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This paper aims to study the tribological behavior of the WS2/oil-impregnated porous polyimide (PPI) solid/liquid composite system, in which both PFPE (perfluoropolyether) and SiCH (silahydrocarbons) oils with different hydrocarbon chains were used, respectively. Lubricating mechanism of the composite system was also explored.

The tribological behaviors of the WS2 films against the PPI cylindrical pins before and after immersing oil were evaluated under different loads by a reciprocating-type ball-on-disc tribometer.

The composite system exhibited the low and stable friction coefficient after the running-in stage, and the lubricant oil played a positive effect. It was found that the WS2/PFPE composite system exhibited more excellent lubricating property, although sole SiCH far exceeds PFPE in lubrication. The abnormal phenomenon mainly resulted from the influence of the oil amount. XRD results on the wear track surfaces indicated that PFPE and SiCH oils with different hydrocarbon chains were likely to preferentially adsorb to the edge plane and basal plane of the WS2 crystals, respectively.

In previous studies, liquid lubricants were directly dripped or spin-coated on the solid lubricant surface. Based on its potential advantage in application, the tribological behavior and mechanism of the solid lubricating film/oil-impregnated PPI composite system were investigated in this study.

This study aims to investigate the most effective approach for governments and enterprises to combat desertification by considering the governance cycle. The focus is on understanding how the government can incentivize enterprises to actively engage in desertification combat efforts.

Both the government and the enterprise are treated as rational entities, making strategic choices for joint participation in combating desertification. Recognizing the dynamic nature of the desertification combat area, differential game models are employed to identify the optimal mode for combating desertification.

The findings underscore the significant influence of the governance cycle duration on the selection of desertification combat modes for government and enterprise. A cooperative mode is best suited to a short governance cycle, while an ecological subsidy mode is optimal for a longer cycle. Enhancing governance technology and shortening the governance cycle are conducive to combating desertification. Reducing taxes alone may not be an effective control strategy; rather, the government can better motivate enterprises by adopting tax rate policies aligned with the chosen governance mode.

This research contributes by elucidating the impact mechanism of the government cycle’s length on the desertification combat process. The results may offer valuable insights for governments in formulating strategies to encourage corporate participation in combating desertification and provide theoretical support for selecting optimal desertification combat modes.

The authors consider a dynamic emission-reduction technology investment decision-making problem for an emission-dependent dyadic supply chain consists of a manufacturer and a retailer under subsidy policy for carbon emission reduction. The consumers are assumed to prefer to low-carbon products and formulate a supply chain optimal control problem.

The authors adopt differential game to analyze investment strategies of cost subsidy coefficient with respect to vertical incentive of a manufacturer and a retailer. A comparison analysis under four different decision-making situations, including decentralized decision-making, centralized decision-making, maximizing social welfare, is obtained.

The results show that the economic benefit and environmental pressure have a win–win performance in centralized decision-making. In four different game models, equilibrium strategies, profits and social welfare show changing diversity and have a consistent development trend as time goes on.

The authors estimate the demand function is a linear function in this paper. According to the consumers’ preference to low-carbon products, consumer’s awareness meets the law of diminishing marginal utility like advertising goodwill accumulation. The carbon-sensitive coefficient might be a quadratic expression, which will complicate the problem and be consistent with reality.

It captures that there is a necessity to strengthen cooperation and exchange of carbon emission technology among the enterprises by simulation of different decision-makings when government granted cost subsidy.

The results provide significant guidelines for the supply chain to make decision-makings of emission-reduction technology investment and relevant government departments to determine emission subsidies costs.

An endogenous subsidies coefficient is produced by the social welfare function. Distinguished from previous study, it also considered the influences of carbon emission trade policy and consumer preference.

No study to date has addressed the construct of event tourist experience value and there is no well-accepted value measurement method. This study aims to examine the underlying dimensions of event tourist experience value from a holistic perspective.

