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Simultaneous localization and map building (SLAM), as a state estimation problem, is a prerequisite for solving the problem of autonomous vehicle motion in unknown environments. Existing algorithms are based on laser or visual odometry; however, the lidar sensing range is small, the amount of data features is small, the camera is vulnerable to external conditions and the localization and map building cannot be performed stably and accurately using a single sensor. This paper aims to propose a laser three dimensions tightly coupled map building method that incorporates visual information, and uses laser point cloud information and image information to complement each other to improve the overall performance of the algorithm.

The visual feature points are first matched at the front end of the method, and the mismatched point pairs are removed using the bidirectional random sample consensus (RANSAC) algorithm. The laser point cloud is then used to obtain its depth information, while the two types of feature points are fed into the pose estimation module for a tightly coupled local bundle adjustment solution using a heuristic simulated annealing algorithm. Finally, the visual bag-of-words model is fused in the laser point cloud information to establish a threshold to construct a loopback framework to further reduce the cumulative drift error of the system over time.

Experiments on publicly available data sets show that the proposed method in this paper can match its real trajectory well. For various scenes, the map can be constructed by using the complementary laser and vision sensors, with high accuracy and robustness. At the same time, the method is verified in a real environment using an autonomous walking acquisition platform, and the system loaded with the method can run well for a long time and take into account the environmental adaptability of multiple scenes.

A multi-sensor data tight coupling method is proposed to fuse laser and vision information for optimal solution of the positional attitude. A bidirectional RANSAC algorithm is used for the removal of visual mismatched point pairs. Further, oriented fast and rotated brief feature points are used to build a bag-of-words model and construct a real-time loopback framework to reduce error accumulation. According to the experimental validation results, the accuracy and robustness of the single-sensor SLAM algorithm can be improved.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of customer service and outline the practices and conditions required to provide excellent customer service in libraries.

The concept of service being at the core of the library profession and the role of libraries to lifelong learning are reiterated to emphasize the importance of quality customer service in libraries. The three‐dimension approach to service management is introduced with practical advice on how this approach is applied to libraries. A customer service self‐assessment is provided for libraries to evaluate how well they serve their customers and identify potential areas for improvement in regards to customer service.

The paper presents ways to establish an effective customer service plan in libraries and provides examples and models for better customer service initiatives.

The paper shows that while the three dimensions of the “Service Triangle” and the implications for libraries are discussed, the interplays between all the dimensions need to be further explored.

The paper provides a practical guide and a useful source of information for libraries planning to set up customer service programs or to improve their customer service efforts.

This paper reviews the concept of customer service from the corporate world and discusses its implications and applications for libraries.

This study aims to address how the social structure of the hospitality management field has evolved from 1960 to 2016.

The informal social structure of the hospitality management literature was analyzed by collecting authorship data from seven hospitality management journals. Co-authorship analyses via network analysis were conducted.

According to the findings, throughout the history of hospitality management, international collaboration levels are relatively low. Based on social network analysis, the research community is only loosely connected, and the network of the community does not fit with the small-world network theory. Additional findings indicate that researchers in the hospitality management literature are ranked via degree centrality, closeness centrality and betweenness centrality. Cliques, which contain at least five researchers, and core researchers are identified.

This study helps both scholars and practitioners improve the informal structure of the field. Scholars must generate strong ties to strengthen cross-fertilization in the field; hence, they collaborate with authors who have strong positions in the field. Specifically, this provides a useful performance analysis. To the extent that institutions and individuals are rewarded for publications, this study demonstrates the performance and connectivity of several key researchers in the field. This finding could be interesting to (post)graduate students. Hospitality managers looking for advisors and consultants could benefit from the findings. Additionally, these are beneficial for journal editors, junior researchers and agencies/institutions.

As one of the first study in the field, this research examines the informal social structure of hospitality management literature in seven journals.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the efforts of an ethnic Miao migrant worker association to recreate and engage with festivals both in the host society of the Pearl River Delta and back home in Southeastern Guizhou province of Southwest China. It analyzes how and under what conditions the disadvantaged migrant workers collectively demonstrate and assert their cultural identity in festival activities, rekindling and strengthening their ethnic consciousness.

Based on ethnographic field data, this study focuses on the connections between migrant workers’ lives in modern host societies and their traditional culture back home. Special attention is paid to the temporal dynamics of migrant workers’ cultural identity and socio-economic development.

The leaders of the Miao migrants’ association created network linkages to channel the flow of labor, capital and culture between the host society and the migrants’ hometown, and made efforts to secure institutional embeddedness at both ends of the flow. Their use of festivals and related heritage as cultural capital has facilitated the cultivation of network linkages and institutional embeddedness for economic advancement and overcoming ethnic prejudices and institutional disadvantages.

By illustrating how the economic development has been imbricated with culture, this research enhances understanding about the role of network linkage and institutional embeddedness in the flow of labor, capital and culture between host society and home place of migrant communities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the key factors affecting Mainland Chinese students pursuing a Master of Education degree in Hong Kong on their study abroad decision and return intentions.

The current study employed a mixed-methods approach to investigate factors that affect Mainland Chinese students pursuing MEd degrees in Hong Kong. Participants were first invited to fill out a questionnaire. After collecting and analyzing the survey data, in-depth interviews with a selected group of students were carried out by the research team to obtain useful qualitative data to triangulate the survey findings. A purposeful and convenience sampling method, carried out through the personal network of the research team, was used to recruit MEd Mainland Chinese students in Hong Kong to participate in the current study.

