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The converging global trends for countries and educational institutions is to push the boundaries of science and develop new technologies through the application of internationalization strategies. However, the extent to which higher education institutions (HEIs) participate and apply internationalization strategies in higher education (IOHE) varies by institution and region.

The study employed the multi-level ordinal regression to estimate how various factors influence the rationales to internationalize higher education.

The study revealed that the salience of HEIs choice of a specific rationale for the IOHE stems from either the academic, administrative and socio-cultural levels.

This article posits, particularly for Kenyan universities, that proper identification of their needs and wants for their higher education is key to successfully engage in IOHE. This recognition of needs and wants places them in the right position to identify appropriate rationales to engage in this complex process.

The novelty of this study is based on the fact that in Sub-Saharan Africa, research on the rationales for the IOHE in universities is highly lacking. A focus on more localized contexts is a critical starting point for these institutions to own and situate the internationalization process in a way that meets their needs.

Doug Scovanner, CFO of Target Corporation, was about to present his proposal at the November 2008 Board meeting. He was prepared to discuss immediate strategic actions which would provide support for working capital for the discount retailer. The retail community was about to suffer their worst fourth quarter in recent memory. Consumer spending had contracted, unemployment was rising and the deflated housing market had driven the economy into a recession. Although discount retailers had fared better than other industries during the second and third quarters, they were not immune to the overall economic downturn which had become a global crisis. To further complicate matters, Target's largest competitor, Wal-Mart, just posted third quarter growth even though Target was bracing for a busy holiday season. Scovanner anticipated further strain on working capital before year-end as cash flow tightened and the capital markets remained at a virtual stand-still.

Scenic tourist buildings are the important material security conditions for famous scenic cities to carry out tourism activities, and the level of their planning and design will directly affect the tourists' recognition of the scenic spots. Based on this, a research on the evaluation of the coupling degree between scenic tourist buildings and sites based on analytic hierarchy process was put forward. First of all, the theory of the coupling between the landscape tourism architecture and the site was elaborated, and then the landscape tourism architecture and its planning and design were proposed; taking a certain project as an example, planning and design of its teahouse, villas, sightseeing stand and other buildings were analyzed emphatically; in addition, the evaluation of the coupling degree of AHP was used to show that the planed and designed scenic tourist buildings are in the landscape and they can also be the landscape.

With the rapid development of social media in the past few years, some dark aspects of usage have appeared, e.g., Weibo addiction. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to address the question of how Weibo keeps users hooked.

The study utilizes the netnography method to explore the symptoms of Weibo addiction and how it is formed.

First, some Weibo users have typical symptoms of addictive behavior, such as withdrawal, loss of control and general living problems; second, narcissism plays an important role in the process of Weibo addiction and has a stronger effect on content generation than content consumption; third, some users use Weibo as a means to alleviate anxiety, but they can then become more anxious owing to addiction; and fourth, the effect of comments has two sides – on the one hand, comments are one kind of feedback to posts, satisfying posters’ social needs, while on the other hand, a storytelling system consists of one post and its comments, upon which some Weibo users become more dependent.

This research is only a preliminary, exploratory study. Therefore, care should be taken when interpreting these findings.

This study should help social media service providers and users to pay attention to the risk of social media addiction. Social media service providers should take social responsibility, design more user-oriented guidelines for marketing ethics and launch more responsible marketing activities. Users should enhance self-control and better balance social media use and offline real life.

Netnography has not been widely used as an addictive behavior research technique. This study is further bolstered because it has also noticed the difference of addiction mechanisms between addictive micro-bloggers and their followers.

In order to develop high shape retention yarn and investigate the effects of spinning process and core yarn contents on the shape retention of yarn, in this paper, three kinds of yarns, JC/T400 18.5tex (55.6dtex) core-spun yarn, JC/T400 18.5tex (44.4dtex) core-spun yarn and JC18.5tex pure cotton yarn were spun by using the complete condensing Siro-spinning technology. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this paper, the core-spun yarns were spun by using the complete condensing spinning and Siro-spinning technology. Two key spinning processes, yarn twist factor and core yarn pre-draft ratio, were optimized by using the orthogonal test method first. Then, via the variable control method, the position of the core yarn, the position of the bell mouth and the center distance between two bell mouths were optimized, respectively, and corresponding optimal spinning process of the three yarns was determined. Finally, the yarns were spun under the optimal process, and the performance of the spun yarns was tested and compared.

Results show that the yarn twist factor affects yarn strength and hairiness, the position of bell mouth affects the evenness and hairiness of the yarn mainly, and the position of the core yarn affects the coverage and hairiness of the yarn. For the Z-twist spinning, the core yarn enters the front roller from the left side of two strands center, which is beneficial to improve the covering effect of core yarn, and reduce the pilling phenomenon of the yarn. The contents of core yarn affect indicators of the yarn shape retention, such as yarn strength, elastic recovery and abrasion resistance.

