information is available. This study provides the information on potential bioethanol and bioelectricity production from various energy crops, GHG emission offset from bioenergy, and regional energy security.

Continuous fiber reinforced thermoplastic composites (CFRTPCs) are becoming more significant in industrial applications but are limited by the high cost of molds, the manufacturing boundedness of complex constructions and the inability of special fiber alignment. The purpose of this paper is to put forward a novel three-dimensional (3D) printing process for CFRTPCs to realize the low-cost rapid fabrication of complicated composite components.

For this purpose, the mechanism of the proposed process, which consists of the thermoplastic polymer melting, the continuous fiber hot-dipping and the impregnated composites extruding, was investigated. A 3D printing equipment for CFRTPCs with a novel composite extrusion head was developed, and some composite samples have been fabricated for several mechanical tests. Moreover, the interface performance was clarified with scanning electron microscopy images.

The results showed that the flexural strength and the tensile strength of these 10 Wt.% continuous carbon fiber (CCF)/acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) specimens were improved to 127 and 147 MPa, respectively, far greater than the one of ABS parts and close to the one of CCF/ABS (injection molding) with the same fiber content. Moreover, these test results also exposed the very low interlaminar shear strength (only 2.81 MPa) and the inferior interface performance. These results were explained by the weak meso/micro/nano scale interfaces in the 3D printed composite parts.

The 3D printing process for CFRTPCs with its controlled capabilities for the orientation and distribution of fiber has great potential for manufacturing of load-bearing composite parts in the industrial circle.

Although social networks play an important role in individual ambidexterity, few studies have examined the impact of salespeople's social networks on sales-service ambidexterity. The purpose of this paper is to explore how salespeople's internal and external social networks affect sales-service ambidexterity.

The unique data of 331 salespeople from 39 units in retail banking industry and insurance industry were collected, and the hierarchical linear model was adopted to test the hypotheses. Finally, the alternative measure of the dependent variable and the alternative estimation method were adopted for robustness test.

The results show that the strength of salespeople's internal social networks and the extensiveness of salespeople's external social networks could facilitate sales-service ambidexterity of salespeople separately and synergistically. Salespeople's role breadth self-efficacy partially mediates the influences of internal and external social networks on sales-service ambidexterity, while empowerment climate and transformational leadership positively moderate the aforementioned mediational process by strengthening the relationship between salespeople's role breadth self-efficacy and sales-service ambidexterity.

Practical guidelines are provided for managers to shape ambidextrous salespeople by facilitating salespeople's internal and external social networks, promoting transformational leadership and creating empowerment climate within the unit.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this paper is the first to systematically examine the impact of salespeople's social network on sales-service ambidexterity. Drawing from social cognitive theory and the ambidexterity literature, this research reveals the mechanism of how salespeople's internal and external social networks contribute to sales-service ambidexterity.

This paper aims to examine the relationships between the group affiliates’ dual legitimacy (membership legitimacy and societal legitimacy) and dual resource acquisition (intra-group and out-group), and the moderating roles of environmental uncertainty and munificence in the emerging economies.

This paper adopts hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypotheses based on the unique data of 251 group affiliated firms in China and applies the alternative measurements and alternative methodology of structural equation modeling into robustness check to confirm the results.

The results show as follows: the group affiliates can benefit from membership legitimacy for intra-group resource acquisition and out-group resource acquisition through the mediations of societal legitimacy and intra-group resource acquisition. However, in the linkage between affiliates’ membership legitimacy and intra-group resource acquisition and the linkage between societal legitimacy and out-group resource acquisition, environmental uncertainty plays the positive moderating roles while environmental munificence plays the negative moderating roles. Under the condition of high environmental uncertainty and low environmental munificence, the linkage between membership legitimacy and intra-group resource acquisition, and the linkage between societal legitimacy and out-group resource acquisition reach the strongest level.

