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The purpose of this study is to discuss Kalia, Basu and Kundu's (KBK’s) paper's motivation, findings and contributions and suggest further development.

This paper is to discuss the meta-analysis of board characteristics and demand for audit Quqality by KBK.

KBK paper is well motivated and makes new contributions to the literature. Future research can expand the sample and examine the moderating effects of institutional factors such as ownership structure, regulatory reforms and country-level investor protection and legal enforcement.

Based on the review of KBK’ spaper, this study suggests that future research should expand the sample and examine the moderating effects of institutional factors such as ownership structure, regulatory reforms and country-level investor protection and legal enforcement.

The purpose of this article is to discuss issues associated with the application big data analytics for decision-making about the introduction of new technologies in the textile industry in the developing world.

The leader–member exchange theoretical framework to consider the nature of the relationships between owners and followers to identify the potential issues that affect decision-making was used. However, decisions to adopt such environmentally friendly biotechnologies are hampered by the lack of awareness amongst owners, intergenerational conflict and cultural impediments.

The article found that the limited use of this valuable technological resource is linked to several factors, mainly cultural, generational and educational factors. The article exposes two key new technologies that could help the industry reduce its carbon footprint.

The study suggests more awareness raising amongst plant owners and greater empowerment of new generations in decision-making in the industry. This study, therefore, bears significant implications for environmental sustainability in the developing world where the textile industry is one of the major polluting industries affecting water quality and human health.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the performance of a fastener composite coating system, sherardized (SD) coating/zinc-aluminum (ZA) coating whether it has good performance in marine environment.

In this paper, SD coating was fabricated on fastener surface by solid-diffusion method. ZA coating was fabricated by thermal sintering method. Corrosion behaviours of the composite coating were investigated with potentiodynamic polarization curves, open circuit potential and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy methods.

Neutral salt spray (NSS) and deep sea exposure tests revealed that the composite coating had excellent corrosion resistance. Polarization curve tests showed that corrosion current density of the sample with composite coating was significantly decreased, indicating an effective corrosion protection of the composite coating. OCP measurement of the sample in NaCl solution demonstrated that the composite coating had the best cathodic protection effect. The good corrosion resistance of the composite coating was obtained by the synergy of SD and ZA coating.

SD/ZA coating can be used in marine environment to prolong the life of carbon steel fastener.

SD/ZA composite coating can reduce the risk and accident caused by failed fastener, avoid huge economic losses.

A new kind of composite coating was explored to protect the carbon steel fastener in marine environment. And the composite coating has the long-term anti-corrosion performance both in simulated and marine environment test.

Recently, the double joint photographic experts group (JPEG) compression detection tasks have been paid much more attention in the field of Web image forensics. Although there are several useful methods proposed for double JPEG compression detection when the quantization matrices are different in the primary and secondary compression processes, it is still a difficult problem when the quantization matrices are the same. Moreover, those methods for the different or the same quantization matrices are implemented in independent ways. The paper aims to build a new unified framework for detecting the doubly JPEG compression.

First, the Y channel of JPEG images is cut into 8 × 8 nonoverlapping blocks, and two groups of features that characterize the artifacts caused by doubly JPEG compression with the same and the different quantization matrices are extracted on those blocks. Then, the Riemannian manifold learning is applied for dimensionality reduction while preserving the local intrinsic structure of the features. Finally, a deep stack autoencoder network with seven layers is designed to detect the doubly JPEG compression.

Experimental results with different quality factors have shown that the proposed approach performs much better than the state-of-the-art approaches.

To verify the integrity and authenticity of Web images, the research of double JPEG compression detection is increasingly paid more attentions.

This paper aims to propose a unified framework to detect the double JPEG compression in the scenario whether the quantization matrix is different or not, which means this approach can be applied in more practical Web forensics tasks.

This study aims to examine whether, in the opinion of patients selected in 13 hospitals of Hubei province, China, hospitals are smoke free. Patients were also asked whether their physicians had inquired about their smoking status.

