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Aircraft assembly is the crucial part of aircraft manufacturing, and to meet the high-precision and high-efficiency requirements, cooperative measurement consisting of multiple measurement instruments and automatic assisted devices is being adopted. To achieve the complete data of all assembly features, measurement devices need to be placed at different positions, and the flexible and efficient transfer relies on Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) and robots in the large-size space and close range. This paper aims to improve the automatic station transfer in accuracy and flexibility.

A transferring system with Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and markers is established. The map coupling for navigation is optimized. Markers are distributed according to the accumulated uncertainties. The path planning method applied to the collaborative measurement is proposed for better accuracy. The motion planning method is optimized for better positioning accuracy.

A transferring system is constructed and the system is verified in the laboratory. Experimental results show that the proposed system effectively improves positioning accuracy and efficiency, which improves the station transfer for the cooperative measurement.

A Transferring system for collaborative measurement is proposed. The optimized navigation method extends the application of visual markers. With this system, AGV is capable of the cooperative measurement of large aircraft structural parts.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether income diversification moderates the relationship between human capital and bank performance.

The study uses a sample of 53 banks and panel data for the years 2010–2018. The hypotheses are tested through hierarchical multiple regression and the choice between fixed effect and random effect estimation is based on the results of the Hausman test.

The study finds that human capital and income diversification significantly influence bank performance; however, the direction of the causality varies. While human capital has a positive effect, income diversification has a negative effect. Additionally, the interaction term has a negative and significant effect on bank performance, inferring that income diversification has an antagonistic effect on the human capital and bank performance relationship. For the control variable, liquidity and asset quality negatively affects bank performance while capitalization has a positive effect.

Human capital was measured as human capital efficiency (HCE), which is a quantitative measure of human capital, hence future studies can use qualitative measures. Also, the study focused on commercial banks in East Africa, future researcher may possibly consider other regions and industries, which would shed more insights.

The results of this paper provide valuable insights. Bank managers can get a better understanding of the impact of human capital on bank performance, and the need to invest more in human capital development. Further, the study cautions bank managers that engaging in non-lending activities might destroy the economic value of human capital and ultimately lower performance. The study also recommends that policymakers should address the obstacles to banks' income diversification, for instance relaxing regulations restricting diversification; this might enable banks to leverage related financial service activities for optimal utilization of human capital and improve banks' profitability.

While a good number of previous studies investigated the direct effect of human capital and income diversification on the performance of banks, this study examines the moderating role of income diversification on the relationship between human capital and performance of banks in East Africa.

This study examines the connection between different digital-twin characteristics and organizational control. Specifically, the study aims to examine whether the digital-twin characteristics exploration, guidance and gamification will affect formal and social control.

The study is based on an analysis of survey results from 139 respondents comprising applied university students who use digital twins.

The results offer an interesting contribution to the literature. The authors consider the digital-twin characteristics exploration, guidance and gamification and investigate their contribution to two types of organizational controls: formal and social. The results show that two characteristics, exploration and gamification, affect the extent to which digital twins can be utilized for social control. Exploration and guidance’s role is significant concerning the extent to which digital twins can be utilized for formal control.

This study contributes to literature by considering multiple digital-twin characteristics and their contribution to two different control outcomes. First, it diverges from previous technical-oriented research by investigating digital twins in a human context. Second, the study is the first to examine digital twins’ effects from an organizational control perspective systematically.

This paper aims to comprehensively clarify the research status of thermal transport of supercritical aviation kerosene, with particular interests in the effect of cracking on heat transfer.

A brief review of current research on supercritical aviation kerosene is presented in views of the surrogate model of hydrocarbon fuels, chemical cracking mechanism of hydrocarbon fuels, thermo-physical properties of hydrocarbon fuels, turbulence models, flow characteristics and thermal performances, which indicates that more efforts need to be directed into these topics. Therefore, supercritical thermal transport of n-decane is then computationally investigated in the condition of thermal pyrolysis, while the ASPEN HYSYS gives the properties of n-decane and pyrolysis products. In addition, the one-step chemical cracking mechanism and SST k-ω turbulence model are applied with relatively high precision.

The existing surrogate models of aviation kerosene are limited to a specific scope of application and their thermo-physical properties deviate from the experimental data. The turbulence models used to implement numerical simulation should be studied to further improve the prediction accuracy. The thermal-induced acceleration is driven by the drastic density change, which is caused by the production of small molecules. The wall temperature of the combustion chamber can be effectively reduced by this behavior, i.e. the phenomenon of heat transfer deterioration can be attenuated or suppressed by thermal pyrolysis.

The issues in numerical studies of supercritical aviation kerosene are clearly revealed, and the conjugation mechanism between thermal pyrolysis and convective heat transfer is initially presented.

With China’s economic growth slowing down and the growth rate of fiscal revenue decreasing, the pressure on local government debts is further increasing. Under this background, it is of great significance to clarify the relation between local government debts and China’s economic growth in order to give full play to the positive role of local debts in stabling growth. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Therefore, this paper explores the impact of Chinese local government debt on economic growth from theoretical and empirical aspects, respectively, and compares the regional differences between different debts and economic growth dynamics.

In the theoretical model part, this paper constructs a three-sector dynamic game model, under the two circumstances of whether local government is subject to debt constraints, and examines the relation between local government debt and economic growth and other variables through numerical simulation. Research shows that when the government is not constrained by debt, there is an inverted “U” relation between government debt and economic growth. When the government is constrained by debt, the economic growth rate gradually decreases as the government debt increases.

