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This paper aims to conduct research to examine the impact of Internet adoption on the productivity of firms in non-urban China.

The study investigates the impact of Internet adoption on firms' productivity in non-urban China. More specifically, the authors conduct a comprehensive and rigorous study while addressing concerns related to firm-level endogeneity by utilizing firm-level panel data. Information on firms in non-urban areas is collected from China's Annual Surveys of Industrial Firm data. For robustness, the authors implement the instrumental variables approach and propensity score matching estimations to strengthen the evidence for suggestive causal inference. Furthermore, the authors also examine the mechanisms and group heterogeneity.

Evidence indicate that the adoption of Internet technology positively impacts the total factor productivity (TFP) of firms in non-urban areas. According to the heterogeneity analysis, the marginal effect of Internet adoption is more significant and pronounced for labor-intensive, private and small-scale manufacturing firms. Moreover, additional evidence suggest that Internet adoption is beneficial for non-urban firms in expanding their business and enlarging their market. It has also been found that the positive effect of Internet adoption on firms' TFP is amplified by expanding public infrastructure.

The current study supports that the informatization strategy benefits non-urban firms and promotes rural revitalization. The findings suggest the possibility of firms borrowing market size from the closest cities and supporting the ongoing policies of investing in broadband infrastructure to narrow the urban-rural digital gap in China.

The purpose of this paper is to study a new pathway out of poverty for rural areas through cultivating non-farm employment: the new media utilization.

The authors utilize two waves of nationwide micro survey data in China, China General Social Survey 2005 and 2013, to investigate the impacts of new media coverage on non-farm employment and earnings in rural China with the ordered probit model and instrument variables.

The authors find that promotion of new media coverage can significantly enhance rural non-farm employment in China by 10-20 percent and ultimately increase earnings for rural residents. The findings provide new evidence for the new media as a potential newly emerging pathway out of poverty for rural areas. The conclusions are robust regarding a variety of controls and model specifications, evaluations with alternative measures, examinations within different subsamples, and estimations with constructed pseudo panels.

Encouragement of new media coverage in rural China not only can improve the rural non-farm employment and living standards but also can contribute toward narrowing the differences between urban and rural areas, thereby balancing regional development.

It contributes to the existing literature through primarily empirically investigating the economic functions of new media in rural China.

Current virtual simulation platforms provide various tools to generate non-immersive simulation processes purposefully in different domains. The generated simulation processes are adopted for analysis, presentation, demonstration and verification. In the virtual maintenance domain, this intuitive and visual method has benefitted product maintainability design and improvement. Generating an ideal and reasonable non-immersive virtual maintenance simulation is always time-consuming because of the complicated human operations and logical relationships involved. This study aims to propose a semiautomatic approach to increase efficiency in non-immersive virtual maintenance simulation implementation.

The methodology analyzes the general catalogs of common maintenance tasks and explores the corresponding secondary development approaches of simulation tools that can achieve motion simulation in virtual environments, by focusing on the diversity, complexity and uncertainty in non-immersive virtual simulation process generation. Afterward, a single virtual human motion can be generated by controlling the parameters and indices of the simulation tools. Subsequently, all of the generated single motions are connected logically to simulate the entire maintenance process.

Instead of selecting various tools, such as that in a traditional method, the proposed methodology analyzes and integrates the necessary basic parameters considering the characteristics of virtual maintenance simulation for a target maintenance activity.

The user can control the predefined parameters to generate the simulation combining several other simple operations in virtual environments. Consequently, the methodology decreases simulation tool selection and logic consideration and increases efficiency to a certain extent in non-immersive virtual maintenance simulation generation.

Purpose – Intersections are hazardous locations and to improve their safety we need to understand the factors contributing to crashes at these locations and provide evidence-based recommendations to reduce them. This chapter provides a summary of the findings on infrastructure-related factors contributing to crashes at urban and rural intersections and some discussions on the implications and potential countermeasures.

