The Interrelationship between Culture and Capital Structure:Evidence from International Retailers

The present study investigates the influence of cultural factors in 2022 on the capital structure of global retailers.There are sixteen retailers from eight countries in the sample.In recent times,numerous academicians have taken an interest in examining the capital structure and business model of retailers,owing to their swift and consistent growth.However,the fact that the majority of research originates from the retailers’host country gives rise to debate regarding the applicability of the capital structure of said retailers to countries with distinct cultural environments.Consequently,academics have begun to investigate whether the capital structure of multinational retailers is impacted by the diversity of national cultures.

Determination of critical state line(CSL)for silty-sandy iron ore tailings subjected to low-high confining pressures

The disposal of filtered tailings in high dry stacks can induce particle breakage,changing the material's behaviour during the structure's lifetime.The grading changes influence material properties at the critical state,and this is not mature for intermediate artificial soils(tailings)in a broad range of confining pressures.In this paper,it aims to describe the behaviour of iron ore tailings in a spectrum of confining pressures broader than the reported in previous studies.A series of consolidated drained(CD)triaxial tests was carried out with confining pressures ranging from 0.075 MPa to 120 MPa.These results show that the amount of breakage plays an essential role in the response of iron ore tailings.The existence of curved critical state line(CSL)in both specific volume(ν)-logarithm of mean effective stress(p′)and deviatoric stress(q)-mean effective stress(p′)planes,and different responses in the deviatoric stress-axial strain-volumetric strain curves were verified.An inverse S-shaped equation was proposed to represent the silty-sandy tailings'behaviour up to high pressures onν-lnp′plane.The proposed equation provides a basis for enhancing constitutive models and considers the evolution of the grading up to severe loading conditions.The adjustment considered three regions with different responses associated with particle breakage at different pressure levels.

Classification of Sailboat Tell Tail Based on Deep Learning

The tell tail is usually placed on the triangular sail to display the running state of the air flow on the sail surface.It is of great significance to make accurate judgement on the drift of the tell tail of the sailboat during sailing for the best sailing effect.Normally it is difficult for sailors to keep an eye for a long time on the tell sail for accurate judging its changes,affected by strong sunlight and visual fatigue.In this case,we adopt computer vision technology in hope of helping the sailors judge the changes of the tell tail in ease with ease.This paper proposes for the first time a method to classify sailboat tell tails based on deep learning and an expert guidance system,supported by a sailboat tell tail classification data set on the expert guidance system of interpreting the tell tails states in different sea wind conditions,including the feature extraction performance.Considering the expression capabilities that vary with the computational features in different visual tasks,the paper focuses on five tell tail computing features,which are recoded by an automatic encoder and classified by a SVM classifier.All experimental samples were randomly divided into five groups,and four groups were selected from each group as the training set to train the classifier.The remaining one group was used as the test set for testing.The highest resolution value of the ResNet network was 80.26%.To achieve better operational results on the basis of deep computing features obtained through the ResNet network in the experiments.The method can be used to assist the sailors in making better judgement about the tell tail changes during sailing.

Reinforcing effects of polypropylene on energy absorption and fracturing of cement-based tailings backfill under impact loading

Polypropylene(PP)fiber-reinforced cement-based tailings backfill(FRCTB)is a green compound material with superior crack resistance and has good prospects for application in underground mining.However,FRCTB exhibits susceptibility to dynamic events,such as impact ground pressure and blast vibrations.This paper investigates the energy and crack distribution behavior of FRCTB under dynamic impact,considering the height/diameter(H/D)effect.Split Hopkinson pressure bar,industrial computed tomography scan,and scanning electron microscopy(SEM)experiments were carried out on six types of FRCTB.Laboratory outcomes confirmed fiber aggregation at the bottom of specimens.When H/D was less than 0.8,the proportion of PP fibers distributed along theθangle direction of80°-90°increased.For the total energy,all samples presented similar energy absorption,reflectance,and transmittance.However,a rise in H/D may cause a rise in the energy absorption rate of FRCTB during the peak phase.A positive correlation existed between the average strain rate and absorbed energy per unit volume.The increase in H/D resulted in a decreased crack volume fraction of FRCTB.When the H/D was greater than or equal to 0.7,the maximum crack volume fraction of FRCTB was observed close to the incidence plane.Radial cracks were present only in the FRCTB with an H/D ratio of 0.5.Samples with H/D ratios of 0.5 and 0.6 showed similar distributions of weakly and heavily damaged areas.PP fibers can limit the emergence and expansion of cracks by influencing their path.SEM observations revealed considerable differences in the bonding strengths between fibers and the FRCTB.Fibers that adhered particularly well to the substrate were attracted together with the hydration products adhering to surfaces.These results show that FRCTB is promising as a sustainable and green backfill for determining the design properties of mining with backfill.