The findings highlight the importance of dual legitimacy building for group affiliates to acquire resources both inside and outside the business group when they operate in emerging economies characterized by high environmental uncertainty and low environmental munificence. However, it does not explore the contextual factors (e.g. institutional distance) affecting the relationship between the affiliate’s membership legitimacy and societal legitimacy. Then more group-level factors are expected to be included and explored with multi-level models in the future studies.

The findings reveal the mechanism of how group affiliates benefiting differently from dual legitimacy to acquire resources in the emerging economies, which also provide a new interpretation for the questions of who benefiting more from the group affiliation, how and why (Carney et al., 2009). This research also explores the moderating roles of task environmental characteristics (environmental uncertainty and environmental munificence) on the affiliate's dual legitimacy and dual resource acquisition, which helps understand why legitimacy building is more important in terms of resource acquisition in the emerging economy characterized by uncertainty and non-munificence.

There is an increasing popularity for the continuum robot in minimally invasive surgery owing to its compliance and dexterity. However, the dexterity takes the challenges in loading and precise control because of the absence of the shape tracking for the continuum robot. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new type of continuum manipulator with variable stiffness that can track the bending shape timely.

The low-melting-point alloy (LMPA) is used to implement the stiffness variation and shape detection for the continuum manipulator. A conceptual design for a single module is presented, and the principle of stiffness control based on the established static model is formulated. Afterward, a shape detection method is introduced in which the shape of the continuum manipulator can be detected by measuring the resistance of every LMPA. Finally, the effect of the proposed variable stiffness method is verified by simulation; the variable stiffness and shape detection methods are evaluated by experiments.

The results from the simulations and experiments indicate that the designed continuum manipulator has the ability of stiffness variation over 42.3% and the shape detection method has high precision.

Compared with conventional structures, the novel manipulator has a simpler structure and integrates the stiffness variation and shape detection capabilities with the LMPA. The proposed method is promising, and it can be conveniently extended to other continuum manipulators.

Continuum manipulators are often used in complex and narrow space in recent years because of their flexibility and safety. Vision is considered to be one of the most direct methods to obtain its spatial shape. However, with the improvement of the cooperation requirements of multiple continuum manipulators and the increase of space limitation, it is impossible to obtain the complete spatial shape information of multiple continuum manipulators only by several cameras.

This paper proposes a fusion method using inertial navigation sensors and cameras to reconstruct the shape of continuum manipulators in the whole workspace. The camera is used to obtain the position information, and the inertial navigation sensor is used to obtain the attitude information. Based on the above two information, the shape of the continuum manipulator is reconstructed by fitting Bézier curve.

The experiment result of single continuum manipulator shows that the cubic Bézier curves is applicable to curve fitting of variable curvature, the maximum fitting error is about 2 mm. Meanwhile, the experiment result shows that this method is not affected by obstacles and can still reconstruct the shape of the continuum manipulators in 3-D space by detecting the position and attitude information of the end.

According to the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study on spatial shape reconstruction of multiple continuum manipulators and the first study to introduce inertial navigation sensors and cameras into the field of shape reconstruction of multiple continuum manipulators in narrow space. This method is suitable for shape reconstruction of manipulator with variable curvature continuum manipulator. When the vision of multiple continuum manipulators is blocked by obstacles, the spatial shape can still be reconstructed only by exposing the end point. The structure is simple, but it has certain accuracy within a certain range.

The purpose of this paper is to facilitate understanding of how to mitigate the privacy concerns of users who have experienced privacy invasions.

Drawing on the communication privacy management theory, the authors developed a model suggesting that privacy concerns form through a cognitive process involving threat-coping appraisals, institutional privacy assurances and privacy experiences. The model was tested using data from an empirical survey with 913 randomly selected social media users.

Privacy concerns are jointly determined by perceived privacy risks and privacy self-efficacy. The perceived effectiveness of institutional privacy assurances in terms of established privacy policies and privacy protection technology influences the perceptions of privacy risks and privacy self-efficacy. More specifically, privacy invasion experiences are negatively associated with the perceived effectiveness of institutional privacy assurances.

