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This study considers a contracting problem between a fairness concerned entrepreneur (EN) and a fair-neutral venture capitalist (VC) to explore the effects of asymmetry, agency conflicts and fairness concerns.

The authors construct the model by assuming the EN's risk aversion degree is private information, which is more realistic but ignored in most studies. Under the principal–agent framework, the authors solve the VC's optimal contracting models by identifying the ranges of feasible solution, where the optimal solutions of these models are explicit and nicely reconcile the “private equity” puzzle. Moreover, validity of the optimal solutions is verified by numerical simulations.

In accordance with empirical evidence, information asymmetry lowers the optimal equity share that the VC provides to EN but raises EN's profit due to lower effort disutility and information rent. Moreover, the authors find that the fairness concerns is beneficial for the EN, where it not only increases the EN's optimal equity share, but also enhances the certainty equivalence of the EN's utility regarding its profit. Relative to the benchmark model where the EN's risk aversion degree is common knowledge, the EN's efforts recommended by the optimal contract is less sensitive to the EN's fairness concerns degree when the EN does not actually announce its risk aversion degree.

First, the authors incorporate asymmetry to study a two-period contracting problem and explore how it affects the equity shares allocated to the contractual parties. Second, the authors incorporate fairness concerns and analyze its effect regarding the decision-makings and profits.

This paper aims to present a one-shot gesture recognition approach which can be a high-efficient communication channel in human–robot collaboration systems.

This paper applies dynamic time warping (DTW) to align two gesture sequences in temporal domain with a novel frame-wise distance measure which matches local features in spatial domain. Furthermore, a novel and robust bidirectional attention region extraction method is proposed to retain information in both movement and hold phase of a gesture.

The proposed approach is capable of providing efficient one-shot gesture recognition without elaborately designed features. The experiments on a social robot (JiaJia) demonstrate that the proposed approach can be used in a human–robot collaboration system flexibly.

According to previous literature, there are no similar solutions that can achieve an efficient gesture recognition with simple local feature descriptor and combine the advantages of local features with DTW.

As productions show characteristics of multi-varieties and small batch in a recent new product system, it is more difficult to acquire its failure rate data. With the help of expert experience information, the authors can get the interval estimation of failure rate data under different methods, so how to make the interval convergence with the new information is an important problem to be solved. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

In this paper, the concept of generalized standard grey number is used to characterize the multi-source heterogeneous uncertainty failure rate data into a unified framework. Then, the engineering construction method is used to calculate the average failure rate and build the grey exponential distribution reliability function, whose image is presented as the possible region of the two-curve envelope.

Further, according to the normal distribution assumption of the regional convergence based on the information supplement, the convergence problem of the reliability function is transformed into the convergence of the area of the curve envelope region, and construct the multi-objective programming model with the minimum envelope area and the lowest total cost of information acquisition, acquire the conclusion that the failure rate is equal to the nuclear of the average failure rate when the envelope region converges.

Through the case analysis of the equipment ejection system of the Harbinger system, five groups of results are obtained by Matlab simulation, which verify the rationality and feasibility of the model described in this paper.

The implied assembly constraints of a computer-aided design (CAD) model (e.g. hierarchical constraints, geometric constraints and topological constraints) represent an important basis for product assembly sequence intelligent planning. Assembly prior knowledge contains factual assembly knowledge and experience assembly knowledge, which are important factors for assembly sequence intelligent planning. This paper aims to improve monotonous assembly sequence planning for a rigid product, intelligent planning of product assembly sequences based on spatio-temporal semantic knowledge is proposed.

A spatio-temporal semantic assembly information model is established. The internal data of the CAD model are accessed to extract spatio-temporal semantic assembly information. The knowledge system for assembly sequence intelligent planning is built using an ontology model. The assembly sequence for the sub-assembly and assembly is generated via attribute retrieval and rule reasoning of spatio-temporal semantic knowledge. The optimal assembly sequence is achieved via a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation.

