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With the yearly increase of mileage and passenger volume in China's high-speed railway, the problems of traditional paper railway tickets have become increasingly prominent, including complexity of business handling process, low efficiency of ticket inspection and high cost of usage and management. This paper aims to make extensive references to successful experiences of electronic ticket applications both domestically and internationally. The research on key technologies and system implementation of railway electronic ticket with Chinese characteristics has been carried out.

Research in key technologies is conducted including synchronization technique in distributed heterogeneous database system, the grid-oriented passenger service record (PSR) data storage model, efficient access to massive PSR data under high concurrency condition, the linkage between face recognition service platforms and various terminals in large scenarios, and two-factor authentication of the e-ticket identification code based on the key and the user identity information. Focusing on the key technologies and architecture the of existing ticketing system, multiple service resources are expanded and developed such as electronic ticket clusters, PSR clusters, face recognition clusters and electronic ticket identification code clusters.

The proportion of paper ticket printed has dropped to 20%, saving more than 2 billion tickets annually since the launch of the application of E-ticketing nationwide. The average time for passengers to pass through the automatic ticket gates has decreased from 3 seconds to 1.3 seconds, significantly improving the efficiency of passenger transport organization. Meanwhile, problems of paper ticket counterfeiting, reselling and loss have been generally eliminated.

E-ticketing has laid a technical foundation for the further development of railway passenger transport services in the direction of digitalization and intelligence.

Considering the response lag and viscous slip oscillation of the system caused by cylinder piston friction during automatic polishing of aero-engine blades by a robotic pneumatic end-effector, the purpose of this study is to propose a constant force control method with adaptive friction compensation.

First, the mathematical model of the pneumatic end-effector is established based on the continuous LuGre model, and the static parameters of the LuGre model are identified to verify the necessity of friction compensation. Second, aiming at the problems of difficult identification of dynamic parameters and unmeasurable internal states in the LuGre model, the parameter adaptive law and friction state observer are designed to estimate these parameters online. Finally, an adaptive friction compensation backstepping controller is designed to improve the response speed and polishing force control accuracy of the system.

Simulation and experimental results show that, compared with proportion integration differentiation, extended state observer-based active disturbance rejection controller and integral sliding mode controller, the proposed method can quickly and effectively suppress the polishing force fluctuation caused by nonlinear friction and significantly improve the blade quality.

The pneumatic force control method combining backstepping control with the friction adaptive compensation based on LuGre friction model is studied, which effectively suppresses the fluctuation of normal polishing force.

When N.J. Habraken proposed the conception of support-infill in housing construction in 1960s, housing issues was centered by drawn material construction and consumption, although the needs of involving in the final occupants' participation emerged. It reflected a transition from the industrial economy to the post-industrial economy. Since the rapid development and evolution in the field of technology and social culture in the last several decades, both the social structure and ideology have been changing. The consumption conception of dwelling has also shifted from physical substance to some invisible items, such as knowledge and service. Therefore, open building, as an architectural design method, should adapt to this situation in its future development. This paper firstly describes the characteristics of the post-industry society. Based on analyzing and summarizing the theories and some examples, this paper tries to re-explain the definition of “flexibility” in the context of the post-industrial society. It concludes that the possible tendency of open building is to establish a service system for future occupants to adapt to the changing living environment in addition to physical changeability of the building.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the changing nature of competition in China. China received over $60 billion in foreign direct investment in 2003, and its economy is already the world's second largest in PPP terms. Thus, there is a tremendous need for executives to understand the changing business environment in China.

The methodology is primarily theoretical complemented by applied cases of foreign companies and their experiences in the Chinese business environment.

Multinational companies face intense price pressure competition in China. The primary factor is due to the growing competitiveness of local Chinese competitors.

China is a complex market combining a transition economy, deflationary economic conditions and local competitors that learn about global products and services in the shortest possible time. Multinational companies are underestimating the speed at which Chinese companies are becoming globally competitive.

Existing business and management research on China has tended to focus either on the transitional nature of the Chinese economy, or on the nature of competition among multinational corporations. This paper illustrates the importance of emphasising China's local companies, that are rapidly becoming multinational corporations.

The relationship between farm size and land productivity is a hotly debated issue in the study of agricultural economics and development economics. The purpose of this paper is to explore the causes leading to the inverse productivity relationship by examining the relationship between farm size and factor inputs.

With a large panel data set of farm households in China during 2010–2011, this study uses the factor demand models to examine the relationship between farm size and per-mu labor and non-labor inputs while employing a stochastic frontier production function in determining the difference of labor efforts in farming operation across farm sizes. Moreover, the models for value-added margins and profits are used to further determine producer behavior of small-size farms.

Results of this study show that, as compared to larger farms, smaller farms not only utilize more labor and non-labor inputs per mu, but also benefit from a higher labor effort. Moreover, smaller farms concentrate more on grain output and cash costs while focusing less on the family labor input costs in an effort to maximize value-added margins rather than profits. The higher yields on smaller farms are thus a result of the utilization of a relatively higher level of labor and non-labor inputs along with skilled-oriented precision farming technology. The inverse productivity relationship is explained by the behavior of small-size producers with employment constraints, leading to smaller farms generating a higher yield than larger farms.

While Sen (1966), Feder (1985), Eswaran and Kotwal (1986) and others have theoretically derived the causal relationship between the incomplete factor markets, especially incomplete labor markets, and the inverse productivity, empirical studies to test the causal relationships are limited. In particular, a solid foundation based on an empirical analysis is lacking when it comes to explaining the inverse productivity in China. Results of this study are expected to have significant policy implications in terms of the understanding of small-size producer behavior and the associated mechanism underlying the inverse relationship between farm size and land productivity.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze changes in consumers’ knowledge and acceptance of genetically modified (GM) foods over the past decade and identifies the determinants in the consumer attitudes toward GM foods in urban China.

The data used in this study were collected from 952 urban consumers in 2013 in 15 provinces. The ordinal logit model was chosen to identify the determinants in the consumers’ subjective knowledge and acceptance of GM foods.

Results show that the consumers’ awareness of GM foods, biotech knowledge, and subjective knowledge improved significantly, while the acceptance rate toward GM foods declined considerably from 2002 to 2013. Moreover, the consumers’ subjective knowledge of GM foods had a significantly negative impact on their acceptance rate of GM foods. Finally, the media coverage with the “event of Golden rice in 2012” as a proxy helped consumers in shaping their negative perceptions toward GM foods, suggesting that the media coverage was one of major factors in leading to the low acceptance rate of GM foods in urban China.

The findings of previous studies conducted in the early 2000s might not reflect current Chinese consumer attitudes because the public opinion toward GM foods in modern China has considerably changed. This study thus filled in the void by updating estimates on consumer attitudes toward GM foods and by underlining the factors that have led to the changes in consumer attitudes, using a mass survey covering Chinese urban consumers in 15 provinces in 2013.

This study estimates the income elasticities of calorie, macronutrients (carbohydrate, protein and fat) and key micronutrients including cholesterol, vitamin A, vitamin C, sodium, potassium, calcium, iron, zinc and insoluble fiber separately for urban and rural adults aged 18–60, using China Health and Nutrition Survey data set from 2004 to 2011.

A semiparametric model, a two-way fixed-effects model and a quantile regression approach are employed to estimate nutrient–income elasticities.

The income elasticities of calorie, protein, fat, cholesterol and calcium are in the range of 0.059–0.076, 0.059–0.076, 0.090–0.112, 0.134–0.230, 0.183–0.344 and 0.058–0.105, respectively. The income elasticity of each of the other nutrients is less than 0.1. The income elasticities of calorie and the majority of nutrients included are larger for rural residents than for urban residents and for low-income groups than for medium- and high-income groups. Overall, in spite of having a relatively small impact, income growth is shown to still have an impact on improving the nutritional status of Chinese adults.

This study estimates nutrient–income elasticities separately for urban and rural adults, expanding the scope of the study regarding the impact of income on the nutritional status in China. Moreover, this study uses a pooled sample generated from the personal food consumption records covering foods consumed at home and away from home during 2004–2011, which is thus likely to more comprehensively reveal the causal relationship between income growth and changes in the nutritional status in China.

