Purpose Building on organizational support theory and social exchange theory, the purpose of this paper is to study the impact of organizational support on employee performance (EP) in the context of flexible manufacturing. In particular, the authors aimed to investigate the mediating role of employee attitude between organizational support and EP, and the moderating role of organizational justice (OJ). Design/methodology/approach A total of 180 participants from 36 work teams employed in 7 large automotive manufacturing enterprises in China were surveyed using a questionnaire designed by the authors. Multiple linear regressions were used to test the proposed hypotheses. Findings The results revealed four new performance indicators of frontline workers in the context of flexible manufacturing: continuous learning, teamwork, problem solving and active work. Organizational support can be divided into reinforcing support and inhibitive support. Reinforcing organizational support has a positive effect on new performance of frontline workers, and a sense of belonging plays a strong mediating role between them. Inhibitive organizational support plays an important role in the sense of awe (SA) of employees, but the SA has no influence on new performance of frontline workers. OJ plays a strong moderating role between organizational support and employee attitudes. Originality/value This study is one of the first attempts to explore the performance of frontline workers in the context of flexible manufacturing and contributes to the existing literature on the relationship between organizational support and EP.

Significance and Impact of the Study: Pullulanases have a great potential in industrial applications including the starch industry, the production of maltose syrups and high-purity glucose and fructose. In this study, a pullulanase from hyperthermophilic archaeon Thermococcus kodakarensis KOD1 was successfully expressed in Escherichia coli and the recombinant enzyme can be purified and characterized. The high activity, broad pH range and stability implicate it as a potential enzyme for industrial applications. AbstractIn this report, a glycoside hydrolase 13 family pullulanase gene (Tk0977) was cloned from a thermophilic anaerobic archaeon Thermococcus kodakarensis KOD1 (Pul-Tk). Pul-Tk encodes a protein of 765 amino acids including a putative 22-residue signal peptide. The protein has four consensus motives and a catalytic triad of glycoside hydrolase 13 family in the deduced amino acid sequence. The recombinant enzyme was expressed in Escherichia coli and purified to homogeneity. Pul-Tk can hydrolyse both pullulan and soluble starch. The purified enzyme was optimal at pH 5Á5-6Á0 and 100°C and exhibited good stability over a broad pH range (4-8). The V max and K m values were 118Á39 AE 1Á76 lmol mg À1 min À1 and 0Á37 AE 0Á02 mg ml À1 for pullulan and 53Á19 AE 11Á66 lmol mg À1 min À1 and 0Á36 AE 0Á05 mg ml À1 for starch.All these favourable enzymatic properties make it valuable in various industries.

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Cold acclimation is an important process to increase freezing tolerance for over-winter survival in many organisms. The apoplastic area is very important in cold acclimation. Two-dimensional electrophoresis was used to identify apoplastic proteins involved in the cold acclimation process of the filamentous fungus Magnaporthe oryzae, and nine protein spots showed at least 1.5-fold increase during cold treatment. These proteins were further analyzed by matrix-assisted laser-desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry. One of these proteins was identified to be an adenosine kinase (MoAK), an ortholog of the adenosine kinase from Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The MoAK gene showed significantly increased in transcription level. Microscopic analyses showed that an MoAK::GFP fusion protein was localized in the apoplastic region. The MoAk protein showed anti-freezing activity when expressed in yeast. These results indicated that cold acclimation is crucial for fungal freezing tolerance and MoAK played an important role in this process in M. oryzae.

LLNs are gradually attracting people’s attention for the feature of low energy consumption. RPL is specifically designed for LLNs to construct a high energy efficiency network topology. In the noisy environment, the packet loss rate of RPL-based WSN increases during data transmission. The DODAG constructed by RPL-based WSN increases in depth when communication is affected by noise. In this situation the data transmission in the network will consume more energy. In event detection WSNs, the appropriate network topology enables root to use less sensor data to fuse enough information to determine whether or not an event has occurred. In this paper, we will improve RPL in two ways to optimize topology and reduce energy consumption.(1)The neighbor list and the information of DIO sender’s parent of a node are used to construct a better DODAG in the noisy environment.(2)SPRT and the quality of information of the data are used in the event detecting process for saving energy consumption. Simulation results show that, compared with the original RPL, QoI-aware RPL can reduce the energy consumption by collecting the same quality of information with less data transmission.