Rheological properties and concentration evolution of thickened tailings under the coupling effect of compression and shear

Cemented paste backfill(CPB)is a key technology for green mining in metal mines,in which tailings thickening comprises the primary link of CPB technology.However,difficult flocculation and substandard concentrations of thickened tailings often occur.The rheological properties and concentration evolution in the thickened tailings remain unclear.Moreover,traditional indoor thickening experiments have yet to quantitatively characterize their rheological properties.An experiment of flocculation condition optimization based on the Box-Behnken design(BBD)was performed in the study,and the two response values were investigated:concentration and the mean weighted chord length(MWCL)of flocs.Thus,optimal flocculation conditions were obtained.In addition,the rheological properties and concentration evolution of different flocculant dosages and ultrafine tailing contents under shear,compression,and compression-shear coupling experimental conditions were tested and compared.The results show that the shear yield stress under compression and compression-shear coupling increases with the growth of compressive yield stress,while the shear yield stress increases slightly under shear.The order of shear yield stress from low to high under different thickening conditions is shear,compression,and compression-shear coupling.Under compression and compression-shear coupling,the concentration first rapidly increases with the growth of compressive yield stress and then slowly increases,while concentration increases slightly under shear.The order of concentration from low to high under different thickening conditions is shear,compression,and compression-shear coupling.Finally,the evolution mechanism of the flocs and drainage channels during the thickening of the thickened tailings under different experimental conditions was revealed.

State-Owned Capital Participation in Private Enterprises:A Perspective of Debt Financing

This study takes debt financing as the entry point and explores the impact of state-owned capital participation in private enterprises from the perspectives of“unarticulated rules”and“articulated rules”.The study finds that state-owned capital participation significantly reduces the debt financing costs of private enterprises and expands the scale of their debt financing.This conclusion remains valid after a series of endogeneity and robustness tests.Further analysis of the mechanism reveals that state-owned capital participation improves the debt financing of private enterprises through multiple channels:Enhancing their social reputation,mitigating the“statistical bias”they face,optimizing their information quality,and reducing the“shareholder-creditor”agency problems.This paper conceptualizes these benefits as the“complementary advantages of heterogeneous shareholders”.This not only constructs a theoretical framework for“reverse mixed-ownership reform”but also better narrates the Chinese story of“mixed-ownership reform”by adopting a more universally applicable theory of equity structure.Additionally,the paper supplements existing research on the macro-and meso-level relationship between the government and the market by exploring the government’s positive role at the micro-level.

Defining Cities by Water: Addressing Capital Misallocation in a Race to Conserve Resources

As part of its efforts to promote a sustainable and high-quality development,China has pledged to reduce water consumption and create a water-efficient society.On the basis of identifying the institutional root causes of excessive capital allocation and excessive water consumption in China’s water-intensive industrial sectors,this study elaborates how the national water-efficient cities assessment contributes to optimized capital allocation.Our research shows that national water-efficient cities assessment has motivated local governments to compete for water efficiency.To conserve water,local governments regulated the entry and exit of water-intensive enterprises,discouraged excessive investments in water-intensive sectors,and phased out obsolete water-intensive capacities within their jurisdictions.This approach has resulted in mutually beneficial outcomes,including improved allocation of capital,enhanced water efficiency,and reduced emissions.This paper offers policy recommendations for establishing a water-efficient society throughout the 14^(th) Five-Year Plan(2021-2025)period by presenting empirical evidence on the policy effects of resource efficiency evaluation.

On Daniel Bell's The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

This article makes a brief introduces to Daniel Bell's The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism which explores how a bourgeois economy coexists with an anti-bourgeois culture. This article is comprised of four parts including the concept of culture、the disjunction of three realms(economics, politics and culture)、the cultural contradictions of capitalism and the evaluation on Daniel Bell's theory. It offers a close look into the inner relation between different spheres in the capitalist society illustrated in Bell's book, and Bell's theory in terms of cultural contradictions of capitalism will be concretely elaborated.

