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Recently, well-being of older people measure (WOOP) was developed and validated in a Dutch population. Although WOOP was developed targeting the older people, it has the potential for use in a wider population. In this study, we aimed to examine the relationship between WOOP and EQ-5D-5L and compared their psychometric properties in a sample of patients, carers and healthy general public covering a wider age group. We conducted a cross-sectional study in Guizhou Province, China between July and August 2022. Data was collected using paper and pencil. We analysed and reported the acceptability, item response distribution, the Spearman correlation coefficients of all items, the Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) of all items, the known-group validity and the convergent validity of EQ-5D-5L utility and WOOP utility. A total of 322 participants completed the survey with 105 patients, 101 carers and 116 healthy general public. 9% of participants had at least one missing response. Three items of WOOP did not have any level 5 responses and EQ-5D-5L had more level 1 responses. The correlations were low between EQ-5D-5L and WOOP items and the three-factor EFA showed these two instruments had only one shared factor and the other two factors were only related to WOOP items. Younger people had lower missing response rate and a different response distribution for three items. WOOP measures a broader construct beyond health while EQ-5D-5L is a more sensitive instrument when health is considered alone. There is a potential of using WOOP in a wider population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the study of protected areas, the "Fences & fines" approach is increasingly becoming acknowledged as obsolete and ineffectual, and there is mounting evidence suggesting that the "Community-based conservation" approach is acquiring consideration. It is significant to identify which protection model or factors perform a definitive part in China. Taking the East Dongting Lake National Nature Reserve in China as a survey site, this paper utilizes semi-structured interviews and random questionnaires surveyed 431 households to investigate the relationship between "community-based conservation" approaches such aslegal system, ecological compensation, environmental education, community participation, concessions, livelihoods, job provision, intrinsic motivation and pro-environmental behavior. The regression results declare that intrinsic motivation (β = 0.390) and legal system (β = 0.212) are the most effective factors impacting on pro-environmental behavior; concessions has a negative conflict on preservation;but other "community-based conservation" approaches had insignificant positive impacts on pro-environmental behavior. Further mediating effects analysis indicated that intrinsic motivation (B = 0.3899, t = 11.9694, p < 0.01) mediates between legal system and pro-environmental behavior of community residents, legal system promotes pro-environmental behavior by promoting intrinsic motivation, which is more effective than legal system promoting pro-environmental behavior directly. This demonstrates that "Fence and fine approach" still is an effective management tool which can shape community residents' positive attitude towards conservation and pro-environmental behavior especially protected areas with large communities. And appropriate "community-based conservation" approaches can mitigate conflicts between special groups with the combination of these two approaches, the management of protected areas can be successful. This supplies a valuable real-world case for the current debate on conservation and improved human livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 is a continuing threat to global public health security. For elderly people, timely and effective vaccination reduces infection rates in this group and safeguards their health. This paper adopted an offline Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) to research the preference for COVID-19 vaccination amongst Chinese adults aged 50 years and above. Through multinomial logistic regression analysis, our DCE leverages five attributes—the risk of adverse reactions, protective duration, injection doses, injection period, and effectiveness—each of which is split into three to four levels. The risk of adverse reaction and the protective duration were demonstrated to be determinants of vaccination preference. Moreover, it was found that socio demographic factors like region, self-health assessment and the number of vaccinated household members can strengthen or weaken the effects of vaccine attributes. In conclusion, the preferences of the elderly population should be considered when developing COVID-19 vaccination programs for this population in China. Accordingly, the results may provide useful information for policymakers to develop tailored, effectively vaccination strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at the traditional ecological footprint model, the improved ecological footprint of the carbon footprint effectively makes up for the singularity of the ecological footprint's consideration of carbon emissions, and plays an important role in promoting