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As one of the world's most productive ecosystems, ecological land plays an important role in regional and global environments. Utilizing advanced optical and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data for land cover/land use research becomes increasingly popular. This research aims to investigate the complementarity of fully polarimetric SAR and optical imaging for ecological land classification in the eastern coastal area of China.

Four polarimetric decomposition methods, namely, H/Alpha, Yamaguchi3, VanZyl3 and Krogager, were applied to Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) SAR image for scattering parameter extraction. These parameters were merged with ALOS optical parameters for subsequent classification using the object-based quick, unbiased, efficient statistical tree decision tree method.

The experimental results indicate that an improved classification performance was obtained in the decision level when merging the two data sources. In fact, unlike classification using only optical images, the proposed approach allowed to distinguish ecological land with similar spectrum but different scattering. Moreover, unlike classification using only polarimetric information, the integration of polarimetric and optical data allows to accurately distinguish reed from artemisia and sand from salt field and therefore achieve a detailed classification of the coastal area characteristics.

This research proposed an integrated classification method for coastal ecological land with polarimetric SAR and optical data. The object-based and decision-level fusion enables effective ecological land classification in coastal area was verified.

Theme park experiences ubiquitously unfold in the presence of others. In acknowledgement of this important part of theme park consumption, this research set out to examine if other visitors help create an immersive environment and, in turn, memorable experiences for theme park visitors.

An online survey was distributed to 561 theme park visitors. Structural equation modeling (AMOS 26) was used for testing the hypotheses in the proposed framework.

Results of SEM analyses reveal the positive impact of perceived similarity on visitors' sense of immersion at theme parks and the memorability of the experience. In turn, memorable experiences further drive behavioral intentions (i.e., return intention and willingness to pay premiums).

The findings provide suggestions for theme parks to leverage customer-to-customer interactions in order to create immersive and memorable visitor experiences.

This research marks one of the first attempts to approach customer-to-customer interactions (CCIs) at theme parks by empirically examining the impact of the perceived similarity of others on focal visitors' emotions and experiences.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of Confucianism on auditor changes by highlighting the role of the cultural embeddedness mechanism in audit contracts from the perspective of credit governance.

Using a unique sample of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2008 to 2018, this study uses logit regression as the baseline methodology while controlling for macro-level factors and firm-level characteristics, as well as industry and year fixed effects. This study also conducts different mediation/channel analyses, endogeneity tests (using two-stage least squares and difference-in-differences techniques) and robustness checks.

The findings show that the embeddedness of Confucianism in a corporation reduces auditor changes. Furthermore, the channel analyses (using moral self-discipline, social trust, professional ethics and the quality of accounting information as four potential channels) reveal that Confucianism can improve moral credit and consolidate the cultural foundation of credit governance. Specifically, the stronger the embeddedness of Confucianism, the more stable the auditing contract. Finally, Confucianism in formal and informal systems can be mutually substituted.

There is limited research on how culture affects auditing contracts. This study offers new contributions and extends the literature on the connection between cultural embeddedness and contract stability. Confucianism has the potential to strengthen the efficiency of credit governance and maintain the stability of contracts. This study offers a thoughtful orientation toward duly using Confucianism vis-à-vis credit governance.

Academic healthcare systems face great challenges in coordinating services across a continuum of care that spans hospital, community providers, home and chronic care facilities. The Johns Hopkins Community Health Partnership (J-CHiP) was created to improve coordination of acute, sub-acute and ambulatory care for patients, and improve the health of high-risk patients in surrounding neighborhoods. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

J-CHiP targeted adults admitted to the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, patients discharged to participating skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), and high-risk Medicare and Medicaid patients receiving primary care in eight nearby outpatient sites. The primary drivers of the program were redesigned acute care delivery, seamless transitions of care and deployment of community care teams.

Acute care interventions included risk screening, multidisciplinary care planning, pharmacist-driven medication management, patient/family education, communication with next provider and care coordination protocols for common conditions. Transition interventions included post-discharge health plans, hand-offs and follow-up with primary care providers, Transition Guides, a patient access line and collaboration with SNFs. Community interventions involved forming multidisciplinary care coordination teams, integrated behavioral care and new partnerships with community-based organizations.