The findings provided compelling evidence that Hong Kong was an attractive study destination to this particular group of MEd Chinese students. The findings also indicated that academic factors were more important than social, cultural and economic factors when it came to choosing their study destination. In contrast to previous studies, participants expressed a much stronger desire to return home upon graduation. The three most influential predictors of their decision to return were the lack of a Hong Kong teaching certificate (r=+0.36), the opportunity to contribute to their hometown (r=+0.31) and the inclination to be closer to family and friends (r=+0.20).

While a number of studies have been carried out to study why Mainland Chinese students chose Hong Kong as their study destination to pursue their teacher training degree, none of these studies focused exclusively on fee-paying MEd Chinese students. Hong Kong is facing keen competition from both traditional host countries and emerging host countries to recruit students from Mainland China. It is therefore crucial to understand the needs of these Mainland Chinese students in a competitive, globalized, tertiary education market, as the satisfaction of students, in the form of positive discussion among alumni, promotes a university’s reputation and sustains its advantage in attracting students.

Since their inception in late 2007, the Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor (QDII) funds, which help Chinese investors to invest in foreign capital markets, have experienced significant portfolio losses and persistent fund outflows. While these losses are large in absolute terms, QDII funds, on average, performed better than Chinese A-share funds, but slightly worse than a group of foreign mutual funds. Our study focuses on the QDII industry, and asks three interrelated questions: (1) why have there been large fund outflows from the industry? (2) what explains QDII funds’ poor performance? and (3) why have QDII funds been so heavily exposed to the Hong Kong market? Our empirical analysis shows that the persistent capital outflows were primarily a result of disappointing fund performance. This poor performance can, in turn, be explained by the deficiency of knowledge required of QDII fund managers to successfully invest in foreign capital markets and manage global portfolios. Finally, our study goes some way to explain the phenomenon of QDII funds’ large asset allocation in the Hong Kong market. This ‘Hong Kong bias’ is shown to be consistent with the well-documented ‘home bias’ behaviour in cross-border portfolio investment, but is greatly exacerbated by the lack of global investing experience of QDII managers.

The purpose of this paper is to predict hospital respiratory system infection rate by using the gray GM(1,1) model, and to provide theoretical basis for the prospective study on hospital respiratory system infection management.

The annual respiratory system infection rate of a comprehensive third-class hospital in Yan’an is collected from 2011 to 2017. The GM(1,1) model is used for prediction, and mean absolute percentage error is used to evaluate the prediction accuracy of the model.

GM(1,1) statistical prediction model is established with good fitting degree and high reliability of extrapolation prediction.

The GM(1,1) model can well predict the respiratory system infection rate of the hospital.

Studies of Tianhou-Mazu cult have been focused on three themes: studies in Taiwan emphasize hegemonic order; studies in Hong Kong reveal a relationship of “sisterhood” alliances; and studies in Singapore highlight the important role of ethnic groups. The rebuilding of the goddess’s ancestral temple in early 1980s and her acquiring a world intangible cultural heritage status in the early twenty-first century facilitate the redefinition of overseas Chinese’s religious affiliation. The purpose of this paper is to discuss this global development of the cult from the 1980s and its ritual implication in overseas Chinese communities.

This paper, by comparing the Tianhou-Mazu cult in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Southeast Asian Chinese settlements, argues that from sisters to descended replicas, or from local alliances to global hegemony, the cult of Tianhou-Mazu since the 1980s has not only replaced local culture with an emphasis on “high culture,” but also represents a religious strategy regarding local people’s interpretation of correctness and authority.

This paper argues that despite the imposition of hegemonic power from various authorities, popular religion is a matter of choice. This reflects how local religious practice is construed according to the interpretation of global cultural languages by the elite Chinese; their decision of when and how to reconnect with the goddess’s ancestral temple or the “imperial state,” or to form alliances with other local communities; and the implementation of the local government’s cultural policy.

This paper is one of the few attempts comparing development of a folk cult in various communities.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interfacial nanostructures and the adhesions of the stainless steel (S.S) coating to the polyurethane (PU) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) leathers.

PU leather and PVC leather deposit S.S nano-films on the surface of PU and PVC leathers in this study. The interfacial nanostructures were investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The experimental results revealed that the surface roughness of the substrates had extremely important influence on the morphology of nano-films. The adhesions of the S.S coating to the PU and PVC leathers were investigated by the peel-off test.

The results showed that the adhesive performance of the S.S nano-films coating on PVC leather was better than that on the substrate of PU leather. Moreover, a weight loss of per peeling force calculating formulation is proposed to determine the bonding strength between the S.S films and the substrates.

In this paper, influence of different substrates on surface morphology of S.S coating was studied by SEM and AFM. Moreover, the weight loss of per peeling force calculating formulation was used to discuss the bonding strength between the S.S coating and the substrates. The research methods presented in this paper are of innovation significance to a certain extent.

This paper aims to automatically generate load shedding sequences due to insufficient power supply, to ensure flight safety and complete flight task.

In this paper, a power allocation and load management model, including logical and physical submodels of the distribution system, is first established according to different requirements of the loads in different flight phase and the current total power supply. Then, an optimal load management scheme based on an improved ant colony algorithm is proposed to automatically generate load shedding sequences for both safety-critical and nonsafety critical loads, to achieve a reliable and safe power supply.

To verify the efficiency and feasibility of the algorithm, the proposed method is verified in a virtual simulation platform. Simulation result illustrates that the proposed algorithm is efficient and feasible.

The proposed method can provide guidance on load power supply when the civil aircraft is under abnormal power supply situation.

An optimal load management scheme is proposed by considering different requirements of the loads in different flight phase and the current total power supply.