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The purpose of this paper is to describe the first experiments to manufacture self-healing carbon fiber reinforced panels (CFRPs) for the realization of structural aeronautic components in order to address their vulnerability to impact damage in the real service conditions.

The developed self-healing system is based on ring-opening metathesis polymerizations reaction of microencapsulated 5-ethylidene-2-norbornene/dicyclopentadiene cyclic olefins using Hoveyda-Grubbs’ first generation catalyst as initiator. In this work, the self-healing resin is infused into a carbon fiber dry preform using an unconventional bulk film infusion technique that has allowed to minimize the filtration effects via a better compaction and reduced resin flow paths. Infrared spectroscopy provides a useful way to identify metathesis products and therefore catalyst activity in the self-healing panel after damage. The damage resistance of the manufactured CFRPs is evaluated through hail and drop tests.

The self-healing manufactured panels show, after damage, catalyst activity with metathesis product formation, as evidenced by an infrared peak at 966 cm⁻¹. The damage response of CFRPs, detected in accord to the requirements of hail impact for the design of a fuselage in composite material, is very good. The results are very encouraging and can constitute a solid basis for bringing this new technology to the self-healable fiber reinforced resins for aerospace applications.

In this paper, autonomically healing CFRPs with damage resistance and self-healing function are proposed. In the development of self-healing aeronautic materials it is critical that self-healing activity functions in adverse weather conditions and at low working temperatures which can reach values as low as −50°C.

In recent years, crowdfunding is assuming an increasingly central role in the development of business projects as an alternative financing tool to traditional sources. This study analyses the role of communication in the success of crowdfunding campaigns in the restaurant sector in the European context.

This study conducts a regression analysis on a sample of 442 European restaurant crowdfunding projects launched on the Kickstarter platform in a time period spanning from 2014 to 2021. More specifically, this study uses a logistic regression model to test the impact of communication on the success of restaurant crowdfunding projects.

Empirical results suggest a strong impact of communication, declined in its different forms, on the success of restaurant crowdfunding campaigns. More specifically, they highlight a positive impact of the number of images, number of videos, readability and community orientation of the project description, number of comments and number of updates on the success of restaurant crowdfunding projects.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study represents the first research that examines the effect of the communication on the success of restaurant crowdfunding projects conducted in the European context.

Crowdfunding is a relatively new alternative method of raising capital for new ventures. In recent years, crowdfunding has also gained prominence within the food industry. On the basis of signaling theory, this study aims to analyze the success factors of vegan crowdfunding campaigns, which remains unexplored in academia.

This study employs a logistic regression analysis on a sample of 200 vegan crowdfunding campaigns launched in Europe between 2014 and 2021 on the popular crowdfunding platform Kickstarter.

The results show that the number of images, comments and updates as well as the readability of project descriptions positively impact the success rate of vegan crowdfunding campaigns. Furthermore, the length of the project description has a negative effect, whereas the number of videos has no bearing on the success of vegan crowdfunding campaigns.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study pioneers examining the success factors of vegan crowdfunding campaigns. This study enriches the literature in several ways. First, this study contributes to an open debate on the success factors of crowdfunding. Second, this study provides knowledge about the factors that can favor the success of vegan initiatives. Third, this study confirms the usefulness of signaling theory as a theoretical framework for understanding vegan crowdfunding.

This study examines the effect that environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure generates on the cost of equity capital in the food and beverage (F&B) sector.

This study analyses a sample of 171 international listed firms pertaining to the F&B sector and headquartered in North America, Western Europe and Asia Pacific (developed), forming an unbalanced panel of 1,316 observations, spanning the period 2010–2019. We run a fixed-effects panel regression model to test the relationship between ESG disclosure and the cost of equity capital.

Our empirical outcomes suggest a significant negative relationship between ESG disclosure and the cost of equity capital. We find support for the notion that increased levels of ESG disclosure are linked to an improved access to financial resources for firms.

