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The purpose of this study was to assess the information literacy proficiency of transfer students. This assessment of skills was undertaken to improve the services provided to transfer students in academic libraries, with a particular focus on information literacy instruction.

The Project Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy Skills (SAILS) test was administered to assess the information literacy proficiency of a cohort of undergraduate students taking courses on two regional campuses of a four-year institution. In total, 114 students participated, and SAILS test scores were compared to several demographic characteristics using one-way and two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA).

Results showed that undergraduate students generally lack information literacy skills, even at the junior and senior levels. Previous library instruction had a positive impact on scores for two of the Association of College and Research Libraries information literacy standards, suggesting that library instruction programs can be effective at improving these skills. When examining performance across the board on the various information literacy skills, there was no significant difference between transfer and native students in this result set.

This study had a limited sample size, and only tested students taking courses from two regional campus locations. Follow-up studies could broaden the scope to include main campus transfer students to form a larger sample size.

It was difficult to find original research within the library literature that directly addressed information literacy skills in a mixed population of transfer and native students. Further research in this area can serve to improve the services offered to all students within academic libraries.

The purpose of this paper was to ask librarian Rachel Mulvihill (Head of Teaching and Engagement) and colleagues at University of Central Florida libraries about the Foundations of Excellence Transfer Initiative, an extensive, university-wide self-study program examining their transfer student needs for success and retention. University librarians participated in Foundational Dimensions groups in the first year of the program and with action groups in the second year.

This is an interview.

Participation in campus-wide initiatives to reach transfer students improved the libraries’ image in the university system, strengthened inter-department connections and supported the success of transfer students. Developing personal connections with transfer students and understanding your school’s transfer population needs and dialogues with feeder school can help libraries better support their student populations.

The integration of library staff into a system-wide transfer-student assessment program is rare, if not unique.

We employ mean‐variance spanning and intersection tests in the stochastic discount factor approach to examine the potential diversification benefits of international investments from the perspective of Korean investors. Our results show that the addition of international regional indices to the set of domestic equities provides significant diversification benefits. However, the source and economic magnitude of diversification benefits differ across international markets. Furthermore, we find that when investors manage their portfolio based on instrument variables, they can not only expand their investment opportunities by investing in international assets, but also increase the efficiency gain of diversification benefits.

This paper provides an overview of the new Securities Law (“the Law”) of the People’s Republic of China, promulgated at the end of 1998. The analysis will be based on the objective of providing good quality control. The writer will ask whether the Law is sufficiently clear in setting up a securities law system in the PRC. The paper will conclude that the Law falls short of this goal by a considerable margin. This is mainly due to ambiguities in the Law. In addition, inherent characteristics of the PRC legal system also contribute towards this conclusion.

This study aims to explore how the ideal employee effects of internal marketing are created and sustained. It aims to reveal the role that outbound marketing activities play in the reproduction of a brand-centric employee culture.

From an organizational ritual perspective, this study conducts a qualitative study of a Chinese department store’s anniversary celebration, which is a multi-day annual sales event. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, supplemented with corporate documents and field observation.

This study reveals that the focal event remains a success because the well-managed coordination of its onstage and backstage activities serves to reproduce an employee culture of espousing and voluntarily enacting corporately mandated role norms, values and beliefs.

For the management of retail events with the aim of building organizational culture, this study points to the importance of emphasizing the symbolism of the sales promotion aspects of an event and paying as much attention to employees’ backstage experiences as to the public execution of a consumer event.

This study shows that external marketing could set the stage for internal marketing, with the ideal effects of internal marketing actually constructed and institutionalized during activities and procedures comprising outbound marketing. This suggests that a more nuanced view of the practice of internal marketing is warranted.

This paper aims to obtain the optimal wire sizing of buffered global interconnects and to investigate the impact of weight factor on the optimized system performance for various technology nodes.

The width and spacing of interconnects are optimized under two scenarios, and corresponding optimum line width is determined by minimizing the value of power‐delay product which is defined as a figure of merit (FOM). Based on the results, the impact of weight factor on the optimized system performance, such as delay and power dissipation per unit length, is analyzed for various technology nodes.

The analytical expressions of the optimum width are derived under two scenarios. Better FOMs can be achieved for the S=W scenario, but the wireability of the chip degrades considerably. The optimized delay increases with the increasing of weight factor, while the optimized power dissipation decreases with it. For a given weight factor, smaller latency and less power dissipation can be achieved for the S=W case.

The analytical expressions of the optimum width of interconnects are given, and a comprehensive study of the impact of weight factor on the optimized results under two scenarios is presented.

