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• Index of recycling sustainability for assessing waste paper recycling. • Integrating methodology of GIS and value chain model. • Historical changes of informal recyclables distribution sites in Beijing. • Value chain of waste paper recycling in Beijing may face challenges in the future. • Policy implications to improve waste paper recycling in Beijing. China established a self-organized and market-driven recycling system, which was dominated by the informal sectors. In recent years, the amount of domestically-recycled waste paper grew slower than expectation in China, which may be resulted from a decline in economic sustainability of current recycling system. For understanding the waste paper recycling system in most cities in China, the economic mechanism remains unclear and the city-level data is extremely insufficient. In this work, an index of recycling sustainability (IRS, benefit divided by cost) is analyzed with a resolution of 1 km2 grid in Beijing City, by adopting value chain and GIS methodology. Five degrees of IRS are defined, from high-degree (IRS > 1.10) to low-degree (IRS < 0.95). Different stakeholders in the informal waste paper recycling system were interviewed to fill the data gap. Results show that: (1) from 2015 to 2018, the informal recycling of waste paper accounted for approximate 80% in Beijing; (2) the number of informal recyclables distribution sites decreased from 27 to 11, and their average distance to the city-center rose from 27.5 km to 40.9 km; (3) in 2015 and 2018, the grids with high-degree IRS accounted for 99.5% and 89.2%, respectively, indicating a sustainable waste paper recycling industry in Beijing; and (4) according to the scenario analysis, if the operating cost rises by 30%, the grids with low-degree IRS accounts for 98.5%, indicating a nontrivial challenges when the recycling cost keeps increasing in the future. Policy recommendations are put forward for a more sustainable paper waste recycling system in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper conceptualises digital displacement as both a way through which the digital, dynamic and fragile spatialities of contentious politics can be examined and as a geographic critique of censorship. Digital displacement, understood here as the act of removing users from the digital places and spaces they wish to remain in and use, often through the act of deletion, is conceptualised through the digital displacement of two contentious political groups that attempted to contest the forced eviction of migrants from Beijing in 2017; hashtag focused #BeijingSurgery# and instant messaging group using BeijingTogether. Explored through participant observation, interviews and playful digital exploration, this paper examines the spatialities that made multiple digital displacements possible and the activist spatialities that emerged during and post‐displacement. In exploring this, I develop a flexible vocabulary around digital place, space, scale, territory and mobility to analyse the practices of digital displacement, to understand the socio‐spatial positionality of activists involved in digitally centred contentious politics and to contextualise their territorial positionality within Chinese digital territory and global digital territories. Through the examination of #BeijingSurgery# and BeijingTogether, the article highlights: the importance of digital territorial positionality for both activists and the digital places and spaces used for contentious politics; that within systems of digital spatial governance, deletion and displacement can be effective strategies of repressive governance with wide‐ranging displacement effects; and that while digital displacement is not necessarily the ending point of contentious politics, the re‐production of activist spatialities is more difficult when the authority being protested against governs the digital territory used for protest. This paper conceptualises digital displacement as: a way through which the digital, dynamic and fragile spatialities of contentious politics can be examined; a way to understand China's digital territorialization project; and as a geographic critique of censorship. Digital displacement is conceptualised through the ethnographic research conducted in Beijing and examines efforts to contest the forced eviction of migrants from Beijing in 2017. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to retrieve and study the highly cited papers as well as the correlation between the citation frequency and the download frequency of the 20 traditional Chinese medicine journals in China, in order to provide the guidance for improving the influence and academic quality of these journals. Bibliometric analyses were conducted on 1103 papers of 20 traditional Chinese medicine journals from 2011 to 2020 by retrieving for the China Academic Journal Network Publishing Database (CAJD) in China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI). SPSS 17.0 software was used to analyze the correlation between the citation frequency and the download frequency via conducting regression fitting and establishing the mathematical models. The results showed that the total citations of the 1103 papers were 93051 times and the average citations were 84.36 times per paper. The total downloads of the 1103 papers were 2058442 times, and the average downloads were 1866.22 times per paper. China Journal of Chinese Materia Medica ranked first according to the number of papers, total citations and total downloads. The citations of Journal of Chinese Medicinal Materials ranked first based on the number of citations per paper. One of Li's paper had been cited the most (983 times). There were 629 (57.03%) papers whose first author was from universities. The scopes of the first authors were distributed in 29 regions and 2 special administrative regions (Macao, Hong Kong) in China. The authors from Beijing published 283 (25.66%) papers, ranking number one. The number of papers supported by funds was 882 (79.96%). The research results of correlation showed that the citation frequency and the download frequency of the highly cited papers had a highly positive correlation from both journal and paper level for whether the sample data of journals was normally distributed or nonnormally distributed. The correlation coefficients of the 20 journals at journal level and that at paper level were 0.9765 and 0.6677, respectively. The correlation was better at journal level than that at paper level, while the optimal regression fitting was all cubic polynomial. Among the 1103 papers, there were 684 (62.01%) research papers and 419 (37.99%) review papers. The main citation period of the top 15 papers was from the 2nd year to the 6th year after publication, accounting for 78.39%. Papers on clinical therapeutics research, papers on the pharmacological effects and its mechanism of traditional Chinese medicine, and papers on traditional Chinese medicine and natural medicine were the main source of the highly cited papers of the traditional Chinese medicine journals. Editors of the journals should focus on the above-mentioned research areas to select manuscripts for exploiting the excellent sources extensively, while paying attention to review papers, focusing on national major or key projects, paying attention to network spreading, stabilizing authors with quality services, in order to improve the influence and the academic quality of journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has played a pivotal role in advancing our understanding of cloisonné enamel production in China during the 19th and 20th centuries. However, Christian workshops, whether operating under missionary subcontracting or owned by the Catholic Church, have yet to be accurately identified and contextualized. This article delves into three significant contexts. Firstly, it identifies and contextualizes the Christian connections and interactions of the Decheng private cloisonné workshop, involving the French Lazarist Bishop Alphonse Favier, in Beijing. Secondly, it identifies the cloisonné workshop stablished by the Lazarists in the Beitang complex in Beijing and elucidates the role it played. Finally, this paper presents new evidence concerning cloisonné Christian objects crafted by the Tushanwan Jesuit workshop in Shanghai. Some of the primary works of these three workshops are identified for the first time. Additionally, this paper shows that certain cloisonné crosses, some of them thought to be originally Japanese, including those referred to as Namban, were, in fact, crafted in Beijing during the 1920s. These preliminary results will contribute to placing Chinese Christian cloisonné within the history of Chinese Art and its interactions at a global level in the context of evangelization in China, the production of the so-called export art, and the processes of indigenization carried out by the Lazarists and the Jesuits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With large volume of passengers boarding and alighting through subway platforms, the stations are getting crowded, resulting in drops in the level of service and safety concerns, especially for subway systems operating at capacity during peak hours. Thus, it is crucial for subway agencies to sense changes in travel demand and adjust their management schemes accordingly. In this paper we propose a statistical approach to estimate