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To ensure the reliable and safe operation of elevated-temperature pipes and equipment in the long term, it is essential to thoroughly assess the creep rupture life. Nevertheless, there is currently no design code that specifies a creep rupture life evaluation method for non-nuclear elevated-temperature equipment. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

An analysis was conducted to compare the differences and conservativeness in calculating creep strain using three major codes (ASME-CC-2843, API-579 and BS-7910) based on the results of the 316H creep constitutive model and creep strain prediction. In addition, the creep resistances of 316H, 304H and 347H were compared. Subsequently, the ANSYS Usercreep subroutine was developed to compare the discrepancies between different codes under multiaxial stress conditions using numerical simulations.

BS-7910 employs the Norton creep model with calculation parameters for the average creep strain rate, which is not applicable for the engineering design stage. ASME-CC2843 code primarily focuses on the primary and secondary creep stages, making it more suitable for non-nuclear pipeline and equipment design. For 316H, the creep strain curves predicted by ASME-CC2843 and API-579 typically intersect at a specific point. By combining the creep strain predicted by ASME-CC2843 and API-579, 347H exhibits superior predicted creep resistance compared to 316H, whereas 316H exhibited better predicted creep resistance than 304H.

This study provides a guide for future evaluation methods and material choices for non-nuclear equipment and pipelines operating at elevated temperatures.

This study aims to examine the relationship between economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure and the moderating role of board network centrality and political connections on the nexus between EPU and ESG.

Using a sample of the UK Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 350 firms during 2007 to 2018, this study examines the relationship between EPU and the ESG disclosure and the moderating effects of board centrality and board political connections using multivariate regression analysis.

The results show that firms tend to increase their ESG disclosure when EPU rises. The results also reveal that EPU is negatively associated with firms’ financial performance and ESG performance is less evident for firms with higher ESG disclosure scores and is observed only when board centrality is relatively low and the political connections are absent. The study finds further evidence to support the hypotheses during periods of heightened conflicts (i.e. global financial crisis and the Brexit referendum).

This study offers practical insights for corporate managers who attempt to preserve and enhance their firms’ competitive advantages via maintaining its stakeholders support through greater ESG disclosure during heightened EPU periods.

By integrating the resource-based view (RBV) and the signaling theory, this study extends the signaling theory and RBV by examining the relationship between EPU and ESG disclosure as a signal to its stakeholders and information advantages that board centrality and political connections bring to the company to reduce information asymmetry between the firms and its stakeholders during EPU.

Improving the diversity of recommendation information has become one of the latest research hotspots to solve information cocoons. Aiming to achieve both high accuracy and diversity of recommender system, a hybrid method has been proposed in this paper. This study aims to discuss the aforementioned method.

This paper integrates latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) model and locality-sensitive hashing (LSH) algorithm to design topic recommendation system. To measure the effectiveness of the method, this paper builds three-level categories of journal paper abstracts on the Web of Science platform as experimental data.

(1) The results illustrate that the diversity of recommended items has been significantly enhanced by leveraging hashing function to overcome information cocoons. (2) Integrating topic model and hashing algorithm, the diversity of recommender systems could be achieved without losing the accuracy of recommender systems in a certain degree of refined topic levels.

The hybrid recommendation algorithm developed in this paper can overcome the dilemma of high accuracy and low diversity. The method could ameliorate the recommendation in business and service industries to address the problems of information overload and information cocoons.

This study aims to analyze the development direction of track geometry inspection equipment for high-speed comprehensive inspection train in China.

The development of track geometry inspection equipment for high-speed comprehensive inspection train in China in the past 20 years can be divided into 3 stages. Track geometry inspection equipment 1.0 is the stage of analog signal. At the stage 1.0, the first priority is to meet the China's railways basic needs of pre-operation joint debugging, safety assessment and daily dynamic inspection, maintenance and repair after operation. Track geometry inspection equipment 2.0 is the stage of digital signal. At the stage 2.0, it is important to improve stability and reliability of track geometry inspection equipment by upgrading the hardware sensors and improving software architecture. Track geometry inspection equipment 3.0 is the stage of lightweight. At the stage 3.0, miniaturization, low power consumption, self-running and green economy are co-developing on demand.

