A coupon level comparative test method was developed to assess the foldability of thin flexible materials used in deployable structures. The subject materials support tensile and compressive loads; they are not cloth-like. The non-destructive method consists of a tensile stiffness test and a compressive buckling test and reveals changes in coupon properties that could result from locally extrem...

The use of a systemic approach allows us to analyse the interrelationship between the vegetation dynamic and the agricultural practices through three biological indicators which relate to one hundred paddocks in six cattle farms. Concerning the vegetation dynamics, it seems that some management practices lead to a nonreversable degradation stage. As regards the forage system, the measure of swa...

This article is focused on historical agricultural landscapes in Slovakia, which have been preserved and have irreplaceable ecological, cultural and historical value. Historical structures of agricultural landscapes (HSAL) are a type of cultural landscape that contains, within a geographic area, both natural and man-made features that typify connected activities, and a cultural expression refle...

This paper addresses the question of how the vertical structure of a product line relates to brand equity. Does the presence of “premium” or high-quality products in a product line enhance brand equity? Conversely, does the presence of “economy” or low-quality products in a product line diminish brand equity? Economists and marketing researchers refer to variation in quality levels of products ...

This research aims to examine tourists’ perception of the sustainable tourism development of the Tianzhu Mountain in Anhui Province, China. It reviews tourists’ opinions on three sustainability aspects of tourism (economic, environmental and socio-cultural aspects) and assess differences among tourist demographics. The research used non-random convenient sampling. 384 questionnaires were distri...

Why are men less likely to use electronic coupons than women? Previous studies have explained the gender difference in coupon usage by exploring roles within household and personality traits of sexes. However, this research offers a novel explanation for phenomenon, that men’s reluctance e-coupons may derive from prevalent stereotype e-coupon users feminine. Because feminine associated with usa...

Businesses (retailers) often wish to offer personalized advertisements (coupons) to individuals (consumers), but run the risk of strong reactions from consumers who want a customized shopping experience but feel their privacy has been violated. Existing models for privacy such as differential privacy or information theory try to quantify privacy risk but do not capture the subjective experience...

A multi-coupon (MC ) represents a collection of k coupons that a user can redeem to a vendor in exchange for some goods or services. Nguyen (FC 2006), deepening the ideas of Chen et al. (FC 2005), introduced an unforgeable privacy-protecting MC system with constant complexity for issuing and redemption of MCs, that discourages sharing of coupons through a property called weak unsplittability, w...

Restoring all facility operations after the 2001 Amerithrax attacks took years to complete, highlighting the need to reduce remediation time. Some of the most time intensive tasks were environmental sampling and sample analyses. Composite sampling allows disparate samples to be combined, with only a single analysis needed, making it a promising method to reduce response times. We developed a st...