Search results

The purpose of this paper is to study the introduction of 3D-printing of concrete in the construction sector.

A survey was conducted to collect professional view on ongoing innovations in the construction sector, including 3D-printing. Participants were selected among the members of Norwegian networks for project and construction management research.

The survey highlighted effective leadership, collaboration with partners and industry-academia collaboration as primary enablers of innovation. Few of the respondents to the survey have used 3D-printing technologies.

It is difficult to obtain representative samples in this type of research, including this study. The study can be seen as a snapshot of attitudes in the sector.

3D-printing appear as a potentially interesting technology, especially for unstandardized construction components. Further work is needed to materialise the expectation for technological development in the construction sector.

Most research on 3D-printing has focused on demonstrating technical potential. This study adds a practitioners’ perspective, with a large dose of pragmatism.

Since the 1980s, and especially after China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1991, international educational collaborations have developed in China. Spurred by economic, cultural and educational factors, joint programs have become an essential supplement to Chinese education. Despite the obvious and diverse benefits brought about by joint programs, various challenges arise. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the benefits and challenges generally and then in a more targeted way through the lens of one Sino‐Australian partnership.

This paper uses a case study of one joint Australia‐China program to explore the development, benefits and challenges of joint programs in China and suggest how to improve the overall quality of the joint programs which will further international collaboration of educational institutions in China.

Joint programs are a strategic component of the expansion and globalization objectives of the Chinese government. They offer more opportunities for Chinese students to receive an overseas education, enhance the research profile of Chinese universities and promote new ways of teaching and learning. For the Australian government, transnational education and the model of joint programs are helping to build Australia's research reputation, develop alternative teaching and learning ideas and promote global citizenship. Challenges include linguistic issues, financial problems, inefficient management, program assessment, qualifications, skills of teaching staff and different ways of thinking.

Enhancing pedagogical quality within a business paradigm is a unifying imperative.

The paper presents a new case study analysis for joint program educators and decision makers.

Due to recent technological advances, the retail industry has changed significantly. This paper examines a novel unmanned retail mode-unattended convenience store to identify the possible operational problems and develop appropriate managerial recommendations.

A data-driven two-stage epsilon-based measure (EBM) data envelopment analysis (DEA) method was developed to evaluate operational performance data from 33 unattended convenience stores and assess the impacts on efficiency of the internal factors, and a Tobit regression analysis was employed to examine the external environment.

It was found that the overall economic performances were relatively low and fluctuated significantly; however, the social performances were slightly higher. The out-of-stock rate was found to have a negative impact on efficiency, and regional characteristics were found to have significant effects on performance.

This study sought to identify current operational problems with unattended convenience stores to provide managerial insights. The cross-sectional assessment suggested that to achieve better performance, particular attention needed to be paid to store locations and surrounding store environments.

First, this paper establishes a novel theoretical framework to evaluate the economic and social operational performances at unattended convenience stores. Second, it contributes to research on unattended convenience stores and the unmanned retail industry and offers significant guidance on detecting operational deficiencies and improving future performances.

This study aims to investigate the differences in consumers’ perceptions of trust, performance expectancy and intention to hire between human financial advisors with high/low expertise and robo-advisors.

Three experiments were conducted. The respondents were randomly assigned to human advisors with high/low expertise or a robo-advisor. Data were analyzed using MANCOVA.

The results suggest that consumers prefer human financial advisors with high expertise to robo-advisors. There are no significant differences between robo-advisors and novice financial advisors regarding performance expectancy and intention to hire.

This pioneering study extends the self-service technology adoption theory to examine adoption of robo-advisors vs human financial advisors with different expertise levels. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is among the first studies to address multi-dimensionality of trust in the context of artificial intelligence-based self-service technologies.

This study examines the relationship between streamers' product descriptions, customer comments and online sales and focuses on the moderating effect of streamer–viewer relationship strength.

Between June 2021 and April 2022, the structured data of 965 livestreaming and unstructured text data of 42,956,147 characters from two major live-streaming platforms were collected for the study. Text analysis and regression analysis methods were employed for data analysis.