This paper offers a detailed description of the design and implementation of a complex program to improve care coordination for high-risk patients in an urban setting. The case studies feature findings from each intervention that promoted patient engagement, strengthened collaboration with community-based organizations and improved coordination of care.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between nonmarket strategy and innovation performance, as well as the boundary factors that influence this relationship in the context of the pharmaceutical industry in emerging markets.

This study analyzed matched data of 227 Chinese pharmaceutical firms and two secondary databases with SPSS to examine the hypotheses.

Nonmarket strategy promotes the innovation performance. High level of firm internal knowledge utilization ability and strategic flexibility strengthens the effect of nonmarket strategy in promoting innovation performance, while information technology (IT) environment weakens the effect of nonmarket strategy in promoting innovation performance.

The research studies the positive impact of nonmarket strategy on innovation performance in the specific context of Chinese pharmaceutical industry, and it introduces the internal capabilities and external IT environment of the firm as moderators of the relationship between nonmarket strategy and innovation performance. More importantly, this research echoes the call for research on moderator of nonmarket strategy and identifies important boundary conditions. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it also explores the impact of the IT environment on the implementation of nonmarket strategy for the first time, which deepens the research on nonmarket strategy’s effect on innovation.

To solve the problem of low sensitivity of traditional capacitive proximity sensor, this paper aims to propose a novel capacitive sensor for detection of an approaching conductor.

Five capacitive proximity sensors with different structures are designed and the performance is compared with the traditional capacitive sensor. The impacts of geometrical parameters on the performance of the proposed capacitive sensor are studied. Furthermore, the sensitivity of the proposed capacitive sensor to an approaching conductor with different sizes is discussed. Also, how the designed capacitive sensor is sensitive to the lateral placement of the approaching object is analyzed.

Several capacitive proximity sensor structures have been designed and analyzed. It is found that the capacitive sensor with the top small ring-bottom large ring structure shows stronger electric field distribution around the top electrode and higher sensitivity to the approaching conductor than other sensors. Through further analysis of the proposed sensor, the results demonstrate that proposed capacitive sensor is effective for proximity object detection.

This paper proposes a novel capacitive proximity sensor with top small ring-bottom large ring structure. Compared with the traditional capacitive sensor, the proposed capacitive sensor is more sensitive to the approaching object. This would be helpful for the accurate detection of the approaching object. Also, the top and bottom electrodes are much smaller.

China’s rapid pace of urbanization has resulted in millions of rural residents migrating from rural areas to urban areas for better job opportunities. Due to economic pressures and the nature of China’s demographic policies, many of these migrants have been forced to leave their children with relatives – typically paternal grandparents – at home in the countryside. Thus, while income for most migrant families has risen, a major unintended consequence of this labor movement has been the emergence of a potentially vulnerable sub-population of left-behind children (LBCs). The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of parental migration on both the academic performance and mental health of LBCs.

Longitudinal data were drawn from three waves of a panel survey that followed the same students and their families – including their migration behavior (i.e. whether both parents, one parent, no parent migrated) – between 2015 and 2016. The survey covers more than 33,000 students in one province of central China. The authors apply a student fixed-effects model that controls for both observable and unobservable confounding variables to explicate the causal effects of parental migration on the academic and mental health outcomes for LBC. The authors also employ these methods to test whether these effects differ by the type of migration or by gender of the child.

The authors found no overall impact of parental migration on either academic performance or mental health of LBCs, regardless of the type of migration behavior. The authors did find, however, that when the authors examined heterogeneous effects by gender (which was possible due to the large sample size), parental migration resulted in significantly higher anxiety levels for left-behind girls. The results suggest that parental migration affects left-behind boys and girls differently and that policymakers should take a more tailored approach to addressing the problems faced by LBCs.

The main contributions of this paper come from the large and representative sample, as well as the causal effects analysis of being left-behind on both academic performance and mental health. First, the paper uses comprehensive panel data from a representative and populous province in China, and the sample size is the largest one among LBC-related papers to the authors’ knowledge. Second, the paper separately examines the causal effects on the student outcomes of different migration strategies. Third, the paper analyzes the heterogeneous effects of different migration strategies on LBC gender. The authors believe that the paper makes a key contribution to the literature.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of rural-urban income gap on agricultural growth in China and its dynamics over time and across regions since reform and opening up.