The shape retention of yarns affects the shape retention of fabrics, and the production of yarn with high shape retention is a key step in achieving shape retention of fabrics. At present, there are little studies on the shape retention of yarns, most researchers shave focused on shape retention of fabrics. Using the complete condensing Siro-spinning method to spin the core-spun yarn can improve the quality of the yarn. Compared with traditional ring-spinning yarns, the addition of the core yarn can improve the shape retention of the yarn.

The paper aims to investigate effectiveness of the strengthening method, the construction process monitoring, fielding-load tests before and after strengthening, and health monitoring after reinforcement were carried out. The results of concrete strain and deflection show that the flexural strength and stiffness of the strengthened beam are improved.

This paper describes prestressed steel strand as a way to strengthen a 25-year-old continuous rigid frame bridge. High strength, low relaxation steel strand with high tensile strain and good corrosion resistance were used in this reinforcement. The construction process for strengthening with prestressed steel strand and steel plate was described. Ultimate bearing capacity of the bridge after strengthening was discussed based on finite element model.

The cumulative upward deflection of the second span the third span was 39.7 mm, which is basically consistent with the theoretical value, and the measured value is smaller than the theoretical value. The deflection value of the second span during data acquisition was −20 mm–10 mm, which does not exceed the maximum deflection value of live load, and the deflection of the bridge is in a safe state during normal use. Thus, this strengthened way with prestressed steel wire rope is feasible and effective.

This paper describes prestressed steel strand as a way to strengthen a 25-year-old continuous rigid frame bridge. To investigate effectiveness of the strengthening method, the construction process monitoring, fielding-load tests before and after strengthening and health monitoring after reinforcement were carried out.

To simplify the circuit design and control complexity of the magnetic coupling resonant wireless charging system, the radio energy transmission constant current and constant voltage charging is realized.

The purpose of this study is to simplify the circuit design and control complexity of the magnetic coupling resonance wireless charging system, in order to achieve constant current and constant voltage charging for wireless energy transmission. First, the principle of LCC/S-S compensation structure is analyzed, and the equivalent mathematical model is established; then, the system characteristics under constant current and constant voltage mode are analyzed, and the design method of system parameters is given; finally, a simulation and experimental system is built to verify the correctness and feasibility of the theoretical analysis.

The results show that the proposed hybrid topology can achieve a constant current output of 2 A and a constant voltage output of 30 V under variable load conditions, and effectively suppress the current distortion problem under light load conditions. The waveform distortion rate of the inverter current is reduced from 33.97% to 10.45%.

By changing the high-order impedance characteristics of the compensation structure, the distortion of the current waveform under light load is suppressed, and the overall stability and efficiency of the system are improved.

The major concern technologies during the processing through three-dimensional printing (3DP) are the mechanical and boundary properties of sand models. The parameters such as activator content, resolution X, layer thickness and re-coater speed play a vital role in 3DP sand components. The purpose of this paper is to recommend the optimal process parameters for the best sand mold properties.

In this paper, taking the parameters of the activator content, resolution X, layer thickness and re-coater speed as the influence factors, an orthogonal test of L16(44) was designed to discuss the influences of those parameters on the mechanical and boundary properties. Three-point bending (3PB) test was used to characterize the actual bending strength, and the boundary accuracy was assessed by the deviation of the three-point bending samples compared with its design scale.

The experimental results showed that the resolution X and layer thickness are the main parameters affecting sand mold properties. The strength will attain its maximum when the resolution X and layer thickness are the minimum. The optimal parameters were screened and verified by the confirmation test. The optimal process parameters for best strength and less gas evolution are the activator of 0.19%, resolution X of 0.1 mm, layer thickness of 0.28 mm and re-coater speed of 210 mm/s.

The novelty of this paper is the select of significant parameters on 3D-printed sand model properties. A mathematical model was built to analyze the effect of these parameters. The optimal process parameters for the best properties were got.

This paper aims to carry out assembly variation analysis for mechanisms with compliant joints by considering deformations induced by manufactured deviations. Such an analysis procedure extends the application area of direct linearization method (DLM) to compliant mechanisms and also illustrates the dimensional interaction within multi-loop compliant structures.

By applying DLM to both geometrical equations and Lagrange’s equations of the second kind, an analytical deviation modeling method for mechanisms with compliant joints are proposed and further used for statistical assembly variation analysis. The precision of this method is verified by comparing it with finite element simulation and traditional DLM.

A new modeling method is proposed to represent kinematic relationships between joint deformations and parts/components deviations. Based on a case evaluation, the computational efficiency is improved greatly while the modeling accuracy is maintained at more than 94% rate comparing with the benchmark finite element simulation.

The Equilibrium Equations of Incremental Forces derived from Lagrange’s equations are proposed to quantitatively represent the relationships between manufactured deviations and assembly deformations. The present method extends the application area of DLM to compliant structures, such as automobile suspension systems and some Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems.