Competitiveness of Inexperienced and Experienced Contractors in Bidding

This paper tests the assertion that experienced contractors are more competitive than inexperienced contractors by measuring the effect of experience on bidding competitiveness for building contracts procured by a regular client. Contractors are grouped into experienced and inexperienced contractors, and two levels of contractors’ experience are identified: (1) bidding experience only and (2) bidding plus construction experience. Results of two-sample t tests show that experienced contractors are more competitive than inexperienced contractors. Contractors’ competitiveness in respect of school contracts and other contracts are further compared in evaluating the relationship between the project type and experience effect. Experienced contractors are, on average, more competitive in competing for school contracts. It emerges that the factor of project type familiarity amplifies the experience effect. A comparison of experienced contractors’ competitiveness in bidding for (1) new building works and (2) alteration and extension works shows that the effect of experience would be more significant when contract works packages are highly standardized.     

Category Norms as a Function of Culture and Age: Comparisons of Item Responses to 105 Categories by American and Chinese Adults.

Understanding how aging influences cognition across different cultures has been hindered by a lack of standardized, cross-referenced verbal stimuli. This study introduces a database of such item-level stimuli for both younger and older adults, in China and the United States, and makes 3 distinct contributions. First, the authors specify which item categories generalize across age and/or cultural groups, rigorously quantifying differences among them. Second, they introduce novel, powerful methods to measure between-group differences in freely generated ranked data, the rank-ordered logit model and Hellinger Affinity. Finally, a broad archive of tested, cross-linguistic stimuli is now freely available to researchers: data, similarity measures, and all stimulus materials for 105 categories and 4 culture-by-age groups, comprising over 10,000 fully translated unique item responses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Defining Phonological Awareness and Its Relationship to Reading Skills in Low-Literacy Adults.

The main purpose of the study reported here was to investigate the relative importance of complexity of syllable structure and task differences in measuring phonological awareness in low-literacy adults. This study is a replication of a study with children conducted by S. A. Stahl and B. A. Murray (1994). Results indicated that the complexity of syllable structure did indeed better describe the construct of phonological awareness in low-literacy adults. At the same time, the authors also found some differences in the pattern of literacy acquisition for their Spanish adults in comparison with child literacy acquisition in English. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

模块化软件开发的标准化内涵和优势分析

简述了模块化理论的基本观点，着重从消费者和生产者两个角度分析了实施软件模块化开发的优势，指出了模块化开发的标准化内涵，揭示了软件开发方法上的模块化趋势。     

我国制造业企业信息化现状分析

制造企业实现信息化可以提高企业的核心竞争力和经济效益。但就目前而言，我国制造业企业信息化工作的整体水平还处于较低的层次，实践中仍存在一些问题，制约了企业信息化的进程。对我国制造业企业信息化的现状进行了分析，详细剖析了制造业企业在实施企业信息化工作中出现的一些典型误区，并提出企业领导人必须不断提高信息化意识，统筹安排企业信息化工作，从各个方面入手，有层次地逐步实施信息化，才能顺利地实现企业信息化的目标。     

Carbon mineralization from composts and food industry wastes added to soil

We have studied the short term C mineralization of six wastes from important food industries, one sludge from a biogas plant and three composts. All the wastes were characterized chemically and fractionated according to the Van Soest method. The fresh wastes were incubated under controlled environment conditions to determine the C mineralization rate. Based on first order mineralization kinetics, we calculated the hypothetical amount of stable C in the wastes as the amount of C that would not be mineralized within one year under field conditions. The percentage of stable organic C in the organic matter was in general much larger in the composts than in the other wastes, but when expressed on dry matter, the non-composted wastes had comparable or larger amounts of stable organic C than the composts and have a considerable potential for supplying organic matter to soils, and hence for C sequestration. The amount of stable organic C could best be predicted by the total N content of the wastes (R _a ² = 0.855), whereas the results of the fractionation had very little predictive power, probably due to problems related to the high ash content of some of the wastes. An index that combined stable organic C and N and P content in the wastes was calculated to assess possible limitations for applying these wastes in agriculture. Under current nutrient legislation in Western Europe, a number of these wastes will only be usable in small amounts, but these and other food industry wastes could still prove to be valuable soil amendments in nutrient poor situations, for increasing soil organic C content and supplying nutrients.     

Renewable energy in competitive electricity markets

A restructured electricity system may undervalue renewable energy. We remain wary of unregulated markets, but urge the renewable energy community to begin considering how they could adapt to increasing customer choice.     

努力攀登科技高峰 为把石化工业建成支柱产业多做贡献

概述中国石化总公司成立以来所取得的重大科技成果。     

试论入世对中国氧化铝工业的影响

随着中国加入WTO，给企业带来了发展的机会，也带来了挑战。本文通过对中国氧化铝工业的现状及其与世界水平的差距的分析，阐明了入世后随着关税等贸易壁垒的消除，国内、国际市场的竞争更加激烈。明确指出了我国氧化铝工业面临的多重挑战，以及给中国氧化铝工业带来的机遇。强调充分利用WTO给企业创设的权利，借入世东风，促进我国氧化铝工业快速发展，只有发展，中国氧化铝工业才有出路。     

化工企业环境因素的评价

化工企业环境因素评价是建立环境管理体系的核心任务，化工企业生产过程的特点决定了其环境因素数量多、环境影响大、识别评价难、控制难度大。本文介绍了化工企业环境因素评价的技术方法和过程，可以为提高环境因素评价的科学性、客观性和充分性提供参考。