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Autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is widely used in resource prospection and underwater detection due to its excellent performance. This study considers input saturation, nonlinear model uncertainties and external ocean current disturbances. The containment errors can be limited to a small neighborhood of zero in finite time by employing control strategy. The control strategy can keep errors within a certain range between the trajectory followed by AUVs and their intended targets. This can mitigate the issues of collisions and disruptions in communication which may arise from AUVs being in close proximity or excessively distant from each other.

The tracking errors are constrained. Based on the directed communication topology, a cooperative formation control algorithm for multi-AUV systems with constrained errors is designed. By using the saturation function, state observers are designed to estimate the AUV’s velocity in six degrees of freedom. A new virtual control algorithm is designed through combining backstepping technique and the tan-type barrier Lyapunov function. Neural networks are used to estimate and compensate for the nonlinear model uncertainties and external ocean current disturbances. A neural network adaptive law is designed.

The containment errors can be limited to a small neighborhood of zero in finite time so that follower AUVs can arrive at the convex hull consisting of leader AUVs within finite time. The validity of the results is indicated by simulations.

The state observers are designed to approximate the speed of the AUV and improve the accuracy of the control method. The anti-saturation function and neural network adaptive law are designed to deal with input saturation and general disturbances, respectively. It can ensure the safety and reliability of the multiple AUV systems.

This study aims to report on the feasibility, acceptability and outcomes of a peer support program designed to promote social participation for adults with serious mental illness (SMI) in China.

The authors used a community-based participatory research approach to adapt and test a six-month, culturally responsive peer program with 68 participants. Peer supporters were trained and supervised in Guangzhou, China. Peer workers were hired via a competitive process and completed both classroom and field training. Study participants were offered individual and group socialization activities. Participants completed measures on recovery, quality of life, functioning and symptoms at three time points (pre-, post- and follow-up).

Nearly 90% of participants expressed satisfaction with their peer supporters and the frequency of services. Findings showed a significant increasing trend for the social relationships domain of quality of life from baseline to follow-up. Female participants reported significantly increased recovery from pre to post and increased psychological quality of life pre-follow-up as compared to their male counterparts. Supervision logs documented positive gains from participants such as increased help-seeking, improved social skills, enhanced emotion regulation and self-confidence and established routine, alongside challenges like inconsistent engagement, low service incentives and an overreliance on social workers. Peer supporters also reported concerns about their own lack of skills and in navigating relationships between participants and their family members.

Peer interventions have been well studied in Western countries but underexplored in China. This research addresses this gap by presenting a peer program aimed at enhancing the social participation of Chinese with SMI.

This paper aims to identify the effects of two types of teaching approaches, namely, project-based learning and place-based learning, on the development of pro-environmental behaviors among university students.

This study used a pre-test–post-test experimental design to evaluate the efficacy of project- and placed-based learning in promoting pro-environmental behaviors among university students. Participants were randomly allocated to either the project-based learning cohort (consisting of 50 participants) or the place-based learning cohort (also consisting of 50 participants). The pre-test assessments evaluated the initial pro-environmental behaviors of the participants. Then, interventions were conducted with the help of instructors. The project-based learning intervention necessitated participants to collectively take part in real-life problem-solving endeavors about environmental matters. On the other hand, the place-based learning intervention prompted participants to record and contemplate their interactions with the surrounding environment. Both interventions sought to augment participants’ understanding, beliefs and actions related to the environment. After the interventions, post-test assessments were carried out to assess any alterations in participants’ pro-environmental behaviors. Mean analysis and paired sample t-test were performed to examine the differences among the pre-test and post-test for both project- and place-based learning.

The findings of this study indicate that the participants have exhibited improved pro-environmental behaviors, including environmental activism, non-activist behaviors and private sphere green behaviors.

This research is original in its analysis of project- and place-based learning approaches for fostering pro-environmental behaviors. By using a pre-test–post-test experimental design, this study provides empirical evidence on the effectiveness of these active learning strategies in shaping environmental attitudes and actions.

Outsourcing has become a crucial avenue for companies to acquire external knowledge. To better understand how dual organizational supports influence the knowledge sharing behavior of outsourced employees within triangular employment relationships, grounded in social exchange theory, this study explores the effect and mechanism of differentiation in perceived organizational support (DPOS) on knowledge sharing of outsourced employees.

A two-wave survey was conducted to test the hypotheses, and data were collected from 271 outsourced employees and their leaders (from client organizations) in 52 interorganizational teams.

Results show that DPOS positively affect the knowledge sharing of outsourced employees and has a stronger predictive value than that of client organizational support. Outsourced employees’ psychological ownership to the interorganizational team mediates this relationship. Task interdependence plays a positive cross-hierarchy moderating role in the relationship between DPOS and psychological ownership to the interorganizational team.

