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As the global presence of Chinese firms grows, increasing numbers of Chinese managers are working abroad as expatriates. However, little attention has been paid to such Chinese expatriate managers and their leadership challenges in an inter-cultural context, especially across a large cultural distance. To fill the gap in the literature concerning the leadership challenges for expatriate managers in an inter-cultural context, the purpose of this paper is to elucidate the leadership styles of Chinese expatriate managers from the perspectives of three traditional Chinese philosophies (i.e. Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism) in the inter-cultural context of the Netherlands.

The data for this qualitative study were collected via semi-structured, open-ended, narrative interviews with 30 Chinese expatriate managers in the Netherlands.

The results clearly show that the leadership style of Chinese expatriate managers is deeply rooted in the three traditional Chinese philosophies of Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism, even in an inter-cultural context. Specifically, the study reveals two salient aspects of how Chinese expatriate managers frame and interact with a foreign cultural context from the perspectives of traditional Chinese philosophies. First, the Chinese expatriate managers reported an initial cultural shock related to frictions between the foreign cultural context and Confucianism or Taoism, but less so in the case of Legalism. Second, the Chinese expatriate managers also reported that their interactions with the Dutch culture are best described as a balance between partial conflict and partial complementarity (thus, a duality). In this sense, the leadership style of Chinese expatriate managers is influenced jointly by the three traditional Chinese philosophies and certain elements of the foreign cultural context. This is consistent with the Chinese perspective of yin-yang balancing.

This study is among the first to offer a more nuanced and highly contextualized understanding of leadership in the unique case of expatriate managers from an emerging market (e.g. China) in an advanced economy (e.g. the Netherlands). The authors call for more research to apply the unique perspective of yin-yang balancing in an inter-cultural context. The authors posit that this approach represents the most salient implication of this study. For practical implications, the authors argue that expatriate leaders should carefully manage the interplay between their deep-rooted home-country philosophies and their salient host-country culture. Reflecting on traditional philosophies in another culture can facilitate inter-cultural leadership training for Chinese expatriates.

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design, www.ted.com/) Talks has been one of the most popular video systems. However, the current TED Talks system expressed its inquired videos as in a two-dimensional (2D) table, which is inconvenient for searching the relationships among videos and tags. This study converts the TED Talks table into a sphere by using optimization techniques to help users search for preferred videos.

There are five phases in this study as follows. Phase 1: Reorganize data of 36 tags and 108 videos; Phase 2: Allocate tags on the TED sphere; Phase 3: Allocate videos on the TED sphere; Phase 4: Develop an online interactive TED retrieval system; and Phase 5: Perform survey and evaluation.

One survey demonstrated that the TED Talks sphere is more convenient for searching videos, as it is more user-friendly because of its graphical user interface, more convenient to use, more useful for retrieving information and can facilitate a more responsive search for users’ preferred videos.

The numbers of tags and videos able to be displayed on a sphere is limited by the capacity of an optimization software and hardware.

The proposed sphere system can be used by a large number of users of TED Talks groups.

This sphere systems can also be applied to other fields which use 2D forms to display the relationships among objects.

This study uses an optimization method to convert a 2D form into a 3D sphere to highlight the relationships among numerous objects.

Docking technology plays a crucial role in enabling long-duration operations of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Visual positioning solutions alone are susceptible to abnormal drift values due to the challenging underwater optical imaging environment. When an AUV approaches the docking station, the absolute positioning method fails if the AUV captures an insufficient number of tracers. This study aims to to provide a more stable absolute position visual positioning method for underwater terminal visual docking.

This paper presents a six-degree-of-freedom positioning method for AUV terminal visual docking, which uses lights and triangle codes. The authors use an extended Kalman filter to fuse the visual calculation results with inertial measurement unit data. Moreover, this paper proposes a triangle code recognition and positioning algorithm.

The authors conducted a simulation experiment to compare the underwater positioning performance of triangle codes, AprilTag and Aruco. The results demonstrate that the implemented triangular code reduces the running time by over 70% compared to the other two codes, and also exhibits a longer recognition distance in turbid environments. Subsequent experiments were carried out in Qingjiang Lake, Hubei Province, China, which further confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed positioning algorithm.

This fusion approach effectively mitigates abnormal drift errors stemming from visual positioning and cumulative errors resulting from inertial navigation. The authors also propose a triangle code recognition and positioning algorithm as a supplementary approach to overcome the limitations of tracer light positioning beacons.

