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This study aims to explore the relationship between network position, various types of inter-organizational conflicts and project performance in the context of megaprojects.

Centrality and structural holes were used to represent network position. A theoretical model was developed, and a structured questionnaire survey was conducted with construction professionals involved in megaprojects. A total of 291 valid responses were obtained, which were analyzed via structural equation modeling.

The results showed that centrality negatively impacts project performance, while structural holes do not significantly impact project performance. Centrality negatively affects task conflicts, but positively affects process conflicts and relationship conflicts. Structural holes positively impact task conflicts, but negatively impact both process conflicts and relationship conflicts. Task conflict and relationship conflict exert constructive and destructive effects on project performance, respectively, while process conflict does not significantly impact project performance. Task conflict and relationship conflict play mediating roles. Task conflict weakens while relationship conflict strengthens the relationship between centrality and project performance. Task conflict strengthens while relationship conflict weakens the relationship between structure hole and project performance.

This study provides a reference for the implementation of network governance, inter-organizational conflict management and project performance management in megaprojects. However, the impact of dynamic changes of inter-organizational conflicts and network position on project performance has not been discussed in the context of megaprojects. Future research may explore the impact of dynamic changes of conflicts and network position on project implementation.

This study increases the current understanding of the impact of network position on project performance. Moreover, a new direction for network governance in the context of megaprojects is provided. This study also verified both the constructive and destructive effects of conflicts and the mediating role they play, thus supplementing the literature on inter-organizational conflict management in the construction field.

This study investigates the impact of network positions on inter-team conflicts and project success in megaprojects.

Network position is measured with centrality and structural holes. Substantive conflict and affective conflict reflect inter-team conflicts. A questionnaire survey was implemented in Chinese megaprojects, and 309 valid questionnaires were collected. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling and bootstrapping methods.

The results show that centrality negatively impacts project success, while the presence of a team in a structural hole has no significant impact on project success. Centrality is negatively related to substantive conflict and is positively related to affective conflict. The team in a structural hole has a positive effect on substantive conflict and a negative effect on affective conflict. Substantive conflict and affective conflict have positive and negative effects on project success, respectively. The effect of network position on project success is mediated by inter-team conflict.

This research provides a reference for megaproject managers to better conduct network governance, manage inter-team conflict, and successfully manage projects. The study did not investigate the effects of changes in teams' network positions on project success. Future research should explore this facet of megaprojects.

This research adds to existing research on network position, and reveals that project network governance is important for megaproject success. This provides a new direction for megaproject management. Furthermore, the results validate constructive and non-constructive roles and the mediating role of inter-team conflict. This complements the literature on conflict management, providing a reference for megaproject managers when managing inter-team conflict.

Frequent renegotiations within public-private partnership (PPP) have been recognised and affect project efficiency. Literature has focussed on diverse issues associated with renegotiation within PPP, especially in Latin America and Europe. However, a systematic summary what they have already provided appears lacking. Thus, the paper aims to conduct a critical review of publications concerning PPP renegotiation and explore the status quo, future interests and gaps in research.

This study carried out a four-phase literature review research framework to identify the quality PPP-renegotiation articles published from 2003 to 2020. Assessing the full articles for eligibility by providing a structured summary including: background; objectives; data sources; study appraisal; results; limitations; conclusions and implications of key findings. After that, filtering papers associated with PPP renegotiation in terms of the structured summary, and a total of 60 research papers were selected in the database of web of science and Scopus for review.

Methods adopted by researchers, research topics and theoretical foundations of PPP renegotiation research in different disciplines were identified through content analysis. Amongst the popular research topics identified were renegotiation factors, the outcomes with renegotiations, the framework to deal with renegotiations and contract design dealing with renegotiation based on rigid or flexible contracts.

This study contributes to the current body of PPP knowledge by revealing the research trend in the past 20 years. It also points out the directions that the renegotiations of PPP research may go towards in the future. Moreover, this study is very valuable in understanding how governments and concessionaires effectively handle renegotiations.

This paper aims to construct a central pattern generator (CPG) network that comprises coupled nonlinear oscillators to implement diversified locomotion gaits of robot AmphiHex-I. With the gaits, AmphiHex-I will have a strong locomotion ability in an amphibious environment, which is motivated by a novel public health application to detect the amphibious snail, Oncomelania hupensis, the snail intermediate host of Schistosoma japonicum, as an amphibious robot-based tool for schistosomiasis surveillance and response in the future.

