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This paper traces the incorporation of western educational histories in the development of normal-school curricula during the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China (1901–1944). It uses publication networks to show how the study of comparative educational history facilitated the international circulation of knowledge in the teaching profession, and how the “uses” of educational history were shaped by larger geopolitical forces.

This paper analyzes the international exchange of texts between normal schools in China and Japan and, subsequently, between normal schools in China and the United States. A database of 107 publications in the field of western educational history that were adopted in China reveals specific patterns of textual citation, cross-reference, and canon-formation in the field of educational historiography.

With conclusions derived from a combination of social network analysis and clustering analysis, this paper identifies three broad stages in China's development of normal-school curricula in comparative educational history: “Japan as Teacher,” “transitional period” and “America as Teacher.”

Statistical analysis can reveal citation and reference patterns but not readers' understanding of the deeper meaning of texts – in this case, textbooks on the subject of western educational history. In addition, the types of publications analyzed in this study are relatively limited, the articles on the history of education in journals have not become the main objects of this study.

This paper uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to uncover the transnational circulation of knowledge in the field of comparative educational history during its formative period in China.

This paper aims to study the electrochemical corrosion performance of ultrafine-grained (UFG) Cu bulk in 0.5 M NaCl solution.

UFG Cu bulk were prepared by impacting at −196°C and following heat treatment. The electrochemical corrosion behaviors of coarse-grained (CG), impacted and subsequently annealed at 190°C Cu bulks were studied.

All the bulks displayed typical active-passive-transpassive behaviors (dual passive films without stable passive regions). The resistance to corrosion of impacted Cu bulk was notably superior to that of CG Cu bulk, and subsequently annealing further improved its corrosion resistance.

Except for mechanical properties, corrosion performance has been considered to be one of the most important aspects in bulk UFG metallic materials research for the prospective engineering applications.

Cryogenic impacting could effectively reduce grain size of CG Cu bulk to UFG scale and induce high density dislocation. Subsequent annealing resulted in a further decrease of grain size even to nanoscale, as well as nanometer twins. The grain refinement, high density dislocation and annealing twins effectively enhance the passivation capability, resulting in an increase in the corrosion resistance.

Electricity plays an important role in the economic condition of any country. Nowadays, Pakistan is badly affected by shortage of electricity, which directly affected the economic growth of state. The purpose of this study is to propose an improved grey model DGPM(1,1,N) to forecast Pakistan's production of electricity, installed capacity and consumption.

To significantly simulate and predict accuracy, the discrete grey polynomial model DGPM(1,1,N) is improved with new information priority accumulation. The particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is used for parameter optimization. The value of parameter is adjusted into improved grey model. By adjusting the parameter value in the model, the accuracy of prediction is enhanced.

The installed capacity of electricity needs more attention to improvement through implementation of effective polices, resolving major issues and funding scheme to fulfill the electricity demand of country. And improved DGPM(1,1,N) has better accuracy than original DGPM(1,1,N), DGM(1,1), nongrey models, linear regression and Holt–Winters methods.

This paper provides a practical and efficient improved grey method to predict the electricity production, consumption and installed capacity in Pakistan. This research and suggestion will help Pakistani government to formulate better policies to decrease the consumption of electricity and increase the installed capacity of electricity.

This paper not only improves the grey model with accumulation generation operator but also forecasts Pakistan's electricity production, installed capacity and consumption. It is a new idea to predict the installed capacity of electricity and the findings provide suggestions for the government to make policies.

This paper aims to focus on an assessment of the electrochemical corrosion performance of bulk NC copper in a variety of corrosion environments.

The electrochemical corrosion behavior of bulk nanocrystalline (NC) copper prepared by inert gas condensation and in situ warm compress technique was studied by using potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy tests in de-aerated 0.1 M NaOH solution.

NC copper exhibited a typical active-passive-transpassive behavior with the formation of duplex passive films, which was qualitatively similar to coarse-grain (CG) copper. Although a compact passive film formed on NC copper surface, the corrosion resistance of NC copper was lower in comparison with CG copper. The increase in corrosion rate for NC copper was mainly attributed to the high activity of surface atoms and intergranular atoms. These atoms led to an enhancement of passive ability and an increase of dissolution rate of passive film in oxygen-deficiency solution. For NC copper, the corrosion resistance decreased as grain size increased in NC range.

