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Effective rail surface defects detection method is the basic guarantee to manufacture high-quality rail. However, the existed visual inspection methods have disadvantages such as poor ability to locate the rail surface region and high sensitivity to uneven reflection. This study aims to propose a bionic rail surface defect detection method to obtain the high detection accuracy of rail surface defects under uneven reflection environments.

Through this bionic rail surface defect detection algorithm, the positioning and correction of the rail surface region can be computed from maximum run-length smearing (MRLS) and background difference. A saliency image can be generated to simulate the human visual system through some features including local grayscale, local contrast and edge corner effect. Finally, the meanshift algorithm and adaptive threshold are developed to cluster and segment the saliency image.

On the constructed rail defect data set, the bionic rail surface defect detection algorithm shows good recognition ability on the surface defects of the rail. Pixel- and defect-level index in the experimental results demonstrate that the detection algorithm is better than three advanced rail defect detection algorithms and five saliency models.

The bionic rail surface defect detection algorithm in the production process is proposed. Particularly, a method based on MRLS is introduced to extract the rail surface region and a multifeature saliency fusion model is presented to identify rail surface defects.

The authors examine the impacts of corporate announcements on stock returns during the pandemic stress.

The authors employ the event study methodology with the market model on a sample of 90 events (announcement and ex-date).

The authors find that all the corporate announcements do not impact the stock returns in a similar pattern. While the bonus announcement, ex-bonus and ex-split events led to positive significant abnormal returns on the event date, the rights issue and stock-split announcements failed to influence the stock returns. The findings suggest that before making such announcements, the corporates should wait until the market recovers because even the positively impacting events result in negative market responses during pandemic stress.

This study will guide the policymakers to stimulate share prices during such pandemics with the help of various corporate announcements. The investors will be assisted in understanding the stock market mechanism and making wise decisions before reacting to corporate actions during a pandemic or emergency period. While the policymakers are concerned with influencing the share prices, the investors are concerned with the composition of the risk-return parameters in their portfolio. This study will act as an essential investment tool for both.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the authors conduct the first-ever study to examine the impacts of corporate announcements during a pandemic stress period that significantly contributes to the literature. The authors examine the announcement effects in India and accurately anticipate that this study will be a pioneer in this field. This study also paves the way for future researches in this area.

Higher education institutions must keep up to date with the changing needs and situations of students, addressing societal issues affecting young people’s lives and learning. Among the crises that higher education institutions in South Korea are facing, population decline and a lack of sustainable development present a significant threat to these institutions’ existence as well as student satisfaction and learning experience. By relying on a review of relevant literature, this chapter will discuss each of these challenges and potential solutions. We hope that our discussion of the challenges in South Korea will also highlight that many of the ‘crises’ for higher education and ways to tackle them can be both localised and globally applicable. What is significant here is that higher education has a key role to play in preparing the young generation of Koreans to embrace sustainability and to foster resilience in them – for preparedness for future crises. We propose that a focus on community identity strength and education for sustainable development (ESD) can work as a solution for improving students’ learning and global citizenship in these areas. Furthermore, we argue that this is especially important for preserving local and regional strengths and, ultimately, mutual development between the region and universities. Sustainable development depends on building a stronger and positive personal and collective identity, and students’ active participation in sustainable development transcends the localised challenges. Such outcomes are also important for the sustainable future of higher education in South Korea and continuous development in the higher education scholarship.

The supercritical design of tail rotor drive shaft has attracted more attention in helicopter design due to its high power–weight ratio and low maintenance cost. However, there exists excessive vibration when the shaft passes through the critical frequency. Dry friction damper is the equipment applied to the drive shaft to suppress the excessive vibration. In order to figure out the damping mechanism of the dry friction damper and improve the damping efficiency, the dynamic model of the shaft/damper system is established based on the Jeffcott rotor model.