The proposed spatio-temporal semantic information model and knowledge system can simultaneously express CAD model knowledge and prior knowledge for intelligent planning of product assembly sequences. Attribute retrieval and rule reasoning of spatio-temporal semantic knowledge can be used to generate product assembly sequences.

The assembly sequence intelligent planning example of linear motor highlights the validity of intelligent planning of product assembly sequences based on spatio-temporal semantic knowledge.

The spatio-temporal semantic information model and knowledge system are built to simultaneously express CAD model knowledge and assembly prior knowledge. The generation algorithm via attribute retrieval and rule reasoning of spatio-temporal semantic knowledge is given for intelligent planning of product assembly sequences in this paper. The proposed method is efficient because of the small search space.

Based on the commitments made when it joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, China began to allow the establishment of foreign‐invested travel agencies. During this transition period, China promulgated travel service‐related policies and paid a great deal of attention to this specific business market. This paper aims to analyze the said tourism policies and provide suggestions to foreign investors for their future business activities in this promising market.

The study uses both primary and secondary data to specify China's policies on foreign‐invested travel agencies upon its accession to the WTO and discuss foreign investors' entry modes and operating strategies for joining the market. Hall's model is employed to examine the policy‐making process, including policy demands, policy decisions, policy outputs, and policy impacts.

Some foreign investment‐related tourism policies were implemented ahead of the schedule to which China committed upon its entry to the WTO. The tight nature of the policies implemented meant that only 25 foreign‐invested agencies had survived in China by August 2007. Industry professionals recruited for this study commented that the nature and pattern of FDI in this market has been successfully framed by the policies adopted.

The entry modes that foreign investors in China's travel service market should adopt and the detailed operating strategies they should use are discussed.

The paper can be seen as a successful and enlightening attempt to pave the way for future researchers to engage in further discussions about FDI in tourism in a political environment, particularly in developing countries.

Based on the moral licensing theory, this study aims to reveal the mechanism of self-sacrificial leadership inducing abusive supervision from two paths of leader moral credit and leader moral credential. At the same time, it also discusses the moderating effect of leader behavioral integrity on the two paths.

In this study, 434 employees and their direct leaders from six Chinese companies were investigated in a paired survey at three time points, and the empirical data was analyzed using Mplus 7.4 software.

Self-sacrificial leadership has a positive effect on leader abusive supervision through the mediating role of leader moral credit and leader moral credential. In addition, this study also finds that leader behavioral integrity is the “gate” for self-sacrificial leadership to promote abusive supervision, and the leader behavioral integrity has a moderating effect on the process of self-sacrificial leadership influencing on leader moral credit and leader moral credential.

This study explores the evolution of self-sacrificial leadership from “good” to “bad” from the perspective of moral licensing and broadens the research on the mechanism and boundary conditions of self-sacrificial leadership. At the same time, it also provides important reference value for preventing the negative effects of self-sacrificial leadership in organizations.

This study aims to examine the impacts of climate change (CC), measured average annual rainfall, average annual temperature and carbon dioxide (CO₂e) on cereal production (CPD) in Bangladesh by using the annual dataset from 1988–2014, with the incorporation of cereal cropped area (CCA), financial development (FD), energy consumption (EC) and rural labor force as important determinants of CPD.

This study used an auto-regressive distributive lag (ARDL) model and several econometric approaches to validate the long- and short-term cointegration and the causality directions, respectively, of the scrutinized variables.

Results of the bounds testing approach confirmed the stable long-term connections among the underlying variables. The estimates of the ARDL model indicated that rainfall improves CPD in the short-and long-term. However, CO₂e has a significantly negative impact on CPD both in the short-and long-term. Results further showed that temperature has an adverse effect on CPD in the short-term. Among other determinants, CCA, FD and EC have significantly positive impacts on CPD in both cases. The outcomes of Granger causality indicated that a significant two-way causal association is running from all variables to CPD except temperature and rainfall. The connection between CPD and temperature is unidirectional, showing that CPD is influenced by temperature. All other variables also have a valid and significant causal link among each other. Additionally, the findings of variance decomposition suggest that results are robust, and all these factors have a significant influence on CPD in Bangladesh.

