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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of China’s urban segregation caused by hukou restrictions on food consumption.

Based on the 2007–2009 Urban Household Survey data from six China provinces conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the authors adopt a propensity score matching (PSM) method to correct for potential selection bias. A Rosenbaum bounds test is applied to evaluate the sensitivity of the PSM results to unobserved variables.

The results show that holding rural hukou (RHs) reduces the consumption of livestock products and vegetables and fruit by 8.8 and 4.8 percent, respectively. The status of hukou does not affect the consumption of grain and edible oil. Hukou impacts on food consumption are heterogeneous across income levels, with low-income and middle-income households more vulnerable to urban segregation and hukou discriminations. A stronger motivation for precautionary saving and higher welfare expenditures that not compensated by social security lead to the lower food consumption by migrant households with RHs.

This paper advances the research frontier by investigating the impacts of hukou system on the structure of food consumption, which accurately reflects the household welfare.

This paper aims to examine impacts of the poverty alleviation relocation (PAR) program on diet quality of low-income households in China. We explore the impact mechanism of relocation on diet quality and the heterogeneous effects of different relocation modes.

A fixed effects model is constructed using panel data of 1126 low-income households collected over three years in eight provinces of China. The PAR program provides a natural experiment which dramatically changes the living conditions surrounding farmers. We are able to identify the causal effects of relocation on diet quality free from selection bias.

The empirical results show that the PAR program improves diet quality of low-income households and that better market access and increasing incomes induced by relocation play an important role in this improvement. Improved market access significantly reduces the over-consumption of staple foods, whereas higher income significantly reduces the intake divergences of non-staple foods. The impacts of different relocation modes on diet quality are highly heterogeneous.

Our findings indicate that the PAR program benefits diet quality of low-income households through greater market access and increases in total household income. Market improvements and food subsidies are conducive to improving the diet quality of the low income.

Despite widespread evidences of healthy diets being associated with household environments and income, selection bias remains. This paper utilizes an exogenous program to explore the causal impacts of market access and family income on diet quality and to separate their different effects.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a new approach for making a bio‐based adhesive from a new resource, rice bran (RB) adhesive.

RB solution was prepared and its pHs were adjusted to either 8.5‐9.0 or 10.0‐10.5. The solid content of slurry was controlled at ≈18 per cent and then gelatinised in a water bath shaker at 60°C for 2 h or at 100°C for 1 h. The bonding strength of RB adhesive was determined by testing the strength of three‐layer plywood. A differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) was used for detecting the reaction energy and curing temperature. According to the DSC analysis, hot pressing at three temperatures was performed to select the best bonding conditions. Then, a two level split‐plot design was used to determine the effects of gelatinisation and pH on the bonding strength of RB adhesive. Thus, the formulation of RB adhesive was optimised. In order to improve the water resistance of RB adhesive, toluene diisocyanate (TDI) was used as a cross linking agent.

In the study reported here, a RB adhesive was developed by alkaline modification. Very high pH was not necessary, when RB adhesive with pH 10.0‐10.5 was gelatinised at 100°C for 1 h, its bonding strength was significantly lower than pH 8.5‐9.0 gelatinised at 60°C for 2 h. Water resistance of RB adhesive improved significantly when TDI was added as a cross linking agent. Compared to pure RB adhesive, the RB‐TDI mixed adhesive started curing at a higher temperature. For RB adhesive curing, 130°C was a suitable hot pressing temperature.

Though the RB adhesive developed had a good bonding strength, its water resistance and dark colour was not satisfactory, which risks discolour of light colour wood. Further study is needed to solve this problem.

The approach provided a bio‐adhesive with good bonding strength, reasonable working life, and without formaldehyde emission. Based on further study, RB adhesive could be considered a promising alternate adhesive in many applications such as paper board bonding and plywood.

