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The purpose of this study is to improve the performance of sodium borohydride in reducing indigo at room temperature, the divalent copper ion complex was combined with electrochemical technology for the reduction of indigo by sodium borohydride.

According to the K/S value of the dyed cloth sample, find a more suitable ligand for the copper ion in the catholyte. Response surface analysis tests were performed to evaluate the effects of sodium borohydride concentration, sodium hydroxide concentration and copper sulfate pentahydrate concentration on the reduction potential of the dye solution and the K/S value of the dyed fabric samples.

Sodium gluconate was found to be a more suitable ligand for copper ions in catholyte. The effects of NaOH concentration as well as the interaction of NaBH₄ and NaOH on the reduction potential of the catholyte and the K/S value of the dyed fabric samples were extremely significant. The optimal concentrations of NaBH₄, NaOH and CuSO₄•5H₂O were 0.5, 2.5 and 0.65 g/L. In the case of the optimized condition, the absolute value of the reduction potential was 968, and the K/S value was 11.92, which is comparable with that of the conventional reduction process with sodium dithionite.

The divalent copper ion complex combined with electrochemical technology was applied in the process of reducing indigo with NaBH₄ at room temperature.

In this study, the oxidative degradation performance of indigo wastewater based on electrochemical systems was explored. The decolourization degrees, removal rate of chemical oxygen demand and biochemical oxygen demand of the indigo wastewater after degradation were evaluated and optimized treatment conditions being obtained.

The single factor method was first used to select the electrolyte system and electrode materials. Then the response surface analysis based on Box–Behnken Design was chosen to determine the influence of four independent variables such as FeCl₃ concentration, NaCl concentration, decolourization time and voltage on the degradation efficiency.

On the basis of single factor experiment, the electrode material of stainless steel was selected in the double cell, and the indigo wastewater was electrolyzed with FeCl₃ and NaCl electrolytes. The process conditions of electrochemical degradation of indigo wastewater were optimized by response surface analysis: the concentration of FeCl₃ and NaCl was of 16 and 9 g/L, respectively, with a decolourization time of 50 min, voltage of 10 V and decolourization percentage of 98.94. The maximum removal rate of chemical oxygen demand reached 75.46 per cent. The highest ratio of B/C was 3.77, which was considered to be more biodegradable.

Dyeing wastewater is bringing out more and more pollution problems to the environment. However, there are some shortcomings in traditional technologies such as adsorption and filtration. As a kind of efficient and clean water treatment technology, electrochemical oxidation has been applied to the treatments of various types of wastewater. The decolourization and degradation of indigo wastewater is taken as an example to provide reference for the treatment of wastewater in actual plants.

The developed method provided a simple and practical solution for efficiently degrading indigo wastewater.

The method for the electrochemical oxidation technology was novel and could find numerous applications in the degradation of printing and dyeing wastewater.

An indirect electrochemical reduction and dyeing with indigo were carried out here to solve problems of low dye reduction rate and poor dyeing depth in the current electrochemical dyeing process.

Response surface analysis tests were performed to evaluate the effects of ferrous sulfate concentration, medium concentration, sodium hydroxide concentration and reduction time on the reduction efficiency of indirect electrochemical reduction of indigo.

The conditions obtained by design-expert optimization showed that the concentration of FeSO₄·7H₂O has the most significant effect on the reduction performance of dye liquor. Under the optimized electrochemical reduction dyeing process, the rate of dye reduction could be reached 91.21 per cent and the K/S value of indirect electrochemical dyeing of indigo can be achieved to 12.96, which is increased by about 9.56 per cent compared with that of Na₂S₂O₄ dyeing with the same color fastness basically.

The recyclability and biodegradability of the dye remain to be explored.

The strategy presented here can be developed to replace a substantial part of electrochemical dyeing with optimized product quality and reduced environmental pollution in denim production.

The strategy presented here can be developed to replace a substantial part of electrochemical dyeing with optimized product quality and reduced environmental pollution in denim production.

Application of the Fe(II)-DGS-Abal B complex media system in the indirect electrochemical reduction of indigo.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of local government decision-making competition new urbanization, further to seek measures to weaken the negative effect of local government decision-making competition.

