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This study examines the impact of a novel co-teaching approach, involving collaboration between university instructors and school teachers, on pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) understanding of classroom management skills, addressing the practical challenges that often exceed the university classroom’s scope.

Using a pooled cross-sectional dataset of 513 students from a Chinese teacher training university, the study employed descriptive statistics, factor analysis and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis. Focus group interviews were also conducted to explore the mechanisms underlying the co-teaching impact.

The co-teaching team effectively integrates theory with practice, enhancing student engagement and learning outcomes. Most students appreciated the co-teaching format, which positively correlated with their recognition of classroom management and the teaching profession. The success of co-teaching was linked to the authenticity brought by school teachers, including exposure to real-life cases that encouraged PSTs to actively solve educational problems.

Pre-service teacher education benefits from university-school collaboration. Inviting experienced school teachers to co-teach in university classrooms offers an efficient instructional approach, improving students’ learning experiences with less time and effort.

This study empirically demonstrates the utility of co-teaching in pre-service teacher education, particularly within China, enriching the literature on school-university partnerships.

This paper takes the manufacturing cluster supply chain as the research object and explores the evaluation and enhancement strategy of manufacturing cluster supply chain synergy. The purpose of this study was to (1) analyze the mechanism of manufacturing cluster supply chain synergy; (2) construct manufacturing cluster supply chain synergy evaluation model; (3) algorithm realization of manufacturing cluster supply chain synergy evaluation and (4) propose manufacturing cluster-based supply chain synergy enhancement strategy.

Breaking through the limitations of traditional manufacturing cluster supply chain synergy evaluation, we take horizontal synergy and vertical synergy as coupled synergy subsystems, use the complex system synergy model to explore the horizontal synergy between core enterprises and cluster enterprises and the vertical synergy of supply chain enterprises and use the coupling coordination model to construct the coupled synergy evaluation model of manufacturing cluster supply chain, which is an innovation of the evaluation perspective of previous cluster supply chain synergy and also an enrichment and supplementation of the evaluation methodology. This is not only the innovation of the evaluation perspective but also the enrichment and supplementation of the evaluation method.

Using Python software to conduct empirical analysis on the evaluation model, the research shows that the horizontal and vertical synergies of the manufacturing cluster supply chain interact with each other and jointly affect the coupling synergy. On this basis, targeted strategies are proposed to enhance the synergy of the manufacturing cluster supply chain.

This study takes manufacturers, suppliers and sellers in the three-level supply chain as the research object and does not consider the synergistic evaluation between distributors and consumers in the supply chain, which can be further explored in this direction in the future.

Advanced manufacturing clusters, as the main force of manufacturing development, and the synergistic development of supply chain are one of the important driving forces for the high-quality development of China’s manufacturing industry. As a new type of network organization coupling industrial clusters and supply chains, cluster supply chain is conducive not only to improving the competitiveness of cluster supply chains but also to upgrading cluster supply chains through horizontal synergy within the cluster and vertical synergy in the supply chain.

Research can help accelerate the transformation and upgrading of clustered supply chains in the manufacturing industry, promote high-quality development of the manufacturing industry and accelerate the rise of the global value chain position of the manufacturing industry.

(1) Innovation of research perspective. Starting from two perspectives of horizontal synergy and vertical synergy, we take a core enterprise in the cluster supply chain as the starting point, horizontally explore the main enterprises of the cluster as the research object of horizontal synergy, vertically explore the upstream and downstream enterprises of the supply chain as the research object of vertical synergy and explore the coupling synergy of cluster supply chain as two subsystems, which provides new perspectives of evaluation of the degree of synergy and synergy evaluation. (2) Innovation of research content. Nine manufacturing clusters are selected as research samples, and through data collection and model analysis, it is verified that the evaluation model and implementation algorithm designed in this paper have strong practicability, which not only provides methodological reference for the evaluation of manufacturing cluster-type supply chain synergy but also reduces the loss caused by the instability of clusters and supply chains and then provides a theoretical basis for improving the overall performance of cluster-type supply chains.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the local residents’ perception of the meaning and importance of conserving cultural heritage assets in Saadani village.

This study applied an exploratory research approach to assess the local residents’ perception over the meaning and importance of conserving cultural heritage in Saadani village in Pwani region. The study used semi-structured interviews, observations and archaeological surveys to collect data from 134 respondents at the village.

