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This study aims to draw on the categorization theory to explore the mediating role of customer qualification skills in explaining how social media use in sales contributes to salespeople’s adaptive selling behaviors to achieve high sales performance in export selling. The study also integrates network effect theory and social linguistics theory to identify the specific social media platform (Facebook versus non-Facebook) and the characteristics of salespeople in terms of English language proficiency, which play a facilitating role in promoting the effectiveness of social media use in export sales.

The sampling frame of the research is a list of Chinese export salespersons obtained on the FOB Business Forum website. Survey data were obtained from 873 Chinese export salespeople. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was performed to analyze the data.

Social media use in sales is associated positively with customer qualification skills and adaptive selling behaviors. Moreover, the results revealed a partial mediating effect of customer qualification skills on the positive impact of social media use in sales on adaptive selling behaviors. The moderating effect analysis found that the positive association between social media use in sales and customer qualification skills was stronger in export salespeople who used Facebook and had mastered a high level of English language proficiency.

This study provides new findings, based on data collected from salespeople in Mainland China, that support the effectiveness of social media use in an export sales context. Moreover, the study advances prior research by showing that the effectiveness of social media use still depends on the type of social media used and the English language proficiency of the salespeople.

The rapidly emerging of Mobile Internet and the constantly increasing of wireless subscribers' number bring new opportunities and challenges to geographic information sharing and accessing. Current Web GISs, which are accessed by using connection based approaches, are very inefficient in fulfilling the requirements of GIS applications under open, dynamic, heterogeneous and distributed computing environments such as (Mobile) Internet. In this paper, we propose a new system for accessing and sharing distributed geographic information by using mobile agent and GML technologies, in which mobile agents are used to overcome the limitations of traditional distributed computing paradigms in (mobile) Internet context and GML is adopted as the common format for spatial information wrapping and mediation, while SVG is used as a web‐map publishing format that can be processed and displayed in Web browser. A prototype is implemented, which demonstrates the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method.

Developing waterway-waterway transfer is an important path for Shanghai's container logistics to innovate service models. Taicang Express Line, a typical case of service model innovation, plays an important role in elevating the standing of Shanghai Port as a container hub port and in developing China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone. From the three dominant transfer service models, the waterway-waterway transfer for container logistics of Taicang Express Line has the traits and experience in streamlining logistics processes, innovating logistics clearance models, saving logistics operating costs, offering port logistics cooperation experience for replications and promoting integration of regional port logistics resources. However, it also harbors issues in infrastructure construction, staffing, container resources allocation and transportation, transportation efficiency and policy innovation. In the future, efforts should be invested to strengthening the construction and staffing of port logistics infrastructure, optimizing the container resources allocation and transport of port logistics systems, improving the logistics transportation efficiency of Taicang Express Line, and pushing forward innovation of the synergistic policy mechanism for regional port logistics.

Developing waterway-waterway transfer is an important path for Shanghai's container logistics to innovate service models. Taicang Express Line, a typical case of service model innovation, plays an important role in elevating the standing of Shanghai Port as a container hub port and in developing China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone. From the three dominant transfer service models, the waterway-waterway transfer for container logistics of Taicang Express Line has the traits and experience in streamlining logistics processes, innovating logistics clearance models, saving logistics operating costs, offering port logistics cooperation experience for replications and promoting integration of regional port logistics resources. However, it also harbors issues in infrastructure construction, staffing, container resources allocation and transportation, transportation efficiency and policy innovation. In the future, efforts should be invested to strengthening the construction and staffing of port logistics infrastructure, optimizing the container resources allocation and transport of port logistics systems, improving the logistics transportation efficiency of Taicang Express Line, and pushing forward innovation of the synergistic policy mechanism for regional port logistics.

In the context of exploring and implementing China's new urbanization, green eco-city have become a transformation model for urban development. Sharpening green buildings in the construction industry can significantly influence and determine China's economic growth trends, as well as the growth and overall development of its national economy. However, current green eco-city still lack appropriate standards and scientific theoretical basis to determine the target star program of green buildings. To fully implement the green building standards, establish and improve a sound technical standard system for the construction of green building demonstration areas, this study considers the spatial layout of green buildings as the core, adopts a plot potential evaluation method for evaluating a few green building plots, and utilizes four factors in verifying plots with great star potential. The study also establishes a system to calculate the star proportion of green buildings and applies the system in calculating the green building ratio of GM New District. Results indicate that the system can quantitatively analyze a plot potential, calculate the star proportion of green buildings scientifically and rationally, and provide some references for the construction of eco-city and the preparation of special planning for green buildings. The system construction is conducive to provide technical support for the construction of green eco-city. The improved system can be applied in the green building demonstration areas in China, and will be a reference model of constructing green building demonstration areas in the country.