This paper first puts forward the three paths which make local government decision-making competition: construction of new-style urbanization, economic development and construction of people’s livelihood and take China’s new-style urbanization as an example, the authors analyzed the internal mechanism of decision making of local government competition which caused by above three paths. Second, using the prospect theory, risk aversion theory and Cournot duopoly model, the authors analyzed how to avoid the local government decision-making competition and how to reduce the harm caused by local government decision-making competition.

The central government can curb the appearance of local government competition strategy through regulating and controlling the effectiveness of local government protective-investment policy, improving the degree of market competition and punishment coefficient of government decision-making failure and further, the authors can reduce the detriment of decision-making competition between local governments through adjusting the revenue function of local government in the process of new-style urbanization.

New-style urbanization is the main driving force of China’s future economic development, however, in the process of new-style urbanization, because of the “principle-agent” relationship between central government and local government, officials achievements appraisal mechanism and promotion game, they all cause competition between local government decision making, and this will weaken the positive effect of urbanization. Although, there are many researches on horizontal and intergovernmental competition, most researches devoted to how to avoid it from the angle of institutional economics, and the suggestions put forward by these researches are hardly applied. Anyone interested in how to avoid local government decision-making competition and reduce the negative influences of it from the angle of unitary government state’s reality will find this paper valuable.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the creep properties of Sn‐0.7Cu composite solder joints reinforced with optimal nano‐sized Ag particles in order to improve the creep performance of lead‐free solder joints by a composite approach.

The composite approach has been considered as an effective method to improve the creep performance of solder joints. Nano‐sized Ag reinforcing particles were incorporated into Sn‐0.7Cu solder by mechanically mixing. A systematic creep study was carried out on nano‐composite solder joints reinforced with optimal nano‐sized Ag particles and compared with Sn‐0.7Cu solder joints at different temperatures and stress levels. A steady‐state creep constitutive equation for nano‐composite solder joints containing the best volume reinforcement was established in this study. Microstructural features of solder joints were analyzed to help determine their deformation mechanisms during creep.

The creep activation energies and stress exponents of Ag particle‐enhanced Sn‐0.7Cu lead‐free based composite solder joints were higher than those of matrix solder joints under the same stress and temperature. Thus, the creep properties of nano‐composite solder joints are better than those of Sn‐0.7Cu solder joints.

The findings indicated that nano‐sized Ag reinforcing particles could effectively improve the creep properties of solder joints. A new steady‐state creep constitutive equation of nano‐composite solder joints was established. Deformation mechanisms of Sn‐0.7Cu solder and nano‐composite solder joints during creep were determined.

The aim of this study is to investigate the market status for online/mobile banking in China. With the recent and forecasted high growth of Chinese electronic banking, it has the potential to develop into a world‐scale internet economy and requires examination.

The demographic, attitudinal and behavioural characteristics of online and mobile bank users were examined. Respondents from six major Chinese cities participated in the consumer survey.

The results showed Chinese online and mobile bank users were predominantly males, not necessarily young and highly educated, in contrast with the electronic bank users in the West. The issue of security was found to be the most important factor that motivated Chinese consumer adoption of online banking. Main barriers to online banking were the perception of risks, computer and technological skills and Chinese traditional cash‐carry banking culture. The barriers to mobile banking adoption were lack of awareness and understanding of the benefits provided by mobile banking.

This study offers an insight into online/mobile banking in China, which has not previously been investigated. Distinct differences and common trends between Chinese and other countries were observed with clear indication of marketing strategy to be deployed by the service providers.

The paper seeks to investigate the effects of psychological contract on control mechanisms in outsourced ISD projects, based on control theories and psychological contract theories.

The paper is a multiple case study involving five outsourced projects completed by one of the largest and most successful telecommunication vendors in China. The company was the client in three of the projects and the vendor in the other two.

