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Flexible pressure sensor arrays have promising applications in analog haptics, reconfiguration of sensory functions, artificial intelligence, wearable devices and human-computer interaction. The force disturbance generated by the connecting material between the sensor array units will reduce the detection accuracy of the unit. The purpose of this paper is to propose a flexible pressure sensor with interference immunity capability. A C-type bridge flexible piezoelectric structure is used to improve the pressure perturbation. The interference immunity capability of the sensor has been improved.

In this paper, a C-type pressure sensor array structure by rapid injection moulding is manufactured through the positive piezoelectric effect of a piezoelectric material. The feasibility of C-type interference immunity structure in a flexible sensor array is verified by further analysis and experiment. A flexible pressure sensor array with C-type interference immunity structure has been proposed.

In this paper, we present the results of the perturbation experiment results of the C-type pressure sensor array, showing that the perturbation error is less than 8%. The test of the flexible sensor array show that the sensor can identify the curved angle of up to 120 °, and the output sensitivity of the sensor in the horizontal state reaches 0.12 V/N, and the sensor can withstand the pressure of 80 N. The flexible sensor can work stably in the stretch rate range of 0–8.6% and the stretch length range of 0–6 mm.

In this paper, C-type pressure sensor array structure is fabricated by rapid injection moulding for the first time. The research in this paper can effectively reduce the disturbance of input pressure on the sensor’s internal array and improve the output accuracy. The sensor can intuitively reflect the number of fingers sliding on the sensor by the order in which the maximum voltage appears. Due to the strong interference immunity capability and flexibility of the flexible sensor array mechanism, it has a broad application prospect in the practical fields of haptic simulation, perceptual function reconstruction, artificial intelligence, wearable devices and human–computer interaction.

The purpose of this study is to provide a micro-nano chip automatic alignment system. Used for micron and nanometer channel alignment of microfluidic chip.

In this paper, combined with the reconstructed micro–nanoscale Hough transform theory, a “clamp–adsorb–rotate” chip alignment method is proposed. The designed alignment system includes a microscopic identification device, a clamping device and a suction device. After assembly, the straightness of the linear slide rail in the horizontal and vertical directions was tested, respectively. The results show that in the horizontal and vertical directions, the linearity error of the linear slide is +0.29 and 0.30 µm, respectively, which meets the requirement of chip alignment accuracy of 15 µm. In the direction of rotation, the angular error between the microchannel and the nanochannel is ±0.5°. In addition, an alignment flow experiment of the chip is designed. The results demonstrate that the closer the angle between the microchannel and the nanochannel is to 90°, the fluid fills the entire channel. Compared with the conventional method, the method and the assembly system realize fully automatic double-layer chip alignment.

A mechanical device designed by Hough transform theory can realize microfluidic chip alignment at nanometer and micron level.

The automatic alignment device adopts Hough transform principle and can be used for microfluidic chip alignment.

This study examined how parental divorce during emerging adulthood gives meaning to emerging adults’ developmental stage and interpersonal relationships.

The participant sample consisted of 15 females from the Southeastern United States who were between the ages of 18 and 25 (M = 21.5). Qualitative methods were utilized, with a transcendental phenomenological research methodology specifically applied. Interviews were conducted focusing on perceptions of the divorce experience in relation to important aspects of emerging adulthood, namely developmental experiences and interpersonal relationships, primarily intimate partner and dating experiences. NVivo was used to allow a “bottom-up” design, emergent design, and interpretive inquiry for data analysis.

Two major themes emerged from the data: (1) developmental stage facilitates insight into the divorce process and (2) parental divorce leads to contemplating and reconceptualizing perceptions of self and interpersonal relationships.

Results are relevant to researchers, parents, and practitioners as divorce is examined with a developmental lens. Findings suggest that the meaning and impact of parental divorce are distinct for emerging adult children, characterized by awareness and personal reflection. Implications for parenting and practice are provided.

This paper aims to develop an efficient numerical method for nonlinear transient heat conduction problems with local radiation boundary conditions and nonlinear heat sources.

