On-Site Identification of Pottery with pXRF: An Example of European and Chinese Red Stonewares

The invention of European hard porcelain, which aims at imitating kaolin-containing white paste of Chinese porcelain, had been started by the development of the technology of “red porcelain”, so-called “Jaspisporzellan” by Johann Friedrich Böttger in the early-eighteenth century at Meissen (Saxony). The visual features of the earlier Böttger red stoneware were rather similar to the one produced in Yixing, China. The prominence of Böttger productions allowed the manufacturing to be expanded across Europe to different countries (Holland, England, France, etc.). In this study, the chemical characteristics of nine European unglazed objects produced in England, France, Russia, and Holland from the 17th to 19th century and 10 Chinese (unglazed or enameled) red stoneware have been studied by using an on-site characterization technique pXRF. The results were compared with the previous studies carried out on 25 unglazed, polished, and non-polished Böttger artefacts. This non-invasive, speedy technique allows a methodology to be created for distinguishing the technological differences related to the provenance and authenticity of the artefacts. The elemental measurements explicitly show the significant discrepancy of Dutch objects from the main group, which involves other European and Chinese ones. Both a Lambertus van Eenhoorn (Delft) statue and an Ary de Milde (Delft) teapot are distinguishable from other European red stoneware by the high content of iron and calcium and high content of titanium and potassium, respectively, found in their body compositions. An overall comparison was made between the measurements made at different times in order to evaluate the error range arising from the measurement procedure (e.g., energy resolution of other series of the same instrument model).

Skill complementarity in production technology: New empirical evidence and implications

Danish manufacturing firm data reveal that 1) industries differ in within-firm worker skill (= wage) dispersion, and 2) within-firm skill dispersion positively correlates with firm productivity in industries with higher average skill dispersion. We argue that these patterns reflect technological differences between industries: firms in the “skill complementarity” industries profit from hiring similarly able workers, while the “skill substitutability” firms thrive on skill differences. Our study produces a robust, data-driven and theoretically validated classification of industries into the complementarity and substitutability groups, unveils hitherto unnoticed technological heterogeneity between industries within the same economy, and illustrates its importance through simulations.

Research on the Evaluation of Customer requirement Importance of Smart Products Based on Online Comments and Improved Quantitative Kano Model

With the development and popularization of smart products, the technological differences of products are decreasing, and the phenomenon of product homogeneity is becoming more and more obvious. It is necessary for the smart product manufacturing firms have the capability to analyze customer requirement deeply and adapt to the dynamically changing market quickly. Therefore, the traditional technology-oriented product development model is no longer suitable for manufacturers to obtain a competitive advantage. Based on this, this paper proposed a method to evaluate the importance of customer demands based on online comments and quantitative Kano model. First, the Python crawler tool is used to obtain online customer reviews of relevant products and the word segmentation processing is performed to obtain the product features and frequency that customers are mainly concerned about, and then the initial importance of demand can be calculated. Furthermore, use the quantitative Kano model to determine the customer satisfaction and revise the initial importance of the requirements to obtain a more reasonable ranking of the importance of user needs. Finally, a case study is carried out with the smart bracelet as an example to verify the effectiveness and feasibility of the model proposed in this paper.

The microstructure of multicolor hare’s fur glaze: the correlation between morphological and compositional characteristics and glaze color

The hare’s fur glazed Jian wares characterized by radial fur-like strips, as one of the typical representatives of Chinese ceramics in the 10th-13th century (A.D.), were famous for the aesthetic values in highlighting the color sparkling effects of tea soup, which were one of the indispensable tea wares in tea culture. The firing technology of hare’s fur glaze of Jian wares not only played a crucial role in the development of Chinese ceramic history, but also enlightened the modern imitation technology. The hare’s fur glaze of Jian wares can be further grouped according to the color of strips, of which the yellowish-brown hare’s fur glaze (yellowish-brown matte strips), gold hare’s fur glaze (golden shiny strips) and silver hare’s fur glaze (bright silvery strips) were the most representative types. Epsilon-Fe2O3, a specific metastable crystal phase, has become a research hotspot as the chromogenic crystals of hare’s fur glaze, however, the comparative analysis focused on the correlation between ε-Fe2O3 and the macroscopic glaze color has been barely reported. In our work, the bright color strips (hare’s fur area) and black strips (black glaze area) of silver, gold and yellowish-brown hare’s fur glaze were morphologically and compositionally analyzed by SEM and EDS, respectively. The morphological features and compositional differences of three representative types of hare’s fur glaze samples were summarized, which indicated the differences in the size, distribution and coverage of crystals and the distribution and contents of materials. It was speculated that high-level of Fe2O3 and CaO with low-level of SiO2 and Al2O3 may relate to the crystallization of ε-Fe2O3. This work helps in laying the foundation of further explanation of the technological differences of hare’s fur glazes.

