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The study investigates the relationship between quality of work life (QWL), work–life balance (WLB) and quality of life (QoL), with reference to corporate social responsibility (CSR) approaches used at the Shangri-La, B&B and Rui hotel companies.

The study draws on the literature and on comparative case study analysis of three very different companies.

The findings indicate that CSR practices have a positive impact on QoL, regardless of company size, location or type of initiative, and that they underline the importance of education as a key to success.

This article concentrates on the concept of QoL and explores different applications of the idea in various environments.

This study aims to outline the rationale for the theme issue question and introduces articles written by MBA students at Les Roches Global Hospitality Education, Switzerland. The issue provides best practice examples of corporate social responsibility in hospitality settings and explores the outcomes and implications for employee quality of life.

This study provides a descriptive review of the theme issue approach and the ways in which industry case study examples have been integrated with a review of literature to analyse the ways in which corporate social responsibility initiatives are increasingly focusing on work–life balance and quality of life considerations.

During their analysis and case study research, the MBA group found that the provision for quality of life outcomes has been enhanced in recent years by hospitality and tourism firms, and that since the onset of the pandemic, momentum has been building. Yet, a bigger and more complex question relates to work–life balance – a critical component of quality of life outcomes – and whether it is transferable to society as a whole.

The aim of this theme issue is to explore the linkages between work–life balance, corporate social responsibility and the concept of circular economic thinking and how this impacts on quality of life. The authors argue that by better understanding these relationships, it is possible to contribute to the longer-term goal of sustainability and sustainable development. In part, this is because work life provisions are not only applicable at the micro level (firms) but also at the macro level (society), the latter through enhanced focus on circular economic thinking and practice.

This study aims to summarize and review the contributions made to the theme issue and observe that synergistic relationships between micro and macro levels of corporate social responsibility initiatives are needed to enable quality of life measures to be embedded in circular economic thinking and practice.

This study reviews the contributions made by each article in the theme issue with reference to case study examples of contemporary corporate social responsibility initiatives implemented in hospitality and tourism settings.

This theme issue sought to showcase how work–life balance provisions help to stabilize employee turnover, and that further to this, quality of life enhancements via corporate social responsibility initiatives at the micro or company level can stimulate circular economic strategies at the macro or societal level. This can play a key role in securing the Sustainable Development Goals, especially Goal number 3 (good health and well-being).

This summary argues that enhanced corporate social responsibility initiatives could shorten the journey to sustainability by focusing on improving societal and personal levels of quality of life. Only then will work–life balance measurements become more transferable from micro to macro perspectives through circular economic thinking and action. Hence, it is clear that work–life provisions are powerful drivers in the journey toward sustainability.

Gallic acid is a substance that is widely found in nature. Initially, it was only used as a corrosion inhibitor to retard the rate of corrosion of metals. In recent years, with intensive research by scholars, the modification of coatings containing gallic acid has become a hot topic in the field of metal protection. This study aims to summarize the various preparation methods of gallic acid and its research progress in corrosion inhibitors and coatings, as well as related studies using quantum chemical methods to assess the predicted corrosion inhibition effects and to systematically describe the prospects and current status of gallic acid applications in the field of metal corrosion inhibition and protection.

First, the various methods of preparation of gallic acid in industry are understood. Second, the corrosion inhibition principles and research progress of gallic acid as a metal corrosion inhibitor are presented. Then, the corrosion inhibition principles and research progress of gallic acid involved in the synthesis and modification of various rust conversion coatings, nano-coatings and organic resin coatings are described. After that, studies related to the evaluation and prediction of gallic acid corrosion inhibition on metals by quantum chemical methods are presented. Finally, new research ideas on gallic acid in the field of corrosion inhibition and protection of metals are summarized.

Gallic acid can be used as a corrosion inhibitor or coating in metal protection.

There is a lack of research on the synergistic improvement of gallic acid and other substances.

The specific application of gallic acid in the field of metal protection was summarized, and the future research focus was put forward.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper systematically expounds on the research progress of gallic acid in the field of metal protection for the first time and provides new ideas and directions for future research.

The authors proposed a new method of fast time delay measurement for integrated pulsar pulse profiles in X-ray pulsar-based navigation (XNAV). As a basic observation of exact orientation in XNAV, time of arrival (TOA) can be obtained by time delay measurement of integrated pulsar pulse profiles. Therefore, the main purpose of the paper is to establish a method with fast time delay measurement on the condition of limited spacecraft’s computing resources.

Given that the third-order cumulants can suppress the Gaussian noise and reduce calculation to achieve precise and fast positioning in XNAV, the proposed method sets the third-order auto-cumulants of standard pulse profile, the third-order cross-cumulants of the standard and the observed pulse profile as basic variables and uses the cross-correlation function of these two variables to estimate the time delay of integrated pulsar pulse profiles.

