Search results

The aim of this paper is to predict the in-vivo degradation behaviour of Mg-based implants through in-vitro immersion test.

A novel placement mode arming to mimic the in-vivo situation was investigated in this work. Specimens were mounted on bones and then immersed in dynamic Hank’s solution.

The degradation behaviour of the specimen’s two sides is unequal. The bottom side which clings to the bone was isolated from solution in the early stage. During the late immersion period, there was crevice corrosion appearing on the bottom side. Weight loss and mechanical properties of specimens were also affected by the placement mode.

Placement mode reported here have guiding significance for degradation behaviour of bio-implants in the clinical study.

Placement mode reported here have guiding significance for degradation behaviour of bio-implants in the clinical study.

A novel placement mode arming to mimic the in-vivo situation was investigated in this work, which was better fit the actual in vivo immersion situation.

This study examines whether manipulation in attributes of corporate narrative disclosures and the use of graphical representations can bias non-professional investors' judgment towards firms' future performance, in an emerging market context.

The authors conduct three different experiments with a 2 × 2 between-subjects design, using accounting and finance senior undergraduate students to proxy for the non-professional investors.

Results show that simple (more readable) disclosures improve non-professional investors' judgment towards firms' future performance. In addition, it is found that non-professional investors are prone to a recency effect from the intentional ordering of narrative information, when using complex (less readable) narratives. However, no primacy effect is found, when using simple (more readable) disclosures. The results further provide evidence that the inclusion of graphical representations, along with the manipulated narrative disclosures, can moderate the recency effect of information order, when using less readable and complex narrative disclosures.

The results reveal that although the content of corporate disclosures can be objective, neutral and relevant, manipulation in textual features and the use of graphical presentations, can interact to impact how non-professional investors perceive and process the disclosed information. This study provides an Egyptian evidence regarding this issue, as the majority of prior studies concentrate on developed capital markets. In addition, it contributes to prior studies evaluating the appropriateness of the Belief Adjustment Model predictions about the effect of textual presentation order on decision-making, by providing evidence from an emerging market.

Results attempt to increase the awareness of investors and encourage them to use multiple sources of information to avoid the probable bias that can result from management's manipulation of narratives. In addition, the study could be of interest to regulators and standard-setters, where the results reveal the need for guidelines and regulations to guide the disclosure of narrative information and the use of graphical information in corporate reports.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to examine the effect of two impression management strategies in narrative disclosures (readability and information order), along with the use of graphical representations, on non-professional investors' judgment in an emerging market, like Egypt.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how non-professional investors (NPIs) with varying levels of financial sophistication interpret and perceive corporate disclosures and management credibility, specifically risk factors, when those disclosures are presented in readable and less-readable formats.

The paper uses an online experiment to test hypotheses related to the effects of financial sophistication (measured) and readability (manipulated) on NPIs’ equity valuations and perceptions of management credibility (competence and trustworthiness).

Increased readability appears to counteract less-sophisticated NPIs’ conservatism in equity valuations, such that they are not statistically significantly different from more-sophisticated NPIs’ equity valuations. Further, less-sophisticated NPIs judge management as less competent when disclosures are less readable, while more-sophisticated NPIs judge management as more competent when disclosures are less readable.

The paper has important implications for the SEC’s regulations related to plain English requirements for risk factor and other corporate disclosures. Financial sophistication varies among NPIs, and readability appears to influence these individuals in different ways.

The SEC’s Concept Release (April 13, 2016) acknowledges the need to update and improve risk factor disclosure regulations. This study provides evidence that contributes to those decisions.

The paper extends the research on processing fluency, by examining readability of disclosures with a consistent tone (negative). The NPIs surveyed are directly representative of the population of interest for risk factor disclosure regulations.

IN the majority of cases, the performance of a new airscrew design is estimated by making use of other test results, already known, and which are recalculated for the particular case in question by applying the laws of similarity.

This paper aims to review recent advances and applications of abrasive processes for microelectronics fabrications.

More than 80 patents and journal and conference articles published recently are reviewed. The topics covered are chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) for semiconductor devices, key/additional process conditions for CMP, and polishing and grinding for microelectronics fabrications and fan-out wafer level packages (FOWLPs).

