Open caissons are widely used in foundation engineering because of their load-bearing efficiency and adaptability in diverse soil conditions.However,accurately predicting their undrained bearing capacity in layered so...Open caissons are widely used in foundation engineering because of their load-bearing efficiency and adaptability in diverse soil conditions.However,accurately predicting their undrained bearing capacity in layered soils remains a complex challenge.This study presents a novel application of five ensemble machine(ML)algorithms-random forest(RF),gradient boosting machine(GBM),extreme gradient boosting(XGBoost),adaptive boosting(AdaBoost),and categorical boosting(CatBoost)-to predict the undrained bearing capacity factor(Nc)of circular open caissons embedded in two-layered clay on the basis of results from finite element limit analysis(FELA).The input dataset consists of 1188 numerical simulations using the Tresca failure criterion,varying in geometrical and soil parameters.The FELA was performed via OptumG2 software with adaptive meshing techniques and verified against existing benchmark studies.The ML models were trained on 70% of the dataset and tested on the remaining 30%.Their performance was evaluated using six statistical metrics:coefficient of determination(R²),mean absolute error(MAE),root mean squared error(RMSE),index of scatter(IOS),RMSE-to-standard deviation ratio(RSR),and variance explained factor(VAF).The results indicate that all the models achieved high accuracy,with R²values exceeding 97.6%and RMSE values below 0.02.Among them,AdaBoost and CatBoost consistently outperformed the other methods across both the training and testing datasets,demonstrating superior generalizability and robustness.The proposed ML framework offers an efficient,accurate,and data-driven alternative to traditional methods for estimating caisson capacity in stratified soils.This approach can aid in reducing computational costs while improving reliability in the early stages of foundation design.展开更多
Foreign-funded overseas industrial parks(OIPs)are crucial for attracting foreign investment and promoting globalization in developing countries.However,large-scale land acquisition for these parks generates conflicts ...Foreign-funded overseas industrial parks(OIPs)are crucial for attracting foreign investment and promoting globalization in developing countries.However,large-scale land acquisition for these parks generates conflicts between developers and local stakeholders,increasing development costs.A qualitative multicase study was conducted in this study to analyze the land transaction trajectories of China's OIPs.Four OIPs were selected to reveal the underlying mechanisms from the perspectives of institutional arrangements,governance mechanisms,and enterprise heterogeneity.The findings indicate that in host countries with insufficient institutional development,local governments are more inclined to directly engage in OIP land acquisition.High-level intergovernmental mechanisms facilitate land acquisition processes,although their efficacy depends largely on administrative power allocation across parks in host countries.The results also indicate that enterprise characteristics significantly influence land acquisition,where microscale private enterprises lacking political connections often employ low-cost,bottom-up strategies by leveraging international experience.In summary,policy-makers in developing countries should prioritize enhancing OIP governance to mitigate transaction costs,promote diversified land supply,and optimize land allocation.By depicting China's OIP land acquisition processes,this study deepens the academic understanding of OIP governance in developing countries and related international land transactions,offering practical OIP management insights for governments in both host and parent countries.展开更多
This study investigates the effects of radiation force due to the rotational pitch motion of a wave energy device,which comprises a coaxial bottom-mounted cylindrical caisson in a two-layer fluid,along with a submerge...This study investigates the effects of radiation force due to the rotational pitch motion of a wave energy device,which comprises a coaxial bottom-mounted cylindrical caisson in a two-layer fluid,along with a submerged cylindrical buoy.The system is modeled as a two-layer fluid with infinite horizontal extent and finite depth.The radiation problem is analyzed in the context of linear water waves.The fluid domain is divided into outer and inner zones,and mathematical solutions for the pitch radiating potential are derived for the corresponding boundary valve problem in these zones using the separation of variables approach.Using the matching eigenfunction expansion method,the unknown coefficients in the analytical expression of the radiation potentials are evaluated.The resulting radiation potential is then used to compute the added mass and damping coefficients.Several numerical results for the added mass and damping coefficients are investigated for numerous parameters,particularly the effects of the cylinder radius,the draft of the submerged cylinder,and the density proportion between the two fluid layers across different frequency ranges.The major findings are presented and discussed.展开更多
P2P trading is driving the decentralization of the electricity market,the autonomy and privacy requirements of prosumers may intro-duce safety risks such as voltage violations.Existing security management methods base...P2P trading is driving the decentralization of the electricity market,the autonomy and privacy requirements of prosumers may intro-duce safety risks such as voltage violations.Existing security management methods based on price guidance may face unsolvable situa-tions in trading scenarios and have difficulty assessing the impact of P2P transactions on voltage security.To this end,this paper proposes a novel distribution system operator(DSO)-prosumers bi-level optimization framework incorporating the dynamic operating envelope(DOE)and risk coefficient-based network usage charge(RC-NUC).In the upper-level,the DOE is employed for dynamic voltage man-agement to prevent violations while the RC-NUC further guides prosumers to engage in grid-friendly transactions.The lower-level decen-tralized market enables prosumers to optimize trading decisions autonomously.Only price signals and energy quantities are exchanged between the two levels,ensuring the privacy of both parties.Additionally,an alternating direction method of multipliers(ADMM)with adaptive penalty factor is introduced to improve computational efficiency.Case studies on a modified IEEE 33-bus system demonstrate that the proposed method reduces voltage violation risks by 18.31%and enhances trading efficiency by 32.3%.These results highlight the feasibility and effectiveness of the approach in advancing secure and efficient distributed energy transactions.展开更多
Blockchain platform swith the unique characteristics of anonymity,decentralization,and transparency of their transactions,which are faced with abnormal activities such as money laundering,phishing scams,and fraudulent...Blockchain platform swith the unique characteristics of anonymity,decentralization,and transparency of their transactions,which are faced with abnormal activities such as money laundering,phishing scams,and fraudulent behavior,posing a serious threat to account asset security.For these potential security risks,this paper proposes a hybrid neural network detection method(HNND)that learns multiple types of account features and enhances fusion information among them to effectively detect abnormal transaction behaviors in the blockchain.In HNND,the Temporal Transaction Graph Attention Network(T2GAT)is first designed to learn biased aggregation representation of multi-attribute transactions among nodes,which can capture key temporal information from node neighborhood transactions.Then,the Graph Convolutional Network(GCN)is adopted which captures abstract structural features of the transaction network.Further,the Stacked Denoising Autoencode(SDA)is developed to achieve adaptive fusion of thses features from different modules.Moreover,the SDA enhances robustness and generalization ability of node representation,leading to higher binary classification accuracy in detecting abnormal behaviors of blockchain accounts.Evaluations on a real-world abnormal transaction dataset demonstrate great advantages of the proposed HNND method over other compared methods.展开更多
