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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of share pledging by controlling shareholders on earnings informativeness.

Using a sample of 23,120 firm-year observations from 2003 to 2019 in China, this paper examines how share pledging by controlling shareholders affects earnings informativeness, measured by earnings persistence and earnings response coefficients.

This paper finds that share pledging by controlling shareholders makes earnings less informative. The adverse impacts are more pronounced when share pledging distorts incentives of controlling shareholders to a greater extent and when the signaling of share pledging about a firm’s weak future performance is stronger. Finally, this paper further shows that the 2018 new regulation on share pledging effectively alleviates the negative impacts of share pledging on earnings informativeness.

First, this paper adds to the growing literature on the economic consequence of share pledging by documenting the adverse impacts of share pledging on earnings informativeness. The literature on the economic consequence of share pledging is often mixed, which justifies further research on the impacts of share pledging on earnings informativeness. Second, this paper documents a new signaling channel through which share pledging affects earnings informativeness. Third, the finding of this paper on the 2018 new regulation on share pledging may be interesting to research agencies, such as the Chartered Financial analyst institute and Institutional Shareholder Services institute that recommend tightening regulations on share pledging.

In order to systematically grasp the changes and matching characteristics of wheel and rail profiles of high speed railway (HSR) in China, 172 rail profile measurement points and 384 wheels of 6 high-speed electric motive unites (EMUs) were selected on 6 typical HSR lines, including Beijing–Shanghai, Wuhan–Guangzhou, Harbin–Dalian, Lanzhou–Xinjiang, Guiyang–Guangzhou and Dandong–Dalian for a two-year field test.

Based on the measured data, the characteristics of rail and wheel wear were analyzed by mathematical statistics method. The equivalent conicity of wheel and rail matching in a wheel reprofiling cycle was analyzed by using the measured rail profile.

Results showed that when the curve radius of HSR was larger than 2,495 m, the wear rate of straight line and curve rail was almost the same. For the line with annual traffic gross weight less than 11 Mt, the vertical wear of rail was less than 0.01 mm. The wear rate of the rail with the curve radius less than 800 m increased obviously. The wheel tread wear of EMUs on Harbin–Dalian line, Lanzhou–Xinjiang line and Dandong–Dalian line was relatively large, and the average wear rate of tread was about 0.05–0.06 mm·(10,000 km)⁻¹, while that of Beijing–Shanghai line, Wuhan–Guangzhou line and Guiyang–Guangzhou line was about 0.03–0.035 mm·(10,000 km)⁻¹. When the wear range was small, the equivalent conicity increased with the increase of wheel tread wear. When the wear range of wheel was wide, the wheel–rail contact points were evenly distributed, and the equivalent conicity did not increase obviously.

This research proposes the distribution range of the equivalent conicity in one reprofiling cycle of various EMU trains, which provides guidance for the condition-based wheel reprofiling.

The cultural tourism industry, which has subtly met the needs and solved the major problem of the current age, is a new growth point for the current city economic growth. Therefore, its position in the industrial structure system will be increasingly improved. The development of the cultural tourism industry also provides an important opportunity for the renewal and re-engineering of urban space. For the current urban space construction crisis needs the integration of historical and cultural elements urgently while the development of the cultural tourism industry itself happened to need the city to provide the necessary carrying space and incubation carrier urgently as well. Thus this research discusses the construction of urban visual planning system and the specific implementation path from the perspective of the development of cultural tourism industry.

Psychosocial factors have received increasing attention regarding significantly influencing safety in the construction industry. This research attempts to comprehensively summarize psychosocial factors related to safety performance of construction workers. In the context of coronavirus disease 2019, some typical psychosocial factors are selected to further analyze their influence mechanism of safety performance.

First, a literature review process was conducted to identify and summarize relevant psychosocial factors. Then, considering the impact of the epidemic, hypotheses on the relationship between six selected psychosocial factors (i.e. work stress, role ambiguity, work–family conflict, autonomy, social support and interpersonal conflict) and safety performance were proposed, and a hypothetical model was developed based on job demands-resources theory. Finally, a meta-analysis was used to examine these hypotheses and the model.

The results showed these psychosocial factors indirectly influenced workers’ safety performance by impacting on their occupational psychology condition (i.e. burnout and engagement). Work stress, role ambiguity, work–family conflict and interpersonal conflict were negatively related to safety performance by promoting burnout and affecting engagement. Autonomy and social support were positively related to safety performance by improving work engagement and reducing burnout.

This research is the pioneer systematically describing the overall picture of psychosocial factors related to the safety performance of construction workers. Through deeply discussed the mechanism of psychosocial factors and safety performance, it could provide a reference for the theory and application of psychosocial factors in the field of construction safety management.

The relationship between farm size and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has not been clearly defined. This paper aims to assess and compare the impact of farm size on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions derived from wheat and maize production in the North China Plain (NCP), one of the most important agricultural regions in China.

A field survey through face-to-face interviews was conducted to collect the primary data, and life cycle assessment method, a worldwide comparable framework, was then adopted to characterize the farm-size effect on greenhouse gas (GHG) wheat and maize production in NCP.

It was confirmed that GHG emissions from N fertilizer production and use were the primary contributor to total carbon footprint (CF). As farm size increased, maize yield increased but wheat yield barely changed, while area-scaled and yield-scaled CF declined for both crops. These results were supposed to relate to utilize the inputs more efficiently resulting from increased application of modern agriculture methods on larger operations. It was also found maize not only had higher grain yields, but possessed much smaller CFs. More notably, the reduction of CF with farm size seemed to be more sensitive for maize as compared to wheat. To further mitigate GHG emissions, farm size should better be larger for wheat than for maize.

