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The purpose of this paper is to establish a more reasonable evaluation system and model for the development level of rural tourism, and provides a method for quantifying the development level of regional rural tourism.

This paper provides a method for evaluating the development level of rural tourism, constructs an evaluation index system according to the connotation of rural tourism, then calculates the index weight by entropy method, and makes a comprehensive evaluation by grey relational analysis. Taking the development of rural tourism in 11 cities in Jiangxi Province as the research object, the ranking results of 11 cities were obtained by using grey relational analysis.

The overall development level of rural tourism in Jiangxi Province is positive, but the spatial distribution is uneven, showing the characteristics of “low-level aggregation and high-level dispersion”. The barrier model diagnoses that the degree of financial input is the biggest constraint to the development level of rural tourism in Jiangxi Province.

This study puts forward an evaluation model based on entropy weight and grey relational analysis, which is an important supplement to the grey relational analysis method system and has a positive role in promoting the quantitative evaluation of regional rural tourism level.

The aim of this paper is to review the literature on the prediction of cutting tool life. Tool life is typically estimated by predicting the time to reach the threshold flank wear width. The cutting tool is a crucial component in any machining process, and its failure affects the manufacturing process adversely. The prediction of cutting tool life by considering several factors that affect tool life is crucial to managing quality, cost, availability and waste in machining processes.

This study has undertaken the critical analysis and summarisation of various techniques used in the literature for predicting the life or remaining useful life (RUL) of the cutting tool through monitoring the tool wear, primarily flank wear. The experimental setups that comprise diversified machining processes, including turning, milling, drilling, boring and slotting, are covered in this review.

Cutting tool life is a stochastic variable. Tool failure depends on various factors, including the type and material of the cutting tool, work material, cutting conditions and machine tool. Thus, the life of the cutting tool for a particular experimental setup must be modelled by considering the cutting parameters.

This submission discusses tool life prediction comprehensively, from monitoring tool wear, primarily flank wear, to modelling tool life, and this type of comprehensive review on cutting tool life prediction has not been reported in the literature till now. The future suggestions provided in this review are expected to provide avenues to solve the unexplored challenges in this field.

This study examines how Confucianism, as an informal system, alleviates manager–shareholder conflicts and thus decreases managerial behavior of keeping higher levels of cash reserves. This study also investigates whether formal governance mechanisms (state ownership and institutional investors) moderate the relationship between Confucianism and cash holdings.

This study opts a sample of Chinese listed firms over the period of 2004–2015. The geographical-proximity-based method was followed to measure Confucianism, which is the distance between a firm's registered address and the national Confucianism centers.

The results indicate that Confucianism adversely influences cash holdings. The authors’ findings illustrate that Confucian culture promotes ethical behavior, and therefore, firms in a strong Confucianism environment keep a lower level of cash reserves. The authors further document that the effect of Confucianism on cash holding is weaker for state-owned firms but stronger for firms with low institutional ownership.

The findings provide implications for policymakers, academicians, and corporations. The results suggest that culture can reduce cash holdings. Especially, in emerging markets, such as China, where formal mechanisms are relatively less effective, informal institutions can serve an alternative system for alleviating adverse effects of agency conflicts.

This study contributes to the literature in two ways. First, this study contributes to cash holdings literature by showing that culture (Confucianism) is negatively associated with cash holdings. Second, this study extends the incumbent literature that seeks to explore how Confucian culture influences corporate behavior. To the best of the authors knowledge, this is the first study that identifies that Confucianism is associated with cash holdings.

By tradition, sensors are used to measure one desired parameter; all other parameters influencing the sensor are considered as interfering inputs, to be eliminated if possible. Hence most of existing sensors are specifically intended for measuring one parameter, e.g. temperature, and the ideal temperature sensor should be as immune to all other parameters as possible. True, we sometimes use primitive sensor fusion, e.g. when calculating heat flow by combining separate measurements of temperature difference and of fluid flow.

Construction organizations must maintain a productive workforce without sacrificing their health and safety. The global construction sector loses billions of dollars yearly to poor health and safety practices. This study aims to investigate benefits derivable from using wearable technologies to improve construction health and safety. The study also reports the challenges associated with adopting wearable technologies.

The study adopted a quantitative design, administering close-ended questions to professionals in the Nigerian construction industry. The research data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics.

The study found that the critical areas construction organizations can benefit from using WSDs include slips and trips, sensing environmental concerns, collision avoidance, falling from a high level and electrocution. However, key barriers preventing the organizations from adopting wearable technologies are related to cost, technology and human factors.

The time and cost lost to H&S incidents in the Nigerian construction sector can be reduced by implementing the report of this study.

Studies on WSDs have continued to increase in developed countries, but Nigeria is yet to experience a leap in the research area. This study provides insights into the Nigerian reality to provide directions for practice and theory.

The aim of continuous learning is to obtain and fine-tune information gradually without removing the already existing information. Many conventional approaches in streaming data classification assume that all arrived new data is completely labeled. To regularize Neural Networks (NNs) by merging side information like user-provided labels or pair-wise constraints, incremental semi-supervised learning models need to be introduced. However, they are hard to implement, specifically in non-stationary environments because of the efficiency and sensitivity of such algorithms to parameters. The periodic update and maintenance of the decision method is the significant challenge in incremental algorithms whenever the new data arrives.