dynamic passenger flows with automated data. First, we develop a dynamic logistic model for calculating passenger tap-out times, which can be employed to infer passenger flow characteristics at the aggregate level. In addition, a new passenger-to-train assignment model for any subway route is derived based on the dynamic model. Subsequently, we apply an expectation-maximization algorithm to estimate the model parameters with automated fare collection and automated vehicle location data. Finally, a cross-validation method is employed to validate our approach with data obtained from several routes in Beijing subway system in China. Results of 95% prediction intervals indicate the effectiveness of the models and the proposed estimation methods. • Propose a dynamic logistic model for inferring and predicting subway passenger tap-out times. • Apply an expectation-maximization algorithm for model parameters estimation. • Develop a novel passenger-to-train assignment strategy. • No prior distributions of parameters or additional information required in the proposed methods. • Results show good effectiveness of the models and acceptable accuracy of the prediction methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, under the influence of multiple factors such as traditional ideas and living economic conditions, the aging population in China continues to increase. Most of the elderly are more inclined to aged at home, and the first places for elderly activities are communities and the surrounding environment, which greatly affects the convenience of life and happiness of the elderly. In this paper, Changxindian area in Fengtai District of Beijing was as the research object, and detailed calculation and analysis were carried out by using POI data and arcGIS software. The relative location of residential areas and surrounding public toilets was explored, and the best location of public toilets in the daily walking area under the model of community home-based care for the elderly was further studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's policies about reducing carbon emissions mainly focus on saving energy and reducing pollutant emissions. However, the carbon emissions of the logistics industry remain high. Thus, logistics companies should not only reduce distribution costs, but also consider the impact of carbon emissions when planning distribution routes. This paper studies the supermarket delivery distribution route planning problem considering carbon emissions. Aiming at the lowest economic operating cost composed of fixed cost, driving cost, and carbon emission cost, we propose a grey wolf optimized genetic algorithm to generate delivery route plans, where the social rank and hunting behavior of the grey wolf optimization algorithm are integrated into the selection operation of the genetic algorithm. Finally, a real case of a large third-party logistics enterprise in Beijing is studied. The case study results verify the effectiveness and applicability of the model and algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban rail transit emergencies in China's large cities are frequent occurrences but currently, operation managers lack effective analysis tools that can help in reducing them. In this study we present a knowledge graph tool, developed using historical emergency text information from Beijing's urban rail transit fault logs from which an information model is developed enabling key information to be mined and subsequently analyzed so that interrelationships within the text can be determined. The knowledge graph tool assists urban rail transit operation managers to analyze more effectively, through knowledge query and semantic search, the relations and attributes of emergencies enabling more insight into their root causes. Compared with traditional first and second order text parsing algorithms, the extended high order parsing algorithm proposed in this paper has better performance in the extraction of both phrases and inter-phrase relations, with an extraction accuracy of more than 85%. Furthermore, compared with traditional failure mode effect analysis methods, the extended method proposed in this paper can also calculate phrase attributes and therefore provide a reference for quantitative risk calculations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, China's advanced light sources have entered a period of rapid construction and development. As modern X-ray detectors and data acquisition technologies advance, these facilities are expected to generate massive volumes of data annually, presenting significant challenges in data management and utilization. These challenges encompass data storage, metadata handling, data transfer and user data access. In response, the Data Organization Management Access Software (DOMAS) has been designed as a framework to address these issues. DOMAS encapsulates four fundamental modules of data management software, including metadata catalogue, metadata acquisition, data transfer and data service. For light source facilities, building a data management system only requires parameter configuration and minimal code development within DOMAS. This paper firstly discusses the development of advanced light sources in China and the associated demands and challenges in data management, prompting a reconsideration of data management software framework design. It then outlines the architecture of the framework, detailing its components and functions. Lastly, it highlights the application progress and effectiveness of DOMAS when deployed for the High Energy Photon Source (HEPS) and Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Facility (BSRF). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[ Objective] The paper uses Geographic Information System (ArcGIS) as a platform to discuss the study of DEM data on the digital construction of rural landscape databases and the coupling relationship in geographic space of rural landscape. The aim is to further expand the coverage of China's land space digitization and provide practical theoretical basis and development possibility of quantitative planning for village level administrative zoning research. [Method] In this paper, Xiangyu Village, Junzhuang Town, Mentougou, West Beijing, is selected as the research object, and the document space database of the study area is constructed by building digital elevation model (DEM), ArcGIS stacked map weighting and visual interpretation methods. Moreover, its elevation equivalence, slope direction, and water flow direction are visually analyzed. [Result] The mountainous terrain and hydrological characteristics of Xiangyu Village are roughly consistent with the village layout; the living environment of Xiangyu Village is consistent with the terrain and texture, and it belongs to the rural landscape system of mountains, valleys and small watersheds. [ Conclusion] The results obtained through data visualization analysis are basically consistent with the traditional village planning pattern of Xiangyu Village; the rural landscape based on village level administrative divisions is still in the traditional planning stage, and there is great development space for village level geographic spatial survey. Therefore, it is necessary for relevant practitioners to make more contributions to fill the full coverage of China's land space digitization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how returnees' repatriation speed and irregularity affect FDI knowledge spillovers. Using a unique dataset of high-tech Chinese firms located in Zhongguancun Science Park in Beijing from 2007 to 2013, we find that returnees are vital in improving local firms' absorptive capacity and disseminating FDI externalities. Our empirical results show that returnees' high repatriation speed positively contributes to the local absorption of FDI knowledge spillovers, whereas repatriation irregularity dampens it. This research highlights the time-based attributes of returnees' repatriation as a new factor of absorptive capacity when learning from FDI knowledge. It thus provides a more integrated viewpoint on the relationship between returnees and FDI spillovers. Our findings have important implications for policymakers and practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The planning controlling post-colonial heritage discourse has long been influenced by changing political and economic narratives. This paper documents diversified uses and narratives of colonial heritage in twelve plans of the Beijing Legation Quarter, China to investigate the influence of multiple identities in Beijing's development. By analysing the particular spatio-temporal dynamics in eleven former legation compounds, it presents three planning strategies used in colonial heritage site regeneration (diminishment, transformation, and enforcement) and argues that the ambivalent or paradoxical discourses of colonial heritage in the Beijing Legation Quarter result from Beijing's multiple cultural identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: The emergency rescue ability of firefighters is particularly important in the event of major disasters or accidents. Therefore, an assessment of the firefighter-training effectiveness is necessary. OBJECTIVE: This paper aims to achieve a scientific and effective assessment of the firefighter-training effectiveness in China. An assessment method based on human factor parameters and