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In systems theory, authors such as Klir, Miller, Yang, Lin and Ma, Backlund, etc. have developed different definitions of the system concept in function of both the type of variables used and the type of connection between variables. The concept of the subsystem, however, tends not to vary substantially from author to author, and this leads to a new system definition based on the subsystem concept, analysing the possible cases of interaction between subsystems and obtaining results for the overall system from an analysis of its subsystems.

The purpose of this paper is to review the reform of China's science and technology (S&T) system and the linkage between globalization and the requirements of China's S&T system during the past two decades.

The authorities and responsibilities of the government in macro administration of S&T are discussed.

It is suggested that strengthening and optimizing the administration mechanism should be the top priority.

This paper usefully looks at future and further reform in the S&T system for China, and by reviewing the history of reforming, analyzes the new problems which will be confronted at first.

The coping of demand oscillation is an important challenge in dynamic transport planning. A reliable request fulfillment must be provided even if the number of incoming requests temporarily climbs over the expected demand and resource scarceness appears. The aim of this paper is to propose an innovative planning approach that enables a transportation fleet to maintain a sufficiently high percentage of timely‐fulfilled customer requests even in demand peak situations.

The effectiveness of the new approach is verified in computational simulation experiments. Quantifications for the system's responsiveness are proposed. Then, the quantified knowledge about the intermediate responsiveness is exploited to adjust the decision model representing the next schedule update task in a rolling horizon re‐planning.

The observed simulation results suggest the suitability of the proposed approach. An adjustment of the plan update model supports the maintenance of a high percentage of timely completed requests during and after the demand peak.

The generic approach presented and evaluated here motivates an adaptation to other more practical problem settings, in order to show its general applicability.

The proposed methodology contributes to the current demand for computational support for increasing the responsiveness of logistic systems.

The original contribution of this paper is the autonomous feedback‐controlled adjustment of decision preferences which enables a rolling horizon re‐planning framework to maintain a stable output performance even if the input oscillates significantly over time.

1. BLCMP has just published a document describing the Project's use of the MARC format:‐ BLCMP MARC Manual: input procedures for monographs cataloguing. With supplement: music and sound recordings. BLCMP, 1972. £1.50. ISBN 0 903154 03X. This is primarily an instruction manual for BLCMP staff but is likely to be of interest both to other MARC users and to those contemplating automation of cataloguing. The manual parallels the BNB MARC Documentation Service publication no.5; it describes the format for cataloguing monographs as it is applied by BLCMP, and shows how, on occasion, this differs from BNB practice. The format in use for serials cataloguing has already been described in MASS Working Paper no.1, 1970. In the United States the tendency appears to be for the Library of Congress to develop different, not necessarily compatible, formats for different media. In the UK, however, it is regarded as important, largely for economy of program development, that all media should conform to a basic format with extensions to it for special media. This is the case with the BLCMP cataloguing format for music and sound recordings and serials.

Taking into consideration the current human need for agricultural produce such as rice that requires water for growth, the optimal consumption of this valuable liquid is important. Unfortunately, the traditional use of water by humans for agricultural purposes contradicts the concept of optimal consumption. Therefore, designing and implementing a mechanized irrigation system is of the highest importance. This system includes hardware equipment such as liquid altimeter sensors, valves and pumps which have a failure phenomenon as an integral part, causing faults in the system. Naturally, these faults occur at probable time intervals, and the probability function with exponential distribution is used to simulate this interval. Thus, before the implementation of such high-cost systems, its evaluation is essential during the design phase.

The proposed approach included two main steps: offline and online. The offline phase included the simulation of the studied system (i.e. the irrigation system of paddy fields) and the acquisition of a data set for training machine learning algorithms such as decision trees to detect, locate (classification) and evaluate faults. In the online phase, C5.0 decision trees trained in the offline phase were used on a stream of data generated by the system.