The research process consists of two steps. First, the dimensions of event tourist experience value are investigated by using grounded theory and content analysis of travel blogs. The second step is to explore and verify the scale of event tourist experience value.

The items show that event tourist experience value can be comprehensively understood from three dimensions: functional value (functional factors); hedonic value (relaxation, escape, restoration and interaction); and symbolic value (social prestige, belonging and self-transcendence).

The findings are useful indicators explaining events attendance, and can help event organizers and destination managers to better understand the needs of tourists and design event experiences in a more sophisticated way.

This work integrates a series of varied events to suggest a holistic view of event tourist experience value, which provides a theoretical basis for other scholars to compare and monitor findings in this field.

To modernize budgeting system is a challenge issue in many developing countries. To some scholars (Schick, 1998a, 1998b; Ma, 2009a), developing countries must first put into place basic budgetary controls before moving to more advanced models of budgeting. This approach of “basic first,” however, is questioned by others (e.g., Andrew, 2006). Drawing on China's recent budget reforms, this essay reconfirms the validity of the “basics first” approach. In China, budget reform since 1999 has begun to install budgetary controls for state finance, leading to an enhancement of budgeting capacity and financial accountability. However, governments at the same time have begun to be plagued by the unexpected problem of delays in spending and the accumulation of significant underexpenditures. Contrary to what many people may believe, we contend that this somewhat odd problem arises not because the new budgeting system has exercised too much control but rather because the new system is not yet effective in exerting budgetary controls.

This study adopts the perspective of dynamic capabilities to investigate influencing factors and proposes improvement strategies of supply chain resilience of prefabricated construction.

The structural equation model (SEM) is used to identify and verify the relationship between factors influencing supply chain resilience of prefabricated construction from the perspective of dynamic capabilities. The system dynamics (SD) model is constructed to dynamically simulate the specific effects of different influencing factors.

Results indicate that: (1) An evaluation index system for supply chain resilience of prefabricated construction containing five first-level indicators and 36 second-level indicators is constructed; (2) Ability to anticipate, ability to respond, ability to adapt, ability to recover and ability to learn are positively correlated with the supply chain resilience of prefabricated construction and (3) ANT3 (information system), RES1 (quick response), ADA3 (buffer stock) and LEA4 (trust) are the most leading factors influencing supply chain resilience of prefabricated construction over time.

This study fulfills the need for an in-depth exploration of the various influencing factors on supply chain resilience of prefabricated construction from the perspective of dynamic capabilities. Furthermore, this study provides improvement strategies to enhance supply chain resilience of prefabricated construction in China.

The hands of intelligent robots perceive external stimuli and respond effectively according to tactile or pressure sensors. However, the traditional tactile and pressure sensors cannot perform human-skin-like intelligent properties of high sensitivity, large measurement range, multi-function and flexibility simultaneously. The purpose of this paper is to present a flexible tactile-pressure sensor based on hyper-elastics polydimethylsiloxane and plate capacitance.

With regard to this problem, this paper presents a flexible tactile-pressure sensor based on hyper-elastics PDMS and plate capacitance. The sensor has a size of 10 mm × 10 mm × 1.3 mm and is composed of four upper electrodes, one middle driving electrode and one lower electrode. The authors first analyzed the structure and the tactile-pressure sensing principle of human skin to obtain the design parameters of the sensor. Then they presented the working principle, material selection and mechanical structure design and fabrication process of the sensor. The authors also fabricated several sample devices of the sensor and carried out experiments to establish the relationship between the sensor output and the pressure.

The results show that the tactile part of the sensor can measure a range of 0.05-1N/mm² micro pressure with a sensitivity of 2.93 per cent/N and a linearity of 0.03 per cent. The pressure part of the sensor can measure a range of 1-30N/mm² pressure with a sensitivity of 0.08 per cent/N and a linearity of 0.07 per cent.

