Evacuated tube solar water heater systems are widely used in China due to their high thermal efficiency, simple construction requirements, and low manufacturing costs. CPC evacuated tube solar water heaters with a geometrical concentration ratio <em>C</em> of less than one are rare. A comparison of the...

This study aims to determine the necessity of applying a mirror coating on the side of a truncated solid dielectric CPC (compound parabolic concentrator) since ray tracing analysis has revealed that part of the incoming rays do not undergo total internal reflection, even within the half...

An innovative direct vapor generation (DVG) power system using cascade steam-organic Rankine cycle (SORC) and two-stage accumulators is proposed. It offers a significantly enlarged storage capacity due to a unique discharge operation mode. Synthetic oil Therminol® VP-1 is used as the heat...

This study examines whether external labour market competitions affect managers' bad news hoarding and the resultant stock price crashes. Using CEOs' exposure to the prestigious media-award-winning events of competitor CEOs, we document a significant increase in stock crash risk for firms with...

Low-cost and eco-friendly auxiliary energy supply units to power gas sensors are of great significance to various fields. In this work, a gas sensor based on the PANI/NiCo 2 O 4 composite was powered by a gelatin-polyimide based triboelectric nanogenerator (GP-TENG) for the detection of NH 3 at...

I construct a state space model with unawareness following Aumann (1976). Dekel, Lipman and Rustichini (1998a) show that standard state space models are incapable of representing unawareness. The model circumvents the impossibility result by endowing the agent with a subjective state space that...

This paper extends Li (2008b) to the multi-agent environment, where players reason about each other's awareness as well as knowledge, subject to their own awareness constraints. I characterize the interactive knowledge hierarchies under unawareness, which significantly differ from those in the...

We study the valuation of unit-linked life insurance contracts with surrender guarantees. Instead of solving an optimal stopping problem, we propose a more realistic approach accounting for policyholders' rationality in exercising their surrender option. The valuation is conducted at the...

Many equity-linked life insurance products offer the possibility to surrender policies prematurely. Secondary markets for policies with surrender guarantees influence both policyholders and insurers. We show that insurers increase premiums to adjust for higher surrender rates of customers and...