Approach – A review of the literature on intersection crashes was performed to identify the infrastructure-related crash-contributing factors. Some discussions on the implications and potential countermeasures are then provided.

Findings – The factors contributing to road crashes are diverse and complex. While the safety effects of a few factors (e.g., exposure and speed) are relatively consistent, many factors have different impacts on crash frequency and severity (e.g., types of intersection) and different impacts on urban and rural intersections (e.g., bus stops).

Research Implications – More studies are needed on developing a stronger theoretical or conceptual foundation on the effects of roadway designs and traffic controls on different dimensions of safety (e.g., exposure, frequency, severity, etc.), types of crashes (e.g., head-on, rear-end, etc.) or road users involved (e.g., drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, etc.).

Practical Implications – Transport engineers need to be aware that some treatments may have different effects on different crash types and road users involved. Even though the overall safety may be improved by the treatments designed, they need to consider and mitigate any unintended consequences to satisfy the Pareto improvement principle and the social equity criterion.

The purpose of this study is to present the state of the art for fiber Bragg grating (FBG) acceleration sensing technologies from two aspects: the principle of the measurement dimension and the principle of the sensing configuration. Some commercial sensors have also been introduced and future work in this field has also been discussed. This paper could provide an important reference for the research community.

This review is to present the state of the art for FBG acceleration sensing technologies from two aspects: the principle of the measurement dimension (one-dimension and multi-dimension) and the principle of the sensing configuration (beam type, radial vibration type, axial vibration type and other composite structures).

The current research on developing FBG acceleration sensors is mainly focused on the sensing method, the construction and design of the elastic structure and the design of a new information detection method. This paper hypothesizes that in the future, the following research trends will be strengthened: common single-mode fiber grating of the low cost and high utilization rate; high sensitivity and strength special fiber grating; multi-core fiber grating for measuring single-parameter multi-dimensional information or multi-parameter information; demodulating equipment of low cost, small volume and high sampling frequency.

The principle of the measurement dimension and principle of the sensing configuration for FBG acceleration sensors have been introduced, which could provide an important reference for the research community.

This paper aims to prevent gasket sealing failure in engineering, accurately predict gasket life, extend system life and improve sealing reliability. The accelerated life test method of flexible graphite composite–reinforced gaskets is established, the life distribution law of flexible graphite composite–reinforced gaskets is revealed, and the life prediction method of flexible graphite composite–reinforced gaskets with different allowable leakage rates is proposed, which can provide a reference for the life prediction of other types of gaskets.

In this study, flexible graphite composite–reinforced gaskets were tested for long-term high-temperature sealing performance on a multi-sample gasket accelerated life test rig. The data were also analyzed using the least squares method and the K-S hypothesis calibration method. A gasket time-dependent leakage model and an accelerated life model were also developed. Constant stress-accelerated life tests were conducted on flexible graphite composite–reinforced gaskets. On this basis, a gasket life prediction method at different allowable leakage rates was proposed.

The life distribution law of flexible graphite composite–reinforced gaskets is revealed. The results show that the life of the gasket obeys the Weibull distribution. The time-correlated leakage model and accelerated life model of the gasket were established. And the accelerated life test method of the flexible graphite composite–reinforced gasket was established. The life distribution parameters, accelerated life model parameters and life estimates of gaskets were obtained through tests. On this basis, a gasket life prediction method under different leakage rates was proposed, which can be used as a reference for other types of gaskets.

The research in this paper can better provide guidance for the use and replacement of gaskets in the project, which is also very meaningful for predicting the leakage condition of gaskets in the bolted flange connection system and taking corresponding control measures to reduce energy waste and pollution and ensure the safe operation of industrial equipment.