high-quality development and ecological sustainability. This paper selects 2015, 2018 and 2020 as important time points for the study, corrects the ecological footprint parameter factors based on net primary productivity (NPP), measures the ecological footprint after the improvement of the carbon footprint, studies the spatial and temporal variation in the ecological footprint at the 100-m grid scale with the support of IPCC greenhouse gas inventory analysis, and analyzes the current ecological conservation status of the Yellow River Delta. Additionally, in the context of a low carbon economy, the decoupling index of carbon emissions and GDP is extended to the evaluation and analysis of high-quality development. The study showed that (1) the ecological footprint of the Yellow River Delta has increased year by year, from 0.721 hm2·person− 1 to 0.758 hm2·person− 1, an average annual increase of 2.9%; the ecological carrying capacity has decreased from 0.40 hm2·person− 1 to 0.31 hm2·person− 1, an overall decrease of 28.59%. (2) The overall ecological deficit of the Yellow River Delta grid is lightly overloaded, with most of the ecological surplus occurring in the northern and eastern parts of the study area and a few moderate and heavy overloads in the center of the core area where there is a lot of built-up land and the area is small and easy to gather. (3) Based on the low-carbon economy analysis, 2015, 2017 and 2020 reach absolute decoupling and are in the ideal scenario. However, in the rest of the years, carbon emissions and economic development are still in a large contradiction, and decoupling has fluctuated and varied greatly in the last six years. The effective combination of ecological footprint and low carbon economy analysis provides an important theoretical basis for improving ecological conservation and achieving high-quality development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital transformation and green innovation are powerful initiatives to achieve carbon peaking, carbon neutrality targets and high-quality economic development. Using a sample of high energy-consuming listed enterprises from 2012 to 2021, a double fixed-effect model is constructed to verify the effect of green innovation on the carbon emission reduction performance of high energy-consuming enterprises, and digital transformation is used as a moderating variable to analyze the inner mechanism of green innovation affecting the carbon emission reduction performance of high energy-consuming enterprises under the effect of digital transformation. The empirical results show that green innovation can significantly improve the carbon emission reduction performance of energy-consuming enterprises, while digital transformation positively moderates the effect of green innovation on the carbon emission reduction performance of energy-consuming enterprises. When considering the industry heterogeneity, the moderation effect of digital transformation is significant in the chemical raw materials and chemical products manufacturing industry and the electricity and heat production and supply industry, but the petroleum processing and coking and nuclear fuel processing industry, the non-metallic mineral products industry, the ferrous metal smelting and rolling processing industry and the non-ferrous metal smelting and rolling processing industry are not yet significantly affected by green innovation and digital transformation. The findings of the study provide empirical evidence to promote the improvement of carbon emission reduction performance of energy-intensive enterprises in China and to achieve the "double carbon" target. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the digital elevation data, snow depth and snow cover remote sensing data, this paper divides six snow evolution areas and geographical partitions, extracts the geographical partitions of each evolution area and obtains the geographical characteristics of the evolution area for analysis. The results show that: (1) From 2003 to 2017, the average snow area decreased at a rate of − 0.004, and the average snow depth increased at a rate of 0.03. (2) The snow in the middle altitude hill with shady gentle slope area is the most obvious in the seasonal evolution, and the percentage of this region in the seasonal snow evolution area is 5.46%, the snow depth in the middle altitude hill with sunny and gentle slopes area increased and decreased significantly in the past 15 years, and the percentage of this region in the SD significant changes evolution area was 6.32%. The snow in the low relief middle altitude mountain with shady and moderate slope area not only shows obvious seasonal evolution, but also increases and decreases significantly in snow depth. And the percentage of this region in the seasonal snow significant evolution area is 5.82%. (3) The geographical partitions with the largest area in all evolution areas is the middle altitude hill with sunny and gentle slopes area (4.75%). (4) The geographical partition with the largest variation of snow depth in Tianshan region is the low relief middle altitude mountain with shady and moderate slope area (12.02 cm). (5) The snow accumulation and melting are obvious in the range of 1000–3500 m above altitude, different