This study aims to understand the uncertainty about the optimum or best pin position (Dp) for friction stir lap welding (FSLW) of Al-Cu. Tensile shear testing is used to determine the Mechanical strength of FSL welds under static loading. Fracture strength (σLap) corresponding to the maximum load in a test over the sample width is used as the strength value. Interface microstructures differ depending on whether the tool pin penetrates the lapping interface. It has been found that σLap values of the defect free weld samples vary quite significantly and in general are significantly higher than those reported in the literature. When the pin penetration is close to zero no intermetallic layers were formed, hence the value of σLap was zero. When the pin penetration is 0.4mm, the commonly observed a thin Al–Cu interface layer forms and this layer does not grow beyond 3µm. It is shown that the thin interfacial layer can withstand a high tensile-shear load and thus the adjacent Al material shears to fracture. When the pin penetrates more than 0.4mm, the commonly observed mix stir zone (MSZ) forms and values of σLap are lower than that of 0.4mm pin penetration welds but remain quite high.

This study aims to investigate the effects of experience and gender of the managers on the relationship between internationalization and business performance of manufacturing firms in Turkey. Based on data collected by the World Bank for 263 manufacturing enterprises in Turkey and by regression estimation, the results show that the relationship between internationalization and firm performance was enhanced when the manager had more years of experience. In contrast, this relationship will be reduced when the business has a female executive manager. The result adds to the empirical evidence and reinforces the theory of internationalization, especially in transition economies. The implications of the research are to help policymakers to promulgate appropriate policies to support and accelerate the internationalization of businesses.

Connections represent major challenges in the design of composite structures, mainly because they entail discontinuities in the geometry of the structure and material properties, and introduce high local stress concentrations. Despite some constructability complications, integrated connection could be a reliable solution. In this paper, the structural behaviour of an integrated connection for implementation between adjacent composite sandwich panels in rapid assembly buildings is studied. The integrated connection system consists of 3-D high density polyethylene (HDPE) skin faces, and cores of high-density polyurethane (PUR) foam integrated into the sandwich panels at the moment of their production. The study included experimental investigations regarding the mechanical and structural response of the connection under actual applied loads, and its torsional rigidity, rotational stiffness and behaviour under lateral loading is investigated. Using Finite Element modelling, the stress distribution and the mechanisms of failure are studied. The results show a good agreement between the numerical and experimental results.

Today, the use of technology has made education more enjoyable. Vocabulary retention becomes a challenging task for both teachers and learners. They may learn the vocabulary but may not retain it. Yet, the use of web-based games may assist them in maintaining words known for short and long-term retention. The current study was conducted to identify students' abilities in retaining words learned after they were assigned to play a web-based vocabulary learning game, namely OnVac. Both short and long-term retention were measured after they were required to play the game as a treatment. Also, the study investigated students' perceptions about the system operation of OnVac. The use of quantitative research design, particularly quasi-experimental research and survey showed gains in vocabulary retention among students for short and long-term retention. The study also found that OnVac can support vocabulary learning among students in their learning of the specialized vocabulary. In terms of the system operation, the participants reported that the tool could assist them in learning engineering and technology words as it was convenient to use. The study provided implications to the teaching pedagogy in that teachers need to be wise and analytical in developing the online game to assist learners in learning English specialized vocabulary.

In this paper, an innovative and efficient sandwich panel is proposed for the structural walls for quickly assembled post-disaster housing, as well as load bearing panels for pre-fabricated modular construction and semi-permanent buildings. This study focuses on the flexural and shear behavior of the innovative sandwich panels, which is composed of two 3-D high density polyethylene (HDPE) skins, and high-density Polyurethane (PU) foam core. An experimental study was carried out to validate the effectiveness of this panel for increasing the ultimate bending strength. A series of experimental tests were performed on medium-scale specimens to characterize their core shear behavior. Then, some supplementary tests were run to determine the panels’ flexural and shear stiffness. The numerical and experimental investigations show that the 3-D-HDPE sheets, manufactured with a studded surface; considerably enhance the pull-out and delamination strength. Good agreement has been observed between the numerical and experimental tests.

