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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mechanical behavior and propagation of cracks of numerical granite samples through the Brazilian split test and to provide a reference for predicting the behavior of real granite samples.

The numerical models of granite containing two fissures are established using the parallel bond model (PBM) and the smooth joint model (SJM) in PFC2D. The peak stresses, number of cracks and anisotropic ratios are obtained to study the influence of the mineral composition and the angle of inclination of rock bridge on the strength, failure mode and deformation characteristics.

The numerical results obtained show that the mineral composition has a marginal influence on the peak stress. When the angle of inclination of rock bridge β increases, the peak stress drops to its minimum value at β = 90° and then gradually increases to a relatively low level. The behavior of cracks falls into three categories based on the distribution of cracks. By analyzing the stress–strain curve and the process of crack propagation for sample No. 4 with β = 60°, it is found that the process of failure can be divided into four stages and tensile cracks dominate. The anisotropic ratios of peak stress and a number of cracks obtained show that the peak stress is low anisotropic and the number of cracks is medium anisotropic.

This paper presents a numerical simulation method to analyze mechanical behavior and propagation of cracks under different conditions. The proposed method and the results obtained are useful for predicting the behavior of real granite samples in laboratory and engineering projects.

This study aims to examine how employees’ perceptions of customer-related and employee-related corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives influence their job satisfaction. Further, the study investigates whether employees’ organizational commitment mediates this proposed relationship and, more importantly, tests how such mediated relationships change according to the level of employees’ perceptions of their company’s sincerity in investing in CSR activities.

This study used an online survey to collect data and collected a total of 490 responses for the main analysis. A regression analysis and standard path-analytic approaches described by Hayes (2013) were conducted to test the proposed hypotheses.

Findings support the main effect of customer- and employee-related CSR on employees’ job satisfaction mediated by employees’ organizational commitment, as well as the moderating effect of the perceived sincerity of customer-related CSR but not employee-related CSR.

The current study focuses on comparing two types of CSR initiatives, i.e. employee- and customer-related, because these two groups are any company’s core stakeholders with the closest relationship to its operations, and they represent the internal and external stakeholders, respectively. Further, the current study investigates the moderating effect of employees’ perceptions of the sincerity of their company’s CSR initiatives on the relationship between the two types of CSR initiatives and employees’ job commitment.

In this work, a kind of Mannich base (C₂₁H₂₅NO) was synthesized with cinnamal aldehyde, acetophenone and diethylamine in a condensing reflux device based on the conventional method. Optimization of the inhibitor concentration was explored.

Spectral properties of this compound was investigated by FTIR, and its inhibition efficiency and mechanism on N80 steel in 20% hydrochloric acid solution were studied by weight loss measurement, electrochemical measurement (potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy) and surface analytical measurement (scanning electron microscope with energy dispersive spectrometer).

The results showed that the new inhibitor reduced the double-layer capacitance and increased the charge transfer resistance. The inhibition efficiency is 99.7% when the concentration of C21H25NO is 3%. The adsorption of C₂₁H₂₅NO on N80 steel surface in 20% HCl solution was found to be spontaneous and steady. Observed from the steel surface, an inhibition film was confirmed to be presented after adding inhibitor and successfully hindered the corrosive ions from reaching the bulk steel.

A new Mannich base (C₂₁H₂₅NO) was synthesized by cinnamal aldehyde, acetophenone and diethylamine for the corrosion prevention of N80 steel in 20% hydrochloric acid solution.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how participatory budgeting (PB) as a democratic governance tool has been translated within the Russian public sector by addressing the local specifics of its design and mobilization through the formation of networks.

The paper is based on a case study of one pioneering municipality. Data have been gathered through triangulation of interviews, document search, video and netnographic observations. By relying on ideas from actor–network theory, the study focuses on the relational and rhetorical work of human (allies/inscriptors) and non-human (inscriptions) actors involved in the development of PB in Russia.

The findings indicate that the initial democratic values of PB underwent several stages of translation as a continuous inscription-building process and the formation of networks. The main finding is that putting democratic idea(l)s of PB into practice proved problematic, since PB depended on many “allies” which were not always democratic. Paradoxically, in order to launch democratic practices in Russia, PB relied largely on bureaucratic and even New Public Management inscriptions, which it was originally supposed to fight against. Notwithstanding, while these inscriptions can fog the democratic values of PB, they are also capable of uncovering its democratic potential over time, albeit not for a long time as the “external referee” is needed.

The paper juxtaposes PB development in Russia with the translation literature. Not only does the study emphasize the role of human, but non-human actors as well.

Laser absolute distance measurement has the characteristics of high precision, wide range and non-contact. In laser ranging system, tracking and aiming measurement point is the precondition of automatic measurement. To solve this problem, this paper aims to propose a novel method.

For the central point of the hollow angle coupled mirror, this paper proposes a method based on correlation filtering and ellipse fitting. For non-cooperative target points, this paper proposes an extraction method based on correlation filtering and feature matching. Finally, a visual tracking and aiming system was constructed by combining the two-axis turntable, and experiments were carried out.

