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The purpose of this paper is to represent a robust image registration method to align noisy and deformed images in their Radon transform domain. Due to the limitation of imaging mechanism, the images are often highly noisy. Even worse, the objects in images have structural differences from time to time.

To eliminate these degressions, the proposed method is equipped with subspace-based power spectrum analysis algorithm for rotation estimation and a new global median filter least square algorithm for displacement computation.

Experiments on strongly noisy and degenerated images show that the proposed method exhibits better accuracy and robustness than phase correlation-based method. In addition, the method can also be applied to multi-modal registration, where the results are comparable to mutual information method but spending much less time.

A robust image registration method is proposed, which has better performance than traditional methods.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating role of employee age in the relationship between work engagement and several job resources.

The study used questionnaire-based surveys completed by 804 employees from firms located in West China. The data were then analyzed by conducting latent moderated structural equation modeling.

The results of the study show that certain job resources (autonomy, recognition, colleague support, participation, job security and flexible work arrangements) are more effective for older employees in promoting work engagement, while other resources (job feedback, opportunities for development, skill variety and internal promotion) are more tailored toward younger employees.

The results suggest that job resources are not equally effective in affecting employee work engagement. Therefore, future studies should adopt a dynamic lifespan perspective when studying the relationship between job resources and work engagement.

The current study indicates that to increase younger employees’ work engagement, organizations need to rely more on development-oriented job resources, and to increase older employees’ work engagement, they need to focus more on maintenance-oriented resources.

The literature on work engagement has assumed that the strength of the relationship between job resources and work engagement is uniform among employees at all ages. This study refers to two life-span theories from the development psychology literature to explain that there are age-related differences in the effect of job resources on employee work engagement.

This paper aims to examine the factors affecting the implementation of affordable housing policies in two Chinese municipal governments. Since 2010, the Chinese government has enforced an ambitious plan to adopt affordable housing provisions accompanying a series of urbanization programs. Furthermore, the policy implementation at the local level has led to various outcomes but has been scarcely investigated. The views of policy implementation from local officials are crucial in the context of intergovernmental relations. Therefore, it is important to examine the views of local public officials on the development status and challenges in the context of Chinese intergovernmental relations.

This paper verifies which factors exert significant impacts on the willingness of local officials to adapt affordable housing policies by using the logistic regression model and marginal effect estimation. With original data from the fieldwork surveys of city administrators, the measures incorporated local characteristics as well as the intergovernmental support from the central government in two selected megacities, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

There are significant differences in local investment between the selected cities. Intergovernmental support from the central government, city development strategies, implementation perceptions of local governments and land supply, all significantly impact the selection of an affordable housing program and its overall implementation.

To the best of the authors’ understanding, this study would be one of the first to empirically explore the view of municipal public officials on affordable housing policy in China. This paper provides an empirical analysis from municipal public officials on the local implementation of affordable housing policies in China. As the outcome of housing policies actually depends on the implementation willingness of public officials and the overall performance of local governments, this explorative study would benefit the future development of China’s affordable housing policy.

This study aims to examine the impact of managerial use of motivating language on employee absenteeism, turnover intention, job satisfaction and job performance for employees from three nations: India, the USA and Vietnam.

Data is collected from 614 employees working in India, the USA and Vietnam. A variance-based partial least squares structural equation modeling technique is used to test the hypotheses. In addition, a statistical test is used to examine the statistical differences in the results across the three nations.

The findings are consistent with the motivating language theory, in that managerial use of motivating language can be an effective strategy in motivating employees. Specifically, motivating language is found to significantly decrease employee absenteeism and turnover intention, as well as significantly increase job satisfaction and performance across the three nations. The effect sizes indicate that, across all samples, motivating language has a medium effect for all employee outcomes, except absenteeism, which is shown to have a small effect size. Moreover, the results indicate that employees in different cultures perceive and interpret the leader’s use of motivating language in different ways. Whereas motivating language may receive greater success in promoting workers’ job performance in eastern cultures, it is also more effective in retaining employees in western cultures.

The study adds to the literature in three major ways. First, it provides evidence for two understudied relationships: motivating language and absenteeism and motivating language and turnover intention. Second, it assesses the generalizability of the motivating language theory by investigating data from India, the USA and Vietnam. Finally, this paper offers a statistical comparison of the three samples to analyze how the relationship between motivating language and worker outcomes differ among the three samples.