Hence, this paper plans to develop the meta-learning model for handling continuous or streaming data. Initially, the data pertain to continuous behavior is gathered from diverse benchmark source. Further, the classification of the data is performed by the Recurrent Neural Network (RNN), in which testing weight is adjusted or optimized by the new meta-heuristic algorithm. Here, the weight is updated for reducing the error difference between the target and the measured data when new data is given for testing. The optimized weight updated testing is performed by evaluating the concept-drift and classification accuracy. The new continuous learning by RNN is accomplished by the improved Opposition-based Novel Updating Spotted Hyena Optimization (ONU-SHO). Finally, the experiments with different datasets show that the proposed learning is improved over the conventional models.

From the analysis, the accuracy of the ONU-SHO based RNN (ONU-SHO-RNN) was 10.1% advanced than Decision Tree (DT), 7.6% advanced than Naive Bayes (NB), 7.4% advanced than k-nearest neighbors (KNN), 2.5% advanced than Support Vector Machine (SVM) 9.3% advanced than NN, and 10.6% advanced than RNN. Hence, it is confirmed that the ONU-SHO algorithm is performing well for acquiring the best data stream classification.

This paper introduces a novel meta-learning model using Opposition-based Novel Updating Spotted Hyena Optimization (ONU-SHO)-based Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) for handling continuous or streaming data. This is the first work utilizes a novel meta-learning model using Opposition-based Novel Updating Spotted Hyena Optimization (ONU-SHO)-based Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) for handling continuous or streaming data.

The purpose of this paper is to construct a grey incidence model for panel data that can reflect the incidence direction and degree between indicators.

Firstly, this paper introduces the concept of a negative matrix and preprocesses the data of each indicator matrix to eliminate differences in dimensions and magnitudes between indicators. Then a model is constructed to measure the incidence direction and degree between indicators, and the properties of the model are studied. Finally, the model is applied to a practical problem.

The grey-directed incidence degree is 1 if and only if corresponding elements between the feature indicator matrix and the factor indicator matrix have a positive linear relationship. This degree is −1 if and only if corresponding elements between the feature indicator matrix and the factor indicator matrix have a negative linear relationship.

The example shows the number of days with good air quality is negatively correlated with the annual average concentration of each pollutant index. PM_2.5, PM₁₀ and O₃ are the main pollutants affecting air quality in northern Henan.

This paper introduces the negative matrix and constructs a model from the holistic perspective to measure the incidence direction and level between indicators. This model can effectively measure the incidence between the feature indicator and factor indicator by integrating information from the point, row, column and matrix.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the major reverse logistics design aspects in used clothing value chains, and those enabling and challenging manifestation of value creation.

This research is based on an exploratory study of 12 established organizations in Swedish used clothing networks. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews, secondary sources, and subsequent field visits.

Empirical insights on how various design aspects influence value creation in used clothing value chains are provided. Crucial among these are strategic and consistent collection, presence of multi-channel sales, and communication of post-retail concepts for manifesting value by bolstering consumer satisfaction, environmental motivation, and corporate image. Inter-organizational collaboration in reverse logistics processes and workplace training, further renders higher economic, environmental and information values.

The paper proposes a holistic framework of design aspects in reverse value chains, and extends existing knowledge on how these aspects manifest value creation. By doing so, a nuanced view of the design aspects is offered by highlighting how they can differentially, either enable, or challenge value creation. In this connection, seven supporting propositions are developed for in-depth future research.

The paper includes implications for the devising strategic solutions for higher value creation, by understanding of the key enablers and challenges, for many actors in the used clothing networks.

The role of various design aspects in reverse value chains for manifesting multifaceted stakeholder value creation is explicitly defined in the paper.

This paper analyzes two external costs often associated with port development, cost to fisheries from marine dredge disposal and damages from air pollution, using estimates of development and operation for a proposed (but since cancelled) container port as a case study. For dredge disposal, a bio-economic model was used to assess short- and long-term and indirect (joodweb) damages to fisheries from marine disposal of clean sediments. In the case of air pollution, estimates of annual activity levels and emission coefficients are used to estimate incremental annual emissions of three key pollutants (NOx, HC and CO) for trucks, trains, yard vehicles, and vessels. These estimates allow for phasing in of strict new air pollution regulations. For both external costs, sensitivity analyses are used to reflect uncertainty. Estimates of shadow values in year 2002 dollars amount from $0.094 per cubic yard to $0.169 per cubic yard of clean dredged material for the selected disposal site and from $0.0584 per mile (jor current control standards) to $ 0. 0023 per mile (after phasing in of new regulations) for air pollution from heavy trucks.

The purpose of this paper is to value put option contracts in hedging the risks in a supply chain consisting of a component supplier with random yield and a manufacturer facing stochastic demand for end products.

This paper adopts stochastic inventory theory, game theory, optimization theory and algorithm and MATLAB numerical simulation to investigate the manufacturer’s ordering and the supplier’s production strategies, and to study the coordination and optimization strategies in the context of random yield and demand.

The authors find that put options can not only facilitate the manufacturer’s order but also the supplier’s production, that is, the manufacturer and the supplier can effectively manage their involved risks and earn more expected profits by adopting put options. Further, the authors find that the single put option contract fails to coordinate such a supply chain. However, when combined with a protocol, it is able to coordinate the supply chain.

This paper is the first effort to study the intersection of put option contracts and random yield in the presence of a spot market. From a new perspective, the authors explore the supply chain coordination. The authors propose a mechanism to coordinate the supply chain under put option contracts.