Ming‐Han Lin and Chin‐Tai Chen
The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of ion‐slip current and Hall current on the formation of longitudinal vortices in natural convection flow over a heated…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of ion‐slip current and Hall current on the formation of longitudinal vortices in natural convection flow over a heated horizontal plate.
Design/methodology/approach
The criterion on the position marking on the onset of longitudinal vortices is defined in the present paper. The results show that the onset position characterized by the Grashof number depends on the Prandtl number, the Reynolds number, the wave number, the Hall parameter, the ion‐slip parameter, and the Hartmann number.
Findings
The flow becomes more stable as the magnetic field increases. However, the destabilizing effect is found on the flow when the Hall and ion‐slip currents are presented.
Research limitations/implications
The standard method of linear stability model is applied, with terms higher than first order in disturbance quantities being neglected.
Practical implications
The problem of MHD natural convection flow with Hall and ion‐slip currents has many important engineering applications, e.g. power generators, Hall accelerators and flows in channels and ducts.
Originality/value
This study is to check the validity of the assumptions that the conditions of Hall and ion‐slip currents can be ignored.
Details
Keywords
Pei-Ju Wu and Yu-Chin Tai
In the reduction of food waste and the provision of food to the hungry, food banks play critical roles. However, as they are generally run by charitable organisations that are…
Abstract
Purpose
In the reduction of food waste and the provision of food to the hungry, food banks play critical roles. However, as they are generally run by charitable organisations that are chronically short of human and other resources, their inbound logistics efforts commonly experience difficulties in two key areas: 1) how to organise stocks of donated food, and 2) how to assess the donated items quality and fitness for purpose. To address both these problems, the authors aimed to develop a novel artificial intelligence (AI)-based approach to food quality and warehousing management in food banks.
Design/methodology/approach
For diagnosing the quality of donated food items, the authors designed a convolutional neural network (CNN); and to ascertain how best to arrange such items within food banks' available space, reinforcement learning was used.
Findings
Testing of the proposed innovative CNN demonstrated its ability to provide consistent, accurate assessments of the quality of five species of donated fruit. The reinforcement-learning approach, as well as being capable of devising effective storage schemes for donated food, required fewer computational resources that some other approaches that have been proposed.
Research limitations/implications
Viewed through the lens of expectation-confirmation theory, which the authors found useful as a framework for research of this kind, the proposed AI-based inbound-logistics techniques exceeded normal expectations and achieved positive disconfirmation.
Practical implications
As well as enabling machines to learn how inbound logistics are handed by human operators, this pioneering study showed that such machines could achieve excellent performance: i.e., that the consistency provided by AI operations could in future dramatically enhance such logistics' quality, in the specific case of food banks.
Originality/value
This paper’s AI-based inbound-logistics approach differs considerably from others, and was found able to effectively manage both food-quality assessments and food-storage decisions more rapidly than its counterparts.
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Keywords
Ming-Chang Huang and Bau-Jung Chang
This paper highlights cooperation as an important moderating condition of competitive action and response. Drawing on a new perspective of collective identity on competitive…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper highlights cooperation as an important moderating condition of competitive action and response. Drawing on a new perspective of collective identity on competitive dynamics, the purpose of this paper is to stress the impacts of market commonalities and resource similarities on competitive actions and responses and focus on the moderating effect of cooperation on the relationships mentioned above.
Design/methodology/approach
This study employs logistic regression analysis to test the hypotheses in the Taiwanese flour industry at the period 2002–2005.
Findings
The results indicate market commonalities and resource similarities have a negative effect on the likelihood of a price-competitive action and a price-competitive response. Moreover, the level of cooperation among firms moderates the relationships among market commonalities, resource similarities, price-competitive actions, and price-competitive responses.
Practical implications
To understand and predict competitive behavior help firms to control and avoid unnecessary rivalry and therefore maintain mutual forbearance with competitors.
Originality/value
This study provides a new angle on cooperation-level analysis, contributing the use of collective identity theory to analyze the moderating effects of cooperation on competitive actions and responses.