Plastic film mulching is widely employed to improve crop yields. Mulching for the entire crop growth period is a widespread practice. However, a shorter plastic film mulching duration is suggested for obtaining larger grain yield recently. To quantify the effects of plastic film mulching...

A simple and hydrazine-free solution-based approach for depositing Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS) and Cu2ZnSn(S,Se)4 (CZTSSe) absorber layers is reported. The process involves incorporating metal salts (Cu(CH3COO)2, Zn(CH3COO)2, SnCl2) and thiourea into a single pyridine-based solution, spin-coating a...

Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) are employed in a wide range of behavioral, biomedical, psychosocial, and health care related research for assessing reliability of continuous outcomes. The linear mixed-effects model (LMM) is the most popular approach for inference about the ICC....

Outliers are commonly observed in psychosocial research, generally resulting in biased estimates when comparing group differences using popular mean-based models such as the analysis of variance model. Rank-based methods such as the popular Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon (MWW) rank sum test are more...

Most manufacturing systems are large and complex and operate in an uncertain environment. One approach to managing such systems is that of hierarchical decomposition. This paper reviews the research devoted to proving that a hierarchy based on the frequencies of occurrence of different types of...

The generalized estimating equations (GEEs) and generalized linear mixed-effects model (GLMM) are the two most popular paradigms to extend models for cross-sectional data to a longitudinal setting. Although the two approaches yield well-interpreted models for continuous outcomes, it is quite a...

Network user equilibrium or user optimum is an ideal state that can hardly be achieved in real traffic. More often than not, every day traffic tends to be in disequilibrium rather than equilibrium, thanks to uncertainties in demand and supply of the network. In this paper we propose a hybrid...

This paper analyses the conditions for sino-Australian joint ventures, assesses those likely to be most suitable and retionalises the characteristics of existing joint ventures in the Peoples's Republic of China. Due to differing social systems and cultures between the West and the PRC Western...