Many reviewed articles reported advanced CMP for semiconductor device fabrications and innovative research studies on CMP slurry and abrasives. The surface finish, sub-surface damage and the strength of wafers are important issues. The defects on wafer surfaces induced by grinding/polishing would affect the stability of diced ultra-thin chips. Fracture strengths of wafers are dependent on the damage structure induced during dicing or grinding. Different thinning processes can reduce or enhance the fracture strength of wafers. In the FOWLP technology, grinding or CMP is conducted at several key steps. Challenges come from back-grinding and the wafer warpage. As the Si chips of the over-molded FOWLPs are very thin, wafer grinding becomes critical. The strength of the FOWLPs is significantly affected by grinding.

This paper attempts to provide an introduction to recent developments and the trends in abrasive processes for microelectronics manufacturing. With the references provided, readers may explore more deeply by reading the original articles. Original suggestions for future research work are also provided.

The aim of this paper is to study the impact of the questions and answers (Q&A) between investors and enterprises from the China stock exchange investor interactive platforms on the total factor productivity (TFP) of enterprises.

To show how the interaction influences the TFP of enterprises, the authors select Q&A records from the interactive platforms related to production, R&D and technology through the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic model and choose A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2019 in China as a sample. To treat the data and test the proposed hypothesis, the authors applied OLS regression and endogeneity testing methods, such as the entropy balance test, Heckman two-stage model and the two-stage least squares regression.

This paper finds that interaction between investors and enterprises is positively correlated with TFP, and that improvements in content length and the timeliness of response can promote TFP. Interactive behavior mainly improves the TFP of enterprises by alleviating financing constraints and encouraging enterprises to increase R&D investment. This positive effect is more pronounced in companies with higher agency costs, non-high-tech companies and companies not supported by industrial policy.

The novelty of the research stands in the application of Python's LDA topic model to screen out Q&A records that are directly related to TFP, such as production, R&D, technology, etc., and measures the degree of information interaction between investors and enterprises from multiple dimensions, such as interaction frequency, content length and the timeliness of response.

The purpose of this paper is to identify most favorable (or quasi-preferred) industry characteristics of remanufacturing industry and most favorable (or quasi-preferred) industry factors which have an effect on these characteristics so as to improve these factors.

Grey system theory has prominent advantage of using few data and uncertainty information to analyze many factors. Therefore, it is more suited for system analysis than traditional statistical analysis methods like regression analysis, variance analysis and principal component analysis, which require massive data, certain probability distribution in the data and few variant factors. So in this paper, grey incidence analysis method, which is an important part of grey system theory, is used to identify industry characteristics and key industry factor of remanufacturing industry in China and then put forward appropriate industrial policies and countermeasures to improve these industry factors.

According to the results of this study, it reveals that there are no most favorable industry characteristics and no most favorable industry factors in remanufacturing industry of China. “Annual sale of remanufacturing industry” is identified as quasi-preferred industry characteristic, and “total number of employees with master degree or above in remanufacturing enterprise” is identified as the quasi-preferred industry factor. “Total building area of remanufacturing enterprise” is referred as the most unfavorable industry factors.

Judging from the findings of this study, four practical implications are summarized as follows: “annual sale of remanufacturing industry” should be given great importance because it is a quasi-preferred industry characteristic. “Total number of employees with master degree or above in remanufacturing enterprise” and “total number of research institution and university participated in remanufacturing” should be further strengthened by establishing an industry-university-research institute collaboration network, due to the fact that they are the top two quasi-preferred industry factors. “Total investment of remanufacturing industry” and “total annual R&D expenditures” have not played their due role in improving remanufacturing industry, so they should be moderately controlled so as to reduce waste of investment. “Total building area of remanufacturing enterprise” must be strictly controlled because of its little impact on remanufacturing industry.

In this research, grey incidence analysis is applied to identify key industry factors of remanufacturing industry for the first time. It helps in finding industry factors which are in urgent need of improvement and assists in making appropriate industrial policies and countermeasures to improve them by studying relationships between industry characteristic and industry factors.

The aim of this paper is to examine the effect of information disclosure by unlisted bond issuers on the stock price informativeness of listed firms in the same industry.

