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This study examines the relative effects of human capital (HC), social capital (SC) and psychological capital (PC) on hotel employees’ job performance.

A sample of 417 employees from seven five-star hotels in China was recruited for the study. Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to confirm the quality of measurement structures. Stepwise regression was used to examine the relative effects of the three capitals on hotel employees’ job performance.

PC was found to be the strongest predictor of self-reported job performance (SJP) among the three capitals under investigation. Education and work experience in the HC domain affected SJP, whereas SC dimensions did not. However, only education and work experience in the HC domain were found to affect supervisor-rated job performance (RJP).

Given the impact of PC on hotel employee’s SJP, human resource managers should attend to this capital in staff recruitment, retention and training and development.

This study provides a holistic comparative lens to examine the relative contribution of the three capitals on hotel employees’ job performance. This will help to further clarify the roles played by each of the capitals in hotel service work, thus advancing the development of the theories underlying each of the three capitals.

The existence and continued growth of the invisible web creates a major challenge for search engines that are attempting to organize all of the material on the web into a form that is easily retrieved by all users. The purpose of this paper is to identify the challenges and problems underlying existing work in this area.

A discussion based on a short survey of prior work, including automated discovery of invisible web site search interfaces, automated classification of invisible web sites, label assignment and form filling, information extraction from the resulting pages, learning the query language of the search interface, building content summary for an invisible web site, selecting proper databases, integrating invisible web‐search interfaces, and accessing the performance of an invisible web site.

Existing technologies and tools for indexing the invisible web follow one of two strategies: indexing the web site interface or examining a portion of the contents of an invisible web site and indexing the results.

The paper is of value to those involved with information management.

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.

Conflict between work and family is a significant issue for entrepreneurs. The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of entrepreneurial failure on both family–work conflict (FWC) and work–family conflict (WFC) and the moderating role of perceived control of time and organizational slack based on conservation of resources (COR) theory.

This study used a questionnaire to explore the relationship between entrepreneurial failure, FWC/WFC, perceived control of time and organizational slack. Data were collected from the Chinese context in 2018 and as a result received 318 valid questionnaires, obtaining a response rate of 63.6 per cent.

The study finds that entrepreneurial failure has a significant relationship with FWC but a nonsignificant relationship with WFC and that perceived control of time and organizational slack moderate the relationship between entrepreneurial failure and FWC/WFC.

This study aligns the field of family–work (work–family) conflict and entrepreneurial failure. It addresses a research gap in the conflict literature by introducing one form of resource loss: entrepreneurial failure as a source of conflict between work and family based on COR theory and the work–home resources model. The study also enriches the literature on the social cost of entrepreneurial failure by exploring the crossover effect of entrepreneurial failure on conflicts in the family domain. Furthermore, the study advances the understanding of managing conflict between work and family after entrepreneurial failure.

The liquid lithium-lead breeding blanket in the international thermonuclear experimental reactor is one of the major international concerns and one of the potential conceptual designs for the fusion reactor.

Reduced activation ferritic-martensitic steels are being considered for application in future fusion technology as the relevant structural material, which will be in contact with the lithium-lead breeding material.

According to the test results, comprehensive evaluations of these findings have been performed to determine the wastage rates and mechanisms for the conceptual design of the fusion reactor.

From micro to macro, systematic cross-scale models are needed for the understanding of corrosion/wastage mechanisms in fusion reactor engineering applications.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the tribological properties of poly-alpha-olefin (PAO) with nano/microstructure core-shell lanthanum borate-SiO₂ composites (OCLS).

Oleic acid-capped core-shell lanthanum borate-SiO₂ composites were synthesized by an easy way. The composites were characterized by means of Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA). The friction and wear behaviors of the quenched AISI 1045 steel specimens sliding against AISI 52100 steel under the lubrication of PAO containing OCLS were comparatively investigated with PAO containing SiO₂ additive on an Optimol SRV reciprocating friction and wear tester. On the other hand, the tribological properties of the PAO containing OCLS were also investigated on four-ball tester.

The diameter of OCLS was about 20 nm, and the thickness of the SiO₂ shell was less than 5 nm. The ratio of oleic acid (OA) is about 15 percent. The PAO containing OCLS possesses much better tribological properties than that of pure PAO and PAO containing SiO₂ additive.

The PAO+OCLS possess a better friction reducing and antiwear properties than pure PAO. The new additive can improve the tribological ability of machinery.

