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This study aims to develop a hierarchical reliability framework to evaluate the service delivery performance of education public–private partnerships (PPPs) effectively and efficiently during long-term operations.

The research design included development and test phases. In the development phase, three performance layers, i.e. indicator, component and system, in the education service delivery system were identified. Then, service component reliability was computed through first order reliability method (FORM). Finally, the reliability of the service system was obtained using dynamic component weightings. A PPP school example in Australia was set up in the test phase, where performance indicators were collected from relevant contract documents and performance data were simulated under three assumptive scenarios.

The example in the test phase yielded good results for the developed framework in evaluating uncertainties of service delivery performance for education PPPs. Potentially underperforming services from the component to the system level at dynamic timepoints were identified, and effective preventative maintenance strategies were developed.

This research enriches reliability theory and performance evaluation research on education PPPs. First, a series of performance evaluation indicators are constructed for assessing the performance of the service delivery of the education PPP operations. Then, a reliability-based framework for service components and system is developed to predict service performance of the PPP school operations with consideration of a range of uncertainties during project delivery.

The developed framework was illustrated with a real-world case study. It demonstrates that the developed reliability-based framework could potentially provide the practitioners of the public sector with a basis for developing effective preventative maintenance strategies with the aim of prolonging the service life of the PPP schools.

Evaluating education PPPs is challenging as it involves long-term measurement of various service components under uncertainty. The developed reliability-based framework is a valuable tool to ensure that reliability is maintained throughout the service life of education PPPs in the presence of uncertainty.

This study, based on construal level theory, aims to examine the influential mechanism of leader empowerment behaviour on employee creativity. Specifically, it examines the mediating role of cognitive flexibility between leader empowerment behaviour and employee creativity, along with the moderating effect of consideration of future consequences (CFC) on this linkage.

A two time-point survey study (n = 214) was conducted to collect information from leaders and employees in terms of mutual evaluation in several Chinese industries. To effectively avoid common source bias, this survey was conducted through pairing leaders and employees. During the survey, the supervisors and subordinates were double-blinded. Correlation analysis and hierarchical regression analysis were used to test the research hypotheses.

Firstly, leader empowerment behaviour can significantly predict employee creativity. Second, cognitive flexibility plays a partial mediating role in the linkage between leader empowerment behaviour and employee creativity. Thirdly, CFC moderates the relationship between leadership empowerment behaviour and cognitive flexibility. The mediating role of cognitive flexibility underlies the overall moderating effect of CFC on the relationship between leader empowerment behaviour and employee creativity.

We used construal level theory to explain the influence of the mechanism of leader empowerment behaviour on employee creativity. In this manner, this study bridges the gap between theory and practice, as well as enriching the research on leader empowerment behaviour and employee creativity, especially in the Chinese context. Moreover, our study has several practical managerial implications, based on the importance of employee creativity. It inspires the implementation of leader empowerment behaviour, cultivation of employee creativity and introduction of several procedures.

This paper discusses the influential mechanism of leader empowerment behaviour on employee creativity from a new perspective and explains the process of encouraging employee creativity through information-processing methods. It mainly highlights the application of construal level theory to discuss employee creativity and develops a new research frame for employee creativity. Leaders can raise employee creativity through leader empowerment behaviour.

To meet the emerging demand for fine-grained annotation and semantic enrichment of cultural heritage images, this paper proposes a new approach that can transcend the boundary of information organization theory and Panofsky's iconography theory.

After a systematic review of semantic data models for organizing cultural heritage images and a comparative analysis of the concept and characteristics of deep semantic annotation (DSA) and indexing, an integrated DSA framework for cultural heritage images as well as its principles and process was designed. Two experiments were conducted on two mural images from the Mogao Caves to evaluate the DSA framework's validity based on four criteria: depth, breadth, granularity and relation.

Results showed the proposed DSA framework included not only image metadata but also represented the storyline contained in the images by integrating domain terminology, ontology, thesaurus, taxonomy and natural language description into a multilevel structure.

DSA can reveal the aboutness, ofness and isness information contained within images, which can thus meet the demand for semantic enrichment and retrieval of cultural heritage images at a fine-grained level. This method can also help contribute to building a novel infrastructure for the increasing scholarship of digital humanities.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has been proposed as a means of reducing the costs of abating greenhouse gasses, and for assisting developing countries. Although the CDM offers apparent environmental benefits, in addition to benefiting both investors and developing country hosts, it has generated considerable controversy. We review and evaluate the arguments surrounding the CDM and we provide new empirical evidence concerning its potential benefits.

