Search results

The purpose of this paper is to test hypotheses about the effects of economic and weather factors on the inventories of cattle, sheep and goats in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR).

An equilibrium displacement model of livestock products is combined with an inventory relation proposed by Rucker et al. (1984) to deduce hypothesis about the effects of expected price and feed costs, weather, and supply and demand shifters on herd size. Dynamics are incorporated using the partial adjustment and adaptive expectations models originally proposed by Nerlove (1956). The hypotheses are tested using both the structural equations implied by the model, and the reduced form.

Results suggest livestock inventories in IMAR in general are more responsive to weather conditions than to economic conditions. This is especially true for cattle and sheep, where isolated 1 percent changes in weather variables, namely precipitation and radiation, were found to have a much larger effect on inventory than isolated 1 percent changes in expected price and forage costs. The effects of the weather variables, moreover, were found to be different for goats than for cattle and sheep, with goat numbers decreasing with improvements in weather, and cattle and sheep numbers increasing. This suggests herders respond to poor weather in part by substituting goats for cattle and/or sheep. Price was found to have a negative effect on cattle inventory, and no effect on sheep and goat inventory. Forage costs were found to have a positive effect on cattle and sheep inventories, and no effect on goat inventory. These results suggest policies to protect grassland by controlling inventory levels must be designed carefully if they are to be effective.

The paper makes a methodological contribution in that the livestock inventory relation proposed by Rucker et al. (1984) is extended to include supply and demand shifters for livestock products in a partial-equilibrium setting where the industry in question is a net exporter of livestock products. The paper makes an empirical contribution in that additional evidence is provided on the role that price plays in inventory behavior.

This paper aims to report on a study that used the practice theory lens to understand how Chinese ethnic culture influences restaurant workers' learning through engagement in everyday work practices.

A multiple case study approach was used. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews and site observations. Thematic analysis was conducted to identify how workers learnt the sayings, doings and relatings in their workplaces.

The findings show that the ethnic culture of the participants influences and enriches their learning in practice settings such as small Chinese restaurants.

The understandings presented here need to be verified through more research in different regions and nations. In addition, cross-cultural studies on other ethnic restaurants may contribute to deeper understandings of the influences of ethnic culture on practice-based learning.

The research contributes to understanding the influence of ethnic culture on practice-based learning.

The understandings gained from the findings of this study form a useful basis for curriculum development and instructional design of training programmes for practice-based as well as work-integrated-learning components of vocational curriculum. Furthermore, awareness of the strengths of the ethnic culture is of interest to owner/managers of small Chinese restaurants to afford supportive learning environments for workers.

This paper seeks to examine an emerging synergetic model of organizational leadership that is founded on Chinese Taoism and complex adaptive system (CAS).

The paper is formed around a comparative analysis of two conceptual models – the CAS model that is founded on what is known as the new science and a more ancient model that is based on Chinese Taoism.

While the two models were developed more than 2,500 years apart, this paper shows a degree of alignment between Eastern wisdom and the latest Western scientific theory. The essence of what is characterized as Taoistic leadership emphasizes alignment with “The Way” and is based on the interplay of “Yin/Yang.” This is similar to the core elements of CAS that emphasizes the importance of “the Attractor” and the interplay of “Order/Disorder.”

This paper points out the promise of a convergence of ancient wisdom from China, with the latest new science view on organizational behavior. The outcome is a complementary leadership model that is undergirded by both ethical values and scientific support.

This paper goes one step beyond traditional analyzes by dissecting the two key streams of Chinese philosophy, comparing and contrasting these with CAS.

Chinese leaders today tend to be influenced by a leadership style that can be broadly characterized as reflecting principles of Confucianism. These principles support a more hierarchical formulation of leadership and organizations that are more centralized and less adaptive to today's dynamic environment. This paper offers an alternative leadership model, grounded in the Tao philosophy that is said to be more accommodating of the complexities of organizational behavior today. It also offers value to Western leaders in appreciation of the ancient wisdom and values in Taoism relating to today's organizational behavior and leadership.

This paper aims to reveal the tribochemical reaction mechanism on the nano-cutting interface between HMX crystal and diamond tool.

Molecular dynamics simulation of HMX crystal nano-cutting by the reactive force field is carried out in this paper. The affinity of activated atoms and friction damage at the different interface have been well identified by comparing two cutting systems with diamond tool or indenter. The analyses of reaction kinetics, decomposition products and reaction pathways are performed to reveal the underlying atomistic origins of tribocatalytic reaction on the nano-cutting interface.

