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The purpose of this study is to process the wettability surface of the ZrO₂ ceramics to improve their surface friction performance.

Microtexture was processed on the surface of ZrO₂ ceramics using a femtosecond laser. The three-dimensional texture morphology, surface contact angle, friction curve and wear morphology were measured by the laser confocal microscope, the contact angle meter, the reciprocating friction and wear tester and the scanning electron microscope, respectively. Based on Wenzel and partial impalement models, a geometric model of micro pits is established to study the influence mechanism of micro pit depth, diameter and distribution density on wettability and to analyze the relationship between surface wettability and tribological properties.

The results show that changing the geometric characteristics of the texture will lead to a change in the solid-liquid contact mode, and then lead to a change of in the surface contact angle. Wettability is an essential factor that affects the reduction of surface friction. The construction of a reasonable texture can enhance the surface hydrophilicity, which is conducive to the formation of a lubricating film on the ceramic surface, thereby reducing abrasive and adhesive wear, and improving the wear resistance of the ZrO₂ ceramic surface.

The results provide a theoretical reference for femtosecond laser surface texture wettability regulation and tribological performance improvement.

The present investigation goals to empirically test the role of expert cloud on team performance and employee creativity. Here, the expert cloud comprises cloud application, cloud management, cloud infrastructure and cloud resources. The present study aims to identify important and key criteria and examine the relationships among them. In other words, the purpose of this study to find out the impact and relationship between cloud application, cloud management, cloud infrastructure and cloud resources and team performance and employee creativity.

Today, human societies’ rapid growth and the environmental changes that surround us every day are clearly visible. They highly affect our activities. In today’s highly complex organizations, people alone cannot handle all the issues that have arisen. As organizational managers are faced with diverse cultures in the governance of organizations, the need to use work teams with different abilities and specializations to achieve the goals of organizations leads managers to use teamwork and focus on employee creativity. On the other hand, the expert cloud makes it possible for human societies like universities, firms, industries, institutes, businesses and colleges to pool and share their human resources’ skills, knowledge and experiences to meet the competitive era’s demands. Therefore, the current investigation examines the impact of expert cloud on team performance and employee creativity. The research information is collected using an online questionnaire. The data collected is analyzed using AMOS and SMART PLS software.

All of the formulated hypotheses are supported. The results have shown that cloud application, cloud management, cloud infrastructure and cloud resources positively and significantly affect team performance and employee creativity.

Managers must be conscious of the vital role that the professional cloud plays in team performance and the innovation of workers. This paper would also make executives more conscious of the powerful tools in the field of cloud computing. Firms can use the outcomes of this paper investigation to improve team performance and employee creativity.

It is considered one of the initial efforts to demonstrate the impacts of expert cloud on team performance and employee creativity. This study’s value relies on that practitioners and academics may have supporting evidence on the role played by novel technology such as an expert cloud.

The calculation of buildings’ carbon footprint (CFP) is an important basis for formulating energy-saving and emission-reduction plans for building. As an important building type, there is currently no model that considers the time factor to accurately calculate the CFP of hospital building throughout their life cycle. This paper aims to establish a CFP calculation model that covers the life cycle of hospital building and considers time factor.

On the basis of field and literature research, the basic framework is built using dynamic life cycle assessment (DLCA), and the gray prediction model is used to predict the future value. Finally, a CFP model covering the whole life cycle has been constructed and applied to a hospital building in China.

The results applied to the case show that the CO₂ emission in the operation stage of the hospital building is much higher than that in other stages, and the total CO₂ emission in the dynamic and static analysis operation stage accounts for 83.66% and 79.03%, respectively; the difference of annual average emission of CO₂ reached 28.33%. The research results show that DLCA is more accurate than traditional static life cycle assessment (LCA) when measuring long-term objects such as carbon emissions in the whole life cycle of hospital building.

This research established a carbon emission calculation model that covers the life cycle of hospital building and considered time factor, which enriches the research on carbon emission of hospital building, a special and extensive public building, and dynamically quantifies the resource consumption of hospital building in the life cycle. This paper provided a certain reference for the green design, energy saving, emission reduction and efficient use of hospital building, obviously, the limitation is that this model is only applicable to hospital building.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a simplified optimization calculation method to assess cable force of self-anchored suspension bridge based on optimization theories.

A simplified analysis method construction using Matlab is developed, which is then compared with the optimization method that considers the main cable’s geometric nonlinearity with software ANSYS in an actual bridge calculation.

This contrast proves the weak coherence and the adjacently interaction theory unreasonable and its limitation.

