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This study aims to introduce the hybrid finite element (FE) – meshfree method and multiscale variational principle into the traditional mixed FE formulation, leading to a stable mixed formulation for incompressible linear elasticity which circumvents the need to satisfy inf-sup condition.

Using the hybrid FE–meshfree method, the displacement and pressure are interpolated conveniently with the same order so that a continuous pressure field can be obtained with low-order elements. The multiscale variational principle is then introduced into the Galerkin form to obtain stable and convergent results.

The present method is capable of overcoming volume locking and does not exhibit unphysical oscillations near the incompressible limit. Moreover, there are no extra unknowns introduced in the present method because the fine-scale unknowns are eliminated using the static condensation technique, and there is no need to evaluate any user-defined stability parameter as the classical stabilization methods do. The shape functions constructed in the present model possess continuous derivatives at nodes, which gives a continuous and more precise stress field with no need of an additional smooth process. The shape functions in the present model also possess the Kronecker delta property, so that it is convenient to impose essential boundary conditions.

The proposed model can be implemented easily. Its convergence rates and accuracy in displacement, energy and pressure are even comparable to those of second-order mixed elements.

This article aims to present a direct solution to handle linear constraints in finite element (FE) analysis without penalties or the Lagrange multipliers introduced.

First, the system of linear equations corresponding to the linear constraints is solved for the leading variables in terms of the free variables and the constants. Then, the reduced system of equilibrium equations with respect to the free variables is derived from the finite-dimensional virtual work equation. Finally, the algorithm is designed.

The proposed procedure is promising in three typical cases: (1) to enforce displacement constraints in any direction; (2) to implement local refinements by allowing hanging nodes from element subdivision and (3) to treat non-matching grids of distinct parts of the problem domain. The procedure is general and suitable for 3D non-linear analyses.

The algorithm is fitted only to the Galerkin-based numerical methods.

The proposed procedure does not need Lagrange multipliers or penalties. The tangential stiffness matrix of the reduced system of equilibrium equations reserves positive definiteness and symmetry. Besides, many contemporary Galerkin-based numerical methods need to tackle the enforcement of the essential conditions, whose weak forms reduce to linear constraints. As a result, the proposed procedure is quite promising.

The welding areas of the workpiece must be consistent with high precision to ensure the welding success during the welding of automobile parts. The purpose of this paper is to design an automatic high-precision locating and grasping system for robotic arm guided by 2D monocular vision to meet the requirements of automatic operation and high-precision welding.

A nonlinear multi-parallel surface calibration method based on adaptive k-segment master curve algorithm is proposed, which improves the efficiency of the traditional single camera calibration algorithm and accuracy of calibration. At the same time, the multi-dimension feature of target based on k-mean clustering constraint is proposed to improve the robustness and precision of registration.

A method of automatic locating and grasping based on 2D monocular vision is provided for robot arm, which includes camera calibration method and target locating method.

The system has been integrated into the welding robot of an automobile company in China.

A method of automatic locating and grasping based on 2D monocular vision is proposed, which makes the robot arm have automatic grasping function, and improves the efficiency and precision of automatic grasp of robot arm.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a design of online-merge-offline (OMO) classroom for open education with design principles related to practical issues of teachers’ teaching, students’ learning and schools’ management.

Three stages were covered: drafted an OMO classroom framework, built a sample classroom and explored end-users’ experience. First, authors searched for and reviewed previous studies and related cases to draft an OMO framework. Second, a classroom, consisted of wireless devices, cloud-based services, Internet of Things terminals, ergonomics furniture, and comprehensive data management and analysis services, was built in Shanghai Open University. Third, invited 11 students’, 18 teachers’ and 9 school managers’ perspectives were collected and analysed by surveys and interviews.

All student participants responded positively in terms of learning experience in the classroom. They not only engaged in classroom activities such, but also accessed needed learning materials and interacted with teachers and peers anytime anywhere via mobile devices. Similarly, most teachers (90 per cent) made positive responses because of flexibility of teaching strategies and learning activities and expressed willingness to use the classroom in the future (94.4 per cent). In addition, more than 78 per cent of managers positively commented on the design of classroom, interaction effects and effective management. Visualised data allowed them to timely monitor status of facilities, comprehensively understand users’ behaviour and issues, make necessary decision with scientific evidence.

The framework and classroom not only provide teachers, students, school managers and researcher with a better understanding of innovative open education, but also indicate the key role of objective-oriented and data-driven issues for further work.

To meet needs of teachers, students, managers and researchers in today’s open education, an OMO classroom was built in Shanghai Open University based on the proposed Objective-Oriented Pedagogy-Space-Technology (OPST) framework. The framework provides readers (especially teachers and administrators of open-education institutes, staff of information centres and ed-tech researchers) with a better understanding of innovative instruction and effective management, and the originally designed classroom can be a practical and illuminating example.

The purpose of this study is to identify the factors and issues within the policy context of education and the school inspection system which might affect education quality in China and examine stakeholder perceptions of inspection content and context in one city region in China.

A mixed-methods design was used. In all, 365 teachers, headteachers and administrative staff from ten schools across the urban and rural area have responded the questionnaires. A total of 13 interviewees including teachers and headteachers from two urban schools and a rural school, city and national inspectors and an educational officer were conducted. The interview instrument was informed by both international and local literature and some of the quantitative findings.