The proposed approach is a comprehensive online component-oriented method, which is a combination of supervised machine learning methods to investigate system faults. Each of these methods is considered a component determined by the dimensions and complexity of the case study (to discover, classify and evaluate fault tolerance). These components are placed together in the form of a process framework so that the appropriate method for each component is obtained based on comparison with other machine learning methods. As a result, depending on the conditions under study, the most efficient method is selected in the components. Before the system implementation phase, its reliability is checked by evaluating the predicted faults (in the system design phase). Therefore, this approach avoids the construction of a high-risk system. Compared to existing methods, the proposed approach is more comprehensive and has greater flexibility.

By expanding the dimensions of the problem, the model verification space grows exponentially using automata.

Unlike the existing methods that only examine one or two aspects of fault analysis such as fault detection, classification and fault-tolerance evaluation, this paper proposes a comprehensive process-oriented approach that investigates all three aspects of fault analysis concurrently.

Describes issues relevant to multilevel systems and, as a particular case, living systems analysed from the entities point of view. As attributes, behaviours, sub‐systems, etc., entities are primitive terms. For this reason, in examining issues such as the influences between entities, look indirectly at issues referring to different levels in the system. This notion was also extended in considering the environment system and analysing the different relationships between the system and the environment system.

One of the common approaches to improve systems reliability is using standby redundancy. Although many works are available in the literature on the applications of standby redundancy, the system components are assumed to be independent of each other. But, in reality, the system components can be dependent on one another, causing the failure of each component to affect the failure rate of the remaining active components. In this paper, a standby two-unit system is considered, assuming a dependency between the switch and its associated active component.

This paper assumes that the failures between the switch and its associated active component follow the Marshall–Olkin exponential bivariate exponential distribution. Then, the reliability analysis of the system is done using the continuous-time Markov chain method.

The derived equations application to determine the system steady-state availability, system reliability and sensitivity analysis on the mean time to failure is demonstrated using a numerical illustration.

All previous models assumed independency between the switch and the associated active unit in the standby redundancy approach. In this paper, the switch and its associated component are assumed to be dependent on each other.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the changes in its importance due to the maintenance and repair of components.

In this paper, a concept of time-varying importance measure is proposed to solve the problem of component importance change caused by maintenance. When the system is broken-down, the probability difference between the component works well after repairing and the component break down before repairing is solved, this difference is measured as an index of time-varying importance method. Then, the approach has been verified by the CNC machine tool.

The paper provides a method to analyze the importance of changes of components in the system due to maintenance. The time-varying importance measure can evaluate the component importance anytime during its whole life span, and it has the ability to find out the most responsible component for a system failure in the actual production process. What is more, it provides guidance for the next maintenance work.

The proposed method can guide the next maintenance time according to the change of component performance caused by each maintenance activity of the manufacturing system, and avoid the waste of resources caused by repeated maintenance.

China's research and development (R&D) internationalization has grown rapidly in the 1990s. However, academic research has not kept pace with it. The purpose of this paper is to study the development characteristics and evolution pattern of China's R&D internationalization, explore its challenges to China's traditional science and technology (S&T) system, and to give some suggestions for the reform of China's S&T system as well.

An in‐depth case study about Huawei is conducted by focusing on its strategy and development pattern of overseas R&D activities. It involves two methods of data collection: comprehensive interviews and administrative records and documents of the company. More information about China's R&D internationalization and S&T system is obtained through literature review, policy documents collection and a previous questionnaire survey of 28 leading Chinese firms.

Based on the literature review, previous survey and study of the strategy and development of R&D internationalization of Huawei, a three‐stage model is proposed to explain the evolution of R&D internationalization in China. The challenges to the traditional S&T system in China are summarized. In the future, R&D internationalization should be considered as an important factor in the reform of China's S&T system. Some suggestions are given as well.

This paper puts forward a three‐stage model to explain the evolution of R&D internationalization in China, which may add both academic and practical value to the field of internationalization of R&D. It brings some valuable implications to the reform of China's S&T system as well. This paper analyzes the challenges and opportunities brought by R&D internationalization to China's S&T system on the basis of case study and policy documents collection. The suggestions of the reform of China's S&T system are presented.