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This study aimed to identify a specific taxonomy of entry modes for international construction contractors and to develop a decision-making mechanism based on case-based reasoning (CBR) to facilitate the selection of the most suitable entry modes.

According to the experience orientation of the construction industry, a CBR entry mode decision model was established, and based on successful historical cases, a two-step refinement process was carried out to identify similar situations. Then the validity of the model is proved by case analysis.

This study identified an entry mode taxonomy for international construction contractors (ICCs) and explored their decision-making mechanisms. First, a two-dimension model of entry mode for ICCs was constructed from ownership and value chain dimensions; seven common ICC entry modes were identified and ranked according to market commitment. Secondly, this study reveals the impact mechanism of the ICC entry mode from two aspects: the external environment and enterprise characteristics. Accordingly, an entry mode decision model is established.

Firstly, sorting out the categories of entry mode in the construction field, which provide an entry mode list for ICCs to select. Secondly, revealing the impact mechanism of ICC entry mode, which proposes a systematic decision-making system for the selection of ICC entry mode. Thirdly, constructing a CBR entry mode decision-making model from an empirical perspective, which offers tool support and reduces transaction costs in the decision-making process.

The study on entry modes for ICCs is still in the preliminary exploratory stage. The authors investigate the entry mode categories and decision-making mechanisms for ICCs based on Uppsala internationalization process theory. It widens the applied scope of Uppsala and promotes cross-disciplinary integration. In addition, the authors creatively propose a two-stage retrieval mechanism in the CBR model, which considers the order of decision variables. It refines the influence path of the decision variables on ICCs' entry mode.

Global climate change speeds up ice melting and increases flooding incidents. China launched a sponge city policy as a holistic nature-based solution combined with urban planning and development to address flooding due to climate change. Using Weibo analytics, this paper aims to study public perceptions of sponge city.

This study collected 53,586 sponge city contents from Sina Weibo via Python. Various artificial intelligence tools, such as CX Data Science of Simply Sentiment, KH Coder and Tableau, were applied in the study.

76.8% of public opinion on sponge city were positive, confirming its positive contribution to flooding management and city branding. 17 out of 31 pilot sponge cities recorded the largest number of sponge cities related posts. Other cities with more Weibo posts suffered from rainwater and flooding hazards, such as Xi'an and Zhengzhou.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to explore the public perception of sponge city in Sina Weibo.

Night lighting reflects the prosperous development of economic and the increasingly rich and colorful cultural life. Currently, various technical standards, protocols and management specifications have been developed to build a safe, comfortable and economical lighting environment. However, prevailing evaluation systems focus on objective indexes of illumination and have ignored environmental characteristics and subjective feelings and lacked consideration of regional culture, economic benefit, management and maintenance. In this context, a lighting evaluation system combining subjective and objective is proposed for the first time in this study to explore approaches to guide the development of a healthy and comfortable urban night-time environment.

Existing research and relevant lighting standards are analyzed and an evaluation model with a logical hierarchy is constructed by combining with the evaluation theory that is set based on people and the environment. The index weights were scientifically determined on the basis of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method. The rationality and validity of the proposed evaluation system is verified in accordance with field projects and case studies.

Taking into account traditional and cultural factors, the evaluation model established has an acceptable accuracy. Evaluation based on subjective-objective combination can provide a scientific basis for the management and optimization of night lighting.

The proposed evaluation system can serve as a guiding reference for other areas of cultural identity and esthetic perspective.

The paper seeks to report data on cigarette smoking, anti‐smoking practices, physicians' receipt of anti‐smoking training, and the association between receipt of the training and anti‐smoking practice among physicians in Wuhan, China.

Participants were selected through the stratified random sampling method. The questionnaires were completed by the sampled physicians and the response rate of the survey was 98.1 percent.

Among the total sample, 11 percent were current smokers. Significantly more male physicians than female physicians were current smokers (31.6 vs 0.9 percent, p<0.001). In total, 41 percent of physicians always or often asked patients about smoking habits, and 61 percent of them often advised patients to quit. Receiving anti‐tobacco training significantly increased the likelihood for physicians to ask patients about smoking (odd ratio=2.55, p<0.001) and to advise patients against smoking (odd ratio=4.05, p<0.001) with and without controlling gender, age, education, type of hospital and medical services specialty.

More effort should be devoted to training for physicians with focus on anti‐smoking practice and smoking cessation counseling in addition to assist physicians themselves to quit smoking.

The findings of this study update the data regarding cigarette smoking among physicians in Wuhan, China, and their practice of anti‐tobacco counseling. It indicates that it is very important to provide the training regarding anti‐smoking counseling among physicians.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the tribological properties of aluminum cylinder liner. Higher martensite contents were closely related to the higher hardness and excellent wear resistance of Fe-based coatings. Furthermore, the grain size of the Fe-based coating was approximately 40 nm, which provides an excellent fine grain strengthening effect.

To improve the tribological properties of aluminum cylinder liners, a Fe-based martensite coating was prepared by internal plasma spraying technology, whose microstructure and tribological properties were then investigated.

Sprayed Fe-based coating possessed a low contact angle and strong adhesion with lubricating oil. In a simulated engine condition, Fe-based coating exhibited a decreased friction coefficient and increased wear resistance under oil lubrication, which was dominated by a stronger adhesive force with lubricating oil, higher martensite contents on the worn surface, higher hardness and higher H/E value than those of the reference HT 200 and Al-19Si cylinder material.

