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This paper presents an account of field research and its findings from an international knowledge exchange project entitled Design Ecologies: Sustaining ethno-cultural significance of products through urban ecologies of creative practice, jointly funded by the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), Beijing. The contribution of this paper is to effectively communicate the processes, mechanisms and benefits of an academic knowledge exchange programme. In this case, six exchange visits were carried out, three to China by the British team and three to the UK by the Chinese team. These visits offered opportunities for both teams to gain insights into a variety of heritage sites and craft practices, as well as to the wider policy landscapes in each country. We found that the use of certain terms, like 'creative industries', to refer to traditional craft practices and other heritage related activities can be problematic as they tend to emphasise their instrumental rather than their intrinsic value. The Chinese team found the importance and significance of volunteers within the UK's cultural heritage landscape to be very different from that of China, which does not have a history of volunteering. On the other hand, China supports its Intangible Cultural Heritage through adoption of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, hereafter referred to as the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) programme or UNESCO convention (UNESCO 2019b; Cominelli and Greffe 2012); in contrast, the UK has not ratified the UNESCO convention. The China team commented on the UK's approach to heritage that keeps a sense of 'living' heritage, e.g. The English Lake District is a UNESCO World Heritage Centre in which people still live and work. In China, such areas are often depopulated to preserve the heritage and focus on tourism. The British team identified opportunities for design contributions in the visualisation of interrelated and interdependent "ecosystems" of design and production, as observed in Jingdezhen Ceramics Factory. Also, at Taoxichuan Creative Zone design was already being used effectively for the design of artefacts, points of sale, branding and packaging. There is much potential for this to be explored and developed further with different case studies in the UK and China. A shared understanding was developed from the knowledge exchange visits and visit reports created by each of the respective teams. These led to a set of conclusions, insights and themes. Finally, this project has already paved the way for a further Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) research project entitled Located Making, in collaboration with the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology and Ningxia University. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the rise of regional research collaboration which is changing the balance of science worldwide. The author states that collaboration is a good practice, in which knowledge is better transferred and co-authored writings are cited more frequently. The author also mentions co-authorship as a valid alternative for collaboration that reflects tangible engagement between countries such as Germany and Great Britain as well as China and the U.S.

While many studies have examined the role of biochar in carbon (C) accrual in short-term scale, few have explored the decadal scale influences of biochar on non-biochar C, e.g., native soil organic C (SOC) and added substrate. To address this knowledge gap, soils were collected from decade-old biochar field trials located in the United Kingdom (Cambisol) and China (Fluvisol), with each site having had three application rates (25–30, 50–60 and 75–100 Mg ha−1) of biochar plus an unamended Control, applied once in 2009. We assessed physicochemical and microbial properties associated with sucrose (representing the rhizodeposits) mineralization and the priming effect (PE) on native SOC. Here, we showed both soils amended with biochar at the middle application rate (50 Mg ha−1 biochar in Cambisol and 60 Mg ha−1 biochar in Fluvisol) resulted in greater substrate mineralization. The enhanced accessibility and availability of sucrose to microorganisms, particularly fast-growing bacterial genera like Arenimonas, Spingomonas, and Paenibacillus (r-strategists belonging to the Proteobacteria and Firmicutes phyla, respectively), can be attributed to the improved physicochemical properties of the soil, including pH, porosity, and pore connectivity, as revealed by synchrotron-based micro-CT. Random forest analysis also confirmed the contribution of the microbial diversity and physical properties such as porosity on sucrose mineralization. Biochar at the middle application rate, however, resulted in the lowest PE (0.3 and 0.4 mg of CO2-C g soil−1 in Cambisol and Fluvisol, respectively) after 53 days of incubation. This result might be associated with the fact that the biochar promoted large aggregates formation, which enclosed native SOC in soil macro-aggregates (2–0.25 mm). Our study revealed a diverging pattern between substrate mineralization and SOC priming linked to the biochar application rate. This suggests distinct mechanisms, biophysical and physicochemical, driving the mineralization of non-biochar carbon in a field where biochar was applied a decade before. Highlights: The application of biochar at a moderate rate (50–60 Mg ha−1) resulted in increased labile C mineralization and decreased priming of native SOC. Biochar amendments led to the reconfiguration of physicochemical properties, including pH, porosity, and the formation of aggregates. Modified microbial community structure towards more r-strategists caused greater sucrose mineralization. Biochar incorporation rate governed the C dynamics via (biophysical vs physicochemical mechanisms) in long-term biochar amended fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, the challenges of the industry increasingly demand the manufacture of complex shapes with great design flexibility without waste by 3D printing. Additive manufacturing, unlike traditional manufacturing techniques such as casting and machining, enables designers to rapid prototype while lowering operating costs and material waste during this process. In this way, understanding the current state of the literature related to additive manufacturing processes and the mechanical properties of 3D printed materials is of high importance to determine a research horizon in developing future works of this topic. In this paper, a bibliometric analysis, also named Scientometric science, was implemented. The tendencies and transcendental topics were determined using the Bibliometrix package for R and VOSviewer. Data were exported directly from the Scopus database with a search equation. The results showed that, of the 1271 documents analyzed, 2015 is a year where the research began its developing