The global wave of digitalization has accelerated the process of corporate digital transformation,placing higher demands on financial and accounting management.Since then,accounting work has shifted from the tradition...The global wave of digitalization has accelerated the process of corporate digital transformation,placing higher demands on financial and accounting management.Since then,accounting work has shifted from the traditional transactional model to a modern value management-oriented model,leading to a transformation of accounting functions.As corporate managers,they must advance their work proactively,empower the modernization and innovation of financial accounting with digital technology,and transition to management accounting to ensure enterprises keep pace with the times.Therefore,this paper explores the current status of corporate financial and accounting work amid the digital wave,identifies the challenges in the transformation of accounting from transactional to value management-oriented,and finally proposes several feasible and effective improvement strategies,aiming to provide more references for relevant practitioners.展开更多
Network Intrusion Detection System(NIDS)detection of minority class attacks is always a difficult task when dealing with attacks in complex network environments.To improve the detection capability of minority-class at...Network Intrusion Detection System(NIDS)detection of minority class attacks is always a difficult task when dealing with attacks in complex network environments.To improve the detection capability of minority-class attacks,this study proposes an intrusion detection method based on a two-layer structure.The first layer employs a CNN-BiLSTM model incorporating an attention mechanism to classify network traffic into normal traffic,majority class attacks,and merged minority class attacks.The second layer further segments the minority class attacks through Stacking ensemble learning.The datasets are selected from the generic network dataset CIC-IDS2017,NSL-KDD,and the industrial network dataset Mississippi Gas Pipeline dataset to enhance the generalization and practical applicability of the model.Experimental results show that the proposed model achieves an overall detection accuracy of 99%,99%,and 95%on the CIC-IDS2017,NSL-KDD,and industrial network datasets,respectively.It also significantly outperforms traditional methods in terms of detection accuracy and recall rate for minority class attacks.Compared with the single-layer deep learning model,the two-layer structure effectively reduces the false alarm rate while improving the minority-class attack detection performance.The research in this paper not only improves the adaptability of NIDS to complex network environments but also provides a new solution for minority-class attack detection in industrial network security.展开更多
Low data encryption efficiency and inadequate security are two issues with the current blockchain cross-chain transaction protection schemes.To address these issues,a blockchain cross-chain transaction protection sche...Low data encryption efficiency and inadequate security are two issues with the current blockchain cross-chain transaction protection schemes.To address these issues,a blockchain cross-chain transaction protection scheme based on Fully Homomorphic Encryption(FHE)is proposed.In the proposed scheme,the functional relationship is established by Box-Muller,Discrete Gaussian Distribution Function(DGDF)and Uniform Random Distribution Func-tion(URDF)are used to improve the security and efficiency of key generation.Subsequently,the data preprocessing function is introduced to perform cleaning,deduplication,and normalization operations on the transaction data of multi-key signature,and it is classified into interactive data and asset data,so as to perform different homomorphic operations in the FHE encryption stage.Ultimately,in the FHE encryption stage,homomorphic multiplication and homomorphic addition are used targeted for the interactive data and asset data,thereby reducing the computational complexity and enhancing the FHE encryption efficiency.The significance of the proposed scheme is proved by experimental results:Firstly,the multi-key generation function and its specific sampling method and transformation ensure the security and efficiency of key generation.Data preprocessing can also accelerate the FHE encryption process by eliminating invalid data and redundancy,so the FHE encryption efficiency is significantly improved.Secondly,the FHE encryption method based on discrete logarithm problem enhances the security of transaction data and can effectively resist multiple attacks.In addition,the preprocessed data also has good performance in capacity storage.The proposed scheme has significant impacts on key indicators such as encryption efficiency and security,it provides a new reference for blockchain cross-chain transaction protection technology and has an important impact on the security improvement of various cross-chain transaction data.展开更多
This paper proposes a novel hybrid fraud detection framework that integrates multi-stage feature selection,unsupervised clustering,and ensemble learning to improve classification performance in financial transaction m...This paper proposes a novel hybrid fraud detection framework that integrates multi-stage feature selection,unsupervised clustering,and ensemble learning to improve classification performance in financial transaction monitoring systems.The framework is structured into three core layers:(1)feature selection using Recursive Feature Elimination(RFE),Principal Component Analysis(PCA),and Mutual Information(MI)to reduce dimensionality and enhance input relevance;(2)anomaly detection through unsupervised clustering using K-Means,Density-Based Spatial Clustering(DBSCAN),and Hierarchical Clustering to flag suspicious patterns in unlabeled data;and(3)final classification using a voting-based hybrid ensemble of Support Vector Machine(SVM),Random Forest(RF),and Gradient Boosting Classifier(GBC).The experimental evaluation is conducted on a synthetically generated dataset comprising one million financial transactions,with 5% labelled as fraudulent,simulating realistic fraud rates and behavioural features,including transaction time,origin,amount,and geo-location.The proposed model demonstrated a significant improvement over baseline classifiers,achieving an accuracy of 99%,a precision of 99%,a recall of 97%,and an F1-score of 99%.Compared to individual models,it yielded a 9% gain in overall detection accuracy.It reduced the false positive rate to below 3.5%,thereby minimising the operational costs associated with manually reviewing false alerts.The model’s interpretability is enhanced by the integration of Shapley Additive Explanations(SHAP)values for feature importance,supporting transparency and regulatory auditability.These results affirm the practical relevance of the proposed system for deployment in real-time fraud detection scenarios such as credit card transactions,mobile banking,and cross-border payments.The study also highlights future directions,including the deployment of lightweight models and the integration of multimodal data for scalable fraud analytics.展开更多