Patients were recruited through an intercept method (i.e. stopped by the interviewer while in the hospital); data were collected through interviews, with a response rate of 96.1 percent.

Among the intercepted patients, 48.3 percent reported having seen people smoking in hospitals; 22.3 percent had seen a doctor and/or nurse smoking; 23.8 percent had smelled tobacco in hospitals; 68.4 percent reported having seen “no‐smoking” signs in hospital settings; 42.6 percent reported having been asked about smoking status in their latest visit to a doctor and 23.8 percent reported receiving tobacco cessation counseling. Compared to hospitals in large cities, patients from medium/small city hospitals reported significantly higher levels of cigarette smoking among physicians, and poorer implementation of regulations for a smoking‐free hospital, and less smoking cessation counseling by physicians.

Findings of this study point to the need for greater efforts to be made in promoting a smoke free environment in hospitals, as well as encouraging physicians to provide more smoking cessation counseling to smoking patients, particularly physicians in small and medium hospitals.

The study explores extant knowledge on the nature of the relationship between internal and external corporate governance mechanisms, particularly board characteristics and audit quality, respectively, while also investigating how the relationship varies across geographies.

The extant knowledge is synthesized using a meta-analysis, which is conducted using a sample of 56 empirical studies from publications of varying grades. The studies span over 25 years (1996–2021) and cover 147 empirical samples (343,787 firm-year observations) across more than 20 countries. The dependent variable is audit fees, and the independent variable captures 12 different measures of board characteristics.

Overall, the results reveal a positive association between board characteristics and audit fees, indicating complementarity between governance mechanisms. Effect size analysis shows board characteristics, like size and independence, are positively associated with audit fees. However, heterogeneity is noted for some characteristics, and further analysis by geography (developed vs emerging countries) explains the heterogeneity.

This study helps multiple stakeholders like firms, shareholders, boards, regulators and policymakers in designing and strengthening governance frameworks.

Both governance and auditing literature benefit from identifying specific board characteristics that drive audit quality consistently across different institutional settings and samples. Heterogeneity analysis helps improve the understanding of contradictions documented in prior literature.

This meta-analysis is the first to explore the interplay between internal and external corporate governance mechanisms, with a focus on board characteristics and audit quality. The study provides valuable insights on how different governance mechanisms influence each other while highlighting, for the first time, how the interaction between governance mechanisms varies by a country's level of development.

The paper seeks to report data on cigarette smoking, anti‐smoking practices, physicians' receipt of anti‐smoking training, and the association between receipt of the training and anti‐smoking practice among physicians in Wuhan, China.

Participants were selected through the stratified random sampling method. The questionnaires were completed by the sampled physicians and the response rate of the survey was 98.1 percent.

Among the total sample, 11 percent were current smokers. Significantly more male physicians than female physicians were current smokers (31.6 vs 0.9 percent, p<0.001). In total, 41 percent of physicians always or often asked patients about smoking habits, and 61 percent of them often advised patients to quit. Receiving anti‐tobacco training significantly increased the likelihood for physicians to ask patients about smoking (odd ratio=2.55, p<0.001) and to advise patients against smoking (odd ratio=4.05, p<0.001) with and without controlling gender, age, education, type of hospital and medical services specialty.

More effort should be devoted to training for physicians with focus on anti‐smoking practice and smoking cessation counseling in addition to assist physicians themselves to quit smoking.

The findings of this study update the data regarding cigarette smoking among physicians in Wuhan, China, and their practice of anti‐tobacco counseling. It indicates that it is very important to provide the training regarding anti‐smoking counseling among physicians.

The purpose of this paper is to set out a study of a Mannich base, which was synthesized and used as an acidizing corrosion inhibitor first, and to the corrosion inhibitor mechanism.