This paper evaluates the precision of four metasearch engines (MSEs) – DuckDuckGo, Dogpile, Metacrawler and Startpage, to determine which metasearch engine exhibits the highest level of precision and to identify the metasearch engine that is most likely to return the most relevant search results.

The research is divided into two parts: the first phase involves four queries categorized into two segments (4-Q-2-S), while the second phase includes six queries divided into three segments (6-Q-3-S). These queries vary in complexity, falling into three types: simple, phrase and complex. The precision, average precision and the presence of duplicates across all the evaluated metasearch engines are determined.

The study clearly demonstrated that Startpage returned the most relevant results and achieved the highest precision (0.98) among the four MSEs. Conversely, DuckDuckGo exhibited consistent performance across both phases of the study.

The study only evaluated four metasearch engines, which may not be representative of all available metasearch engines. Additionally, a limited number of queries were used, which may not be sufficient to generalize the findings to all types of queries.

The findings of this study can be valuable for accreditation agencies in managing duplicates, improving their search capabilities and obtaining more relevant and precise results. These findings can also assist users in selecting the best metasearch engine based on precision rather than interface.

The study is the first of its kind which evaluates the four metasearch engines. No similar study has been conducted in the past to measure the performance of metasearch engines.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the serious corrosion problems of the water injection system on the offshore oil field and to study the type, and effect factors and mechanisms of corrosion on the offshore oil field in order to develop an effective corrosion inhibitor for the sea water injection system.

The corrosion of metal in a water injection system was studied by weight‐loss and electrochemical methods.The effect factors and mechanisms of corrosion on the offshore oil field were proposed from the trend of corrosion.

FeCO₃ is the main corrosion product in the water injection system of the Chengdao Offshore Oil Field. The corrosion rate of coupons in sea water injection systems reaches a maximum peak at a temperature of 50‐60°C. The corrosion rate of coupons exposed in all three water samples increased with an increase in the dissolved oxygen concentration. When the mixed ratio of sea water and produced water and well water is 1:3:1 or 1:2:2, the corrosion rate of carbon steel is lower than is the case in pure water. The electrochemical mechanism of corrosion indicates that corrosion in the well water, produced water, and sea water samples were all controlled by the oxygen absorption process, which controlled the cathodic reaction. The corrosion rate of coupons followed the ranking order: well water; produced water; sea water.

This paper provides the main corrosion product in the water injection system of the Chengdao Offshore Oil Field, and provides new information on the effect factors and mechanisms of corrosion on the offshore oil field.

This paper aims to explore pathways and issues of small business technological commercialization in China, probing the particular characteristics of the Chinese context and the ways in which innovation frameworks, institutions and business strategies are embedded.

The authors examine in detail the case of an innovative Chinese indigenous small firm engaged in innovative nanotechnology materials development. The strategies and push- and pull factors underlying the company’s innovation practices were investigated. The proposition that the institutional relationships formed to secure access to research expertise and aid business survival also influence the ways in which technology is commercialized was explored.

It was found that while technological development is company-driven, it is also highly connected to regional innovation structures and networks. This stimulates a “spin-in” rather than a university-led model of development, as this small firm embeds its technology and business development strategies in conjunction with partner organizations. Broader management and policy implications are discussed.

While China has rapidly expanded scientific research in emerging technologies such as nanotechnology, commercialization through the development of entrepreneurial technology-oriented small companies faces a series of challenges. New enterprises in the emerging area of nanotechnology encounter problems of technology transfer and intellectual property management, capital acquisition, market uncertainty and constrained access to global markets.

The impact of COVID-19 has led to a surge in the public’s reliance on the Internet for pandemic information, and the policy of home isolation has exacerbated this. This study aimed to investigate public information needs and ways of accessing and disseminating information during COVID-19 in mainland China.

This study used a qualitative research approach to conduct semi-structured interviews with 15 participants from 9 cities in mainland China about information needs and access behaviors during the COVID-19 outbreak. All interview recordings were converted into text and proofread, then coded and summarised in correspondence with the research questions using the grounded theory.

This study summarized the dynamics of public information needs during the 2.5-year pandemic and identified the difficulties in accessing certain information.

Although information needs of public health emergencies have been a hot topic during COVID-19, scant studies focus on information needs in specific countries in Asia, especially in mainland China, the first country with a major outbreak and stringent lockdown mandates. Therefore, the current study is well enriched by focusing on information demand behavior in the context of COVID-19. Possible measures for improvement were also given to existing and potential problems, taking into account the participants’ views.