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In this chapter, the authors provide a historical overview of the development of comparative and international education societies throughout the earth. In most cases, these societies have gradually grown and continue to thrive; in other cases, some comparative education societies have become dormant and a few no longer exist. A historical analysis that outlines the rise and fall of comparative education societies is provided. An overview of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies is also discussed, including its lead organizational role in serving as a historical hub to help comparative education societies preserve and disseminate their respective histories. The chapter concludes with suggestions on how anyone can get involved to help contribute to the history preservation of comparative education at the individual, national, regional, and global levels.

This paper assesses how discretionary accruals (DAs) affect corporate cash savings policies and the motivation behind this cash saving behavior and, also whether the linkage between DAs and cash saving affect the market-perceived cash value.

We construct the measure of DAs using the previous five-year average information to investigate the association of DAs with the change in cash. Moreover, the Faulkender and Wang (2006) methodology is utilized to examine the market-perceived cash value in DAs.

The key finding is that firms with high DAs save significantly more cash. A one standard deviation increase in DAs saves cash by 12.59%. Furthermore, the value of cash is low for these firms. The effect is stronger in firms with poor governance but not present in financially constrained firms.

The empirical evidence highlights DAs have negative effect on market-perceived cash value, which underscores the insight that managers manage earnings opportunistically using DAs.

Taken together, we provide more evidence on the literature of accruals in earnings manipulation.

The safety of high-speed rail operation environments is an important guarantee for the safe operation of high-speed rail. The operating environment of the high-speed rail is complex, and the main factors affecting the safety of high-speed rail operating environment include meteorological disasters, perimeter intrusion and external environmental hazards. The purpose of the paper is to elaborate on the current research status and team research progress on the perception of safety situation in high-speed rail operation environment and to propose directions for further research in the future.

In terms of the mechanism and spatio-temporal evolution law of the main influencing factors on the safety of high-speed rail operation environments, the research status is elaborated, and the latest research progress and achievements of the team are introduced. This paper elaborates on the research status and introduces the latest research progress and achievements of the team in terms of meteorological, perimeter and external environmental situation perception methods for high-speed rail operation.

Based on the technical route of “situational awareness evaluation warning active control,” a technical system for monitoring the safety of high-speed train operation environments has been formed. Relevant theoretical and technical research and application have been carried out around the impact of meteorological disasters, perimeter intrusion and the external environment on high-speed rail safety. These works strongly support the improvement of China’s railway environmental safety guarantee technology.

With the operation of CR450 high-speed trains with a speed of 400 km per hour and the application of high-speed train autonomous driving technology in the future, new and higher requirements have been put forward for the safety of high-speed rail operation environments. The following five aspects of work are urgently needed: (1) Research the single factor disaster mechanism of wind, rain, snow, lightning, etc. for high-speed railways with a speed of 400 kms per hour, and based on this, study the evolution characteristics of multiple safety factors and the correlation between the high-speed driving safety environment, revealing the coupling disaster mechanism of multiple influencing factors; (2) Research covers multi-source data fusion methods and associated features such as disaster monitoring data, meteorological information, route characteristics and terrain and landforms, studying the spatio-temporal evolution laws of meteorological disasters, perimeter intrusions and external environmental hazards; (3) In terms of meteorological disaster situation awareness, research high-precision prediction methods for meteorological information time series along high-speed rail lines and study the realization of small-scale real-time dynamic and accurate prediction of meteorological disasters along high-speed rail lines; (4) In terms of perimeter intrusion, research a multi-modal fusion perception method for typical scenarios of high-speed rail operation in all time, all weather and all coverage and combine artificial intelligence technology to achieve comprehensive and accurate perception of perimeter security risks along the high-speed rail line and (5) In terms of external environment, based on the existing general network framework for change detection, we will carry out research on change detection and algorithms in the surrounding environment of high-speed rail.

The purpose of this paper is to calculate the meshing stiffness of nutation face gear considering the roughness, establish the calculation method of time-varying meshing stiffness of rough tooth surface and analyze the influence of roughness, load and other factors on the meshing stiffness of tooth surface.