A Mannich base, 1-phenyl-3-(1-pyrrolidinyl)-propanone (PHPP), was synthesized with acetophenone, pyrrolidine and formaldehyde at pH = approximately 2-3. The structure of PHPP was characterized by elemental analysis and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The corrosion inhibition of PHPP on N80 steel in 15 per cent hydrochloric acid (HCl) was studied by weight loss method, scanning electron microscope (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDAX), and the adsorption behavior of PHPP on the surface of N80 steel was discussed.

The results showed that the inhibition efficiency reached to 99.8 per cent and corrosion rate was 2.65 g·m-2·h-1 at 0.6 per cent of PHPP concentration in 15 per cent HCl, which indicated that PHPP presented excellent corrosion inhibition performance. The results of SEM and EDAX analysis showed that PHPP could be absorbed on the surface of N80 steel. The adsorption process of PHPP on the surface of N80 steel was chemisorption. This process was spontaneous and obeyed Langmuir adsorption isotherm.

It was found that PHPP presented excellent corrosion inhibition performance, and it is practicable to enhance oil production in oilfield development as a oil-well acidizing inhibitor. The study results can provide theoretical guidelines for the development of the inhibitor.

Following the standard practice of using nutrition claims to denote food functionality, this study empirically explores Chinese consumers’ willingness-to-pay for functional processed meat products by using three nutrition claims (namely “increased calcium,” “containing omega-3”, and “reduced salt”) made on pork sausages. It also aims to outline the typical characteristics of Chinese consumer segments based on preferences.

A choice-based choice experiment is utilized to investigate Chinese consumers’ valuation on attributes of interest regarding functional sausage products. First-hand data was collected in the two cities of Xi'an and Beijing.

There are market potentials for domestic and/or imported functional processed meat products among Chinese consumers. Nutrition claims made on pork sausages are appealing to Chinese consumers, and therefore, monetarily rewarded by them. Being imported from a more developed country of origin could both positively and negatively impact consumers’ WTP for nutrition claims made on pork sausages. Furthermore, specific functional modification strategies should be taken into account when addressing different segments of the Chinese market. In addition, regional impacts between Xi'an and Beijing are implied in terms of consumers’ valuation for functional pork sausages.

Limitations in the current study are mainly two folds. First, the WTP estimation magnitudes are subject to a hypothetical bias by using a stated preference approach. Second, this study only focuses on pork sausages to explore consumers’ perceptions and selects three nutrition claims among many other relevant options.

Implications are provided for meat marketers and for Chinese official food policymakers, such that promoting meat products with a nutrition claim is an attractive marketing strategy for foreign food manufacturers in China, and more reformulated meat products with better nutritional compositions should be allowed in the Chinese market.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this research is the first to fill in the literature blank on investigating the consumers’ valuation for functional meat in the emerging market of China. Because when taking Chinese consumers as a target market and evaluating their perceptions of food quality-related labeling and certifications, the existing literature is mainly limited to topics of product safety, organic/green products, and geographical origins. However, nutrition claims, as marketable credence attributes that associate closely to the main characteristics of the functional food products, have been explored to a much lesser extent among Chinese consumers.

This paper studies the effects of lottery preference on stock market participation at the macro level.

The authors use the abnormal search volume intensity for lottery-related keywords from the Baidu search engine to capture retail investors' lottery preference. To measure stock market participation, they use five different macro-level measures from various angles. They perform the time series regression analysis in their empirical study.

First, the validation tests show that the lottery preference index in this study is reasonable. Further, the authors find that lottery preference increases people's propensity to enter and trade in the stock market. Besides, they find that the effect on trading behavior is asymmetric, that is, high lottery preference has a more significant impact on trading behavior than low lottery preference. However, lottery preference has no significant effect on the stockholding.

This paper contributes to the growing literature that examines the determinants of stock market participation and the role of lottery/gambling preference in the financial market. It also provides direct and novel evidence for Statman's (2002) conclusions about the similarity of lottery players and stock traders.