machine learning was proposed. METHOD: The model is constructed by collecting the corresponding human factor parameters such as electrocardiographic signals, electroencephalographic signals, surface electromyographic signals, and photoplethysmographic signals through wireless sensors and using them as constraint indicators. For the problems of weak human factor parameters and high noise proportion, an improved flexible analytic wavelet transform algorithm is used to denoise and extract the corresponding feature values. To overcome the limitations of traditional assessment methods, improved machine learning algorithms are used to comprehensively assess the training effectiveness of firefighters and provide targeted training suggestions. RESULTS: The effectiveness of this study's evaluation method is verified by comparing it with the expert scoring method and considering firefighters from a special fire station in Xhongmen, Daxing District, Beijing, as an example. CONCLUSION: This study can effectively guide the scientific training of firefighters and the method is more objective and accurate than the traditional method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 5–10 years, a growing number of Chinese scholars and policy experts have sought to theorise the 'development' of other peoples and places in the Global South. These intellectual efforts include building temporal frameworks for describing development processes, and often, an implicit set of directives for effecting positive change. Drawing on eight months' fieldwork in Beijing, this paper examines the representational practices of depicting development and its temporal dimension that have been mobilised in the ongoing production of Chinese international development thinking. In particular, it is concerned with the ways in which temporal distance and proximity have been constructed to provide a theoretical and moral justification for China's intensifying geopolitical and economic preoccupations. We argue that more than a system of explanations, current Chinese thinking contains and expresses a recalibrated will to geopolitical power, which has had a conditioning effect on the enframing of the meanings and relations of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently the Chinese government has been actively collaborating with nonprofit nongovernmental organizations to provide social welfare services to older adults at the community level. The role played by NGOs in facilitating governance has only recently gained attention in the literature on Chinese NGOs and urban governance. Addressing this gap, the paper advances geographers' understanding of State–NGO collaborations in facilitating urban governance in the Chinese context using fieldwork in Beijing and Shanghai on the provision of community eldercare services as an example. It also explains the political control of these NGOs and their changing role in the eldercare market. We argue that collaborations between the state and NGOs in China have gradually transferred eldercare services to the NGOs, and led to a fragmented welfare system, which, as a consequence, has facilitated entrepreneurial urban governance. The paper sheds light on community-based organizations, their collaboration with local governments, and how they have become not only welfare providers but a significant site for social control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, a frequent claim among speakers of local Chinese languages (called fangyan in Chinese) is that their native languages preserve the language of antiquity better than the Beijing-based national language, Mandarin. This paper explores the origin of these claims and probes their significance in the making of the Han ethnoracial collective identity. I argue that claims of linguistic proximity to the imagined ancient origins of Chinese civilization represent a form of "hegemonic Han-ness"—an idealized form of the Han collective identity that was both internally hegemonic, in that it was meant to supersede other expressions of Han-ness, and externally hegemonic, in that it was meant to uphold the superiority of the Han people over other ethnoracial groups. From Zhang Taiyan, whose work provided a model for drawing linguistic connections between contemporary local languages and the language spoken at the dawn of Chinese civilization, to local gazetteer authors, who used linguistic data to prove their mother tongues directly had preserved the language of antiquity without being adulterated by the languages of non-Han peoples, this paper explores how various groups drew upon the cultural power of an idealized Han-centered past to challenge the authority afforded to the national language by the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Day by day pollution in cities is increasing due to urbanization. One of the biggest challenges posed by the rapid migration of inhabitants into cities is increased air pollution. Sustainable Development Goal 11 indicates that 99 percent of the world's urban population breathes polluted air. In such a trend of urbanization, predicting the concentrations of pollutants in advance is very important. Predictions of pollutants would help city administrations to take timely measures for ensuring Sustainable Development Goal 11. In data engineering, imputation and the removal of outliers are very important steps prior to forecasting the concentration of air pollutants. For pollution and meteorological data, missing values and outliers are critical problems that need to be addressed. This paper proposes a novel method called multiple iterative imputation using autoencoder-based long short-term memory (MIA-LSTM) which uses iterative imputation using an extra tree regressor as an estimator for the missing values in multivariate data followed by an LSTM autoencoder for the detection and removal of outliers present in the dataset. The preprocessed data were given to a multivariate LSTM for forecasting PM2.5 concentration. This paper also presents the effect of removing outliers and missing values from the dataset as well as the effect of imputing missing values in the process of forecasting the concentrations of air pollutants. The proposed method provides better results for forecasting with a root mean square error (RMSE) value of 9.8883. The obtained results were compared with the traditional gated recurrent unit (GRU), 1D convolutional neural network (CNN), and long short-term memory (LSTM) approaches for a dataset of the Aotizhonhxin area of Beijing in China. Similar results were observed for another two locations in China and one location in India. The results obtained show that imputation and outlier/anomaly removal improve the accuracy of air pollution forecasting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integration or segmentation of regional carbon prices implies that barriers may hinder prices from adjusting efficiently and impede linkages between regional carbon markets. Past studies have found that crossregional carbon prices in China tend to diverge, indicating unbalanced regional markets and that carbon cap-and-trade policies may be insufficiently effective. China's carbon trading pilots opened in 2013. Is the integration efficient? This is the research question addressed in this study. This paper uses the carbon prices of four carbon-trading pilot regions in China (i.e. Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Guangdong) over the period of January 1, 2014, to March 23, 2021, to explore whether prices are correlated across three dimensions: long-term convergence, short-term correlation, and volatility transmission by adopting a vector error correction model with heterogeneous variances. And by using longer-term daily data and empirical tests that can account for the multiple-faceted correlations, this paper provides evidence showing that long-term convergence and risk transfer between the four regional carbon prices exist, which indicates significant regional integration. The results indicate that the price behavior of the Beijing pilot is efficient and that the Shanghai pilot has the lowest volatility. The paper also documents an information transfer pattern. For example, the Beijing pilot is shown to be the leading risk transfer market, whereas the Shanghai pilot is shown to be the market where most risk is transferred. Contrary to findings elsewhere, our main results demonstrate that China's carbon markets exhibit integration efficiency and no imbalance between regions. This may be because the efficiency of China's carbon markets has improved over time. The evidence also implies that if a multi-dimensional correlation has not been considered, it may underestimate the efficiency of regional carbon prices' integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the concentrations of PM2.5 in urban ambient air in China have been declining; however, the strong atmospheric oxidation capacity (AOC) represents challenges to the further reduction of PM2.5 concentration and the continuous improvement of ambient air quality in China in the future, since the overall AOC is still at a high level. For this paper, based on ground observation data recorded in Beijing from 2016 to 2019, the variation in AOC was characterized according to the concentration of odd oxygen (OX = O3 + NO2). The concentrations of the primary and secondary components of PM2.5 were analyzed using empirical formulas, the correlation between