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Salt rock from salt lakes can serve as a cost-effective material for subgrade filling, as demonstrated in projects like the Qarhan Salt Lake section of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway and the Qarhan Salt Lake section of the G215 Highway. This state-of-the-art paper aims to summarize the engineering properties of salt rock filling and present the advances of its utilization.

This paper collects and analyzes laboratory and field data of salt rock filling from previous studies to present a comprehensive analysis of the engineering properties and utilization of salt rock fillings.

Salt rock primarily contains minerals such as halite and glauberite, which contribute to its unique phase-changing behavior under varying environmental conditions, impacting its mechanical properties. Salt rock filling shrinks when in contact with vapor or unsaturated brine and expands under cooling or evaporation. Its use is particularly recommended for arid regions, with specific restrictions depending on the structure type. This paper discusses suggested countermeasures to mitigate these issues, as well as key quality acceptance indices for salt rock filling compaction. Moisture content after air-drying is recommended as a crucial parameter for construction quality control.

This review aims to support future research and engineering practices in salt rock subgrade applications.

This research was carried out in response to the need to find new alternative ways of maintaining public lighting with high pressure sodium vapor lamps. The objective was to develop a public lighting maintenance management system based on fuzzy logic that guarantees maximum energy efficiency and is economically feasible.

A preliminary study was carried out on the complaints due to failures of public lighting for three years in the municipality of Camagüey, Cuba, determining the failure rate of each control and the time between failures, a statistical evaluation of the time between failures was carried out identifying that this variable responds to a Weibull distribution, the membership functions of the proposed four linguistic variables and the rule base for their fuzzy sets were created, obtaining as output linguistic variable the mass replacement and cleaning time.

The fuzzy logic maintenance model developed is effective in making better use of the useful life of high-pressure sodium vapor lamps, increasing the time between maintenance operations of mass lamp replacement and mass cleaning of luminaires up to 8 and 9 years, without compromising the required lighting levels and energy efficiency.

The literature contains very few references to the use of condition-based maintenance in this type of system, so a novel approach by a robust heuristic model of street lighting condition-based maintenance management driven by data is proposed, the model integrates through fuzzy logic all the factors that influence the progressive deterioration of these installations and maintenance actions that guarantee compliance with the established service quality standards, with the maximum energy efficiency that is economically justified.

This paper aims to provide a full introduction, new classification, comparison and investigation of the challenges as well as applications of layerless 3D printing, which is one of the industry 4.0 pioneers.

Given the significance and novelty of uniform 3D printing, more than 250 publications were collected and reviewed in an unbiased and clear manner.

As a result, the majority of uniform parts printed in polymer form are known up to this point. In a novel division for better researchers’ comprehension, uniform printing systems were classified into three categories: oxygen inhibition (OI), liquid lubrication (LL) and photon penetration (PP), and each was thoroughly investigated. Furthermore, these three approaches were evaluated in terms of printing speed, precision and accuracy, manufacturing scale and cost.

The parameters of each approach were compared independently, and then a practical comparison was conducted among these three approaches. Finally, a variety of technologies, opportunities, challenges and advantages of each significant method, as well as a future outlook for layerless rapid prototyping, are presented.

This paper aims to propose a novel wheel-based multiaxis force sensor designed to detect the interaction forces and moments between the planetary rover’s wheel and the terrain, thereby assisting the rover in environmental perception.

The authors’ design approach encompasses the mechanical structure design, decoupling methods and component integration techniques, effectively incorporating multiaxis sensors into the forward-sensing wheel. This enables high-precision and high-reliability detection of wheel–terrain interaction forces and torques.

The designed wheel-based multiaxis force sensor exhibits a nonlinearity error of 0.45%, a hysteresis error of 0.56% and a repeatability error of 0.49%, meeting the requirements for practical applications. Furthermore, the effectiveness and stability of the designed wheel-based multidimensional force sensor have been validated through hardware-in-the-loop experiments and full-vehicle model testing.

Unlike previous methods that directly integrate multiaxis sensors into the forward-sensing wheel, the authors have designed the force sensing wheel with consideration of its limited design space and the need for high measurement accuracy. The effectiveness of the designed wheel-based multidimensional force sensor was ultimately validated through static calibration, hardware-in-the-loop experiments and full-vehicle model experiments.

The study aims to examine diabetic patients’ switching intentions toward self-monitoring blood glucose devices, incorporating perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, with switching cost as a moderator.

A self-administered questionnaire was developed using established measuring scales. Data from 321 respondents was collected and analyzed using the partial least squares structural equation modeling approach.

Results indicate that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use influence switching intention. Switching cost does not moderate the perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and switching intention. This study reveals important information for healthcare practitioners and device manufacturers.

The significance and originality of this study stem from its pioneering investigation into the switching intentions of diabetic patients regarding self-monitoring glucose devices through the application of the technology acceptance model, thereby addressing a notable gap in the existing literature on diabetes management and technology adoption, which has lacked comprehensive examination of patients’ transition behaviors in this specific context.

