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Low levels of human capital in rural China are rooted in the poor schooling outcomes of elementary school students. The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the distribution of academic performance in rural China and identify vulnerable groups.

The authors draw on a data set of 25,892 observations constructed from 11 school-level surveys spanning nine provinces and one municipality in China conducted from 2013 to 2015.

The authors find that the distribution of academic performance is uneven across provinces and subgroups. In general, male students, Han, living in richer counties, living with their parents and studying in rural public schools do better academically than female students, non-Han, living in poorer counties, left behind and studying in private migrant schools in cities.

Using the results of this study, policymakers should be able to better target investments into rural education focusing on at risk subpopulations.

With limited data sources, the research on the academic performance of students in rural China is largely absent. The findings of this study help to fill the gaps in the literature base.

Wolverine hairs with superior heat transfer properties have been used as fur ruffs for extreme cold-weather clothing. In order to understand the exclusive mechanism of wolverine surviving in the cold areas of circumpolar, the purpose of this paper is to establish a one-dimensional fractional heat transfer equation to reveal the hidden mechanism for the hairs, and also calculate the fractal dimension of the wolverine hair using the box counting method to verify the proposed theory. The observed results (from the proposed model) found to be in good agreement with the box counting method. This model can explain the phenomenon which offers the theoretical foundation for the design of extreme cold weather clothing.

The authors calculated the fractal dimension of the wolverine hair using the box counting method to verify the proposed theory. The observed results (from the proposed model) found to be in good agreement with the box counting method.

The box counting method proves that the theoretical model is applicable.

The authors propose the first heat transfer model for the wolverine hair.

This paper aims to successfully synthesize three-dimensional spindle-like Au functionalized Co₃O₄-ZnO nanocomposites; characterize the structure, morphology and surface chemical properties of the products; study the effect of Au NPs doping concentration, operating temperature different gas to, sensing properties; and introduce an attractive gas sensor for acetone detection.

Au NPs functionalized Co₃O₄-ZnO nanocomposite was prepared by coprecipitation and impregnation methods; the structure and surface chemical property of the products were characterized by XRD, SEM, TEM, UV-Vis, BET and XPS. The sensing ability of Au@Co₃O₄-ZnO for acetone and mechanism was analyzed systematically.

The results of gas sensing tests show that the unique component structure, Schottky junction and catalytic effect of Au functionalization make it have low operating temperature, excellent selectivity, high response (10 ppm, 56) and rapid response recovery time.

All the characterization and test data of the prepared materials are provided in this paper and reveals the gas sensing mechanism of the gas sensor.

The detection limit is 2.92–100 ppb acetone. It is promising to be applied in low-power, micro detection and miniature acetone gas sensors.

The gas sensor prepared has a lower working temperature and low detection limit, so it has promising application prospects in low-concentration acetone detection and early warning.

The unique component structure, Schottky junction and catalytic effect of Au functionalization Co₃O₄-ZnO make it have low operating temperature, excellent selectivity and rapid response recovery time.

Based on the online brand community, this study focuses on how online brand community experience affects customer voice and discusses the relationship between community engagement and community commitment. Specifically, we examine the mediation effect of community engagement between community experience and customer voice and also the moderation role of community commitment.

The survey data is collected through the online survey of people who participate in the online mobile phone brand community. In total, 369 members of online community users (Huawei and Apple communities) were collected as the research samples. Then the structural equation model analysis was tested through the SPSS 25 and Mplus 7 in a two-stage analysis program.

The results show that (1) customer online brand community experience has a positive impact on customer voice; (2) community engagement mediates the positive relationship between online brand community experience and customer voice; and (3) community commitment plays a moderating role between customer experience and customer voice. Compared with low level customer's community commitment, when customer's community commitment is high, the level of community engagement has a greater mediation effect on the positive relationship between community experience and customer voice.

On the one hand, the model of customer community experience to customer voice built in this paper has not been fully validated. Whether the model can get more robust results needs to be extended to more different community scenarios. On the other hand, this paper is actually cross-sectional data, which cannot strictly reveal the causal relationship. The authors recommend that future research may use other research methods to further reveal its internal mechanism.

This paper shows that customer's community experience has an important impact on customer voice behavior. Among them, information experience and sociability remain as the important factor affecting customer voice behavior, which is quiet important for maintaining brand community and product or service improvement. Brand community managers need to consistently create multiple forms of information presentation and interaction channels to enhance the information and social experience of community members.

First, this paper puts forward a new perspective on customer comments or feedback-customer voice, which provides a solid foundation and reference value for future scholars to explore such important phenomena. Second, the relationship between community experience and customer voice behavior was examined, which enriched the research on community experience and also discovered another positive significance of community experience in community construction. Finally, the authors examine the mediation effect of community engagement on customer voice behavior. Community engagement is one of the important indicators that reflexing community performance, which is of great significance to the brand community.

The effective and efficient motivation of the sales personnel affects the sales of a firm directly. The aim of this paper is to study the incentive effects of different compensation contracts under the framework of multi‐agent principal agent model, and it finds that the optimal contract is not the one that ties one salesperson's compensation to his own performance, but the one that ties his compensation to all the salespersons' performance. Factors that influence the incentive degree are also discussed. The purpose of this article is to design a reasonable incentive contract for salespersons where there are competitions between them.