stage, with a growth rate of 20.8%. The USA resulted to be a leading country in publications followed by China and the UK. Likewise, it is observed that the author with the highest number of publications and h-index is C.B. Williams, followed by A.A. Zadpoor and J. Muller. Besides, the evolution in time of the keywords most used by researchers, and trends and research gaps in the study of additive manufacturing with the mechanical properties of the 3D printing materials are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Very few developed economies have a full free trade agreement (FTA) with China. This study employs one GTAP model and builds an extended environmental multi-region input–output model to investigate a hypothetical China-UK FTA, concerning embodied industrial emissions of SO2, PM2.5, NOX, and NH3. The economic sectors are also classified based on their embodied pollution intensity and trade advantage index under various FTA scenarios. Results show that the UK's GDP and welfare and China's welfare will increase, along with changes in their trade structures. Overall, this FTA brings about larger net impacts on embodied emissions of SO2 than on PM2.5, NOX and NH3, and both countries are net importers of the latter three pollutants. Key sectors such as non-metallic mineral products, chemical products, and agriculture are inclined to become less competitive and less polluting under the FTA. The inclusion of agri-food sectors exhibits slight counteracting effects in general. The findings are of policy importance as they provide insights into how best to target key sectors, seeking a balance between trade development and environmental protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: With effective control of point source pollution, non-point source (NPS) pollution has been widely concerned as the primary reason for the improvement of global water environmental quality. Some bibliometric analysis related to NPS pollution has been carried out before the mid-2010s. Analyzing the research status and hot issues of NPS pollution in the past decade is important for guiding the control and management of NPS pollution in the future. Results: A bibliometric analysis was conducted based on 3407 publications retrieved from the Web of Science during 2012–2021. China, USA and UK were the most productive countries. Sci. Total Environ, Environ. Sci. Pollut. Res, and Water were the most productive journals. The NPS pollutant, pollution types, driving forces, technology and the research object were retrieved from the keywords analysis. The common NPS pollutants of nitrogen, phosphorus, and heavy metals grabbed the highest attention, while the emerging contaminants have attracted increased attention. The migration and transformation of agricultural NPS pollution and urban NPS pollution driven by climate change and land use change were hot issues related to NPS pollution studies. Technologies related to the combination of 3S technology (RS, GIS, and GPS) and NPS pollution models, the sustainable control technologies, the technology of accurate traceability and automatic monitoring, and the comprehensive management plan were the important research areas related to NPS pollution. Although the research locations were mostly concentrated in the surface water and groundwater, the ocean and drinking water have great potential for future research. Conclusions: This study illustrates the global focuses related to NPS pollution during 2012–2021 according to analyzing the publication outputs, source journals, source country, author, institution and the high-frequency keywords. Results demonstrated that the migration and transformation mechanism and ecological risk assessment for heavy metals and emerging pollutants, accurate traceability techniques, sustainable ecological restoration control techniques, and marine pollution have attracted rising attention. Additionally, developing countries will have a higher interest in NPS pollution in the future, because developed countries have already made great progress in controlling NPS pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the relationship between board committees' independence and the financial distress of firms in China and the UK. Akin to previous literature, we estimate this relationship between 2007 and 2016 using a conditional logit model on a sample of matched pair firms. For China, the results indicate a positive and statistically significant association between the percentage of independent audit committee members and the financial distress of firms. In contrast, the opposite relationship was found for independent compensation and nomination committee members. For the UK, the relationships are the same, but the results are significant only for nomination committee independence. Our overall results suggest that independent audit committee members are not favorable for firm survival. In contrast, the independent compensation and nomination committee members are beneficial for the financial health of firms, as they are responsible for designing fair compensation packages and for selecting the most suitable persons to decide the strategic moves of the firm, respectively. A robustness test demonstrates that the results are robust to the assumed functional form imposed by the conditional logit model and confirms our core findings for both Chinese and UK firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compares measures of marketing success between China and Great Britain. Importance of marketing for long-term business success; Information about marketing in China; Difference in the associations between business orientation and the measurement of marketing effectiveness in both the countries.

In this paper, we study the cooperative strategies between two firms in an overseas country. In Part 1, we examine the circumstances under which foreign firms would cooperate with another foreign firm in a third country market. Drawing upon existing literature, we develop and test a set of hypotheses using a longitudinal data set from China. The types of cooperative arrangements include all the major modes of operation. In Part 2, we further investigate what types of operation and level of control exist among the cooperative arrangements between two foreign firms in China. We used a sample of 483 cooperative arrangements between two firms from Hong Kong, the U.S., Japan, Germany, or Britain. This study offers interesting insight as to why foreign firms form cooperative arrangements in an overseas country and what types of cooperative arrangements these firms prefer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the performance and success rate of joint venture activities of small and medium size enterprises (SME). Examination of activities and performance of nine British and 12 German SME joint ventures in China; Characteristics of a joint venture; Joint venture problems; Factors contributing to success of joint ventures.