BACKGROUND The early diagnosis rate of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma(PDAC)is low and the prognosis is poor.It is important to develop an interpretable noninvasive early diagnostic model in clinical practice.AIM To ...BACKGROUND The early diagnosis rate of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma(PDAC)is low and the prognosis is poor.It is important to develop an interpretable noninvasive early diagnostic model in clinical practice.AIM To develop an interpretable noninvasive early diagnostic model for PDAC using plasma extracellular vesicle long RNA(EvlRNA).METHODS The diagnostic model was constructed based on plasma EvlRNA data.During the process of establishing the model,EvlRNA-index was introduced,and four algorithms were adopted to calculate EvlRNA-index.After the model was successfully constructed,performance evaluation was conducted.A series of bioinformatics methods were adopted to explore the potential mechanism of EvlRNA-index as the input feature of the model.And the relationship between key characteristics and PDAC were explored at the single-cell level.RESULTS A novel interpretable machine learning framework was developed based on plasma EvlRNA.In this framework,a two-layer classifier was established.A new concept was proposed:EvlRNA-index.Based on EvlRNA-index,a cancer diagnostic model was established,and a good diagnostic effect was achieved.The accuracy of PDACandCPvsHealth-Probabilistic PCA Index-SVM(PDAC and chronic pancreatitis vs health-probabilistic principal component analysis index-support vector machine)(1-18)was 91.51%,with Mathew’s correlation coefficient 0.7760 and area under the curve 0.9560.In the second layer of the model,the accuracy of PDACvsCP-Probabilistic PCA Index-RF(PDAC vs chronic pancreatitis-probabilistic principal component analysis index-random forest)(2-17)was 93.83%,with Mathew’s correlation coefficient 0.8422 and area under the curve 0.9698.Forty-nine PDAC-related genes were identified,among which 16 were known,inferring that the remaining ones were also PDAC-related genes.CONCLUSION An interpretable two-layer machine learning framework was proposed for early diagnosis and prediction of PDAC based on plasma EvlRNA,providing new insights into the clinical value of EvlRNA.展开更多
In the wake of major natural disasters or human-made disasters,the communication infrastruc-ture within disaster-stricken areas is frequently dam-aged.Unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs),thanks to their merits such as rapi...In the wake of major natural disasters or human-made disasters,the communication infrastruc-ture within disaster-stricken areas is frequently dam-aged.Unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs),thanks to their merits such as rapid deployment and high mobil-ity,are commonly regarded as an ideal option for con-structing temporary communication networks.Con-sidering the limited computing capability and battery power of UAVs,this paper proposes a two-layer UAV cooperative computing offloading strategy for emer-gency disaster relief scenarios.The multi-agent twin delayed deep deterministic policy gradient(MATD3)algorithm integrated with prioritized experience replay(PER)is utilized to jointly optimize the scheduling strategies of UAVs,task offloading ratios,and their mobility,aiming to diminish the energy consumption and delay of the system to the minimum.In order to address the aforementioned non-convex optimiza-tion issue,a Markov decision process(MDP)has been established.The results of simulation experiments demonstrate that,compared with the other four base-line algorithms,the algorithm introduced in this paper exhibits better convergence performance,verifying its feasibility and efficacy.展开更多
With the introduction of the“dual carbon”goal and the continuous promotion of low-carbon development,the integrated energy system(IES)has gradually become an effective way to save energy and reduce emissions.This st...With the introduction of the“dual carbon”goal and the continuous promotion of low-carbon development,the integrated energy system(IES)has gradually become an effective way to save energy and reduce emissions.This study proposes a low-carbon economic optimization scheduling model for an IES that considers carbon trading costs.With the goal of minimizing the total operating cost of the IES and considering the transferable and curtailable characteristics of the electric and thermal flexible loads,an optimal scheduling model of the IES that considers the cost of carbon trading and flexible loads on the user side was established.The role of flexible loads in improving the economy of an energy system was investigated using examples,and the rationality and effectiveness of the study were verified through a comparative analysis of different scenarios.The results showed that the total cost of the system in different scenarios was reduced by 18.04%,9.1%,3.35%,and 7.03%,respectively,whereas the total carbon emissions of the system were reduced by 65.28%,20.63%,3.85%,and 18.03%,respectively,when the carbon trading cost and demand-side flexible electric and thermal load responses were considered simultaneously.Flexible electrical and thermal loads did not have the same impact on the system performance.In the analyzed case,the total cost and carbon emissions of the system when only the flexible electrical load response was considered were lower than those when only the flexible thermal load response was taken into account.Photovoltaics have an excess of carbon trading credits and can profit from selling them,whereas other devices have an excess of carbon trading and need to buy carbon credits.展开更多
Traditional large-scale multi-objective optimization algorithms(LSMOEAs)encounter difficulties when dealing with sparse large-scale multi-objective optimization problems(SLM-OPs)where most decision variables are zero....Traditional large-scale multi-objective optimization algorithms(LSMOEAs)encounter difficulties when dealing with sparse large-scale multi-objective optimization problems(SLM-OPs)where most decision variables are zero.As a result,many algorithms use a two-layer encoding approach to optimize binary variable Mask and real variable Dec separately.Nevertheless,existing optimizers often focus on locating non-zero variable posi-tions to optimize the binary variables Mask.However,approxi-mating the sparse distribution of real Pareto optimal solutions does not necessarily mean that the objective function is optimized.In data mining,it is common to mine frequent itemsets appear-ing together in a dataset to reveal the correlation between data.Inspired by this,we propose a novel two-layer encoding learning swarm optimizer based on frequent itemsets(TELSO)to address these SLMOPs.TELSO mined the frequent terms of multiple particles with better target values to find mask combinations that can obtain better objective values for fast convergence.Experi-mental results on five real-world problems and eight benchmark sets demonstrate that TELSO outperforms existing state-of-the-art sparse large-scale multi-objective evolutionary algorithms(SLMOEAs)in terms of performance and convergence speed.展开更多
This work uses refined first-order shear theory to analyze the free vibration and transient responses of double-curved sandwich two-layer shells made of auxetic honeycomb core and laminated three-phase polymer/GNP/fib...This work uses refined first-order shear theory to analyze the free vibration and transient responses of double-curved sandwich two-layer shells made of auxetic honeycomb core and laminated three-phase polymer/GNP/fiber surface subjected to the blast load.Each of the two layers that make up the double-curved shell structure is made up of an auxetic honeycomb core and two laminated sheets of three-phase polymer/GNP/fiber.The exterior is supported by a Kerr elastic foundation with three characteristics.The key innovation of the proposed theory is that the transverse shear stresses are zero at two free surfaces of each layer.In contrast to previous first-order shear deformation theories,no shear correction factor is required.Navier's exact solution was used to treat the double-curved shell problem with a single title boundary,while the finite element technique and an eight-node quadrilateral were used to address the other boundary requirements.To ensure the accuracy of these results,a thorough comparison technique is employed in conjunction with credible statements.The problem model's edge cases allow for this kind of analysis.The study's findings may be used in the post-construction evaluation of military and civil works structures for their ability to sustain explosive loads.In addition,this is also an important basis for the calculation and design of shell structures made of smart materials when subjected to shock waves or explosive loads.展开更多