The HMX crystals only undergo damage and removal in the indenter cutting, while they appear to accelerate thermal decomposition in the diamond cutting. the C-O affinity is proved to be the intrinsic reason of the tribocatalytic reaction of the HMX-diamond cutting system. The reaction activation energy of the HMX crystals in the diamond cutting system is lower, resulting in a rapid increase in the decomposition degree. The free O atoms can induce the asymmetric ring-opening mode and change the decomposition pathways, which is the underlying atomistic origins of the thermal stability of the HMX-diamond cutting system.

This paper describes a method for analyzing the tribochemical behavior of HMX and diamond, which is beneficial to study the thermal stability in the nano-cutting of HMX.

This paper aims to design an event-triggered adaptive prescribed performance controller for flexible manipulators, with the primary objectives of achieving output performance constraints and addressing communication resource limitations.

The authors propose a novel prescribed performance barrier Lyapunov function (PP-BLF) that considers both output and tracking performance constraints. The PP-BLF ensures that the system's output, transient behavior and steady-state performance, adhere to prescribed constraints. The boundary of the PP-BLF is established by an exponential function that decays over time. Notably, the PP-BLF can be applied seamlessly in unconstrained cases without necessitating controller redesign. Moreover, the controller design incorporates an event-triggered mechanism, effectively reducing the frequency of controller updates and optimizing the utilization of communication resources. Additionally, the authors employ adaptive techniques to estimate the system's unknown parameters and approximate unknown nonlinear functions using radial basis function neural networks (RBFNN). To address the challenge of “complexity explosion”, dynamic surface technology is employed.

Numerical simulations are conducted under five different cases to verify the effectiveness of the proposed controller. The results demonstrate that the controller successfully constrains the output tracking error within the prescribed performance boundary. Moreover, compared with the traditional time-triggered mechanism, the event-triggered mechanism significantly reduces the controller's update frequency, resolving the problem of limited communication resources.

The paper reduces the update frequency of control signals and improves resource utilization through an event-triggered mechanism in the form of relative thresholds. The authors recognize that the event-triggered mechanism may impact the output performance of the system. To address this challenge, the authors propose a prescribed performance Barrier Lyapunov Function (PP-BLF). The PP-BLF is designed to effectively constrain the output performance of the system, ensuring satisfactory control even when the control signal updates are reduced.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a big picture of the current context of Chinese economy, the government policies on agriculture, and the role of agricultural risks and risk management against this background.

The new Chinese economic challenges are laid out upfront. Relevant agricultural issues are then provided, with statistics; next, risks and risk management topics are introduced and controversial issues in agriculture are discussed. Relevant policies reflected in the State Council's No. 1 documents in both 2012 and 2013 are introduced and filled in each section.

The Chinese economy may slow down after decades of fast development. Food security is still a top priority, even with the income rise. Increased labor cost may transform Chinese agriculture from the traditional labor intensive field management into a modern agriculture characterized by high input use and larger scale.

The research implication is directing economists focusing on Chinese agricultural risks to grasp the opportunity of the Chinese government investing in agricultural research and development, to look more broadly, to involve multidisciplinary research with the natural sciences, and to refer to the situation of modern agriculture.

There are some policy implications. Further liberalization of land ownership is called for, as is the development of infrastructure.

This paper addresses the objectives in putting agricultural risks and risk management into the overall big picture of the Chinese economy and government policies.

This paper aims to explore the impact of business environment on high-quality economic development (HQED) and clarify the role of technological innovation and government intervention in this relationship.

Based on China’s provincial panel data from 2010 to 2019, this paper adopts the system generalized method of moments to empirically analyze the influential mechanism and heterogeneity of the business environment on HQED. Furthermore, the authors construct a dynamic panel threshold model to test the threshold effect of government intervention.

The results indicate that optimizing the business environment can significantly promote HQED, technological innovation plays a partial mediating role in the impact of business environment on HQED, mainly by enhancing the intensity of innovation input and increasing innovation output to facilitate HQED. Government intervention can regulate the impact of business environment on HQED, and there is a double threshold effect, and it possesses an inverted U-shaped feature of first promoting and then inhibiting.

This paper examines the influence path of business environment on HQED from the perspective of technological innovation and government intervention, filling the gap in the study of provincial business environment. Moreover, the conclusions furnish a theoretical basis for optimizing the business environment and facilitating the HQED in China.

