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Rural residential energy consumption accounts for 46.6% of total building-related energy consumption of China. In Northeast China, energy consumption for space heating represents a significant proportion of total rural residential energy consumption and has reached 100 million tce (tons of standard coal equivalent), or more than 60% of total household energy consumption. In terms of energy consumption per square meter of gross floor area, rural residential energy consumption for heating is more than that of cities (20kgce/m2). However, the average indoor temperature of most rural residence is below 10°C, much less than that in cities (18°C). Hence, it is an important task for Chinese energy saving and emission reduction to reduce rural residential energy consumption, while enhancing indoor thermal comfort at the same time.

Restricted by local technology and low economic level, rural residences currently have poor thermal insulation resulting in severe heat loss. This paper reports on research aimed at developing design strategies for improving thermal insulation properties of rural residences with appropriate technology. A field survey was conducted in six counties in severe cold areas of Northeast China, addressing the aspects of indoor and outdoor temperature, humidity, internal and external surface temperature of building envelop enclosure, and so on.

The survey data show the following:

1. Modern (after 2000) brick-cement rural residences perform much better than the traditional adobe clay houses and Tatou houses (a regional type of rural residence in Northeast China – see figure A) in overall thermal performance and indoor thermal comfort;

2. Among the traditional residential house types, adobe clay houses have better heat stability and thermal storage capacity than Tatou houses;

3. Applying an internal or external thermal insulation layer can greatly improve rural residential thermal insulation properties, and is an economical and efficient solution in rural areas;

4. In terms of roofing materials, tiled roofs show much better thermal insulation properties than thatch roofs;

5. Adopting passive solar techniques can form a transition space (greenhouse) against frigid temperatures, resulting in interior temperatures 5.91°C higher than the outside surroundings. It is evident that local passive solar room design offers significant heat preservation effects and lower cost ($12/m2), embodies the ecological wisdom of rural residents, and is therefore important to popularize.

The above experimental results can provide guidance in energy conservation design for both self-built residences and rural residences designed by architects. In addition, the results can also provide experimental data for energy-saving studies for rural residences in China.

A high-precision gyroscope is an important tool for accurate positioning, and the amplitude stability and frequency tracking ability of the drive control system are important and necessary conditions to ensure the precision of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) gyroscopes. To improve the precision of MEMS gyroscopes, this paper proposes a method to improve the amplitude stability and frequency tracking ability of a drive control system.

A frequency tracking loop and an amplitude control loop are proposed to improve the frequency tracking ability and amplitude stability of the drive control system for a MEMS gyroscopes. The frequency tracking loop mainly includes a phase detector, a frequency detector and a loop filter. And, the amplitude control loop mainly includes an amplitude detector, a low-pass filter and an amplitude control module. The simulation studies on the frequency tracking loop, amplitude control loop and drive control system composed of these two loops are implemented. The corresponding digital drive control algorithm is realized by the Verilog hardware description language, which is downloaded to the application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) platform to verify the performances of the proposed method.

The simulation experiments in Matlab/Simulink and tests on the ASIC platform verify that the designed drive control system can keep the amplitude stable and track the driving frequency in real time with high precision.

This study shows a way to design and realize a drive control system for MEMS gyroscopes to improve their tracking ability. It is helpful for improving the precision of MEMS gyroscopes.

Drawing on conservation of resources (CoR) and speech act theories, the authors tested the relationship between managers’ motivating language (ML) and employee service quality and psychological relatedness and competence as mediating variables between their associations.

Using a convenient sampling technique, the authors collected 366 hotel employees’ opinions in Malaysia and analysed them in partial least squares-structural equation modelling.

Three forms of ML, psychological competence and relatedness correlate with employees’ service quality. Although direction-giving language is correlated with competence, empathetic and meaning-making language are not; thus, competence only mediates the relationship between direction-giving language and service quality. Three types (direction-giving, empathetic and meaning-making) of managers’ communication are correlated with relatedness; thus, relatedness mediates the association between the three types of language and service quality.