The difference in corrosion resistance between bulk NC copper and its CG counterpart is dependent upon the corrosion solution. In a previous work, the potentiodynamic polarization tests revealed that NC copper bulks (grain size 48, 68, 92 nm) had identical corrosion resistance to CG copper bulk in naturally aerated 0.1 M NaOH solution. The results might be related to the dissolved oxygen in the medium.

The design and performance of X-band high power 3-bit phase shifter which has been fabricated in 0.25µm GaN HEMT technology are presented.

Each bit of this phase shifter design is based on high-pass/low-pass topology.

For all eight states, the insertion loss is 12.5 ± 2.5 dB from 8-10 GHz and the input return loss is better than 9 dB over 8-10 GHz. The 3-bit phase shifter achieves a RMS phase error of 1o at 8.5 GHz and a RMS amplitude error less than 1.1dB. The measured continuous wave power data demonstrates typical input RF power handing capability of 32 dBm at 8 GHz.

This is to the authors’ knowledge the first published results of 3-bit AlGaN/GaN phase shifter.

The deposition of particles onto a substrate during the cold spraying (CS) process relies on severe plastic deformation, so there are various micro-defects induced by insufficient deformation and severe crushing. To solve the problems, many post-treat techniques have been used to improving the quality by eliminating the micro-defects. This paper aims to help scholars and engineers in this field a better and systematic understand of CS technology by summarizing the post-treatment technologies that have been investigated recently years.

This review summarizes the types of micro-defects and introduces the effect of micro-defects on the properties of CS coating/additive manufactured, illustrates the post-treatment technologies and its effect on the microstructure and performances, and finally outlooks the future development trends of post-treatments for CS.

There are significant discoveries in post-treatment technology to change the performance of cold spray deposits. There are also many limitations for post-treatment methods, including improved performance and limitations of use. Thus, there is still a strong requirement for further improvement. Hybrid post-treatment may be a more ideal method, as it can eliminate more defects than a single method. The proposed ultrasonic impact treatment could be an alternative method, as it can densify and flatten the CS deposits.

It is the first time to reveal the influence factors on the performances of CS deposits from the perspective of microdefects, and proposed corresponding well targeted post-treatment methods, which is more instructive for improving the performances of CS deposits.

Prior studies have shown that terminology support can improve health information retrieval but have not taken into account the characteristics of the user performing the search. In this chapter, the impact of translating queries’ terms between lay and medico-scientific terminology, in users with different levels of health literacy and topic familiarity, is evaluated. Findings demonstrate that medico-scientific queries demand more from the users and are mostly aimed at health professionals. In addition, these queries retrieve documents that are less readable and less well understood by users. Despite this, medico-scientific queries are associated with higher precision in the top-10 retrieved documents results and tend slightly to generate knowledge with less incorrect contents, the researchers concluded that search engines should provide query suggestions with medico-scientific terminology, whenever the user is able to digest it, that is, in users above the lowest levels of health literacy and topic familiarity. On the other hand, retrieval systems should provide lay alternative queries in users with inadequate health literacy or in those unfamiliar with a topic. In fact, the quantity of incorrect contents in the knowledge that emerges from a medico-scientific session tends to decrease with topic familiarity and health literacy. In terms of topic familiarity, the opposite happens with Graded Average Precision. Moreover, users most familiar with a topic tend to have higher motivational relevance with medico-scientific queries than with lay queries. This work is the first to consider user context features while studying the impact of a query processing technique in several aspects of the retrieval process, including the medical accuracy of the acquired knowledge.

This paper aims to investigate the economic consequence of the tax reductive strategy on stock price. The authors’ theory, empirically reinforced, suggests managerial tax aggressiveness endangers the corporation through a heightened risk in stock price crashing. Information opacity worsens the situation by reinforcing the relationship. Policymakers should emphasize two aspects: market openness and tighter institutional monitoring. The evidence shown in this paper demonstrates that these two weaken the tax aggressiveness impact on risk of a crashing stock price.