This paper takes advantage of information disclosure during the bond issuance and examines the spillover effect of unlisted bond issuers' information disclosure on listed firms in the stock market. The sample is composed of A-share firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2007 to 2018. All the data are obtained from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research and WIND databases. The impact of bond market information disclosure on price informativeness of listed firms in the same industry is identified through multivariate regression analyses.

Empirical results show that price informativeness of listed firms has a significantly positive association with the information disclosure of same-industry unlisted bond issuers. Further analyses show that the above finding is more significant when information disclosure of bond issuers is a more important channel for acquiring industry information (i.e. when industry is more concentrated, when economic uncertainty is high, and when industry information is less transparent) and understanding the industry competitive landscape (i.e. when bond issuers are relatively large, when bond issuers and listed firms have more direct product competition, when bond issuance firms are large-scale state-owned business groups), and when there are more cross-market information intermediaries (i.e. more cross-market institutional investors and more sell-side analysts). This paper indicates that information disclosure of bond issuers has a positive spillover effect on the stock market.

The novelty of the research is that the authors examine industry information spillover from unlisted firms to listed firms leveraging on unlisted firms' information disclosure in bond markets.

In this study, a highly sensitive and quantitative analysis method using surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS)-labeled immunoassay is adopted for bisphenol A bisphenol A (BPA) detection in water samples.

Primarily, an excellent SERS immuno-nanoprobe is prepared, which relays on Au/Ag core-shell nanoparticles tagged 4-mercaptobenzoic acid (4MBA) and labeled with specific antibody against BPA. Second, the coating antigen of 4,4-Bis(4-hydroxyphenol) valeric acid (BVA) coupling poly-L-lysine (PLL) conjugate (BVA-PLL) is fastened on the substrate. Based on competitive immunoassay, the antibody labeled on SERS immuno-nanoprobe will bind with the free BPA and BVA-PLL competitively.

A calibration curve was obtained by plotting the intensity of SERS signal of 4MBA at 1007 cm⁻¹ versus the concentration of BPA. The results indicated that the limit of detection (LOD) for BPA is 1 ng/mL and present a great capacity for higher sensitivity. Furthermore, the method was able to quantitatively detect BPA in water samples, which was validated by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).

The method was developed based on competitive immunoassay, and the conjugate (BVA-PLL) was chosen as the coating antigen. Au/Ag core-shell nanoparticles played as the SERS active substrate and were labeled with Raman reporter. The value of this paper is supplying a wide potential for analysis of target analytes in the environmental monitoring and food safety.

This study investigates the pathways for adopting IoTs and BDA technologies to improve healthcare management.

The study relied on 445 healthcare professionals' perspectives to explore different causal pathways to IoTs and BDA adoption and usage for daily healthcare management. The Fussy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis was adopted to explore the underlying pathways for healthcare management.

The empirical analysis revealed six different configural paths influencing the acceptance and use of IoTs and BDA for healthcare improvement. Two key user topologies from the six configural paths, digital literacy and ease of use and social influence and behavioural intentions, mostly affect the paths for using digital health technologies by healthcare physicians.

Despite this study's novel contributions, limitations include the fsQCA methodology, perceptual data and the context of the study. The fsQCA methodology is still evolving with different interpretations, although it reveals new insights and as such further studies are required to explain the configural paths of social phenomena. Additionally, future research should consider other constructs beyond the UTAUT and digital literacy to illustrate configural paths to healthcare technology acceptance and usage. Again, the views of healthcare professionals are perceptual data. Hence future research on operational data will support significant contributions towards pathways to accept and use emerging technologies for healthcare improvement. Lastly, this study is from a developing country perspective where emerging digital healthcare technology is still emerging to support healthcare management. Hence, more investigation from other cross-country analyses of configural paths for digital technology deployment in healthcare will enhance the conversation with IoTs and BDA for healthcare management.

Holistically, the acceptance and use of healthcare technologies and platforms is not solely on their capabilities, but a combination of distinct factors driven by users' perspectives. This offers healthcare administrators and institutions to essentially reflect on the distinct combinations of conditions favourable to health professionals who can use IoTs and BDA for healthcare improvement.

This study is among the few scholarly works to empirically investigate the configural paths to support healthcare improvement with emerging technologies. Using fsQCA is a unique contribution to existing information system literature for configural paths for healthcare improvement with emerging digital technologies.