A multi‐agent model where the efforts of one agent harm the performance of the other agent is established.

The optimal compensation of a salesperson is always composed of two parts: an incentive for an agent to improve his own performance and a disincentive for the agent to harm his colleague's performance, provided that there is a competition relationship between the two agents.

This model applies only to the rewards incentive of multi‐agents with competitive relationships.

The conclusion could be used anywhere when there are two agents with one's behavior harming the other's performance.

A multi‐agent model where the efforts of one agent harm the performance of the other agent is established to study the compensation design problems for agents.

In order to obtain visually appealing simulation results with smooth cloth surfaces, high resolution meshes are required. Since cloth simulation with high resolution meshes is very time consuming, subdivision of a reusable model is preferred. The purpose of this paper is to adopt an approach for the subdivision of a reusable model, using different subdivision methods.

In order to obtain visually pleasing reusable garment model, the authors subdivide the model after the conversion to reusable garment model. Two meshes are employed, of which the coarse mesh is used to convert to deformable model while the subdivided mesh, i.e. the refined mesh, is for pleasing modeling results. The modified loop subdivision and modified butterfly subdivision scheme is adopted for the optimization of determining which is more suitable for the reusable model. The authors adopt an algorithm for resolving the collisions happened after the subdivision.

A 3D reusable garment model obtained from previous work was tested. The experimental results validate this method as a useful and effective approach to resolve collisions after the subdivision process.

The paper presents an approach for the subdivision of a reusable model, using different subdivision methods.

Reusability of geometric model is of essential importance in garment simulation since in reality, the same garment dressed on different human bodies will exhibit different draping results. Due to the multiplicity of a garment which can be dressed on various human bodies, it is necessary to reuse a given geometrical garment model in the cyberspace, the purpose of this paper is to explore this. This requires the technique of converting a geometrical model to a physically‐based model to predict the dressing result.

In this paper, a 3D garment model obtained from range data scanning is reconstructed as a mass‐spring system driven by the first order backward Euler integrator. The penetration of dressing onto the given avatars is compensated through an AABB accelerated collision detection and response scheme.

This paper implements efficient techniques resolving intersection for cloth simulation. Two stages are selected for handling the collision. The first stage is trying to prevent collision from happening in the first stage, and the second stage is to deal with actual intersections. This two‐stage approach eliminates almost all collision in the first stage, leaving only a few collisions for the second stage. Results obtained with this approach, in the case of dressing garments on different avatars are presented and validate the conversion method from geometric model to deformable one.

The experimental results validate this method as a useful and effective approach to exhibit draping behavior on various human body shapes accordingly.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the draping behavior of a scanned garment model in irregular and regular mesh topology. 3D garment with high fidelity can be obtained via range data scanning. The original output of a body scanner is an unorganized points cloud. In this paper, the geometrical surface of 3D garment is reconstructed through a series of treatments.

The primary target of this work is to investigate the dynamic behavior of the corresponding physical model transferred from different mesh topologies. A mass‐spring model is constructed for both regular and irregular meshes. The performance under various integration methods is evaluated.

Experimental results reveal the procedure of regularization is suitable for the integrators that are sensitive to the physically‐based simulation of scanned garments.

The geometrical surface of 3D garment is reconstructed through a series of treatments solving the problem of points cloud data for high definition 3D data.

According to sociotechnical systems theory, this study examines the configurational effects of modularity (product and process modularity), supply chain integration (information, operational and relational integration) and the characteristics of customer need (customer need tacitness and diversity) on MCC and the impact of high MCC generated by different configurations on economic performance.

This study tests the model by combining fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) with propensity score matching methods based on data from 277 Chinese manufacturers.

The authors identify four equifinal configurations sufficient for high MCC and categorize them into three types: modularity + integration oriented, integration + customer need oriented, modularity + integration + customer need balance. The results further indicate that the high MCC triggered by three types of configuration affects economic performance in different ways.

The results deliver an important message to manufacturing enterprises that high MCC can be achieved through multiple equally-effective combinations. Moreover, managers should focus on the fit between multiple conditions and choose the appropriate pathway to enhance economic performance.

From a configurational perspective, these findings enrich the literature on enablers and performance outcomes of MCC by introducing an integrated model.

As a kind of NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem, pipe routing design (PRD) is applied widely in modern industries. In the offshore oil and gas industry, a semi-submersible production platform is an important equipment for oil exploitation and production. PRD is one of the most key parts of the design of semi-submersible platform. This study aims to present an improved ant colony algorithm (IACO) to address PRD for the oil and gas treatment system when designing a semi-submersible production platform.

First, to simplify PRD problem, a novel mathematical model is built according to real constraints and rules. Then, IACO, which combines modified heuristic function, mutation mechanism and dynamical parameter mechanism, is introduced.

Based on a set of specific instances, experiments are carried out, and the experimental results show that the performance of IACO is better than that of two variants of ACO, especially in terms of the convergence speed and swarm diversity. Finally, IACO is used to solve PRD for the oil and gas treatment system of semi-submersible production platform. The simulation results, which include nine pipe paths, demonstrate the practicality and high-efficiency of IACO.

The main contribution of this study is the development of method for solving PRD of a semi-submersible production platform based on the novel mathematical model and the proposed IACO.