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The purpose of this paper is to establish the optimization model and solve the short‐term economic dispatch of cascaded hydro‐plants.

An improved particle swarm optimization (IPSO) approach is proposed to solve the short‐term economic dispatch of cascaded hydroelectric plants. The water transport delay time between connected reservoirs is taken into account and it is easy in dealing with the difficult hydraulic and power coupling constraints using the proposed method in practical cascaded hydroelectric plants operation. The feasibility of the proposed method is demonstrated for actual cascaded hydroelectric plant.

The simulation results show that this approach can prevent premature convergence to a high degree and keep a rapid convergence speed.

The optimal values of parameters in the proposed method are the main limitations where the method will be applied to the economic operation of the hydro‐plant.

The paper presents useful advice for short‐term economic operations of the hydro‐plant. A new optimization method to solve the short‐term optimal generation scheduling is proposed. The optimal generation power and water discharge during the whole dispatching time for hydro‐plant operation can be obtained.

The IPSO method is realized by maintaining high diversity of the swarm during the optimization process and preventing premature convergence.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a rolling horizon procedure (RHP) to deal with the large‐scale and strongly NP‐hard problem on cooperative lockage‐timetables and service‐policies of the five locks in the Three Gorges Project.

RHP based approach is composed of a series of periodical short‐time sub‐optimizations instead of global optimization. Each of the sub‐optimizations is modeled by a mixed‐integer‐programming and solved by a branch and bound algorithm with terminal penalty.

The RHP method is found to be effective and efficient. The size of the rolling horizon is positively correlated to the total weighted area of ships.

Precision of short‐time predictions is the main limitation.

This procedure promotes the navigation capacity of the Three Gorges Project and proposes a solution to the lockage‐scheduling problem of the Three Gorges Project.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the antecedents of manager voice in Chinese business from the theory of plan behavior perspective. The paper focuses on how antecedents including organization‐based self‐esteem, psychological ownership, and supervisor‐subordinate guanxi influence manager voice. It also examines the cross‐level moderating effect of Chinese indigenous leadership style authoritarian leadership on the relationships between antecedents and manager voice.

A literature review on manager voice, organization‐based self‐esteem, psychological ownership, supervisor‐subordinate guanxi, and authoritarian leadership provided the model and hypothesis. Using a sample of 262 supervisor‐subordinate dyads collected in Chinese business, a cross‐level analysis was conducted to test the model and hypothesis.

The results of hierarchical linear modeling show that on a individual level, in comparison with the organization‐based self‐esteem and psychological ownership, supervisor‐subordinate guanxi is a more critical factor influencing manager voice; on a group level, authoritarian leadership is negatively related to manager voice; and authoritarian leadership moderates the relationship between the supervisor‐subordinate guanxi and the manager voice: for weak authoritarian leadership group, the positive relationship between supervisor‐subordinate guanxi and manager voice is stronger.

It was a cross‐sectional study, and the samples were limited to Chinese business. It is necessary to replicate this research in other organization contexts. The results indicate that indigenous guanxi and authoritarian leadership significantly influence manager voice, which advances voice research in Chinese management studies.

Results of the study suggest top Chinese business leaders should strengthen the interpersonal relationship between supervisors and subordinates in order to encourage manager voice. Moreover, the top leaders should change their authoritarian leadership to facilitate voice behavior.

The paper is original in its investigation on how Chinese indigenous organizational factors – guanxi and authoritarian leadership – influence manager voice. The paper also explains the relationships between antecedents and manager voice from a cross‐level perspective.

The emergence of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology promises enormous opportunities to shift business process automation up to the wire level. The purpose of this paper is to explore the methodology of incorporating business logics into RFID edge systems, and thereby facilitate the business process automation in the RFID‐applied environment.

Following the object‐oriented modelling perspective, concepts of classes, instances are deployed to characterise the runtime context of RFID business scenarios; event patterns are used to aggregate RFID tag read events into business meaningful events; and business rules are established to automate business transactions according to the elicited events.

The paper has emphasised the synergy between business process automation and automatic data acquisition, and has identified the inter‐relations between RFID tag read events, application‐level events, business rules, and business operations. The reported research has demonstrated a feasible scheme of incorporating business process control and automation into RFID‐enabled applications.

The paper analyses the characteristics of RFID data and event handling in relation to business rule modelling and process automation. The features of event‐relied awareness, context containment and overlapping, etc. are all captured and described by the proposed object‐oriented business model. The given data‐driven RFID middleware architecture can serve as one reference architecture for system design and development. Hence, the paper plays an important role in connecting automatic data acquisition and existing business processes, and thereby bridges the physical world and the digital world.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of nano‐titanium dioxide and nano‐silicon dioxide particles on the mechanical and antimicrobial properties of denture base resin.