The findings from the study revealed that the residents are aware of the meaning and importance of conserving cultural heritage assets in the village. Further, the respondents are also aware of the different strategies that can be used to improve the management and conservation of the cultural heritage assets in the area.

The research revealed that the residents have sufficient knowledge regarding importance and means to conserve culture heritage. Such information may be used to improve the overall process of designing and implementing cultural heritage management (CHM) initiatives.

No similar studies on this subject matter have been conducted in Saadani village. The information generated by this study will be essential for officials, policymakers, developers and local authorities on the importance of involving local community members in designing and implementing CHM and conservation projects.

The diagnosis and prediction methods used for estimating the health conditions of the bearing are of great significance in modern petrochemical industries. This paper aims to discuss the accuracy and stability of improved empirical mode decomposition (EMD) algorithm in bearing fault diagnosis.

This paper adopts the improved adaptive complementary ensemble empirical mode decomposition (ICEEMD) to process the nonlinear and nonstationary signals. Two data sets including a multistage centrifugal fan data set from the laboratory and a motor bearing data set from the Case Western Reserve University are used to perform experiments. Furthermore, the proposed fault diagnosis method, combined with intelligent methods, is evaluated by using two data sets. The proposed method achieved accuracies of 99.62% and 99.17%. Through the experiment of two data, it can be seen that the proposed algorithm has excellent performance in the accuracy and stability of diagnosis.

According to the review papers, as one of the effective decomposition methods to deal with nonlinear nonstationary signals, the method based on EMD has been widely used in bearing fault diagnosis. However, EMD is often used to figure out the nonlinear nonstationarity of fault data, but the traditional EMD is prone to modal confusion, and the white noise in signal reconstruction is difficult to eliminate.

In this paper only the top three optimal intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) are selected, but IMFs with less correlation cannot completely deny their value. Considering the actual working conditions of petrochemical units, the feasibility of this method in compound fault diagnosis needs to be studied.

Different from traditional methods, ICEEMD not only does not need human intervention and setting but also improves the extraction efficiency of feature information. Then, it is combined with a data-driven approach to complete the data preprocessing, and further carries out the fault identification and classification with the optimized convolutional neural network.

Predicting commodity futures trading volumes represents an important matter to policymakers and a wide spectrum of market participants. The purpose of this study is to concentrate on the energy sector and explore the trading volume prediction issue for the thermal coal futures traded in Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange in China with daily data spanning January 2016–December 2020.

The nonlinear autoregressive neural network is adopted for this purpose and prediction performance is examined based upon a variety of settings over algorithms for model estimations, numbers of hidden neurons and delays and ratios for splitting the trading volume series into training, validation and testing phases.

A relatively simple model setting is arrived at that leads to predictions of good accuracy and stabilities and maintains small prediction errors up to the 99.273th quantile of the observed trading volume.

The results could, on one hand, serve as standalone technical trading volume predictions. They could, on the other hand, be combined with different (fundamental) prediction results for forming perspectives of trading trends and carrying out policy analysis.

Firms are increasingly digitalizing their business processes and expanding them into digital platforms, which are believed to generate digital and relational resources that can facilitate and deliver innovations for firms. Instead of focusing on the extent of digital integration capability (DI), this paper seeks to empirically evaluate whether the DI asymmetry between the buyer and supplier firms influences bilateral information sharing and the buyer’s product innovation. We also examine the moderating effects of firms’ external (environmental dynamism) and internal (innovative climate) environments on these relationships.

Primary and secondary archival data on 180 buyer-supplier Chinese dyadic relationships were collected and analyzed using multiple linear regression models. Additionally, the Process macro was used to shed a nuanced light on the moderation effects of environmental dynamism and innovative climate.

The results show that DI asymmetry negatively impacts buyer firms’ product innovation through decreased information sharing. Environmental dynamism weakens the negative relationship between DI asymmetry and information sharing. Meanwhile, the innovative climate negatively moderates the relationship between information sharing and product innovation.

This study adds knowledge to the literature regarding the dark side of “one-sided digitalization.” By exploring the influences of unbalanced DI in buyer-supplier relationships, this study yields essential theoretical and managerial implications for product innovation success in a digital era.