These findings have important policy implications for Bangladesh and other developing countries. For instance, introduce improved cereal crop varieties, increase CCA and familiarizes agricultural credits through formal institutions on relaxed conditions and on low-interest rates could reduce the CPD’s vulnerability to climate shocks.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first attempt to examine the short- and long-term impacts of CC on CPD in Bangladesh over 1988–2014. The authors used various econometrics techniques, including the ARDL approach, the Granger causality test based on the vector error correction model framework and the variance decomposition method.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest an implicit integration method for updating the constitutive relationships in the newly proposed anisotropic egg-shaped elastoplastic (AESE) model and to apply it in ABAQUS.

The implicit integration algorithm based on the Newton–Raphson method and the closest point projection scheme containing an elastic predictor and plastic corrector are implemented in the AESE model. Then, the integration code for this model is incorporated into the commercial finite element software ABAQUS through the user material subroutine (UMAT) interface to simulate undrained monotonic triaxial tests for various saturated soft clays under different consolidation conditions.

The comparison between the simulated results from ABAQUS and the experimental results demonstrates the satisfactory performance of this implicit integration algorithm in terms of effectiveness and robustness and the ability of the proposed model to predict the characteristics of soft clay.

The rotational hardening rule in the AESE model together with the implicit integration algorithm cannot be considered.

The singularity problem existing in most elastoplastic models is eliminated by the closed, smooth and flexible anisotropic egg-shaped yield surface form in the AESE model. In addition, this notion leads to an efficient implicit integration algorithm for updating the highly nonlinear constitutive equations for unsaturated soft clay.

The construction industry is facing challenges not only for workers' mobility in the pandemic situation but also for Lean Construction (LC) practise in responding to the high-quality development during the post-pandemic. As such, this paper presents a construction workforce management framework based on LC to manage both the emergency goal in migrant worker management and the long-term goal in labour productivity improvement in China.

The framework is created based on the integrated culture and technology strategies of LC. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods is taken to explore factors influencing the mobility of construction workers and to measure labour productivity improvement. The case study approach is adopted to demonstrate the framework application.

For method application, a time-and-motion study and Percent Plan Complete indicator are proposed to offer labour productivity measurements of “resources efficiency” and “flow efficiency”. Moreover, the case study provides an industry level solution for construction workforce management and Lean Construction culture shaping, as well as witnesses the LC culture and technology strategies alignment contributing to LC practise innovation.

Compared with previous studies which emphasised solely LC techniques rather than socio-technical system thinking, the proposed integration framework as well as implementation of “Worker's Home” and “Lean Work Package” management models in the COVID-19 pandemic contribute to new extensions of both the fundamental of knowledge and practise in LC.

The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of micro-nano surface texture on the corrosion resistance of a titanium alloy and investigate the correlation between corrosion resistance and hydrophobicity.

The surface of the Ti₆Al₄V alloy was modified by laser processing and anodizing to fabricate micro-pits, nanotubes and micro-nano surface textures. Afterward, the surface morphology, hydrophobicity and polarization curve of the samples were analyzed by cold field scanning electron microscopy, contact angle measurement instruments and a multi-channel electrochemical workstation.

The micro-nano surface texture can enhance the hydrophobicity of the Ti₆Al₄V surface, which may lead to better drag reduction to ease the friction of implants in vivo. Nevertheless, no correlation existed between surface hydrophobicity and corrosion resistance; the corrosion resistance of samples with nanotubes and high-density samples with micro-nano surface texture was extremely enhanced, indicating the similar corrosion resistance of the two.

The mechanism of micro-dimples on the corrosion resistance of the micro-nano surface texture was not studied.

The density of micro-pits needs to be optimized to guarantee excellent corrosion resistance in the design of the micro-nano surface texture; otherwise, it will not fulfill the requirement of surface modification.

The influence of the micro-nano surface texture on the corrosion resistance, as well as the relationship between hydrophobicity and corrosion resistance of the titanium alloy surface, were systematically investigated for the first time. These conclusions offer new knowledge.