The typical frequency response of the system is studied through bifurcation diagrams, amplitude-frequency characteristic curves and waterfall frequency response spectrum. The typical transient responses under frequency sweeps are also obtained.

The results show that the response of the system changes from periodic no-rub motion to quasi-periodic rub-impact motion, and then to synchronous full annular rub-impact, and finally, back to periodic no-rub motion. The slip of the rub-impact ring improves the stability of the system. Besides, the effects of the system parameters including critical dry friction force, rub-impact friction coefficient, initial clearance on the stability and the vibration damping capacity are studied. It is observed that the stability changes significantly varying the three parameters respectively. The vibration damping capacity is mainly affected by the critical dry friction force and the initial clearance.

Presented results provide guidance for the design of the dry friction damper.

Emergency logistics is an important means to deal with disasters and public crises. Since the outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus in 2003, China has established and developed an emergency logistics management system. With the outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in China, its emergency logistics system is facing unfolded challenges. The main purposes of this study are to explore the development of China’s emergency logistics system in this context and identify the critical success factors for such systems. A series of focus groups are organized to collect the opinions of 24 interviewees from three Chinese cities, namely Wuhan, Shanghai, and Xi’an. Through the analysis, a framework of the critical success factors for emergency logistics in China is recreated. The key elements are demand forecasting and planning, inventory management, distribution network, and systematic information management. Findings suggest critical points on the design and imple-mentation of the emergency logistics operations during a chaotic period.

Lack of access to finance is a major constraint to the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurship in developing countries. The recent proliferation of mobile phone services, access to the internet and emerging technologies has led to a surge in the use of FinTech in Africa and is transforming the financial sector. This paper aims to examine whether FinTech developments heterogeneously contribute to the growth of digital finance for SMEs and entrepreneurship in 47 African countries from 2013 to 2020.

The paper uses a novel method of moments quantile regression, which deals with heterogeneity and endogeneity in diverse conditions for asymmetric and nonlinear models.

The empirical results reveal that the rise of FinTech companies offering services in Africa heterogeneously increases digital finance for SMEs and entrepreneurship in their different stages of growth. FinTech developments have a strong and positive impact in countries with higher levels of digital finance than those with lower levels. FinTech developments and digital finance positively and significantly influence entrepreneurship in Africa, particularly in the nascent and transitional development stages of entrepreneurship. Institutional quality has a considerable positive moderating effect when used as a control rather than an interaction variable.

The results suggest the need to promote FinTech developments in Africa: to provide a wide range of alternative digital finance schemes to SMEs and to promote entrepreneurship, especially in countries where entrepreneurship is in the nascent and transitional development stages. The results also underscore the need to promote FinTech development through supportive regulations and institutional quality to reduce risks related to FinTech and digital financing schemes.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first attempts to account for the often overlooked heterogeneity effects and show that the influence of FinTech developments is not homogenous across the varying development stages of digital finance and entrepreneurship.

The recently developed resource orchestration theory studies the processes by which managers handle resources to create competitive advantages. According to this theory, it is the way that resources interact with each other that results in such advantages. Resource integration, i.e. the alignment, or fit between resources, is one important outcome of resource orchestration processes. This paper aims to develop a scale and outline approaches to measuring such resource integration.

Using a typology of five types of resources derived from value theory, the authors develop a scale for measuring the fit between resource types, i.e. the degree of resource integration. The authors illustrate the method using a case example of an IT company and demonstrate how a variety of statistical methods including hierarchical cluster analysis, structural equation modeling, social network analysis and methods from biostatistics can provide measures of resource integration.

The authors develop a scale and associated measures that can help scholars systematically measure and identify firms with a high or low level of resource integration capability. This makes it possible to investigate further these companies and reconstruct how they support dynamic capabilities, as well as commonalities across firms with high and low levels of this capability.

Existing studies on resource orchestration have failed to provide us with a reliable measurement instrument that can be used both in cross-sectional work, and in repeated or time-series studies, allowing us to assess the degree to which a wider range of resources in an organization are integrated. The authors develop and demonstrate such an instrument.