The Weierstrass–Mandelbrot (W-M) function in the Majumdar–Bhushan model is used to characterize the rough contact line of the tooth surface, the normal height and radius of the micro convex body are calculated and the contact flexibility of the contact point of the tooth surface is obtained. The contact flexibility and the bending shear deformation flexibility obtained previously are substituted into the improved deformation compatibility equation for iterative calculation, and the time-varying meshing stiffness of the nutation face gear considering the roughness is obtained.

Compared with ABAQUS finite element simulation results, it is found that the meshing stiffness curve of rough tooth surface is more gentle than that of smooth tooth surface, the meshing stiffness value is smaller and the meshing stiffness change is smaller at the position where the number of gear teeth coincide changes.

In the process of calculating contact deformation, the fractal theory W-M function is used to characterize the contact line of the rough nutation face gear, and the deformation coordination condition considering roughness is improved. Therefore, the method of time-varying meshing stiffness considering roughness can obtain more accurate results, which provides theory and data for the subsequent dynamics analysis of the nutation face gear transmission.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of char on the flame retardancy of fabrics by a cone calorimeter, which is an important factor to compare the flame retardancy of different fabrics.

Cone calorimeter measurements were carried out in a Fire Testing Technology (UK) apparatus at the heat fluxes of 50 and 75 kW/m². Fabrics with one and three layers were employed, with the name of cotton1, cotton3, FR cotton1, FR cotton3, PMIA1 and PMIA3. The dimension of the fabric was 100×100 mm². A cross-steel grid was used to prevent the fabrics from curling during burning. The distance between the bottom of the cone heater and the top of the sample was 25 mm.

This work was generously supported by National Key R&D Program of China (Project No. 2017YFB0309000), Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province of China (Project No. ZR2019BEM026), Natural Science Foundation of China (Project No. 51803101) and China postdoctoral science foundation funded project (Project No. 2018M632619).

The present research provides insight into the effect of the char formation on the flame retardancy of the fabrics, and a method to comprehensively investigate the char influence in the flame retardancy of the fabrics by a cone calorimeter is proposed.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the attitude of patients towards the current medical service price and the effect of policy implementation, and explore the existing problems of the current medical service price policy in the region in order to provide a research basis for the dynamic adjustment mechanism of the medical service price.

Literature analysis and expert interviews are used to design the questionnaire of the dynamic adjustment of medical service price formation mechanism. A convenient sampling method is used to extract data of 600 patients from the five areas, namely Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong and Liaoning, on-site to fill out the paper-based questionnaire and electronic questionnaire. The grey relational analysis is used to explore the difference in the attitudes of patients towards the price of the medical service. Combined with the research results and expert interview results, some improvement suggestions related to the current price policy of medical service in five areas are put forward.

The overall average score of respondents in the five areas, namely Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong and Liaoning, is found to be 3.861. In terms of surgical operation fee and examination fee, the average score is higher than 4, i.e. 4.097 and 4.011, respectively, indicating “relatively high” nodes. According to grey relevancy sorting, the correlation between the health service price attitude and the overall score in the five regions is in the following order: Shandong > Tianjin > Beijing > Liaoning > Hebei.

In this study, patients’ attitude towards the current price of medical services in their local areas, Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong and Liaoning, is investigated in order to explore the existing problems of medical service price reform and thus provide the basis for further improvement in the medical service price policy.

This study aims to explore the influence of green participative leadership on hotel employees’ pro-environmental behavior. Additionally, we seek to analyze the mediating role of green self-efficacy in this relationship while examining how environmental awareness moderates the connection between green participative leadership and green self-efficacy.

In this study, we distributed questionnaires to 546 employees working in the Chinese hotel industry. We used partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyze the data and test the hypothesized relationships in our model.

The present study shows that green participative leadership positively influences employees’ pro-environmental behavior, with this relationship being partially mediated by green self-efficacy. Furthermore, environmental awareness significantly moderates the connection between green participative leadership and green self-efficacy.

The findings of this study offer valuable insights for hotel industry managers and policymakers in developing effective strategies for fostering a sustainable work environment. By embracing green participative leadership, hotels can inspire and engage employees to adopt environmentally friendly practices, ultimately contributing to the hotel’s overall sustainability.

This research expands the existing literature by proposing an integrative model that connects green participative leadership, green self-efficacy, environmental awareness and pro-environmental behavior. As a pioneering study within the Chinese hotel industry, it offers unique contextual insights that can help advance environmental sustainability in this sector.