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The purpose of this paper is to extend game analysis to explore decision-making mechanisms for promoting a specific type of products, low energy consumption for individual one while the total energy consumption is huge due to the high quantity of sales, that is, low for individual and high for total (LIHT) in terms of energy consumption.

Game models are developed to compare decisions of optimal prices for newly developed and environmentally friendly (NDEF) and regular products as well as associated sales quantity, profits, carbon emissions under different governmental policies, along with a case of low energy-intensive broadband terminal products in the Chinese telecommunication industry under the carbon tax and subsidy policies.

For both NDEF and regular products, optimal prices decrease under the subsidy policy while both increase under the tax policy. Manufacturers’ decision of optimal prices is highly relevant with unit carbon tax/subsidy and the consumers’ preference. Both the tax and subsidy policies can improve consumption of NDEF products while the subsidy policy can be more effective at the current initial stage.

This paper provides decision support for manufacturers to promote sustainable consumption of LIHT products. Research ideas on models development and solutions for optimal prices can be applied to other LIHT products.

The results provide insights for governments on how to effectively evaluate and motivate sustainable consumption for LIHT products.

This paper first explores how to motivate sustainable consumption of LIHT products by developing models, examining effectiveness of potential governmental policies as well as associated carbon emissions.

This essay focuses on the Chinese-Japanese Library of the Harvard-Yenching Institute and examines how the Library collected and transported Chinese rare books to the United States during the 1930 and 1940s. It considers Harvard's rationale for its collection of Chinese books and tensions between Chinese scholars and the Harvard-Yenching Institute leaders and librarians over the purchase and “export” of Chinese books.

This research is a historical study based on archival research at Harvard-Yenching Institute and the Harvard-Yenching Library, as well as careful readings of published primary and secondary sources.

By examining the debates that surrounded the ownership of Chinese books, and the historical circumstances that enabled or hindered the cross-national movement of books, this essay uncovers a complex and interwoven historical discourse of academic nationalism, internationalism and imperialism.

Drawing upon the unexamined primary sources and published second sources, this essay uncovers a complex and interwoven historical discourse of academic nationalism, internationalism and imperialism.

This paper aims to study the clearance compatibility of active magnetic bearing (AMB) and gas bearing (GB) to achieve a single-structured hybrid gas-magnetic bearing (HGMB), which uses a single bearing structure to realize both the functions of gas bearing and magnetic bearing.

Because the radial clearance size of the AMB is typically ten times larger than that of the GB, radial clearance compatibility of GB and AMB needs to maximize the radial clearance of GB by adjusting structural parameters. Parametric analysis of structural parameters of GB is explored. Furthermore, a general structural design principle based on static analysis, rotordynamic performance and system stability is established for the single-structured HGMB.

Load capacity is vastly reduced due to the enlarged radial clearance of the GB. A minimum clearance needs to be ensured by increasing the bearing diameter or width to compensate for the reduced load capacity, yet indirectly raising the bearing load. Increased bearing load is conducive to stability, yet it raises the risk of rotor abrasion. In addition, excessively large bearing diameter leads to system instability, and inappropriate bearing width affects critical speeds. A general structural design principle is established and the designed HGMB–rotor processes optimal performances.

A single-structured HGMB is proposed to address the urgent demand for high-speed, cryogenic turboexpanders with frequent starts/stops. This design applies a single-bearing structure to realize the characteristics of both GB and AMB, greatly simplifying the implementation, reducing air friction loss and raising critical speeds. This paper provides a fresh perspective on the development of cryogenic turboexpanders for hydrogen liquefaction. It theoretically validates the feasibility and provides a design guide for a single-structured HGMB system.

The relationship between exports and productivity has always been a hot topic for scholars, but no unified conclusions have been made by theory and empirical research so far. There is no denying that the relationship between the two is important though, exploring the factors affecting the relationship can bring much more reflection and inspiration.

After using stochastic frontier analysis which includes stochastic factors to calculate total factor productivity, this paper makes regressions on the panel data of Chinese manufacturing industries from 2004 to 2013. In addition, it also tests the roles of industry heterogeneity plays in analyzing the relationships between exports and productivity.

It turns out that in China, exports inhibit the growth of productivity overall, and scale effect is not reflected in the export sector. From the perspective of sub-sectors, exports dampen the productivity significantly in labor-intensive industries, which may be because of low learning ability. In industries with low R&D investment, exports also have significant and negative effects on industry productivity, which is because the R&D capital is not efficient and sufficient to be converted to productivity. In industries with high foreign capital rate, exports prohibit the growth of productivity because of the existence of much processing trade. In industries with low competition pressure, exports hinder the productivity because firms in such industries are possibly not competitive enough to survive in the fierce international market.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, previous research studies did not take the industry heterogeneity into consideration when discussing the effects of exports on productivity. In this paper, cost types, R&D investment, energy consumption efficiency, export destination, foreign investment rate, state-owned ratio, competition pressure and international competitiveness are all discussed in the analysis of export and productivity. This study provides new insights to help understand the mechanism of export and productivity and the conclusions are of rich policy implications.

Product variant design can only be achieved after all its constituent parts have been implemented by variant design. It is necessary to plan the sequence of part variant design reasonably. The product variant design process involves a large amount of information transfer events at the dimensional level. A reasonable product variant design process needs to make full use of the information transfer characters of parts to decrease the uncertainty of product variant design process. The existing methods of researching the product variant design process mainly focus on resource constraint and activity logic. They are deficient, however, in information transfer resolution and uncertainty management. This paper aims to address these issues.