Blockchain can realize the reliable storage of a large amount of data that is chronologically related and verifiable within the system.This technology has been widely used and has developed rapidly in big data systems...Blockchain can realize the reliable storage of a large amount of data that is chronologically related and verifiable within the system.This technology has been widely used and has developed rapidly in big data systems across various fields.An increasing number of users are participating in application systems that use blockchain as their underlying architecture.As the number of transactions and the capital involved in blockchain grow,ensuring information security becomes imperative.Addressing the verification of transactional information security and privacy has emerged as a critical challenge.Blockchain-based verification methods can effectively eliminate the need for centralized third-party organizations.However,the efficiency of nodes in storing and verifying blockchain data faces unprecedented challenges.To address this issue,this paper introduces an efficient verification scheme for transaction security.Initially,it presents a node evaluation module to estimate the activity level of user nodes participating in transactions,accompanied by a probabilistic analysis for all transactions.Subsequently,this paper optimizes the conventional transaction organization form,introduces a heterogeneous Merkle tree storage structure,and designs algorithms for constructing these heterogeneous trees.Theoretical analyses and simulation experiments conclusively demonstrate the superior performance of this scheme.When verifying the same number of transactions,the heterogeneous Merkle tree transmits less data and is more efficient than traditional methods.The findings indicate that the heterogeneous Merkle tree structure is suitable for various blockchain applications,including the Internet of Things.This scheme can markedly enhance the efficiency of information verification and bolster the security of distributed systems.展开更多
Effective small object detection is crucial in various applications including urban intelligent transportation and pedestrian detection.However,small objects are difficult to detect accurately because they contain les...Effective small object detection is crucial in various applications including urban intelligent transportation and pedestrian detection.However,small objects are difficult to detect accurately because they contain less information.Many current methods,particularly those based on Feature Pyramid Network(FPN),address this challenge by leveraging multi-scale feature fusion.However,existing FPN-based methods often suffer from inadequate feature fusion due to varying resolutions across different layers,leading to suboptimal small object detection.To address this problem,we propose the Two-layerAttention Feature Pyramid Network(TA-FPN),featuring two key modules:the Two-layer Attention Module(TAM)and the Small Object Detail Enhancement Module(SODEM).TAM uses the attention module to make the network more focused on the semantic information of the object and fuse it to the lower layer,so that each layer contains similar semantic information,to alleviate the problem of small object information being submerged due to semantic gaps between different layers.At the same time,SODEM is introduced to strengthen the local features of the object,suppress background noise,enhance the information details of the small object,and fuse the enhanced features to other feature layers to ensure that each layer is rich in small object information,to improve small object detection accuracy.Our extensive experiments on challenging datasets such as Microsoft Common Objects inContext(MSCOCO)and Pattern Analysis Statistical Modelling and Computational Learning,Visual Object Classes(PASCAL VOC)demonstrate the validity of the proposedmethod.Experimental results show a significant improvement in small object detection accuracy compared to state-of-theart detectors.展开更多
In the context of China’s“double carbon”goals and rural revitalization strategy,the energy transition promotes the large-scale integration of distributed renewable energy into rural power grids.Considering the oper...In the context of China’s“double carbon”goals and rural revitalization strategy,the energy transition promotes the large-scale integration of distributed renewable energy into rural power grids.Considering the operational characteristics of rural microgrids and their impact on users,this paper establishes a two-layer scheduling model incorporating flexible loads.The upper-layer aims to minimize the comprehensive operating cost of the rural microgrid,while the lower-layer aims to minimize the total electricity cost for rural users.An Improved Adaptive Genetic Algorithm(IAGA)is proposed to solve the model.Results show that the two-layer scheduling model with flexible loads can effectively smooth load fluctuations,enhance microgrid stability,increase clean energy consumption,and balance microgrid operating costs with user benefits.展开更多
Thucydides asserts that the occupation of Decelea by the Spartans in 413 BC made the grain supply for Athens costly by forcing the transport from land onto the sea.This calls into question the well-established consens...Thucydides asserts that the occupation of Decelea by the Spartans in 413 BC made the grain supply for Athens costly by forcing the transport from land onto the sea.This calls into question the well-established consensus that sea transport was far cheaper than land transport.This paper contends that the cost of protecting supply lines-specifically the expenses associated with the warships which escorted the supply ships-rendered the grain transported on the new route exceptionally costly.In this paper,the benefits and drawbacks of a maritime economy,including transaction costs,trade dependencies,and the capabilities of warships and supply ships are discussed.展开更多
In the evolving landscape of software engineering, Microservice Architecture (MSA) has emerged as a transformative approach, facilitating enhanced scalability, agility, and independent service deployment. This systema...In the evolving landscape of software engineering, Microservice Architecture (MSA) has emerged as a transformative approach, facilitating enhanced scalability, agility, and independent service deployment. This systematic literature review (SLR) explores the current state of distributed transaction management within MSA, focusing on the unique challenges, strategies, and technologies utilized in this domain. By synthesizing findings from 16 primary studies selected based on rigorous criteria, the review identifies key trends and best practices for maintaining data consistency and integrity across microservices. This SLR provides a comprehensive understanding of the complexities associated with distributed transactions in MSA, offering actionable insights and potential research directions for software architects, developers, and researchers.展开更多
In the context of globalization and digitalization, the application of transaction cost theory in supply chain management has become increasingly important. As business environments grow more complex, enterprises face...In the context of globalization and digitalization, the application of transaction cost theory in supply chain management has become increasingly important. As business environments grow more complex, enterprises face challenges in effectively managing supply chain transaction costs. This paper systematically explores the application of transaction cost theory in supply chain management, covering key areas such as supplier selection, supply chain integration, and risk management. The research finds that supplier evaluation models based on transaction costs can help enterprises make more comprehensive selection decisions. In terms of supply chain integration, transaction cost theory provides important guidance for vertical integration decisions and the design of collaboration mechanisms. The application of digital technologies has both reduced traditional transaction costs and introduced new cost considerations. Faced with emerging risks such as cybersecurity and geopolitical issues, enterprises need to adopt dynamic transaction cost management strategies. In the future, the application of transaction cost theory in supply chain management will likely place greater emphasis on interdisciplinary integration and sustainable development, providing theoretical support for enterprises to achieve efficient, flexible, and sustainable supply chain management in the changing global business environment.展开更多