Nanostructure Fe-based martensite coating was sprayed on an aluminum cylinder liner, which demonstrated remarkable advantages over the reference cylinder material.

This paper aims to investigate whether electroencephalography (EEG) technology is effective in qualifying the tactile sensation evoked by non-steady cutaneous electrical stimulation. EEG is a novel method for electrotactile analysis and has demonstrated the discrimination ability for electrotactile sensation under steady contact conditions in recent years. However, in non-steady contact conditions, it is necessary to test its effectiveness. This study aims to explore an objective analysis method in comparison to psychophysical approach and to provide a methodology for non-steady electrotactile research.

With EEG experimentation on 13 volunteers, the authors collected evoked potentials by the predesigned “1” and “0” stimulation events. In addition, with a series of data preprocessing including artifact elimination, band-pass filtering, baseline normalization, data superposition and fast Fourier transform transformation, the authors got the power spectrum of alpha, beta and gamma rhythms. Furthermore, statistics analysis and ANOVA test were adopted for exploring the discrepancy of the spectrum characterizations for different non-steady electrostimulation events.

The EEG power spectrum of the central cortical brain is valuable in discriminating the two types of stimulation events. The power of alpha rhythm especially in the central cortical brain evoked by event “1,” whose current level is equal to the threshold, was significantly lower than that evoked by event “0,” whose level is less than the threshold (p < 0.05). Then, the power of the beta rhythm presented counter-change (p < 0.05). This study suggests that EEG may have the potential to qualify non-steady electrotactile sensation for engineering applications.

Limiting factors of non-steady electrotactile stimulation were considered in this study. Different tapping frequency and contact time should be investigated in future studies.

This paper fulfills a challenge in qualifying the tactile sensations evoked by non-steady electrical stimulation with EEG characteristics.

This paper aims to present the effect of entropy generation on the unsteady flow of upper-convected Maxwell nanofluid past a wedge embedded in a porous medium in view of buoyancy force. Cattaneo-Christov double diffusion theory simulates the processes of energy phenomenon and mass transfer. Meanwhile, Brownian motion, thermophoresis and convective boundary conditions are discussed to further visualize the heat and mass transfer properties.

Coupled ordinary differential equations are gained by appropriate similar transformations and these equations are manipulated by the Homotopy analysis method.

The result is viewed that velocity distribution is a diminishing function with boosting the value of unsteadiness parameter. Moreover, fluid friction irreversibility is dominant as the enlargement in Brinkman number. Then controlling the temperature and concentration difference parameters can effectively regulate entropy generation.

This paper aims to address the effect of entropy generation on unsteady flow, heat and mass transfer of upper-convected Maxwell nanofluid over a stretched wedge with Cattaneo-Christov double diffusion, which provides a theoretical basis for manufacturing production.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) marketing has become ubiquitous in the hospitality industry. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of donation appeals containing warmth-focused versus competence-focused messages in hospitality CSR marketing. Moreover, we offer an innovative visual design strategy focusing on the typeface (handwritten vs machine-written) in donation appeals to encourage consumers’ donations and boost their brand loyalty.

This research used a 2 (message framing: warmth-focused vs competence-focused) × 2 (typeface: handwritten vs machine-written) between-subjects experimental design.

The findings suggest that donation appeals featuring warmth-focused messages combined with handwritten typeface and competence-focused messages combined with machine-written typeface can maximize donation intention and brand loyalty. Furthermore, results from the moderated mediation analyses indicate that brand trust is the psychological mechanism underlying these effects.

Hospitality managers should use typeface design, which is easy and inexpensive to manipulate, to enhance the effectiveness of CSR marketing. Specifically, for donation appeals featuring warmth-focused (competence-focused) messages, the handwritten (machine-written) typeface can boost consumers’ donation intention and brand loyalty.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to reveal the competitive advantage of typeface design in hospitality CSR marketing. This research sheds light on the congruency effects of message framing and typeface design in donation appeals on consumers’ donation intention and brand loyalty while using the contemporary context of The Coronavirus Disease 2019 to test the theory.

This paper aims to improve the tribocorrosion properties of 316L, thus WC/Ni60 coated 316L was prepared by thermal spraying technique.

Composition and microstructure of WC/Ni60 coating was investigated, and tribological properties of 316 L and WC/Ni60 coating were studied under dry sliding, deionized water and artificial seawater.

The results showed that WC/Ni60 coating was lamellar structure, and the phase composition consisted of γ-Ni solid solution, carbides and borides. Furthermore, the hardness and corrosion resistance of 316 L in static seawater and wear resistance in dry sliding were improved by WC reinforced nickel-based coating. Furthermore, tribocorrosion results demonstrated that wear resistance of WC/Ni60 coating was also significantly better than 316 L, especially for higher load at artificial seawater. The reason can be attributed to the fact that the passive film of WC/Ni60 coating consisted of tungsten carbide, Ni(OH)2 and FeOOH for WC/Ni60 coating and only FeOOH for 316 L.

According to this study, it can be concluded that WC phases acted as a role in resisting the wear damages. Meanwhile, Ni-based materials performed well in corrosion resistance. Thus, the combined-effect Ni-based alloys and WC phases in WC/Ni60 coating showed better tribocorrosion performance than 316 L.