geomorphology types lead to obvious differences in snow characteristics. The snow melting is most obvious in the gentle slope area of the low topographic relief geomorphology types, and the snow accumulation is most obvious in the steep slope area of the middle relief geomorphology types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the western region of China, which is typical of extraordinary resource endowments, has gradually emerged as the major mining zone in China, the mining of thick coal seams and roadways with coal-rock composite roof have become more and more common in this region. However, it is extremely difficult to realize safe and effective maintenance and control of such roadways due to the differences in natural endowments of coal-rock masses. With the roadway with coal-rock composite roof of Hulusu Coal Mine in western China as the engineering background, experiment research on large-scale similarity model was conducted through comprehensive measures such as the pneumatic loading system, the surrounding rock stress monitoring system, the roadway deformation monitoring system, the bolt load monitoring system, and the displacement field monitoring system in this paper. According to the results of the experiment, the control effects of the three support systems on the roadway with coal-rock composite roof were significantly different. When the single support of short anchor bolts was applied, the comparatively low initial anchor-hold failed to constrain the initial micro deformation of the roof. Consequently, wide-range fractures of the roof were triggered at a loading pressure of 0.8 MPa. In the meanwhile, the deep surrounding rocks witnessed a downward inflection point in stress, accompanied by the possibility of the collapse of the thin-layer anchorage zone at any time. As for the support combining both short anchor bolts and long anchor cables, though a reinforced effect on the bolt anchorage zone could be achieved with the help of the cables, the active reinforcement capacity of the bolt was limited. The bolt anchorage zone was the first to be damaged at a loading pressure of 0.9 MPa, which would subsequently affect the effective bearing capacity of the deep surrounding rocks. In the application of the single support of high-strength long anchor bolts, the long bolts with high pre-tightening force were able to lock multiple groups of coal-rock strata to form a thick-layer anchorage bearing structure capable of withstanding a load as high as 1.0 MPa. The crash and collapse of the coal wall eventually caused the subsidence of the roof. Based on the intense dynamic load experiment and the feedbacks of engineering application outcomes in the field, it was concluded that the high-pretension thick-layer (HPTL) anchoring technology can effectively constrain the deformation of roadways with coal-rock composite roof with favorable application outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the main means to dovetail the domestic system with international rules, institutional openness is the key to deepening participation in the global economic governance system, breaking through energy and carbon emission constraints, and achieving green and sustainable economic development. Taking 284 prefecture-level cities in China from 2006 to 2019 as the research sample, this paper uses the establishment of Pilot Free Trade Zones as a quasi-natural experiment to systematically identify and test the actual impact of institutional openness on urban carbon emissions in China through the asymptotic difference in difference method, instrumental variables method, spatial econometric model, and mediating effects model. Meanwhile, technological progress is used as the entry point to analyze the intrinsic mechanism of action by adopting digital transformation oriented to efficiency improvement and green innovation capability oriented to R&D innovation as the differentiated perspective. It is found that institutional openness significantly suppresses urban CO2 emissions, and there is a certain heterogeneity and spatial spillover effect of this effect. Further study finds that institutional openness achieves carbon emission reduction through technological progress. The study aims to find new institutional innovation and development paths for low carbon development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stroke is the leading cause of death in China (Zhou et al. in The Lancet, 2019). A dataset from Shanxi Province is analyzed to predict the risk of patients at four states (low/medium/high/attack) and to estimate transition probabilities between various states via a SHAP DeepExplainer. To handle the issues related to an imbalanced sample set, the quadratic interactive deep model (QIDeep) was first proposed by flexible selection and appending of quadratic interactive features. The experimental results showed that the QIDeep model with 3 interactive features achieved the state-of-the-art accuracy 83.33%(95% CI (83.14%; 83.52%)). Blood pressure, physical inactivity, smoking, weight, and total cholesterol are the top five most important features. For the sake of high recall in the attack state, stroke occurrence prediction is considered an auxiliary objective in multi-objective learning. The