Yan Gao, Kai Chang, Xuguang Xing, Jiaping Liang, Nian He and Xiaoyi Ma
Traditional laboratory measurements of soil water diffusivity (D) and soil water retention curve (SWRC) are always time-consuming and labor-intensive. Therefore, this paper aims…
Abstract
Purpose
Traditional laboratory measurements of soil water diffusivity (D) and soil water retention curve (SWRC) are always time-consuming and labor-intensive. Therefore, this paper aims to present a simple and robust test method for determining D and SWRC without reducing accuracy.
Design/methodology/approach
In this study, a D model of unsaturated soil was established based on Gardner–Russo model and then a combination of Gardner–Russo model with one-dimensional horizontal absorption method to obtain n and a parameters of Gardner–Russo model. One-dimensional horizontal absorption experiments on loam, silt loam and sandy clay loam were conducted to obtain the relationships between measured infiltration rate and cumulative infiltration with wetting front distance. Based on the obtained relationships, the measured infiltration data from the one-dimensional horizontal absorption tests were used to calculate n and a parameters and further constructing D and SWRC.
Findings
Both the calculated D and SWRC inversed from the infiltration data were in good agreement with the measured ones that obtained from the traditional horizontal absorption method and the centrifuge method, respectively. Error analysis indicated that only the infiltration data are enough to reliably synchronously determine D and SWRC.
Originality/value
A simple and robust method is proposed for synchronous determination of soil water diffusivity and water retention curve.
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Hong Lu, Bin Liang and Deena DeVore
The victim’s rights movement and restorative justice (RJ) have gained momentum around the world. More laws and policies have focused on crime victims and their families. Western…
Abstract
The victim’s rights movement and restorative justice (RJ) have gained momentum around the world. More laws and policies have focused on crime victims and their families. Western literature suggests that the victim’s family suffers physical, emotional, and financial tolls and that the power of the victim’s family in pursuing justice for their loved ones remains limited. This is particularly concerning within the political and legal context of the abolitionist movement, innocence project, and human rights groups’ campaigns against police torture. Grounded in the perspectives of RJ and Chinese legal culture, this study examines the victim’s family, represented by Ding and senior Yu, of the Nian Bin capital murder case. Drawing on published reports and using the thematic content analysis method, this study examines the following aspects of victim’s family in a death penalty case: 1) victim family’s physical, emotional, and financial tolls; 2) victims’ family and the criminal justice system; 3) victims’ family and the media; and 4) the relationship between the victims’ and the accused’s families. This study concludes with discussions of the competing goals of families impacted by a crime and RJ practices that would help mitigate the loss of the victim’s family and enhance their confidence in the criminal justice system.
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Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American…
Abstract
Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.
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Fang Liu and Jamie Murphy
This research aims to examine Chinese consumers’ wine consumption and purchasing behaviour.
Abstract
Purpose
This research aims to examine Chinese consumers’ wine consumption and purchasing behaviour.
Design/methodology/approach
The study, conducted during the Chinese New Year in early 2006, used in‐depth interviews with 15 consumers in Guangzhou, People's Republic of China.
Findings
The results suggest that Chinese consume Chinese spirits for all occasions, yet consume red wine only for special occasions such as Chinese new year and other holidays. A key point for selling red wine to the Chinese is its positive image; drinking red wine is considered trendy and shows good taste. Another key point is consumer perceptions of red wine as healthier than Chinese spirits because wine contains less alcohol. Two other findings are that most Chinese consumers assume all wine is red wine and have little wine knowledge. Most respondents did not know of white wine or that Australia produces wine. Finally, China's culture of face value, mianzi, plays a key role in purchasing and consuming wine. Chinese tend to purchase inexpensive wine for private consumption and public occasions, yielding more mianzi in front of others. In some important occasions, consumers will purchase a foreign (French) red wine to impress their guests and obtain even more mianzi. In most situations, Chinese purchase and consume wine for perceived health and symbolic – lucky or good face – values.
Research limitations/implications
The small sample size is a limitation. Another limitation is that all the respondents lived in the urban area of Guangzhou, one of China's most developed cities. The findings do not generalize to China.
Practical implications
The findings suggest that wine is a symbolic product rather than a necessity product in China; therefore, image is an important attribute for selling wine in China. Furthermore, limited wine knowledge tends to make Chinese consumers rely heavily on price for their wine purchasing decisions, as price relates to mainzi. Chinese consumers’ high awareness of France as a wine making country and their deep‐rooted positive beliefs about French wines pose difficulties for marketing other foreign wines, such as Australian wines, in China.
Originality/value
This is perhaps the first academic study in English of Chinese wine consumption and wine purchasing. It offers important insights on the characteristics of wine consumption and purchasing in China.
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Milos Milovancevic, Vlastimir Nikolic, Nenad T. Pavlovic, Aleksandar Veg and Sanjin Troha
The purpose of this study is to establish a vibration prediction of pellet mills power transmission by artificial neural network. Vibration monitoring is an important task for any…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to establish a vibration prediction of pellet mills power transmission by artificial neural network. Vibration monitoring is an important task for any system to ensure safe operations. Improvement of control strategies is crucial for the vibration monitoring.
Design/methodology/approach
As predictive control is one of the options for the vibration monitoring in this paper, the predictive model for vibration monitoring was created.
Findings
Although the achieved prediction results were acceptable, there is need for more work to apply and test these results in real environment.