First, the basis neural network was built by adopting six Hopf nonlinear oscillators which corresponded to six legs. Then, the correlation between the self-excited harmonic output signals generated from CPGs and various gaits was established. In view of requirements on its field application, the authors added a telecontrol system and an on-board battery to support the real-life remote control and a high-definition camera and a global positioning system module to acquire images and position information. Finally, the authors conducted the testing experiments on several tasks, e.g. detecting the distribution of Oncomelania hupensis snails.

The results demonstrate that the CPG is effective in controlling the robot’s diversified locomotion gaits. In addition, the robot is capable of fulfilling several testing tasks in the experiments.

The research provides a method based on CPG to control a hexapod robot with multiple motion patterns, which can effectively overcome the difficulty of motion control simply by changing certain mathematical parameters of a nonlinear equation, such as frequency, phase difference and offset angle, so as to realize the gait transitions. Also, using such a robot to probe the distribution of snails offers another way to tackle this laborious job, especially in some odious terrains, which will hence broaden the application of AmphiHex-I to vector surveillance in the fields of public health.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the research status and outputs of information behavior in China in order to reveal its in-depth research pattern and trends.

The author collected literature during the past 29 years from China Academic Journal Network Publishing Database. Bibliometric analysis, including publication growth analysis, core authors and collaborative degree analysis, core journals analysis, and institutions distribution, was performed. The temporal visualization map of burst term was drawn, and the co-occurrence matrix of these keywords was analyzed by the hierarchical cluster analysis, strategic diagram, and social network analysis.

The earliest article on information behavior in China was published in 1987. And the number of articles has risen continually since then, which follows the logical growth law of literature. The collaborative degree of authors is on the rise in general. The distribution of these articles obeys the Bradford’s Law of Scattering. School of Information Management of Wuhan University remarkably ranks the top in most publications. In all, ten important research directions were identified, which are in the imbalanced development. And a newly appearing topic with great potential for further development, namely information seeking and information security, is identified.

This study provides important insights into the research status and trends on information behavior in China, which might provide a potential guide for the future research.

Global positioning system (GPS) kinematic positioning suffers from performance degradation in constrained environments such as urban canyons, which then restricts the application of high-precision vehicle positioning and navigation within the city. In December 2012, the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) regional service was announced, and the combined BDS/GPS kinematic positioning has been enabled in the Asia-Pacific area. Previous studies have mainly focused on the performance evaluations of combined BDS/GPS static positioning. Not much work has been performed for kinematic vehicle positioning under constrained observation conditions. This study aims to analyze the performance of BDS/GPS kinematic vehicle positioning in various conditions.

In this study, three vehicle experiments under three observation conditions, an open suburban area, a less dense non-central urban area and a dense central urban area, are investigated using both the code-based differential global navigation satellite system (DGNSS) and phase-based real-time kinematic (RTK) modes. The comparison between combined BDS/GPS and GPS-only vehicle positioning solutions is conducted in terms of positioning availability and positioning precision.

Numerical results show that the combined BDS/GPS system significantly outperforms the GPS-only system under poor observation conditions, whereas the improvement was less significant under good observation conditions.

Thus, this paper studies the performance of combined BDS/GPS kinematic relative positioning under various observation conditions.

The purpose of this paper is to invent a new functional coated fabric based on nanomaterials to shield UV and IR. Multifunctional surface coatings with ultraviolet (UV)/near infrared radiations protection and waterproof were widely applied in outdoor fabrics. Herein, ultrafine TiO2 and nano-antimony doped tin dioxide (ATO) were prepared and embedded into water-based polyurethane (PU) coatings and then coated on the nylon fabric.

ATO was prepared using the sol–gel method and the two powders were dispersed by ball milling. The results of zeta potential and particle size distribution showed that the ultrafine TiO2 and nano-ATO could be stably dispersed in water at pH 8 with the presence of sodium polycarboxylate. The optimal process was screened out by orthogonal design and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), UV protection, thermal insulation and water-pressure resistance were tested. SEM images indicated the nanoparticles could be uniformly dispersed in the coatings.

The effect of UV prevention can get to UPF > 50, UVA < 5 per cent, which meet up with the AATCC 183-2014. Coatings can effectively lower the temperature of fabric surface by 8∼9ºC through the self-made closed test system and by 3ºC through the open test system.

