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The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect on the cost of capital of increased disclosure that reduces information asymmetry among market participants.

This study uses the decision to regularly hold open (closed) conference calls pre‐Reg FD as a proxy for a commitment to the policy of public (selective) disclosure and a cross‐sectional research design to examine the associations between open/closed conference calls and three proxies for firms' cost of capital (i.e. bid‐ask spreads, share turnover, and implied costs of capital).

The results show that firms that commit to open calls exhibit lower relative bid‐ask spreads, lower implied costs of capital, and higher share turnover than firms that commit to closed calls.

The findings suggest that increased disclosure that “levels the playing field” for small investors benefits investors as a whole by improving firms' market liquidity and reducing the cost of capital.

This study contributes to existing literature on the association between corporate disclosure and firms' cost of capital.

The purpose of this paper is to examine critically the different influences of open/closed innovation on employees’ performance.

The paper takes into account the different influence of open and closed innovation on the performance of employees. Some previous literature was reviewed and the quantitative method used a structured questionnaire to collect primary data from participants.

The results indicated that open innovation was more influential on the performance of employees than closed innovation. It also appeared that the case study organization uses the open innovation approach in the investments department to attract more clients and investments and thus increase its benefits.

The paper presents a critical account of differences in the influence on employees’ performance between open and closed innovation; it also takes into account the pros and cons of both aspects and their influence on the overall performance of the organization, putting into perspective the recommendations for the best approach to guarantee a good orientation within the internal environment of the organization. Finally, it helps in understanding the best approach to attract talent and creativity to the organization.

It is expected that the current research will offer guidance to organizations in Jordan to draw up plans for effective management of innovative approaches both internally and externally. It highlights the practice of open innovation and its role in attracting talent to the organization, to boost employees’ performance.

The purpose of this paper is to present a coordinated control strategy for stable walking of biped robot with heterogeneous legs (BRHL), which consists of artificial leg (AL) and intelligent bionic leg (IBL).

The original concentrated control in common biped robot system is replaced by a master‐slave dual‐leg coordinated control. P‐type open/closed‐loop iterative learning control is used to realize the time‐varying gait tracking for IBL to AL.

The new control architecture can simplify gait planning scheme of BRHL system with complicated closed‐chain mechanism and mixed driving mode.

Designing and constructing a suitable magneto‐rheological damper can greatly improve the control performance of IBL.

Master‐slave coordination strategy is suitable for BRHL stable walking control.

The concepts and methods of dual‐leg coordination have not been explicitly proposed in single biped robot control research before. Master‐slave coordinated control strategy is suitable for complicated BRHL.

A very important concern of physical distribution managers is deciding the location of warehouses (distribution centres or depots). It is, therefore, not surprising that this location problem has been receiving considerable research attention and indeed, some impact has been made in actual industrial warehouse location decisions. The interested reader is referred to the expository articles, which describe both the theoretical developments and some practical applications of the theory.

The purpose of this paper is to present a design sensitivity analysis continuum formulation for the cross-section properties of thin-walled laminated composite beams. These properties are expressed as integrals based on the cross-section geometry, on the warping functions for torsion, on shear bending and shear warping, and on the individual stiffness of the laminates constituting the cross-section.

In order to determine its properties, the cross-section geometry is modeled by quadratic isoparametric finite elements. For design sensitivity calculations, the cross-section is modeled throughout design elements to which the element sensitivity equations correspond. Geometrically, the design elements may coincide with the laminates that constitute the cross-section.

The developed formulation is based on the concept of adjoint system, which suffers a specific adjoint warping for each of the properties depending on warping. The lamina orientation and the laminate thickness are selected as design variables.

The developed formulation can be applied in a unified way to open, closed or hybrid cross-sections.

The purpose of this research is to show that upward mobility of female academics in regular selection procedures is evolving extremely slowly, especially in The Netherlands. This paper aims at a more profound understanding of professorial recruitment and selection procedures in relation to gender differences at Dutch universities.

This paper explores the recruitment of university professors as a gendered process and is mainly based on the analysis of selection committee reports between 1999‐2003 from six large Dutch universities (n=682).

The research findings give a clear indication of gender differences in selection and recruitment procedures. Although not in all disciplines, the paper observes a disparity in the percentages of male and female applicants who were successful in the selection procedure. There is no confirmation of the predicted relationship with the nature of the procedure (open/closed), but there is a correlation with the number of women on the committee.

As it was not possible to make any pronouncements about the quality of the applicants, a strict measurement of gender bias is not possible.

The results show that academic disciplines are gendered in a different way, requiring different measures at the institutional and individual levels.

This is the first paper on recruitment and selection procedures that takes into account disciplinary differences and factors such as the number of applicants for each professorship and the recruitment potential by gender.

The flexibility of batch process enables its wide application in fine-chemical, pharmaceutical and semi-conductor industries, whilst its complexity necessitates control performance monitoring to ensure high operation efficiency. This paper proposes a data-driven approach to carry out controller performance monitoring within batch based on linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) method.

A linear time-varying LQG method is proposed to obtain the joint covariance benchmark for the stochastic part of batch process input/output. From historical golden operation batch, linear time-varying (LTV) system and noise models are identified based on generalized observer Markov parameters realization.

Open/closed loop input and output data are applied to identify the process model as well as the disturbance model, both in Markov parameter form. Then the optimal covariance of joint input and output can be obtained by the LQG method. The Hotelling's Tˆ2 control chart can be established to monitor the controller.