AOC and the concentrations of secondary PM2.5 and the secondary inorganic components (SO42−, NO3−, NH4+, and SNA) in Beijing were explored, the impact of atmospheric photochemical reaction activity on the generation of atmospheric secondary particles was evaluated, and the impact of atmospheric oxidation variations on PM2.5 concentrations and SNA in Beijing was investigated. The results revealed that OX concentrations reached their peak in 2016 and reached their lowest point in 2019. The OX concentrations followed a descending seasonal trend of summer, spring, autumn, and winter, along with a spatial descending trend from urban observation stations to suburban stations and background stations. The degree of photochemical activity and the magnitude of the AOC have a large influence on the production of atmospheric secondary particles. When the photochemical reaction was more active and the AOC was stronger, the mass concentrations of the secondary generated PM2.5 fraction were higher and accounted for a higher proportion of the total PM2.5 mass concentrations. In the PM2.5 fraction, SNA accounted for 50.7% to 94.4% of the total mass concentrations of water-soluble inorganic ions in the field observations. Higher concentrations of the atmospheric oxidant OX in ambient air corresponded to a higher sulfur oxidation ratio (SOR) and nitrogen oxidation ratio (NOR), suggesting that the increase in AOC could promote the increase of PM2.5 concentration. Based on a relationship analysis of SOR, NOR, and OX, it was inferred that the relationship between OX and SOR and the relationship between OX and NOR were both nonlinear. Therefore, when establishing PM2.5 control strategies in Beijing in the future, the impact of the AOC on PM2.5 generation should be fully considered, and favorable measures should be taken to properly regulate the AOC, which would be more effective when carrying out further control measures regarding PM2.5 pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban-scale green spaces have been a central topic as of late, but community-scale green spaces are overlooked in urban studies. This paper takes community green spaces in the main urban area of Beijing as the case to quantitatively interpret the spatial-temporal patterns of their service efficiency and distribution characteristics. The measurement section of the paper includes two parts: the first part compares the applicability of two major green space service efficiency measurement methods on the community scale and determines that the Shortest Time Distance method performs better in describing the spatial-temporal patterns of service efficiency. The second part applies the Time Distance Entropy method to initially identify the locational relationship between community green spaces and neighboring residential buildings, then proposes the Green Space Distribution Coefficient method based on this relationship to analyze the 'courtyard', 'mixed', and 'centralized' distribution types alongside the transition relationships between them, and the spatial-temporal patterns of distribution characteristics are measured. The results of service efficiency reveal that the community paradigms transform from 'humanistic-oriented' to 'benefit-oriented' as the Shortest Time Distance measurement values show an ascending trend with the passage of years and the outward expansion of the ring roads. The results of distribution characteristics reveal that the community residential culture transforms from 'closeness' to 'detachment' as Green Space Distribution Coefficient measurement values show a descending trend under the same conditions. Based on the measurements, this paper further provides several optimizing strategies for community green spaces in the central urban area of Beijing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While most academics regard virtual religious communities to be secondary to in-person religious communities, the virtual Buddhist sangha served as a full and complete social infrastructure that provides purpose to life and spiritual consolation to its members. From the outbreak of the Covid-19 from March to May in 2020, this paper investigates how a Chinese Buddhist group based in Beijing practices Theravada meditation on the WeChat social media platforms. This paper, based on online ethnography and informal interviews, argues that digital media is a significant arena for Chinese Buddhists to conduct Buddhist rituals, transmit Buddhist ideas, generate and accumulate Buddhist merits, and build alternative cyber-Buddhist economies. This paper also highlights that Buddhist groups are continuously growing and rising as highly united and community-oriented digital sanghas within current China's technoculture context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ever since China has formally joined the WHO-backed global COVID-19 vaccine initiative known as COVAX, there is a presumed notion that China's vaccine diplomacy will make a significant contribution to the international public good and thus uplift Beijing's role as the rule-maker of international order. To scrutinize this, the paper asks if China succeeded in proliferating its weaponized vaccine policy to obtain maximum diplomatic gains and soft power projection to intensify its international image, geopolitical power, and domestic politico legitimacy. The authors argue that despite its vaccine diplomacy demonstrated the robust governance capacity and responsibility to be a great power. Yet, Beijing's geopolitical influence and international image are significantly overrated and not enough to play a more prominent role in the global power fulcrum/equilibrium. On the contrary, China enjoys a leading position on the domestic political front. Its successful portrayal of China's vaccine provision in the global market and remarkable configuration to leverage a deep-rooted nationalism has fundamentally provided China with a powerful rationale to divert its public's attention from Beijing's earlier inadequate handling of the outbreak. The evaluation of the paper reveals that China's vaccine diplomacy's influence in promoting international image and geopolitics is limited but has successfully stabilized its domestic political environment and enhanced its domestic legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When building new airports various strategies for initiating new air routes prominently affect the overall system performance. From a perspective of disruption management, however, very little is known regarding the impacts of different strategies exerted to the resilience of airline networks in a multi-layer system configuration. In this paper, we established a multi-layer China airline network (CAN) using route data from 46 airlines in mainland China and proposed four optimization strategies for adding new routes based on service-oriented perspectives. The geographical traits of the multi-layer CAN was first explored and, taking the Daxing International Airport (a new-built airport in Beijing, China) as a demonstrative example, we then conducted both qualitative and quantitative analyses to investigate the impact of the proposed strategies and their effectiveness of improving network resilience. It is revealed that those strategies have heterogeneous effects on the network performance in terms of meeting passenger demands and balancing overall connectivity at a national strategic level, and the overall resilience of the CAN could be significantly improved under the selected strategy by 59.8% on average. Based on the findings, several managerial and policy implications are put forward and discussed. This paper sheds new lights on resilience-building strategies for service carriers and airport managers and is also of value to regional governments for offering incentives for expanding connections to new destinations. • A comprehensive multi-layer airline network is constructed. • The network consists of 46 layers of sub-networks from mainland China. • Practical strategies are proposed and tested for improving network resilience. • Optimized strategies improve the overall resilience of the multi-layer network by 59.8% on average. • Implications for managing a growing multi-layer airline network are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has made remarkable achievements in reducing carbon emissions in recent years. However, there is still much reduction room before achieving carbon neutrality. In Beijing, the capital of China, it is a strategic choice to respond to global climate change by promoting green and low-carbon development. This paper calculates the carbon dioxide emissions of key industries in Beijing and analyzes the temporal evolution trend of carbon emissions. Carbon dioxide emissions in Beijing before 2030 are predicted based on the grey prediction GM (1,1) and BP neural network model. The effects of factors of carbon dioxide emissions are discussed using the threshold regression model under different economic conditions. The results show that energy consumption intensity, GDP per capita, and the ownership of civil cars have a positive impact on carbon dioxide emissions, while the number of permanent residents and urban green space areas have a negative impact on carbon dioxide emissions. These findings of carbon emission prediction and influencing factors contribute to carbon reduction path design. Related policy implications on carbon emission reduction are put forward