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This study aims to analyze the development direction of track geometry inspection equipment for high-speed comprehensive inspection train in China.

The development of track geometry inspection equipment for high-speed comprehensive inspection train in China in the past 20 years can be divided into 3 stages. Track geometry inspection equipment 1.0 is the stage of analog signal. At the stage 1.0, the first priority is to meet the China's railways basic needs of pre-operation joint debugging, safety assessment and daily dynamic inspection, maintenance and repair after operation. Track geometry inspection equipment 2.0 is the stage of digital signal. At the stage 2.0, it is important to improve stability and reliability of track geometry inspection equipment by upgrading the hardware sensors and improving software architecture. Track geometry inspection equipment 3.0 is the stage of lightweight. At the stage 3.0, miniaturization, low power consumption, self-running and green economy are co-developing on demand.

The ability of track geometry inspection equipment for high-speed comprehensive inspection train will be expanded. The dynamic inspection of track stiffness changes will be studied under loaded and unloaded conditions in response to the track local settlement, track plate detachment and cushion plate failure. The dynamic measurement method of rail surface slope and vertical curve radius will be proposed, to reveal the changes in railway profile parameters of high-speed railways and the relationship between railway profile, track irregularity and subsidence of subgrade and bridges. The 200 m cut-off wavelength of track regularity will be researched to adapt to the operating speed of 400 km/h.

The research can provide new connotations and requirements of track geometry inspection equipment for high-speed comprehensive inspection train in the new railway stage.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influences of positive-framed and negative-framed green advertising on pro-environmental WTP. This study also explores the impacts of regulatory focus, environmental concern and pleasant level on green advertising effectiveness.

Data are collected from a within-participant between-group online experiment in China. The generalized estimating equation (GEE) is employed to investigate the impact of green advertising on WTP. Grouped regression and mediation analyses are conducted to explore the influences of regulatory focus, environmental concern and pleasure on advertising efficacy.

The experimental outcomes indicate that green advertising significantly increases participants’ pro-environmental WTP, and negative-framed advertising is more effective than its positive-framed counterpart. Prevention focus heightens receptivity to green advertising, and the relation of environmental concern to advertising effectiveness is inverted U-shaped. Pleasure mediates the effect of green advertising on the WTP, and this mediating role is influenced by emotional intensity when advertising is negatively framed.

Evidence suggests that green advertising may propel pro-environmental WTP by raising environmental awareness, but such a relationship remains severely understudied. As such, this study pioneers in exploring the impact of different-framed green advertising on pro-environmental WTP, extending the concept of green advertising to environmental management. By considering the influences of regulatory focus, environmental concern and pleasure, this study raises practical implications for designing green advertisements, such as increasing the usage of visual elements.

Integrating social network theory with signaling theory, the purpose of this research is to examine the impact of corporate political connections and executive’s international experience on Chinese firms initial public offerings (IPOs) performance in the USA.

This study used Securities Data Company (SDC) New Issues database to identify all Chinese firms that went public in the USA between 2003 and 2014. Consistent with previous research, IPO firms excluded from the sample include merger or acquisitions, spin-offs and initial stage listed firms. The final sample size is of 142 Chinese foreign IPOs in the US markets.

This study finds that firms with political connections perform significantly poor than firms without political connections. It shows that US stock markets react to the signals of political connections of Chinese foreign IPOs. In response, the Chinese foreign IPOs can signal international work experience of top executives to US investors. The results show that the executives’ international work experience has significant positive relationships on foreign IPO performance of Chinese firms. Moreover, this study finds that the interaction between corporate political connections and international experience pursues positive effects on the performance of foreign IPOs.

This research intends to extend the knowledge of how corporate political connections and international work experience affects the performance of Chinese firms attempting to access US capital markets. To date, scholars have not investigated the influence of corporate political connections on the amount of capital raised by foreign IPOs.

The collaborative filtering algorithm is a classical and widely used approach in product recommendation systems. However, the existing algorithms rely mostly on common ratings of items and do not consider temporal information about items or user interests. To solve this problem, this study proposes a new user-item composite filtering (UICF) recommendation framework by leveraging temporal semantics.