This research provides practical advice for support strategies of client and supplier organizations.

Results provide further understanding for outsourced employees’ psychological and behavioral mode in triangular employment contexts.

Even though remote work has been around for years and COVID-19 has rapidly increased its prevalence among organizations, research on remote employee engagement is limited. Informed by social exchange theory and social support theory, the purpose of the current study is to examine how internal listening, including both organizational and supervisory listening, influences remote employee engagement and the mediating role of remote employees perceived organizational supportiveness and affective organizational commitment.

Using survey as the research method, the study recruited full-time employees who fully work remotely in the United States of America. The data were collected in early December 2021, and a total of 527 complete and valid responses were used for data analysis. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the study hypotheses.

The results showed that both organizational and supervisory listening had an indirect effect on remote employee engagement by strengthening their perceived organizational support and affective organizational commitment. Both organizational listening and supervisory listening could make remote employees feel they are supported by the organization. However, only supervisory listening had a significant direct impact on remote employees' affective commitment to the organization.

This study is among the first that examines the importance of listening in motivating employee engagement in the context of remote work. The findings showcase the communication functions, from the aspect of organizational and leadership listening, in inspiring the remote workforce. Moreover, this study contributes to the understanding of listening as a pivotal force in driving employees' positive emotional and relational outcomes when they work remotely.

Drought is the primary disaster that negatively impacts agricultural and animal husbandry production. It can lead to crop reduction and even pose a threat to human survival in environmentally sensitive areas of China (ESAC). However, the phases and periodicity of drought changes in the ESAC remain largely unknown. Thus, this paper aims to identify the periodic characteristics of meteorological drought changes.

The potential evapotranspiration was calculated using the Penman–Monteith formula recommended by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, whereas the standardized precipitation evaporation index (SPEI) of drought was simulated by coupling precipitation data. Subsequently, the Bernaola-Galvan segmentation algorithm was proposed to divide the periods of drought change and the newly developed extreme-point symmetric mode decomposition to analyze the periodic drought patterns.

The findings reveal a significant increase in SPEI in the ESAC, with the rate of decline in drought events higher in the ESAC than in China, indicating a more pronounced wetting trend in the study area. Spatially, the northeast region showed an evident drying trend, whereas the southwest region showed a wetting trend. Two abrupt changes in the drought pattern were observed during the study period, namely, in 1965 and 1983. The spatial instability of moderate or severe drought frequency and intensity on a seasonal scale was more consistent during 1966–1983 and 1984–2018, compared to 1961–1965. Drought variation was predominantly influenced by interannual oscillations, with the periods of the components of intrinsic mode functions 1 (IMF1) and 2 (IMF2) being 3.1 and 7.3 years, respectively. Their cumulative variance contribution rate reached 70.22%.

The trend decomposition and periods of droughts in the study area were analyzed, which may provide an important scientific reference for water resource management and agricultural production activities in the ESAC. However, several problems remain unaddressed. First, the SPEI considers only precipitation and evapotranspiration, making it extremely sensitive to temperature increases. It also ignores the nonstationary nature of the hydrometeorological water process; therefore, it is prone to bias in drought detection and may overestimate the intensity and duration of droughts. Therefore, further studies on the application and comparison of various drought indices should be conducted to develop a more effective meteorological drought index. Second, the local water budget is mainly affected by surface evapotranspiration and precipitation. Evapotranspiration is calculated by various methods that provide different results. Therefore, future studies need to explore both the advantages and disadvantages of various evapotranspiration calculation methods (e.g. Hargreaves, Thornthwaite and Penman–Monteith) and their application scenarios. Third, this study focused on the temporal and spatial evolution and periodic characteristics of droughts, without considering the driving mechanisms behind them and their impact on the ecosystem. In future, it will be necessary to focus on a sensitivity analysis of drought indices with regard to climate change. Finally, although this study calculated the SPEI using meteorological data provided by China’s high-density observatory network, deviations and uncertainties were inevitable in the point-to-grid spatialization process. This shortcoming may be avoided by using satellite remote sensing data with high spatiotemporal resolution in the future, which can allow pixel-scale monitoring and simulation of meteorological drought evolution.

Under the background of continuous global warming, the climate in arid and semiarid areas of China has shown a trend of warming and wetting. It means that the plant environment in this region is getting better. In the future, the project of afforestation and returning farmland to forest and grassland in this region can increase the planting proportion of water-loving tree species to obtain better ecological benefits. Meanwhile, this study found that in the relatively water-scarce regions of China, drought duration was dominated by interannual oscillations (3.1a and 7.3a). This suggests that governments and nongovernmental organizations in the region should pay attention to the short drought period in the ESAC when they carry out ecological restoration and protection projects such as the construction of forest reserves and high-quality farmland.