On the Industrial Capitalism(Reflected) in the Red Badge of Courage

Stephen Crane' s The Red Badge of Courage adopted the industrial capitalism as response to his motif to indicate that industrial capitalism had a swift development in 1890s in America,and meanwhile his novel was greatly influenced.

THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM, NON-EXPECTEDUTILITY AND ASSET PRICING

This paper investigates testable restrictions on the time-series behavior of consumption and asset returns implied by a representative agent model with the spirit of capitalism in which intertemporal preference is represented by a utility function that generalizes conventional, time-additive, expected utility. In the recursive structure of preference, the author examines the implication for cosumptions, portfolio holdings, and stock-market prices when investors accumulate wealth not only for the sake of consumption but also for wealth-induced social status. When investors care about relative social status, the propensity to consume and risk-taking behavior will depend on social standards, and stock prices will be volatible. Hence, the spirit of capitalism seems to be a driving force behind stock-market volatility and economic growth. Because the elasticity df substitution and the coefficient of relative risk aversion are independent and the spirit of capitalism is introduced, the equity premium puzzle can be partially explained in the model.

Heuristic algorithms for scheduling on uniform parallel machines with heads and tails

This paper considers the uniform parallel machine scheduling problem with unequal release dates and delivery times to minimize the maximum completion time.For this NP-hard problem,the largest sum of release date,processing time and delivery time first rule is designed to determine a certain machine for each job,and the largest difference between delivery time and release date first rule is designed to sequence the jobs scheduled on the same machine,and then a novel algorithm for the scheduling problem is built.To evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm,a lower bound for the problem is proposed.The accuracy of the proposed algorithm is tested based on the data with problem size varying from 200 jobs to 600 jobs.The computational results indicate that the average relative error between the proposed algorithm and the lower bound is only 0.667%,therefore the solutions obtained by the proposed algorithm are very accurate.

A Calculation Method of Rolling Characteristics of Canard Missile with Free-Spinning Tails

The steady flow field of a canard missile on different angles of attack and Mach numbers were studied. Based on analysis, a method was proposed to reduce the calculation for the rolling characteristics of the canard missile with free-spinning tails, and was tested to obtain the relations between rolling moment coefficient, Mach number, and angle of attack. All the computed rolling moment coefficients obtained from the proposed method greatly agreed with the experimental results of FD-06 wind tunnel in CAAA, which proved that the method can not only reduce the calculation cost but also keep precision in calculating the rolling characteristics of canard missiles.

On Reformation and the Development of Capitalism

Due to Reformation movement in the 16th century,Protestantism came into being.Lutheranism,Calvinism and Puritanism rationalized and justified worldly economic activity.The Protestant asceticism was considered favorable to the development of capitalistic economy.Religious reform was in a certain degree beneficial to the development of capitalism.This thesis mainly discusses the influence of Reformation upon the development of capitalism.

Numerical Study of Propulsion Mechanism for Oscillating Rigid and Flexible Tuna-Tails

Numerical study on the unsteady hydrodynamic characteristics of oscillating rigid and flexible tuna-tails in viscous flow-field is performed. Investigations are conducted using Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes （RANS） equations with a moving adaptive mesh. The effect of swimming speed, flapping amplitude, frequency and flexure amplitude on the propulsion performance of the rigid and flexible tuna-tails are investigated. Computational results reveal that a pair of leading edge vortices develop along the tail surface as it undergoes an oscillating motion. The propulsive efficiency has a strong correlation with various locomotive parameters. Peak propulsive efficiency can be obtained by adjusting these parameters. Particularly, when input power coeffcient is less than 2.8, the rigid tail generates larger thrust force and higher propulsive efficiency than flexible tail. However, when input power coefficient is larger than 2.8, flexible tail is superior to rigid tail.