The target tracking algorithm has an accuracy of 91.15% and a speed of 19.5 frames per second. The algorithm can adapt to the change of target scale and short-term occlusion. The mean error and standard deviation of the center point extraction of the hollow Angle coupling mirror are 0.20 and 0.09 mm. The mean error and standard deviation of feature points matching for non-cooperative target were 0.06 mm and 0.16 mm. The visual tracking and aiming system can track a target running at a speed of 0.7 m/s, aiming error mean is 1.74 pixels and standard deviation is 0.67 pixel.

The results show that this method can achieve fast and high precision target tracking and aiming and has great application value in laser ranging.

This article gives a brief introduction to computer applications in information retrieval, library management and Chinese character processing in some information organisations in China. It outlines the history, present status and future trends of these aspects.

The purpose of this paper is to examine corporate strategic effects on hotel unit performance. Taking a hotel owner's perspective, the relationship between four types of the owner's corporate level strategies and the hotel property financial performance are examined.

This study is built on a secondary data set provided by Smith Travel Research. A total of 2,012 hotels across the USA were analyzed for the period between 2003‐2005.

The findings support the existence of corporate effects in the US lodging industry. It is revealed that a hotel owner's corporate strategies do influence hotel property level financial performance. Specifically, a hotel owner's expertise in implementing superior strategies regarding segment, brand, operator, and location (i.e. state) are critical to hotel unit financial performance.

The main limitations of this study include the limited number of years with available data, lack of knowledge on the names of hotel owners, brands and operators, and the performance measures focusing only operating but not value/return measures.

This research shows that a hotel owner can have significant influence on the operating performance of its hotel properties by implementing strategies regarding its properties' locations, segments, brand affiliations and operators. Specifically, brand affiliation has shown a consistently larger impact on both revenue and profit than other corporate strategies, and consequently should receive particular attention from the owner to carefully assess the brand's potential contribution before engaging in a franchise agreement.

This research expands the strategy research in the hospitality field by linking two key strategy constructs – corporate effects and corporate strategy – together and by revealing their collective influence on hotel performance.

This study sets out to examine the potential curvilinear relationship between capital intensity and firm value for the US hospitality industry, specifically including publicly traded US hotels and restaurants, during the period 1990‐2008.

This study performs a pooled regression analysis to examine the proposed relationship. The sampled companies are from the period 1990‐2008, consisting of 281 and 1,406 observations for the hotel and restaurant industries, respectively. The study additionally performs the analysis for the 1990s and the 2000s separately for a comparison purpose.

The findings support the U‐shaped relationship between capital intensity and firm performance during the 2000s for both hotels and restaurants, while no relationship exists during the 1990s.

While the results may not be generalizable to private or non‐US hotels and restaurants, the findings should provide hotel and restaurant executives and managers with valuable information for developing their strategies with regard to the capital intensity level.

Based on the two perspectives regarding capital intensity's impact on a firm (i.e. positive and negative), a possible proposal suggests that the relationship between capital intensity and a firm's value may not be linear, but possibly curvilinear. Considering the importance of capital intensity in the hospitality industry, examinations of the issue would be beneficial for the hospitality industry.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the financial characteristics associated with outperformance of US public restaurant firms in challenging economic times and the empirical measure of outperformance proposed herein.

This study utilizes a Logit model and considers the relevant financial variables in annual deviation forms to explore an empirical model that explains financial outperformance in troubled economic times for the restaurant industry.

The results of the study indicate that larger market share, asset turnover, and profit margin, combined with lower leverage, BM, earnings variance, and size, in addition to franchise utilization, appear to produce collectively a fine balance for success in difficult economic times.

This paper does not address the fine balance between short‐term financial performance and long‐term sustainability. Further, the employed contemporaneous modeling framework may limit generality of findings of this paper.

This study provides systematic evidence on an empirical framework linking financial characteristics and outperformance of restaurant firms in difficult economic times. Its results have timely and significant implications for practitioners, researchers and other parties of interest.

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is a much hopeful scheme, which is deployed to enhance the spectral efficiency (SE) significantly, and it also enhances the massive access that has attained substantial concern from industrial and academic domains. However, the deployment of superposition coding (SC) at the receiver side resulted in interference. For reducing this interference, “multi-antenna NOMA” seems to be an emerging solution. Particularly, by using the channel state information at the transmitter, spatial beam forming could be deployed that eliminates the interference in an effective manner.

This survey analyzes the literature review and diverse techniques regarding the NOMA-based spatial modulation (SM) environment. It reviews a bunch of research papers and states a significant analysis. Initially, the analysis depicts various transmit antenna selection techniques that are contributed in different papers. This survey offers a comprehensive study regarding the chronological review and performance achievements in each contribution. The analytical review also concerns on the amplitude phase modulation (APM) selection schemes adopted in several contributions. Moreover, the objective functions adopted in the reviewed works are also analyzed. Finally, the survey extends with various research issues and its gaps that can be useful for the researchers to promote improved future works on NOMA-based SM.

This paper contributes to a review related to NOMA-based SM systems. Various techniques and performance measures adopted in each paper are analyzed and described in this survey. More particularly, the selection of transmission antenna and APM are also examined in this review work. Moreover, the defined objective function of each paper is also observed and made a chronological review as well. Finally, the research challenges along with the gaps on NOMA-based SM systems are also elaborated.

This paper presents a brief analysis of NOMA-based SM systems. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first work that uses NOMA-based SM systems to enhance SE.