prediction accuracy was improved, while the recall of the attack state was increased by 17.79% (to 82.06%) compared to QIDeep (from 71.49%) with the same features. The prediction model and analysis tool in this paper provided not only a prediction method but also an attribution explanation of the risk states and transition direction of each patient, a valuable tool for doctors to analyze and diagnose the disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The correlation characteristics between anomalous changes in summer precipitation on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (QTP) and the high-impact areas of global sea-surface temperature (SST) are mainly studied in this paper. The results show that the interdecadal change of the regional "warming-wetting" in China is especially prominent in the northern part of the main body of the QTP, which is therefore identified as the high-value area of precipitation variability. Investigations have revealed that the high-value areas of summer precipitation variability in the northern QTP are significantly correlated with four high-value areas of SST variability, namely the western North Pacific, the western Central Pacific, the Southwest Pacific, and the central Indian Ocean. In these four high-impact areas, a synchronous tendency is found in the SST increase and sea-surface specific humidity. Through the tracking analysis of the correlated vectors of the water vapor source for the warming-wetting of the QTP, it further confirms that the four high-value areas of SST variability in the Indo-Pacific Ocean are the major impact sources of water vapor transport for the warming-wetting of the QTP. Moreover, the comparison of the characteristics of various interdecadal global water vapor transport circulations show that from 1991 to 2020, the trans-equatorial water vapor transport from the Southern Hemisphere witnessed a notable increase, which furthermore suggests that the interdecadal change of SST increase in the Southwest Pacific and central Indian Ocean is the key reason for the warming-wetting of the QTP. In addition, a comprehensive image of high-impact marine water vapor sources for modulating the warming-wetting tendency in the QTP is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in China in December 2019 has posed a major challenge to health systems in all countries around the world. One of the most relevant epidemiological measures to consider during the course of a pandemic is the proportion of cases that eventually die from the disease (case fatality ratio, CFR). Monitoring the evolution of this indicator is of paramount importance because it allows for the assessment of both variations in the lethality of the virus and the effectiveness of the control measures implemented by health authorities. One of the problems with estimating the CFR in practice is that the available data only show daily or weekly counts of new cases and deaths; there is no information on when each deceased patient was infected and therefore it is not possible to know exactly how many cases there were at the time the patient became infected. Various approaches have been proposed for calculating the CFR by correcting for the time lag between infection and death. In this paper, we present a novel methodology to perform a non-parametric estimation of the evolution of the CFR by initially identifying an optimal time lag between infections and deaths. The goodness of this procedure is assessed by means of a simulation study and the method is applied to the estimation of the CFR in Spain in the period from July 2020 to March 2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perceived government corruption is an important indicator of depressive symptoms. Recent studies have explored the relationship between perceived government corruption and depressive symptoms in a cross-cultural context, but the underlying mechanisms need further research. This paper examines the impact of perceived government corruption on depressive symptoms in China and the moderating role of social status. Based on the 2018 wave of China Family Panel Studies (CFPS2018), 14,116 respondents aged between 16 and 96 were selected. The results revealed: (1) Perceived government corruption was significantly positively correlated with depressive symptoms. (2) Social class had an inhibitory effect in moderating the relationship between perceived government corruption and depressive symptoms. (3) The moderating effect was only significant for respondents who received education between junior high school and a bachelor's degree. The findings provide policy implications for developing countries and transitional societies like China. To build a more psychologically healthy society, we need to strengthen anti-corruption, stimulate social mobility, and improve people's sense of gain in the future [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) outbreak that emerged in late 2019 has posed a severe threat to human health and social and economic development, and thus has become a major public health crisis affecting the world. The spread of COVID-19 in population and regions is a typical geographical process, which is worth discussing from the geographical perspective. This paper focuses on