The ability of track geometry inspection equipment for high-speed comprehensive inspection train will be expanded. The dynamic inspection of track stiffness changes will be studied under loaded and unloaded conditions in response to the track local settlement, track plate detachment and cushion plate failure. The dynamic measurement method of rail surface slope and vertical curve radius will be proposed, to reveal the changes in railway profile parameters of high-speed railways and the relationship between railway profile, track irregularity and subsidence of subgrade and bridges. The 200 m cut-off wavelength of track regularity will be researched to adapt to the operating speed of 400 km/h.

The research can provide new connotations and requirements of track geometry inspection equipment for high-speed comprehensive inspection train in the new railway stage.

This paper examines the impact of board ethnic diversity on the level of compliance with international financial reporting standards (IFRS) disclosures.

Using a unique hand-collected dataset from South Africa, we develop a comprehensive disclosure index against 570 mandatory requirements of IFRS. Further, we employ the fixed-effects model to investigate whether board ethnic diversity affects IFRS disclosures.

We document a significant positive association between ethnic minority directors and IFRS disclosure levels. Furthermore, we reveal that non-busy ethnic minority directors have a greater impact on IFRS disclosure levels than their busy counterparts. Additional analyses show that ethnic minority directors have less impact on IFRS disclosure levels when their number exceeds two. Companies with more ethnic directors on audit committees are more likely to comply with IFRS disclosure requirements and ethnic diversity increases accounting disclosures irrespective of the level of ownership concentration.

Our findings shed new light on the impact of board ethnic diversity on firms’ compliance with IFRS disclosure requirements. The results are robust to alternative econometric techniques, proxies and potential endogeneity concerns.

Information transparency is an important factor in enhancing trust and promoting interfirm cooperation. By combining transaction cost theory and institutional theory, this study aims to examines whether host-country firms’ information transparency prompt multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) to choose the joint venture entry mode for outward foreign direct investment (OFDI).

Using Heckman two-stage estimation method, this study examines Chinese listed manufacturing firms for the period 2014–2019.

The findings indicate that the higher the information transparency of host-country firms, the higher the possibility of MNEs choosing the joint venture entry mode for OFDI. This study further finds that the positive relationship between host country firms’ information transparency and the possibility of choosing the joint venture entry mode is enhanced by institutional distance, but weakened by MNEs’ host-country experience.

How to choose the appropriate entry mode of OFDI in the internationalization strategy is an important issue for MNEs to consider. As the postpandemic world is characterized by increased global risks, decoupling of economies, disruption of global value chains and the retreat of globalization (Contractor and Cantwell, 2022), how to further strengthen cooperation, reduce the cost and risk of MNEs and truly realize common construction and sharing is one of the hot issues in both practice and research.

This study employed a questionnaire survey to understand the safety attitudes, focusing on safety motivation and risk tolerance as well as safety management practices, including safety training and safety incentives, among construction site employees, including both managerial personnel and frontline workers. The objective was to explore the relationship between safety management practices and safety attitudes within both the managerial and frontline worker groups.

This study was conducted among 1,026 construction workers and 256 managerial personnel at 53 construction sites across 12 provinces in China. A t-test was used to compare the differences in safety-related scores between managerial personnel and frontline workers, and a structural equation model was used to explore the relationship between safety attitudes and safety management.

This study found that the scores of managerial personnel for safety motivation, safety training and safety incentives were significantly higher than construction workers, while their scores for risk tolerance were significantly lower than construction workers. Managerial personnel’s safety motivation has a significant positive impact on both safety training and safety incentives, while their risk tolerance has a significant negative impact on safety incentives. Safety training has a significant positive effect on construction workers’ safety motivation, whereas safety incentives have a significant negative impact on construction workers’ risk tolerance.

This study is one of the few that have investigated construction safety by conducting surveys targeting both site managerial personnel and frontline workers, employing an empirical approach to validate the role of safety management in transmitting safety attitudes from site managerial personnel to frontline workers.