from the aspects of promoting industrial upgrading, accelerating the construction of advanced economic structures, optimizing transportation structures, and strengthening green building development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In December 2019, a Chinese court sentenced Jiankiu He, the scientist who used genome editing to create three babies via in vitro fertilization (IVF), to three years in prison for practicing medicine without a license. The court claimed that He violated Chinese law when he forged ethical review documents and misled doctors into unknowingly implanting genetically altered embryos into two women the previous year. He stated that he had taken a leave from his university prior to starting the clinical stage of his project, and that he financed that part of the study from his own personal savings, therefore seemingly absolving his university and Chinese authorities of any responsibility in the affair. But to many observers, it seems inconceivable that Jiankui He could have engaged in this research without at least tacit government approval. This paper explores the sources of funding for He's experiment, in an attempt to clarify what Chinese authorities knew or should have known – and whether it is conceivable that He could have completed the clinical phase of the project with no direct government knowledge. It then analyzes the roles that China's science policy and scientific culture played in enabling He to act as he did. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The micropolitics involved in urbanising land is yet to be well illustrated in urban and development studies. With the case of Dahongmen in Beijing, this paper explores the governing techniques for dealing with land transformation to uncover the nature and conduct of the state in weaving together land and urban questions. Recognising the power of discourses in enacting actions, this paper focuses on two performative moments of the state in reassembling land for the urban process, corresponding to social (re)ordering and economic mechanisms respectively. Both moments are critical since new ideas, concepts, and calculative rationales are invented to reassemble land into the intermediator of the urban process, whereby the state renews its identity and authority. The state, seen from the perspective of performativity, is more like a process (with structural effects) where certain utterances are made and repeated to incorporate multiple actors in land assemblages for the urban political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the factors influencing the behaviors of government officials during the implementation of open government data (OGD). By identifying and understanding the key factors that determine government officials' adoption of OGD in China, this study can create a valuable reference for other countries and their decision-making regarding government implementation of OGD. Design/methodology/approach: This research collected data by in-depth interviews with government officials in Chinese OGD departments. Through these interviews, the authors consulted 15 administrators from departments that are responsible for the information tasks in Beijing and other cities on their opinions about OGD. The authors also interviewed senior executives from information technology (IT) companies, as well as open data policy scholars from big data alliance and research institutions. Findings: This paper provides insights about how to promote government officials in OGD implementation, including (1) strengthen social supervision for the environment, through developing and publishing OGD technology roadmaps, then attracting the public to actively participate in the implementing of OGD; (2) establish an OGD assessment mechanism for government officials, with bonus motivations, position promotion incentives, as well as spiritual incentives via regional or sector rankings; (3) alleviate the risks of officials' OGD decisions in actual practice, using the institution construction of OGD to guide its direction and strengthen security protection. Originality/value: This paper fulfils an identified need to study how government officials' behavior can be motivated on OGD implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars and analysts have sought to clarify the Chinese Communist Party's motives for carrying out the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a series of infrastructure investments in countries across the globe. While many emphasize Beijing's geopolitical interests, this paper argues that the BRI should also be understood as a large-scale effort to create business activities for Chinese companies and workers outside of China. We define the contours of this "building out" strategy by analyzing the stages that typify BRI projects: project selection, project financing, project construction, and post-construction operation and management. Our analysis draws, in large part, on data that we have compiled from a sample of BRI projects. After showing macro-level trends in the data, we offer three in-depth case studies to clarify the underlying mechanisms at work. Our findings suggest that BRI projects are engineered to direct finance and construction bids to Chinese companies, which are typically state-owned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the implementation of China's clean heating plan in 2017, the progress of natural gas replacing coal for heating is still not ideal. With the proposal of the goal of carbon neutralization and the impact of international war, the price, supply, and demand of natural gas have attracted attention. In case of gas shortage, reasonable schemes are required to be allocated to different industries and categories. Therefore, this research divides the gas field into four levels according to the social utility, and establishes the multi-objective distribution optimization model considering the social and economic benefits. The solution of the model is based on genetic algorithm and realized on MATLAB. Multi-objective optimization strategies and several constraints are used to make the algorithm's process of the search is continuously moving closer to the Pareto optimal front. Taking Beijing as an example, two scenarios are set to simulate and optimize, so as to verify the optimization effect of the model. Better quantitative results are created after reallocation of natural gas. The ideal scenario realizes 5.64% more social benefits than 2019 through additional allocation of 117.288 million cubic meters of reserve gas. The constraint scenario creates 0.67% more social benefits with only 0.07% decrease of the economic benefits. The conclusions show that allocating more gas to three main industries can improve the optimization effect and it is necessary to expand the supply of natural gas reserve volume. This paper provides a new perspective of natural gas allocation category and priority, providing theoretical and practical ideas for the planning of natural gas security emergency plan and the development of gas sales plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between property return and seller behavior and aims to test the disposition effect in China's real estate market. Using transaction data in Beijing, we find that loss properties have a lower sell propensity relative to gain properties, confirming the existence of the disposition effect. We also find that the disposition effect is more pronounced in samples with shorter holding periods. Sellers with financial constraints and popular projects are more likely to show the disposition effect. Furthermore, we find that sellers exhibit loss aversion; specifically, sellers with loss properties are likely to set a higher listing price, which provides indirect evidence for the disposition effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the perspective of value-added trade, this paper divides the virtual water consumption and trade in different provinces of China into five major paths according to the input-output relationship. In 2012 and 2015, most provinces' water resources were implicitly used in the final products to meet the local demand. In addition, the volume of virtual water trade in the complex domestic value chain is greater than that in the traditional domestic trade value chain and the simple domestic trade value chain. In both years, judging from the sum of virtual water trade volumes in the three major value chains, there is virtual water net inflow in Beijing-Tianjin and the northern, eastern and southern coastal areas, and virtual water net outflow in the northeast, central and northwest areas. In the course of this research, the virtual water net outflow turned into net inflow in the southwestern area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the existing research on banking systemic risk focuses on static single-risk exposures, and there is a lack of research on multiple-risk exposures. The reality is that the banking system is facing an increasingly complex environment, and dynamic measures of multiple-risk integration are essential. To reveal the risk accumulation process under the multi-risk exposures of the banking system, this article constructs a dynamic banking system as the research object and combines geometric Brownian motion, the BSM model, and the maximum likelihood estimate method. This article also aims to incorporate three types of exposures (interbank