Shandong province, which has a high incidence, though the first Chinese confirmed case was reported from Hubei province. Based on the data of reported confirmed cases and the detailed information of cases collected manually, we used text analysis, mathematical statistics and spatial analysis to reveal the demographic characteristics of confirmed cases and the spatio-temporal evolution process of the epidemic, and to explore the comprehensive mechanism of epidemic evolution and prevention and control. The results show that: (1) the incidence rate of COVID-19 in Shandong is 0.76/100,000. The majority of confirmed cases are old and middle-aged people who are infected by the intra-province diffusion, followed by young and middle-aged people who are infected outside the province. (2) Up to February 5, the number of daily confirmed cases shows a trend of "rapid increase before slowing down", among which, the changes of age and gender are closely related to population migration, epidemic characteristics and intervention measures. (3) Affected by the regional economy and population, the spatial distribution of the confirmed cases is obviously unbalanced, with the cluster pattern of "high–low" and "low–high". (4) The evolution of the migration pattern, affected by the geographical location of Wuhan and Chinese traditional culture, is dominated by "cross-provincial" and "intra-provincial" direct flow, and generally shows the trend of "southwest → northeast". Finally, combined with the targeted countermeasures of "source-flow-sink", the comprehensive mechanism of COVID-19 epidemic evolution and prevention and control in Shandong is revealed. External and internal prevention and control measures are also figured out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using ArcGIS to analyze satellite derived PM2.5 estimates, this paper obtains the average concentration and maximum concentration of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in China's 31 provinces from 2002 to 2015. We adopt fixed effects model and spatial Durbin model to investigate the association between PM2.5 and perinatal mortality rates. The results indicate that PM2.5 has a significantly positive association with perinatal mortality rates. A 1% increase of log-transformed average concentration and maximum concentrations of PM2.5 is associated with 1.76‰ and 2.31‰ increase of perinatal mortality rates, respectively. In spatial econometrics analysis, we find PM2.5 has significant spatial autocorrelation characteristics. The concentrations of log-transformed average and maximum PM2.5 increase 1% is associated with a 2.49% increase in a 2.49‰ and 2.19‰ increase of perinatal mortality rates, respectively. The potential mechanism is that air pollution has an impact on infant weight to impact perinatal mortality rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Yellow River basin spans nine provinces and autonomous regions and plays an important role in China's economic and social development and ecological security. However few studies have integrated the concept of carbon neutrality into research to evaluate the carbon-neutral development level. This paper calculates the comprehensive evaluation value of the provincial carbon-neutral capacities comprehensive evaluation index in the Yellow River basin through the driving-force-pressure-state-impact-response (DFPSIR) index system and the global entropy method based on provinces data between 2008 to 2019. The final results indicated that from 2008 to 2019, the carbon-neutral capacities of the provinces in the Yellow River basin were in a state of rapid development and had achieved a grade leap. However, seven provinces had carbon-neutral capacity levels at the Grade III standard in 2019, thereby leaving scope for substantial improvement. Through the above research, we identified the changes in the trend and driving mechanisms of the carbon-neutral capacity of the Yellow River basin and provide a theoretical reference value for a comprehensive realization of carbon neutrality in China in 2060. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese fir (Cunninghamia lanceolata) is one of southern China's most important native tree species, which has experienced noticeable climate-induced changes. Published papers (1978–2020) on tree growth of Chinese fir forests in China were collected and critically reviewed. After that, a comprehensive growth data set was developed from 482 sites, which are distributed between 102.19° and 130.07°E in longitude, between 21.87° and 37.24°N in latitude and between 5 and 2260 m in altitude. The dataset consists of 2265 entries, including mean DBH (cm), mean H (m), volume (m3), biomass (dry weight) (kg) (stem (over bark) biomass, branches biomass, leaves biomass, bark biomass, aboveground biomass, roots biomass, total trees biomass) and related information, i.e. geographical location (Country, province, study site, longitude, latitude, altitude, slope, and aspect), climate (mean annual precipitation-MAP and mean annual temperature-MAT), stand description (origin, age, canopy density and stand density), and sample regime (plot size, number and investigation year). Our results showed that (1) the best prediction of height was obtained using nonlinear composite