The proposed method is simple, fast and has high accuracy in time delay measurement for integrated pulsar pulse profiles. The result shows that compared to the bispectrum algorithm, the method improves the precision of the time delay measurement and reduced the computation time significantly as well.

To improve the performance of time delay estimation in XNAV systems, the authors proposed a novel method for XNAV to achieve precise and fast positioning.

Compared to the bispectrum algorithm, the proposed method can improve the speed and precision of the TOA’s calculation effectively by using the cross-correlation function of integrated pulsar pulse profile’s third-order cumulants instead of Fourier transform in bispectrum algorithm.

Water-lubricated bearings can significantly reduce the pollution to environment because the traditional oil lubricant is replaced by water in the bearings. The ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) has proven to be effective and reliable for the manufacturing of water-lubricated bearings. However, limited work has been done to address the improvement of the tribological performance of the UHMWPE-based water-lubricated bearings using surface texture processing. This paper aims to investigate the effects of bar-grooved surface on the tribological performance improvement of UHMWPE-based water-lubricated bearings.

For the first time, the bar grooves were processed on the surfaces of UHMWPE-based water-lubricated bearings. The CBZ-1 friction and wear tester have been used to test the wear and friction performance of the bearing samples. The LI laser interference surface contour graph and the digital microscope have been used to measure the surface morphology of the specimens. The tribological characteristics of the tested bearings were analyzed.

With bar grooves added on the surfaces of the specimens, the friction coefficient of the specimens were lower than that of the specimens without surface texture processing; the wear quantity of the two kinds of specimens were almost the same; by using the LI laser interference surface contour graph and the digital microscope to measure the surface morphology of the specimens, the furrows of the specimens with bar grooves were narrower and shallower than that of the specimens without bar grooves.

The paper implicates that the surface texture processing using bar grooves can reduce the friction coefficient and prolong the service life of the water-lubricated bearings in practical applications.

This paper fulfills an identified need to provide important theoretical and experimental support to the design of water-lubricated bearings in practical applications.

The severe friction and wear of the spindle in a cotton picker often occur in a picking cotton, which affects the spindle lifetime and its efficiency of picking cottons. This paper aims to investigate the effect of an electroless nick coating on the spindle performances to avoid its abnormal phenomena.

First, it is coated on the surface of the test specimen with the material same as that of the spindle. Then, the friction coefficient and wear for the coating are measured under oil lubrication to evaluate its effect in improving the tribological performances for the spindle.

The stabilized friction coefficient of the electroless nick coating decreases with increasing reciprocating frequency of specimen and increasing applied load. There exists a critical coating thickness yielding the smallest friction coefficient. Moreover, this coating has a property of the smaller friction coefficient in comparison with a hard chromium coating.

The research about the electroless nick effect on the spindle’s tribological performances is not found yet to date. To avoid severe friction and wear of the spindle, this paper investigated how the reciprocating frequency of specimen, applied load and coating thickness affect the spindle’s tribological performances. The associated conclusions can provide a reference to enhance the spindle lifetime and its transmission efficiency.

This paper aims to investigate an identification strategy for the nonlinear state-space model (SSM) in the presence of an unknown output time-delay. The equations to estimate the unknown model parameters and output time-delay are derived simultaneously in the proposed strategy.

The unknown integer-valued time-delay is processed as a latent variable which is uniformly distributed in a priori known range. The estimations of the unknown time-delay and model parameters are both realized using the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm, which has a good performance in dealing with latent variable issues. Moreover, the particle filter (PF) with an unknown time-delay is introduced to calculated the Q-function of the EM algorithm.

Although amounts of effective approaches for nonlinear SSM identification have been developed in the literature, the problem of time-delay is not considered in most of them. The time-delay is commonly existed in industrial scenario and it could cause extra difficulties for industrial process modeling. The problem of unknown output time-delay is considered in this paper, and the validity of the proposed approach is demonstrated through the numerical example and a two-link manipulator system.

The novel approach to identify the nonlinear SSM in the presence of an unknown output time-delay with EM algorithm is put forward in this work.

The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of different trade modes on the electricity market.

A linear model between power units' output and their bidding prices is presented and optimal models to minimize the purchase power cost of power grid companies are presented, applying static games and dynamic games, respectively. Then the relation between power generation amount and units' bidding price is settled by using difference methods. In addition, optimization models are established to optimize profits of units at discriminatory bidding or uniform marginal price applying static game and dynamic game. Finally, the economic benefits and fair competition are compared and analyzed.

If impartiality is emphasized, the detailed history bidding information should not be opened. Also, it is fairer but difficult to control units' speculative behavior at uniform marginal price.

A supposition has been made that all participants are rational.

The paper presents useful advice for improving the trade mode of the electricity market.

Power units' bidding models and strategies are presented at discriminatory bidding price or at uniform marginal price applying non‐cooperation static game and dynamic game, respectively.