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This paper explores why and how Japanese tourists travel in their home country. This work uses in-depth interviews and focus group interviews as its study design. Nature is an important aspect of Japanese life, and the meaning and use of nature include spiritual and bodily purification. Furthermore, Japanese domestic nature-based travels are strongly linked to self-identity and self-presentation, in that the Japanese travel not only for the sake of enjoyment, but also to a large extent as an instrument for learning, sharing and communing. The results are discussed in terms of theoretical contributions and practical applications.

Psychological researches of colour reveal that a colour or a group of colours is associated with certain meanings or can cause certain feelings. These feelings of a colour are termed as colour emotions perceived by people. It is important for colour design of a product. Quantitative relationships between colours and the emotion they caused can assist designers to select right colour for the right design objects. The quantitative relationships can also contribute to the reduction of the lead time for colour design process as the colour emotion can be expressed by standard colour specification. A review was carried out in this paper to introduce the research works in quantifying colour emotion.

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is developed by an insufficient supply of oxygen-rich blood to the myocardium. Recent studies have shown that increased oxidative stress has implicated in the pathogenesis of coronary atherosclerosis. Anxiety and CAD have a mutual relationship, as the effect of long-lasting anxiety on atherosclerosis and CAD is well known. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between dietary / serum total antioxidant capacity and CAD.

A total of 160 male patients were enrolled in this cross-sectional study. Diagnosis and analysis of angiograms were performed visually by a cardiologist. The subjects were categorized into CAD− (coronary artery obstruction <75 per cent) and CAD+ (coronary artery obstruction ≥ 75 per cent) groups. Anthropometric indices, blood pressure, blood sugar and lipid profile and physical activity (PA) were assessed. Information about anxiety was obtained by Spielberger questionnaire. Dietary total antioxidant capacity (TAC) was obtained by using a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire and an oxygen radical absorbance capacity of selected foods.

Mean of dietary TAC was significantly lower in CAD+ than CAD− group (P < 0.001). However, there was not any significant differences about serum TAC (P = 0.28). The mean of body mass index (BMI) (P = 0.04) and triglyceride (TG) level (P = 0.03) and the frequency of smoking (P = 0.03) were significantly higher in the CAD+ than the CAD− group. There was no significant relationship between CAD with apparent (P = 0.33) and hidden anxiety level (P = 0.16). Confounding factors such as smoking and medications were adjusted.

This study had certain limitations. Being a single center cross-sectional design does not permit analysis of causal relationships; the sample size was geographically limited. The authors could not exclude the medication of patients, which could affect the total antioxidant capacity levels. Measurement error in self-reported dietary consumption may results misclassification of exposure.

A diet high in total antioxidant capacity is inversely associated with CAD. Serum TAC does not vary between men with and without CAD when confounders including age, BMI, TG, smoking, SBP, DBP, energy intake, PA, HDL-C, LDL-C, T-C, FBS, family history of CAD, education and anxiety are taken into consideration.

High consumption of vegetables and fruits may play a major role in the prevention of CAD.

The study was approved by the ethics committee of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences (No:394888).

The starting hesitation of a switched reluctance motor (SRM) is an issue which must be considered in the early motor design. It is mostly handled as a control concern. The starting procedure of a SRM using a single Hall-effect position sensor is analysed in this paper. This low cost position measurement solution requires a specific control strategy. That has been developed for a three-phase 6/4 SRM. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The starting procedure begins with a rotor alignment step intending to bring the rotor to a known position. Afterward, only one phase is supplied on a periodic basis, to drive the rotor in the desired direction and accelerate up to a predefined speed threshold. Thus, the proposed procedure drastically simplifies the control strategy and permits a low cost sensor based control. 2D finite elements simulations are performed to analyse the starting performances in terms of response time and power efficiency. Both electrical and mechanical transients are considered in the simulation model thanks to simplifying assumption which consists in applying a time averaged voltages instead of instantaneous switching. Finally, the entire starting procedure with a one phase supply procedure is tested experimentally.

A starting procedure of a three-phase SRM is implemented. The control effectiveness is validated by complementary FE calculations and measurements.

The starting hesitation issue of a three-phase SRM is solved with an easy control strategy. During the acceleration phase, only one phase is self-controlled.

The purpose of this paper is to show how shape analysis and quantitative characterization of fiber cross sections, with the aid of image analysis techniques, provide a quick, powerful approach to automated profiled fiber identification.