Erosion wear at the bend of pipe during tailings slurry transportation:Numerical study considering inlet velocity,particle size and bend angle

Pipeline hydraulic transport is a highly efficient and low energy-consumption method for transporting solids and is commonly used for tailing slurry transport in the mining industry.Erosion wear(EW)remains the main cause of failure in tailings slurry pipeline systems,particularly at bends.EW is a complex phenomenon influenced by numerous factors,but research in this area has been limited.This study performs numerical simulations of slurry transport at the bend by combining computational fluid dynamics and fluid particle tracking using a wear model.Based on the validation of the feasibility of the model,this work focuses on the effects of coupled inlet velocity(IV)ranging from 1.5 to 3.0 m·s^(-1),particle size(PS)ranging from 50 to 650μm,and bend angle(BA)ranging from 45°to 90°on EW at the bend in terms of particle kinetic energy and incidence angle.The results show that the maximum EW rate of the slurry at the bend increases exponentially with IV and PS and first increases and then decreases with the increase in BA with the inflection point at 60°within these parameter ranges.Further comprehensive analysis reveals that the sensitivity level of the three factors to the maximum EW rate is PS>IV>BA,and when IV is 3.0 m/s,PS is 650μm,and BA is 60°,the bend EW is the most severe,and the maximum EW rate is 5.68×10^(-6)kg·m^(-2)·s^(-1).In addition,When PS is below or equal to 450μm,the maximum EW position is mainly at the outlet of the bend.When PS is greater than 450μm,the maximum EW position shifts toward the center of the bend with the increase in BA.Therefore,EW at the bend can be reduced in practice by reducing IV as much as possible and using small particles.

Development,Capitalism Transformation and Marxism

Development,Capitalism Transformation and

Effort Levels of Capital-constrained Retailer under Bank Financing

In a supply chain with a retailer confronted with financial constraints,impacts on profits of the supply chain can be alleviated by increasing the retailer's efforts and market demand through external financing( bank). If the cost of bank lending is not very high,the capitalconstrained retailer can borrow money and make efforts. The reduction of bank interest rates,however,increases the retailer's efforts. We prove that there is a unique equilibrium point between the retailers. We find out the optimal interest rate of the bank and the optimal efforts by the retailer through numerical analysis and verify validity of the results.

Effect of layer thickness on the flexural property and microstructure of 3D-printed rhomboid polymer-reinforced cemented tailing composites

For mines with poor ore bodies and surrounding rocks,the general mining method does not allow the ore to be extracted from underground safely and efficiently.For these mines,the downward layered filling mining technique is undoubtedly the most suitable mining method.The downward filling mining technique may eliminate the troubles relating to poor ore deposit conditions,such as production safety,ore loss rate,and depletion rate.However,in this technique,the safety of the artificial roof of the next stratum is of paramount importance.Cementitious tailings backfilling(CTB)that is not sufficiently cemented and causes collapses could threaten ore production.This paper explores a diamond-shaped composite structure to mimic the stability of a glued false roof in an actual infill mine based on the recently emerged three-dimensional(3D)printing technology.Experimental means such as three-point bending and digital image correlation(DIC)techniques were used to explore the flexural characteristics of 3D construction specimens and CTB combinations with different cement/tailings weight ratios at diverse layer heights.The results show that the 3D structure with a 14-mm ply height and CTB has strong flexural characteristics,with a maximum deflection value of 30.1 mm,while the 3D-printed rhomboid polymer(3D-PRP)structure with a 26-mm ply height is slightly worse in terms of flexural strength characteristics,but it has a higher maximum flexural strength of 2.83 MPa.A combination of 3D structure and CTB has more unique mechanical properties than CTB itself.This research work offers practical knowledge on the artificial roof performance of the downward layered filling mining technique and builds a scientific knowledge base regarding the successful application of CTB material in mines.

Three Tales of Capitalism and Creative Economy

The aim is to examine how the creative economy develops in shareholder,state,and stakeholder capitalism.In the shareholder capitalism,the creative economy is headed by large companies in cooperation with governments,which replicate pregiven formulas of governance with no consideration of local specificities,and reinforces the exclusion of small and medium-sized creative enterprises.The state capitalism has the government authorities as the main drivers of the creative economy’s growth,which is usually connected to their political interest in preserving authority and manipulating the population.In the stakeholder capitalism,companies should pay their fair share of taxes,show zero tolerance for corruption,uphold human rights throughout their global supply chains,and advocate for a competitive level playing field.These elements create the specific conditions for a more diversified set of actors leading the initiatives dedicated to the development of creative economy.