Based on the physical characteristic of the transient heat conduction and the distribution characteristic of the Green’s function, a quasi-superposition principle is presented for the transient heat conduction problems with local nonlinearities. Then, an efficient method is developed, which indicates that the solution of the original nonlinear problem can be derived by solving some nonlinear problems with small structures and a linear problem with the original structure. These problems are independent of each other and can be solved simultaneously by the parallel computing technique.

Within a small time step, the nonlinear thermal loads can only induce significant temperature responses of the regions near the positions of the nonlinear thermal loads, whereas the temperature responses of the remaining regions are very close to zero. According to the above physical characteristic, the original nonlinear problem can be transformed into some nonlinear problems with small structures and a linear problem with the original structure.

An efficient and accurate numerical method is presented for transient heat conduction problems with local nonlinearities, and some numerical examples demonstrate the high efficiency and accuracy of the proposed method.

The authors develop a theoretical framework of how foreign competition in a firm's home country jointly interacts with other environmental factors to influence the internationalization pace. This study moves beyond the debate on whether foreign competition promotes or inhibits the internationalization pace by unpacking the nature of pace across strategic and operational dimensions. By differentiating the internationalization paces of market scope and international commitment, the study results show that foreign competition has a positive effect on the former and a negative effect on the latter. This indicates that the determinants of different paces are conditional upon the different knowledge types among foreign competitors.

Using a panel data set of Chinese construction corporations over the period from 2009 to 2015, the authors extend previous research on the effect of home country environment on internationalization behavior in an emerging economy by examining the effects of the interplay between foreign competition in home country and industrial contexts. The authors also explore the moderating effect of subnational institutions on the relationship between foreign competition and internationalization pace. They use a Poisson model and a GEE model to examine the main effects and moderating effects involved.

The results indicate that industry dynamism strengthens the positive effect of foreign competition and the pace of market scope, while industry munificence weakens the negative effect of foreign competition and the pace of international commitment. The authors’ findings support the coexistence of “pushing” and “pulling” effects of environmental factors from a firm's home country. The authors extend the argument of “institutional escapism” by focusing on subnational institutions. They show that firms located in a region with a low level of marketization are more likely to respond by accelerating the pace of their international expansion to escape from their home country.

The authors’ findings have implications for practitioners and policymakers working with emerging market firms (EMFs). The authors suggest that local governments should consider building high-quality institutions that can reduce the possibility of investment opportunities escaping EMFs. The authors’ findings indicate that international knowledge from foreign competitors may also assist EMFs in understanding more about the cultural environment before entering host countries, although it cannot help them to resolve cultural uncertainty when operating in host countries. Hence, managers should carefully evaluate their competitiveness before they decide to engage in global competition at an accelerated rate.

The advanced synthetic and natural materials, such as piezoelectric ceramics, electroactive polymers and biological soft tissues, exhibit the multi‐physical or physicochemical coupling behaviors. The coupling behavior involves the thermal‐mechanical, electric‐mechanical and electrochemicalmechanical interactions. The coupling phenomena can be modeled in the microscopic and macroscopic levels. In the microscale, the material consists of the solid, fluid and ions. The domain FE technique can be used to model the deformation of the solid and the flow of the fluid. In the macroscale, the mixture theory can be applied to description of the coupled response of the continuum under coupled thermal, electrical, chemical and mechanical loadings. A weak form of the governing equations is established by means of variational principle and a multi‐field finite element (MFE) method is developed for numerical modeling of the coupling behavior of advanced materials.

Culture and institutions are among the essential sources of comparative advantage in international trade and may influence a country's FDI influx. This paper aims to analyze the impact of cultural distance (CD) and institutional distance (ID) on the efficiency of China's outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) for the panel of 43 countries during 2003–2016.

The stochastic frontier approach (SFA) has been incorporated into the standard gravity model of gravity Kalirajan, 1999; Ravishankar and Stack, 2014). SFA has traditionally been implemented to evaluate the production frontier as the highest yield that could possibly be generated from specified input levels. The production process is viewed to be fully efficient if the real output is performed at frontier level. Otherwise, the production process is assumed technically inefficient, which implies potential scope for enhanced output. This error term is split into two parts, a non-negative term and more standard asymmetrical term. The former identifies inefficiencies in production, while the latter retrieves random disorders

The outcomes assert a U-shaped relationship between CD and the efficiency of China's OFDI. Put differently, when the CD is minimal, the “liability of foreignness” (LOF) effect plays a dominant role; and CD tends to reduce the efficiency of China's OFDI. On the flip side, when the culture distance is greater than a certain threshold level, the “advantages of foreignness” (AOF) effect plays a predominant role, and CD improves the efficiency of China's OFDI. Institutional distance results in the “LOF” effect significantly reduce the efficiency of China's OFDI.

