This study aims to investigate the relationship between technology partnership portfolios and firm innovation performance by examining the moderating effect of firm size. Using a sample of 391 US firms, the study finds that technology partnership portfolios have a positive impact on innovation performance. Additionally, firm size moderates this relationship, such that larger firms benefit more from diversifying their technology partnership portfolios. These findings suggest that technology partnership portfolios can be an effective strategy for firms to enhance their innovation performance, and that firm size should be taken into account when formulating such strategies.

The aim of this article is to explore the utilization of phase change materials (PCMs) for enhancing thermal comfort in the design of ergonomic chairs. The thermal comfort of individuals seated for extended periods can be compromised due to excessive heat or cold. Traditional approaches, such as the use of air conditioning or heating systems, have limitations in terms of energy consumption and localized effects. In this study, the potential of PCMs is investigated as a passive and sustainable solution to regulate temperature and improve thermal comfort. The experimental methodology involves integrating PCMs into the chair structure and evaluating their impact on thermal sensation, skin temperature, and overall comfort. The findings indicate that the inclusion of PCMs in ergonomic chair design offers a promising strategy for achieving thermal comfort and reducing energy consumption.

Gasoline engine fuel octane numbers are important indicators of fuel quality and performance. In this study, we investigate whether accelerometer analysis and statistical measurement can provide an accurate and efficient method of determining gasoline engine fuel octane numbers under real-world driving conditions. We collected data from a gasoline engine vehicle using an accelerometer sensor and an on-board diagnostic system, and analyzed the data using statistical methods to determine the relationship between the accelerometer measurements and the fuel octane numbers. Our results showed a strong correlation between the accelerometer measurements and the fuel octane numbers, suggesting that this method offers a promising alternative to laboratory tests for determining fuel octane numbers.

Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) in cloud computing is a critical optimization problem that needs to be tackled, including cold start latency, resource inefficiency, state management, and more. While FaaS provides obvious scalability and lower cost benefits, the lack of availability of resources and the problem of cold starts to prevent it from being used for high-performance applications. Pre-warming, snapshotting, and on-demand instantiation with lightweight runtimes, such as WebAssembly, are other ways to minimize cold start delays. It also benchmarks major FaaS platforms (AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, Azure Functions, and OpenFaaS) and measures latency, throughput, and scalability metrics. The study also considers how to manage the resource, for instance, using auto-scaling, memory allocation, and request batching to enhance cost efficiency and performance. The study covers security challenges in multi-tenant environments and solutions for stateful applications in usually stateless serverless architectures with Faast.js, Knative, and OpenWhisk. Another area of research is edge computing and architectures for multiple clouds to improve the deployment of FaaS. Incorporating the lessons from this study gives it enough flexibility to adjust functions as applications in a real-world enterprise environment, especially in high-performance and data-sensitive applications. The study also provides security practices like function isolation and encryption to secure data in multi-tenancy environments for reliable, secure, and efficient serverless computing. The contribution to FaaS optimization and security for various use cases is achieved.

The implementation of hub motors has revolutionized electric cars functionality by integrating electric motors directly into the wheels. Although this design innovation brings numerous advantages to modern-day automobiles including increased fuel economy and a reduction in carbon emissions, it is essential to understand its potential limitations. This paper examines how hub motor technology transforms automotive engineering while exploring potential drawbacks like imbalance issues arising from changing weight distribution. Electric vehicles are evolving rapidly due to increased investment by governments and energy companies worldwide to decarbonize road transport systems. A key component of electric vehicles that impacts their performance is the type of motor used.