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Qualitative case study methodology enables researchers to conduct an in-depth exploration of intricate phenomena within some specific context. By keeping in mind research students, this article presents a systematic step-by-step guide to conduct a case study in the business discipline. Research students belonging to said discipline face issues in terms of clarity, selection, and operationalization of qualitative case study while doing their final dissertation. These issues often lead to confusion, wastage of valuable time, and wrong decisions that affect the overall outcome of the research. This article presents a checklist comprised of four phases, that is, foundation phase, prefield phase, field phase, and reporting phase. The objective of this article is to provide novice researchers with practical application of this checklist by linking all its four phases with the authors’ experiences and learning from recently conducted in-depth multiple case studies in the organizations of New Zealand. Rather than discussing case study in general, a targeted step-by-step plan with real-time research examples to conduct a case study is given.

Solar energy is the most viable and abundant renewable energy source. Its intermittent nature and mismatch between source availability and energy demand, however, are critical issues in its deployment and market penetrability. This problem can be addressed by storing surplus energy during peak sun hours to be used during nighttime for continuous electricity production in concentrated solar power (CSP) plants. This article reviews the thermal energy storage (TES) for CSPs and focuses on detailing the latest advancement in materials for TES systems and advanced thermal fluids for high energy conversion efficiency. Problems of TES systems, such as high temperature corrosion with their proposed solutions, as well as successful implementations are reported. The article also reviews the economic analysis on CSP plants with TES systems and life-cycle assessment to quantify the environmental impacts of different TES systems.

This study develops a test model that can conceptually contribute to the formation of a green brand image for the hospitality market. A conceptual model highlighting the mediating role of green brand image based on two antecedent constructs (consumer’s perceived functional and emotional benefits of green hotels) and four outcome constructs (green brand preferences, trust, loyalty, and corporate image) was tested using 347 Malaysian lodging consumers. The findings indicate that the increase in consumer’s perceived functional and emotional benefits will initially increase their green brand image, and eventually increase their green brand preferences, trust, loyalty, and corporate image. Moreover, the role of green brand image as a mediator exists between consumers’ perceived benefits and their green brand preferences, trust, loyalty, and corporate image. Based on these findings, the managers can devise green branding strategies for their hotels, and show how green campaigns can highlight ecological concerns among green hotel consumers.

The advantages of ventilated cavity façade systems in terms of energy saving have been proven over decades of research. The presence of an air cavity introduces an additional layer between harsh outdoor conditions and indoor thermal comfort zones. The same façade can be further enriched to function as a solar absorber, namely a solar thermal façade. It can harness heat from solar radiation and even ambient in winter and facilitate space cooling through night ventilation in summer. In a solar thermal façade, airflow through the ventilated cavity is necessary. It keeps the surfaces dry from condensed, diffused and penetrated rainwater. In this research, theoretical modelling of such a system has been undertaken. The initial model is developed, assuming the outer surface to be adiabatic, and an analytical solution is obtained. Subsequently, the system’s complexity is incrementally increased, and relative solution methods are formulated. The model that has been developed represents a non-linear coupled system of three ordinary differential equations, which can be solved using an iterative method on various platforms, such as MATLAB. The parameter values required to test the functionality and correctness of the model are taken from experiments conducted. The results presented in this paper are limited and only reflect the physics of the system. For example, increasing the cavity width decreases the air temperature in the cavity. The validation of the model against experimental results will be conducted in future work and is beyond the scope of this paper.

In this article, thermal performance of different waste materials and by-products of industrial processes is investigated experimentally. A geopolymer concrete block with 7.5 cm thickness and cross-sectional area of 5 × 5 cm was considered as a reference model to measure heat transmission across the two opposite surfaces while all four remnant surfaces were perfectly insulated. For all other samples, a sandwich concrete block was developed by taking two pieces of the geopolymer concrete with 2.5 cm thickness each on either side and insulation material of 2.5 cm thickness in between. The sandwich materials investigated were air cavity, expanded polystyrene foam, polyurethane foam, rubber tire, date palm, PCM-30, and PCM-42. Experimental investigations revealed that the investigated green materials and industrial by-products have comparable insulation performance with respect to the traditional insulations such as expanded polystyrene foam. It is found that polyurethane foam and date palm can reduce indoor cooling demand by 46.6% each in hot conditions while rubber tire can reduce indoor heating demand by 59.2% in cold climatic conditions at the maximum. The research results confirm and encourage the effective utilization of waste materials in building walls for reducing indoor air-conditioning demand in the extreme climatic conditions.