model Height = 1.3 + 34.23 ∗ (1 - e - 0.01025 ∗ DBH 1.347 ) , (R2 = 0.8715, p < 0.05), (2) the equation Volume = DBH2/(387.8 + 19,190/Height) (R2 = 0.9833, p < 0.05) was observed to be the most suitable model for volume estimation. Meanwhile, when the measurements of the variables are difficult to carry out, the volume model Volume = 0.03957 − 0.01215*DBH + 0.00118*DBH2 (R2 = 0.9573, p < 0.05) is determined from DBH only has a practical advantage, (3) the regression equations of component biomass against DBH explained more significant than 86% variability in almost all biomass data of woody tissues, which were ranked as total trees (97.25%) > aboveground (96.55%) > stems (with bark) (96.17%) > barks (88.95%) > roots (86.71%), and explained greater than 64% variability in branch biomass. The foliage biomass equation was the poorest among biomass components (R2 = 0.6122). The estimation equations derived in this study are particularly suitable for the Chinese fir forests in China. This dataset can provide a theoretical basis for predicting and assessing the potential of carbon sequestration and afforestation activities of Chinese fir forests on a national scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The observation of electromechanical coupling might be used as an important tool to detect pre-seismic changes associated with the preparation of earthquakes. This paper attempts to study the electromechanical coupling process before the large earthquakes by using the load/unload response ratio (LURR) approach in which the geo-electric data and Benioff strain of small earthquakes were adopted as the data input. The variation of Coulomb failure stress induced by earth tides on the fault surface of the mainshock is applied to differentiate the loading and unloading stages. Using this technique, we test the geo-electric data recorded at the Hotan observatory near the epicenter of 2020 Yutian Ms 6.4 earthquake. Results show that the LURR time sequence fluctuated around 1.0 for many years and reached significant high peaks at the beginning of 2020. More importantly, this evolution correlates well with the LURR time series calculated by using the Benioff strain of small earthquakes within the circular region of 300 km radius centered at the epicenter. The underlying physics of the changes should be caused by the fluid infiltration derived from pre-seismic rock dilatancy. The corresponding volume variations in the crust could be found in the geophysical observation time series in the same neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To quantitatively evaluate the impact of domestic aviation control measures on the spread of COVID-19 in China. The number of international flights from March to September 2019 simulated the number of flights from March to September 2020 without implementing aviation control measures. In addition, the proportion of asymptomatic persons and the delay in case reporting were adjusted to estimate the prevalence of each country during the same period and calculate the estimated imported cases. The estimated imported cases were assigned each day with weight, and the estimated daily reported cases were obtained based on the actual daily number of domestic cases in China. Effective Reproduction Number ( R t ) was calculated based on delayed distribution, Basic Reproductive Number ( R 0 ) distribution, and generation time distribution were reported in previous studies. Gaussian Process was used to estimate the effect of time-varying on R t , and the estimated R t was compared with the actual R t . The estimated imported cases increased significantly compared with the actual number of imported cases. The estimated imported cases were mainly concentrated in North America and Europe from March to April and gradually increased in many East Asian countries from May to September. The difference between predicted R t and actual R t was statistically significant. The estimated imported cases and the estimated R t have increased compared to the actual situation. This paper quantitatively proves that Chinese aviation control measures significantly suppress the COVID-19 epidemic, which is conducive to promoting and applying this measure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The continuing decline in the birth rate has led to a series of problems, such as the disproportion of population structure and severe aging population, which have restricted the country's economic development. To have a deeper understanding of the geographical differences and influencing factors of the birth rate, this paper collects and organizes the birth population data of 31 provinces in mainland China from 2011 to 2019. The national region is divided into seven natural geographical regions to obtain the spatial hierarchy, and a hierarchical Bayesian Spatio-temporal model is established. The INLA algorithm estimates the model parameters. The results show significant spatial and temporal differences in birth rates in mainland China, which are reflected mainly in the combination of spatial, temporal, and Spatio-temporal interaction effects. In the spatial dimension, the northeast is low, the northwest and southwest are high, and the birth rate has an upward trend from east to west. These trends are