(1) An observer Markov parameter approach to identify the time-varying process and noise models from both open and closed loop data, (2) a linear time-varying LQG optimal control law to obtain the optimal benchmark covariance of joint input and output and (3) a joint input and output multivariate control chart based on Hotelling's T² statistic for controller performance monitoring.

The use of queueing network models was stimulated by the appearance (1975) of the exact product form solution of a class of open, closed and mixed queueing networks obeying the local balance principle and solved, a few years later, by the popular mean value analysis algorithm (1980). Since then, research efforts have been produced to approximate solutions for non-exponential services and non-pure random mechanisms in customer processing and routing. The purpose of this paper is to examine the suitability of modeling choices and solution approaches consolidated in other domains with respect to two key logistic processes in container terminals.

In particular, the analytical solution of queueing networks is assessed for the vessel arrival-departure process and the container internal transfer process with respect to a real terminal of pure transshipment.

Numerical experiments show the extent to which a decomposition-based approximation, under fixed or state-dependent arrival rates, may be suitable for the approximate analysis of the queueing network models.

The limitation of adopting exponential service time distributions and Poisson flows is highlighted.

Comparisons with a simulation-based solution deliver numerical evidence on the companion use of simulation in the daily practice of managing operations in a finite-time horizon under complex policies.

Discussion of some open modeling issues and encouraging results provide some guidelines on future research efforts and/or suitable adaption to container terminal logistics of the large body of techniques and algorithms available nowadays for supporting long-run decisions.

Treatment of coeliac disease (CD) is essentially dietary and requires permanent changes in dietary habits. Gluten‐free diet compliance affects every aspect of an individual's quality of life. This paper aims to analyse the difficulties associated with the food practices tried and reported by CD patients and their health and quality of life.

A questionnaire with open, closed and multiple choice questions adapted from an already validated instrument was administered to a sample of 105 CD patients. The inclusion criteria were patients diagnosed with CD living in Distrito Federal (DF) who agreed to participate in the study.

The greatest concerns of CD patients were eating out (44.23 per cent), having to read food labels (50.00 per cent), believing that foods are not safe (52.88 per cent) and not having dietary alternatives (56.44 per cent). Some (39.42 per cent) patients have no difficulty following the diet, 42.3 per cent have some difficulty and 18.27 per cent find it very difficult to follow the diet.

This study discloses some of the social difficulties faced by CD patients, such as eating with relatives and friends, and discusses the impact of these challenges on their quality of life. The data show that information can help CD patients to maintain their quality of life.

This paper aims to focus on real-world mobile systems, and thus propose relevant contribution to the special issue on “Real-world mobile robot systems”. This work on 3D laser semantic mobile mapping and particle filter localization dedicated for robot patrolling urban sites is elaborated with a focus on parallel computing application for semantic mapping and particle filter localization. The real robotic application of patrolling urban sites is the goal; thus, it has been shown that crucial robotic components have reach high Technology Readiness Level (TRL).

Three different robotic platforms equipped with different 3D laser measurement system were compared. Each system provides different data according to the measured distance, density of points and noise; thus, the influence of data into final semantic maps has been compared. The realistic problem is to use these semantic maps for robot localization; thus, the influence of different maps into particle filter localization has been elaborated. A new approach has been proposed for particle filter localization based on 3D semantic information, and thus, the behavior of particle filter in different realistic conditions has been elaborated. The process of using proposed robotic components for patrolling urban site, such as the robot checking geometrical changes of the environment, has been detailed.

The focus on real-world mobile systems requires different points of view for scientific work. This study is focused on robust and reliable solutions that could be integrated with real applications. Thus, new parallel computing approach for semantic mapping and particle filter localization has been proposed. Based on the literature, semantic 3D particle filter localization has not yet been elaborated; thus, innovative solutions for solving this issue have been proposed. Recently, a semantic mapping framework that was already published was developed. For this reason, this study claimed that the authors’ applied studies during real-world trials with such mapping system are added value relevant for this special issue.

The main problem is the compromise between computer power and energy consumed by heavy calculations, thus our main focus is to use modern GPGPU, NVIDIA PASCAL parallel processor architecture. Recent advances in GPGPUs shows great potency for mobile robotic applications, thus this study is focused on increasing mapping and localization capabilities by improving the algorithms. Current limitation is related with the number of particles processed by a single processor, and thus achieved performance of 500 particles in real-time is the current limitation. The implication is that multi-GPU architectures for increasing the number of processed particle can be used. Thus, further studies are required.

The research focus is related to real-world mobile systems; thus, practical aspects of the work are crucial. The main practical application is semantic mapping that could be used for many robotic applications. The authors claim that their particle filter localization is ready to integrate with real robotic platforms using modern 3D laser measurement system. For this reason, the authors claim that their system can improve existing autonomous robotic platforms. The proposed components can be used for detection of geometrical changes in the scene; thus, many practical functionalities can be applied such as: detection of cars, detection of opened/closed gate, etc. […] These functionalities are crucial elements of the safe and security domain.

Improvement of safe and security domain is a crucial aspect of modern society. Protecting critical infrastructure plays an important role, thus introducing autonomous mobile platforms capable of supporting human operators of safe and security systems could have a positive impact if viewed from many points of view.

This study elaborates the novel approach of particle filter localization based on 3D data and semantic mapping. This original work could have a great impact on the mobile robotics domain, and thus, this study claims that many algorithmic and implementation issues were solved assuming real-task experiments. The originality of this work is influenced by the use of modern advanced robotic systems being a relevant set of technologies for proper evaluation of the proposed approach. Such a combination of experimental hardware and original algorithms and implementation is definitely an added value.