As national legislation, federated national services, institutional policies and institutional research service arrangements may differ, data stewardship programs may be organized differently in higher education institutions across the world. This work seeks to elaborate the picture of different data stewardship programs running in different institutional and national research environments.

Utilizing a case study design, this study described three distinct data stewardship programs from Purdue University (United States), Delft Technical University (Netherlands) and Aalto University (Finland). In addition, this work investigated the institutional and national research environments of the programs. The focus was on initiatives led by academic libraries or similar services.

This work demonstrates that data stewardship programs may be organized differently within varying national and institutional contexts. The data stewardship programs varied in terms of roles, organization and funding structures. Furthermore, policies and legislation, organizational structures and national infrastructures differed.

The data stewardship programs and their contexts develop, and the descriptions presented in this work should be considered as snapshots.

This work broadens the current literature on data stewardship by not only providing detailed descriptions of three distinct data stewardship programs but also highlighting how research environments may affect their organization. We present a summary of key factors in the organization of data stewardship programs.

This study aims to investigate how the role of female leadership works in sports coaching. Drawing key insights from the ability–motivation–opportunity (AMO) framework of human resource management, the authors explore the underlying mechanisms of female leadership and the role female coaches play in enabling athletes to develop their self-initiative through AMO enhancement.

The sample in this study is made up of 11female coaches from eight teams in China selected using purposive sampling. Data was collected and analyzed on various aspects of female leadership.

Analysis of interviews and secondary data show that the mechanisms and enablers related to AMO enhancing practices stimulated by female coaching leadership can increase team performance.

This study opens new avenues for sports science research and strengthens the theoretical and practical understanding of the intentions and mechanisms female coaches implement as leaders in sports coaching.

First, this study contributes to the AMO framework by helping form new theoretical insights based on the understanding of female sports coaching mechanisms. Second, this study provides novel insights into female leadership literature by investigating the mechanisms of female leadership in the context of sports exercise. Third, this study also contributes to the body of research on sports coaching in Asia, especially that of Chinese women in such leadership roles.

Digital transformation and innovation-driven development have become an international consensus. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of relationships, mechanisms and economic consequences between digital transformation and enterprise innovation quality in order to provide a benchmark for developing countries to implement digital transformation strategies and innovation-driven strategies and provide a major support for economic recovery in the post-coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) era.

Using microdata from A-share listed enterprises in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2010 to 2021, this study examines the relationship between digital transformation and enterprise innovation quality and further reveals the internal logic and economic consequences of digital transformation to improve enterprise innovation quality through the mediating effect and moderating effect models.

The results demonstrate that digital transformation is beneficial for improving enterprise innovation quality. The heterogeneity test demonstrates that digital transformation has a larger effect on improving enterprise innovation quality in non-state-owned enterprises and eastern enterprises in China. The mechanism test demonstrates that digital transformation can improve enterprise innovation quality by improving internal control quality and analyst attention. Furthermore, with the increase in enterprise innovation inputs, digital transformation plays a significantly stronger role in improving enterprise innovation quality. The extended analysis demonstrates that digital transformation can significantly improve enterprise financial performance by improving innovation quality.

First, the construction of the core explanatory variable digital transformation index in this study is based on the Python data analysis software, which calculates the frequency of digital transformation in the text of the business situation analysis portion of the annual report of the listed companies and then obtains the degree of digital transformation of the company in this year. There may be some deviation from the degree of digital transformation in the actual production and operation of enterprises. Second, in addition to internal control quality and analyst attention, are there other mediating mechanisms for the impact of digital transformation on the quality of enterprise innovation? Third, whether the moderating effect of innovation input on digital transformation and innovation quality is related to human capital factors of the research and development (R&D) team, such as the technical background of R&D personnel, etc.

This study enriches the relevant theories of digital transformation and broadens the research boundaries of digital transformation and enterprise innovation. This study's result provides an empirical basis for enterprises to improve enterprise innovation quality and financial performance from the perspective of digital transformation at the micro level and points out specific practical directions, combining theory with practice.