caused by unbalanced economic development, different fertility attitudes and differences in fertility security, reflecting regional differences in spatial effects. From 2011 to 2019, China's birth rate showed an overall downward trend in the time dimension. However, all regions except the northeast saw a significant but temporary increase in birth rates in 2016 and 2017, reflecting the temporal effect difference in birth rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, with the advance of Artificial Intelligence, automatic music composition has been demonstrated. However, there are many music genres and music instruments. For a same piece of music, different music instruments would produce different effects. Invented some 2500 years ago, Guzheng is one of the oldest music instruments in China and the world. It has distinct timbres and patterns that cannot be duplicated by other music instruments. Therefore, it is interesting to see whether AI can compose Guzheng music or alike. In this paper we present a method that can automatically compose and play Guzheng music. First, we collect a number of existing Guzheng music pieces and convert them into Music Instrument Digital Interface format. Second, we use these data to train a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network and use the trained network to generate new Guzheng music pieces. Next, we use the Reinforcement Learning to optimize the LSTM network by adding special Guzheng playing techniques. Comparing to the existing AI methods, such as LSTM and Generative Adversary Network, our new method is more effective in capturing the characteristics of Guzheng music. According to the evaluations from skilled Guzheng players and general audiences, our Guzheng music is very close to the real Guzheng music. The presented method can also be used to automatically compose the music of other Chinese music instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The uncertainty of LNG import risks will have a significant impact on China's energy security. This paper establishes a multi-agent game model based on the current LNG transportation network and global LNG supply and demand pattern, evaluates the LNG import risks faced by China under the global governance model, and simulates and predicts the optimal LNG import strategy of China in 2030. The research results show that between 2007 and 2020, China's LNG import risks increased rapidly compared with political risks and national risks. From the perspective of risk identification, the comprehensive risk of China's imports from Southeast Asia and Australia is lower. However, due to the increasing demand gap for LNG, the Middle East, and Africa are still necessary supply sources. It is estimated that by 2030, the future LNG market will be oversupplied, and the United States is expected to become the world's top LNG supplier. China will reduce its dependence on Africa and the Middle East, and import a large amount of natural gas from the United States, Australia, Qatar, and Russia to reduce supply risks. From the perspective of import market competition, the new analysis model proposed in this article provides an effective tool for exploring the optimal strategy for LNG import. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the causal effect of only-child status on educational performance among junior high school students from only-child and two-child families in China. It uses the dataset of the China Education Panel Survey 2013–14. The results show that the only children's educational outcomes are significantly low than students from two-child families. Only children's willpower and extraversion are weaker than children's from two-child families. The scale economies effect is strong and the resource dilution effect is weak when sibling size is small. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reservoir water level fluctuation zone (WLFZ) is a new and fragile ecosystem that is gaining attention with the construction of large and medium-sized hydropower plants. Compared to the natural riparian zone, it has a greater drop in water level, longer inundation time, more intense impact from alternating wet and dry conditions, and a wider impact on ecological security. The Jinsha River basin is located in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River in China, and several world-class large-scale hydropower projects with dam heights over 100 m have been built, forming a large area of reservoir WLFZ, however, due to the short time since their construction, there are few related studies. In this paper, fixed sample plots were set up in the typical WLFZs of each large reservoir in the Jinsha River basin. In response to the problem of the precipitous terrain and poor accessibility of the Jinsha River basin, a combination of small UAV surveys and field research in July 2020 was used to draw vegetation cover maps and extract topographic data for each site, and quantitatively analyse the community composition, dominant species types, area, coverage, spatial distribution patterns and environmental factors of tolerant vegetation using spatial superposition analysis, neural network models, landscape pattern indices and typical correlation analysis. The results showed that the original drought-tolerant vegetation in the arid river valley WLFZ has evolved into amphibious herbaceous vegetation, with trees and shrubs disappearing and species composition tending to be simpler. 