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The brake pipe system was an essential braking component of the railway freight trains, but the existing E-type sealing rings had problems such as insufficient low-temperature resistance, poor heat stability and short service life. To address these issues, low-phenyl silicone rubber was prepared and tested, and the finite element analysis and experimental studies on the sealing performance of its sealing rings were carried out.

The low-temperature resistance and thermal stability of the prepared low-phenyl silicone rubber were studied using low-temperature tensile testing, differential scanning calorimetry, dynamic thermomechanical analysis and thermogravimetric analysis. The sealing performance of the low-phenyl silicone rubber sealing ring was studied by using finite element analysis software abaqus and experiments.

The prepared low-phenyl silicone rubber sealing ring possessed excellent low-temperature resistance and thermal stability. According to the finite element analysis results, the finish of the flange sealing surface and groove outer edge should be ensured, and extrusion damage should be avoided. The sealing rings were more susceptible to damage in high compression ratio and/or low-temperature environments. When the sealing effect was ensured, a small compression ratio should be selected, and rubbers with hardness and elasticity less affected by temperature should be selected. The prepared low-phenyl silicone rubber sealing ring had zero leakage at both room temperature (RT) and −50 °C.

The innovation of this study is that it provides valuable data and experience for the future development of the sealing rings used in the brake pipe flange joints of the railway freight cars in China.

As China is on an inevitable march into the digital era, firms have accumulated abundant digital assets, such as algorithms and data. Facing the possibility of using digital assets as a new type input, besides traditional inputs such as capital and labor, would powerful managers perform better? Would managerial power help managers increase the efficiency of how a firm combines traditional and digital inputs and converts them into outputs? Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate whether powerful managers promotes corporate productivity by using digital assets as a new input.

Using data from listed Chinese firms between 2008 and 2020, the authors constructed panel regressions with three-way fixed effects to examine whether and how managerial power influences corporate productivity in the current digital context, particularly under market uncertainty.

The findings reveal no consistent relationship between managerial power and corporate productivity. The results explain this from two contrasting effects: while managerial power promotes technological change it hinders technical efficiency – two components of total productivity. Moreover, this study identifies market uncertainty as a significant external contingency. In uncertain markets, strong managerial power positively impacts corporate productivity.

The results extend extant theoretical insights in the literature on how managerial power might influence corporate productivity.

Mega construction projects (megaprojects) require technological innovation cooperation (TIC) to address complex construction demands and the interests of multiple stakeholders. Although TIC has been extensively discussed at the firm level, a significant gap remains in understanding megaprojects at the project level. This paper aims to identify TIC’s influencing factors and transmission paths and discuss stakeholders’ TIC mechanisms at the project level.

Based on case analysis, expert interviews, literature analysis and the Delphi method, this paper identifies the influencing factors of TIC in megaprojects at the project level. A structural system of these influencing factors is constructed by interpretive structural modeling (ISM), developing various mechanisms for TIC from bottom to top. The Matriced’ Impacts Croisés Multiplication Appliquée à un Classement (MICMAC) method validates the driving forces and dependencies of the influencing factors, clarifying their roles and positions within the system. Additionally, the TIC mechanism is constructed.

The research findings identify 26 influencing factors categorized into four hierarchical levels: cooperative relationships, cooperative behavior, cooperative performance and technological innovation risks. Regarding direct factors, resource sharing affects goal congruence and communication effectiveness in megaprojects, affecting TIC’s satisfaction and trust. Most factors exist in the middle layer, and bridging the upper and lower levels depends on stakeholder collaboration. The root factors in the independent group significantly impact TIC, including policy circumstances, high technical requirements and limited site conditions. Addressing these issues influences improvements in other factors. The development of a digital resource-sharing platform, the enhancement of innovation incentives, the optimization of benefit distribution mechanisms and the improvement of risk-sharing mechanisms are essential for the effective operation of the TIC mechanism.

This study contributes to identifying and classifying challenges and opportunities in TIC. It explores transmission paths for enhancing TIC and presents strategies for successfully implementing and delivering megaprojects.

This study aims to explore the factors influencing the evolution of emerging technology innovation network (ETIN) in combination with the key attributes and life cycle of emerging technologies, particularly the impact of multiple knowledge attributes and technology life cycle on the ETIN evolution.

This study collects 5G patent data and their citation information from the Derwent Innovations Index to construct a 5G technology innovation network (5GIN) as a sample network and conducts an empirical analysis of the 5GIN using the temporal exponential random graph model (TERGM).

The results indicate that during the 5GIN evolution, the network scale continues to expand and exhibits increasingly significant core-periphery structure, scale-free characteristic, small-world characteristic and community structure. Furthermore, the findings suggest that the multiple knowledge attributes based on the key attributes of emerging technologies, including knowledge novelty, coherence, growth and impact, have a significant positive influence on the ETIN evolution. Meanwhile, the temporal evolution of ETIN is also found to be correlated with the life cycle of emerging technologies.

This study extends the exploration of emerging technology research from a complex network perspective, providing a more realistic explanatory framework for the factors influencing ETIN evolution. It further highlights the important role that multiple knowledge attributes and the technology life cycle play within this framework.

This paper aims to provide a reference for the development of digital transformation from the perspective of manufacturing process links.

This paper applies canonical correlation analysis based on digital technology patents in the key links of manufacturing industries (product design, procurement, product manufacturing, warehousing and transportation, and wholesale and retail) and the related indicators of economic benefits of regions in China.