PurposeThe purpose of the study is to analyze the impact of the Publication Timeline, i.e. Submission to First Decision and Submission to Acceptance on Journal Metrics, i.e. Impact Factor (IF) and 5-year IF.Design/methodology/approachData related to the IF and 5-year IF were retrieved from Clarivate Analytics’ Journal Citation Report 2020. The Publication Timeline of each journal was ascertained through their respective websites. To attain the model fit summary, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) test was performed. Regression analysis was also performed on the models using SPSS 21 software to ascertain the nature and degree of impact the Publication Timeline (Submission to First Decision and Submission to Acceptance) has on Journal Metrics (IF and 5-year IF).FindingsSubmission to First Decision has a significant inverse relationship with both the IF and 5-year IF, whereas Submission to Acceptance has a significant direct relation with 5-year IF and an inverse but insignificant relationship with IF.Research limitations/implicationsJournals published by Springer Nature and of multidisciplinary nature have been considered for the study. Only those journals were selected that provided the information regarding the Publication Timeline, whereas those which did not provide the same, were excluded. However, new insights can be revealed if the journals published by different publishers and belonging to one particular discipline are studied.Practical implicationsThe study helps to ascertain the impact of the Publication Timeline on the Impact Metrics of the journals. It can help the authors select the journals as their publishing venues considering the Publication Timeline. Publishers can also be benefitted from the findings of this study since improvisations and modifications in their Publication Timelines can positively influence the impact metrics of their respective journals.Originality/valueThe study attempts to measure the impact of the Publication Timeline on Journal Metrics using cross-sectional secondary data, by performing regression analysis. Though various studies have examined the influence of the Publication Timeline on the IF using correlation analysis, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to use regression analysis to check the relation, as well as the degree of impact the Publication Timeline, has on Journal Metrics.

In this study, a novel porous geopolymer mortar (GP) was produced and tested experimentally. Industrial waste materials/by-products were used as constituents of the GP, along with dune sand. One sample was produced as a control sample for benchmarking. For the rest of the samples, 15%, 30%, and 45% by volume, the solid constituents were replaced with expanded polystyrene foam (EPS) beads. These mortar samples were heat cured to depolymerize the EPS to cause porosity inside the samples. Indoor experiments were conducted to evaluate the response of produced porous GP to high heat flux. The porous samples were able to reduce heat transmission across the opposite surfaces. Induced porosity resulted in a decrement in compressive strength from 77.2 MPa for the control sample to 15.8 MPa for 45% porous sample. However, the limit lies within the standards for partitioning walls in buildings and pavements in urban areas to absorb rainwater.

The bacterial contamination of meat carcasses occurs mainly during processing and manipulation. Due to the abundance of nutrients in meat may encourage the growth of microorganisms and the animal transmission of harmful bacteria, meat is regarded as food with a high risk of contamination. A cross-sectional study was carried out in two Abbatoirs in Tanzania, Morogoro Municipality and NARCO, and bacteriological analysis was performed to determine the level of bacterial contamination in beef (chuck beef, sirloin beef and ground beef). Ninety samples from different beef were collected from three breeds (cows) (Ancole, Boran and Gogo) transferred without undue delay to the Laboratory of Food Science of Sokoine University of Agriculture, and subjected to bacteriological examination. The results specified that mean values of Total Plate Count (TPC), at the chuck beef, sirloin beef and round beef were 6.09 ± 0.20, 5.93 ± 0.18 and 5.87 ± 0.18 log cfu/g respectively. Though mean values of Salmonella Count at the previous regions were 1.30 ± 0.19, 1.35 ± 0.20 and 0.93 ± 0.18 log cfu/g, respectively, while mean values of total E.coli count were 1.07 ± 0.14, 1.10 ± 0.12 and 2.03 ± 0.15 log cfu/g, respectively, mean values of total Staphylococcal count were 4.34 ± 0.15, 3.62 ± 0.2 and 4.80 ± 0.14 log cfu/g, respectively. The breeds were not significantly different to all microbes examined. The samples concealed high counts of microorganisms.

This paper focuses on the artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm, which is a nonlinear optimization problem. is proposed to find the optimal power flow (OPF). To solve this problem, we will apply the ABC algorithm to a power system incorporating wind power. The proposed approach is applied on a standard IEEE-30 system with wind farms located on different buses and with different penetration levels to show the impact of wind farms on the system in order to obtain the optimal settings of control variables of the OPF problem. Based on technical results obtained, the ABC algorithm is shown to achieve a lower cost and losses than the other methods applied, while incorporating wind power into the system, high performance would be gained.

This paper deals with an advanced design for a pump powered by solar energyto supply agricultural lands with water and also the maximum power point is used to extract the maximum value of the energy available inside the solar panels and comparing between techniques MPPT such as Incremental conductance, perturb & observe, fractional short current circuit, and fractional open voltage circuit to find the best technique among these. The solar system is designed with main parts: photovoltaic (PV) panel, direct current/direct current (DC/DC) converter, inverter, filter, and in addition, the battery is used to save energy in the event that there is an increased demand for energy and not to provide solar radiation, as well as saving energy in the case of generation more than demand. This work was done using the matrix laboratory (MATLAB) simulink program.