Two types of indices are constructed to measure the rural-urban income gap: the intra-provincial index and the inter-provincial index. A provincial panel data from 1978 to 2010 and growth accounting method are used to estimate the size of the adverse effect of rural-urban income gap on agricultural growth in China.

The empirical results show that both indices of rural-urban income gaps are negatively associated with agriculture output, but the inter-provincial rural-urban income gap produces a larger adverse effect than the intra-provincial rural-urban income gap. Growth accounting analysis further shows that such adverse effects are decreasing over time and are larger in the central provinces. The results represent resource diversion effects of rural-urban income gap on agriculture.

This paper bridges the gap in existing literature on the relationship between sectoral income gaps and agricultural growth, which confirms Schultz's argument that agricultural activities are efficient even in developing countries and the rural resources diverted out by income gap are not surplus. The results imply that equalized rural-urban and regional policies are required to maintain sustainable agricultural growth in China.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the effectiveness of the credit evaluation system using the borrowing data from China’s leading P2P lending platform, Renrendai.com.

The current credit valuation systems are classified into the forward-looking mechanism, which judges the borrowers’ credit levels based on their uploaded information, and the backward-looking mechanism, which judges the borrowers’ credit levels based on their historical repayment performance. Probit models and Tobit models are used to examine the effectiveness of credit evaluation mechanisms.

The results show that only the “hard” information reflecting borrowers’ credit ability can explain the default risk on the platform under the forward-looking credit evaluation mechanism. The backward-looking credit evaluation mechanism (BCEM) based on the repeated borrowings produces both promise-enhancing and “fishing” incentives and thus fails to explain the default risk, and weakens the effectiveness of forward-looking credit indicators in explaining the default risk because it encourages borrowers to invest in forging forward-looking credit indicators. Additional information such as the interest rate and the repayment periods reveals borrowers’ credit and thus can also be used as a predictor of borrowers’ default risk.

The findings suggest that current ex ante screening based on the information collected from the borrowers or repeated borrowings is inadequate to control the default risk in P2P lending markets and thus needs be improved. Ex post monitoring and sharing on defaulter’s information should be strengthened to increase the default cost and thus to deter potential bad borrowers.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper classifying the credit evaluation system in online P2P lending market into the forward-looking type and the backward-looking type, which is important since they provide different incentives to borrowers. The paper also investigates and provides evidence on the promise-enhancing and “fishing” incentives of BCEMs.

As an advanced manufacturing method, additive manufacturing (AM) technology provides new possibilities for efficient production and design of parts. However, with the continuous expansion of the application of AM materials, subtractive processing has become one of the necessary steps to improve the accuracy and performance of parts. In this paper, the processing process of AM materials is discussed in depth, and the surface integrity problem caused by it is discussed.

Firstly, we listed and analyzed the characterization parameters of metal surface integrity and its influence on the performance of parts and then introduced the application of integrated processing of metal adding and subtracting materials and the influence of different processing forms on the surface integrity of parts. The surface of the trial-cut material is detected and analyzed, and the surface of the integrated processing of adding and subtracting materials is compared with that of the pure processing of reducing materials, so that the corresponding conclusions are obtained.

In this process, we also found some surface integrity problems, such as knife marks, residual stress and thermal effects. These problems may have a potential negative impact on the performance of the final parts. In processing, we can try to use other integrated processing technologies of adding and subtracting materials, try to combine various integrated processing technologies of adding and subtracting materials, or consider exploring more efficient AM technology to improve processing efficiency. We can also consider adopting production process optimization measures to reduce the processing cost of adding and subtracting materials.

With the gradual improvement of the requirements for the surface quality of parts in the production process and the in-depth implementation of sustainable manufacturing, the demand for integrated processing of metal addition and subtraction materials is likely to continue to grow in the future. By deeply understanding and studying the problems of material reduction and surface integrity of AM materials, we can better meet the challenges in the manufacturing process and improve the quality and performance of parts. This research is very important for promoting the development of manufacturing technology and achieving success in practical application.