This paper identifies the number of dimension transfer paths and the position of dimension locating within a transfer path as being the key factors affecting the information transfer role of dimension. Information transfer utility is proposed to measure the information transfer capability of dimensions and parts. Based on these, a two-stage approach of generating the sequence of part variant design based on information transfer utility is proposed.

The uncertainty of dimension constraint network is minimal during the product variant design process when parts are implemented by variant design under the sequence generated through a two-stage method based on the information transfer utilities of parts, as does the times of parameter transferring and iteration in dimension constraint network.

Part variant design under the sequence of descending information transferring utilities can decrease the difficulty of implementing product variant design validly and also increase the efficiency. This suggests an innovative method to planning the product variant design process reasonably from the perspective of informatics.

With the application and development of intelligent clothing and wearable technology, the term “micro-interaction” has gradually entered people’s lives. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The paper takes the concept of “micro-interaction” as the design principle, starting from the consumer demand, combing the realization mode of the intelligent safety clothing in recent years, and finds out the existing problems in the design of the intelligent safety clothing.

Under the concept of micro-interaction, a new theoretical model has been proposed to study intelligent safety clothing. Finally, the paper also emphasizes the importance of the industrialization of the proposed model.

The paper proposes a new research and development mode for intelligent clothing in safety protection area which is a pioneering study and can be valuable for safety clothing manufacturers to produce more functional and attractive products.

This paper aims to study the Gramian solutions and solitonic interactions of a (2 + 1)-dimensional Broer–Kaup–Kupershmidt (BKK) system, which models the nonlinear and dispersive long gravity waves traveling along two horizontal directions in the shallow water of uniform depth.

Pfaffian technique is used to construct the Gramian solutions of the (2 + 1)-dimensional BKK system. Asymptotic analysis is applied on the two-soliton solutions to study the interaction properties.

N-soliton solutions in the Gramian with a real function ζ(y) of the (2 + 1)-dimensional BKK system are constructed and proved, where N is a positive integer and y is the scaled space variable. Conditions of elastic and inelastic interactions between the two solitons are revealed asymptotically. For the three and four solitons, elastic, inelastic interactions and soliton resonances are discussed graphically. Effect of the wave numbers, initial phases and ζ(y) on the solitonic interactions is also studied.

Shallow water waves are studied for the applications in environmental engineering and hydraulic engineering. This paper studies the shallow water waves through the Gramian solutions of a (2 + 1)-dimensional BKK system and provides some phenomena that have not been studied.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how different types of the village relationship influence different types of public goods provision in rural China.

The three components (clan-based relationship, neighborhood relationship and external relationship) were derived by employing factor analysis. The simultaneous discrete choice model was used to estimate the influence of these components on public goods provision, using the survey data from the China Household Income Project conducted in 2007.

The findings indicate that considering different components of village relationship allows for a better understanding of the public good provision. The results indicate that the neighborhood relationship has a significantly positive effect on rural public goods provision, particularly on water conservancy and irrigation, while the external relationship has a significantly positive effect on all types of public goods.

Local public goods provision is the core of the new rural construction in China. These findings imply that relationship in villages plays a vital role in the provision of public goods and is necessary in the construction of the new harmonious countryside in China. The results also have implications for rural public goods provision in other developing countries.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to quantitatively model the impact of different relationships on public goods provision at the rural level. A consideration of the different components in village relationship allows for a more precise understanding of the pubic goods provision in the village.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the properties of several thiol-acrylate photosensitive systems and compare with corresponding acrylate free-radical systems. The potential stereolithography applications of thiol–ene photosensitive systems are also discussed.

In the both thiol–ene and acrylate free-radical photosensitive systems, various key performances were characterized. The function group conversions were characterized by real-time Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The tension strength was determined according to the standard ASTM D638-2003, the flexible strength was determined according to ASTM D790-07 and the hardness was measured according to ASTM D2240-05. The volume shrinkage was measured by dilatometer method. The glass transition temperature was analyzed by differential scanning calorimeter.

As adding mercapto propionates into acrylate system, the inhibition of polymerization by oxygen was controlled and the flexible performance was improved. In addition, the photosensitive resin showed better tension strength, higher elongation at break and lower volume shrinkage. Among the four mercapto propionates, rigid TEMPIC showed most obvious affect, followed hexa-functional DPMP, tetra-functional PETMP and tri-functional TMMP.

Although the thiol–ene photosensitive resin has unmatched advantages in performance, there are no reports on the thiol–ene photosensitive resin in the stereolithography application. In this study, thiol–ene photopolymerization material was first tentatively implemented in stereolithography area. Several critical performance parameters were compared between thiol–ene and acrylate free-radical photosensitive systems.

The purpose of this paper was to synthesise a thermally expandable microsphere (TEMS) with fast thermal response property and small expansion temperature range, and investigate the factors affecting the expansion properties of the microspheres.

A new kind of TEMS with fast thermal response property was synthesised by suspension polymerisation method, using acrylonitrile, ethyl methacrylate and methacrylic acid as the main monomers; Mg(OH)₂ as the main dispersing agent; and isooctane or n-hexane or n-pentane as the blowing agent.

The TEMS possessed the best expansion capacity when encapsulated isooctane and n-hexane were about 18.5 Wt.%. The expansion process of the TEMS could be finished by raising the temperature to 18°C from the expansion onset, much less than the reported 30-50°C. The morphology of the TEMS turned from sphere to irregular concave shape following the content increase of the blowing agent.

A new kind of TEMS composed of acrylonitrile/ethyl methacrylate/methacrylic acid as the polymer shell was synthesised. These TEMS showed the fastest thermal response speed reported.