文摘Open caissons are widely used in foundation engineering because of their load-bearing efficiency and adaptability in diverse soil conditions.However,accurately predicting their undrained bearing capacity in layered soils remains a complex challenge.This study presents a novel application of five ensemble machine(ML)algorithms-random forest(RF),gradient boosting machine(GBM),extreme gradient boosting(XGBoost),adaptive boosting(AdaBoost),and categorical boosting(CatBoost)-to predict the undrained bearing capacity factor(Nc)of circular open caissons embedded in two-layered clay on the basis of results from finite element limit analysis(FELA).The input dataset consists of 1188 numerical simulations using the Tresca failure criterion,varying in geometrical and soil parameters.The FELA was performed via OptumG2 software with adaptive meshing techniques and verified against existing benchmark studies.The ML models were trained on 70% of the dataset and tested on the remaining 30%.Their performance was evaluated using six statistical metrics:coefficient of determination(R²),mean absolute error(MAE),root mean squared error(RMSE),index of scatter(IOS),RMSE-to-standard deviation ratio(RSR),and variance explained factor(VAF).The results indicate that all the models achieved high accuracy,with R²values exceeding 97.6%and RMSE values below 0.02.Among them,AdaBoost and CatBoost consistently outperformed the other methods across both the training and testing datasets,demonstrating superior generalizability and robustness.The proposed ML framework offers an efficient,accurate,and data-driven alternative to traditional methods for estimating caisson capacity in stratified soils.This approach can aid in reducing computational costs while improving reliability in the early stages of foundation design.
基金Philosophy and Social Science Planning Projects in Yunnan Province,No.QN202428China Postdoctoral Science Foundation,No.2024M752918。
文摘Foreign-funded overseas industrial parks(OIPs)are crucial for attracting foreign investment and promoting globalization in developing countries.However,large-scale land acquisition for these parks generates conflicts between developers and local stakeholders,increasing development costs.A qualitative multicase study was conducted in this study to analyze the land transaction trajectories of China's OIPs.Four OIPs were selected to reveal the underlying mechanisms from the perspectives of institutional arrangements,governance mechanisms,and enterprise heterogeneity.The findings indicate that in host countries with insufficient institutional development,local governments are more inclined to directly engage in OIP land acquisition.High-level intergovernmental mechanisms facilitate land acquisition processes,although their efficacy depends largely on administrative power allocation across parks in host countries.The results also indicate that enterprise characteristics significantly influence land acquisition,where microscale private enterprises lacking political connections often employ low-cost,bottom-up strategies by leveraging international experience.In summary,policy-makers in developing countries should prioritize enhancing OIP governance to mitigate transaction costs,promote diversified land supply,and optimize land allocation.By depicting China's OIP land acquisition processes,this study deepens the academic understanding of OIP governance in developing countries and related international land transactions,offering practical OIP management insights for governments in both host and parent countries.
基金supported by MHRD as researcher C.K.Neog received the MHRD Institute GATE scholarship from Govt.of India.
文摘This study investigates the effects of radiation force due to the rotational pitch motion of a wave energy device,which comprises a coaxial bottom-mounted cylindrical caisson in a two-layer fluid,along with a submerged cylindrical buoy.The system is modeled as a two-layer fluid with infinite horizontal extent and finite depth.The radiation problem is analyzed in the context of linear water waves.The fluid domain is divided into outer and inner zones,and mathematical solutions for the pitch radiating potential are derived for the corresponding boundary valve problem in these zones using the separation of variables approach.Using the matching eigenfunction expansion method,the unknown coefficients in the analytical expression of the radiation potentials are evaluated.The resulting radiation potential is then used to compute the added mass and damping coefficients.Several numerical results for the added mass and damping coefficients are investigated for numerous parameters,particularly the effects of the cylinder radius,the draft of the submerged cylinder,and the density proportion between the two fluid layers across different frequency ranges.The major findings are presented and discussed.
文摘P2P trading is driving the decentralization of the electricity market,the autonomy and privacy requirements of prosumers may intro-duce safety risks such as voltage violations.Existing security management methods based on price guidance may face unsolvable situa-tions in trading scenarios and have difficulty assessing the impact of P2P transactions on voltage security.To this end,this paper proposes a novel distribution system operator(DSO)-prosumers bi-level optimization framework incorporating the dynamic operating envelope(DOE)and risk coefficient-based network usage charge(RC-NUC).In the upper-level,the DOE is employed for dynamic voltage man-agement to prevent violations while the RC-NUC further guides prosumers to engage in grid-friendly transactions.The lower-level decen-tralized market enables prosumers to optimize trading decisions autonomously.Only price signals and energy quantities are exchanged between the two levels,ensuring the privacy of both parties.Additionally,an alternating direction method of multipliers(ADMM)with adaptive penalty factor is introduced to improve computational efficiency.Case studies on a modified IEEE 33-bus system demonstrate that the proposed method reduces voltage violation risks by 18.31%and enhances trading efficiency by 32.3%.These results highlight the feasibility and effectiveness of the approach in advancing secure and efficient distributed energy transactions.
文摘Blockchain platform swith the unique characteristics of anonymity,decentralization,and transparency of their transactions,which are faced with abnormal activities such as money laundering,phishing scams,and fraudulent behavior,posing a serious threat to account asset security.For these potential security risks,this paper proposes a hybrid neural network detection method(HNND)that learns multiple types of account features and enhances fusion information among them to effectively detect abnormal transaction behaviors in the blockchain.In HNND,the Temporal Transaction Graph Attention Network(T2GAT)is first designed to learn biased aggregation representation of multi-attribute transactions among nodes,which can capture key temporal information from node neighborhood transactions.Then,the Graph Convolutional Network(GCN)is adopted which captures abstract structural features of the transaction network.Further,the Stacked Denoising Autoencode(SDA)is developed to achieve adaptive fusion of thses features from different modules.Moreover,the SDA enhances robustness and generalization ability of node representation,leading to higher binary classification accuracy in detecting abnormal behaviors of blockchain accounts.Evaluations on a real-world abnormal transaction dataset demonstrate great advantages of the proposed HNND method over other compared methods.