Hospitality managers are encouraged to enhance psychological relatedness and competence by practising an appropriate ML. Psychological relatedness and competence are significant mechanisms that enlighten the effects of supervisory communicant on service quality, indicating employees’ need satisfaction should be improved.

Our study contributes to speech act and CoR theories by explaining the relationship between ML, psychological relatedness, competence and service quality.

Using only zinc nitrate, ferric nitrate and sodium hydroxide as reactants, rod-like and flower-like α-Fe₂O₃/ZnO composites were prepared via a simple and rapid solution route by controlling the composition of precursor solution. The products were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) and UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectra (UV-vis DRS). Photocatalytic activity of the as-prepared α-Fe₂O₃/ZnO composites was evaluated by degradation of methyl orange (MO) under simulated solar light. The results indicated that both α-Fe₂O₃/ZnO composites possess higher photocatalytic activity than commercial P25 TiO₂. In addition, possible reasons why α-Fe₂O₃/ZnO composites have excellent photocatalytic performance were discussed.

Objective of the study is to determine the factors effecting successful women leadership and to draw a comparison between Thailand and Malaysia. Primary data were collected from both countries. Quantitative research approach was used in this study by using a cross-sectional research design. Population of the study was based on the textile companies of Thailand and Malaysia. Employees of textile companies were selected as the respondents. Partial Least Square (PLS) was used for data analysis. Results of the study found that learning autonomy, emotional intelligence, political differences and organization culture (OC) are the major factor which effect on successful women leadership in both countries. Moreover, in both countries, learning autonomy, emotional intelligence and OC have positive role in successful women leadership, however, political differences effect negatively on successful women leadership. Additionally, there is a difference between both countries, in case of moderating role of political differences and OC. In Thailand, OC has positive role to enhance women leadership through emotional intelligence. In case of Malaysia, political differences weaken the positive relationship between the emotional intelligence and successful women leadership.

Microribbon with meander type based on giant magnetoimpedance (GMI) effect has become a research hot spot due to their higher sensitivity and spatial resolution. The purpose of this paper is to further optimize the line spacing to improve the performance of meanders for sensor application.

The model of GMI effect of microribbon with meander type is established. The effect of line spacing (Ls) on GMI behavior in meanders is analyzed systematically.

Comparison of theory and experiment indicates that decreasing the line spacing increases the negative mutual inductance and a consequent increase in the GMI effect. The maximum value of the GMI ratio increases from 69% to 91.8% (simulation results) and 16.9% to 51.4% (experimental results) when the line spacing is reduced from 400 to 50 µm. The contribution of line spacing versus line width to the GMI ratio of microribbon with meander type was contrasted. This behavior of the GMI ratio is dominated by the overall negative contribution of the mutual inductance.

This paper explores the effect of line spacing on the GMI ratio of meander type by comparing the simulation results with the experimental results. The superior line spacing is found in the identical sensing area. The findings will contribute to the design of high-performance micropatterned ribbon with meander-type GMI sensors and the establishment of a ribbon-based magnetic-sensitive biosensing system.

This study aims to clarify the evolution law of stress field and fracture field during the mining process of inclined coal seam, to prevent the occurrence of roof burst water and impact ground pressure accident during the advancing process of working face.

The evolution law of stress-fracture field under different mining conditions of inclined coal seam was studied by using discrete element method and similar material simulation method.

The overburden stress at the lower end of the coal seam was mainly transmitted to the deep rock mass on the left side, and the overburden stress at the upper end was mainly transmitted to the floor direction. With the increase of the inclined length of the mining coal seam, the development of the fracture zone gradually evolves from the “irregular arch” form to the “transversely developed trapezoid” form. The development range of the fracture zone was always in the internal area of the stress concentration shell.

