Critical evaluation of competitiveness of SMEs in Chinese Yangtze river delta

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonChina has continued the economic reform and open door policy over 30 years with many great achievements, such as the second largest GDP, the largest import and export economy with the largest infrastructural investment in the world. On the other hand, the conflicts and risks the firms especially for small and medium sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) have faced are extremely serious and more acute due to the economy growth and increasing social wealth, especially in Yangtze River Delta, in the general context of ever increasing cost such as labour, land and higher customers’ expectations such as the quality of product. These serious problems are challenges for the competitiveness of SMEs in Yangtze River Delta. This research aims to investigate and improve the competitiveness of SMEs by the main variables such as enterprise’s resources, product’s competitive issues and innovation activities related barriers. To achieve the aim, the research employed a mixed method of quantitative and qualitative approaches to build the competitiveness’s belief network model by Bayesian Belief Networks and analyze the factors of the most important variables by the SPSS software. Secondly, 36 entrepreneurs of small and medium sized manufacturing enterprises in Yangtze River Delta have been carefully selected to participate in the questionnaire survey and face to face interviews. All participants are entrepreneurs who have run enterprise for at least three years. Five kinds of resources, competitive issues and innovation have been identified as the variables of competitiveness. The findings of research are mainly related to the three aspects which are general view of variables; barriers to innovation activity and importance of variables for improving the competitiveness; and the factor analysis of quality management practices. Firstly, the general condition of financial resource is the worst in resource sector of SMEs; Dependability is the best performance in competitive issues of SMEs; Lack of finance is generally identified the biggest barrier to innovation of SMEs. Secondly, the Physical resource in resource sector and Quality in competitive issues sector are the most important variables for improving the competitiveness of SMEs after BBN assessment; Lack of technical experts is the most serious barrier when the SMEs are really focusing on the innovation according to the BBN assessments. Thirdly, the factor analyses have identified the key independent factors explaining the quality management practices in these SMEs. Finally, these findings can help the SMEs build variables’ impact tables based on the outputs from the conditional assessment of BBNs to make more efficient and effective decisions when they try to improve the enterprise competitiveness, with detailed recommendations. At the same time, the importance and factors of good quality management practices have also been argued to help the entrepreneurs improve the quality performance and their enterprise competitiveness

Three dimensional photonic Dirac points in metamaterials

Topological semimetals, representing a new topological phase that lacks a full bandgap in bulk states and exhibiting nontrivial topological orders, recently have been extended to photonic systems, predominantly in photonic crystals and to a lesser extent, metamaterials. Photonic crystal realizations of Dirac degeneracies are protected by various space symmetries, where Bloch modes span the spin and orbital subspaces. Here, we theoretically show that Dirac points can also be realized in effective media through the intrinsic degrees of freedom in electromagnetism under electromagnetic duality. A pair of spin polarized Fermi arc like surface states is observed at the interface between air and the Dirac metamaterials. These surface states show linear k-space dispersion relation, resulting in nearly diffraction-less propagation. Furthermore, eigen reflection fields show the decomposition from a Dirac point to two Weyl points. We also find the topological correlation between a Dirac point and vortex/vector beams in classic photonics. The theoretical proposal of photonic Dirac point lays foundation for unveiling the connection between intrinsic physics and global topology in electromagnetism.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure

Users’ Perception and Utility of Health Information Based on WeChat

Objective: To explore the ability of users to identify the health information spread on WeChat platform, and then to discuss the utility of such information on them. Methods: Questionnaire survey and descriptive statistical methods were used to collect and analyze the data. The process of “get health related information, judge true or false, production related behavior” was used to design the survey problem, finally, the paper and network surveys were investigated in users. Results: The proportion of accurate recognition, ambiguous recognition, none recognition and none classification were 21.55%, 63.26%, 4.41%, 10.78% respectively. The average frequency of identification, transmission, guidance and none behavior of originally true health information were 52.00, 78.40, 45.20, 31.80 respectively, and originally false health information were 21.30, 27.70, 14.10, 5.50 respectively.Conclusions: Most WeChat users surveyed lack the ability to accurately identify the authenticity of health information, and improvement of citizens’ health literacy has long way to go. WeChat is an effective platform for the dissemination of health information, but also provides a fertile soil for the spread of false health information. Additionally, users are not aware of the problem of their ability to identify information, even if produced a false judgment of false health information, most of the active users will also lead this kind of information still widely spread

On the Development and Application of FOG

Gyroscope is a type of angular velocity measuring device, which can precisely determine the orientation of moving objects. It was first employed in navigation and later became an inertial navigation instrument widely used in modern aviation, aerospace, and national defense industries. As a vital representative of gyroscope, the fiber-optic gyroscope (FOG) has advantages in terms of compact structure, high precision, high sensitivity, and high environmental adaptability. FOG has been broadly utilized in many fields, and is also a key component of modern navigation instruments. In this paper, the history, classification, performance indicators, and application requirements of gyroscope are briefly summarized. The development history of FOG based on Sagnac effect is described in detail. The three generations of FOG are interferometric FOG, resonant FOG, and stimulated Brillouin scattering FOG. At the same time, this chapter summarizes the development and research situation of FOG in the United States, Japan, France, and other major developing countries, and compares the application of FOG in various international companies