In 2007, Dr. Biwang Jiang, a scientist, returned to China to establish NanoMicro. For the first decade, he exemplified the spirit of a scientist by focusing intensively on the field of nanospheres. His perseverance in research and his breakthroughs in leading international technologies allowed him to identify two major application areas: flat panel displays and biopharmaceuticals. The flat panel display business helped his startup survive the initial years, while the rise of the biopharmaceutical sector provided the growth needed for the company's eventual listing on the Shanghai Stock Exchange Sci-Tech Innovation Board (SSE STAR Market). What distinguishes entrepreneurship by scientists? Should technology-driven companies find markets for their technologies, or should they develop technologies to meet market demands?

The use of information and communication technology (ICT) has been improving in education and constantly evolving; however, the recent pandemic has catapulted it. Digital transformation of academia through online teaching demands new pedagogies to be adopted by faculty members. Academia embraces technological advancements in teaching-learning to ensure growth, development and sustainability. This paper aims to gain insights regarding the current status of literature, critical contributing authors, countries, areas, overall trends and future direction for research.

The bibliometric data was collected from two of the most widely referred databases: Scopus and Web of Science(WoS); tools like vosViewer and map builder were used for analysis. Short empirical evidence is added to the study to understand faculty members' current adoption of new pedagogical approaches in some prominent higher educational institutions.

Because of the corona pandemic, there is substantial digital transformation in the teaching-learning process. Therefore, it is essential to comprehend what faculty members can adopt critical pedagogies. Understanding the importance of pedagogy in learning outcomes, this study has attempted to synthesize available literature on ICT, pedagogy and higher education in the 21st century.

The study outlined flipped and blended learning as two teaching methods developed due to ICT integration in the classroom. Bibliometric insights from the study build the groundwork for academic advancement to remote online education. This is an attempt to corroborate such insights.

This study aims to assess the situation of a nascent field of research dealing with the impact of nationalism on foreign direct investment (FDI) by providing a general overview of the field, critically reviewing the literature to identify the gaps and making suggestions for future research directions.

This study uses a combination of a bibliometric analysis and a critical literature review. A total of 154 papers were included in the sample. They were selected from the Web of Science database based on specific criteria.

The study concluded with the presentation of the key descriptive information – most prolific authors, journals, affiliations, countries and disciplines; number of publications per year; and most cited articles – from the bibliometric analysis to illustrate the structure of the literature. Moreover, the critical discussion focused on six main categories: constituents of nationalism, types of nationalism, relevant ideologies, related actors, outcomes of nationalism and the contexts investigated. Furthermore, the need for further empirical research to shed light on the relationship between nationalism and FDI was emphasized and suggestions for future research directions were made.

This study represents one of the pioneering attempts to comprehensively examine the relationship between nationalism and FDI. Moreover, the systematic review of the methodical sections of the articles examined and the suggestions made have the potential to contribute to improving the quality of future research in this area.

This research is designed to meet two research objectives: firstly, to weigh up the criteria of Internet of Things (IoT) adoption in warehousing startups; secondly, to rank warehousing startups on the basis of benefits they derive from IoT adoption catering to an unorganized sector in the food supply chain.

A blend of analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and complex proportional assessment (COPRAS) methods of multi-criteria decision-making techniques were applied. AHP determined the weights of various criteria using pairwise comparison, and COPRAS technique ranked the 10 warehousing startups on account of performance indicators. The study has been conducted at the warehousing startups of Bangalore, a hub of food warehousing startups.

The critical findings of the study revealed that these food warehouse startups attain improved productivity in terms of enhancing efficiency when implemented with IoT adoption. When evaluated using both AHP and COPRAS techniques, the combined results show WH5 as the best performing and WH10 as the least performing warehouse startups.

Warehouses that are embarking on their business opportunity in food storage can strategize to leverage the benefits of IoT in terms of food safety and security, capacity planning, layout design, space utilization and resilience.

Despite the numerous research works on food supply chain, the research on IoT in warehousing startups is limited. The rankings for the 10 food warehousing startups integrated with IoT using AHP-COPRAS approaches are the novelty of this work.

This study aims to evaluate the effects of the downhole environment and auxiliary rubber bellows on the contact mechanical characteristics and sealing performance of rubber-bellows mechanical seals (RBMS) in electric submersible pumps (ESPs), considering the elastic support of the rubber bellows, multi-field coupling effect and actual operating conditions.

A thermal-fluid-solid multi-field coupling numerical model for RBMS in ESPs is developed using the finite element analysis and influence coefficient method. Based on the contact mechanical characteristics of RBMS, the interactions of multiple physical fields between the sealing rings and lubricating oil are accounted for to assess the liquid lubrication state and sealing performance of RBMS in ESPs.

The findings indicate the anti-leakage effects of rubber bellows, the transition of lubrication state of the sealing end face and the evolution law of sealing performance with environmental pressure, axial compression amount and contact widths of rubber bellows.

This study innovatively proposes a multi-field numerical research method to reveal the impact of the downhole environment and rubber bellows on RBMS in ESPs. These findings contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the sealing mechanism of RBMS and optimize the sealing design for ESPs in high-pressure environments.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-10-2024-0369/