In the theoretical analysis part, this paper tries to estimate the amount of local debts under different calibers and examines the impact of different types of local government debts on China’s economic growth and their regional differences. The results show that excessive accumulation of government hidden debts in the eastern region is not conducive to economic growth, while explicit debts in the central and western regions significantly contribute to local economic growth. The results of empirical analysis are basically consistent with the predictions of the theoretical model.

Global climate change characterized by an increase in temperature has become the focus of attention all over the world. China is a sensitive and significant area of global climate change. This paper specifically aims to examine the association between agricultural productivity and the climate change by using China’s provincial agricultural input–output data from 2000 to 2019 and the climatic data of the ground meteorological stations.

The authors used the three-stage spatial Durbin model (SDM) model and entropy method for analysis of collected data; further, the authors also empirically tested the climate change marginal effect on agricultural productivity by using ordinary least square and SDM approaches.

The results revealed that climate change has a significant negative effect on agricultural productivity, which showed significance in robustness tests, including index replacement, quantile regression and tail reduction. The results of this study also indicated that by subdividing the climatic factors, annual precipitation had no significant impact on the growth of agricultural productivity; further, other climatic variables, including wind speed and temperature, had a substantial adverse effect on agricultural productivity. The heterogeneity test showed that climatic changes ominously hinder agricultural productivity growth only in the western region of China, and in the eastern and central regions, climate change had no effect.

The findings of this study highlight the importance of various social connections of farm households in designing policies to improve their responses to climate change and expand land productivity in different regions. The study also provides a hypothetical approach to prioritize developing regions that need proper attention to improve crop productivity.

The paper explores the impact of climate change on agricultural productivity by using the climatic data of China. Empirical evidence previously missing in the body of knowledge will support governments and researchers to establish a mechanism to improve climate change mitigation tools in China.

Digital transformation shapes industries and influences the forms of collaboration between companies. This study aims to investigate digital business strategy as a key to facilitating collaboration beyond organizational boundaries.

The study focuses on the connection between digital business strategy and collaboration performance. The authors identify five types of digital business strategy elements based on the literature: development, objectives, resources, management capabilities, and digital leadership. The authors then studied the implications of these elements for collaboration performance using a survey. The study’s empirical data were collected from manufacturing and service companies, and 202 valid responses were received. The implications of the research elements were tested through regression analysis, which included the moderating effects of digitally enabled performance measurement.

The theoretical research framework identifies digital business strategy as a key determinant of collaboration performance, thus advancing the understanding of how companies can utilize digital business strategies and achieve enhanced collaboration performance. The results also show that the effect of digital business strategy on collaboration performance may be moderated by digitally enabled performance management.

The results suggest that management capabilities associated with digital strategy are a crucial element in positively influencing collaboration performance. Further, digital strategy-related resources can be better managed with digitally enabled performance measurement system, which is reflected in improved collaborative performance. Thus, companies should invest in management capabilities and connect their digital business strategies and performance measurement systems to develop collaboration in digital transformation.

The study is among the first to translate an empirical understanding of the digital transformation of small and medium-sized companies into a conceptual framework of a digital business strategy.

As a crucial institutional form established since the Chinese economic reform, the system of competitive local governments has been shaping the characteristics of China's socialist market economy to a considerable degree.

This study not only adopts the view of existing studies that attribute the economic motive of local governments to rent and consider land public finance as a means through which local governments carry out strategic investment but also attempts to further develop the view within a Marxist analytical framework.

As a result, the local governments have helped to maintain an incredibly high investment rate over a considerable period of time, facilitating the continuous, rapid growth of the Chinese economy.

This study concludes that China's local governments function as the productive allocator and user of rent in the strategic investment based on land public finance and thereby embed themselves in the relative surplus-value production initially arising from competition amongst enterprises, forming the dual structure of relative surplus-value production unique to China's economy.

This paper discusses the urban management challenges in the Greater Kuala Lumpur area. Before examining Greater Kuala Lumpur's economic and social environment, we will look at the factors that make it a competitive and fiscally sound entity. When considering urban development and redevelopment, we consider how proposed and ongoing projects, as well as plans, hierarchical links, and road networks, contributed to the increase. Because there is no urban growth boundary, land use change and rural encroachment, as well as environmental degradation and the impact of national economic projects on urban expansion, are both rapid and linear in the analysis. This paper also considers how to manage linear development that results in the creation of new suburbs. Finally, we propose strategies for achieving sustainable urban expansion and management by balancing the financial and governance capacities of Greater Kuala Lumpur local governments.

Lubricating oil leakage is a common issue in thermal power plant operation sites, requiring prompt equipment maintenance. The real-time detection of leakage occurrences could avoid disruptive consequences caused by the lack of timely maintenance. Currently, inspection operations are mostly carried out manually, resulting in time-consuming processes prone to health and safety hazards. To overcome such issues, this paper proposes a machine vision-based inspection system aimed at automating the oil leakage detection for improving the maintenance procedures.

The approach aims at developing a novel modular-structured automatic inspection system. The image acquisition module collects digital images along a predefined inspection path using a dual-light (i.e. ultraviolet and blue light) illumination system, deploying the fluorescence of the lubricating oil while suppressing unwanted background noise. The image processing module is designed to detect the oil leakage within the digital images minimizing detection errors. A case study is reported to validate the industrial suitability of the proposed inspection system.

On-site experimental results demonstrate the capabilities to complete the automatic inspection procedures of the tested industrial equipment by achieving an oil leakage detection accuracy up to 99.13%.

The proposed inspection system can be adopted in industrial context to detect lubricant leakage ensuring the equipment and the operators safety.

The proposed inspection system adopts a computer vision approach, which deploys the combination of two separate sources of light, to boost the detection capabilities, enabling the application for a variety of particularly hard-to-inspect industrial contexts.