文摘The global wave of digitalization has accelerated the process of corporate digital transformation,placing higher demands on financial and accounting management.Since then,accounting work has shifted from the traditional transactional model to a modern value management-oriented model,leading to a transformation of accounting functions.As corporate managers,they must advance their work proactively,empower the modernization and innovation of financial accounting with digital technology,and transition to management accounting to ensure enterprises keep pace with the times.Therefore,this paper explores the current status of corporate financial and accounting work amid the digital wave,identifies the challenges in the transformation of accounting from transactional to value management-oriented,and finally proposes several feasible and effective improvement strategies,aiming to provide more references for relevant practitioners.
基金supported by the Institute of Information&Communications Technology Planning&Evaluation(IITP)—Innovative Human Resource Development for Local Intellectualization program grant funded by the Korea government(MSIT)(IITP-2025-RS-2022-00156334)in part by Liaoning Province Nature Fund Project(2024-BSLH-214).
文摘Network Intrusion Detection System(NIDS)detection of minority class attacks is always a difficult task when dealing with attacks in complex network environments.To improve the detection capability of minority-class attacks,this study proposes an intrusion detection method based on a two-layer structure.The first layer employs a CNN-BiLSTM model incorporating an attention mechanism to classify network traffic into normal traffic,majority class attacks,and merged minority class attacks.The second layer further segments the minority class attacks through Stacking ensemble learning.The datasets are selected from the generic network dataset CIC-IDS2017,NSL-KDD,and the industrial network dataset Mississippi Gas Pipeline dataset to enhance the generalization and practical applicability of the model.Experimental results show that the proposed model achieves an overall detection accuracy of 99%,99%,and 95%on the CIC-IDS2017,NSL-KDD,and industrial network datasets,respectively.It also significantly outperforms traditional methods in terms of detection accuracy and recall rate for minority class attacks.Compared with the single-layer deep learning model,the two-layer structure effectively reduces the false alarm rate while improving the minority-class attack detection performance.The research in this paper not only improves the adaptability of NIDS to complex network environments but also provides a new solution for minority-class attack detection in industrial network security.
文摘Low data encryption efficiency and inadequate security are two issues with the current blockchain cross-chain transaction protection schemes.To address these issues,a blockchain cross-chain transaction protection scheme based on Fully Homomorphic Encryption(FHE)is proposed.In the proposed scheme,the functional relationship is established by Box-Muller,Discrete Gaussian Distribution Function(DGDF)and Uniform Random Distribution Func-tion(URDF)are used to improve the security and efficiency of key generation.Subsequently,the data preprocessing function is introduced to perform cleaning,deduplication,and normalization operations on the transaction data of multi-key signature,and it is classified into interactive data and asset data,so as to perform different homomorphic operations in the FHE encryption stage.Ultimately,in the FHE encryption stage,homomorphic multiplication and homomorphic addition are used targeted for the interactive data and asset data,thereby reducing the computational complexity and enhancing the FHE encryption efficiency.The significance of the proposed scheme is proved by experimental results:Firstly,the multi-key generation function and its specific sampling method and transformation ensure the security and efficiency of key generation.Data preprocessing can also accelerate the FHE encryption process by eliminating invalid data and redundancy,so the FHE encryption efficiency is significantly improved.Secondly,the FHE encryption method based on discrete logarithm problem enhances the security of transaction data and can effectively resist multiple attacks.In addition,the preprocessed data also has good performance in capacity storage.The proposed scheme has significant impacts on key indicators such as encryption efficiency and security,it provides a new reference for blockchain cross-chain transaction protection technology and has an important impact on the security improvement of various cross-chain transaction data.
基金funded by the Deanship of Scientific Research,Vice Presidency for Graduate Studies and Scientific Research,King Faisal University,Saudi Arabia[Grant No.KFU241683].
文摘This paper proposes a novel hybrid fraud detection framework that integrates multi-stage feature selection,unsupervised clustering,and ensemble learning to improve classification performance in financial transaction monitoring systems.The framework is structured into three core layers:(1)feature selection using Recursive Feature Elimination(RFE),Principal Component Analysis(PCA),and Mutual Information(MI)to reduce dimensionality and enhance input relevance;(2)anomaly detection through unsupervised clustering using K-Means,Density-Based Spatial Clustering(DBSCAN),and Hierarchical Clustering to flag suspicious patterns in unlabeled data;and(3)final classification using a voting-based hybrid ensemble of Support Vector Machine(SVM),Random Forest(RF),and Gradient Boosting Classifier(GBC).The experimental evaluation is conducted on a synthetically generated dataset comprising one million financial transactions,with 5% labelled as fraudulent,simulating realistic fraud rates and behavioural features,including transaction time,origin,amount,and geo-location.The proposed model demonstrated a significant improvement over baseline classifiers,achieving an accuracy of 99%,a precision of 99%,a recall of 97%,and an F1-score of 99%.Compared to individual models,it yielded a 9% gain in overall detection accuracy.It reduced the false positive rate to below 3.5%,thereby minimising the operational costs associated with manually reviewing false alerts.The model’s interpretability is enhanced by the integration of Shapley Additive Explanations(SHAP)values for feature importance,supporting transparency and regulatory auditability.These results affirm the practical relevance of the proposed system for deployment in real-time fraud detection scenarios such as credit card transactions,mobile banking,and cross-border payments.The study also highlights future directions,including the deployment of lightweight models and the integration of multimodal data for scalable fraud analytics.
基金Supported by Talent Scientific Research Start-up Foundation of Wannan Medical College,No.WYRCQD2023045.
