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Water-lubricated bearings can significantly reduce the pollution to environment because the traditional oil lubricant is replaced by water in the bearings. The ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) has proven to be effective and reliable for the manufacturing of water-lubricated bearings. However, limited work has been done to address the improvement of the tribological performance of the UHMWPE-based water-lubricated bearings using surface texture processing. This paper aims to investigate the effects of bar-grooved surface on the tribological performance improvement of UHMWPE-based water-lubricated bearings.

For the first time, the bar grooves were processed on the surfaces of UHMWPE-based water-lubricated bearings. The CBZ-1 friction and wear tester have been used to test the wear and friction performance of the bearing samples. The LI laser interference surface contour graph and the digital microscope have been used to measure the surface morphology of the specimens. The tribological characteristics of the tested bearings were analyzed.

With bar grooves added on the surfaces of the specimens, the friction coefficient of the specimens were lower than that of the specimens without surface texture processing; the wear quantity of the two kinds of specimens were almost the same; by using the LI laser interference surface contour graph and the digital microscope to measure the surface morphology of the specimens, the furrows of the specimens with bar grooves were narrower and shallower than that of the specimens without bar grooves.

The paper implicates that the surface texture processing using bar grooves can reduce the friction coefficient and prolong the service life of the water-lubricated bearings in practical applications.

This paper fulfills an identified need to provide important theoretical and experimental support to the design of water-lubricated bearings in practical applications.

This study investigates the effect of renting in land on farm productivity, and the impacts of rented-in land size and transaction partner type on farm productivity.

Data from the 2015 China Household Finance Survey are analyzed using an extended regression model and the two-stage least squares method.

Farm households that rent in land are likely to achieve higher farm productivity, and ignoring endogeneity underestimates the positive effect of land renting-in. Further evidence indicates that rented-in land size has an insignificant impact on farm productivity, and that there is no difference in farm productivity between lessees renting-in land from acquaintances and those renting-in land from non-acquaintances. These results may be caused by the higher degree of marketization of land rentals between acquaintances in China. With increasing competition in agricultural factor markets, in theory, rented-in land size should not affect farm productivity.

Overall, the analysis suggests that renting in land improves farm productivity, which supports the land transfer policies that have been rolled out in recent decades in China. However, our finding that rented land size does not affect farm productivity, consistent with the results in the literature, implies that the Chinese government should no longer subsidize or prefer large farms with low productivity. More attention should be paid to small lessees and market-oriented land rentals between acquaintances. Promoting the marketization of land transfers inside acquaintance networks could realize the potential of the land market, especially if land transfers decrease.

This study identifies the effects of renting in land, rented-in land size and type of rental transaction partner on farm productivity using nationally representative data. The findings imply that the government should pay more attention to the marketization of land rentals between acquaintances. Although existing studies regard land rental between acquaintances as informal and of low efficiency, the recent evidence shows that China's land markets are changing, and policy makers should adjust their policies accordingly.

Stakeholders in complex capital projects are characterized by complicated interactions, adversarial short-term relationships and cooperative demand for deliverables. Unhealthy interfaces between stakeholders often lead to significant interface conflicts, which gradually become apparent in the construction stage. However, stakeholder interface health (SIH) has not been well understood and measured in the construction industry by either scholars or practitioners. It is essential to identify unhealthy interface relationships between stakeholders by comprehensively assessing SIH for enhancing project performance.

The study provided a comprehensive framework to assess SIH. The assessment was based on Wuli-Shili-Renli theory. Moreover, the CRITIC and Grey-TOPSIS methodologies were applied to precisely evaluate the SIH level. Besides, graph-based interface networks were developed to visualize SIH. At last, the framework was applied to a mass rapid transit project in China to test the validity of the study.

The result showed that stakeholder interfaces with strict contract constraints are healthier. On the other hand, IM behaviors make up for the soft coordination mechanism without contract constraints to a certain extent. The results of the case study were consistent with the actual project practices. The proposed framework provided a useful IM tool for assessing and visualizing SIH.

The limitation of this study is that only the mass rapid transit project was selected for empirical analysis to validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework. It is recommended that the proposed framework be applied to other types of complex capital projects to further discussions in IM.

Theoretically, this study introduces a comprehensive framework to measure the health of stakeholder interfaces in complex capital projects, which helps to provide a theoretical basis and methodological support for stakeholder interface management.

Practically, applying SIH assessment to existing interface management procedures can help the project manager identify interface conflicts between stakeholders in time and eventually contribute to the improvement of PM performance. At the same time, the interface management team tracks the responsibilities of unhealthy interface stakeholders and requires them to take measures to improve the SIH level. Stakeholder interfaces with lower health scores should be given more attention. The proposed framework can serve as a novel IM approach to identify weaknesses in IM and take targeted management measures to alleviate unhealthy stakeholder interface relationships.

The study provides an innovative method for scientifically and accurately assessing SIH. This research can help scholars and practitioners in the project management field facilitate the diagnosis of unhealthy interface relationships and provide decision support for the project management theoretical foundation.

Since the publication of the 1987 Brundtland Report, discussions about sustainable development have been nothing short of a buzz among politicians and academics. This chapter takes stock of an emerging strand of the sustainable city literature that recognizes local political dynamics, conflicts of interest, and power struggles.