The UICF framework fully utilizes the time information of item ratings for measuring the similarity of items and takes into account the short-term and long-term interest decay for computing users’ latest interest degrees. For an item to be probably recommended to a user, the interest degrees of the user on all the historically rated items are weighted by their similarities with the item to be recommended and then added up to predict the recommendation degree.

Comprehensive experiments on the MovieLens and KuaiRec datasets for user movie recommendation were conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed UICF framework. Experimental results show that the UICF outperformed three well-known recommendation algorithms Item-Based Collaborative Filtering (IBCF), User-Based Collaborative Filtering (UBCF) and User-Popularity Composite Filtering (UPCF) in the root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE) and F1 metrics, especially yielding an average decrease of 11.9% in MAE.

A UICF recommendation framework is proposed that combines a time-aware item similarity model and a time-wise user interest degree model. It overcomes the limitations of common rating items and utilizes temporal information in item ratings and user interests effectively, resulting in more accurate and personalized recommendations.

Based on conservation of resources theory, this study explored the relationship between multitasking and creative work involvement through the mediation of emotional exhaustion, taking regulatory focus as a first-stage moderator.

Based on a three-wave and two-source survey among a sample of 418 employees and 116 leaders, this study conducted multilevel analyses to examine the conceptual model.

The results showed that multitasking was negatively associated with creative work involvement and that emotional exhaustion mediated the relationship between multitasking and creative work involvement. Furthermore, promotion focus and prevention focus moderated the relationship between multitasking and emotional exhaustion and the indirect relationship between multitasking and creative work involvement via emotional exhaustion.

Organizations can promote creative work involvement through interventions that reduce employees' multitasking or emotional exhaustion. In addition, supervisors should be aware of the different responses to multitasking exhibited by employees with different regulatory focuses and could potentially assign multiple tasks to employees with either a high promotion focus or a low prevention focus.

This study contributes to the literature on multitasking and creative work involvement by exploring whether and how multitasking is related to creative work involvement.

To address the problem that the current train operation mode that train selects one of several offline pre-generated control schemes before the departure and operates following the scheme after the departure, energy-saving performance of the whole metro system cannot be guaranteed.

A cooperative train control framework is formulated to regulate a novel train operation mode. The classic train four-phase control strategy is improved for generating specific energy-efficient control schemes for each train. An improved brute force (BF) algorithm with a two-layer searching idea is designed to solve the optimisation model of energy-efficient train control schemes.

Case studies on the actual metro line in Guangzhou, China verify the effectiveness of the proposed train control methods compared with four-phase control strategy under different kinds of train operation scenarios and calculation parameters. The verification on the computation efficiency as well as accuracy of the proposed algorithm indicates that it meets the requirement of online optimisation.

Most existing studies optimised energy-efficient train timetable or train control strategies through an offline process, which has a defect in coping with the disturbance or delays effectively and promptly during real-time train operation. This paper studies an online optimisation of cooperative train control based on the rolling optimisation idea, where energy-efficient train operation can be realised once train running time is determined, thus mitigating the impact of unpredictable operation situations on the energy-saving performance of trains.

Constructed upon knowledge-based view, the study examines the influence of internal marketing on knowledge management processes and the indirect association of knowledge management processes with organizational performance through mediating role of knowledge worker satisfaction.

This study used a sample frame of 536 academic and administrative employees from higher education institutions in China; structural equation modeling was performed using Smart PLS 3.2.8.

The outcome reveals that internal marketing has a significant impact on knowledge management processes. The results revealed a direct insignificant impact of knowledge management processes on organizational performance; the study found full mediation of knowledge worker satisfaction on the linkage between knowledge management processes and organizational performance.

Outcomes of this research strengthen the universities’ experience of knowledge management and recommend how academics and administrators of higher education institute can value knowledge worker satisfaction, which in turn improves organizational performance.

Although, there is an increased significance of knowledge management in higher education institutions, there is a lack of research that examines the enabling factors and outcomes of knowledge management practices. The present study is one of the first studies to ascertain the relationship of internal marketing, knowledge management processes, knowledge worker satisfaction and organizational performance. This is one of the initial research studies that not only empirically examines the interrelationships among these variables but also enlightens insights into the current literature by instantaneous investigation of the mediating role of knowledge worker satisfaction.