An original element of this paper is based on the condition that the dip angle of coal seam is 35°, and the evolution law of overburden stress-fracture field during the excavation of coal seam with different lengths was analyzed by UDEC numerical simulation software. The coupling relationship between stress shell and fracture field was proposed, and the development range of fracture zone was determined by stress. The value of this paper is to provide technical support and practical basis for the safety production of a mine working face.

The absence of government intervention and market supervision cannot effectively promote green process innovation in manufacturing industries. As a new government regulation approach, environmental taxes provide a platform to internalize the externality of environmental pollution. This paper empirically investigates the impact of environmental taxes on green process innovation and the moderating effects of industry pollution heterogeneity and green credit.

This research collects manufacturing industry data ranging from 2008 to 2020, resulting in a total of 351 observations. Time-individual, two-way fixed effect models are constructed to examine the hypotheses.

The results indicate environmental taxes have an inverted-U effect on green process innovation in manufacturing industries. Implementation intensity of the current environmental taxes on China's manufacturing industries does not reach an inflection point. Further analysis suggests that environmental taxes exert influence on the inverted-U relationship with low-pollution industries displaying a steeper curvilinear pattern than high-pollution industries. Moreover, the analysis shows that green credit plays a moderating role in the inverted-U relationship, as low green credit provides more limited stimulus than high green credit in terms of the effect of environmental taxes on green process innovation.

This study offers empirical evidence to accommodate negative externalities of corporate production and provides new perspectives in nudging corporate green-process innovation.

This paper verifies the effect of environmental taxes on green process innovation amid industry pollution heterogeneity by introducing an industrial-level analysis unit. This study improves the means by which environmental taxes are measured. Existing literature has narrowly used pollution discharge fees as a proxy for environmental taxes. The authors have summed up the taxes on vehicle and vessels, urban land use, urban maintenance and construction, vehicle purchases, waste gas, wastewater and solid waste to measure the effect of environmental taxes in this study.

This paper aims to improve the diversity and richness of haptic perception by recognizing multi-modal haptic images.

First, the multi-modal haptic data collected by BioTac sensors from different objects are pre-processed, and then combined into haptic images. Second, a multi-class and multi-label deep learning model is designed, which can simultaneously learn four haptic features (hardness, thermal conductivity, roughness and texture) from the haptic images, and recognize objects based on these features. The haptic images with different dimensions and modalities are provided for testing the recognition performance of this model.

The results imply that multi-modal data fusion has a better performance than single-modal data on tactile understanding, and the haptic images with larger dimension are conducive to more accurate haptic measurement.

The proposed method has important potential application in unknown environment perception, dexterous grasping manipulation and other intelligent robotics domains.

This paper proposes a new deep learning model for extracting multiple haptic features and recognizing objects from multi-modal haptic images.

This paper aims to study the impacts of groundwater seepage on artificial freezing process of gravel strata, the temperature field characteristics of the strata, and the strata process, closure time and thickness evolution mechanism of the frozen wall.

In this paper several laboratory model tests were conducted, considering different groundwater seepage rate.

The results show that there is a significant coupling effect between the cold diffusion of artificial freezing pipes and groundwater seepage; when there is no seepage, temperature fields upstream and downstream of the gravel strata are symmetrically distributed, and the thickness of the frozen soil column/frozen wall is consistent during artificial freezing; groundwater seepage causes significant asymmetry in the temperature fields upstream and downstream of the gravel strata, and the greater the seepage rate, the more obvious the asymmetry; the frozen wall closure time increases linearly with the increase in the groundwater seepage rate, and specifically, the time length under seepage rate of 5.00 m d⁻¹ is 3.2 times longer than that under no seepage; due to the erosion from groundwater seepage, the thickness of the upstream frozen wall decreases linearly with the seepage velocity, while that of the downstream frozen wall increases linearly, resulting in a saddle-shaped frozen wall.

The research results are beneficial to the optimum design and risk control of artificial freezing process in gravel strata.