The findings enhance the understanding of the phasic and periodic characteristics of drought changes in the ESAC. Future studies on the stress effects of drought on crop yield may consider these effects to better reflect the agricultural response to meteorological drought and thus effectively improve the tolerance of agricultural activities to drought events.

Digital product and service innovations (DPSI) has attracted widespread attention from both management scholars and practitioners. Previous studies have documented that information technology (IT) capability and digital orientation positively influence DPSI performance. However, the question of whether and how digitalization capability can facilitate DPSI performance remains unresolved. This paper fills these gaps by investigating the mediating role of improvisation capability and the moderating role of technological turbulence.

This study used two-wave data from 240 matched digital transformation department leaders and senior managers from Chinese firms and examined the hypotheses deploying hierarchical regression and bootstrapping.

Our analyses reveal positive, significant links between digitalization capability and improvisation capability and between improvisation capability and DPSI performance. The findings further show that the effect of digitalization capability on DPSI performance is partially mediated by improvisation capability and that technological turbulence strengthens the indirect relationship between digitalization capability and DPSI performance through improvisation capability.

Integrating resource-based view, this research provides evidence that the extent to which improvisation capability mediates the relationship between digitalization capability and DPSI performance depends on technological turbulence. It provides a new direction for digitalization capability and DPSI performance.

This study investigates how downward envy affects interpersonal conflict, workplace ostracism and displaced aggression in the mentoring context. It seeks to deepen our understanding of how these dynamics influence a mentor–protégé relationship.

Employing a three-wave research design, this study uses a sample of 176 participants in mentoring relationships to test our proposed moderated mediation model.

Downward envy can increase interpersonal conflict, workplace ostracism and displaced aggression. A mentor’s social comparison orientation moderates these effects by amplifying the negative impacts of downward envy.

These findings have practical implications for both mentors and protégés.

These findings have practical implications for both mentors and protégés.

This study contributes to the literature by focusing on downward envy within the mentoring context, yielding valuable insights to navigate mentoring experiences at work.

Prior studies have consistently treated participative leadership as a given leadership style. Conversely, this study aims to prove that participative leadership can be predicted by leaders and teams collectively, depending on leaders' work characteristics (i.e. workload).

A two-source survey was designed to collect data from a sample of 89 leader-team dyads in a trading company in a southeastern Chinese city. Polynomial regression and response surface analysis were used to test the hypotheses.

The leader showed more participative leadership when leader-team future orientation was congruent rather than incongruent; in the congruent situation, there was an inverted U-shaped relationship between leader-team future orientation congruence and participative leadership; in the incongruent situation, when the team's future orientation gradually exceeded the leader's, participative leadership first increased and then decreased; and leader workload positively moderated the relationship between leader-team future orientation congruence and participative leadership.

These findings theoretically respond to the call for investigating the influence of leader-team future orientation congruence on leaders’ behaviors, and in practice enlighten managers on how to encourage supervisors to involve employees in decision-making processes.

This study investigates the causal relationship and mechanisms between the development of digital finance and household carbon emissions. Its objective is to explore how digital finance can influence the carbon footprint at the household level, aiming to contribute to the broader understanding of financial innovations' environmental impacts.

The research combines macro and micro data, employing input-output analysis to utilize data from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) for the years 2013, 2015, 2017, and 2019, national input-output tables, and Energy Statistical Yearbooks. This approach calculated CO2 emissions at the household level, including the growth rate of household carbon emissions and per capita emissions. It further integrates the Peking University Digital Financial Inclusion Index of China (PKU-DFIIC) for 2012–2018 and corresponding urban economic data, resulting in panel data for 7,191 households across 151 cities over four years. A fixed effects model was employed to examine the impact of digital finance development on household carbon emissions.

The findings reveal that digital finance significantly lowers household carbon emissions. Further investigation shows that digital transformation, consumption structure upgrades, and improved household financial literacy enhance the restraining effect of digital finance on carbon emissions. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that this mitigating effect is more pronounced in households during the nurturing phase, those using convenient payment methods, small-scale, and urban households. Sub-index tests suggest that the broadening coverage and deepening usage of digital finance primarily drive its impact on reducing household carbon emissions.

The paper recommends that China should continue to strengthen the layout of digital infrastructure, leverage the advantages of digital finance, promote digital financial education, and facilitate household-level carbon emission management to support the achievement of China's dual carbon goals.

The originality of this paper lies in its detailed examination of the carbon reduction effects of digital finance at the micro (household) level. Unlike previous studies on carbon emissions that focused on absolute emissions, this research investigates the marginal impact of digital finance on relative increases in emissions. This method provides a robust assessment of the net effects of digital finance and offers a novel perspective for examining household carbon reduction measures. The study underscores the importance of considering heterogeneity when formulating targeted policies for households with different characteristics.