lending market risk exposures, entity industry credit risk exposures, and market risk exposures) within the same framework for the first time and builds a model of the dynamic evolution of banking systemic risk under multiple exposures. This study included the collection of a large amount of real data on banks, entity industries, and market risk factors, and used the Δ C o V a R model to evaluate the systemic risk of the China banking system from the point of view of the accumulation of risk from different exposures, revealing the dynamic process of risk accumulation under the integration of multiple risks within the banking system, as well as the contribution of different exposures to banking systemic risk. The results showed that the banking systemic risk of China first increased and then decreased with time, and the rate of risk accumulation is gradually slowing down. In terms of the impact of different kinds of exposures on system losses, the credit risk exposure of the entity industry had the greatest impact on the banking systemic risk among the three kinds of exposures. In terms of the contribution of the interbank lending market risk to the systemic risk, the Bank of Communications, China Everbright Bank, and Bank of Beijing contributed the most. In terms of the contribution of the bank–entity industry credit risk to the systemic risk, the financial industry, accommodation and catering industry, and manufacturing industry contributed the most. Considering the contribution of market risk to the systemic risk, the Shanghai Composite Index, the Hang Seng Composite Index, and the Dow Jones Index contributed the most. The research in this paper enriches the existing banking systemic risk research perspective and provides a reference for the regulatory decisions of central banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the gradual normalization of the COVID-19, unmanned delivery has gradually become an important contactless distribution method around China. In this paper, we study the routing problem of unmanned vehicles considering path flexibility and the number of traffic lights in the road network to reduce the complexity of road conditions faced by unmanned vehicles as much as possible. We use Monte Carlo Tree Search algorithm to improve the Genetic Algorithm to solve this problem, first use Monte Carlo Tree Search Algorithm to compute the time-saving path between two nodes among multiple feasible paths and then transfer the paths results to Genetic Algorithm to obtain the final sequence of the unmanned vehicles fleet. And the hybrid algorithm was tested on the actual road network data around four hospitals in Beijing. The results showed that compared with normal vehicle routing problem, considering path flexibility can save the delivery time, the more complex the road network composition, the better results could be obtained by the algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urban barrier effect is one possible physical mechanism by which the urbanization alters the spatial distribution of cloud‐to‐ground (CG) lightning activity in a city. There is a gap in the preceding research on an urban barrier effect to alter patterns of CG lightning in Beijing, and the urban morphology does not receive enough attention as an important influencing factor. By combining lightning location data, ground meteorological data, and urban morphology datasets, we identify a possible urban barrier effect from the perspective of CG lightning in Beijing during 2010–2017. Analysis of one typical thunderstorm on 13 July 2017 revealed that the barrier effect might result in a bifurcation of low‐level airflow and splitting of the convergence line. A more important finding was the modulation of the barrier effect by the scale and density of the built‐up area, and the numerical simulation experiments further confirmed this potential association. Plain Language Summary: Lightning is a common hazard associated with thunderstorms, which can result in $332 million of property damage annually in the United States and cause more than 1,000 casualties per year in China. Beijing, as one of the first‐tier cities in China, is undergoing a rapid urbanization in both city size and building density. Statistical results of cloud‐to‐ground lightning activity over 8 years showed that there were lots of lightning at the edge of the city, and most lightning seemed to be diverted around the city center. Due to a possible barrier effect, the path of a thunderstorm on 13 July 2017 was obviously altered by the city, also resulting in the change of near‐surface wind field. Except for synoptic forcing, wind speed, and urban heat island, this paper pointed out that the size of a city and its building density could influence whether the barrier effect occurred and how strong it was. Key Points: The strong synoptic forcing, strong wind speed, and weak urban heat island were in favor of the formation of a barrier effect in the built‐up area of BeijingWhen thunderstorms passed over city, the bifurcation of low‐level airflow and splitting of convergence line was a result of the urban barrier effectThe size of a city and its building density might influence the occurrence and strength of a barrier effect [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As long as maps produced by the official Chinese state mapping agency at scales larger than 1:1,000,000 remain inaccessible, Soviet General staff maps provide the best alternative. Although toponyms are given only in cyrillicized form, vernacular script equivalents may be found on pre-1945 Japanese military survey maps as well as on some maps of the US Army Mapping Service (AMS). A unique feature of the Soviet 1:200,000 map series is the accompanying spravka or descriptive text on the reverse of each sheet, probably constituting in aggregate the most detailed description of China ever compiled. Soviet General Staff plans of Chinese cities include 'objects' of military significance, many of which are omitted or not identified on any other mapping. This paper presents translations of the spravka from a representative sheet of the 1:200,000 series and from the city plan of Beijing, together with an evaluation of the reliability of their content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beijing plain is a strong earthquake tectonic area in China. There was a Sanhe-Pinggu earthquake with Ms8 that happened in1679. The seismogenic fault of this earthquake is called Xiadian fault. Our work found fault with a similar strike and opposite dip in the west of the Xiadian fault, which is called the Xiadian west fault in this paper. Six shallow seismic profiles have been constructed to determine the location of the fault in Sanhe city, and the late Quaternary activity of the fault is studied with the method of combined drilling, magnetic susceptibility logging, and luminescence dating. The results of shallow seismic exploration show that the fault is zigzag and generally strikes NE and inclines NW. According to the core histogram and logging curves of ten boreholes and eight effective dating data, the buried depth of the upper breakpoint of the concealed fault is about 12 m, which dislocates the late Pleistocene strata. The effective dating result of this set of strata is 36.52 ±5.39 ka. The vertical slip rate has been about 0.075± 0.023 mm/a since the late Pleistocene and about 0.058 ± 0.030 mm/a since the late period of the late Pleistocene. It can be inferred that the Xiadian west fault is probably a part of the seismogenic structure of the Sanhe-Pinggu Ms8 earthquake that happened in 1679. In a broad sense, the Xiadian fault zone is likely to extend to the southwest along the Xiadian west fault. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to provide new ideas and methods for the sustainable use of groundwater in areas with serious groundwater overexploitation and serious groundwater pollution. Geographic information systems (GIS) were combined with machine learning algorithms, water resources optimization technology, and groundwater numerical simulation to optimize the regulation of the groundwater table and quality beneath the Daxing District in the southern plain of Beijing. By collecting local consumption and supply data and observations of the groundwater table and quality in the connected aquifer beneath Daxing for the years 2006–2020, the corresponding water demands and groundwater impact were extrapolated for the years 2021–2025 based on the basis of the existing development model. Through the combination of GIS and machine learning algorithms, the NO3-N concentration of local groundwater monitoring points in wet years, normal years, and dry years were predicted. With respect to NO3-N pollution, three new groundwater exploitation regimes were devised, which we numbered 1 to 3. The optimal allocation of water resources was then calculated for wet year, typical year, and dry year scenarios for the year 2025. By comparing the water shortage, groundwater utilization rate, and NO3-N pollution under the new groundwater exploitation regimes, the optimal groundwater exploitation mode for the three different types of hydrological year was determined. The results indicate that NO3-N pollution was greatly reduced after the adoption of the optimal regimes and that the groundwater table demonstrated rapid recovery. These results can be of great help in realizing the management, supervision, and regulation of