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The study aims to trace the history of Chinese education in Macao in the first half of the 20th century, emphasizing macro- and meso-level political influences.

The paper reviews published works including official documents, rare books, newspapers, etc. and provides a three-part analysis: first, discussion of the colonial Government's education policy during the early 20th century and the establishment of the Chinese Educators' Association of Macau (CEAM); second, contextualization of the major upset and change in educational policy during the Sino-Japanese War (World War II in Asia); and third, considering the reinstatement of laissez-faire education policies regarding Macao's Chinese community and the CEAM's shifting political loyalties in the post-war period.

The colonial Government created a vacuum into which both the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) muscled, seeking to manipulate education from across the border via control of the CEAM. Mainland China's shifting political landscapes thus significantly altered the political orientation of the CEAM, especially around 1949. Soon afterward, various Catholic and other schools withdrew from the CEAM, primarily separating Chinese schools in Macao into blue (Catholic et al.) and red (pro-CCP) camps.

The paper reviews Macao Chinese education history from 1914 to 1949 while providing better comprehension of an analogous situation in neighboring Hong Kong.

The paper aims to discuss whether the younger generation of China's rural labor force is prepared, in terms of education level or labor quality, for the future labor markets under China's industrial upgrading.

Using nationally representative survey data, the paper gives detailed discussions on the young rural laborers' education attainments, and their off‐farm employment status including job patterns, working hours, and hourly wage rates. The relationship between education and employment status is analyzed and tested. Through these discussions, an employment challenge is revealed, and some policy implications are made.

This paper finds that China's young rural laborers are generally poorly educated and mainly unskilled. They work long hours and are low paid. While they lack the labor quality that will be required to meet the industrial upgrading, an employment challenge may face them in the near future. This paper also finds a strong link between education levels and employment status for the young labor force, which implies the possible effect of policies such as improving rural education.

Based on a solid foundation of a national rural household survey, this paper updates the understanding of the education and employment situations of the young rural labor force in contemporary China. The concern about the employment challenges raised in the paper is related to the future of China's rural labor transition and the whole economy.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of Cr and Ta additions on the friction performance and corrosion-wear mechanism of Fe90-Al₂O₃ coating in 3.5% NaCl solution.

Cr and Ta reinforced Fe90-Al₂O₃ coatings were prepared on Q235 steel by laser cladding. The effects of Cr and Ta addition on the coefficient of friction (COF) and wear rate of Fe90-Al₂O₃ coating were investigated using a friction tester, and the wear model was established to discuss its corrosion-wear mechanism.

The average COFs of Fe90-Al₂O₃, Fe90-Al₂O₃-10%Cr and Fe90-Al₂O₃-10%Ta coatings in 3.5% NaCl solution are 0.57, 0.42 and 0.75, respectively, and the corresponding wear rates are 9.42 × 10⁻⁷, 5.31 × 10⁻⁷ and 7.02 × 10⁻⁷ mm³ s⁻¹ N⁻¹, respectively. The corrosion-wear resistance of Fe90-Al₂O₃-10%Cr coating is the best among the three kinds of coatings, in which the additions of Cr and Ta play a role in solid solution strengthening.

The Fe90-Al₂O₃ coating was strengthened by the additions of Cr and Ta to improve its corrosion-wear resistance in 3.5% NaCl solution.

The problem of parameter identification for biaxial piezoelectric stages is still a challenging task because of the existing hysteresis, dynamics and cross-axis coupling. This study aims to find an accurate and systematic approach to tackle this problem.

First, a dual-input and dual-output (DIDO) model with Duhem-type hysteresis is proposed to depict the dynamic behavior of the biaxial piezoelectric stage. Then, a systematic identification approach based on a modified differential evolution (DE) algorithm is proposed to identify the unknown parameters of the Duhem-type DIDO model for a biaxial piezostage. The randomness and parallelism of the modified DE algorithm guarantee its high efficiency.

The experimental results show that the characteristics of the biaxial piezoelectric stage can be identified with adequate accuracy based on the input–output data, and the peak-valley errors account for 2.8% of the full range in the X direction and 1.5% in the Y direction. The attained results validated the correctness and effectiveness of the presented identification method.

The classical DE algorithm has many adjustment parameters, which increases the inconvenience and difficulty of using in practice. The parameter identification of Duhem-type DIDO piezoelectric model is rarely studied in detail and its successful application based on DE algorithm on a biaxial piezostage is hitherto unexplored. To close this gap, this work proposed a modified DE-based systematic identification approach. It not only can identify this complicated model with more parameters, but also has little tuning parameters and thus is easy to use.

The determination of parameters of Duhem model that can describe piezoelectric hysteresis is usually a great challenge. The purpose of this paper is to find a way to identify the parameters of Duhem model by using a modified bee colony algorithm.

