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The purpose of this paper is to examine how innovation-related firm-specific ownership advantage (FSA) plays a role in developing the competitive advantage of Chinese multinationals when they internationalize.

Based on a review of the existing literature concerning foreign direct investment by emerging economy multinational enterprises (EMNEs), the authors identify that numerous studies explain this phenomenon on the basis of their location-bound country-specific advantages. However, such views do not fully explain the key underlying factors behind the rapid rise and success of many EMNEs as these firms rapidly internationalize and develop global competitiveness in developed markets. The current research explores three leading innovative Chinese EMNEs from the engineering sector: BYD, Sany Heavy Industry and CSR China.

The authors find that EMNEs’ knowledge, and particularly their innovation-creating technological knowledge, has contributed greatly to their successful internationalization. The illustrative cases show that the three firms have now moved beyond the infant to the mature stage of EMNE development through developing their technological knowledge in order to realize FSA through internationalization. This study helps in contributing fresh reflections to the continuing debate concerning the causes of internationalization and global competitive development by EMNEs and the role of their FSAs in these processes.

This is one of the few studies which have demonstrated that some of the EMNEs do possess firms’ specific advantage which helps explain their innovative capabilities, competitive advantages and subsequent internationalization patterns.

This study aims to explore capability upgrading of EMNE’s subsidiaries in developed countries and how the parent-subsidiary relationship influences such upgrading.

The study adopts an interdisciplinary approach to capability upgrading of EMNEs subsidiaries in developed countries. It employs a single case study to explore this under-research area.

The analysis challenges the orthodox view and suggests broad-based capability upgrading has taken place in the EMNE-acquired subsidiaries ranging from product, process, functional to intersectoral. In addition, the capability upgrading was contingent on the degree of subsidiary autonomy and subsidiary mandates.

This study represents one of the first to examine capability upgrading and parent-subsidiary relationship in the context of EMNEs’ internationalisation activities.

Existing three-dimensional (3D) road-surface models use approximation methods such as a set of discrete triangular patches and cannot accurately describe changes in the geometrically designed elements along the road. This paper aims to construct a 3D road-surface model with combinations of geometric design invariants and apply the proposed model to analyse the state of motion of a wheel’s centre.

In this paper, the 3D road surface is modelled as a continuous function with combinations of geometric design invariants. By introducing the theories of differential geometries and rigid body dynamics, a wheel-road model wherein a wheel fixed to a Darboux frame moves along a curved road surface is constructed, and the wheel time-dependent properties of the velocity, angular velocity and acceleration at an arbitrary point of the surface are described using road geometry design invariants.

This paper adopts the Darboux frame to study the instantaneous spin-rolling motion of a wheel. It is found that the magnitudes of the spin-rolling velocity, the acceleration and the geometric invariants of the road surface, including the geodesic curvature, the normal curvature and the geodesic torsion, determine the instantaneous states of motion of a wheel.

This work provides a theoretical foundation for future studies of wheel motion states, such as the relationship between road geometry design invariants and driving safety, vehicle lane changing and other vehicle microbehaviours. New insights are gained in the areas of road safety and vehicles incorporating artificial intelligence.

The purpose of this study is to present a novel hybrid closed-loop control method together with its performance validation for the dexterous prosthetic hand.

The hybrid closed-loop control is composed of a high-level closed-loop control with the user in the closed loop and a low-level closed-loop control for the direct robot motion control. The authors construct the high-level control loop by using electromyography (EMG)-based human motion intent decoding and electrical stimulation (ES)-based sensory feedback. The human motion intent is decoded by a finite state machine, which can achieve both the patterned motion control and the proportional force control. The sensory feedback is in the form of transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) with spatial-frequency modulation. To suppress the TENS interfering noise, the authors propose biphasic TENS to concentrate the stimulation current and the variable step-size least mean square adaptive filter to cancel the noise. Eight subjects participated in the validation experiments, including pattern selection and egg grasping tasks, to investigate the feasibility of the hybrid closed-loop control in clinical use.

The proposed noise cancellation method largely reduces the ES noise artifacts in the EMG electrodes by 18.5 dB on average. Compared with the open-loop control, the proposed hybrid closed-loop control method significantly improves both the pattern selection efficiency and the egg grasping success rate, both in blind operating scenarios (improved by 1.86 s, p < 0.001, and 63.7 per cent, p < 0.001) or in common operating scenarios (improved by 0.49 s, p = 0.008, and 41.3 per cent, p < 0.001).

The proposed hybrid closed-loop control method can be implemented on a prosthetic hand to improve the operation efficiency and accuracy for fragile objects such as eggs.

The primary contribution is the proposal of the hybrid closed-loop control, the spatial-frequency modulation method for the sensory feedback and the noise cancellation method for the integrating of the myoelectric control and the ES-based sensory feedback.

Suggests that misunderstandings frequently occur when trying to understand Chinese language and culture, and so gives the implied meaning of various Chinese expressions and sayings such as greetings, thanks, respect, age, congratulations and taboo subjects.

This study aims to examine the current state of literature on structural equation modeling (SEM) studies in “cloud computing” domain with respect to study domains of research studies, theories and frameworks they use and SEM models they design.

Systematic literature review (SLR) protocol is followed. In total, 96 cloud computing studies from 2009 to June 2018 that used SEM obtained from four databases are selected, and relevant data are extracted to answer the research questions.

A trend of increasing SEM usage over years in cloud studies is observed, where technology adoption studies are found to be more common than the use studies. Articles appear under four main domains, namely, business, personal use, education and health care. Technology acceptance model (TAM) is found to be the most commonly used theory. Adoption, intention to use and actual usage are the most common selections for dependent variables in SEM models, whereas security and privacy concerns, costs, ease of use, risks and usefulness are the most common selections for causal factors.

Previous cloud computing SLR studies did not focus on statistical analysis method used in primary studies. This review will display the current state of SEM studies in cloud domain for all future academics and practical professionals.

45 steel is a common material for the manufacture of various components such as shafts or gears. However, its poor surface properties often limit its applications. The purpose of this paper is to find a way to enhance the surface performance of 45 steel, which is expected to improve the wear resistance of 45 steel.

Double glow plasma surface metallurgy technique was used to prepare hafnium carbide (HfC) coatings on the surface of the 45 steel with two preparation process; one is to diffuse two elements together, while the other is to diffuse step by step. The scanning electronic microscopy and the X-ray diffraction were used to analyze the morphology and phase of the HfC coatings. And then the wear tests were carried out for this coating.

Coating diffused step by step shows better performance; it has a 15-µm alloyed layer which is uniform and dense and its hardness can reach up to 1326.5 Vickers-hardness (HV). While the coating fabricated by diffusing elements together owns a 10-µm alloyed layer and its hardness is 1204.1 HV. According to the wear test results, both coatings have a protective effect on the substrate and the coating prepared by step-by-step diffusion process has less wear volume, indicating that it possesses better friction reduction.

A new method which diffuses elements together was successfully used to prepare compound HfC coating, which can reduce the cost of coating preparation and improve the efficiency of coating preparation.