groundwater by combining GIS with machine learning algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigating a Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) project in Myanmar, this paper contests the proposition that China's state-coordinated investments are, by nature, more accommodating to local people's demands than Western investments. Tension between Myanmar villagers and the Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) in a copper mine project does not square with Beijing's "inclusive globalization" narrative. Drawing upon extensive semi-structured interviews with stakeholders in a Sino-Myanmar copper mine project, as well as other secondary data, this study finds that the Chinese SOE's operation was reactive to the ebb and flow of social resistance and the government's pressure amid the host country's democratization in the 2010s. Reforms were more likely to occur when the Chinese SOE observed more domestic constraints in its operation environment. It showed less incentive to improve its business practices when societal actors failed to display strong resistance, and the host government did not care about its legitimacy. Despite Beijing's efforts to craft an image of itself as a responsible power, conflicts in the BRI project should not be simplified as the SOE's defiance of the state's regulations. They are rooted in the state-centric foreign policy that systematically overlooks societal actors in state-coordinated investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Depending on the strategy of "Healthy China", more and more people pay attention to health issues. The integration and development of sports industry and health service industry is an inevitable outcome of industrial transformation and upgrading and healthy life in the new era. Through constructing the evaluation index system of the coupling and coordination development degree between sports industry and health service industry, using entropy evaluation method and coupling and coordination degree model, this paper explore the comprehensive level and coupling and coordination development status of sports industry and health service industry in thirty-one provinces, municipality cities and autonomous regions of China from 2013 to 2017. The results of this paper show that the comprehensive China's sports industry and health service industry both present an incremental development trend year by year, and are characterized by the distribution of "high in the east and low in the west" in space. The government's policy support provides superior industrial supporting conditions for the development of sports industry. However, it is not conducive to the promotion of industrial economic benefits. In the health service industry, the rapid development of health insurance is beneficial to the integration of industrial resources and the perfection of industrial chain. Whereas as the core content of health service industry, health service has greater space for development; the coupling and coordination degree between the two industries rises from mild maladjustment to basic coordination, which is characterized by the distribution of "high in the east and low in the west" in space; among provinces, with Beijing, the Yangtze River Delta and Guangdong as the three development center points, it shows the spatial evolutionary process from "dispersion-type plaques" to "gathering type scattered surfaces". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reveals the contemporary Chinese state's active role in shaping the country's religion-related intangible cultural heritage (ICH) safeguarding, through a systematic review of China's official inventories of national representative ICH projects and extensive investigations of relevant local practices and initiatives. Although China is ruled by a political party officially embracing an atheist ideology, various elements of the contemporary Chinese state have been proactively involved in safeguarding religion-related ICH. The Chinese state's involvement in de facto religion-related ICH safeguarding predates its adoption of explicit ICH safeguarding narratives. Still, the Chinese state's practices and initiatives in safeguarding religion-related ICH flourished after ratifying the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2004. Since then, China's central government has established a nationwide framework to recognise representative ICH items, including religion-related ones. Beyond Beijing, various local state agencies have also developed noticeable enthusiasm for supporting the safeguarding of religion-related ICH. In addition to engaging directly with ICH safeguarding, the contemporary Chinese state has also shaped China's religion-related ICH by working closely with some academics and religious groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigated the dynamic relationship between ife expectancy (LE) and its inflencing factors including, health care, socioeconomic, and environment factors in Beijing City of China. Time-series data from 2000 to 2018 were collected and vector autoregression (VAR) modeling was performed. This study quantified the lagged effect of air pollution and socioeconomic factors on increased LE over the 19 years of the study period in Beijing. The results showed that a VAR model with optimum lag 3 was constructed between LE and three explanatory variables including per capita area of green land (AGL), the average wage of employed staff and workers (WAGE), and PM2.5. In addition, LE showed a decrease from its present value once the impulse of AGL and WAGE are given. In contrast, LE increase from its present value after the impulse of PM2.5 given in the ten-year period analysis. In sum, environment factors such as air pollution and area of green land are considered to be highly effective in influencing LE than socioeconomic factors in Beijing City. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the background of the promotion of the Olympic effect of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and the in-depth implementation of the national ice and snow industry's strategy of "expanding from the south to the west and expanding from the east," China's ice and snow industry has ushered in a new period of development. By applying literature and logical analysis, etc., with in-depth analysis of various subjective and objective supplies for the integration of China's ice-snow industry and ecocultural tourism in Hunan Province, it is considered to be driven by the bidding and preparation effect of Beijing Winter Olympic Games in 2022. The supply capacity of ice-snow industry venues, professional facilities, and public services are gradually strengthened, and the soft power of construction of the ice-snow industry needs to be coordinated and improved. The problem of safety is prominent and it is urgent to build a safety prevention and emergency management of ice-snow tourism.The integration of ice-snow sports and ecotourism industry has gradually became a prototype, but the integration point, line, and surface still need to be further strengthened and expanded. Accordingly, this paper puts forward a method to realize the transformation and upgrading of the commercial operation mode of the integration of ice-snow industry and ecological culture tourism, comprehensively to improve the ecological innovation ability of ice-snow tourism public service, to create multi-industry ice-snow industry cluster area, and to construct the basic framework system of risk prevention and control and management with multisubject participation and other relevant strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the limitation of carbon emissions, China's photovoltaic (PV) industry has developed vigorously, while some traditional heavy industries have been violently hit. Therefore, the industrial production data exhibits significant nonlinear and complexity characteristics, which may affect prediction accuracy, thus hindering the corresponding department's decision-making. Consequently, a novel structure-adaptive fractional Bernoulli grey model is presented in this paper to surmount this toughie, and the core innovations can be summarized as follows. Initially, a novel time function term is utilized to depict the accumulative time effect, which can smoothly represent the dynamic variations and significantly strengthen the robustness of the new model. Besides, the fractional-order accumulation technique, which could effectively improve the predicting accuracy, is employed in the proposed model. Furthermore, the adaptability and generalizability of the proposed model can be enhanced by the self-adaptive parameters optimized by the Particle Swarm Optimization. For illustration and verification purposes, experiments on forecasting the annual output of Photovoltaic modules in China and the annual output of steel in Beijing are compared with a range of benchmarks, including the classic GM (1, 1), conventional econometric technology, and machine learning methods. And the results confirmed that the proposed model is superior to all benchmark models, which indicates that the novel model is indeed suitable for industrial production forecasting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the country with the largest population of older people, while still being a developing one, China is confronted with huge challenges in seeking an optimum response, which is high on the agenda