This study provides useful information guide for Chinese agriculture in increasing crop production, raising farm income and relieving environmental burdens caused by the misuse of agricultural resources.

Hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) is a common infectious disease in infants and children. HFMD has caused millions of cases and a large epidemic worldwide. A number of studies have shown that the incidence of HFMD is closely related to various factors such as meteorological factors, environmental air pollution factors and socio-economic factors. However, there are few studies that systematically consider the impact of various factors on the incidence of HFMD. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study used grey correlation analysis and principal component analysis (PCA) method to systematically analyse the impact of meteorological factors, health resource factors, socio-economic factors and environmental air pollution factors on the incidence of HFMD in Shenzhen.

The incidence of HFMD in Shenzhen was affected by multiple factors. Grey correlation analysis found eight influencing factors which are as follows: volume of industrial waste gas emission; the days of air quality equal to or above grade; the volume of industrial nitrogen oxide emission; precipitation; the mean air temperature; the gross domestic product; the expenditure for medical and health care; and the gross domestic product per capita. PCA found that the gross domestic product, the volume of industrial soot emission, the relative humidity, and the days of air quality equal to or above grade have a higher load value.

This study is the one of the first studies that apply the grey correlation analysis to analyse the influencing factors of HFMD in the English literature, which to some extent fills up the blank in this field.

This paper aims to propose a soft actuator that combines a sponge-based actuating structure and a layer-jamming-based stiffness-improving structure in a cavity.

The proposed soft actuator consists of film-constrained sponge units (FCSUs) and jamming layers. The FCSUs in the proposed soft actuator bend under vacuum pressure, causing bending deformation of the entire actuator. The jamming layers are strongly coupled through friction under vacuum pressure, increasing the stiffness of the entire actuator. The performance of the proposed soft actuator was examined by measuring its stiffness, bending deformation and response performance. A four-finger soft robotic gripper was proposed based on the proposed soft actuator.

Through experiments, it was shown that the proposed soft actuator exhibited acceptable bending deformation, stiffness and response. Moreover, the proposed four-finger soft gripper could effectively grasp objects in daily life.

In this study, the authors proposed a novel bending actuator (with a volume of approximately 43.2 cm³) based on FCSUs and jamming layers. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to combine a sponge-based actuating structure and a layer-jamming structure in a cavity to achieve simultaneous change in actuation and stiffness. The soft actuator exhibited good bending deformation and high stiffness simultaneously under vacuum pressure. Consequently, it could be used effectively to fabricate soft grippers.

Traditional laboratory measurements of soil water diffusivity (D) and soil water retention curve (SWRC) are always time-consuming and labor-intensive. Therefore, this paper aims to present a simple and robust test method for determining D and SWRC without reducing accuracy.

In this study, a D model of unsaturated soil was established based on Gardner–Russo model and then a combination of Gardner–Russo model with one-dimensional horizontal absorption method to obtain n and a parameters of Gardner–Russo model. One-dimensional horizontal absorption experiments on loam, silt loam and sandy clay loam were conducted to obtain the relationships between measured infiltration rate and cumulative infiltration with wetting front distance. Based on the obtained relationships, the measured infiltration data from the one-dimensional horizontal absorption tests were used to calculate n and a parameters and further constructing D and SWRC.

Both the calculated D and SWRC inversed from the infiltration data were in good agreement with the measured ones that obtained from the traditional horizontal absorption method and the centrifuge method, respectively. Error analysis indicated that only the infiltration data are enough to reliably synchronously determine D and SWRC.

A simple and robust method is proposed for synchronous determination of soil water diffusivity and water retention curve.

Because of the continued use of mobile, cloud and the internet of things, the possibility of data breaches is on the increase. A secure authentication and authorization strategy is a must for many of today’s applications. Authentication schemes based on knowledge and tokens, although widely used, lead to most security breaches. While providing various advantages, biometrics are also subject to security threats. Using multiple factors together for authentication provides more certainty about a user’s identity; thus, leading to a more reliable, effective and more difficult for an adversary to intrude. This study aims to propose a novel, secure and highly stable multi-factor one-time password (OTP) authentication solution for mobile environments, which uses all three authentication factors for user authentication.

The proposed authentication scheme is implemented as a challenge-response authentication where three factors (username, device number and fingerprint) are used as a secret key between the client and the server. The current scheme adopts application-based authentication and guarantees data confidentiality and improved security because of the integration of biometrics with other factors and each time new challenge value by the server to client for OTP generation.

The proposed authentication scheme is implemented on real android-based mobile devices, tested on real users; experimental results show that the proposed authentication scheme attains improved performance. Furthermore, usability evaluation proves that proposed authentication is effective, efficient and convenient for users in mobile environments.

The proposed authentication scheme can be adapted as an effective authentication scheme to accessing critical information using android smartphones.

New (post‐1949) Chinese local gazetteers are one of the major primary resources for contemporary China Studies in the field of history, social sciences, humanities and sciences. Major research libraries in North America have collected them; however, the research value of this series of publications has not yet fully explored. This paper aims at examining how new local gazetteers have been compiled, the scope of their content and research value, and how scholars have used them.

The paper explores the scope and importance of the new Chinese local gazetteers collection through reviewing relevant regulations, policies and guidelines regarding compilation of the new local gazetteers, and randomly examining over 30 provincial, city and county gazetteers.

The paper provides a detailed account of publishing history of this collection; rich and unique research information available; and approaches to collection development, including utilizing digitized gazetteers by Chinese governments.

The paper explores the development of new Chinese local gazetteers in a more systematic way and adds to the current literature on the unique research value this collection has to offer.