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This exploratory study aims to determine whether a relationship is likely to exist between good feng shui and success.

The feng shui of eight hotel foyers and entrances were evaluated against 20 criteria, and managers asked to comment on the success of their hotels. Results were examined for possible relationships between feng shui and their descriptions of success.

Similarities between the reported success of hotel and feng shui evaluations were found in six out of the eight hotels in the study.

Responses on success were subjective and based on five criteria, which were insufficient to determine the existence of a firm relationship between actual success and feng shui. However, this was an exploratory study, and the relationships were sufficiently strong to warrant further research.

Findings suggest that feng shui offers useful design principles, and hotels with good feng shui are described as being more successful than those with poor feng shui. Good feng shui appears to have a positive effect on feelings of success.

This is the first study that attempts to test the relationship between good feng shui and success.

There have recently been an increasing number of scientific studies exploring the effectiveness of practising Chinese geomancy or feng shui in the built environment. However, these are rather generic studies focusing mainly on urban planning, architecture and interior design. The impetus for this present research stems from the lack of understanding relating to the practice of feng shui in Facilities Management (FM). Bridging these two disciplines, this study examines the relevance of and relationship between feng shui and FM principles.

A questionnaire survey was conducted, the results of which affirm the validity of the assimilated relationships between the two disciplines. Interviews with three groups of experts – the feng shui practitioners, facilities managers and feng shui practitioners who are also building professionals – were also conducted to verify the assimilation of the two disciplines with a view to draw new perspectives for better understanding.

The principles of feng shui and FM were studied, and the validity of the relationships between 15 feng shui principles and three FM activities were examined. The latter relates specifically to building fabric cleaning, routine external site/lot cleaning and road and pavement cleaning. It was found that specific feng shui principles and scenarios appear to influence the three FM activities. The statistical analysis shows that the means of specific feng shui scenarios in relation to FM activities were consistently higher than those of the feng shui principles. The one-sample t-test indicates that all the feng shui principles were significant in affecting the three FM activities.

This study provides a better understanding of the relevance of feng shui principles influencing FM principles. It also revealed the challenges and limitations in bridging the relationships between these two disciplines.

This study is the first investigation to examine the relevance and relationship between feng shui and FM practice. This serves to encourage further research to determine how feng shui design implementation will affect the ease of conducting FM activities. If the relationship is established, as is the case from this study, then the implementation of feng shui principles in building design can be encouraged to positively influence the ease of conducting FM activities downstream in the occupancy stage. This can serve to contribute to the improvement of sustainable building design. It can also contribute to the scientific investigation of feng shui, which has so far been largely overlooked in built environment studies. Such studies can help to demystify and provide logical and scientific interpretations of how feng shui principles actually work.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a local parallel finite element algorithm based on fully overlapping domain decomposition technique to solve the incompressible magnetohydrodynamic equations.

The algorithm uses a lower-order element pair to compute an initial approximation by the Oseen-type iteration and uses a higher-order element pair to solve a linear system in each processor.

Besides, the convergence analysis of local parallel finite element algorithm is given. Finally, numerical experiments are presented to verify the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.

Compared with the numerical solution of the common two-step method, this method is easy to realize and can produce a more accurate solution. And, this approach is executed in parallel, so it saves a lot of computational time.

Since robot’s structural stiffness is usually less than 1 N/µm, mode coupling chatter occurs frequently during robotic milling process, and chatter frequency is close to the natural frequency of the robot itself. Chatter not only affects the surface quality but also damages the robot and reduces the positioning accuracy. Therefore, it is necessary to predict chatter in robotic machining process.

A three-dimensional dynamic model for robot’s spatial milling plane is established, and a corresponding stability criterion is obtained. First, the cutting force in milling plane is transformed into the coordinate system of the robot principal stiffness direction based on homogeneous transformation matrix. Then the three-dimensional stability criterion under milling process can be obtained by using system stability analysis. Furthermore, the circle diagram of mode coupling chatter stability is drawn. Each feeding direction’s stability under the two processing forms, referred as spindle vertical milling and spindle horizontal milling, is analyzed.

The experimental results verify that the three-dimensional stability criterion can avoid chatter by selecting machining feed direction in stable area.

This paper established a three-dimensional dynamic model in robot’s spatial milling plane and proposed a three-dimensional stability criterion according to the Routh criterion. The work is also expected to be an efficient tool in the development of robotic milling technology.

The performance of oil-filled pressure cores is very much affected by the corrugated diaphragm and the oil filling volume. The purpose of this paper is to show the effects of different corrugated diaphragms, different oil filling volumes and different treatments of the corrugated diaphragms on the performance of pressure sensors.

Pressure-sensitive cores with different diaphragm diameters, different diaphragm ripple numbers and different oil filling volumes are produced, and thermal cycling is introduced to improve the diaphragm performance, and finally the performance of each pressure-sensitive core is tested and the test data are analyzed and compared.

The experimental results show that the larger the diameter of the corrugated diaphragm used for encapsulation, the better the performance. For pressure-sensitive cores using smaller diameter corrugated diaphragms, the performance of one corrugation is better than that of two corrugations. When the number of corrugations and the diameter are the same size, the performance of the outer ring of the diaphragm with concave corrugations is better than that with convex corrugations. At the same time, the diaphragm after thermal cycling treatment and appropriate reduction of encapsulated oil filling can improve the performance of the pressure-sensitive core.