This paper aims to develop resonant vibratory gyroscopes for high sensitive detection. The dynamic characteristics of resonant vibratory gyroscopes are investigated.

Firstly, the working principle and the dynamic output characteristics of the resonant vibratory gyroscope could be described by the damped Mathieu equation. Moreover, an approximate analytical method based on the small parameter perturbation has been used for the purpose of investigating the approximate solution of the damped Mathieu equation. Finally, to verify the feasibility of the approximate analytical method of the damped Mathieu equation, dynamic output characteristics’ experiments of the resonant vibratory gyroscope are built.

The theoretical analysis and numerical simulations show that the approximate solution of the damped Mathieu equation is close to the dynamic output characteristics of the resonant vibratory gyroscope. On the other hand, it is concluded from the tested result that there exists a correlation between the theoretical curve and the experimental data processing result, meaning the damped dynamics analytical method is effective in building resonant vibratory gyroscopes.

This paper seeks to establish a foundation for optimizing and testing the performance of the resonant vibratory gyroscope. To this end, the approximate analytical method of the damped Mathieu equation was discussed. The result of this research has proved that the dynamic characteristics based on the damped Mathieu equation is an effective approach and is instructional in the practical resonant sensor design.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the feasibility of analytical models, specifically the radial basis function method, Akbari–Ganji method and Gaussian method, in conjunction with the finite element method. The aim is to examine the impact of processing parameters on temperature history.

Through analytical investigation and finite element simulation, this research examines the influence of processing parameters on temperature history. Simufact software with a thermomechanical approach was used for finite element simulation, while radial basis function, Akbari–Ganji and Gaussian methods were used for analytical modeling to solve the heat transfer differential equation.

The accuracy of both finite element and analytical methods was validated with about 90%. The findings revealed direct relationships between thermal conductivity (from 100 to 200), laser power (from 400 to 800 W), heat source depth (from 0.35 to 0.75) and power absorption coefficient (from 0.4 to 0.8). Increasing the values of these parameters led to higher temperature history. On the other hand, density (from 7,600 to 8,200), emission coefficient (from 0.5 to 0.7) and convective heat transfer (from 35 to 90) exhibited an inverse relationship with temperature history.

The application of analytical modeling, particularly the utilization of the Akbari–Ganji, radial basis functions and Gaussian methods, showcases an innovative approach to studying directed energy deposition. This analytical investigation offers an alternative to relying solely on experimental procedures, potentially saving time and resources in the optimization of DED processes.

The processing techniques and materials utilized in the fabrication of a two-terminal electrostatically actuated micro-electro-mechanical cantilever-arrayed device used for radio frequency tuning applications are presented in this work. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The process, which is based on silicon surface micromachining, uses spin-coated photoresist as the sacrificial layer underneath the electroplated gold structural material and an insulating layer of silicon dioxide, deposited using plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD), to avoid a short circuit between the cantilever and the bottom electrode in a total of six major fabrication steps. These included the PECVD of the silicon dioxide insulating layer, optical lithography to transfer photomask layer patterns, vacuum evaporation to deposit thin films of titanium (Ti) and gold (Au), electroplating of Au, the dry release of the cantilever beam arrays, and finally the wafer dicing to split the different micro devices. These process steps were each sub-detailed to give a total of 14 micro-fabrication processes.

Scanning electron microscope images taken on the final fabricated device that was dry released using oxygen plasma ashing to avoid stiction showed 12 freely suspended micro-cantilevered beams suspended with an average electrostatic gap of 2.29±0.17 μm above a 4,934±3 Å thick silicon dioxide layer. Preliminary dimensional measurements on the fabricated devices revealed that the cantilevers were at least 52.06±1.93 μm wide with lengths varying from 377.97±0.01 to 1,491.89±0.01 μm and were at least 2.21±0.05 μm thick.

The cantilever beams used in this work were manufactured using electroplated gold, and photoresist was used as a sacrificial layer underneath the beams. Plasma ashing was used to release the beams. The beams were anchored to a central electrode and each beam was designed with varying length.