Based on first‐hand observations by the first author over a two‐year period and follow‐up interviews, four scenarios of match and mismatch of psychological contract between the client and vendor are identified, labeled as mutual transaction, client vulnerable, vendor vulnerable, and mutual loyalty. Moreover, the effect of psychological contract in shaping organizational control and outsourcing outcomes in the four different scenarios is revealed. For example, mutual transaction was associated with an emphasis on outcome control by the client. In contrast, mutual loyalty was associated with more informal control (self‐control and clan control). Furthermore, in the cases of mismatch between the client's and vendor's psychological relationship, the client implemented more behavior control and encouraged self‐control by its partner.

This research is, to the best of the author's knowledge, one of the first attempts to bring together psychological contract theory and organizational control theory in the domain of IT offshore outsourcing research. It reveals the effect of psychological contract in shaping organizational control in the four different scenarios labeled as mutual transaction, client vulnerable, vendor vulnerable, and mutual loyalty.

To discover new explanatory variables for employee turnover in call centres, this study seeks to examine the impact of customer verbal aggression on employee turnover intention and the mediating role of employees' emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, it aims to analyse the moderating effect created by perceived organisational support (POS) in a team climate on the relationship between customer verbal aggression and employees' emotional exhaustion.

The authors used a deductive logic approach to develop hypotheses and analytical frameworks. Interviews and questionnaires were employed to collect data from two call centres, 81 units, and 1,112 employees in China. Finally, the data were analysed and the hypotheses were tested via descriptive analysis and hierarchical linear modeling analysis using SPSS and HLM, respectively.

First it was found that customer verbal aggression significantly predicted employee turnover intention. Second, that employees' emotional exhaustion fully mediated the relationship between customer verbal aggression and employee turnover intention. Third, the correlation between customer verbal aggression and employee emotional exhaustion was found to be weaker for teams with higher levels of emotional POS, but not weaker for those with higher levels of instrumental POS.

These results suggest that service‐oriented enterprises (such as call centres) should consider employee turnover intention from the perspective of customer behaviour and improve the climate of organisational support to more efficiently reduce employee turnover.

Previous studies on workplace behaviours in call centres focused on customer relationship management. However, research concerning employee emotions during customer interactions is lacking. This study examined the influence of customer verbal aggression on the emotional exhaustion of call centre employees and the resultant turnover intention stemming from the conservation of resources theory. The results extend the Price–Mueller turnover model and explain how a team climate of organisational support can affect employee emotions..

The purpose of this paper is to describe a general purpose localization system, GRAIL. GRAIL provides real‐time, adaptable, indoor localization for wireless devices.

In order to localize as diverse a set of devices as possible, GRAIL utilizes a centralized, anchor‐based approach. GRAIL defines an abstract data model for various system components to support different physical modalities. The scalable architecture of GRAIL provides maximum flexibility to integrate various localization algorithms.

The authors show through real deployments that GRAIL functions over a variety of physical modalities, networks, and algorithms. Further, the authors found that a centralized solution has critical advantages over distributed implementations for handling privacy concerns.

A key contribution of this system is its universal approach: it can integrate different hardware and software capabilities within a single localization framework. The deployment of such a system in academic and research environments allows researchers to explore issues beyond algorithms and investigate effects in real deployments.

The minimum wage has been regarded as an important element of public policy for reducing poverty and inequality. Increasing the minimum wage is supposed to raise earnings for millions of low-wage workers and therefore lower earnings inequality. However, there is no consensus in the existing literature from industrialized countries regarding whether increasing the minimum wage has helped lower earnings inequality. China has recently exhibited rapid economic growth and widening earnings inequality. Since China promulgated new minimum wage regulations in 2004, the magnitude and frequency of changes in the minimum wage have been substantial, both over time and across jurisdictions. The growing importance of research on the relationship between the minimum wage and earnings inequality and its controversial nature have sparked heated debate in China, highlighting the importance of rigorous research to inform evidence-based policy making. We investigate the contribution of the minimum wage to the well-documented rise in earnings inequality in China from 2004 to 2009 by using city-level minimum wage panel data and a representative Chinese household survey, and we find that increasing the minimum wage reduces inequality – by decreasing the earnings gap between the median and the bottom decile – over the analysis period.