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Ocean exploration is of importance and in great demand throughout the world. This results in a huge challenge in tribology in the marine environment. Moreover, polymeric materials with large molecules or macromolecules play an important role in marine equipment.

The tribological performance of sea-water-eroded polyether polyurethane (PU) was systematically studied by using a multi-specimen test machine for different durations from 0 to 60 days. Surface characterization technologies, such as scanning electric microscopy energy dispersive spectroscopy, were used to analyze the PU samples.

It can be found that the COF measured against 316 steel increases with the testing load because of the change of contact areas for the original PU samples. The effect of hydrodynamic lubrication and heat resulted in the decline of the COF with the increase in testing speed. The COF of PU sample immersed for 20 days was the lowest compared with other samples. With the immersion time increased to 60 days, the COF increased first and then decreased. The reduced COF of PU resulted in improved anti-wear performance of the PU sample.

These results enhanced the comprehension of the tribological performances of PU immersed in sea-water.

Music mood is an important metadata type on online music repositories and stream music services worldwide. Many existing studies on mood metadata have focused on music websites and services in the Western world to the exclusion of those serving users in other cultures. The purpose of this paper is to bridge this gap by exploring mood labels on influential Chinese music websites.

Mood labels and the associated song titles were collected from six Chinese music websites, and analyzed in relation to mood models and findings in the literature. An online music listening test was conducted to solicit users’ feedback on the mood labels on two popular Chinese music websites. Mood label selections on 30 songs from 64 Chinese listeners were collected and compared to those given by the two websites.

Mood labels, although extensively employed on Chinese music websites, may be insufficient in meeting listeners’ needs. More mood labels of high arousal semantics are needed. Song languages and user familiarity to the songs show influence on users’ selection of mood labels given by the websites.

Suggestions are proposed for future development of mood metadata and mood-enabled user interfaces in the context of global online music access.

This paper provides insights on understanding the mood metadata on Chinese music websites and uniquely contributes to existing knowledge of culturally diversified music access.

Three-dimensional (3D) food printing is an innovative technology used to customize food products through the integration of digital technology and food ingredients. The purpose of this study is to assess the current state of research in the field of 3D food printing, identify trending topics and identify promising future research directions.

This bibliometric review systematically evaluates the field of 3D food printing using data from published literature in the Web of Science database. After reference screening, 812 articles were included in the analysis.

The result reveals that research in 3D food printing primarily focuses on the optimization and characterization of mechanical and rheological properties of food inks and that post-printing processing, such as laser treatment, has emerged recently as an important consideration in 3D food printing. However, extant works lack animal and human studies that demonstrate the functionality of 3D-printed food.

This sophisticated bibliometric analysis uncovered the most studied current research topics and the leading figures in the area of 3D food printing, providing promising future research directions.

This paper aims to explore the impact of green finance on the heterogeneity of enterprise green technology innovation and the underlying mechanism between them.

Using the data of China's A-share listed enterprises from 2008 to 2020 and the fixed effect model, the authors empirically explore the relationship and mechanism between green finance and green technology innovation by constructing the green finance index while considering both the quality and quantity of innovation.

The study suggests that green finance is positively related to the quality and quantity of enterprise green technology innovation, while green finance is more effective in stimulating the quality of green technology innovation than quantity. In addition, alleviating financial mismatch and improving the quality of environmental information disclosure are core mechanisms during the process of green finance facilitating green technology innovation. Furthermore, green finance exerts a more positive effect on the quality and quantity of green technology innovation with large-size enterprises, heavily polluting industries and enterprises in the eastern region.

This paper enriches the literature on green finance and green technology innovation and provides practical significance for green finance implementation.

The present study aims to ascertain the relationships between subordinate moqi and leader behaviors, by primarily discussing how and when subordinate moqi is associated with leadership empowerment.

A self-report study was conducted by recruiting 334 employees from 13 firms. All concepts were rated on a seven-point Likert-type response scale. Linear regression analysis (conducted in MPLUS 7) was conducted to verify the hypotheses.

First, subordinate moqi showed positive association with empowerment. Second, trust-in-supervisor mediated the relationships between subordinate moqi and empowerment. Third, subordinates' power distance orientation (PDO) could moderate the subordinate moqi – leader empowerment relationship. When subordinates reported higher PDO, the relationships between subordinate moqi and empowerment were more robust; likewise, subordinate moqi would have more significantly indirectly impacted empowerment via trust-in-supervisor.

Though researchers have discussed the impacts of subordinate moqi on subordinates' outcomes, the impact of subordinate moqi on supervisors' attitudes or behaviors remains unclear. The relationships between subordinate moqi and supervisor empowerment behaviors are empirically ascertained by emphasizing the leader-subordinate dyadic process. The findings here suggested that subordinate moqi boosted subordinates' trust-in-supervisor, and moqi would also predict the behaviors of leader empowerment. This study extended the PDO literature by identifying the moderating role of PDO in the subordinate moqi – leader empowerment behavior relationship.

The unitized curtain wall system (UCWS), one of the prefabricated technologies, is increasingly attracting attention in the Hong Kong construction industry. However, this innovative technology still lacks on-site implementation in high-rise residential buildings. To promote its development, this study aims at identifying the influential factors of UCWS adoption in Hong Kong's high-rise residential buildings from a multi-stakeholder perspective.