First, the authors' analysis reveals an inverted U-shaped relationship between comment length and product sales. Notably, comment volume and comment emotion positively influence product sales. Furthermore, the semantic richness, emotion and readability of streamers' product descriptions also positively influence product sales. Secondly, the authors find that the strength of streamer–viewer relationship weakens the positive effects of comment volume and comment emotion without moderating the inverted U-shaped effect of comment length. Lastly, the strength of streamer–viewer relationship also diminishes the positive effects of emotion, semantics and readability of streamers' product descriptions on product sales.

This study is the first to concurrently examine the direct and interactive effects of user-generated content (UGC) and marketer-generated content (MGC) on consumer purchase behaviors in livestreaming e-commerce, offering a novel perspective on individual decision-making and cue utilization in the social retail context.

The present study provides a comprehensive review of the advancements in five active heating modes for cold-proof clothing as of 2021. It aims to evaluate the current state of research for each heating mode and identify their limitations. Further, the study provides insights into the optimization of intelligent temperature control algorithms and design considerations for intelligent cold-proof clothing.

This article presents a classification of active heating systems based on five different heating principles: electric heating system, solar heating system, phase-change material (PCM) heating system, chemical heating system and fluid/air heating system. The systems are analyzed and evaluated in terms of heating principle, research advancement, scientific challenges and application potential in the field of cold-proof clothing.

The rational utilization of active heating modes enhances the thermal efficiency of cold-proof clothing, resulting in enhanced cold-resistance and reduced volume and weight. Despite progress in the development of the five prevalent heating modes, particularly with regard to the improvement and advancement of heating materials, the current integration of heating systems with cold-proof clothing is limited to the torso and limbs, lacking consideration of the thermal physiological requirements of the human body. Additionally, the heating modes of each system tend to be uniform and lack differentiation to meet the varying cold protection needs of various body parts.

The effective application of multiple heating modes helps the human body to maintain a constant body temperature and thermal equilibrium in a cold environment. The research of heating mode is the basis for realizing the temperature control of cold-proof clothing and provides an effective guarantee for the future development of the intelligent algorithms for temperature control of non-uniform heating of body segments.

The integration of multiple heating modes ensures the maintenance of a constant body temperature and thermal balance for the wearer in cold environments. The research of heating modes forms the foundation for the temperature regulation of cold-proof clothing and lays the groundwork for the development of intelligent algorithms for non-uniform heating control of different body segments.

The present article systematically reviews five active heating modes suitable for use in cold-proof clothing and offers guidance for the selection of heating systems in future smart cold-proof clothing. Furthermore, the findings of this research provide a basis for future research on non-uniform heating modes that are aligned with the thermal physiological needs of the human body, thus contributing to the development of cold-proof clothing that is better suited to meet the thermal needs of the human body.

The purpose of the study reported in this paper was to prepare modified C.I. Pigment Red (PR) 170 to reduce production cost and improve application performance. The structure of the modified pigment was characterised. The colour strength, thermal stability, mobility, aqueous dispersability and ultraviolet (UV) resistance of modified pigments were studied.

Silica fume was added into the diazonium salt solution under acidic condition, followed by the activation to generate new surface. Subsequently, coupling component was dropwise added to the system to form the modified pigments evenly on the surface of silica fume in situ. The structure and properties of the modified pigment were studied by fourier transform infrared spectoscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), thermal gravity analysis (TG-DTA), UV-visible diffuse reflectance spectra (UV-Vis DRS), and commission internationale de L‘Eclairage (CIE L*a*b*) colour measurements.

The morphology and particle size of the modified pigment were controlled by the modification of the silica fume, and the organic pigment and silica fume formed a core–shell structure. The properties of the modified pigment including colour strength, thermal stability, mobility, aqueous dispensability and UV resistance were improved significantly.

The effect of the amount of silica fume on the thickness of the organic pigment layer and the effect of the thickness of the organic pigment layer on the properties of the modified pigment need to be studied further.