Nano‐titanium dioxide and nano‐silicon dioxide particles were introduced to heat‐curing denture base resin to prepare composites. Electronic universal testing machine and friction tester were used to test tensile strength and frictional resistance properties of the samples prepared, respectively; also, film adhesion method was used to test the in vitro antimicrobial activity against Candida albicans and Streptococcus mutans.

Addition of nano‐titanium dioxide particles could improve the antimicrobial property of denture base resin, and addition of nano‐silicon dioxide particles could improve the tensile strength and frictional resistance of denture base resin. Mixture of the two nano‐particles, at a certain ratio, could improve the tensile strength, frictional resistance and antimicrobial property of denture base resin to a certain extent.

Nano‐titanium dioxide and nano‐silicon dioxide denture base resin composites were obtained. The mechanical and antimicrobial properties of the composites were improved compared to the raw denture base resin.

Nano‐titanium dioxide and nano‐silicon dioxide denture base resin composites with excellent performance could be obtained. Longer service life, greater hardness and clearness helped improve the patients' quality of life. Limited work with respect to the improved denture base resin was performed, which could form the theme of a future study. The outcomes of the research reported here set a new milestone in the field of denture base resin.

Purpose – Emerging work on returnee entrepreneurs has done little to examine how these individuals coordinate the resources they need to exploit their opportunities. Existing research has recognized the role of context, but this has been quite limited. The chapter provides a novel analytical framework that integrates a resource orchestration perspective with recognition of the heterogeneity of context.

Design/Methodology – The authors build upon returnee entrepreneurship, strategic entrepreneurship theory, and theories relating to context and spillovers to distinguish the implications of temporal, institutional, social, and spatial dimensions of context for resource selection and coordination.

Findings – The authors identify a range of research themes relating to each context. The authors also discuss methodological issues relating to both qualitative and quantitative research.

Originality/Value – The intention is to spur further entrepreneurship, strategy, and international business research.

By making an analogy with the human body, the purpose of this paper is to underline the relations between a firm's failure causes and its current situation, in terms of the syndrome that can be identified at its level.

For this reason, some elements taken from medicine, such as symptoms, causes and syndromes are presented and characterized from the point of view of the firm.

It is shown that knowing the type of syndrome and the relation between it and the causes that determined its occurrence, a firm's situation can be improved and its life can be lengthened. The study was conducted on 19 firms and the results are conclusive.

By knowing the main causes that determine a certain type of bankruptcy syndrome, the firm's management can properly intervene to establish a new order and a new equilibrium, which can “save” the firm from an imminent collapse, bringing it to a normality situation and even leading it, in future, to increased performance.

The paper succeeds in shaping the relation between a firm's situation, its symptoms, the bankruptcy syndrome and the causes that led to a certain situation. Using one of the newest developed theories – the grey systems theory – and one of the newest concept used in firms' diagnosis – the bankruptcy syndrome – the paper extends the characteristics of this term and uses it in determining the causes that generate anomalies at firm level.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the theoretical relationship between the layout of four‐sensor dynamic acoustic array tracking system and systematic observation accuracy, and provide an algorithm to determine the optimal arrangement of four‐sensor acoustic array and an indicator to evaluate acoustic array system measurement accuracy.

In the present paper, the measurement principle of the four‐sensor dynamic acoustic array tracking system is analyzed, and the system observation model and the conversion relationship between models are established. Subsequently, the optimization algorithm for the four‐sensor dynamic acoustic array is deduced, the theoretical optimal arrangement of the four‐sensor dynamic acoustic array tracking measurement system is obtained based on the optimal position dilution of precision function (PDOPF) of 2D target, and the static experimental study on sound‐source bearing estimation is designed. The theoretical results are compared with the experimental results of the present study.

The measurement accuracy of the four‐sensor dynamic acoustic array tracking system is largely dependent on the layout of the acoustic sensor. Theoretical studies and experimental results demonstrated that an optimal PDPOF can be used to analyze the rationality of the layout. It can also serve as an indicator for the layout of the four‐sensor dynamic acoustic array tracking system.

The PDOPF value is presented as an indicator for the evaluation of the four‐sensor dynamic acoustic array systematic observation accuracy based on theoretical analysis. The feasibility of the indicator and the rationality of the sensor layout in practical engineering application are verified through experimental studies on sound‐source bearing estimation. The higher the PDOPF value is, the lower the accuracy of the system will be.