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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between farm size and agricultural production efficiency from the aspects of output and profit in order to find an optimal farm size that achieves both output and profit efficiency in agricultural production in China.

This study uses the 2012 China Family Panel Studies survey data and employs the stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) models to investigate empirically the relationship between farm size and agricultural production efficiency.

The study finds that there is an inverted-U curve relationship between farm size and output efficiency and a U-shaped curve relationship between farm size and profit efficiency in agricultural production in China. Based on the empirical results, the study estimates that the appropriate farm size is around 10–40 mu and the optimal farm size is around 20–40 mu both in terms of output efficiency and profit efficiency in Chinese agricultural production under the current agricultural technology and land management system.

The findings of this study suggest that appropriate land consolidation will bring more benefits to farmer households and agricultural production efficiency. There are some policy implications. First, governments should give long term and more stable land using rights to farmers through extending the period of land contract and verifying land using rights. Second, governments should encourage transfers of land using rights and promote land consolidation. But the implementation of this policy should consider regional differences and not be used for blindly pursuing increasing land size. Third, land consolidation should be accompanied with the development of specialized agricultural services.

The paper makes two major contributions to the literature. First, the authors use the SFA model to investigate the relationship between land size and agricultural production efficiency. Second, the authors establish two SFA models – the stochastic frontier output analysis model and the stochastic frontier profit analysis model – to estimate the optimal land size to achieve both output and profit efficiency of agricultural production in China.

Internal capital markets of diversified firms have been associated with inefficient allocation of investment funds across divisions, leading to value losses. Utilizing a sample of diversified firms that adopted or eliminated Residual Income (RI) plans between 1990 and 2009, we show that adoptions of these plans mitigate investment distortions and lead to value gains. Following the adoption of RI plans, diversified firms start allocating investment funds based on growth opportunities of their divisions. RI plan adopters lower their divisional investment levels, especially in segments with below-average growth opportunities. The overall investment allocation efficiency improves, and the diversification discount diminishes after the adoption of RI plans. However, RI plans appear to be used only as temporary tools for assessing corporate performance. The plans are adopted primarily by firms expected to immediately generate plan bonuses for management, and they are frequently eliminated by firms with bad accounting performance and low managerial bonuses. The study contributes to the literature on organizational efficiency, internal capital markets, and on the importance of measures based on economic profits or RI.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a new solution for wheel‐robot's adhesion and passing‐obstacles mechanism and the optimal design of magnetic adhesion unit with finite element methods. The new mechanism makes the robot have a simpler structure, finer passing obstacles and larger payload capabilities.

After researching literature and analyzing in detail the disadvantages and advantages of magnetic wheel and structure magnet mounted under the chassis of a robot, the structure magnet is selected as the robot's adhesion style. Then the paper introduces the robot's structure and locomotion mechanism, the design of the new mechanism and the optimization of structure parameters for magnetic adhesion unit are described in detail in this paper. The new design can lift the robot's wheel unit and change adhesion force using only a motor.

A prototype of robot has been developed and successful test results prove that the proposed technology is feasible. The climbing robot can overcome 70‐mm high obstacles and has a large enough payload capability while climbing on vertical surfaces.

The new design reduces the number of actuators used in the robot and increases the magnetic adhesion force.

Thanks to the excellent passing‐obstacles and payload capabilities, the climbing robot with the new mechanism has a widely applying prospect in the field of welding and inspecting large equipment.

The lifting mechanism can lift the wheel unit and change magnetic adhesion force using only one motor. This makes the robot have a simple structure as well as the large payload capability.

Computer aided process planning (CAPP) is generally acknowledged as a significant activity to achieve computer‐integrated manufacturing (CIM). In coping with the dynamic changes in the modern manufacturing environment, the awareness of developing intelligent CAPP systems has to be raised, in an attempt to generate more successful implementations of intelligent manufacturing systems. In this paper, the architecture of a hybrid intelligent inference model for implementing the intelligent CAPP system is developed. The detailed structure for such a model is also constructed. The establishment of the hybrid intelligent inference model will enable the CAPP system to adapt automatically to the dynamic manufacturing environment, with a view to the ultimate realization of full implementation of intelligent manufacturing systems in enterprises.

In this era of global education reform, teacher professional learning (TPL) has emerged as a key factor in efforts to create sustainable school improvement. The same holds in Mainland China where ambitious curriculum reforms have been undertaken since 2000. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of learning-centered leadership (LCL) and teacher trust (TT) in fostering TPL in Chinese schools. More specifically, the authors examined two research questions: (1) What is the nature of the relationship of LCL to TT and professional learning?; and (2) How LCL practices influence TT and professional learning.

The study employed a cross-sectional survey design. The authors collected survey data from 1,259 teachers in 41 primary and secondary schools in three different Chinese provinces. The research employed confirmatory factor analysis to confirm the measurement model and structural equation modeling to examine interactions among the three main variables.

The results affirmed a positive association between LCL and TPL, and highlighted TT as a significant mediator in this relationship. Additional analyses distinguished between the effects of different dimensions of LCL on TT and TPL. Although the results of these analyses were broadly consistent with prior findings reported in the literature, divergent findings also emerged. More specifically, there was a limited use and no significant impact of “leadership modeling” on either TT or professional learning.