Notwithstanding these contributions, our study has some limitations which offer directions for future research. The major limitation of this research work is the availability of comprehensive data for a well extended time, in particular for the variable of CD. Further, a firm-level study can shed light on the motivations and performance of China OFDI. Finally, given that our analysis focuses on emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) from China, the findings might not be explicitly generalizable to MNEs from other developing countries. Future studies should concentrate on the comparative study of China's OFDI with other developing countries, to deepen our understanding of the effects of ID and CD on the efficiency of OFDI.

(1) The work is novel in nature as the authors attempt to explore the effect of ID and CD on efficiency of Chinese FDI. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no research is conducted in this direction in terms of Chinese FDI. (2) Further, the prior studies employed standard gravity model, which may not correctly evaluate the trade potential viewed as the highest potential value. To overcome the shortcomings of the standard gravity model in estimation of the trade performance and efficiency, the SFA has been incorporated into the standard gravity model of gravity.

This study aimed to bibliometrically and visually analyze and review hospitality and tourism marketing studies published from 2000–2020.

A total of 3,942 articles collected from the databases of Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) and Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E) in the Web of Science (WoS) along with their references were used for analyses. The bibliometric software HistCiteTM and literature measurement visualization tools, VOSviewer and CiteSpace, were employed to analyze the selected articles.

The results of the study demonstrated top influential scholars and institutions, intellectual structure and emerging trends of the study topics, and future research opportunities in the field of hospitality and tourism marketing.

First, academic influence of a scholar was evaluated by citations of his/her publications, which did not take the order of authorship into consideration. Second, this study was restricted to the English language journals. Third, other types of published documents related to the studied field such as review papers were not considered by this research.

In comparison to traditional qualitative analysis such as content analysis, bibliometric analysis is a more objective approach to vividly demonstrate trends and performance of a research field, offers unique insights for its advancement with wider inclusiveness of a larger amount of data.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of job, organizational and personal factors on exhaustion (EXH) in early career construction professionals in India.

A survey questionnaire was developed and circulated among early career construction professionals in India. The responses on job, organizational and personal demands (role ambiguity, stakeholder management and work-family conflict respectively) and job, organizational and personal resources (job autonomy (JA), perceived organizational support and emotional intelligence respectively) were sought using standard measures. The valid data (N = 187) thus collected, was analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM).

The study finds that in terms of demands, stakeholder management and work family conflict have a significant positive effect on EXH. In other words, EXH level increases with the increase in these two. With respect to resources, JA has a negative effect on EXH. This implies that as JA increases, the EXH level goes down.

This study is the first to examine factors causing EXH in early career construction professionals in India. This study is significant on two counts. First, it proposes a comprehensive theoretical model based in job demands-resources (JD-R) theory customized for construction sector. Second, the empirical examination is situated in the Indian context, which remains underexplored despite its economic and demographic significance.

At least 35 years have passed since Slovic's (1987) seminal article on the ‘Perception of Risk’, wherein the conceptual foundations for understanding general risk and the psychometric properties underlying how individuals perceive risks were laid. Over the same time span, research on risk perception in the context of travel has become voluminous and recurrent. It is therefore fitting that in a modern, post-COVID age, Slovic's theory of risk perception is re-examined in the travel context, given the recent dramatic transformation of travel, the emergence of novel tourism-related risks and persistent scholarly attempts to understand travel risk theory. Using modern data mining methods and content analysis techniques, this chapter examines the stability and validity of long-standing categories and taxonomies of perceived travel risks, based on data archived in a sizeable database of scholarly studies related to travel risk (n = 17,790 studies), across an extensive 35-year period from 1990 to 2022. Findings infer two higher-order dimensions that likely underpin the taxonomic organization and relational ordering of different travel risk types and clusters. Findings also suggest a possible shift from Slovic's original theory in the way risks are perceived, at least in the travel context.