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LiTaSiO5 system is considered as type of solid electrolyte with great potential for application as ionic conductor. It is well-known that it is difficult to obtain pure dense LiTaSiO5 phase by traditional synthesis methods, because dielectric LiTaO3 phase easily precipitates during synthesis, which affects ionic conductivity. In this work, a glass-ceramic electrolyte with main LiTaSiO5 phase was obtained by controlled crystallization of Li2OTa 2O5-2 SiO2 glass without porosity. The precipitation of LiTaO3 phase at the grain boundary was effectively inhibited by adding an appropriate amount of ZrO2. Among all the glass-ceramic samples, the glass containing 4.76mol% ZrO2 had the maximum ionic conductivity of 8.40 × 10−6 S/cm at 25°C, which is two order of magnitude greater than the ionic conductivity of the matrix glass. These glass-ceramic samples have the potential to be used as solid electrolytes in electrochemical applications.

Exploring the hidden factors behind donors' inspiration is of great importance. This will go a long way, enabling charitable organizations to design more effective communication in donation appeals. For decades, the donation appeals used for charity emphasize on negative emotion sadness to induce empathy in viewers. However, using extreme negative emotions like sadness in donation appeals has adverse psychological effects; causing distress to viewers. In contrast, there is almost non-existent research on donors' inspiration in such donation appeals. This research analyses donors' inspiration in experimental studies. The data were collected through survey questionnaires. The findings reveal that the sadness & dignity combined condition triggers higher inspiration than the sadness condition; resulting in a positive evaluation of the donation appeal in the combined condition as compared to the sadness condition (Study-1). Further, the combined condition elicits higher inspiration than the sadness condition; causing higher donations in the combined condition than both the sadness and dignity conditions (Study-2). In a nutshell, this research reveals that dignity inspires people. Specifically, it shows that combining sadness & dignity is more effective than the sadness dominating emotion in persuading people to donate. Theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed., Author(s): Aftab Rahim [sup.1] , Haizhong Wang [sup.1] , Jiancai Liao [sup.2] , Sher Khan [sup.3] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.12981.33, 0000 0001 2360 039X, Sun Yat-Sen Business School, Sun Yat-Sen [...]

Transportation is an important component in the logistics and production processes. To accurately match rapidly growing demand and limited transport capacity, the goal of minimising costs while ensuring high service quality under existing infrastructure has received significant attention. This paper presents an integrated optimisation approach for the short-term operational management under daily fluctuating demand, with a focus on two key strategic decisions: train timetabling and coupling. In particular, an integrated two-stage stochastic model and a combined heuristic local search algorithm with the branch-and-bound method are developed to (1) obtain the optimal demand assignment to the rail network, (2) investigate trains' coupling plans to avoid waste of resources when demand is low, and (3) add candidate trains to generate new feasible timetables when demand surges. To verify the solving method, a lower bound algorithm is introduced. Using a hypothetical small-scale and a real-world China high-speed rail network as numerical experiments, different demand scales and critical parameters are tested to obtain optimised timetables. The results show that good solutions are achieved in several seconds, making it possible to adjust trains' schedules efficiently and effectively according to the variable demand in short-term operational management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]