The authors suggest that this pattern of leadership practice is linked with features of China’s institutional cum socio-cultural context. The authors recommend the use of qualitative and mixed methods studies capable of gaining further insight into relationships.

These findings in Mainland China reaffirm the efficacy of school-level leadership that builds a safe, trusting but focussed environment for teacher learning in the workplace. This is a potentially significant finding in a society where the use of top-down directives and reliance on legitimate authority by leaders can rob teachers of the motivation and initiative that undergirds sustainable professional learning. The findings, in concert with those of other scholars, suggest that “building trust” represents a useful strategy for principals who seek to establish productive learning environments for their teachers.

The value of this study lies in two areas. First, this is one of a growing but still limited set of quantitative empirical studies of school leadership in Mainland China. Second, the study tests the nature of mediation in the relationship between leadership, trust and TPL, a topic of relatively recent vintage in the educational leadership literature.

Social question and answer (SQA) site is one of the factors that boosted up and popularized the vision of social web. It enables community members to post highly valued answers to globally asked questions and information seekers to grab intellectual information in a contextual, concise, and meaningful format at the cost of investing a few minutes. The purpose of this paper is to present a common architecture, history, and a comprehensive review of such sites.

A critical and analytical investigation of the state-of-the-art SQA sites and relevant literature has been carried out with the intention to explore the noticeable features of such sites.

By studying relevant literature, and analysing a number of existing systems, a number of research challenges are identified and a generic architecture of SQA sites is contributed.

The review contributes a comprehensive knowledge about SQA systems and aims to be helpful to new researchers who want to get a broad picture of SQA systems on a single platform. The domain is in its infancy and requires tremendous efforts from the research community to explore its salient aspects with respect to the human world.

The study inspects SQA sites on a large scale and makes an original contribution by presenting a comprehensive review, future research challenges, and a generic architecture of SQA sites.

This paper aims to determine the effects of processing pineapple fruits into different products and storage of the processed products on the ascorbic acid content.

Pineapples (variety “Queen Victoria”) were processed into juice, jam and sorbet. Vitamin C was analysed by the 2‐6 dichloroindophenol titrimetric method and tests were performed during preparation and storage of the products. The pineapple juice was stored for nine days at 8°C, whilst the jam and sorbet were kept for two months at 22‐25°C and −18°C respectively.

Fresh peeled pineapple fruit contains an average ascorbic acid content of 24.8 mg/100 g of fruit. During the juice making process, peeling led to the highest percentage loss of vitamin C (41.8 per cent) followed by exhausting (23.7 per cent). Processing of pineapples into jam was revealed to be most destructive towards ascorbic acid (a loss of 46.8 per cent) as compared to juice making (38.5 per cent) and sorbet preparation (15.5 per cent). Storage of the three processed products in the specific conditions led to a significant decrease (p<0.05) in vitamin C content, and the highest rate of degradation was in pineapple juice (0.6 mg loss per day).

This paper deals with the retention of vitamin C potency in pineapple products, which is important both to consumers concerned with maintaining good health, and to pineapple processors, who are interested in quality assurance, nutrient labelling and product storage.

The purpose of this paper is to present the landscape of the cash-per-publication reward policy in China and reveal its trend since the late 1990s.

This study is based on the analysis of 168 university documents regarding the cash-per-publication reward policy at 100 Chinese universities.

Chinese universities offer cash rewards from USD30 to USD165,000 for papers published in journals indexed by Web of Science, and the average reward amount has been increasing for the past ten years.

The cash-per-publication reward policy in China has never been systematically studied and investigated before except for in some case studies. This is the first paper that reveals the landscape of the cash-per-publication reward policy in China.

Library science and information science, two subdisciplines of library and information science (LIS), are developed independently but interconnectedly. In this information age, LIS is in a special period of transformation and development, which has caused some changes in both library science and information science. By accurately capturing these changes and analyzing them, the authors can effectively map the development of LIS in the new century, thus providing a reference for the evolution and development of the field. The purposes of this paper are to explore the mainstream research fields and frontiers of library science and information science, respectively, since the new century, and to make a comparative analysis of the two subdisciplines.

By using CiteSpace to visualize LIS journals, this study draws knowledge maps of the two subdisciplines of LIS through the co-occurrence descriptors network. Using burst detection algorithm, this study detects words of high frequency variation by investigating the time frequency distribution.

The results show that the research focus of library science has experienced a change from traditional to digital library while information science has moved from information to data focus. This study also finds the similarities and differences between mainstream areas of library science and information science.

This study focuses on the evolution of library science and information science, and explores their mainstream research fields and frontiers in the 21st century. These findings will promote the transformation and development of LIS as well as provide research directions for scholars in the field.

This study aims to make explicit fundamental challenges, which includes children with disabilities and special educational needs in education in China, Hong Kong, and Indonesia under the current conceptions of Inclusion and Education for All (EFA). Based on extensive research and staff development work in these places, this chapter argues for uniting the aims of inclusive education and EFA in order to realize the goal of EFA in all countries. Such a transformative agenda will require a new model of looking at difficulties in learning and the concept of diversity in education. Unless a conscious effort is made to move our thinking and planning from EFA to Inclusive EFA, we will not achieve true universal education.