Music in Virtual Reality

Virtual reality (VR) is a platform that is only just beginning to find its footing in the consumer industry. With a highly diverse line of products available, composers are challenged with different technological specifications for each VR project. This chapter discusses how VR, as a medium, is unique, covering important concepts and technological differences like degrees of freedom (DOF), positional tracking systems, binaural audio, ambisonics, and more. It then goes on to explore some different methods for designing scores for VR.

The Modern Periphery-Making Machine in the Early Twenty-First Century

Cultural, discursive, and technological differences notwithstanding, the peripheralization effects of plantation agriculture-based development pathways seem to be as vibrant today as during the height of the modern era's imperialism. This, at least, is what Bosma suggests, and I fully agree with him. The plantation, that modern labour-expelling periphery-making machine, is alive and kicking hard amid convergent socioecological crises nowadays. And this is an analytically but also politically salient phenomenon. Most often, development models which rely on predatory extractivism not only leave the majority of the population behind the well-being bandwagon, thereby turning a deaf ear to the pledge of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to “leave no one behind”; they also erode the ecological base, socioeconomic fabric, and institutions that enable more just and environmentally sound life projects to blossom. Thus, the careful examination of the complex and generative interplay between the model and intensity of resource extractivism and the broader political economy, as developed by Bosma in The Making of a Periphery, calls into question any non-transformative climate stewardship and sustainable development efforts, like the “business as usual” one represented by the flex crops and commodities complexes of the twenty-first century.

Mexico and Spain on the Eve of Encounter

Themes from the previous two chapters are interwoven for a trans-Atlantic, comparative perspective on the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries in Mexico and Spain on the eve of encounter. The emphasis is primarily on their most consequential kingdoms: the Aztec Triple Alliance and the Crown of Castile-León. Major themes of comparison include ethnic affiliation and national mythos, patterns of urbanism and political and economic organization, military and transportation technologies, and worldview framed through religion and philosophy. Previous comparative histories of the two culture areas have emphasized technological differences, particularly with regard to naval and military capabilities. These differences certainly existed, but such accounts often ignore the role of cultural and ideological variables, such as the role of micro-patriotism within Mesoamerican polities of the region and differences in battlefield ethos and the religious framing of warfare between Aztecs and Spaniards. These were critical to how the Spanish-led invasion of Mesoamerica unfolded. Likewise, similarities in certain cultural variables between the two regions enabled the post-conquest creation of New Spain to be a negotiated process that saw the birth of hybrid and syncretic beliefs and material culture.

Linking ISO 9000 certification to firm performance and financial crisis: a matched sample longitudinal analysis

PurposeThis is a longitudinal study exploring the effect of ISO 9000 certification on firm's financial performance in the pre-crisis period and the 2008 financial crisis period.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical analysis is based on a 22-year dataset with balance sheet data from 136 Greek listed firms covering the period 1992–2013. A matching technique is applied to properly estimate potential differences in the impact of ISO 9000 on firm's financial performance between the groups of certified and matched non-certified (control) firms in the entire period but, most importantly, in pre-crisis vs crisis periods, using the difference-in-differences econometric approach.FindingsThe findings indicate that certified firms exhibit significantly higher financial performance relative to the matched non-certified group in both the pre-crisis and crisis periods, which tends to persist for several years post-certification. The financial crisis has a negative and statistically significant effect on firm performance in both the certified and matched non-certified groups, which nevertheless did not differ significantly between them. Controlling for sectoral and technological differences did not harm the higher performance of certified firms relative to the matched control peers. The results remain in the same direction when the authors test the ISO 9000 effect in the sub-group of certified firms that obtained the certification at the firm-level.Originality/valueThe study is original in its sample design and hypothesis testing. The matched sample created from a sufficiently long and continuous time dataset enabled the authors to properly estimate firm performance differences of ISO 9000 between pre-crisis and crisis periods. Of additional value is the testing of sectoral/technological differences and the distinction between firm-level and plant-level certification.