This is the first study that analyses the impact of ESG disclosure on the cost of equity capital in the F&B sector, taking existing literature a step further into more detailed and specific aspects of the relationship of focus.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the financial consequences of the level of human capital (HC) information disclosed by firms through integrated reports. Specifically, this work examines the effect of HC information on the cost of capital and firm value.

A manual content analysis is used to measure the level of HC information contained in integrated reports. A fixed-effects regression model is used to analyse 375 observations (a balanced panel of 125 firms for the period 2017–2019) and test the financial consequences of HC disclosure.

The empirical outcomes indicate that HC disclosure has a significant and negative effect on the cost of capital and a positive impact on firm value. Our results show that companies can reduce investors' perceived firm risk by improving HC disclosure, leading to a lower cost of capital. Moreover, our findings support the notion that increased levels of HC disclosure are linked to firms' improved access to external financial resources, consequently enhancing firm value.

This study is the first contribution to examine the financial consequences of HC disclosure and is one of the first to examine the level of HC information within integrated reports.

Digitalization is an element capable of improving companies’ financial performance. Despite the relevance of the topic, the financial effects associated with extensive transparency in digitalization choices have rarely been explored in extant literature. This study aims to close this important gap by examining the effect of digitalization-related information on the cost of equity capital.

This study uses manual content analysis on a sample of 122 international listed firms to measure the level of transparency in digitalization choices and a regression model to test the effect of this transparency on the cost of equity capital.

The results show that broad transparency allows firms to benefit from a lower cost of equity capital. From this perspective, disseminating information about digitalization choices in a signaling theory key represents the signal that companies send to investors.

This study extends the knowledge about the potential of transparency to facilitate access to finance by examining the effect of another type of information, namely, those relating to digitalization choices, on the cost of equity capital.

There are very few individuals who have studied the question of weights and measures who do not most strongly favour the decimal system. The disadvantages of the weights and measures at present in use in the United Kingdom are indeed manifold. At the very commencement of life the schoolboy is expected to commit to memory the conglomerate mass of facts and figures which he usually refers to as “Tables,” and in this way the greater part of twelve months is absorbed. And when he has so learned them, what is the result? Immediately he leaves school he forgets the whole of them, unless he happens to enter a business‐house in which some of them are still in use; and it ought to be plain that the case would be very different were all our weights and measures divided or multiplied decimally. Instead of wasting twelve months, the pupil would almost be taught to understand the decimal system in two or three lessons, and so simple is the explanation that he would never be likely to forget it. There is perhaps no more interesting, ingenious and useful example of the decimal system than that in use in France. There the standard of length is the metre, the standard of capacity the cubic decimetre or the litre, while one cubic centimetre of distilled water weighs exactly one gramme, the standard of weight. Thus the measures of length, capacity and weight are most closely and usefully related. In the present English system there is absolutely no relationship between these weights and measures. Frequently a weight or measure bearing the same name has a different value for different bodies. Take, for instance, the stone; for dead meat its value is 8 pounds, for live meat 14 pounds; and other instances will occur to anyone who happens to remember his “Tables.” How much simpler for the business man to reckon in multiples of ten for everything than in the present confusing jumble. Mental arithmetic in matters of buying and selling would become much easier, undoubtedly more accurate, and the possibility of petty fraud be far more remote, because even the most dense could rapidly calculate by using the decimal system.

The latest information from the magazine chemist is extremely valuable. He has dealt with milk‐adulteration and how it is done. His advice, if followed, might, however, speedily bring the manipulating dealer before a magistrate, since the learned writer's recipe is to take a milk having a specific gravity of 1030, and skim it until the gravity is raised to 1036; then add 20 per cent. of water, so that the gravity may be reduced to 1030, and the thing is done. The advice to serve as “fresh from the cow,” preferably in a well‐battered milk‐measure, might perhaps have been added to this analytical gem.