文摘BACKGROUND The early diagnosis rate of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma(PDAC)is low and the prognosis is poor.It is important to develop an interpretable noninvasive early diagnostic model in clinical practice.AIM To develop an interpretable noninvasive early diagnostic model for PDAC using plasma extracellular vesicle long RNA(EvlRNA).METHODS The diagnostic model was constructed based on plasma EvlRNA data.During the process of establishing the model,EvlRNA-index was introduced,and four algorithms were adopted to calculate EvlRNA-index.After the model was successfully constructed,performance evaluation was conducted.A series of bioinformatics methods were adopted to explore the potential mechanism of EvlRNA-index as the input feature of the model.And the relationship between key characteristics and PDAC were explored at the single-cell level.RESULTS A novel interpretable machine learning framework was developed based on plasma EvlRNA.In this framework,a two-layer classifier was established.A new concept was proposed:EvlRNA-index.Based on EvlRNA-index,a cancer diagnostic model was established,and a good diagnostic effect was achieved.The accuracy of PDACandCPvsHealth-Probabilistic PCA Index-SVM(PDAC and chronic pancreatitis vs health-probabilistic principal component analysis index-support vector machine)(1-18)was 91.51%,with Mathew’s correlation coefficient 0.7760 and area under the curve 0.9560.In the second layer of the model,the accuracy of PDACvsCP-Probabilistic PCA Index-RF(PDAC vs chronic pancreatitis-probabilistic principal component analysis index-random forest)(2-17)was 93.83%,with Mathew’s correlation coefficient 0.8422 and area under the curve 0.9698.Forty-nine PDAC-related genes were identified,among which 16 were known,inferring that the remaining ones were also PDAC-related genes.CONCLUSION An interpretable two-layer machine learning framework was proposed for early diagnosis and prediction of PDAC based on plasma EvlRNA,providing new insights into the clinical value of EvlRNA.
基金supported by the Basic Scientific Research Business Fund Project of Higher Education Institutions in Heilongjiang Province(145409601)the First Batch of Experimental Teaching and Teaching Laboratory Construction Research Projects in Heilongjiang Province(SJGZ20240038).
文摘In the wake of major natural disasters or human-made disasters,the communication infrastruc-ture within disaster-stricken areas is frequently dam-aged.Unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs),thanks to their merits such as rapid deployment and high mobil-ity,are commonly regarded as an ideal option for con-structing temporary communication networks.Con-sidering the limited computing capability and battery power of UAVs,this paper proposes a two-layer UAV cooperative computing offloading strategy for emer-gency disaster relief scenarios.The multi-agent twin delayed deep deterministic policy gradient(MATD3)algorithm integrated with prioritized experience replay(PER)is utilized to jointly optimize the scheduling strategies of UAVs,task offloading ratios,and their mobility,aiming to diminish the energy consumption and delay of the system to the minimum.In order to address the aforementioned non-convex optimiza-tion issue,a Markov decision process(MDP)has been established.The results of simulation experiments demonstrate that,compared with the other four base-line algorithms,the algorithm introduced in this paper exhibits better convergence performance,verifying its feasibility and efficacy.
基金supported by State Grid Shanxi Electric Power Company Science and Technology Project“Research on key technologies of carbon tracking and carbon evaluation for new power system”(Grant:520530230005)。
文摘With the introduction of the“dual carbon”goal and the continuous promotion of low-carbon development,the integrated energy system(IES)has gradually become an effective way to save energy and reduce emissions.This study proposes a low-carbon economic optimization scheduling model for an IES that considers carbon trading costs.With the goal of minimizing the total operating cost of the IES and considering the transferable and curtailable characteristics of the electric and thermal flexible loads,an optimal scheduling model of the IES that considers the cost of carbon trading and flexible loads on the user side was established.The role of flexible loads in improving the economy of an energy system was investigated using examples,and the rationality and effectiveness of the study were verified through a comparative analysis of different scenarios.The results showed that the total cost of the system in different scenarios was reduced by 18.04%,9.1%,3.35%,and 7.03%,respectively,whereas the total carbon emissions of the system were reduced by 65.28%,20.63%,3.85%,and 18.03%,respectively,when the carbon trading cost and demand-side flexible electric and thermal load responses were considered simultaneously.Flexible electrical and thermal loads did not have the same impact on the system performance.In the analyzed case,the total cost and carbon emissions of the system when only the flexible electrical load response was considered were lower than those when only the flexible thermal load response was taken into account.Photovoltaics have an excess of carbon trading credits and can profit from selling them,whereas other devices have an excess of carbon trading and need to buy carbon credits.
基金supported by the Scientific Research Project of Xiang Jiang Lab(22XJ02003)the University Fundamental Research Fund(23-ZZCX-JDZ-28)+5 种基金the National Science Fund for Outstanding Young Scholars(62122093)the National Natural Science Foundation of China(72071205)the Hunan Graduate Research Innovation Project(ZC23112101-10)the Hunan Natural Science Foundation Regional Joint Project(2023JJ50490)the Science and Technology Project for Young and Middle-aged Talents of Hunan(2023TJ-Z03)the Science and Technology Innovation Program of Humnan Province(2023RC1002)。
文摘Traditional large-scale multi-objective optimization algorithms(LSMOEAs)encounter difficulties when dealing with sparse large-scale multi-objective optimization problems(SLM-OPs)where most decision variables are zero.As a result,many algorithms use a two-layer encoding approach to optimize binary variable Mask and real variable Dec separately.Nevertheless,existing optimizers often focus on locating non-zero variable posi-tions to optimize the binary variables Mask.However,approxi-mating the sparse distribution of real Pareto optimal solutions does not necessarily mean that the objective function is optimized.In data mining,it is common to mine frequent itemsets appear-ing together in a dataset to reveal the correlation between data.Inspired by this,we propose a novel two-layer encoding learning swarm optimizer based on frequent itemsets(TELSO)to address these SLMOPs.TELSO mined the frequent terms of multiple particles with better target values to find mask combinations that can obtain better objective values for fast convergence.Experi-mental results on five real-world problems and eight benchmark sets demonstrate that TELSO outperforms existing state-of-the-art sparse large-scale multi-objective evolutionary algorithms(SLMOEAs)in terms of performance and convergence speed.
文摘This work uses refined first-order shear theory to analyze the free vibration and transient responses of double-curved sandwich two-layer shells made of auxetic honeycomb core and laminated three-phase polymer/GNP/fiber surface subjected to the blast load.Each of the two layers that make up the double-curved shell structure is made up of an auxetic honeycomb core and two laminated sheets of three-phase polymer/GNP/fiber.The exterior is supported by a Kerr elastic foundation with three characteristics.The key innovation of the proposed theory is that the transverse shear stresses are zero at two free surfaces of each layer.In contrast to previous first-order shear deformation theories,no shear correction factor is required.Navier's exact solution was used to treat the double-curved shell problem with a single title boundary,while the finite element technique and an eight-node quadrilateral were used to address the other boundary requirements.To ensure the accuracy of these results,a thorough comparison technique is employed in conjunction with credible statements.The problem model's edge cases allow for this kind of analysis.The study's findings may be used in the post-construction evaluation of military and civil works structures for their ability to sustain explosive loads.In addition,this is also an important basis for the calculation and design of shell structures made of smart materials when subjected to shock waves or explosive loads.
