Green Biased Technical Change in Terms of Industrial Water Resources in China’s Yangtze River Economic Belt

As a significant ecological corridor from west to east across China, the Yangtze River Economical Belt (YREB) is in great need of green development and transformation. Rather than only focusing on the overall growth of green productivity, it is important to identify whether the technical change is biased towards economic performance or green performance in promoting green productivity. By employing the biased technical change theory and Malmquist index decomposition method, we analyze the green biased technical change in terms of industrial water resources in YREB at the output side and the input side respectively. We find that the green biased technical change varies during 2006–2015 at both the input side and output side in YREB. At the input side, water-saving biased technical change is generally dominant compared to water-using biased technical change during 2006–2015, presenting the substitution effects of non-water production factors. At the output side, the economy-growth biased technical change is the main force to promote green productivity, whereas the role of water-conservation biased technical change is insufficient. The green performance at the output side needs to be strengthened compared to the economic performance in YREB. A series of water-related environmental policies introduced in China since 2008 have promoted the green biased technical change both at the input side and the output side in YREB, but the policy effects at the output side is still inadequate compared to that at the input side. The technological innovation in sewage treatment and control need to catch up with the economic growth in YREB. Our research gives insights to enable a deeper understanding of the green biased technical change in YREB and will benefit more focused policy-making of green innovation

What explains the performance of Chinese exporting firms?

Drawing on the entry mode literature and the strategic tripod framework, we examine whether firm performance is influenced by its outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) mode, controlling other firm-, industry- and institution-specific factors. It is found that employing OFDI does not improve an exporting firm’s performance. This is not surprising as anecdotal evidence shows that many Chinese firms with OFDI have been making loss in the host country. This may indicate exporting firms employ OFDI to seek complementary and strategic resources/assets, not to improve immediate firm performance. Furthermore, firm performance is influenced by strategic assets, including technology-based capabilities (TBCs) and brands, at the firm level, industry entry barriers at the industry level and the home and host country institutional support at the country level

THE INFLUENCE OF COORDINATION BETWEEN UPPER LIMBS\u27 JOINTS ON SPORT LEVEL IN SNOOKER

This study explored the effect of coordination between upper limb joints on the technical level of shooting in billiards.Eight professional and eight amateur players were asked to shoot according to a specific rounte and vector coding method used to quantify the coordination of the motions of the limbs during the shooting stage.For coordination between the flexion and extension of shoulder and flexion and extension of elbow,the proportion of the anti-phase and elbow-phase coordination in the professional group was higher than the amateur group,and the proportion of the shoulder-phase was lower for professional than amateur group. For coordination of the flexion and extension of shoulder and the the adduction and outreach of wrist,the proportion of the wrist-phase coordination in the professional group was higher than the amateur group,and the proportion of the shoulder-phase was lower for the professional than amateur group.These indicators can be used as diagnostic indicators for snooker player\u27s shooting motio

Emotion Regulation and Incivility: keep it civil even though it may not be honest

Emotions are an inescapable a part of our daily experiences and we spend much of our time regulating them either deliberately or subconsciously. While we understand what it means to regulate our emotions and the toll it can take, it remains unclear how another individual’s perceptions of our emotion regulation patterns may vary, especially when our behavior crosses the line into incivility. Building on theories of emotion regulation and incivility, this paper proposes that perceptions of emotion regulation can change based on displays of incivility, which occur when emotion regulation or lack thereof reach an extreme. In a study with a simulated online customer service interaction, this paper finds that (1) civility increases perceptions of trust, (2) angry uncivil behavior is viewed as the most honest but least moral, and (3) angry civil behavior is viewed as particularly benevolent. This research shows how while civility may increase trust, honest and authentic behavior may not always be viewed in a positive manner

Solving the Multi-activity Shift Scheduling Problem using Variable Neighbourhood Search

This paper presents a set of benchmarks instances for the multi-activity shift scheduling problem and the results produced using a variable neighbourhood search method. The data set is intended as a resource to generate and verify novel research on an important and practical but challenging problem. The variable neighbourhood search uses four different neighbourhood operators and can produce feasible solutions within short computation times

Change Point Estimation of Bilevel Functions

Reconstruction of a bilevel function such as a bar code signal in a partially blind deconvolution problem is an important task in industrial processes. Existing methods are based on either the local approach or the regularization approach with a total variation penalty. This article reformulated the problem explicitly in terms of change points of the 0-1 step function. The bilevel function is then reconstructed by solving the nonlinear least squares problem subject to linear inequality constraints, with starting values provided by the local extremas of the derivative of the convolved signal from discrete noisy data. Simulation results show a considerable improvement of the quality of the bilevel function using the proposed hybrid approach over the local approach. The hybrid approach extends the workable range of the standard deviation of the Gaussian kernel significantly