This paper analyzes the calculation method to assess cable force of a self-anchored suspension bridge and its application effect.

Some papers have investigated the complex factors impacting building information modeling (BIM) application in prefabricated buildings (PBs), but few paid attention to their interaction relationships. Ignoring the fact that different factors are not isolated may lead to some key factors being overlooked without appropriate improvement strategies being proposed. This paper aims to analyze those factors and their inter-relationships, with the view to identify the critical factors and their interaction relationships so as to derive constructive strategies that would effectively facilitate BIM adoption in Chinese prefabrication.

First, factors influencing BIM application in prefabrication are extracted and collated by literature review, expert interview and analysis of PBs characteristics. Thereafter, an evaluation laboratory (decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory) and interpretive structural modeling are used to explore the relationships and hierarchy among the factors. Based on the degree of cause and centrality, critical factors are extracted and the interaction relationship are investigated.

The results show that BIM policies and standards for PBs are the main causal factors. The maturity of BIM software and BIM data interface for PBs, willingness to share data, the strategic goals of the enterprise, BIM law and BIM input and benefit are the main transitional factors while BIM staff and workflow, enterprise attitude, distribution of BIM liability and cooperation of participants are the main direct factors.

Based on the above findings, corresponding improvement strategies are proposed so as to promote BIM application in prefabrication and the rapid development of China’s PBs efficiently.

The authors focus on a non-Western setting that has hardly featured in debates around political authenticity, Taiwan. The authors also adopt a novel inter-generational perspective to look at varying attitudes towards two ‘unconventional’, high-profile politicians, Ko Wen-je and Han Kuo-yu. Drawing on focus group data, the authors note the similarities and differences in the way that the different generations engage with, and assess, the two politicians with a particular focus on the extent to which their personalities, appearance, and everyday activities are perceived as authentic.

Education plays an important role in improving Chinese rural laborers’ non-farm incomes. However, in Chinese western rural area, the level of return to education is very low due to the underdeveloped economy and the condition of the education system. For improving the schooling returns level, Chinese central government is paying great attention to the condition of education in the rural western area. To date, no research has examined what educational style is more favorable for improving western rural laborers’ non-farm incomes. To answer this question, the purpose of this paper is to compare the treatment effect of high school education and secondary vocational education on their non-farm incomes. That will provide significant evidence for the government to carry out educational policy.

Base on the Mincer model, several methods is used to estimate the average return to a year education on western rural labors’ non-farm income, including OLS, IV and Heckman tow-steps method, to accounting for the ability endogenous and self-selection bias. And the propensity score matching method is used in estimate the treatment effects of high school education and secondary vocational education.

The results from Mincer model showed that the schooling returns in Chinese western rural area were estimated to range from 2.7 to 3.9 percent, that were lower than the average levels in Chinese whole rural area that are estimated in the other recent studies. By using propensity score matching to roll out the heterogeneous bias, show that the treatment effect from high school education was higher than that from secondary vocational education, indicating that the secondary vocational education is better.

Studies concerning the causal relationship between schooling (high school education and secondary vocational education) and non-farm earnings in the western region of China remain very limited, even empty. This paper will make an update contribution to the literature in the area of education earnings in China.

Lack of optimization and improvement on experimental circuits precludes comprehensive statements. It is a deficiency of the existing chaotic circuit technology. One of the aims of this paper is to solve the above mentioned problems. Another purpose of this paper is to construct a 10 + 4-type chaotic secure communication circuit based on the proposed third-order 4 + 2-type circuit which can output chaotic phase portraits with high accuracy and high stability.

In Section 2 of this paper, a novel third-order 4 + 2 chaotic circuit is constructed and a new third-order Lorenz-like chaotic system is proposed based on the 4 + 2 circuit. Then some simulations are presented to verify that the proposed system is chaotic by using Multisim software. In Section 3, a fourth-order chaotic circuit is proposed on the basis of the third-order 4 + 2 chaotic circuit. In Section 4, the circuit design method of this paper is applied to chaotic synchronization and secure communication. A new 10 + 4-type chaotic secure communication circuit is proposed based on the novel third-order 4 + 2 circuit. In Section 5, the proposed third-order 4 + 2 chaotic circuit and the fourth-order chaotic circuit are implemented in an analog electronic circuit. The analog circuit implementation results match the Multisim results.

The simulation results show that the proposed fourth-order chaotic circuit can output six phase portraits, and it can output a stable fourth-order double-vortex chaotic signal. A new 10 + 4-type chaotic secure communication circuit is proposed based on the novel third-order 4 + 2 circuit. The scheme has the advantages of clear thinking, efficient and high practicability. The experimental results show that the precision is improved by 2-3 orders of magnitude. Signal-to-noise ratio meets the requirements of engineering design. It provides certain theoretical and technical bases for the realization of a large-scale integrated circuit with a memristor. The proposed circuit design method can also be used in other chaotic systems.