This paper aims to establish a method to optimize reflow profiles and achieve high reliability of solder joints on the basis of the heating factor, Q_η, a measure of the reflow profile related to reliability of reflow processed products.

The focus of the paper is on how to realize the optimal range of Q_η, since there is no need to pay particular attention to the shape of a reflow profile when performing a heating factor‐based optimization. The coldest point on the printed circuit board assembly (PCA), which experiences the minimum heating factor (Q_η^min) during the reflow process, was used to set the lower limit of the optimal range (Q_η^L). If Q_η^min approaches Q_η^L and the temperature difference across the PCA is minimized, then the solder joints on the PCA will all experience heating factors within the optimal range, ensuring high quality reflow soldering. Establishing an initial reflow profile may be performed using profiling software. The resultant oven recipe may then be used as the reference recipe by which to apply the heating factor‐based optimization. A combinatorial parameter, H_t, is defined to represent the temperature settings of all the top heating zones within the heating section of the reflow oven. The relative difference between H_t and each top heating zone temperature setting is derived from the reference recipe, and H_t is then adjusted to achieve Q_η^L for Q_η^min. This is achieved by using a least squares estimation method to build a regression model for Q_η^min versus H_t.

Experiments and regression analysis have demonstrated that Q_η^min varied linearly with H_t, with α denoting its slope. With a measured Q_η^min in response to the reference setup after the first run of a PCA, H_t should be increased by ((Q_η^L−Q_η^min)/α) to attain Q_η^L in the second run. Thereby, a suitable reflow process recipe can be obtained with only two reflow runs where Q_η^min is close to Q_η^L.

The optimal range of heating factor for lead‐free solder pastes is currently unknown, and the method to establish the required oven recipe for achieving a required reflow profile requires further exploration.

Provides a methodology for reducing the risk of process‐related reliability issues in lead‐free soldering.

Q_η^L can be fairly quickly achieved for Q_η^min with the approach established in this paper, facilitating the formation of solder joints with high reliability during the reflow soldering process.

The study explores how pre-service teachers engage in Tong Ke Yi Gou (“Same lesson and different design”) as a Chinese version of lesson study in a language teacher education course.

Data were collected from multiple sources, including semi-structured interviews, field observations, as well as individual reflections constructed by the participants. The different data sources served to triangulate and enrich each other, shedding light on the student teachers’ learning experiences through lesson study.

The findings of the study reveal the participants’ enhanced motivation and participation through a process-oriented, collaborative design (i.e. joint lesson planning, micro-teaching, collaborative debrief and individual reflections). In addition, the participants engaged in constant comparisons at multiple levels, which collectively refined and expanded their pedagogical knowledge about language teaching. Such rich and collaborative experiences further contributed to their reflections on and for practice as future language teachers. On the other hand, the study also reveals the emotional challenges faced by some participants due to the competitive atmosphere brought by the comparative element embedded in the process of Tong Ke Yi Gou.

This study incorporates the mode of Tong Ke Yi Gou into a pre-service teacher education course in order to examine how it can benefit student teachers’ learning to teach. The findings highlight the power of “comparison” in promoting student teachers’ reflective and analytical thinking at multiple levels with practical implications for current pre-service teacher education programs.

This paper aims to propose an online local trajectory planner for safe and fast trajectory generation that combines the jerk-limited trajectory (JLT) generation algorithm and the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. A trajectory switching algorithm is proposed to improve the trajectory tracking performance. The proposed system generates smooth and safe flight trajectories online for quadrotors.

First, the PSO algorithm method can obtain the optimal set of target points near the path points obtained by the global path searching. The JLT generation algorithm generates multiple trajectories from the current position to the target points that conform to the kinetic constraints. Then, the generated multiple trajectories are evaluated to pick the obstacle-free trajectory with the least cost. A trajectory switching strategy is proposed to switch the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to a new trajectory before the UAV reaches the last hovering state of the current trajectory, so that the UAV can fly smoothly and quickly.

The feasibility of the designed system is validated through online flight experiments in indoor environments with obstacles.

The proposed trajectory planning system is integrated into a quadrotor platform. It is easily implementable onboard and computationally efficient.

The proposed local planner for trajectory generation and evaluation combines PSO and JLT generation algorithms. The proposed method can provide a collision-free and continuous trajectory, significantly reducing the required computing resources. The PSO algorithm locally searches for feasible target points near the global waypoint obtained by the global path search. The JLT generation algorithm generates trajectories from the current state toward each point contained by the target point set. The proposed trajectory switching strategy can avoid unnecessary hovering states in flight and ensure a continuous and safe flight trajectory. It is especially suitable for micro quadrotors with a small payload and limited onboard computing power.