This study is targeted towards the explosive behavior of crypto-currencies, namely Bitcoin, Etherium, Litecoin and Ripple by investigating the crypto-currencies bubbles and the causal link between Bitcoin and other three crypto-currencies prices, using GSADF and wavelet coherence tests. The study aims to answer the following questions which have not been investigated in the literature to our best knowledge (i) Was there any bubble in the prices of Bitcoin, Etherium, Litecoin and Ripple and between 01.09.2016 and 01.04.2019? If yes, why (ii) was there any linkage between Bitcoin and Etherium, Litecoin and Ripple? Our findings reveal that (a) there were some bubbles in the crypto-currencies for the periods investigated; (b) there was a positive correlation between Bitcoin and Etherium, Litecoin and Ripple in the short-run; (c) changes in Bitcoin prices lead changes Etherium, Litecoin and Ripple prices in the long run at different periods.

Friction Stir Welding (FSW) is a relatively new solid state joining technique which is used not only for joining the aluminum and its alloys but also has potential for joining dissimilar materials with very different physical and mechanical properties which are hard to weld using conventional fusion welding processes. Tensile shear testing is used to determine the Mechanical strength of friction stir lap (FSL) welds under static loading, fracture strength (σLap) corresponding to the maximum load in a test over the sample width is widely used as the strength value. During friction stir lap welding (FSLW) of dissimilar metals with large differences in melting temperatures, a metallurgical bond is established through the formation of interfacial intermetallic compounds. However, as these intermetallic compounds are generally believed to be brittle with little ductility, they are generally considered to have detrimental effect on fracture strength. The aim of the present research is to study how the interface structure is affected by FSW parameters and how the formation of interface structure affects fracture of Al-Steel and Al-Ti FSL welds.

This research includes an extensive review of the studies associated with Corporate Governance. The study uses Scopus database as a primary search engine to collect the necessary data and collects 333 records over the period 2010-2018.The purpose of this research is to investigate the structured study of research activities carried out around the subject of corporate governance which have been published in international, well-known and credible magazines, books and sites. For this purpose, the study searches the phrase corporate governance on Scopus site and detects around 7200 documents and 2000 of highly cited documents are selected for the purpose of the investigation accomplished by a bibliometrics tool. The study limits the survey on published articles over the period 1993-2009 and detects 806 documents among 2000 documents from Scopus. The results indicate that papers published by researchers in United States have received the highest citations (8669), followed by United Kingdom (2094) and Australia with 1557 citations.

Emergency department (ED) overcrowding is a common issue in emergency medicine of Canada. Previous studies indicate that adding a physician in triage (PIT) can increase accuracy and efficiency in the initial process of patient evaluations. However, the PIT concept should be thoroughly researched before its widespread implementation can be recommended. This paper introduces the evaluation of impact of PIT on ED patient wait times and length of stay (LOS) using simulation modeling. A discrete-event simulation model of ED is built to simulate and predict the effect of PIT intervention. The model performance is validated using current-state ED flow metrics to quantitatively test multiple alternatives for ED improvements. Results show that the PIT implementation can reduce the ED patient LOS by an average of 34% and Waiting to be Seen time by 49% across all scenarios studied. The proposed method can be applied to improve the operation efficiency of healthcare systems in the current pandemic, COVID -19.

During the past three decades, data envelopment analysis (DEA) has been successfully used for measuring the relative efficiency of financial or non-financial firms. This paper presents an empirical investigation to measure the relative efficiency of five Canadian banks versus 6 US big banks using DEA method. The study considers the number of employees and total assets as input and net revenue is used as the output of the DEA model. The data are collected from the official statements of the banks for the fiscal year of 2017. The results indicate that 6 US banks maintained an average efficiency of 0.87 but the average efficiency of Canadian banks was 0.72. While two US banks maintained an efficiency of one, the other US banks demonstrate relatively well in terms of the performance. In Canada, while one bank performed relatively well, the performance of the other Canadian banks were not as good as the US banks.