By exploring the effects of corrugated diaphragm and oil filling volume on the performance of oil-filled pressure cores, the design of oil-filled pressure sensors can be guided to improve sensor performance.

This paper aims to clarify the effects of metallic nanoparticles (NPs) additives and room temperature ionic liquids (ILs) on the tribological performance of electric contacts.

Tribological properties of copper (Cu) and silver (Ag) NPs as lubricant additives in different lubricants of ILs or polyalphaolefin (PAO) oils under applied electric currents were investigated. After tribological tests, morphologies of worn surfaces were observed; meanwhile, lubrication and anti-wear properties were analyzed.

The mixture solution of the IL and Cu NPs showed desirable lubrication and anti-wear properties due to the reduction of electrocorrosion and the enhancement of rolling effects of particles in the contact region. The anti-wear performance of Cu NPs is better than that of Ag NPs due to the difference in the particle size. The PAO oil with the Cu NPs additives showed poor lubrication properties due to the low solubility of the particles in the oil. When the direction of applied current was changed, the friction of the lubricant with better conductivity was more stable in the variation trend.

This paper begins with a study of tribological properties of Cu and Ag NPs as lubricant additives in different lubricants of IL or PAO oils under applied electric currents. The authors then propose several methods and possible solutions which could be implemented to improve the tribological performance of electric contacts.

This paper aims to explore how environmental management practices impact different dimensions of corporate sustainability. It also explores the mediating impact of environmental regulation and reports on the relationship between environmental management practice and corporate sustainability.

A brief focus group discussion and a preliminary test were conducted through a focused group meeting with industry experts before data were collected from senior management of 116 registered operations in the hospitality and tourism industry in the Maldives. To analyse the data, a mediation model is proposed and tested using partial least squares structural equation modelling.

Results showed that environmental management practices have a direct and positive effect on corporate sustainability. Furthermore, environmental regulation and reporting positively mediate the effect of environmental management practices on corporate sustainability. Among the sustainability dimensions, it is important to note that the social sustainability aspect has the highest impact, followed by the economic and environmental aspects of corporate sustainability.

Findings provide empirical evidence in understanding achieving corporate sustainability through environmental management practices. The study is practical for stakeholders and policymakers to follow through with the environmental regulations and be transparent on environmental reporting measures that impact overall sustainability.

This study serves as noteworthy research for stakeholders to evaluate against regulatory and reporting requirements for businesses they invest in the future. It adds value to the literature and attempts to advance environmental management and sustainability research in the context of small island developing states.

This paper aims to propose two parallel two-step finite element algorithms based on fully overlapping domain decomposition for solving the 2D/3D time-dependent natural convection problem.

The first-order implicit Euler formula and second-order Crank–Nicolson formula are used to time discretization respectively. Each processor of the algorithms computes a stabilized solution in its own global composite mesh in parallel. These algorithms compute a nonlinear system for the velocity, pressure and temperature based on a lower-order element pair (P₁b-P₁-P₁) and solve a linear approximation based on a higher-order element pair (P₂-P₁-P₂) on the same mesh, which shows that the new algorithms have the same convergence rate as the two-step finite element methods. What is more, the stability analysis of the proposed algorithms is derived. Finally, numerical experiments are presented to demonstrate the efficacy and accuracy of the proposed algorithms.

Finally, numerical experiments are presented to demonstrate the efficacy and accuracy of the proposed algorithms.

The novel parallel two-step algorithms for incompressible natural convection problem are proposed. The rigorous analysis of the stability is given for the proposed parallel two-step algorithms. Extensive 2D/3D numerical tests demonstrate that the parallel two-step algorithms can deal with the incompressible natural convection problem for high Rayleigh number well.

This paper aims to consider numerical simulation for radionuclide transport calculations in geological radioactive waste repository.

The nonlinear two-point flux approximation is used to discretize the diffusion flux and has a fixed stencil. The cell-vertex unknowns are applied to define the auxiliary unknowns and can be interpolated by the cell-centered unknowns. The approximation of convection flux is based on the second-order upwind method with a slope limiter.

Numerical results illustrate that the positivity-preserving is satisfied in solving this convection-diffusion system and has a second-order convergence rate on the distorted meshes.

A new positivity-preserving nonlinear finite volume scheme is proposed to simulate the far-field model used in the geological radioactive waste repository. Numerical results illustrate that the positivity-preserving is satisfied in solving this convection-diffusion system and has a second-order convergence rate on the distorted meshes.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new method to solve the incompressible natural convection problem with variable density. The main novel ideas of this work are to overcome the stability issue due to the nonlinear inertial term and the hyperbolic term for conventional finite element methods and to deal with high Rayleigh number for the natural convection problem.

The paper introduces a novel characteristic variational multiscale (C-VMS) finite element method which combines advantages of both the characteristic and variational multiscale methods within a variational framework for solving the incompressible natural convection problem with variable density. The authors chose the conforming finite element pair (P₂, P₂, P₁, P₂) to approximate the density, velocity, pressure and temperature field.

The paper gives the stability analysis of the C-VMS method. Extensive two-dimensional/three-dimensional numerical tests demonstrated that the C-VMS method not only can deal with the incompressible natural convection problem with variable density but also with high Rayleigh number very well.

Extensive 2D/3D numerical tests demonstrated that the C-VMS method not only can deal with the incompressible natural convection problem with variable density but also with high Rayleigh number very well.