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The Chinese criminal justice system has undergone significant changes in the past 20 years. An important aspect of the changes is the promulgation of a series of laws that are essential to the criminal justice operation. In 1996, the National People’s Congress promulgated the amended Criminal Procedure Law (CPL). The amended law in many aspects has expanded the rights of defendants and suspects. But the preliminary research on the implementation of the amended CPL indicates that due to the lack of a culture of respect for the law on the part of the police and the deficiencies contained in the amended CPL, the protections afforded to suspects are far from being properly implemented by the police. Introduces to readers the legislative progress made in the amended CPL, examines various problems that arise in the implementation of the amended CPL, and offers suggestions as to what needs to be done further to assure better protections of suspects’ rights at the police investigatory stage.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the organizational forgetting affect innovation performance under the consideration of the environmental turbulence as a moderating factor of the analysis framework.

This study constructs and verifies a moderated mediating model of organizational forgetting to innovation performance, using the exploratory factor analysis and the hierarchical regression analysis based on a survey sample of 320 Chinese companies.

The organizational forgetting is a critical determinant for improving innovation performance of an enterprise. A more detailed analysis reveals that first organizational forgetting cannot promote organization’s innovation performance without absorptive capacity. Second, the mediating effect of absorptive capacity is more positive when environmental turbulence is higher.

This study provides empirical evidence about the importance of organizational forgetting in the firm innovation.

This paper adds to the existing literature by providing a clear explanation of the impacts of organizational forgetting on innovation performance through a comprehensive empirical study. Contrasting with previous research, this research clarifies the boundary conditions under which organizational forgetting enhances innovation performance. In particular, the authors find that organizational forgetting is not equally positive but instead increases with the level of environmental turbulence.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new brand association density metric and evaluate its performance in terms of correlations with recall, consideration, brand equity and market share and to compare different data collection methodologies to identify brand associations.

The authors present results from two studies covering three product categories. The authors use an open free association question and associations to a set of pre-defined brand attributes. The responses to the open free format question are text-mined prior to further analysis.

The authors find that the brand association density metric performs better than a metric that only uses the number of distinct associations. The authors also find that these metrics work best when derived from open free association data.

First, in addition to focusing on trying to build specific brand associations in consumers’ minds, it may be equally important, if not more important, to manage the number and inter-connectedness of the brand’s associations. Second, firms should complement their existing survey approaches with open-ended free association questions.

The brand association density concept presented is believed to be new. The empirical comparison between the use of free association to pre-defined attributes is also new.

In any time and space and under any circumstance, we find peasants are never passive actors in their livelihoods and rural development. Instead, they always create space for manoeuvre in order to make changes. This chapter analyses the innovative actions taken by the majority of rural inhabitants in rural areas during the overwhelming modernization process, so as to affirm that peasants are the main actors of rural development. It is they who have shaped the transformation of rural societies and the history. Through the analysis, this chapter concludes that rural development is not an objective, a blueprint nor a design. It is not the to-be-developed rear field in modernization. It is not the babysitter for cities, nor a rehearsal place for bureaucrats to testify their random thoughts. Rural development is what peasants do. The path they have chosen reveals scenery so different from modernization. If we regard development as a social change, or a cross with influential meanings, we could understand rural development as peasants’ victories over their predicament. Villages accommodate not only peasants, but without peasants villages would surely vanish. In this sense, the most important part in rural development or rural change is peasants – their conditions and their feelings.

With the rapid development of China’s urbanisation and market economy, municipal solid waste (MSW) generation is increasing dramatically. In response to the threat of environmental pollution and the potential value of converting waste into energy, both the government and the public are now paying more attention to MSW treatment and disposal methods. In 2014, 178.6 million tonnes of MSW was collected at a safe treatment rate of 84.8%. However, the treatment methods and the composition of MSW are influenced by the collection area, its gross domestic product, population, rainfall and living conditions. This chapter analysed the MSW composition properties of Lhasa, Tibet, compared with other cities, such as Beijing, Guangzhou and so forth. The research showed that the moisture content of MSW in Lhasa approaches 31%, which is much lower than the other cities mentioned previously. The proportion of paper and plastics (rubbers) collected was 25.67% and 19.1%, respectively. This was 1.00–3.17 times and 0.75–2.44 times more than those found in Beijing and Guangzhou, respectively. Non-combustibles can reach up to 22.5%, which was 4.03–9.11 times that of Beijing and Guangzhou, respectively. The net heating values could reach up to 6,616 kilojoule/kilogram. The food residue was only half the proportion found in other cities. Moreover, the disposal method applied in each city has also been studied and compared.

This paper aims to investigate the thermal oxidation characteristics of the unsaturated bonds (C=C) of trimethylolpropane trioleate (TMPTO) and to reveal the high temperature oxidation decay mechanism of unsaturated esters and the nature of the anti-oxidation properties of the additives.

Using a DXR laser microscopic Raman spectrometer and Linkam FTIR600 temperature control platform, the isothermal oxidation experiments of TMPTO with or without 1.0 wt. % of different antioxidants were performed.