The removing of oil from waste silk is carried out widely by microbial fermentation. However, it is difficult to remove the oil completely. In this study, surfactants were used to enhance microbial oil removing. In seven of the surfactants that were tested, 0.1% of the anionic surfactants inhibited the growth of bacteria and 0.1% of the nonionic surfactants partially inhibited the growth of bacteria. When only the surfactant was used to remove oil, all of the tested surfactants helped remove oil from the waste silk and treatment that added 0.1% AEO-9 gave the lowest oil content.

When surfactants were combined with bacteria to remove oil, the oil content was further reduced and the lowest oil content was obtained by combining AEO-9 and bacteria. The optimum conditions for oil removing by combining AEO-9 with bacteria were pH8.0, temperature 40°C, 4% (v/v) inoculum size and 3 days incubation time. Compared with untreated silk, silk treated by combining surfactants with bacteria resulted in a decrease in oil content and improvement in appearance. Scanning electron micrographs showed that treated samples had a clean surface.

In order to improve the competitiveness of the “double first-class” university in China, it is essential to conduct a rational, scientific study of the current status of the staff to ensure its long-term development.

Based on the grey analytic hierarchy process (Grey–AHP), this paper evaluates the situation of faculty and staff, hereby, analyzes the initiative and enthusiasm of faculty and staff in the construction of “double first-class universities”

The index weights of the main factors are similar, which indicate the development of teaching staff in higher education depends mainly on the role of full-time teachers, doctors and master's guidance teachers and non-teaching staff.

While the other literature emphasized scientific output, this article enlightened the important role of faculty and staff in the construction of ‘first-class' universities, which contributes to the study of development of China's high education in a new perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of single parameters for temperature characteristics of oil film in port plate pair and the relationship of calculated results and experimental results under different viscosity.

The paper established the mathematical model of oil film of port plate pair, calculated the energy equation of port plate pair, simulated for the oil film and temperature distribution and selected different kinds of lubricants to analyze the calculated value and the experimental value.

The results show: temperature rise of port plate pair is reduced with the increase of oil viscosity; temperature rise of port plate pair is decreased with rise of initial oil film thickness; temperature rise of port plate pair is increased with the rise of cylinder body speed, inclination angle and sealing belt width; and through the comparison of calculated value and experimental value, under the same viscosity and cylinder speed, experimental results are bigger.

This paper used the methods that the temperature of port plate pair was calculated numerically, and the results were consistent with experimental results, so it can get high precision.

The authors consider systems that generate damage to environment as they get older and degrade. The purpose of this paper is to develop an optimal condition-based maintenance strategy for such systems in situations where they have a finite operational time requirement. The authors determine simultaneously the optimal number of inspections and the threshold level of environmental damage which minimize the total expected cost over the considered finite time horizon.

The environmental degradation level is monitored through periodic inspections. The authors model the environmental degradation process due to the equipment’s degradation by the Wiener process. A mathematical model and a numerical procedure are developed. Numerical calculations are performed and the influence of the variation of key parameters on the optimal solution is investigated.

Numerical tests indicate that as the cost of the penalty related to the generation of an excess damage to environment increases, inspections should become more frequent and the threshold level should be lowered in order to favor preventive actions reducing the probability to pay the penalty.

Given the complexity of the cost function to be minimized, it is difficult to derive analytically the optimal solution. A numerical procedure is designed to obtain the optimal condition-based maintenance policy. Also, the developed model is based on the assumption that the degradation follows a process with stationary independent increments. This may not be appropriate for all types of degradation processes.

The proposed optimal maintenance policy may be relevant and very useful in the perspective of green operations. In fact, this paper offers to decision-makers a comprehensive approach to implement a green maintenance policy and to rapidly understand the net effect of the maintenance policy with respect to environmental regulation requirements.

The main contribution consists in the modeling and optimization of the condition-based maintenance policy over a finite time horizon. Indeed, existing condition-based maintenance models over an infinite time horizon are not applicable for systems with a finite operational time requirement.