This paper argues that student non-academic outcomes were perceived by participants to be more important than academic achievements in demonstrating education quality. The prevailing exam-oriented evaluation system still sets barriers for student all-round development. Educational equity in student performance has not drawn sufficient attention from the inspectorates of Shandong province.

School inspection standards remain to be improved to better support student all-round development and equity in educational outcomes within and between schools, and better accommodate policy contexts and local needs.

This study examines the school effectiveness factors which have been rarely tested in Chinese context and collects new empirical evidence to explore participants’ perceptions on the quality of school inspection criteria and education quality in Shandong province.

The paper aims to explore the road to independence of the less-fortunate women in early Hong Kong society and their means in passing of wealth after death. In the 1970s, about 400 Chinese wills from the 1840s to the 1940s were dug up on a construction site in Hong Kong. One-fourth of these were from women who had held a substantial amount of property. How they obtained this property intrigued us because, at that time, women were seen as subordinate to men and excluded from the labor market. Why they had wills led to further questions about Hong Kong society of that time and the role of women in it.

The analysis of this paper is based on archival data gathered from the Hong Kong Public Records Office. These data include 98 women’s wills filed from the 1840s to the 1940s and a 500-page government investigation report on the prostitution industry released in 1879. The former recorded valuable information of brief testators’ family and personal life history, amount of assets, and profolio of investment, etc. The latter included testimonials of brothel keepers and prostitutes and their life stories and the background of legalizing prostitution in early Hong Kong. Apart from basic quantitative analysis on women’s marital status, number of properties, nature of wills and number of brothels, qualitative analysis is directed to review the testator’s life of self-reliance, wealth accumulation and reasons of using wills for arranging wealth transmission after death.

In this paper, the authors found that because the colonial government declared prostitution legal, and only women could obtain employment by becoming prostitutes or brothel keepers, they earned their own livelihood, saved money and finally became independent. However, because these professions were not seen as “decent”, and these women were excluded from the formal marriage system, intestacy could cause problems for them. Through their socio-business connections, they became familiar with the Western concept of testate inheritance. So, they tended to use wills – a legal document by which a person assigns someone to distribute his or her property according to his or her wishes after his or her death – to assign their property.

Because only archival data are chosen for analysis, the research results may lack generalizability. Follow-up researches to examine whether the studied women acquired their wealth through their own work or simply as gifts from others are required.

This paper explores the understudied women’s life and method of estate passing after death in the early Hong Kong society. It fills the academic gap of women’s contribution to Hong Kong’s success and enriches our understanding on the important factors that could attribute women’s real independence.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how a neo-liberal nationalist discourse of China imagines the spatial identity of the post-1997 Hong Kong with reference to Lost in Hong Kong, a new Chinese middle-class film in 2015 with successful box office sales.

Textual analysis with the aid of psychoanalysis, postcolonial studies and semiotics is used to interpret the meaning of the film in this study. The study also utilizes the previous literature reviews about the formation of the Chinese national identity to help analyze the distinct identity of the Chinese middle class today.

The discussion pinpoints how the new Chinese middle class as neo-liberal nationalists take Hong Kong as a “bizarre national redemptive space”. While Hong Kong is cinematically constructed as such a national other, this paper argues that the Hong Kong in question stands not for itself but in a form of “reverse hallucination” for pacifying the new Chinese middle class’ trauma under the rapid neo-liberalization of China in the 1990s.

This paper shows the new of formation of the Chinese nationalist’s discourse, especially the new Chinese middle-class discourse on Hong Kong after 1997.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the cultural images of an urban quarter have been formulated by analyzing the Wing Lee Street (WLS) case in Hong Kong. This study aims to fill the gap in knowledge, which is predominantly associated with the effects of cultural policies on the production of attractive urban images, but has overlooked the social and ideological constructions placed on such imagery by the people viewing them.

In accordance with the study’s purpose, these images have been taken to have been formulated, thanks to the participation of different social forces that act based on their own respective interests.

This research has identified four social parties involved in the WLS project: the Urban Renewal Authority, which is a self-financed public corporation; local residents; nonprofit cultural organizations concerned with cultural continuity; and community interests, and artists and the media.

This study reveals the collisions, constraints and influences that result from these social forces’ interactions with one another, and how these have shaped the cultural image of WLS. Finally, this research presents the five dimensions of the cultural image of WLS.

The past two decades have witnessed significant changes in China as it has moved from a centrally planned economy to a more market‐oriented one. As a socialist nation, state owned enterprises (SOEs) continue to comprise a dominant part of economic activity in China. While many SOEs are inefficient and incur losses, economic reforms since the late 1970s have brought about irrevocable changes in the manner in which Chinese SOEs conduct their business. The important agenda for the Chinese government now is how to “vitalize” state sectors and ensure that SOEs are able to strive for their own survival. SOEs therefore are exploring ways to improve the productivity of their current operation and to enhance innovativeness in their business development, including seeking financial and technological resources overseas. The varying levels of market‐orientation in SOEs present diverse outcomes for the SOEs. This study attempts to evaluate the extent to which the SOEs have adopted market‐based organizational learning (Sinkula, Baker, and Noordewier 1997), market orientation (Deshpande and Farley 1998), entrepreneurial orientation (Smart and Conant 1994), and learning and innovativeness (Hurley and Hult 1998).