The results indicated that the Raman peaks of =C-H, C=C and -CH₂- weaken gradually with prolonged oxidation time, and the corresponding Raman intensities drop rapidly at higher temperatures. The aromatic amine antioxidant can decrease the attenuation of peak intensity, as it significantly reduces the rate constant of C=C thermal oxidation. The hindered phenolic antioxidant has a protective effect during the early stages of oxidation (induction period), but it may accelerate the oxidation of C=C afterwards.

Research on the structure changes of synthetic esters during oxidation by Raman spectroscopy will be of great importance in promoting the use of Raman spectroscopy to analyze the oxidation of lubricants.

This study aims to examine the effects of dialect connectedness between the chairman and the chief executive officer (CEO) (DCCC) on the tunneling activities of controlling shareholders.

This study uses abnormal related-party transactions (ARPT) as a proxy for tunneling activities and traces dialects of chairmen and CEOs based on the respective birthplace information. Baseline results are examined using a fixed-effects model. The results remain robust when using the instrumental variable approach, propensity score matching (PSM) technique, changing the measurement of tunneling and Heckman two-step selection model.

The results show that DCCC reduces tunneling activities. This negative association is more pronounced for non-state-owned enterprises and firms whose chairmen and CEOs work in the respective hometowns. DCCC restrains tunneling activities through mechanisms by establishing an informal supervisory effect on CEOs because the CEOs fear reputational damage and strengthening cooperation between chairmen and CEOs. Further analyses suggest that this negative association is more significant when chairmen and CEOs are non-controlling shareholders, but the association is weakened during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis.

As dialect is a carrier of culture, this study's results imply that cultural proximity can replace formal mechanisms to enhance corporate governance.

The emergence of the Software-as-a-service (SaaS) licensing model dramatically changes how enterprise software is released. Especially, it is favored by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) because of the cost-friendly feature. In contrast, many large enterprises (LEs) own relatively abundant budgets and prefer the on-premise software to fulfill demands through customization. Considering the differentiated cost-acceptance level among customers, this study aims to address the versioning problem of the enterprise software faced by software firms.

A two-point distribution model is formulated to calculate the maximal profits software firm earned from both LEs and SMEs under three strategies (On-premise, SaaS and Hybrid). Then through profit comparison, this paper obtains the optimal versioning strategy and corresponding feasible conditions. Finally, the optimal solutions are derived concerning social welfare.

A significant finding is that moving to SaaS becomes necessary for the software firms in product releases since the on-premise strategy will not be optimal. Based on this, this paper discovers that when LEs own a cost-acceptance level close to that of SMEs, the hybrid strategy is the only optimal choice. When LEs become less sensitive to costs, the hybrid strategy is suggested if the customization cost falls below the threshold. Otherwise, the SaaS strategy becomes the optimal option. The conclusions explain why some software vendors transit to “cloud companies” thoroughly and provide practical insights for software firms’ future decisions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first information economics study to consider consumer cost sensitivity in discussing enterprise software versioning. The differentiated cost-acceptance level is introduced to describe the customer utilities, and the results uncover the necessity of moving to SaaS under diversified customer composition. This work provides significant theoretical value and practical insights.

The tribological properties of muscovite and its thermal-treated products as lubricant additives in lithium grease were investigated. The effect of thermal temperature on the crystal structure and tribological properties of muscovite was studied. This study aims to explore the tribological mechanism of muscovite and optimize a proper thermal activation temperature, thus further improving the tribological properties.

The crystal structure of muscovite samples was characterized by SEM, TG-DSC, XRD and FTIR. The tribological properties of grease samples were investigated using a four-ball tribotester and the worn surface was analyzed by SEM and EDS.

The excellent tribological properties of muscovite can be ascribed to the layer structure and lubricant film formed on the worn surface. Thermal temperature at 500-600°C increases the surface activity and oxygen releasing capability, and thus favors the formation of lubricant film and accordingly further improves the tribological properties. However, the layer structure is destroyed and hard phases such as alumina and amorphous appear after thermal temperature activated beyond 1000°C, as it results in the aggravation of friction and wear.

To the authors’ knowledge, it is the first to study the effect of thermal temperature on the crystal structure and tribological properties of muscovite. The tribological mechanism of muscovite particle and its thermal-treated products was disclosed.

This paper aims to review in-memory computing (IMC) for machine learning (ML) applications from history, architectures and options aspects. In this review, the authors investigate different architectural aspects and collect and provide our comparative evaluations.

Collecting over 40 IMC papers related to hardware design and optimization techniques of recent years, then classify them into three optimization option categories: optimization through graphic processing unit (GPU), optimization through reduced precision and optimization through hardware accelerator. Then, the authors brief those techniques in aspects such as what kind of data set it applied, how it is designed and what is the contribution of this design.

ML algorithms are potent tools accommodated on IMC architecture. Although general-purpose hardware (central processing units and GPUs) can supply explicit solutions, their energy efficiencies have limitations because of their excessive flexibility support. On the other hand, hardware accelerators (field programmable gate arrays and application-specific integrated circuits) win on the energy efficiency aspect, but individual accelerator often adapts exclusively to ax single ML approach (family). From a long hardware evolution perspective, hardware/software collaboration heterogeneity design from hybrid platforms is an option for the researcher.

IMC’s optimization enables high-speed processing, increases performance and analyzes massive volumes of data in real-time. This work reviews IMC and its evolution. Then, the authors categorize three optimization paths for the IMC architecture to improve performance metrics.