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) require regular generation of information determining what employees want from their institution and their real feelings about their jobs. Internal marketing (IM) can be a significantly valuable source of generating such information for HEIs to assess perceptions about institutions’ initiatives pertinent to their staff members. However, there has been a significantly limited research to operationalize IM in HEIs. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a multi-dimensional instrument for measuring IM in the HEIs in China and to assess the impact of IM on university performance.

The research used methodological triangulation that involved both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The qualitative technique was used to generate scale items to measure IM and the quantitative technique was utilized to test and validate the scale. The study sample included 576 academics and administration staff from universities in China.

The study found that IM has six dimensions, namely internal communications, training and development, interrelations, motivation, rewards and work support. The study also found a significant impact of IM on university performance.

The sample size used was taken from a single province, which can ultimately limit the generalizability of the results. The scale shall be tested in a different cultural setting to extend its generalizability. In comparison with previous studies, the results of the current study provide a more absolute coverage and understanding of various dimensions used in measuring IM in HEIs. Furthermore, this research can provide a context for the management to develop policies that could foster positive employee and organizational outcomes in HEIs.

This reliable and valid six-dimensional scale offers a practical way to measure staff perceptions of IM that are key for HEIs to be judged as staff-centered organization. Based on the knowledge, HEIs can use the information to identify the areas in which they are lacking and can further improve. IM scale can significantly help the HEIs to communicate to the staff members their service mindedness and staff orientation. IM can help foster knowledge management in organizations by utilizing IM, thereby contributing to the professional and organizational interaction.

Despite the focus on IM in existing literature, there is a significant lack of research on IM in the education sector. This study developed a simple and practical instrument to measure the IM construct in HEIs. Scholars have asked for context-specific measures of IM and with significantly limited research on IM in higher education, there is also a scarcity of research in the context of higher education in China. This is the first study to assess the multi-dimensionality of IM in HEIs and the impact of IM on organizational performance in Chinese higher education.

This paper investigates the policy changes made towards infrastructure public–private partnerships (PPPs). The purpose of this study is to empirically identify the policy risks associated with the development of PPPs and to assess their impacts on the projects.

A case study of the policy changes that have been implemented for PPPs in China over the past seven years has been undertaken and is presented in this study. The causal loop diagrams are applied to assess and illustrate the potential impacts of the risks as a result of such changes on PPPs.

A sequence of the policy risks, which relate to PPP risk allocation, contract management and implementation, payment and abatement mechanisms and financing, has been identified. It is also found that the identified risks will generate significant but negative impacts on PPPs, leading to an ineffective project delivery, low revenue, poor service quality and even contract breach.

This research provides the private-sector entities that will embark on PPPs with an insight into managing and controlling policy risks over the project's lifecycle.

PPPs have been critical for infrastructure development worldwide. Nevertheless, they have been a controversy, as many of them were subjected to poor outputs. Consequently, a variety of political mechanisms has been implemented to enhance the governance for PPPs. Policy can bring not only benefits but also risks and, however, policy risks of PPPs with a particular assessment for their potential impacts have received limited attention. Therefore, the study presented in this paper will contribute to the identification and assessment of policy risks within the context of PPPs.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a prediction method of gas-liquid two-phase flow patterns and reveal the flow characteristics in the suction chamber of a centrifugal pump.

A transparent model pump was experimentally studied, and the gas-liquid two-phase flow in the pump was numerically simulated based on the Eulerian–Eulerian heterogeneous flow model. The numerical simulation method was verified from three aspects: the flow pattern in the suction chamber, the gas spiral length and the external characteristics of the pump. The two-phase flow in the suction chamber was studied in detail by using the numerical simulation method.

There are up to eight flow patterns in the suction chamber. However, at a certain rotational speed, only six flow patterns are observed at the most. At some rotational speeds, only four flow patterns appear. The gas spiral length has little relationship with the gas flow rate. It decreases with the increase of the liquid flow rate and increases with the increase of the rotational speed. The spiral flow greatly increases the turbulence intensity in the suction chamber.

A method for predicting the flow pattern was proposed. Eight flow patterns in the suction chamber were identified. The mechanism of gas-liquid two-phase flow in the suction chamber was revealed. The research results have reference values for the stable operation of two-phase flow pumps and the optimization of suction chambers.