This study examined the effectiveness of a 4.5-day service leadership program for students from Chinese universities using objective outcome evaluation. The participants were assessed before and after the program, with two post-test measurements (immediate assessment and assessment 12 days after the completion of class learning). At pretest and two posttest time points, the participants completed a questionnaire measuring positive youth development, service leadership qualities and beliefs, and life satisfaction. Results showed that students’ performance in both the immediate posttest and follow-up test was better than that in the pretest. Despite the limitations of the one-group pretest-posttest design, results suggest that the curricular-based service leadership program was effective to promote students’ positive youth development, service leadership qualities and beliefs, as well as life satisfaction, and the effectiveness maintained a short period after the class had ended. While the existing findings are promising, these findings should be replicated in the future.

Understanding employees’ multi-dimensional motivations is at the core of realizing the potential of a well-designed human resource (HR) system. This study aims to investigate whether the effects of HR practices on employee motivations, and their performance would be dependent on the service orientation of HR department.

The authors collected data in two surveys: a pilot survey and a main survey with a two-wave design. The pilot survey with 93 respondents was to verify the newly developed HR service orientation scale. In the main survey, a total of 276 supervisor-subordinate pairs from 48 companies were valid for analysis.

The authors find support for their hypothesis that promotion-oriented motivation mediates the relationship between discretionary HR practices and employee outcomes [in-role performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)]. Furthermore, the indirect effect of discretionary HR practices on employee outcomes is stronger when the HR service orientation is higher. Transactional HR practices, however, are not evidenced to relate to employee prevention-focused motivation and outcomes.

The findings illustrate a comprehensive process of HR practices on employees’ multi-dimensional motivations. High service skills of HR professionals in handling internal employees’ needs could amplify employees’ promotion-focused motives, which in turn increase their in-role performance and OCB.

In sum, the authors' study contributes to both human resource management (HRM) and employee motivation literature by demonstrating the different impacts of discretionary and transactional HR practices on employees’ motivations. In addition, by revealing HR service orientation as an important contingency factor, the authors shed greater light on when and how HR practices can motivate employees.

A novel grafted temperature-responsive ReO₄⁻ Imprinted composite membranes (Re-ICMs) was successfully prepared by using polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) resin membranes as substrates, this study aimed to separate and purify ReO effectively.

Re-ICMs were synthesized by PVDF resin membranes as the substrate, acrylic acid (AA), acrylamide (AM), ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) were functional monomers. The morphology and structure of Re-ICMs were characterized by scanning electron microscope and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy.

The maximum adsorption capacity toward ReO₄⁻ was 0.1,163 mmol/g and the separation decree had relation to MnO₄⁻ was 19.3. The optimal operation conditions were studied detailedly and the results as follows: the molar ratios of AA, AM, EGDMA, ascorbic acid, NH4ReO₄, were 0.8, 0.96, 0.02, 0.003 and 0.006. The optimal time and temperature were 20 h and 40°C, respectively. The Langmuir and pseudo-second-order models were fit these adsorption characteristics well.

Rhenium (Re) is mainly used to chemical petroleum and make superalloys for jet engine parts. This study was representing a technology in separate and purify of Re, which provided a method for the development of the petroleum and aviation industry.

This contribution provided a novel method to separate ReO₄⁻ from MnO₄⁻. The maximum adsorption capacity was 0.1163 mmol/g at 35°C and the adsorption equilibrium time was within 2 h. Meanwhile, the adsorption selectivity rate ReO₄⁻/MnO₄⁻ was 19.3 and the desorption rate was 78.3%. Controlling the adsorption experiment at 35°C and desorption experiment at 25°C in aqueous solution, it could remain 61.3% of the initial adsorption capacity with the adsorption selectivity rate of 13.3 by 10 adsorption/desorption cycles, a slight decrease, varied from 78.3% to 65.3%, in desorption rate was observed.

Most supersonic aircraft were manufactured using 2A70 aluminum alloy. The purpose of this paper is to study the corrosion mechanism and fatigue behavior of an aircraft in a semi-industrial atmospheric corrosive environment, alternating effects of corrosion and fatigue were used to simulate the aircraft’s ground parking corrosion and air flight fatigue.

For this purpose, the aluminum alloy samples were subjected to pre-corrosion and alternating corrosion-fatigue experiments. The failure mechanisms of corrosion and corrosion fatigue were analyzed using microscopic characterization methods of electrochemical testing, X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. Miner’s linear cumulative damage rule was used to predict the fatigue life of aluminum alloy and to obtain its safe fatigue life.