The sample in this paper consists of 9,702 observations from listed firms from 2008 to 2013 in China. The tax rate is manually collected and all the other original data used in this study are sourced from Wind and China Capital Market and Accounting Research databases. Both logistic regression and ordinary least squares regression methods are used to test the hypothesis in this paper.

One key insight is in tax aggressiveness to be strongly correlated with a greater risk of future stock price crashing. The authors also found information opacity to exert a positive moderating effect. That is, the higher the information opacity, the stronger and more positive the correlation between tax aggression and stock price crash risk. However, the market process and an institutional investor have opposite, negative impacts. An open market environment reduces their correlativeness. Similarly, stronger institutional vigilance leads to an attenuation of such a co-relationship.

The findings of this paper have wide policy implications for management and control by authorities of listed corporations. Aggressiveness in management of corporate taxes accentuates the risks borne by stockholders. If so, internally within the corporation, such aggression shown by management, if not proscribed, could be subject to scrutiny, possibly by an independent committee. Externally, this may be countered by the authority in emphasizing three key factors: openness in information sharing, the market environment and tighter institutional monitoring.

This study provides a consequential theory of aggressive management of tax, rigorously analyzed and strongly, empirically supported. Overall, aggressiveness in tax management is related with assumption of higher risks in the crashing of stock price. The relationship is enhanced through information opacity, but reduced via market environment and institutional monitoring.

The purpose of this paper is to address the problem of control in a typical chaotic power system. Chaotic oscillations cannot only extremely endanger the stabilization of the power system but they can also not be controlled by adding the traditional controllers. So, the sliding mode control based on a fuzzy supervisor can sufficiently ensure perfect tracking and controlling in the presence of uncertainties. Closed-loop stability is proved using the Lyapunov stability theory. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed method in damping chaotic oscillations of the power system, eliminating control signal chattering and also show less control effort in comparison with the methods considered in previous literatures.

The sliding mode control based on a fuzzy supervisor can sufficiently ensure perfect tracking and controlling in the presence of uncertainties. Closed-loop stability is proved using the Lyapunov stability theory.

Closed-loop stability is proved using the Lyapunov stability theory. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed method in damping chaotic oscillations of power system, eliminating control signal chattering and also less control effort in comparison with the methods considered in previous literatures.

Main contributions of the paper are as follows: the chaotic behavior of power systems with two uncertainty parameters and tracking reference signal for the control of generator angle and the controller signal are discussed; designing sliding mode control based on a fuzzy supervisor in order to practically implement for the first time; while the generator speed is constant, the proposed controller will enable the power system to go in any desired trajectory for generator angle at first time; stability of the closed-loop sliding mode control based on the fuzzy supervisor system is proved using the Lyapunov stability theory; simulation of the proposed controller shows that the chattering is low control signal.

With more demand-driven innovation activities, manufacturers must proactively engage in information sharing activities with their customers for better innovation performance. This study aims to inquire into the impacts of information sharing activities between manufacturers and customers (including information system usage and information content sharing) on manufacturers’ innovation performance and considers interfirm justice (including distributive justice, procedural justice and interactional justice) as information sharing antecedents.

The social exchange theory is applied to develop the conceptual model. The authors examine the conceptual model with the structural equation modeling approach using data collected from 213 Chinese manufacturers.

Interactional justice promotes information system usage. Both interactional justice and procedural justice increase information content sharing, while distributive justice decreases it. Information content sharing directly improves innovation performance and fully mediates the relationship between information system usage and innovation performance.

This research enriches empirical studies on justice-information sharing relationships by systematically investigating the impacts of three types of justice on different information sharing activities. It also adds to the application of social exchange theory in the practices of interfirm justice and information sharing. Besides, it probes into influencing mechanisms of different information sharing activities, information system usage and information content sharing, on innovation performance. The findings can guide firms to implement interfirm justice and information sharing practices for superior innovation performance.