This chapter explores how the development of football fandom for the Chinese national team and local football clubs is strongly associated with societal changes. Although the performances of Chinese football teams, especially the national team, have failed to impress the world, football remains the most popular because of millions of supporters with loyalty and passion. Most studies related to fans mainly focus on the economic and political implications of spectatorship along with the rise of China. Nevertheless, few articles are available to answer the fundamental questions, such as ‘When did these supporters come out?’ and ‘What were the factors of the development of fandom?’. By going through archival records and published documents over the last decades, this chapter offers a comprehensive and historical analysis of the development of football fandom in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and deals with these unanswered questions. As such, this chapter does not intend to be the most authoritative one but is one of the rare sources to lay down the foundation for research on Chinese football fandom. Furthermore, this chapter also proves that studies on football fandom can be a useful window for observing Chinese society.

This paper aims to assess the current and future dynamics of land cover transitions and analyze the vegetation conditions in Abuja city since its establishment as the capital of Nigeria in 1991.

A random forest classifier embedded in the Google Earth Engine platform was used to classify Landsat imagery for the years 1990, 2001, 2014 and 2020. A post-classification comparison was used to detect the dynamics of land cover transitions. A hybrid simulation model that comprised cellular automata and Markovian was used to model the probable scenario of land cover changes for 2050. The trend of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index was examined using Mann–Kendall and Theil Sen’s from 2014 to 2022. Nighttime band data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were obtained to analyze the trend of urbanization from 2014 to 2022.

The findings show that built-up areas increased by 40%, while vegetation, bare land and agricultural land decreased by 27%, 7% and 8%, respectively. Vegetation had the highest declining rate at 3.15% per annum. Built-up areas are expected to increase by 17.1% between 2020 and 2050 in contrast with other land cover. The proportion of areas with moderate vegetation improvement is estimated to be 15.10%, while the proportion of areas with no significant change was 38.10%. The overall proportion of degraded areas stands at 46.8% due to urbanization.

The findings provide a comprehensive insight into the dynamics of land cover transitions and vegetation variability induced by rapid urbanization in Abuja city, Nigeria. In addition, the findings provide valuable insights for policymakers and urban planners to develop a sustainable land use policy that promotes inclusivity, safety and resilience.

In modern China, sports and nationalism always have close connection, and nationalism is the important reason for the promotion of Chinese sports. However, the relationship between Chinese sports and nationalism in globalised China could be much more examined by academics, as well as its influencing factors. This chapter selects the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games as the context and representative three Chinese sports heroes in the period of globalisation to study. The findings show that in some extent, Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and three Chinese sports heroes represent the national image of China in the globalised world, also bearing the burden of washing away historical humiliation and pursuing national glory. Furthermore, it is manifested that China have a complex nationalism in the process of hosting the 2008 Olympic Games. Under the influence of mass media, market economy and sports professionalisation, nationalism still exists in Chinese sports, but people gradually start to reflect on the ‘Juguo Tizhi’, the traditional Chinese sports system and the concept of ‘winning glory for the nation’. The relationship between Chinese nationalism and sports shows the important implications of rapid Chinese sports development.

The null-space projection method is commonly adopted for controlling redundant robots, which undoubtedly requires the robot Jacobian matrix inverse. This paper aims to provide a novel control scheme, which enables null-space control of redundant robots without conflict with the main task space.

In this paper, an impedance-based null-space control approach for redundant robots is proposed. The null-space degrees of freedom are separated from the primary task space by using the eigenvalue decomposition. Then, a joint impedance controller spans the null space and is reflected into the joint space to manage the redundancy. Finally, several experiments have been conducted to evaluate and validate the performance of the proposed approach in comparison with the null-space projection method under various situations.

Experiment results show that no significant differences were observed between the different filling eigenvalues in the proposed approach under different null-space dimensions and motion velocity. Besides, comparative experiment results demonstrate that the proposed method can achieve comparable results to the null-space projection method. Nevertheless, the suggested approach has benefits regarding the quantity of control parameters in addition to not requiring a Jacobian inverse. Notably, the performance of the proposed method will improve as the null-space dimension increases.

This study presents a new control method for redundant robots, which has advantages for dealing with the problems of controlling redundant robots compared to the existing methods.