Coopetition capability of international joint ventures for high-speed railway projects

Global high-speed railway (HSR) market is developing rapidly, and the amount of international joint ventures (IJVs) of HSR projects is surging. Even though previous studies claim that cooperation and competition simultaneously exist in the HSR IJVs and engaging in coopetition activities is of great significance, how to enhance their coopetition capability to better create common benefits and capture private benefits has rarely been informed. To bridge the gap, this study aims to identify the factors influencing coopetition capability in the HSR IJVs and develop a path model to reveal the internal mechanism. This study identified 19 factors along with their categories through a literature review and pilot study, and collected data from the HSR IJVs practitioners using a questionnaire survey. Based on the measurement model test and path analysis, five categories were validated and six paths were supported. The research findings demonstrate that both environmental and organizational conditions have a positive effect on coopetition capability, and develop an analytical framework of coopetition capability in the context of HSR IJVs. This study will contribute to the existing knowledge on coopetition theory, and assist the HSR IJVs’ members and other infrastructure projects contractors in their coopetition capability enhancement and successful projects completion.</p

Retirement villages in Australia: a literature review

With the increasing growth in the ageing population of Australia, providing older adults with suitable housing has become a significant focus of policy and practice. Retirement villages are a type of housing that delivers specialized accommodation for older people. Although previous research focused on a variety of topics concerning Australian retirement villages, a systemic overview of the development of the industry is still lacking. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to deliver an overview of its development. Considering the scarcity of data regarding the industry, secondary data collected from various sources are analysed to present the whole picture. It is found that, although the industry has grown gradually in past decades, it is currently still in a formative stage. Its development is confronted with various issues and challenges including affordability, inadequacy of social and physical environment settings, low penetration level and challenges from the unique requirements of ageing baby boomers, technological applications and sustainability, and the lack of policy support. This paper provides a platform for researchers and industry stakeholders to plan for the future development and growth of this sector

Additional file 1 of Delayed coronary artery occlusion after transcatheter aortic valve replacement and chimney stenting: a case report

Additional file 1. The IVUS from LM stent to the aorta after a small balloon dilation

Additional file 2 of Delayed coronary artery occlusion after transcatheter aortic valve replacement and chimney stenting: a case report

Additional file 2. The IVUS after the second chimney stent deployment

Enantiocomplementary Chiral Polyhydroxyenoate: Chemoenzymatic Synthesis and Helical Structure Control

Here, we present the chemoenzymatic synthesis of two pairs of configuration-customized unsaturated chiral polyesters and discover that they are able to self-assemble into a helical superstructure. The chiral (R)- or (S)-polyesters with a polar unsaturated main-chain and an apolar side chain were designed to be stereoregular and amphiphilic-like. The solvent polarity, stereoregularity, unsaturated bond in the backbone and the structure of side chains were found to be the key factors to affect the self-assembly performance of the chiral polyesters. As the solvent polarity increased, the nanostructures of stereoregular unsaturated polyesters transformed from spheres to helical fibers, while there was no such transformation for the racemic or saturated polyesters

Visualization 1: Pump-probe imaging of the fs-ps-ns dynamics during femtosecond laser Bessel beam drilling in PMMA

An animation showing the evolution process during fs laser Bessel beam drilling in PMMA Originally published in Optics Express on 14 December 2015 (oe-23-25-32728

Solvent-Free Lipase-Catalyzed Synthesis: Unique Properties of Enantiopure d- and l- Polyaspartates and Their Complexation

Amino acids are attractive monomers for the large-scale preparation of chiral polyamides. For enzymatic polymerization of amino acids using protease in aqueous environment as the catalysis system, one main restriction is oligomer formation, usually along with other displayed advantages. Herein we developed an efficient solvent-free lipase-catalyzed polymerization of diethyl d- or l-aspartate, providing chiral d- and l-polyaspartates with an average degree of polymerization (DP_avg) up to 60 and having about 96% β-linkages. Additionally, their distinct chemical and physical properties were characterized by circular dichroism (CD) spectra, X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), microscopic observation, and thermal analysis. Poly­(β-d-AspEt) and Poly­(β-l-AspEt) showed vertically mirrored negative and positive CD signals, high crystallinity, and entirely different microscopic morphology. They are thermal stable while having different decomposition (<i>T</i>_d), melting (<i>T</i>_m), and cold crystallization temperatures (<i>T</i>_cc), respectively. Our results also showed that the complexation of enantiopure d- and l-polyaspartates was not stereocomplex but homocomplex

Table1_Impact of environmental regulation on government subsides of public-private partnership waste-to-energy incineration projects: evidence from 66 cities in China.XLSX

Introduction: Environmental regulation, as a vital component of public regulation in China, plays a crucial role in coordinating regional eco-efficiency, while the traditional hypothesis, Porter hypothesis, and uncertainty hypothesis offer three different perspectives for understanding the relationship between industry performance and environmental regulations.Methods: Based on the assumption of industry heterogeneity, 81 public-private partnership (PPP) waste-to-energy (WTE) incineration projects are analyzed using panel data from 66 cities within China during the period from 2013 to 2017 with the aims to reveal the underlying mechanism behind environmental regulation and the government subsides of public-private partnership waste-to-energy incineration projects by using multiple regression modeling.Results: The results show that the impact of environmental regulation on government subsides of PPP WTE projects has demonstrated an “Inverted-U”-shaped relationship with an inflection point, of which an increase in environmental regulation is positively correlated with an increase in subsidies at first then a negative correlation developing later.Discussion: The findings are significant in setting flexible environmental regulations according to the needs of regional economic and social development. In addition, they also supply a theoretical reference for promoting the WTE incineration industry’s sustainable and healthy development.</p

Enantioselective and Regiodivergent Gold and Chiral Brønsted Acid Catalyzed Cycloisomerization/Diels–Alder Reaction of 1,10-Dien-4-yn-3-yl Acetates: Synthesis of Norbornene-Embedded Tricarbocycles

A synthetic method for the enantioselective and regiodivergent synthesis of hexahydro-2H-2,4a-methanonaphthalen-4-yl and octahydro-2,4-methanoazulen-1-yl esters that relies on the gold(I)- and chiral Brønsted acid-catalyzed cycloisomerization/Diels–Alder (CDA) reaction of (E)-1,10-dien-4-yn-3-yl acetates is described