The results showed that the corrosion damage caused by the corrosive environment was gradually connected by pitting pits to form denudation pits along grain boundaries. The deep excavation of chloride ions and the presence of intergranular copper-rich phases result in severe intergranular corrosion morphology. During cyclic loading, alternating hardening and softening occurred. The stress concentration caused by surface pitting pits and denudation pits initiated fatigue cracks at intergranular corrosion products. At the same time, the initiation of multiple fatigue crack sources was caused by the corrosion environment and the morphology of the transient fracture zone was also changed, but the crack propagation rate was not basically affected. The polarization curve and impedance analysis results showed that the corrosion rate increases first, decreases and then increases. Fatigue failure behavior was directly related to micro characteristics such as corrosion pits and microcracks.

In this research, alternating effects of corrosion and fatigue were used to simulate the aircraft’s ground parking corrosion and air flight fatigue. To study the corrosion mechanism and fatigue behavior of an aircraft in a semi-industrial atmospheric corrosive environment, the Miner’s linear cumulative damage rule was used to predict the fatigue life of aluminum alloy and to obtain its safe fatigue life.

The outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in Asia and North America has raised much concern from all angles and reflections on nowadays living environment that resulted in public health, especially the high−density urban residential complexes. The so−called community infection at Amoy Gardens apartment in Hong Kong was such a case that is worth further study. However, under the trends of globalization and sustainable development, SARS could be the first alert of unknown outbreak−type fatal epidemic to the coming biomedicine age.

Main findings of the investigation in Amoy Gardens by the Department of Health, Hong Kong, which has been mostly corroborated by World Health Organization (WHO), pointed that environmental factors played a major role in this outbreak. They are, in fact, related to community design, building design and facility management. In this respect, open building theory is conceived of ideas for solution. Three directions are discussed in this study: 1) “territorial depth” at urban tissue level and building level, 2) utility lines at building level and infill level, and 3) space layout by zoning at building level.

In conclusion, design principles for new buildings are suggested; (1) Creating territorial depths in urban tissue and building complex by hierarchical circulations so as to separate people's daily movement and reduce unnecessary human contacts. In addition, the deeper territory expands, the fewer the dwelling units will be preferred. (2) Planning unit space layout with envelope zone following fluid dynamics and solar control physics so as to avoid gaseous infection to people living in the neighborhood among multi−story buildings. (3) Constructing buildings with open−system interfaces between building level and infill level or between infill elements themselves, so that stopgap renovations could easily be done. (4) Separating service lines between building level and infill level. And locating maintenance shafts at accessible public space

This study attempts to explore major attributes of food delivery applications in consideration of their impacts upon perceived service quality, satisfaction and usage intention. A multi-group analysis is performed to examine the hypothesized relationships in the structural models for the millennials and non-millennials.

The data was collected from 311 food delivery application users. The structural equation model (SEM) was designed to examine the interrelationships among variables.

The findings indicate that five salient dimensions that include ease of use, facility aesthetics, trustworthiness, value for money and product portfolio have a significant impact on overall service quality. Results further demonstrate that differences in generational difference partially moderate the relationship between each attribute of the food delivery application service quality as well as overall service quality.

The rapid evolution of the Internet and mobile communication has resulted in the proliferation of food delivery applications in China. However, to the best of our knowledge, only a few studies have focused on measuring the key dimension of service quality of food delivery applications.

The purpose of this paper is to combine the Jiles-Atherton (J-A) hysteresis model with the field separation approach to realize the accurate simulation of dynamic magnetostrictive characteristics of silicon steel sheet.

First, the energy loss of silicon steel sheet is divided into hysteresis loss Why, classical eddy current loss Wed and anomalous loss Wan according to the statistical theory of losses. The Why is calculated by static J-A hysteresis model, Wed and Wan are calculated by the analytical formulae. Then, based on the field separation approach, the dynamic magnetic field is derived. Finally, a new dynamic magnetostrictive model is proposed by means of the quadratic domain rotation model.

Comparison of simulation and experimental results verifies that the proposed model has high accuracy and strong universality.

The proposed method improves the existing method’s problem of relying on too much experimental data, and the method ensures the calculation accuracy, parameter identification accuracy and engineering practicability. Consequently, the presented work greatly facilitates further explorations and studies on simulation of dynamic magnetostrictive characteristics of silicon steel sheet.