A multi-specimen gasket-accelerated life test device has been developed, and the design parameters of the device have reached the international advanced level. The life distribution law of the flexible graphite composite–reinforced gasket was revealed. The accelerated life test method for the flexible graphite composite–reinforced gasket was established. The life prediction method of the flexible graphite composite–reinforced gasket under different allowable leakage rates was proposed.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-08-2023-0254/

Purpose – This chapter provides an overview of issues related to analysing crash data characterised by excess zero responses and/or long tails and how to overcome these problems. Factors affecting excess zeros and/or long tails are discussed, as well as how they can bias the results when traditional distributions or models are used. Recently introduced multi-parameter distributions and models developed specifically for such datasets are described. The chapter is intended to guide readers on how to properly analyse crash datasets with excess zeros and long or heavy tails.

Methodology – Key references from the literature are summarised and discussed, and two examples detailing how multi-parameter distributions and models compare with the negative binomial distribution and model are presented.

Findings – In the event that the characteristics of the crash dataset cannot be changed or modified, recently introduced multi-parameter distributions and models can be used efficiently to analyse datasets characterised by excess zero responses and/or long tails. They offer a simpler way to interpret the relationship between crashes and explanatory variables, while providing better statistical performance in terms of goodness-of-fit and predictive capabilities.

Research implications – Multi-parameter models are expected to become the next series of traditional distributions and models. The research on these models is still ongoing.

Practical implications – With the advancement of computing power and Bayesian simulation methods, multi-parameter models can now be easily coded and applied to analyse crash datasets characterised by excess zero responses and/or long tails.

In this paper, we investigate whether internal control and whether corporate life cycle would affect firm performance in the emerging markets of China.

We use Chen, Dong, Han, and Zhou’s (2013) internal control index on the effectiveness of internal control and Dickinson’s (2011) definition on firm life cycle. We use multivariate regression analysis.

We find that the internal control improves corporate performance. When dividing firm life cycle into five stages: introduction, growth, mature, shake-out and decline, we find that the impacts of internal control on firm performance vary with different stages. The positive impact of internal control on firm performance is more significant in maturity and shake-out stages than other stages.

Our findings would have implications for the regulators and policy makers with regards to the importance of internal control in corporate governance and the effectiveness of implementing standards and guidelines on internal control in public firms.

In addition, our findings on the various roles of internal control at different stages of firm life cycle would help managers and board of directors find more focus in risk management and board monitoring, respectively.

Although the prior literature have examined the link between internal control, information quality and cost of equity capital (Ashbaugh-Skaife, Collins, Kinney, & LaFond, 2009; Ogneva, Subramanyam, & Raghunandan, 2007), our study would be the first attempt to investigate the link between internal control and firm performance during different stages of firm life cycles.

There are many investigations in design methodologies, but there are also divergences and convergences as there are so many points of view. This study aims to evaluate to corroborate and deepen other researchers’ findings, dissipate divergences and provide directing to future work on the subject from a methodological and convergent perspective.

This study analyzes the previous reviews (about 15 reviews) and based on the consensus and the classifications provided by these authors, a significant sample of research is analyzed in the design for additive manufacturing (DFAM) theme (approximately 80 articles until June of 2017 and approximately 280–300 articles until February of 2019) through descriptive statistics, to corroborate and deepen the findings of other researchers.

Throughout this work, this paper found statistics indicating that the main areas studied are: multiple objective optimizations, execution of the design, general DFAM and DFAM for functional performance. Among the main conclusions: there is a lack of innovation in the products developed with the methodologies, there is a lack of exhaustivity in the methodologies, there are few efforts to include environmental aspects in the methodologies, many of the methods include economic and cost evaluation, but are not very explicit and broad (sustainability evaluation), it is necessary to consider a greater variety of functions, among other conclusions

The novelty in this study is the methodology. It is very objective, comprehensive and quantitative. The starting point is not the case studies nor the qualitative criteria, but the figures and quantities of methodologies. The main contribution of this review article is to guide future work on the subject from a methodological and convergent perspective and this article provides a broad database with articles containing information on many issues to make decisions: design methodology; optimization; processes, selection of parts and materials; cost and product management; mechanical, electrical and thermal properties; health and environmental impact, etc.