These PU coatings are environment-friendly and adhesive to impart waterproof, UV-proof and thermal insulation properties to nylon fabrics by coating finishing.

This study aims to evaluate the thermal performance of phase change materials (PCMs) microcapsules (MCs) attached using SiO₂ microspheres and investigate the thermal regulation effect on the coated denim fabric.

The PCM microcapsule was prepared by in situ polymerization using a mixture of solid paraffin and butyl stearate as core material (CM) and methyl methacrylate as a monomer. The SiO₂ microparticles were attached to the outer layer of the membrane to enhance the thermal performance of MCs. The morphology, chemical structure, latent heat storage and thermal resistance of MCs were characterized. PCM MCs were coated on the denim fabric and thermo-gravimetric analysis was conducted; thermal insulation and thermal infrared imaging performance of the coated fabrics were also investigated.

The diameters of SiO₂ particles and PCMs MCs were 300-500 nm and 1 μm, respectively. SiO₂ was wrapped on single-wall PCMs MCs with the mass ratio of 1:5. With the addition of SiO₂, the phase transition temperature range of MCs increased from 34°C to 39°C, and the endothermic and exothermic latent heat decreased by 5.35 J/g and 10.07 J/g, respectively. The degradation rate of MCs was significantly slowed down at high temperature. The denim fabric coated with MCs revealed thermal regulation property. After absorbing heat, the MCs slowed down the rate of heat loss and extended the heat release time.

The phase transition temperature of the composite CM was wide, and the latent heat storage was reduced. The addition of SiO₂ particles can significantly slow down the rate of heat loss, but it further reduces the latent heat storage performance.

The method developed provided a simple and practical solution to improve the thermal regulation performance of fabrics.

The method of adjusting the phase transition temperature range of the composite CM is novel and many applications could be found in preparation of PCMs and thermal management.

This study aims to produce a superhydrophobic fabric surface with a layered rough structure and which are resistant to droplet adhesion. Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) systems doped with stearic acid modified titanium dioxide (SA-TiO₂) nanoparticles was sprayed onto the surface of cotton fabric.

This experiment therefore uses a simple method to prepare superhydrophobic textiles by spraying SA-TiO₂ particles mixed with PDMS onto the surface of cotton fabrics. The effects of the ratio of stearic acid to TiO₂, spraying times and tension on the apparent morphological structure and hydrophobic properties of the cotton fabric were investigated.

The results showed that the stearic acid-modified TiO₂ nanoparticles were hydrophobic and more uniformly dispersed in the PDMS solution. When the modification ratio of stearic acid to TiO₂ was 3:5, the water contact angle of cotton fabric was 155.48° and sliding angle was 6.67° under the applied tension for three times of spraying, showing superhydrophobicity. The fabric shows super hydrophobic and anti-adhesive properties to a wide range of liquids such as cola, dyeing liquids, tea, milk and simulated blood. The surface tension of the liquid shows a negative correlation with its adhesion to the fabric.

The SA-TiO₂ and PDMS were applied to the fabric surface by spraying, which not only gave the fabric superhydrophobic properties, but also created anti-adhesion to a wide range of droplets.

The superhydrophobic cotton fabrics prepared by this method showed good anti-adhesive behavior to common stains and simulated blood and can be used in the development of medical protective textiles.

Modification of TiO₂ with stearic acid to prepare SA-TiO₂ with excellent hydrophobic properties, which was mixed with PDMS to make suspensions. Fluorine-free superhydrophobic fabrics were prepared by spraying method. It also exhibited excellent anti-adhesive properties against blood, providing a reference for the preparation of self-cleaning and anti-adhesive surgical gowns.

The purpose of this paper is to examine behavior intention of Chinese university students toward mobile library (m-library) applications (apps) and to explore the determinants of their perceptions of m-library apps.

Based on previous research, this study first proposed an integrated model and hypothesized the relationships between constructs while exploring the significance of the effects of education level and discipline. In all, 466 undergraduate and graduate students from various disciplines participated in a survey for this study. A structural equation modeling approach was applied for analysis.

Attitude is the main predictor of behavior intention toward m-library apps, and it is significantly affected by perceived usefulness, self-efficacy, and subjective norm. The quality of m-library apps determines students’ perception of usefulness. In addition, education level and discipline have significant effects on behavior intention toward m-library apps, which may reflect students’ different focuses and purposes of use.

This study deepens understanding of the continuance usage of m-library apps and has practical implications on related developments and services.