The promising bee colony algorithm has great potential to identify hysteresis nonlinearity, but has not yet been used to identify the Duhem-type hysteresis in the literatures. To explore this possibility, the classical bee colony algorithm is modified to enhance its performance regarding both searching capability and convergence speed. In the modification, the current optimal solution is used to guide the search direction, which can balance the local and global searching ability. Moreover, a new searching formula for scout bees is proposed to enhance the convergence ability of the algorithm.

Through a series of experiments, the modified algorithm can attain the optimal parameters with a 0.61 µm peak valley error and a 0.12 µm root-mean-square error. Compared to the particle swarm optimization and classical bee colony algorithms, the modified bee colony algorithm can reach higher parameter identification accuracy. Based on 50 trials, the robustness of the posed algorithm was also proved.

The well-performed modified bee colony algorithm is a good candidate in parameter identification of Duhem-type hysteresis nonlinear systems. As there is no work studying the parameter identification of Duhem model using a bee colony algorithm in the literatures, this work closed this gap and explored the ability of bee colony algorithm to identify piezoelectric hysteresis with superb accuracy and robustness.

In order to investigate the vibration reduction properties of a three-dimensional elastic metastructure with spherical cavities at low frequencies.

The bandgap characteristics of a three-dimensional elastic metastructure with spherical cavities are studied based on analytical and numerical approaches.

The results of both method revealed that the vibration of the vertexes masses is important for opening bandgaps. The fact that the big sphere cavity radius or short side length of the cube unit leads to a wider bandgap, is noteworthy.

This research provides theoretical guidance for realizing the vibration attenuation application of EMs in practical engineering.

Rapid prototyping (RP) technology is widely used in many fields in recent years. Bone tissue engineering (TE) is an interdisciplinary field involving life sciences, engineering and materials science. Hydroxyapatite (HAp) are similar to natural bone and it has been extensively studied due to its excellent biocompatibility and osteoconductivity. This paper aims to review nanoscaled HAp-based scaffolds with high porosity fabricated by various RP methods for bone regeneration.

The review focused on the fabrication methods of HAp composite scaffolds through RP techniques. The paper summarized the evaluation of these scaffolds on the basis of their biocompatibility and biodegradability through in vitro and in vivo tests. Finally, a summary and perspectives on this active area of research are provided.

HAp composite scaffold fabricated by RP methods has been widely used in bone TE and it has been deeply studied by researchers during the past two decades. However, its brittleness and difficulty in processing have largely limited its wide application in TE. Therefore, the formability of HAp combined with biocompatible organic materials and fabrication techniques could be effectively enhanced, and it can be used in bone TE applications finally.

This review paper presented a comprehensive study of the various types of HAp composite scaffold fabricated by RP technologies and introduced their potential application in bone TE, as well as future roadmap and perspective.

Evaluation of the quality and performance of a tunnel lining during the installation of segments are the main objects of tunneling projects. Because the quality is affected by several attributes, the purpose of this paper is an appropriate multivariate data analysis that is helpful in extracting applicable knowledge of the data collected regarding the related attributes of the initial installed rings.

Principal component analysis (PCA) is used to analyze the data obtained by the quality control team. The authors use canonical correlation analysis (CCA) to extract some linear combinations of the original attributes of the two groups that produce the largest correlations with the second set of variables.

The authors reduce the dimensionality of the original data set for further analyses, and use a small number of uncorrelated variables rather than a larger set of correlated variables to take effective and efficient action to control the quality of the tunnel lining. The authors also explore the correlation structure and relationship between two main groups of characteristics used for assessing the quality of the installed rings. Then, instead of a large number of the original characteristics in the two groups, the authors can easily control these few to attain a reasonable quality for the tunnel lining.

This is a case study, and for each ring selected for inspection, 16 different characteristics are measured and the observations are recorded. The authors use PCA and CCA to analyse the data and interpret the results. Although the methods are not new, applying them to this data results in useful and informative outcomes and interpretation.

To reveal the effective ways for leaders to motivate employees' innovative behaviour in complex environmental situations, the leadership rapport orientation is subdivided into two types of values-based/instrumental rapport orientation. The mechanism of supervisor developmental feedback in mediating between leadership rapport orientation and employees' innovative behaviour and the moderating effect of ambidextrous environments is explored. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objective.

Leadership rapport orientation is divided into value-based and instrumental rapport orientation to reveal effective ways for leaders to motivate employees' innovative behaviour in complex environmental situations.

The results show that the values-based (instrumental) rapport orientation of leaders impacts employees' innovative behaviour positively (negatively).

Leaders' values-based/instrumental rapport orientation indirectly influences employees' innovative behaviour through supervisor developmental feedback, which positively moderates the relationship between the values-based or instrumental rapport orientation of leaders and employees' innovative behaviour and further moderates the partially mediating role of supervisor developmental feedback between leaders' values-based/instrumental rapport orientation and employees' innovative behaviour.