基金funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(62072056,62172058)the Researchers Supporting Project Number(RSP2023R102)King Saud University,Riyadh,Saudi Arabia+4 种基金funded by the Hunan Provincial Key Research and Development Program(2022SK2107,2022GK2019)the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province(2023JJ30054)the Foundation of State Key Laboratory of Public Big Data(PBD2021-15)the Young Doctor Innovation Program of Zhejiang Shuren University(2019QC30)Postgraduate Scientific Research Innovation Project of Hunan Province(CX20220940,CX20220941).
文摘Blockchain can realize the reliable storage of a large amount of data that is chronologically related and verifiable within the system.This technology has been widely used and has developed rapidly in big data systems across various fields.An increasing number of users are participating in application systems that use blockchain as their underlying architecture.As the number of transactions and the capital involved in blockchain grow,ensuring information security becomes imperative.Addressing the verification of transactional information security and privacy has emerged as a critical challenge.Blockchain-based verification methods can effectively eliminate the need for centralized third-party organizations.However,the efficiency of nodes in storing and verifying blockchain data faces unprecedented challenges.To address this issue,this paper introduces an efficient verification scheme for transaction security.Initially,it presents a node evaluation module to estimate the activity level of user nodes participating in transactions,accompanied by a probabilistic analysis for all transactions.Subsequently,this paper optimizes the conventional transaction organization form,introduces a heterogeneous Merkle tree storage structure,and designs algorithms for constructing these heterogeneous trees.Theoretical analyses and simulation experiments conclusively demonstrate the superior performance of this scheme.When verifying the same number of transactions,the heterogeneous Merkle tree transmits less data and is more efficient than traditional methods.The findings indicate that the heterogeneous Merkle tree structure is suitable for various blockchain applications,including the Internet of Things.This scheme can markedly enhance the efficiency of information verification and bolster the security of distributed systems.
文摘Effective small object detection is crucial in various applications including urban intelligent transportation and pedestrian detection.However,small objects are difficult to detect accurately because they contain less information.Many current methods,particularly those based on Feature Pyramid Network(FPN),address this challenge by leveraging multi-scale feature fusion.However,existing FPN-based methods often suffer from inadequate feature fusion due to varying resolutions across different layers,leading to suboptimal small object detection.To address this problem,we propose the Two-layerAttention Feature Pyramid Network(TA-FPN),featuring two key modules:the Two-layer Attention Module(TAM)and the Small Object Detail Enhancement Module(SODEM).TAM uses the attention module to make the network more focused on the semantic information of the object and fuse it to the lower layer,so that each layer contains similar semantic information,to alleviate the problem of small object information being submerged due to semantic gaps between different layers.At the same time,SODEM is introduced to strengthen the local features of the object,suppress background noise,enhance the information details of the small object,and fuse the enhanced features to other feature layers to ensure that each layer is rich in small object information,to improve small object detection accuracy.Our extensive experiments on challenging datasets such as Microsoft Common Objects inContext(MSCOCO)and Pattern Analysis Statistical Modelling and Computational Learning,Visual Object Classes(PASCAL VOC)demonstrate the validity of the proposedmethod.Experimental results show a significant improvement in small object detection accuracy compared to state-of-theart detectors.
文摘In the context of China’s“double carbon”goals and rural revitalization strategy,the energy transition promotes the large-scale integration of distributed renewable energy into rural power grids.Considering the operational characteristics of rural microgrids and their impact on users,this paper establishes a two-layer scheduling model incorporating flexible loads.The upper-layer aims to minimize the comprehensive operating cost of the rural microgrid,while the lower-layer aims to minimize the total electricity cost for rural users.An Improved Adaptive Genetic Algorithm(IAGA)is proposed to solve the model.Results show that the two-layer scheduling model with flexible loads can effectively smooth load fluctuations,enhance microgrid stability,increase clean energy consumption,and balance microgrid operating costs with user benefits.
文摘Thucydides asserts that the occupation of Decelea by the Spartans in 413 BC made the grain supply for Athens costly by forcing the transport from land onto the sea.This calls into question the well-established consensus that sea transport was far cheaper than land transport.This paper contends that the cost of protecting supply lines-specifically the expenses associated with the warships which escorted the supply ships-rendered the grain transported on the new route exceptionally costly.In this paper,the benefits and drawbacks of a maritime economy,including transaction costs,trade dependencies,and the capabilities of warships and supply ships are discussed.
文摘In the evolving landscape of software engineering, Microservice Architecture (MSA) has emerged as a transformative approach, facilitating enhanced scalability, agility, and independent service deployment. This systematic literature review (SLR) explores the current state of distributed transaction management within MSA, focusing on the unique challenges, strategies, and technologies utilized in this domain. By synthesizing findings from 16 primary studies selected based on rigorous criteria, the review identifies key trends and best practices for maintaining data consistency and integrity across microservices. This SLR provides a comprehensive understanding of the complexities associated with distributed transactions in MSA, offering actionable insights and potential research directions for software architects, developers, and researchers.
文摘In the context of globalization and digitalization, the application of transaction cost theory in supply chain management has become increasingly important. As business environments grow more complex, enterprises face challenges in effectively managing supply chain transaction costs. This paper systematically explores the application of transaction cost theory in supply chain management, covering key areas such as supplier selection, supply chain integration, and risk management. The research finds that supplier evaluation models based on transaction costs can help enterprises make more comprehensive selection decisions. In terms of supply chain integration, transaction cost theory provides important guidance for vertical integration decisions and the design of collaboration mechanisms. The application of digital technologies has both reduced traditional transaction costs and introduced new cost considerations. Faced with emerging risks such as cybersecurity and geopolitical issues, enterprises need to adopt dynamic transaction cost management strategies. In the future, the application of transaction cost theory in supply chain management will likely place greater emphasis on interdisciplinary integration and sustainable development, providing theoretical support for enterprises to achieve efficient, flexible, and sustainable supply chain management in the changing global business environment.
