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The purpose of this paper is to find the relationship between alliance partner selection and innovation performance of technological standard alliance in China.

The authors designed the selection factors of alliance partners in terms of reputation, compatibility and technological standardization ability and, based on the empirical research data, analyzed the correlation between partner selection and innovation performance using the method of cross validation statistically.

It was found that the selection of alliance partners would directly affect the operation and management of technological standard alliance in China. Appropriate partners among technological standard alliance will play a significant role in improving partners' independent innovation capability. The empirical results showed that potential cooperative partners' reputation, compatibility and standardization ability had an obvious effect on innovation performance.

The paper finds and verifies the key index of alliance partner selection. This result can provide some important references for managers when selecting appropriate cooperative partners. Technological standard alliance managers can evaluate potential cooperative partners according to the index of reputation, technological standardization ability and compatibility designed in this paper. High‐tech firms can cultivate their cooperative innovation ability to adapt to the demands of technological standard alliance according to the key index.

As one of the nearest and most important groups of resource guardians, local teenagers are an important force for current and especially future world heritage protection. Nurturing their awareness of world heritage protection is an important way to achieve the sustainable development of world heritage sites (WHS). The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of local teenagers of Tai’an city in China with the aim of examining how they have developed consciousness of their role as “world heritage guardians.”

Semi-structured interviews are used to examine the awareness of 15 local teenagers on world heritage protection. The interview results are then qualitatively analyzed by using a systematic coding process.

The analysis shows that the formation of the guardianship role is realized through three dimensions: recognition, emotion, and action, which are subjected to role awakening, role identifying, and role strengthening stage by stage. The personal experiences of the interviewees, as well as the impact from surrounding groups both serve to influence the formation of their role as “world heritage guardians.”

The framework constructed in this study on the development of teenagers’ role consciousness cannot only apply to world heritage and environmental contexts in terms of awareness of the need for conservation, but be used toward behavioral studies of other age groups.

The findings can be used as a practical guide for school teachers, government officials, and heritage managers to better carry out educational programs in terms of heritage tourism and sustainable development of WHS for teenagers.

The teenagers’ population is underrepresented in the literature in terms of community involvement with world heritage. This study is meaningful because the focus is on improving local teenagers’ awareness of the value and importance of world heritage and their preservation.

This study aims to present a model and analysis of automotive body outer cover panels (OCPs) assembly systems to predict assembly variation. In the automotive industry, the OCPs assembly process directly influences the quality of the automobile body appearance. However, suitable models to describe variation propagation of OCPs assembly systems remain unknown.

An adaptive state space model for OCPs assembly systems is introduced to accurately express variation propagation, including variation accumulation and transition, where two compliant deviations make impacts on key product characteristics (KPCs) of OCP, and the impacts are accumulated from welding process to threaded connection process. Another new source of variation from threaded connection is included in this model. To quantify the influence of variation from threaded connection on variation propagation, the threaded connection sensitivity matrix is introduced to build up a linear relationship between deviation from threaded connection and output deviation in KPCs. This matrix is solved by homogeneous coordinate transformation. The final deviation of KPCs will be transferred to ensure gaps and flushes between two OCPs, and the transition matrix is considered as a unit matrix to build up the transition relationship between different states.

A practical case on the left side body structure is described, where simulation result of variation propagation reveals the basic rule of variation propagation and the significant effect of variation from threaded connection on variation propagation of OCPs assembly system.

The model can be used to predict assembly variation or potential dimension problems at a preliminary assembly phase. The calculated results of assembly variation guide designers or technicians on tolerance allocation, fixture layout design and process planning.

The shield tunnels closely constructed near the foundations have an inevitable influence on the structures, even results in the large settlement or uplift of the structures.

The comparison of structural deformation of three different foundations is presented based on the field monitoring data.

Shield tunnelling parameters vary for the different types of foundations. For the long pile foundations, the recommended speed is 3 to 4 cm/min, the grouting pressure is about 0.3 MPa and the grouting rate ranges from 150 to 180.

The study based on the field monitoring data is rarely reported, especially the topic about the structural deformation of different types of the foundations.

Mega construction projects (MCPs), which play an important role in the economy, society and environment of a country, have developed rapidly in recent years. However, due to frequent social conflicts caused by the negative social impact of MCPs, social risk control has become a major challenge. Exploring the relationship between social risk factors and social risk from the perspective of risk evolution and identifying key factors contribute to social risk control; but few studies have paid enough attention to this. Therefore, this study aims to systematically analyze the impact of social risk factors on social risk based on a social risk evolution path.

This study proposed a social risk evolution path for MCPs explaining how social risk occurs and develops with the impact of social risk factors. To further analyze the impact quantitatively, a social risk analysis model combining structural equation model (SEM) with Bayesian network (BN) was developed. SEM was used to verify the relationship in the social risk evolution path. BN was applied to identify key social risk factors and predict the probabilities of social risk, quantitatively. The feasibility of the proposed model was verified by the case of water conservancy projects.

The results show that negative impact on residents’ living standards, public opinion advantage and emergency management ability were key social risk factors through sensitivity analysis. Then, scenario analysis simulated the risk probability results with the impact of different states of these key factors to obtain management strategies.

This study creatively proposes a social risk evolution path describing the dynamic interaction of the social risk and first applies the hybrid SEM–BN method in the social risk analysis for MCPs to explore effective risk control strategies. This study can facilitate the understanding of social risk from the perspective of risk evolution and provide decision-making support for the government coping with social risk in the implementation of MCPs.

Question answering (QA) answers the questions asked by people in the form of natural language. In the QA, due to the subjectivity of users, the questions they query have different expressions, which increases the difficulty of text retrieval. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore new query rewriting method for QA that integrates multiple related questions (RQs) to form an optimal question. Moreover, it is important to generate a new dataset of the original query (OQ) with multiple RQs.

This study collects a new dataset SQuAD_extend by crawling the QA community and uses word-graph to model the collected OQs. Next, Beam search finds the best path to get the best question. To deeply represent the features of the question, pretrained model BERT is used to model sentences.

The experimental results show three outstanding findings. (1) The quality of the answers is better after adding the RQs of the OQs. (2) The word-graph that is used to model the problem and choose the optimal path is conducive to finding the best question. (3) Finally, BERT can deeply characterize the semantics of the exact problem.

The proposed method can use word-graph to construct multiple questions and select the optimal path for rewriting the question, and the quality of answers is better than the baseline. In practice, the research results can help guide users to clarify their query intentions and finally achieve the best answer.

One of the standard practices of Communist Parties around the world is to employ art, including music, as a channel to spread political ideologies. This study aims to scrutinize the reception of Beethoven's music, particularly from a political viewpoint, by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the People's Republic of China (PRC) during the early years of its rule, i.e. from 1949–1959. The ambiguity of Beethoven's own political outlook may have provided an opportunity for the CCP to choose the composer and his music in support of its aims.

To understand why and how the CCP could exploit Beethoven and his music to support its political ideologies, a series of Chinese writings on Beethoven between 1949 and 1959 have been studied. Those literatures not only helped the composer gain reputation and popularity in the PRC, but also provided a platform for the CCP to manipulate such candidate and his music. Finally, the reception of the performances of the Ninth Symphony in 1959 in the PRC is singled out for close examination.

During the first ten years of the establishment of the PRC, the quantity and quality of the articles on Beethoven expanded considerably. These writings continued to reflect the reception of Beethoven and his music with the addition of political nuances that could be interpreted in the CCP's favour.

This paper seeks to examine the PRC's artistic policies, with a particular emphasis on the reception of Beethoven and western classical music.