The purpose of this paper is to study the influences of recess configurations on the performances of high-speed hybrid journal bearing. Hybrid journal bearing earns increasing attention in high-speed machine tool spindle owing to its intrinsic outstanding performances of low temperature rise and high stability.

To investigate the coupled effects of temperature, turbulence and the interaction between lubricant and journal/bearing bush, a thermal fluid-structure interaction approach is presented and validated by the experimental results.

Ladder-type recess has excellent tribological characteristics in decreasing temperature rise, improving stability and inhibiting cavitation, which are all beneficial to improve the performances of high-speed spindle system.

This work can be a valuable guide for the future high-speed hybrid journal bearing design.

The purpose of this study was to examine youth service librarians’ use of collaborative collection development (CCD) behaviors and interlibrary loan (ILL) to collaborate with school librarians.

A quantitative design was implemented with a self-administered survey that was placed online.

Public youth services librarians in the USA believe it is important to collaborate with school librarians. However, they are not frequently using collaborative resource sharing strategies. Public youth services librarians that have more experience, understand trends and issues in school libraries and feel they have knowledge of collaborative strategies are more likely to engage in collaborative resource sharing.

The study was limited to 265 public librarians serving youth in the USA. This study does not present the perspectives of school libraries.

CCD and ILL between public and school libraries are overlooked practices for building relationships between public and school librarians that should be explored. Presenting the benefits of these strategies during training programs may increase the resources that youth can access, thus having an overall impact on the quality of life in communities. Collaborating will also help communities understand the value of libraries as institutions for promoting lifelong learning.

The results provide evidence that public youth service librarians in the USA believe in the importance of collaborative relationships with school librarians. However, they do not frequently use ILL or engage in CCD behaviors with school librarians. Using ILL and CCD are two strategies that may be used to build stronger relationships.

The purpose of the paper is to show that modern markets are characterized by rapidly changing environments and numerous external forces. Under these conditions, product lifetimes are rapidly reducing. Therefore, products require optimum inspection policies to maintain high quality and reduce costs in the competitive market. This study aims to establish optimal inspection policies of reliability analysis for quantal‐response product with Weibull lifetime components.

This study considers a product consisting of m different components in series with lifetimes that follow Weibull distributions, and applies a competing failure model to examine the proposed series system for quantal‐response products. The maximum likelihood estimators of parameters of the Weibull distribution are derived based on the quantal‐response data in the proposed series system. The statistical features of the model are illustrated through a numerical example of two‐component series products, and the properties of the maximum likelihood estimators were studied via Monte Carlo simulation under a two‐stage inspected scheme for various sampling sizes and inspection time conditions.

Simulation results demonstrate not only that the optimum inspection condition is the inspection times at T₁=0.2 and T₂=0.5 for the two‐stage inspected scheme, but also that the economical sampling size is 150 for both cases.

This research results can be applied to the analysis of one‐shot products, e.g. firework, ammunition, airbag, injector, with Weibull components lifetime distribution or the stockpile storage test.

Recently, an increasing number of Internet users have begun to purchase various products, both secondhand and new, from online auction websites. However, some Internet users are still hesitant to purchase products from these websites. Moreover, the factors affecting male and female users' intention to shop on the websites may be different. Past studies have indicated that uncertainty is a major determinant of online shopping behaviors and may have different effects on men's and women's purchase intentions. Therefore, to explore the differences, this study seeks to propose a research model based on uncertainty and agency theory.

This study included members of the Yahoo! and PChome online portal sites in Taiwan as research subjects. A web survey was conducted, and data were collected from a total of 313 bidders of online auctions. The casual model was validated using partial least squares (PLS) techniques.

Gender moderated most of the relationships in the research model. The analysis results showed that the factors influencing men's and women's uncertainty are different. In addition, uncertainty has stronger influence on men's intention to purchase products from online auction websites.

This study contributes to a theoretical understanding of the factors that promote men's and women's intention to purchase products from online auction websites. From a practical perspective, insights provided by this study can help online auction service providers understand buyers' concerns and eliminate the sources of the uncertainty.

The primary value of this paper lies in providing a better understanding of male and female behaviors on online C2C market, and investigating the gender differences in the factors that influence the consumers' purchase in online auctions.