In this paper, an effective method of cross‐sectional shape characterization for profiled fiber identification is reported with extraction of the distance fluctuation curve of fiber cross‐sectional boundary to the centroid. By calculating their cross‐correlations using signal processing techniques, the authors tackle the problem of calibrating the starting points of fiber objects orientated arbitrarily in image successfully, which are difficult to deal with by means of image processing, to finish the normalization of distance fluctuation curves. For two fiber cross‐sections, the similarity degree of their boundary fluctuation curves normalized can effectively reflect the similarity degree of themselves.

Based on this, the method presented extracts the curves of all fiber cross‐sections in one sample, compares the similarity degrees between each other, and creates clusters to identify profiled fiber.

Experimental results validate that this curve can effectively characterize profiled fiber cross‐sectional contour for profiled fiber identification and the normalization method is feasible.

The purpose of this paper is to examine management practices in transferring Japanese kaizen activities to overseas plants. The aim is to provide a greater understanding of organisational capabilities that facilitate an incremental organisation‐wide innovation.

Case studies of nine medium‐ and large‐sized Japanese auto‐parts overseas plants in China were conducted. The data were analysed by comparing the successful cases of management practices concerning the transfer of Japanese kaizen activities to overseas plants with unsuccessful ones. Based on the assumption that learning is situated in the context, the concept of communities of practice promoted by Wenger is used as the analytical framework of this study.

The results of the comparative analysis show some common characteristics of management practices in successful cases: they actively used team‐based rather than individual‐based suggestion schemes; they had human resource practices that emphasised the importance of having workers who could do more than one job and long‐term employment; and the managers of successful cases conducted shop floor visits to check the work processes every day.

This study suggests the necessity for the researchers and practitioners of kaizen to consider a healthy balance between three types of organisational capabilities that encourage workers' self‐initiative, facilitate cross‐functional communication, and discipline workers.

This paper aims to discuss the low carbon supply chain practices in China’s textile industry. To curb greenhouse gas emissions, the Chinese government has launched restrict regulatory system and imposed the energy consumption constraint in the textile industry to guarantee the achievability of low carbon economy. The authors aim to examine how the energy consumption constraint affects the optimal decisions of the supply chain members and address the supply chain coordination issue.

The authors conduct two case studies from Chinese textile companies and examine the impact of energy consumption constraints on their production and operations management. Based on the real industrial practices, the authors then develop a simple analytical model for a low carbon supply chain in which it consists of one single retailer and one single manufacturer, and the manufacturer determines the choice of clean technology for energy efficiency improvement and emission reduction.

From the case studies, the authors find that the textile companies develop clean technologies to reduce carbon emission in production process under the energy consumption enforcement. In this analytical model, the authors derive the optimal decisions of the supply chain members and reveal that supply chain coordination can be achieved if the manufacturer properly sets the reservation wholesale price (WS) despite the production capacity can fulfill partial market demand under a WS (or cost sharing) contract. The authors also find that the cost-sharing contract may induce the manufacturer to increase the investment of clean technology and reduce the optimal WS.

This paper discusses low carbon supply chain practices in China’s textile industry and contributes toward green supply chain development. Managerial implications are identified, which are beneficial to the entire textile industry in the developing countries.

This study aims to provide a novel approach to examining the connection between several aspects of low-carbon supply chain practices (LCSCPs), eco-innovation (EI) and the performance of manufacturing firms in Malaysia.

The current study employed a quantitative research strategy, utilizing survey data collected from a sample of 120 manufacturing firms located in Malaysia. The main aim of this study was to analyze the research framework and test the proposed hypotheses.

The results of the study indicate that EI has a mediating role in the link between LCSCP and manufacturing firm performance (MFP). EI serves as a mediating factor in the association between MFP and four components of LCSCPs, specifically low-carbon product design, low-carbon process improvement, low-carbon purchasing and low-carbon logistics.

The results of this study hold significant potential for supply chain professionals in their endeavors to decrease carbon emissions. Practitioners can help eliminate carbon footprints (CFs) by selecting the right LCSCP techniques that support EI and MFP. When creating low-carbon management methods in supply chain management (SCM), practitioners must take into account the potential mediating role of EI.

To date, this work is one of the first efforts to investigate the role of EI as a mediator between LCSCP and MFP. Moreover, this research adds to the existing knowledge and improves understanding of how low-carbon development is being implemented in Malaysia, with the ultimate objective of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.

This paper presents a study on implementing design of experiments for optimizing the extrusion blow molding process. The effect of screw speed, melting temperature, cooling time, pressure, mold temperature, and ambient temperatures on the outcome of the process is investigated. The significant factors affecting the volume and mass of the blow molded bottles are identified. The results show that melting temperature, pressure, and ambient temperature have a significant impact on the variation of produced bottle quality. An optimization technique is implemented to identify the best operating conditions to meet the required product output.