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The financialization of the platform economy is a crucial part of the theoretical landscape of the platform economy. However, it has not yet received adequate attention from the academic community. This deficiency has led to current research often neglecting the supportive role of finance capital in the platform economy, and consequently, there has been a lack of comprehensive interpretation of the generally poor profitability of platform companies. This paper aims to address the existing gap in the literature within this field.

This paper examines the role of finance capital, particularly venture capital, in the platform economy and offers a political economy analysis of the historical background, accumulation logic, and inherent contradictions of the financialization of the platform economy.

The paper argues that the advancement of new technologies, excess capital and labor supply in the post-crisis era, and the development of economic financialization, particularly the maturity and diffusion of the venture capital system, constitute the historical background of the financialization of the platform economy. Driven by finance capital, platform enterprises engage in excessive expansion to increase their financial valuations, forming a valuation-driven accumulation model. Financialization has caused the platform economy to deviate from its normal developmental trajectory. Platform enterprises exhibit higher shareholder payouts while simultaneously engaging in rapid investment expansion, leading to a trend of bubble-like development in the platform economy.

The financialization of the platform economy has exacerbated the socio-economic problems caused by disembeddedness, deepening the contradiction between the speculative logic of finance capital and the healthy development of the real economy. This profoundly reflects the obstruction posed by contemporary capitalist relations of production to the development of productive forces. This paper provides several key policy insights for the formulation and implementation of relevant policies in China.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the seal performance by proper design of the cavity shape of the damping holes, especially the rotordynamics characteristics of the hole-pattern damped seal (HPDS).

A new damping seal structure that comprises a circle-shaped cavity and two directional leaf-shaped cavities with a dovetail-shaped diversion groove is proposed. The comparative study on the sealing characteristics of dovetail-shape, leaf-shape and classical circular HPDSs was carried out using ANSYS CFX.

The dovetail-shaped HPDS significantly outperformed two other damping seal designs in leakage and rotordynamic performance. At a rotating speed of 7,500 rpm, it showed a 25% reduction in leakage, a 23% increase in average effective damping and a 119% increase in average effective stiffness. The cross-coupled stiffness K_xy shifted from positive to negative, reducing circumferential flow. The dovetail's inclined leaf-shaped grooves create a double vortex that slows jet velocity in the seal clearance and alters spiral flow direction, resulting in a uniform pressure distribution and enhanced rotor stability at low frequencies.

This study proposes a novel HPDS with dovetail-shaped diversion grooves. The seal can realize the simultaneous improvement of rotordynamics and leakage characteristics compared to the current seal structure.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-04-2024-0127/

City wall is an important symbol of ancient Chinese cities with unique geographical and cultural characteristics. Thus, the preservation of this historic landmark is considered significantly important. However, numerous residential construction activities and changes in ecological environment have destructed a great portion of the city walls in recent years. This study looks into the preservation of the ancient city walls from the systematic perspective and in line with the actual characteristics of Longdong Region to provide guideline measures for the protection and restoration of such landmark. Cognition and preservation are adopted extensively to investigate the specific situation of and the factors that influence the ancient city walls in this region. Preservation strategies for the city walls, including the “Axis-Point” system, planning control, and authenticity readability, are presented. The ancient city walls in Longdong Region can be preserved by protecting the entire region, the city, and the main wall body. The systematic method and preservation strategies at the “macro perspective,” “medium perspective” and “micro perspective” levels can solve the preservation problems of the ancient city walls in Longdong Region effectively.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the mechanism of the role of government subsidies on corporate environmental investment and explore how specific characteristics of firms affect corporate environmental responsibility.

This paper examines the relationship between government subsidies and corporate environmental investment and models with a sample of 78,854 industries. The authors measure the corporate environmental investment by the natural logarithm of the volume of waste gas treatment facilities.

The results show the positive effect of government subsidies on corporate environmental investment. In addition, state ownership positively regulates the relationship between government and corporations, but the relationship between them is negatively regulated by the slack resources.

When people are increasingly concerned about corporate social and environmental responsibility, clarifying the link between government subsidies and corporate environmental investments can help policymakers formulate policies and allocate limited resources.

This study uses the resource-based view as a theoretical framework to reveal the mechanism of action between government subsidies and corporate environmental responsibility, enriching the previous literature that explores the issue based on the legitimacy perspective.

The Library System of China and the Information System of China are the two systems of information organisations in China. This paper discusses the types of information agencies in each, focusing on structural characteristics, and governing regulations and especially on programmes and activities. Included in the discussion are such topics as publications, cooperative undertakings, new services and evaluation procedures.