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This paper aims to explore how currently underserved young adults engaged in a community-based organization (CBO), Bull City YouthBuild, wrote and published a book together, and how this work impacted them and their communities. Through a critical literacy framework, the research asked: How do students in a community-based writing project demonstrate self-empowerment and agency through narrative writing?

This qualitative case study examined the students’ published narratives. The researchers used ethnographic methods in data collection, and the qualitative data analysis approaches were developed through a critical conceptual framework.

The students’ narratives expressed self-empowerment and agency in the ways the young adults wrote against a dominant discourse; they wrote about repositioning their lives and redesigning their futures to reveal how they wanted to be externally perceived and to be leaders in their communities. The students expressed how the CBO offered them freedom to write their stories as they found new ways of using their historical and cultural backgrounds to collectively pursue success.

This work offers implications of how CBOs can meet the needs of currently underserved young adults through centering their voices. The authors see the writing process as crucial for student engagement in finding agency and self-empowerment with their words.

Critical literacy foregrounds the voices of young adults as they push back against dominant narratives and stereotypes. This research hopes to reveal the intersections between CBOs and the communities they serve to develop literacies that are relevant and meaningful to young adults’ lives.

This systematic review synthesizes the recent literature (2010–2020) on hospitality employees’ emotions, affect and moods. This study has three objectives: to clarify the definitions of emotions, affect and moods; to explain how theories are integrated into understanding hospitality employees’ emotions, affect and moods; and to assess how emotions, affect and moods are measured.

Using seven major databases, the authors selected 61 peer-reviewed academic journal articles published in hospitality outlets for review. We based our study on five stages of conducting a systematic review: scoping, planning, identification, screening and eligibility.

Affect is an umbrella term encompassing moods and emotions. Emotions are distinct from emotion-laden constructs, such as emotional labor and emotional intelligence. Theories on conservation of resources, emotional labor and social exchange have been most frequently used to understand hospitality employees’ emotions. However, they overlooked the dynamic nature of emotions when using these theories. Hospitality researchers often used a subset of the positive and negative affect scale and did not discuss back-translation.

Hospitality employees’ emotions lead to far-reaching consequences in attitudes, intentions and behaviors in work and non-work domains. Effective practices (e.g. creating a supportive climate) that help evoke positive employee emotions and reduce negative employee emotions are thus desirable.

Our findings crystallize the understanding of emotions, affect and moods of hospitality employees. We further provide a roadmap for future research on hospitality employees’ emotions. Data triangulation, cross-cultural research and mixed emotions are novel opportunities for future research.

The proliferation of non-fungible token (NFT)-based crypto-art platforms has transformed how creators manage, own and earn money through the creation, assets and identity of their digital works. Despite this, no studies have examined the drivers of continuous content contribution behavior (CCCB) toward NFTs. Hence, this study draws on the theory of relational bonds to examine how various relational bonds affect feelings of psychological ownership, which, in turn, affects CCCB on metaverse platforms.

Using structural equation modeling and importance-performance matrix analysis, an online survey of 434 content creators from prominent NFT platforms empirically validated the research hypotheses.

Financial, structural, and social bonds positively affect psychological ownership, which in turn encourages CCCBs. The results of the importance-performance matrix analysis reveal that male content creators prioritized virtual reputation and social enhancement, whereas female content creators prioritized personalization and monetary gains.

We examine Web 3.0 and the NFT creators’ network that characterizes the governance practices of the metaverse. Consequently, the findings facilitate a better understanding of creator economy and meta-verse commerce.

This paper gives a review of the finite element techniques (FE) applied in the area of material processing. The latest trends in metal forming, non‐metal forming, powder metallurgy and composite material processing are briefly discussed. The range of applications of finite elements on these subjects is extremely wide and cannot be presented in a single paper; therefore the aim of the paper is to give FE researchers/users only an encyclopaedic view of the different possibilities that exist today in the various fields mentioned above. An appendix included at the end of the paper presents a bibliography on finite element applications in material processing for 1994‐1996, where 1,370 references are listed. This bibliography is an updating of the paper written by Brannberg and Mackerle which has been published in Engineering Computations, Vol. 11 No. 5, 1994, pp. 413‐55.

Artificially intelligent (AI) assistant-enabled smart speaker not only can provide assistance by navigating the massive amount of product and brand information on the internet but also can facilitate two-way conversations with individuals, thus resembling a human interaction. Although smart speakers have substantial implications for practitioners, the knowledge of the underlying psychological factors that drive continuance usage remains limited. Drawing on social response theory and the technology acceptance model, this study aims to elucidate the adoption process of smart speakers.

A field survey of 391 smart speaker users were obtained. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

Media richness (social cues) and parasocial interactions (social role) are key determinants affecting the establishment of trust, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, which, in turn, affect attitude, continuance usage intentions and online purchase intentions through AI assistants.