The review is organized into three sections. The first section reviews how past studies have utilized sustainable urban development as an opportunity for advancing theories of urban politics, highlighting recent developments in the growth machine, regulatory state, and risk society theses. The second section examines a range of studies that place the questions of scale, unit, and boundary at the center of inquiry. The third section draws together a body of research that interrogates different meanings of sustainability.

The first section discusses the extent to which social and political processes in the sustainability age exhibit a pattern consistent with established theoretical accounts. The second section focuses on studies that address how urban sustainable development has brought challenges to existing configurations of spatial relations. These studies pose important methodological and epistemological questions for studying environmental politics. In the third section, the focus is placed on political implications of urban sustainable development, which is subject to multiple interpretations.

This chapter ends with a review of an emerging thesis – strategic urbanism, which draws attention to the patterns of change in urban politics. Much of the contributions to this thesis are based on urban sustainability politics in recent years.

Purpose – The net increase in China's urban population in the last 50 years equals the current total population of the European Union. The scale and speed of urbanization in China requires a sustainable solution to unprecedented energy demands and elevated carbon emissions. As low-carbon development emerges in urban China, it offers a unique vantage point to examine some fundamental theoretical questions of the environmental state. How do structural socioeconomic changes affect the environmental state? Does the rise of the environmental state offer a basis for regulatory reform on a broader scale?

Methodology/approach – Case study of five low-carbon cities in China provides the empirical evidence for the analysis. The five cities represent a continuum in their levels of postindustrialization. I compare low-carbon development strategies in postindustrial cities with those strategies in industrial cities. Evidence is collected primarily by way of interviews with planning bureau officials, urban design professionals, involved NGOs, academics, and private sector individuals familiar with the matter.

Findings – First, in cities where the level of postindustrialization is high, state resources support innovative low-carbon development strategies that attempt to achieve emission reductions in a variety of sectors. In industrial cities, however, the environmental state's regulative power is limited to one or two (sub)sectors. Second, and more importantly, a new pattern of governance is emerging in postindustrial cities. Low-carbon development in postindustrial cities is a much less centralized process, having local levels of governments as key players of low-carbon policy making. When the environmental state intersects with the postindustrial city, it gives birth to a new urbanism that has profound implications for political structuring in China.

Research limitations – The analysis in this chapter is based on evidence from a purposefully selected set of Chinese cities, which may render the results biased. Future studies should aim for a more systematic analysis of cities in order to establish more generalizable conclusions. In addition, given the increasing availability of quantitative data at the city level in China, future studies should also seek to incorporate quantitative analyses to better substantiate existing knowledge derived from qualitative sources of evidence.

Originality/value of chapter – First, this chapter challenges the Western bias in the existing literature on the environmental state. The role of the civil society is far from salient in the Chinese context, and yet the environmental state demonstrates a robust level of activity despite the weak civil society. It therefore seems that a general theory of the environmental state can be built from existing literature, but needs to be sensitive to non-Western social conditions that might falsify parts of the theoretical claims. Second, the environmental state literature can be consolidated and further developed when examined in conjunction with other literatures in the modernity tradition. I have demonstrated the connection between the environmental state and the postindustrial city. More studies are needed to examine other facets of the environmental state, as it intersects with a multitude of (post)modern conditions.

On the eve of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development's (UNCSD) conference on sustainable development (Rio+20) in June 2012, the United Nation's Environmental Program (UNEP)'s Global Outlook Report (GEO-5) provided sobering data on global environmental progress. The report indicated that world nations are making little headway on significant environmental targets set for themselves under the Millennium Development Goals. The UN indicated that world nations made progress on only 4 of the 90 most significant objectives from the Millennium Plan: reducing substances depleting the ozone layer, removing lead from fuel, increasing access to water supplies, and increasing research on ways to reduce pollution in marine environments. However, in some cases no progress or regression occurred in reaching goals on climate change issues including limiting increases in average global temperatures to less than two degrees above preindustrial levels nor advances in issues such as revitalization of depleted fish stocks, protection of biodiversity, and combating desertification (UNEP, 2012).

Despite the growing body of empirical research on leader anger expressions, the issue of how and when leader anger expressions shape newcomers’ proactive career behavior and work alienation in the construction industry has been largely overlooked. Building upon social information processing theory, this research identifies newcomers’ organization-based self-esteem as a mediator, and suggests that newcomers’ performance goal orientation could moderate the relationship.

A questionnaire study was conducted on the construction industry in China, and the PROCESS program developed by Hayes was used to test the hypothetical model with 215 valid cases.

The results suggest that leader anger expressions are negatively associated with newcomers’ organization-based self-esteem, and organization-based self-esteem mediated the link between leader anger expressions and newcomers’ proactive career behavior and work alienation. Furthermore, the newcomers’ performance goal orientation moderates the negative impact of leader anger expressions on newcomers’ organization-based self-esteem.

Due to the cross-sectional nature of this study, causal implications are difficult to draw. Moreover, all data we received was based on participant self-reports, which may raise concerns about common method variance.

In this paper, we contribute to a deeper understanding of the mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions by which leader anger expressions influence newcomers’ proactive career behavior and work alienation from social information processing perspective, in addition to providing valuable insights for management of newcomers in the construction industry.