It provided a potential way to utilise by‐product of agriculture, RB as industrial raw material. This will do farmers a great favour. Meanwhile, the modified RB adhesive is promising to partly or completely replace urea formaldehyde resin that mainly used in wood industry, avoiding formaldehyde emission and reducing the dependence on petroleum products.

The type 120 emergency valve is an essential braking component of railway freight trains, but corresponding diaphragms consisting of natural rubber (NR) and chloroprene rubber (CR) exhibit insufficient aging resistance and low-temperature resistance, respectively. In order to develop type 120 emergency valve rubber diaphragms with long-life and high-performance, low-temperatureresistant CR and NR were processed.

The physical properties of the low-temperature-resistant CR and NR were tested by low-temperature stretching, dynamic mechanical analysis, differential scanning calorimetry and thermogravimetric analysis. Single-valve and single-vehicle tests of type 120 emergency valves were carried out for emergency diaphragms consisting of NR and CR.

The low-temperature-resistant CR and NR exhibited excellent physical properties. The elasticity and low-temperature resistance of NR were superior to those of CR, whereas the mechanical properties of the two rubbers were similar in the temperature range of 0 °C–150 °C. The NR and CR emergency diaphragms met the requirements of the single-valve test. In the low-temperature single-vehicle test, only the low-temperature sensitivity test of the NR emergency diaphragm met the requirements.

The innovation of this study is that it provides valuable data and experience for future development of type 120 valve rubber diaphragms.

The Chinese civilization is an important part of the history of mankind. The purpose of this paper is to show that there are project management lessons to be learned from Chinese history, including that relating to the management of the building process in ancient China.

Through a review of the literature, this paper discusses the key management and economic practices in the building process of ancient China and highlights these practices from an important document, the Yingzao Fashi or (“Treatise on Architectural Methods”), that was compared with the modern‐day project management framework.

This paper explains the official systems instituted for public projects; the management of labour, design and planning of construction works; quantity surveying practices; the use, control and recycling of building materials; and inspection of building elements in ancient China.

The study suggests that lessons in the principles of construction project management in ancient China bear many similarities with the nine areas of modern‐day project management body of knowledge relating to integration, scope, time, cost, quality, human resource, communications, risk, and procurement management. An area for future research would be to compare the Yingzao Fashi with modern‐day codes of practice for building works to determine which of its “ancient” provisions relating to quality management are still relevant today.

It was found that much emphasis was placed by the ancient Chinese on the quality aspects of prominent building projects. This is one facet from which modern‐day project managers and clients can draw lessons.

The purpose of this article is to prepare graphene/polyimide composite materials for use as bearing cage materials, improving the friction and wear performance of bearing cages.

The oil absorption and discharge tests were conducted to evaluate the oil content properties of the materials, while the mechanical properties were analyzed through cross-sectional morphology examination. Investigation into the tribological behavior and wear mechanisms encompassed characterization and analysis of wear trace morphology in PPI-based materials. Consequently, the influence of varied graphene nanoplatelets (GN) concentrations on the oil content, mechanical and tribological properties of PPI-based materials was elucidated.

The composites exhibit excellent oil-containing properties due to the increased porosity of PPI-GN composites. The robust formation of covalent bonds between GN and PPI amplifies the adhesive potency of the PPI-GN composites, thereby inducing a substantial enhancement in impact strength. Notably, the PPI-GN composites showed enhanced lubrication properties compared to PPI, which was particularly evident at a GN content of 0.5 Wt.%, as evidenced by the minimization of the average coefficient of friction and the width of the abrasion marks.

This paper includes implications for elucidating the wear mechanism of the polyimide composites under frictional wear conditions and then to guide the optimization of oil content and tribological properties of polyimide bearing cage materials.

In this paper, homogeneously dispersed PPI-GN composites were effectively synthesized by introducing GN into a polyimide matrix through in situ polymerization, and the lubrication mechanism of the PPI composites was compared with that of the PPI-GN composites to illustrate the composites’ superiority.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-12-2023-0415