AI assistant-enabled smart speakers are revolutionizing how people interact with smart products. Studies of smart speakers have mainly focused on functional or technical perspectives. This study is the first to propose a comprehensive model from both functional and social perspectives of continuance usage intention of the smart speaker and online purchase intentions through AI assistants.

Gives a bibliographical review of the finite element methods (FEMs) applied for the linear and nonlinear, static and dynamic analyses of basic structural elements from the theoretical as well as practical points of view. The range of applications of FEMs in this area is wide and cannot be presented in a single paper; therefore aims to give the reader an encyclopaedic view on the subject. The bibliography at the end of the paper contains 2,025 references to papers, conference proceedings and theses/dissertations dealing with the analysis of beams, columns, rods, bars, cables, discs, blades, shafts, membranes, plates and shells that were published in 1992‐1995.

With excellent mechanic properties and hydrogen embrittlement (HE) resistance, 12Cr2Mo1R(H) steel is suitable to make hot-wall hydrogenation reactors. However, longtime exposure to a harsh environment of high-pressure hydrogen at medium temperature in practical application would still induce severe hydrogen uptake and eventually damage the mechanical properties of the steel. The study aims to evaluate the HE resistance of the steel under different tensile strain rates after hydrogen charging and analyze the hydrogen effect from atomic level.

This research studied the HE properties of 12Cr2Mo1R(H) steel by slow strain rate tests. Meanwhile, the effect of hydrogen on the structures and the mechanical properties of the simplified models of the steel was also investigated by first-principle calculations.

Experimental results showed that after hydrogen pre-charging in this work, hydrogen had little effect on the microstructure of the steel. The elongations and reduction of cross-sectional area of the samples reduced a lot, by contrast, the yield and tensile strengths changed slightly. The 12Cr2Mo1R(H) steel was not very susceptible to HE with a maximum embrittlement index of about 20.00%. First principles calculation results showed that after H dissolution, lattice distortion occurred and interstitial H atoms would preferentially occupy the tetrahedral interstitial site in bcc-Fe crystal and increase the stability of the supercells. With the increase of H atoms added into the simplified model, the steel still possessed a good ductility and toughness at a low hydrogen concentration, while the material would become brittle as the concentration of hydrogen continued to increase.

These finds can provide valuable information for subsequent HE studies on this steel.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a multidimensional hierarchical scale for measuring “e-service quality variation.”

Based on the psychometric scale-development approach, qualitative and quantitative methods were employed to develop the e-SERVAR scale. A multidimensional hierarchical factor structure of e-SERVAR is proposed, along with a set of preliminary items derived from literature and the qualitative study. Furthermore, the Yahoo website in Taiwan was chosen to be the target e-service website for data collection to develop the e-SERVAR scale. A series of statistical methods (i.e. item-to-total correlations, exploratory factor analyses, CFAs and structural equation modeling) were adopted to verify construct reliability and validity as well as nomological validity of the scale.

A 41-item e-SERVAR scale based on the structure of a hierarchical factor model was developed that contains three primary dimensions (i.e. information, system and fulfillment) and nine subdimensions (information accuracy, information quantity, information timeliness, information usefulness, system reliability, system security, merchandise quality, merchandise delivery timeliness and merchandise security).

The results of this study help managers identify sources of quality variability and design efficacious strategies to reduce such variability in order to improve the overall e-service quality.

Prior research of e-service quality has paid less attention to the role of e-service quality variability. Discussion of e-service quality variability was mainly conceptual in nature. This research presents the e-SERVAR scale as a measurement tool that provides a new avenue for researchers to study how to improve e-service quality by measuring service variability.

In this paper, the authors aim to examine and comparatively evaluate a recently-developed metaheuristic called crystal structure algorithm (CryStAl) – which is inspired by the symmetries in the internal structure of crystalline solids – in solving engineering mechanics and design problems.

A total number of 20 benchmark mathematical functions are employed as test functions to evaluate the overall performance of the proposed method in handling various functions. Moreover, different classical and modern metaheuristic algorithms are selected from the optimization literature for a comparative evaluation of the performance of the proposed approach. Furthermore, five well-known mechanical design examples are utilized to examine the capability of the proposed method in dealing with challenging optimization problems.

The results of this study indicated that, in most cases, CryStAl produced more accurate outputs when compared to the other metaheuristics examined as competitors.

This paper can provide motivation and justification for the application of CryStAl to solve more complex problems in engineering design and mechanics, as well as in other branches of engineering.

CryStAl is one of the newest metaheuristic algorithms, the mathematical details of which were recently introduced and published. This is the first time that this algorithm is applied to solving engineering mechanics and design problems.