In this paper, a novel third-order 4 + 2 chaotic circuit is constructed and a new chaotic system is proposed on the basis of the 4 + 2 chaotic circuit for the first time. Some simulations are presented to verify its chaotic characteristics by Multisim. Then the novel third-order 4 + 2 chaotic circuit is applied to construct a fourth-order chaotic circuit. Simulation results verify the existence of the new fourth-order chaotic system. Moreover, a new 10 + 4-type chaotic secure communication circuit is proposed based on chaotic synchronization of the novel third-order 4 + 2 circuit. To illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, the intensity limit and stability of the transmitted signal, the characteristic of broadband and the requirements for accuracy of electronic components are presented by Multisim simulation. Finally, the proposed third-order 4 + 2 chaotic circuit and the fourth-order chaotic circuit are implemented through an analog electronic circuit, which are characterized by their high accuracy and good robustness. The analog circuit implementation results match the Multisim results.

The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of environmental pollution and industrial structure upgrading on environmental pollution in different stages based on the temporal and spatial heterogeneity of economic development level and industrial structure upgrading level in eastern, central and western regions of China and discuss whether there is adjustment effect and threshold effect in the process of economic growth affecting environmental pollution, and finally realizes sustainable economic development.

Based on panel data from 30 provincial-level administrative regions of China (excluding Tibet and Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) from 2000 to 2019, this paper uses the environmental Kuznets curve, regulating effect model and panel threshold model to analyze the impact of economic growth and industrial structure upgrading on environmental pollution.

The results present that the uneven distribution of natural resources leads to different levels of economic development and industrial structure upgrading in eastern and western regions, and its impact on environmental pollution is also different. Economic growth and industrial structure upgrading have a positive effect on environmental pollution, and the relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution is inverted U-shaped. At present, the eastern, central and western regions of China are at the right end of the inverted U-shaped relationship. In general, industrial structure upgrading in eastern, central and western regions has a significant inhibitory effect on environmental pollution. Industrial structure upgrading has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution, and the regulating effect is most significant in the central region, followed by the eastern region, and not significant in the western region. The results of panel threshold model show that the industrial structure upgrading can slow down the positive impact of economic growth on environmental pollution and strengthen the negative moderating effect of industrial structure upgrading on economic growth and environmental pollution.

The innovation of this study is to bring economic growth, industrial structure upgrading and environmental pollution into a unified analytical framework, analyze the impact of economic development and industrial structure upgrading levels in different periods on environmental pollution, and select industrial structure upgrading as the moderating variable and threshold variable. It provides a thought for the influence mechanism of different levels of industrial structure upgrading on economic growth and environmental pollution. Based on the panel data in China, this study emphasizes the concept of sustainable development, adheres to green development and proposes relevant policies to improve environmental pollution. And this paper proposes relevant policies to improve environmental pollution from the perspective of transforming economic growth mode and optimizing industrial structure in China, which also has reference significance for developing countries to realize sustainable economic development.

A structural and textural characterization study has been performed to investigate the adherence of zeolite-based catalyst washcoated onto honey-comb-type cordierite monoliths. The supports were characterized by the scanning electron microscopy/energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) techniques.

SEM/EDS provided quantitative estimate of the washcoated monolith as the elemental composition of catalyst coating. The XRD pattern deduced that the zeolite-based catalysts were successfully mounted on the cordierite support, showing the characteristic peaks of zeolites (Zeolite Socony Mobil–5; ZSM-5) at Braggs angles of 7.88°, 8.76°, 23.04°, 23.88° and 24.36°, whereas the characteristic peak of cordierite is seen at a Braggs angle of 10.44°.

The BET results proved that a monolayer of zeolite may serve the need for surface area and porosity. This was evident in the increase of surface area of washcoated support as against the bare support. The obtained isotherms were of Type IV, illustrating the presence of mesopores. The adsorption and desorption isotherm branches coincided over the interval 0 < P/P0 < 0.50 and 0 < P/P0 < 0.45, showing N₂ reversible adsorption for the two samples, respectively.

It was concluded that the composite materials which are ZSM-5 (Si/Al = 25) and precursors of the transition salts of copper, zinc and ceria powders were deposited on the catalyst supports, establishing the success of the coating procedure relative to the adherence of the catalyst compositions on the ceramic support.