This paper shows a feasible method of the modification of the PR170 with the silica fume, and the modification can improve the properties of the PR170. The use of silica fume to modify organic pigment can realise the reuse of solid waste and reduce the production cost of the organic pigment.

This modification method of the organic pigment is adaptive and it can be adjusted to the modification of other species of the organic pigment.

The modification of the PR170 with the silica fume was carried out in its preparation process, which synchronised the preparation and modification of the organic pigment. The properties of the modified pigment were improved, which were beneficial for their application in inks and coatings.

This study aims to fabricate a cool phthalocyanine green/TiO₂ composite pigment (PGT) with high near-infrared (NIR) reflectance, good color performance and good heat-shielding performance under sunlight and infrared irradiation.

With the help of anionic and cationic polyelectrolytes, the PGT composite pigment was prepared using a layer-by-layer assembly method under wet ball milling. Based on the light reflectance properties and color performance tested by ultraviolet-visible-NIR spectrophotometer and colorimeter, the preparation conditions were optimized and the properties of PGT pigment with different assembly layers (PGT-1, PGT-3, PGT-5 and PGT-7) were compared. In addition, their heat-shielding performance was evaluated and compared by temperature rise value for their coating under sunlight and infrared irradiation.

The PGT pigment had a core/shell structure, and the PG thickness increased with the self-assembly layers, which made the PGT-3 and PGT-7 pigment show higher color purity and saturation than PGT-1 pigment. In addition, the PGT-3 and PGT-7 pigment showed 11%–16% lower light reflectance in the visible region. However, their light reflectance in the NIR region was similar. Under infrared irradiation the PGT-5 and PGT-7 pigment coating showed 1.1°C–3.4°C and 1.3°C–4.7°C lower temperature rise value than PGT-1 pigment coating and physical mixture pigment coating, respectively. And under sunlight the PGT-3 pigment coating showed 1.5–2.6°C lower temperature rise value than the physical mixture pigment coating.

The layer-by-layer assembling makes the core/shell PGT composite pigment possess low visible light reflectance, high NIR reflectance and good heat-shielding performance.

To study these issues, the authors chose a GFSC with one producer and one material supplier as research object, the supplier will offer green material to the producer and the producer will make green food using green production technology. Then, the authors proposed that consumers' perceived value was determined by the trustworthiness levels of the related green and quality-safety information provided by the supplier and the producer. Then, considering the trustworthiness levels of the green and quality information provided by the supplier and the producer, the authors improved the demand function. Afterwards, we constructed four investment models and their income models are built and then a cost-sharing and revenue-sharing contract (hereafter, CSRS) was adopted to coordinate the GFSC.

With the growth of consumers environmental awareness and life level, consumers' requirements for green and high quality food are growing. In recently years, to increase consumers' perceived trustworthiness on the product greenness and quality levels, stakeholders in green food supply chain (hereafter, GFSC) start to adopt the blockchain-based traceability system (hereafter, BLTS). For investors, they need to know the investment conditions and how to coordinate the GFSC.

(1) When the revenue-sharing coefficient is less than three-fourths and higher then a certain vaule, the cost-sharing and revenue-sharing contract can make the GFSC coordinate. (2) The investment cost threshold of the BLTS has a positive relationship with the trustworthiness improvement levels of the green and quality information, the green degree of food products and the quality of food products. (3) In the proposed four investment situations, as the growth of consumers perceived credibility coefficient about the greenness information and the quality information, chain members' revenues will increase. In addition, comparing with co-investing the BLTS, benefits of chain members are lower than them in the sole investment model.

(1) The demand function we proposed can help chain members forecast market demand to support production or ordering decisions. (2) The investment decision policies can offer a theoretical reference for chain members to use the BLTS. (3) The CSRS will offer the theoretical reference for coordinating the supply chain after using the BLTS. Furthermore, our study method can be referenced by other scholars. (4) The study method can offer a method reference for researchers who do a similar discussion in a manufacturing supply chain. Although, our research cannot guide the industrial practices, it can serve as a reference of the similar research in industry.