Originality/value
Artificial neural network (ANN) was implemented as the predictive model while extreme learning machine (ELM) and back propagation (BP) learning schemes were used as training algorithms for the ANN. BP learning algorithm minimizes the error function by using the gradient descent method. ELM training algorithm is based on selecting of the input weights randomly of the ANN network and the output weight of the network are determined analytically.
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Feng Zhao, Jiahe Tian and Yuchen Duan
The neo-Kaleckian model follows the ideas of Marx, Keynes and Kalecki, that investment is a key influencing factor in the dynamics of the capitalist mode of production. Through…
Abstract
Purpose
The neo-Kaleckian model follows the ideas of Marx, Keynes and Kalecki, that investment is a key influencing factor in the dynamics of the capitalist mode of production. Through the discussion of different forms of investment decision function, this paper constructs the analysis framework of wage-led and profit-led economic growth regimes.
Design/methodology/approach
The model has become an important theoretical paradigm for current Western heterodox economists regarding the research on the impact of functional income distribution on economic growth, and it has a very large impact on both theoretical and empirical research. Starting from Marx's reproduction theory, this article discusses the theoretical shortcomings of the neo-Kaleckian growth regime model.
Findings
This paper mainly focuses on three aspects: (1) the ideological legacy of “Smith's Dogma”; (2) neglecting the restrictions on income distribution from the organic composition of capital and the surplus value rate; (3) technological progress and the formation of a new long economic wave.
Originality/value
The authors believe that the neo-Kaleckian model unilaterally emphasizes the demand-side factors in the economy and, unconsciously or not, ignores the role of the supply-side, which makes it encounter certain limitations in explaining long-term growth. Even if some empirical conclusions are employed to bridge functional income distribution and technological progress, there is still a lack of a theoretical basis for accurately describing long-term economic changes using this model. In order to better promote high-quality economic development and accelerate the formation of a new pattern of economic development in which the domestic large-scale cycle is the mainstay and the domestic and international double cycles promote each other, the authors need to adopt a policy combination with the supply-side as the main and the demand-side as the supplement, and to work from both sides.
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In human history, poverty for most and prosperity for few is the norm. Thus, no theory or practice of common prosperity has been developed. Marxism first formulated the theory of…
Abstract
Purpose
In human history, poverty for most and prosperity for few is the norm. Thus, no theory or practice of common prosperity has been developed. Marxism first formulated the theory of common prosperity, and the classical Marxist authors conducted theoretical exploration on the issue of common prosperity, forming a series of scientific conclusions.
Design/methodology/approach
The century-long practical history of the Communist Party of China (CPC) is the great practice of leading the Chinese people in getting rid of poverty, letting some people and regions get rich first and ultimately achieving the goal of common prosperity.
Findings
Common prosperity is the great practice of the CPC that leads all Chinese people in building a modern socialist country in an all-round way in the new era.
Originality/value
The path of common prosperity with Chinese characteristics will certainly arise in the process of the great practice of common prosperity with Chinese characteristics. Based on the anti-poverty theory and the “spirit of poverty alleviation” from the battle against poverty with Chinese characteristics, the theory of common prosperity and its spirit with Chinese characteristics will certainly be formed. The above conclusions constitute the basic principles of the theory of common prosperity with Chinese characteristics.
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Fangyi Jiao, Dongchao Zhang and Xiyue Zheng
This paper analyzes and discusses the fundamental role of new urbanization in the construction of a new development pattern based on the specific practice of China’s new…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper analyzes and discusses the fundamental role of new urbanization in the construction of a new development pattern based on the specific practice of China’s new urbanization construction, combining the classical Marxist ideas in urbanization and the theory of the industrial capital circulation, and proposes to remove blockages in the domestic and international circulations through developing new urbanization and construct a new development pattern with the domestic circulation as the mainstay and the domestic and international circulations promoting each other, thereby achieving high-quality national economic operation.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the theory of industrial capital circulation, this paper elucidates the general process of domestic and international economic circulations, critically examines the bottlenecks and challenges in economic circulation, and emphasizes the mechanisms through which new urbanization contributes to the formation of a new development pattern.
Findings
The people-centered new urbanization can effectively release domestic demand, optimize investment supply, and stabilize market participants’ expectations, linking the national economic circulation from production to consumption and alleviating supply and demand mismatches, which has a fundamental role in building the new development pattern.
Originality/value
We should focus on creating a comprehensive domestic demand system based on counties while fostering a unified domestic market led by urban clusters and metropolitan areas to stabilize and enhance the expectations of both domestic and international market participants.
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Since the outbreak of COVID-19, tremendous changes have taken place in the US economy – the economic growth in the whole year of 2020 was negative, and though it enjoyed a…
Abstract
Purpose
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, tremendous changes have taken place in the US economy – the economic growth in the whole year of 2020 was negative, and though it enjoyed a significant rebound for the first half of 2021, the growth rate began to decline rapidly by the third quarter, and inflation suddenly rises rapidly, which after came the all-time highs of the “misery index” consisted of the inflation rate and unemployment rate. All signs indicate that the US economy will likely enter a “stagflation” crisis.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper analyzes the institutional and social contradictions in the United States during the neoliberal era from the perspectives of domestic social structure of accumulation (SSA) and international SSA based on the SSA theory.
Findings
The current risk of stagflation in the US economy is a concentrated outbreak of the long-term accumulated contradictions in neoliberal SSA under the impact of the epidemic, which is the product of the irreconcilable contradictions inherent in the capitalist mode of production.
Originality/value
Based on this analysis, the paper points out that with the deepening of the crisis, the neoliberal SSA is likely to end and a new SSA will be established gradually.