of policy makers in Beijing. This paper makes the case for a radical new strategy on ageing which substitutes an ageing-oriented paradigm for the previous passive, instrumental and economistic ones. We first present an overview of the trend of Chinese population ageing, compared with already aged societies, followed by a summary of its impacts on the social welfare system associated with old age. Then we outline an alternative WHO influenced policy paradigm, active ageing, focusing on health, participation and security. In the light of this new approach, more active policies on ageing are called for, which are rooted in a comprehensive understanding of population trends, draw on international experience and conform to Chinese conditions and traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Timely and accurate survey of construction and demolition waste (C&DW) distribution is of significance for managing C&DW and enhancing the quality of the urban environment, especially in rapidly urbanizing country of China. Automatic C&DW recognition using high-resolution remote sensing images is an extremely important surveying method. Existing C&DW recognition methods can only obtain a rough spatial distribution of C&DW. Mapping precise C&DW distribution on large-scale remote sensing images is still challenging. In this paper, to solve the problem of precise C&DW recognition, a novel deep learning algorithm based on high-resolution remote sensing images is proposed, which we refer to as the cross-channel multi-scale gated fusion network (CCMGNet). CCMGNet extracts depth features of C&DW from RGB and NIR bands by using two independent encoding streams. A gated fusion layer and a multi-scale attention module are designed to effectively fuse the features from two encoding streams. We manually labelled the sample set used for training and testing on 26 remote sensing images captured by the Gaofen-2 (GF-2) satellite. These images were taken in nine typical cities in China over the time period from 2019 to 2021. The results showed that the proposed method is effective in recognizing C&DW, realizing 89.42% and 84.52% in precision and IoU, and is superior to other state-of-the-art deep learning algorithms and existing C&DW recognition methods. The effectiveness of all significant components in CCMGNet was confirmed by ablation experiments. The proposed method was applied to extract C&DW regions in large-scale remote sensing images, with an example of a GF-2 image of Beijing. The high extraction efficiency and satisfactory visual effect demonstrate the potential of the proposed method for surveying the spatial distribution of C&DW. The novel method will play a crucial role in automatically surveying the spatial distribution and size of C&DW across the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food safety dominates public discourse about health, life, and the body in China today. But incidents of 'fake food'—including fake eggs and milk powder—raise new questions about how bodily threats are detected and evaluated, and have undermined trust not only in food, but also in official food regulations and tests. In response, new alternative food movements (including organic farms) are seeking to rebuild trust that food is real, not fake—but refuse to rely on official regulations. Drawing on theoretical literature on counterfeit goods and market devices, this paper examines how alternative food producers in Beijing, China qualify their food as authentic in a context where food fraud is expected. Whereas scholars have previously highlighted the role of interpersonal trust in alternative food markets, I argue that alternative farmers rely more on 'popular certification' devices—such as farm visits and taste tests—to materially certify the qualities of their food products. These tests differ from official certification because—rooted in sensory experience rather than instrumental tests—they are knowledge-making devices that are accessible to consumers. Linking agrarian change with the problems of knowledge explored by STS scholars, fake food points toward a renewed political economy of qualities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) is one of the most important parameters of aerosol and a key physical quantity to characterize atmospheric turbidity and air pollution. Accurate retrieval of AOD is of great significance for air quality assessment. However, the spatial resolution of the currently widely used Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) AOD products is too low to meet the application research of atmospheric environment at the regional scale. In 2013, China launched the Gaofen-1 (GF-1) satellite, which provides a new idea for AOD retrieval. In this paper, we apply the synergetic use of TERRA and AQUA satellite MODIS data to calculate the high-resolution AOD over Beijing based on the Synergetic Retrieval of Aerosol Properties algorithm (SRAP) and discussed scale conversion problems between AODs with different resolutions. To obtain the 100 m MODIS data, we use GF-1 wide-field-of-view data to downscale 1 km MODIS data based on mutual information method. The retrieved AOD has a spatial resolution of 100 m and can cover many land surface types. Preliminary validation was carried out with the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) ground observation data. The correlation coefficient is about 0.88, and the root-mean-square error is about 0.15. Due to the high resolution of retrieved results, more detailed features can be provided in the spatial distribution. The experimental results show that the method has high precision, and further verification work is continuing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While access to school is one crucial aspect of education equality, there is a lack of research on factors that influence the distance that pupils travel to school. Previous studies have failed to reveal the relationship between pupils' socio-spatial characteristics and travel distance. This paper uncovers the multilevel structure, ignored hitherto, that underpins the determinants of pupils' travel distance. Using detailed travel survey data for Beijing and an appropriate multilevel modelling approach, this research reveals that contextual variation remains, having taken account of compositional (individual-level) variables; and that contextual factors, that is, school density and neighbourhood context, are more influential when compared with individual-level factors except for education stage and housing type. The policy implications include improved planning for schools in comparatively deprived areas, increased provision of affordable housing and enhanced education opportunities for migrant children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper is a large scale clinical studies between cytokines and prognosis of Kawasaki disease in China. • The prominent feature of this paper is the large amount of data. • The number of mediators detected in this study is large. Kawasaki disease (KD) is a type of pediatric vasculitis. Ten to twenty percent of children with KD do not respond to initial intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) treatment which called refractory Kawasaki disease. If untreated, approximately 15–25% of KD patients have complications. Therefore, it is important to predict whether KD is resistant to IVIG at an early stage. The aim of this study was to determine whether cytokines are predictors of refractory KD in children. We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 265 children diagnosed with KD who received IVIG within 10 days of fever onset at Beijing Children's Hospital. Refractory Kawasaki disease was defined as persistent or recrudescent fever beyond 36 h after IVIG. Before IVIG and 3 days after temperature normalization following IVIG treatment, the concentrations of cytokines in the serum including interferon gamma (IFN-γ), tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), interleukin-10 (IL-10), interleukin-6 (IL-6), interleukin-4 (IL-4), interleukin-2 (IL-2) and other conventional inflammatory mediators including white blood cells counts (WBC), C-reactive protein (CRP), erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and albumin were detected. The patients were divided into 2 groups: IVIG-sensitive group and refractory group. Of the 265 patients, 47 (17.7%) were refractory. After treatment with IVIG, the serum levels of IFN-γ, TNF-α, IL-10 and IL-6 in both groups were significantly lower than those before treatment (P < 0.05). Before treatment, the serum levels of IFN-γ, TNF-α, IL-10 and IL-6 in refractory group were significantly higher than those in IVIG-sensitive group (P < 0.05). There were no significant differences in IL-4 or IL-2 levels between the 2 groups. The results of logistic regression analysis showed that IFN-γ, IL-6, fever duration and serum albumin were independent risk factors for refractory KD. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC curve) for IFN-γ was 0.781, and the cut-off value for refractory was 7.37 pg/ml, while the area under the ROC curve for IL-6 was 0.837, and the cut-off value for refractory was 70.13 pg/ml. IFN-γ and IL-6 were independent risk factors for refractory Kawasaki disease in children. KD patients with serum levels of IFN-γ above 7.37 pg/ml and IL-6 above 70.13 pg/ml before treatment were prone to refractory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]