(1) The degree of digitalization of manufacturing process links is significantly correlated with economic benefits. (2) The improvement of the degree of digitalization in the “product design” link, the “warehousing and transportation” link, the “product manufacturing” link and the “wholesale and retail” link has significant impacts on the economic benefits of manufacturing industry. (3) The digital degree of the “procurement” link has no obvious influence on the economic benefits of manufacturing industry.

The research results can provide reference for the formulation and implementation of micro policies. The strategy of improving the level of digital transformation of key links of manufacturing industry is put forward to better promote both the digital transformation of manufacturing industry and economic development.

This paper innovatively studies the relationship between digitalization of manufacturing process links and economic benefits. The findings can provide theoretical and empirical support for the digital transformation of China's manufacturing industry and high-quality development of economy.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how manufacturers make collaborative decisions in the ecosystem in the context of digital servitization.

Constructing an inframarginal analysis mathematical model to transform the ideal ecological niche choice of firms into solving the problem of maximizing the utility of firms, exploring the service boundary conditions of digital service business under the ideal ecological niche choice and focusing on the effects of niche factor, digital technology input and transaction efficiency on the boundary decision.

The boundaries of digital services business are in dynamic change, and changes are influenced by a combination of niche factor, digital technology input and transaction efficiency. Businesses focusing on a single niche and fully collaborative business delivery models are more in line with the trends under the digital service transformation.

Analyzing ecosystem participants’ cooperative decision-making on digital services from the perspective of ecological niche strategy selection. The study enriches the research on firm niche theory as well as service boundary decision theory in servitization transformation and provides theoretical guidance and management suggestions for firms to construct appropriate service boundaries to achieve synergistic and stable development of service ecosystems in the process of digital servitization transformation.

COVID-19 has aggregated the need for a non-contact medical logistic system. A non-contact robot with self-navigation ability has greatly enhanced the efficiency of the medical logistic system. This paper aims to design a new medical logistics robot system for the complex environment of hospitals with dynamic obstacles.

Targeting a medical logistics robot system for a large-scale hospital environment, this study proposed a dynamic obstacle avoidance system to reduce the robot’s delay time as well as frequent route switching. In the algorithm, this study proposed a new loop closure detection with an artificial correction factor. Moreover, this study presented enhanced 3D object detection, improving detection accuracy in hospital environments.

Experimental results confirm that the robot can move along its global path and reach its destination without colliding with stationary or moving obstacles.

The medical logistics robot system has safe and stable performance in real hospital scenarios. The implementation verifies that the robot has effectiveness and reliability in both hardware and software design.

Since the “Standards + Certification” regional quality brand initiative has become a key component of China’s efforts to promote a quality-driven economy, this paper aims to examine the effect of perception, trust and satisfaction toward the regional quality brand on consumer loyalty.

Data were collected from 401 consumers who have bought “Zhejiang Manufacturing” regional quality brand products. The structural equation modeling (SEM) technique was applied to assess the relationship of the research model.

The results show that brand perception, trust and satisfaction toward regional quality brands all significantly positively impact both consumer behavioral and attitudinal loyalty. Further, the results confirmed that brand trust and satisfaction fully mediate the relationship between brand perception and behavioral loyalty and partially mediate the relationship between brand perception and attitudinal loyalty.

This study presents a conceptual model on the impact of perception toward regional quality brands on consumer loyalty in a field where little research has been done. It offers a consumer-focused analysis that advances the theoretical and empirical knowledge of regional quality brands.

As the two sides of the same coin, usefulness and usability have emerged as pivotal research themes in user experience field. This study compares cognitive effort and cognitive resource allocation strategy across documents varying perceived usefulness and then across documents with different objective usability (unimodal vs multimodal discourses).

A controlled user study of four identifying tasks related to public health epidemics was conducted to collect data, including document usefulness as perceived by participants, presentation modes of the document and gaze behaviors on each document.

Usefulness and modality discourse impact cognitive effort and resource allocation strategy in health information search. In useless health documents, spatial encoding resource spending increased significantly with multimodal discourse, and a spatial browsing strategy with an evident exploratory feature was applied; while in useful documents, including low-useful and high-useful, both spatial and information encoding resource spending increased significantly with multimodal discourse, and an information processing strategy with an evident comprehensive feature was applied. Notably, multimodal discourse failed to enhance decision-making effectiveness. Furthermore, in useful documents, the interaction effect of the presentation mode of useful information and multimodal discourse on cognitive effort followed an inverted U-shape pattern.

This paper sheds new light on the interaction effect of usefulness and usability on cognitive effort and resource allocation strategy, highlighting its significance in cognitive effort detecting for multimodal discourse and improving effectiveness and efficacy of health information identification by optimizing information presentation mode design.

Balancing economic development with social challenges such as gender inequality has become critical in the current times. Structural barriers persist as obstacles to women's professional opportunities despite evolving gender roles in the modern era. This chapter investigates the ‘motherhood penalty’, which is a concept couched in sociology and describes the disadvantages that working mothers face including lower wages and fewer opportunities of career advancement. This chapter explores economic, physical and mental health impacts of this penalty and sheds light on its detrimental effects on women's well-being and organisational success. Potentially, virtual reality (VR) technology is a solution through which working mothers can alleviate stress and improve well-being. In this chapter, existing literature on the motherhood penalty has been reviewed, and the innovative use of VR in workplace settings has been examined. There is limited research on the nexus between VR, motherhood penalty and working mothers' well-being, and therefore, this chapter seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of this intersection and proposes VR as a tool to mitigate the motherhood penalty, promoting gender equality and enhancing overall workplace well-being. Future research should explore VR's long-term benefits and ensure inclusive applications for diverse demographic groups.