Privacy concerns are conceptualized as general concerns that reflect an individual’s worry about the possible loss of private information. The specific types of private information were not differentiated.

This paper is among the first to clarify the specific mechanisms through which privacy invasion experiences influence privacy concerns. Privacy concerns have long been viewed as resulting from individual actions. The study contributes to literature by linking privacy concerns with institutional privacy practice.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of standard fire on the strength and microstructure properties of concrete with different strength grades.

Different strength grades of concrete used for the investigation are M20, M30, M40 and M50. An electrical bogie hearth furnace was developed to simulate the International Standards Organization 834 standard fire curve.Concrete samples were subjected to high temperatures of 925, 1,029, 1,090 and 1,133°C for the duration of 1, 2, 3 and 4 h, respectively, as per standard fire curve. Compressive strength, tensile strength, thermal crack pattern and spalling of heated concrete specimens were evaluated by experimental investigation. Scanning electron microscopy and thermo-gravimetric analysis were performed to investigate the microstructure properties of heated concrete specimens.

Test results indicated reduction in the strength and changes in the microstructure properties of concrete exposed to elevated temperature. The degree of weight and the strength loss were found to be higher for concrete with higher grades. An empirical relation is proposed to determine the residual strength of concrete with different strength grade using regression analysis.

Results of this research will be useful for the design engineers to understand the behavior of concrete exposed to elevated temperature as per standard fire.

When concrete is exposed to elevated temperature, its internal microstructure changes, thereby strength and durability of concrete deteriorates. The performance of concrete with different strength grade exposed to standard fire is well understood. This research’s findings will be useful for the designers to understand more about fire resistance of concrete. A simple relationship is proposed to determine the residual strength of concrete exposed to various durations of heating.

Artificial electromagnetic (EM) medium and devices are designed with integrated micro- and macro-structures depending on the EM transmittance performance, which is difficult to fabricate by the conventional processes. Three-dimensional (3D) printing provides a new solution for the delicate artificial EM medium. This paper aims to first review the applications of 3D printing in the fabrication of EM medium briefly, mainly focusing on photonic crystals, metamaterials and gradient index (GRIN) devices. Then, a new design and fabrication strategy is proposed for the EM medium based on the 3D printing process, which was verified by the implementation of a 3D 90o Eaton lens based on GRIN metamaterials.

A new design and manufacturing strategy driven by the physical (EM transmittance) performance is proposed to illustrate the realization procedures of EM medium based device with controllable micro- and macro-structures. Stereolithography-based 3D printing process is used to obtain the designed EM device, an GRIN Eaton lens. The EM transmittance of the Eaton lens was validated experimentally and by simulation.

A 3D 90o Eaton lens was realized based on GRIN metamaterials structure according to the proposed design and manufacturing strategy, which had the broadband (12-18 GHz) and low loss characteristic. The feasibility of 3D printing for the artificial EM medium and GRIN devices has been verified for the further real applications in the industries.

The applications of 3D printing in artificial EM medium and devices were systematically reviewed. A new design strategy driven by physical performance for the EM device was proposed and validated by the firstly 3D printed 3D Eaton lens.

One aspect of agency theory suggests that dominant shareholders use the firm’s assets for their personal benefits and 1thus expropriate minority shareholders (tunneling). Accordingly, this paper aims to examine the effect of capital structure and cash holding decisions on minority shareholders' expropriation for short and long periods.

Data of 16 years (2000-2015) has been obtained from 200 non-financial firms registered at Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX). The study used fixed effect and autoregressive distributed lagged to obtain the results.

The results suggest that the presence of more debts in capital structure is positively associated with minority shareholders' expropriation, whereas a negative association has been found between the level of cash holding and minority shareholders expropriation. These results have been observed as significant both for the short and long run.

This study also suggests some important measures to control minority shareholders' expropriation by the dominant shareholders and thus to protect their rights.

There is a lack of literature for this severe issue in the developing countries especially Pakistan, so this study narrates the potential measures to the regulatory authority of the market to curb tunneling and to protect minority shareholders.