This paper analyzes the tactile and pressure sensing principles of human skin and develop an intelligent sensitive human-skin-like tactile-pressure sensor for intelligent robot perception systems. The sensor can achieve to imitate the tactile and pressure function simultaneously with a measurement resolution of 0.01 N and a spatial resolution of 2 mm.

Due to the harsh underground environment in coal mining, the surface of hydraulic support columns corrodes severely, resulting in significant economic losses. Therefore, a highly corrosion-resistant coatings is needed to extend the service life of the columns.

This study aims to compare the corrosion resistance of ST-Cr₃C₂-NiCr (sealed treatment Cr₃C₂-NiCr) coatings with industrially applied chromium plating. The corrosion failure mechanism of the coatings was investigated.

The results demonstrated that the ST-Cr₃C₂-NiCr coatings exhibited excellent corrosion resistance. After sealing treatment, the corrosion potential of Cr₃C₂-NiCr coatings was −0.215 V, and the corrosion current density of Cr₃C₂-NiCr coatings was lower than that of the plated parts.

ST-Cr₃C₂-NiCr coatings prepared by supersonic atmospheric plasma spraying could provide excellent corrosion resistance in the coal industry.

The low porosity and the presence of the NiCr phase were crucial factors contributing to the preferable corrosion resistance exhibited by the ST-Cr₃C₂-NiCr coatings. The corrosive process of the coatings involved layer-by-layer delamination of surface oxide film, sub-surface pitting, formation and degradation of sub-surface passive film, as well as severe block-like delamination.

Some papers have investigated the complex factors impacting building information modeling (BIM) application in prefabricated buildings (PBs), but few paid attention to their interaction relationships. Ignoring the fact that different factors are not isolated may lead to some key factors being overlooked without appropriate improvement strategies being proposed. This paper aims to analyze those factors and their inter-relationships, with the view to identify the critical factors and their interaction relationships so as to derive constructive strategies that would effectively facilitate BIM adoption in Chinese prefabrication.

First, factors influencing BIM application in prefabrication are extracted and collated by literature review, expert interview and analysis of PBs characteristics. Thereafter, an evaluation laboratory (decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory) and interpretive structural modeling are used to explore the relationships and hierarchy among the factors. Based on the degree of cause and centrality, critical factors are extracted and the interaction relationship are investigated.

The results show that BIM policies and standards for PBs are the main causal factors. The maturity of BIM software and BIM data interface for PBs, willingness to share data, the strategic goals of the enterprise, BIM law and BIM input and benefit are the main transitional factors while BIM staff and workflow, enterprise attitude, distribution of BIM liability and cooperation of participants are the main direct factors.

Based on the above findings, corresponding improvement strategies are proposed so as to promote BIM application in prefabrication and the rapid development of China’s PBs efficiently.

This paper aims to test the effects of social presence (SP) and other related factors, including trust, self-construal and brand familiarity, in affecting consumers’ purchase intention of live-streaming workout courses.

Three between-subjects, Web-based experimental studies were conducted. There were separately 108, 208 and 284 valid questionnaires collected in the three studies. Moderation and mediation analyses were performed to test the research hypotheses.

Users’ sense of SP when watching live-streaming courses positively affects their willingness to purchase courses, and users’ sense of trust plays a mediating role in the influence of users’ SP on their purchase intention. In addition, when users belong to dependent self-construal rather than independent self-construal, their trust in live-streaming courses plays a stronger mediating role in the influence of users’ SP on their purchase intentions. What is more, when users have high brand familiarity rather than low brand familiarity, their trust in online live-streaming plays a stronger mediating role in the influence of users’ SP on their purchase intentions.

This research delineates the effects of SP on the consumption of live-streaming courses, thus further adding to the understanding of the role of real-time interaction in determining consumer behavior. It also highlights the roles of self-construal and brand familiarity as mediating influences on the relationship between SP and consumer trust.