Factors were first selected through an in-depth literature review and a semi-structured interview. Then the factors were validated through a questionnaire survey using Cronbach's Alpha Reliability Test. Next, the factors were ranked regarding their importance using mean-score ranking and standard deviation. Meanwhile, different stakeholders were clustered using an experimental factor analysis (EFA) model to find the shared preferences (namely common factors).

The result shows that reduction of construction time (B1) and insufficient site storage area (C1) are the most important factors. The six stakeholder groups were clustered into two segments. B1 and improved quality control are the shared interests. While C1 and the need of specification change are the common concerns.

There are two major breakthroughs in this study. First is the novelty of research objects. UCWS, particularly its application preference in high-rise residential buildings, has rarely been studied, yet it is urgently required. Second is the novel research perspective. The influential factors were studied from a multi-stakeholder perspective. Not only the significant factors for six specific stakeholders but also the shared preference for stakeholder groups was identified. The findings contribute to promoting UCWS more targeted, efficient and comprehensive, as well as demonstrating the collaborative possibilities of multi-stakeholders.

The unitized curtain wall system (UCWS), a symbol of modern architecture, is gaining popularity among prefabricated components. Previous studies have focused on both construction technology advances and material selection strategies to facilitate the UCWS. However, the topic of client satisfaction, which drives industry development by targeting clients' demands, has gone unnoticed. Therefore, the current study aims to investigate client satisfaction with UCWS products in Hong Kong by finding its influential factors.

A systematic review was employed to first identify the influential factors. A semi-structured interview was employed to validate the reliability of the extracted factors. The machine learning algorithm Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) and the Pearson correlation were then employed to rank the importance and correlation of factors based on the 1–5 Likert scale scores obtained through a questionnaire survey.

The findings revealed that “reduction in construction time” and “reduction in construction waste” are the most important factors and have a strong positive influence on client satisfaction.

Unlike previous studies, the present study focused on a novel research topic and introduces an objective analysis process using machine learning algorithms. The findings contribute to narrowing the knowledge gap regarding client preference for UCWS products from both individual and collaborative perspectives, providing decision-makers with an objective, quantitative and thorough reference before making investments in the curtain wall management development.

This study analyzes the causal effect of education on consumers' cognition and attitudes toward genetically modified (GM) foods.

The authors propose an analytical framework to clarify the role of education levels and education content in the formation of attitudes toward GM foods and utilize education reforms in China as natural experiments to test the theoretical predictions empirically. For education levels, the authors use Compulsory Education Law's implementation to construct the instrument variable. For education content, the authors utilize the revision of the biology textbook in the Eighth Curriculum Reform to implement staggered difference-in-difference estimation. The authors use two national household surveys, the China Genuine Progress indicator Survey (CGPiS) and the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) of 2017, combined with provincial-level data of education reforms.

The education level, instrumented by the Compulsory Education Law's implementation, has an insignificant effect on consumers' cognition and attitudes toward GM foods, whereas the acquisition of formal education on genetic science, introduced by the Eighth Curriculum Reform, has a statistically significant and positive influence.

This is the first study to investigate the causal effects of education level and content on consumers' cognition and attitude toward GM foods using national representative data. It is also the first to evaluate the long-term effects of the biology textbook reform in China. The findings help open the black box of how education shapes people's preferences and attitudes and highlight the significance of formal biology education in formulating consumers' willingness to accept GM foods.

In the big data era, image compression is of significant importance in today’s world. Importantly, compression of large sized images is required for everyday tasks; including electronic data communications and internet transactions. However, two important measures should be considered for any compression algorithm: the compression factor and the quality of the decompressed image. In this paper, we use Frei-Chen bases technique and the Modified Run Length Encoding (RLE) to compress images. The Frei-Chen bases technique is applied at the first stage in which the average subspace is applied to each 3 × 3 block. Those blocks with the highest energy are replaced by a single value that represents the average value of the pixels in the corresponding block. Even though Frei-Chen bases technique provides lossy compression, it maintains the main characteristics of the image. Additionally, the Frei-Chen bases technique enhances the compression factor, making it advantageous to use. In the second stage, RLE is applied to further increase the compression factor. The goal of using RLE is to enhance the compression factor without adding any distortion to the resultant decompressed image. Integrating RLE with Frei-Chen bases technique, as described in the proposed algorithm, ensures high quality decompressed images and high compression rate. The results of the proposed algorithms are shown to be comparable in quality and performance with other existing methods.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of ZnO on the structure and properties of micro-arc oxidation (MAO) coating on rare earth magnesium alloy under large concentration gradient.

The macroscopic and microscopic morphology, thickness, surface roughness, chemical composition and structure of the coating were characterized by different characterization methods. The corrosion resistance of the film was studied by electrochemical and scanning Kelvin probe force microscopy. The results show that the addition of ZnO can significantly improve the compactness and corrosion resistance of the MAO coating, but the high concentration of ZnO will cause microcracks, which will reduce the corrosion resistance to a certain extent.

When the concentration of zinc oxide is 8 g/L, the compactness and corrosion resistance of the coating are the best, and the thickness of the coating is positively correlated with the concentration of ZnO.

Too high concentration of ZnO reduces the performance of MAO coating.

The MAO coating prepared by adding ZnO has good corrosion resistance. Combined with organic coatings, it can be applied in corrosive marine environments, such as ship parts and hulls. To a certain extent, it can reduce the economic loss caused by corrosion.

The effect of ZnO on the corrosion resistance of MAO coating in electrolyte solution was studied systematically, and the conclusion was new to the common knowledge.