We survey banks to construct national estimates of total noncash payments by type, payments fraud and related information. The survey is designed to create aggregate total estimates of all payments in the United States using data from responses returned by a representative, random sample. In 2016, the number of questions in the survey doubled compared with the previous survey, raising serious concerns of smaller bank nonparticipation. To obtain sufficient response data for all questions from smaller banks, we administered a modified survey design which, in addition to randomly sampling banks, also randomly assigned one of several survey forms, subsets of the full survey. This case study illustrates that while several other factors influenced response outcomes, the approach helped ensure sufficient response for smaller banks. Using such an approach may be especially important in an optional-participation survey, when reducing costs to respondents may affect success, or when imputation of unplanned missing items is already needed for estimation. While a variety of factors affected the outcome, we find that the planned missing data approach improved response outcomes for smaller banks. The planned missing item design should be considered as a way of reducing survey burden or increasing unit-level and item-level responses for individual respondents without reducing the full set of survey items collected.

Faced with declining government funding support and rising student loan debt, recently timely graduation in higher education has become a focal point of discussion at many institutions, particularly public universities. Timely graduation requires a student to successfully enroll in and complete a set of required and elective courses, the relationship of which is bound by the courses’ prerequisite requirements. However, due to the fact that class capacity is oftentimes limited and wrongly timed, many students find it challenging to stay on track. A well-structured degree roadmap that takes all factors into consideration and specifies the right courses to take by semester will better guide students’ course selection and thus increase their chance of earning their degrees within the four-year time window. Additionally, it will also allow administrators to do better capacity planning, and hence increase course accessibility to students. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this research, some operational techniques such as line balancing and simulation are applied to restructure and improve degree roadmaps, and assess the resulting outcomes. Some innovative methods are proposed to improve the processes on which students proceed to degree.

The results based on historical data that contains millions of student records spanning over eight-year time window demonstrate that the improved degree roadmaps can substantially increase students’ chance of completing the degree in a four-year time window. The research findings provide university administrators with cost-effective solutions.

This research breaks a new ground in literature due to its unique approach and focus. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is one of the first attempts to systematically study the impact of degree roadmap on timely graduation. This research focuses on finding solutions that are within the institution’s control, hence the proposed solutions are implementable and will provide university administrators with new tools and perspectives to enhance student success.

Biometric systems are widely used for face recognition. They have rapidly developed in recent years. Compared with other approaches, such as fingerprint recognition, handwriting verification and retinal and iris scanning, face recognition is more straightforward, user friendly and extensively used. The aforementioned approaches, including face recognition, are vulnerable to malicious attacks by impostors; in such cases, face liveness detection comes in handy to ensure both accuracy and robustness. Liveness is an important feature that reflects physiological signs and differentiates artificial from real biometric traits. This paper aims to provide a simple path for the future development of more robust and accurate liveness detection approaches.

This paper discusses about introduction to the face biometric system, liveness detection in face recognition system and comparisons between the different discussed works of existing measures.

This paper presents an overview, comparison and discussion of proposed face liveness detection methods to provide a reference for the future development of more robust and accurate liveness detection approaches.

The stress state near the notch affects fatigue damage directly, but quantifying the stress field is difficult. The purpose of this study is to provide a mathematical description method of the stress field near the notch to achieve a reliable assessment of the fatigue life of notched specimens.

Firstly, the stress distribution of notched specimens of different materials and shapes under different stress levels is investigated, and a method for calculating the stress gradient impact factor is presented. Then, the newly defined stress gradient impact factor is used to describe the stress field near the notch, and an expression for the stress at any point along a specified path is developed. Furthermore, by combining the mathematical expressions for the stress field near the notch, a multiaxial fatigue life prediction model for notched shaft specimens is established based on the damage mechanics theory and closed solution method.

The stress gradient factor for notched specimens with higher stress concentration factors (V60-notch, V90-notch) varies to a certain extent when the external load and material change, but for notched specimens with relatively lower stress concentration factors (C-notch, U-notch, stepped shaft), the stress gradient factor hardly varies with the change in load and material, indicating that the shape of the notch has a greater influence on the stress gradient. It is also found that the effect of size on the stress gradient factor is not obvious for notched specimens with different shapes, there is an obvious positive correlation between the normal stress gradient factor and the normal stress concentration factor compared with the relationship between the shear stress gradient factor and the stress concentration factor. Moreover, the predicted results of the proposed model are in better agreement with the experimental results of five kinds of materials compared with the FS model, the SWT model, and the Manson–Coffin equation.

In this paper, a new stress gradient factor is defined based on the stress distribution of a smooth specimen. Then, a mathematical description of the stress field near the notch is provided, which contains the nominal stress, notch size, and stress concentration factor which is calculated by the finite element method (FEM). In addition, a multiaxial fatigue life prediction model for shaft specimens with different notch shapes is established with the newly established expressions based on the theory of damage mechanics and the closed solution method.