The purpose of this paper is to review the current literature in the field of tourism demand forecasting.

Published papers in the high quality journals are studied and categorized based their used forecasting method.

There is no forecasting method which can develop the best forecasts for all of the problems. Combined forecasting methods are providing better forecasts in comparison to the traditional forecasting methods.

This paper reviews the available literature from 2007 to 2017. There is not such a review available in the literature.

This research explores support vector machine (SVM) with Gaussian radial basis function kernel (RBF) as the model and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) for forecasting the invalidation re-examination decisions of China invention patents, it is beneficial to support patent monetization for corporate intellectual capital.

There were 8,666 China invention patents with their existing invalidation re-examination decisions during 2000∼2021 chosen to conduct classification model training and prediction for the accuracy of invalidation re-examination decisions through SVM with RBF. Statistical significance was performed by ANOVA to identify indicators for these invention patents selected in this research. These selected 8,666 China invention patents were divided into two groups based on their invalidation re-examination decisions during 2000∼2021 in Table 1, which Group 1 included 5,974 invention patents with all valid or partially valid claims, and Group 0 included 2,692 invention patents with all invalid claims. Thereafter, each group was further divided into sub-groups based on 13 major regions where the applicants filed invalidation re-examination. The training sets for Group 1, Group 0 and the sub-groups were selected based on the patent issued in January, February, April, May, July, August, October and November; while the prediction sets were selected from the invention patents issued in March, June, September and December.

The training and prediction accuracies were compared to the existing invalidation re-examination decisions. Accuracies of training sets were ranged from 100% in region 7 (Beijing) and region 9 (Shanghai) to 95.95% in region 1 (US), and the average accuracy of invalidation re-examination decisions was 98.95%. While the accuracies of prediction sets for Group 1 were ranged from 100.00% in region 7 (Beijing) to 90.78% in region 13 (Overseas-others), and the average accuracy of classification was 95.96%, this research’s outcomes confirmed the purpose of applying SVM with RBF to predict the patentability sustainability.

This research developed an empirical method through SVM with RBF to predict patentability sustainability which is crucial for corporate intellectual capital on patents. In particular, the investments on patents are huge, including the patent cultivation and maintenance, developments into products or services, patent litigations and dispute managements. Therefore, this research is beneficial not only for corporation, but also for research organisations to perform cost-effective and profitable patent strategies on intellectual capital.

The purpose of this study is to examine the potential of integrating material from the arts into postgraduate curricula to deepen students’ engagement with marketing phenomena. The authors assess the use of arts-based activities, within a broader critical pedagogy, for encouraging imaginative and analytical thinking.

The authors devised two learning activities and an interpretive method for studying their value. The activities were an individual essay connecting themes in song lyrics to marketing, and a group photography project. These were applied, within a broader, critical approach, in postgraduate modules on sustainability, ethics and critical marketing. Data collection comprised diaries kept by the teachers, open-ended feedback from students and students’ assignments.

Students showed high levels of engagement, reflexivity and depth of thought, in felt experiences of learning. Their ability to make connections not explicitly in the materials, and requiring imaginative jumps, was notable. Several reported lasting changes to their behaviour. Some found the tasks initially intimidating or, once they were more engaged, stressful or saddening.

This adds to scholarship on management education by showing the usefulness of an arts-based approach towards a transformative agenda.

It offers a template of how to draw from the arts to strengthen critical engagement upon which marketing teachers can build. It also contains practical advice on the challenges and benefits of doing so.

The authors provide evidence that this approach can enhance sensitivity and reflexivity in students, potentially producing more ethical and sustainable decisions in future.

The pedagogical interventions are novel and of value to lecturers seeking to enhance critical engagement with theory. An empirical study of an attempt to integrate arts into teaching marketing represents a promising direction, given the discipline’s creative nature.