The purpose of this paper is to undertake research on the relationship of firm heterogeneity and innovation diffusion performance, and the role of absorptive capacity in this relationship.

Based on the diffusion of innovation theory, enterprise heterogeneity directly affects the evaluation stage (considering whether to adopt it) and the experimental stage (observing whether it is suitable for one’s own situation) of the diffusion process. Therefore, the paper uses a structural equation model to construct the influencing factors model of enterprise heterogeneity on technology diffusion. Furthermore, questionnaires were distributed to 236 enterprises with different scales, nature and location to explore the impact of heterogeneity on technology diffusion with scientific, objective and comprehensive data.

Firm heterogeneity has a positive effect on absorptive capacity and absorptive capacity has a positive effect on technological innovation diffusion performance. Thus, absorptive capacity plays an intermediary role in the effect on enterprise heterogeneity and technological innovation diffusion performance. More interestingly, the authors get some results that are not entirely consistent with the theoretical assumptions.

Firm heterogeneity plays a central role in the process of innovation diffusion. Enterprises should build internal management platforms to enhance cooperation among employees, and establish links with other enterprises for opportunities for win-win cooperation. In addition, enterprises should control the frequency of internal activities, which will undermine the enthusiasm of enterprise members to participate in technology sharing.

This paper explores the interaction between technology potential, cooperation frequency and absorptive capacity from the perspective of systems theory. The findings enrich the theory of innovation diffusion, and explore the inherent reasons why enterprise heterogeneity affects innovation diffusion. Furthermore, the theory that intra-firm cooperation promotes innovation diffusion is not always correct.

This research aims to develop a user risk segmentation typology and implement a method that traces how user emotions adapt before, after and toward a next cosmetic procedure. It introduces the user risk segments to an empirical framework to explain re-engagement with the procedure.

A survey was self-administered to online consumer panels in the USA. The survey targeted users who had previously undertaken one of three elective procedures, namely, Botox (N = 550), hair transplant (N = 350) or liposuction (N = 350).

The typology identified timid image seekers, daring image crafters, approval-seeking socialites and mainstream image adopters. The method tracking user emotions found significant differences before, after and toward a next cosmetic procedure in the user risk segments. The framework predicted user re-engagement with the procedure for each segment.

The typology presents more sophisticated user risk profiles. The method maps adapting user emotions toward engagement pre- and post-procedure. However, findings are limited to the USA and three cosmetic procedures.

The typology offers a profile of users and their risk perceptions of a behavior. The method presents an instrument that follows how user emotions adapt. The framework advances understanding of user re-engagement with the behavior.

Arguably, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research to explore how perceived risk operates on emotional states and adaptation, which manifest user well-being and impact user behavior.

Millets are ancient grains, following wheat, that have been a fundamental source of human sustenance. These are nutrient-rich small-seeded grains that have gained prominence and admiration globally due to their super resilience in diverse climates and significant nutritional benefits. As millets are renowned for their nutritional richness, the demand for millet-based products increases. Hence, this paper aims in identifying the growing need for innovative processing techniques that not only preserve their nutritional content but also extend their shelf life.

In traditional times, heat was the only means of cooking and processing of the foods, but the amount of damage they used to cause to the sensorial and nutritional properties was huge. Millets’ sensitivity toward heat poses a challenge, as their composition is susceptible to disruption during various heat treatments and manufacturing processes. To cater to this drawback while ensuring the prolonged shelf life and nutrient preservation, various innovative approaches such as cold plasma, infrared technology and high hydrostatic pressure (HPP) processing are being widely used. These new methodologies aim on inactivating the microorganisms that have been developed within the food, providing the unprocessed, raw and natural form of nutrients in food products.

Among these approaches, nonthermal technology has emerged as a key player that prioritizes brief treatment periods and avoids the use of high temperatures. Nonthermal techniques (cold plasma, infrared radiation, HPP processing, ultra-sonication and pulsed electric field) facilitate the conservation of millet’s nutritional integrity by minimizing the degradation of heat-sensitive nutrients like vitamins and antioxidants. Acknowledging the potential applications and processing efficiency of nonthermal techniques, the food industry has embarked on substantial investments in this technology. The present study provides an in-depth exploration of the array of nonthermal technologies used in the food industry and their effects on the physical and chemical composition of diverse millet varieties.

Nonthermal techniques, compared to conventional thermal methods, are environmentally sound processes that contribute to energy conservation. However, these conveniences are accompanied by challenges, and this review not only elucidates these challenges but also focuses on the future implications of nonthermal techniques.