44 species of plants, mainly in the Asteraceae and Gramineae families, were extant, 61% of which were also reported in the Three Gorges Reservoir WLFZ. The water level variation showed convergence in the natural screening process of suitable species in the WLFZ. Moreover, even in the dry valley WLFZs, flood stress showed a more significant filtering effect on vegetation species than drought stress. The vegetation in the WLFZ showed an obvious band-like aggregated distribution along the water level elevation gradient, and the vegetation coverage along the flooding gradient is as follows: upper part of the WLFZ >> middle part > lower part, and mainly concentrated in the gentle area with slope less than 35°. Flooding stress, drought stress and soil substrate deficiency were the main limiting factors for vegetation recovery in the WLFZ. The vegetation restoration of the WLFZ should be adapted to local conditions, and the dominant role of native species should be emphasized. At the early stage of the restoration of the WLFZ, native species should be selected for artificial planting to accelerate the formation of vegetation cover, and gradually advance downwards along the gradient of water level elevation, while for areas of the WLFZ with slopes greater than 35° and large topographic relief, biological engineering measures should be used to help plant establishment, and after a certain stable cover has been formed, natural restoration should be the main focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's food security has always been a high priority issue on the political agenda with rapid urbanization affecting agricultural land, and it is challenged by several factors, such as human activities, social politics and policy. Shandong is an important grain-producing province and the second most populous province in China. In this paper, the spatiotemporal characteristics of grain yield and their potential influencing factors were explored at the county level in Shandong by using panel data over a 19-year period. The location Gini coefficient (L-Gini) and exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) were used to study the spatial agglomeration characteristics of grain yield, and spatial regression methods (SRMs) were used to analyse the influencing factors. The results indicated that grain yield increased from 38.3 million metric tons to 53.2 million metric tons in 2000–2018, with a growth rate of approximately 28.0%. The increase in grain yield in Shandong was due to the driving effect of radiation from high-yield counties to surrounding moderate-yield counties. This revealed an upward trend of spatial polarization in Shandong's grain yield. In 2000–2018, the L-Gini and global Moran's I increased from 0.330 to 0.479 and from 0.369 to 0.528, respectively. The number of counties in high-high (HH) and low-low (LL) agglomeration areas increased, and the spatial polarization effect was significant. SRMs analysis showed that irrigation investment and non-grain attention have significant positive and negative effects on grain production, respectively. The spatial relationship between grain yield and its influencing factors was explored to provide a reference for formulating scientific and rational agricultural policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of barbed-spring locks in ancient China has a history of more than 2000 years. With the development of the design and manufacturing techniques in ancient China, the safety of locks has gotten better and better. Since the seventeenth century, the puzzle lock, with a complicated structure and a high difficulty in opening, was gradually developed and used. The puzzle lock needs specific steps to be opened. Based on the difficulty of the opening process, traditional Chinese puzzle locks can be partition into two sorts, namely, general puzzle locks and complex puzzle locks. As the structure of the puzzle lock will change during the opening process, the puzzle lock belongs to the reconfigurable mechanism. In this paper, a method of topology matrix is provided to analyze the structure of the complex puzzle lock during systematical operation. Firstly, the characteristics and types of general puzzle locks are explained, and then the topology matrix representation is introduced. Finally, four complex puzzle locks are taken as examples, to illustrate the opening process. There are various types of complex puzzle locks, and the mechanism designs are quite ingenious and interesting, which shows the extraordinary technique and ingenuity of the ancient craftsmen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of water-conducting fracture zone development height is key to the scientific prevention and control of water damage in mines. Based on the geological conditions of the Wenjiapo coal mine in Binchang, China, this paper investigates the development of water-conducting fracture zone in overlying bedrock during mining under large buried depth and huge thick aquifer by combining on-site well-location microseismic monitoring and laboratory similar material simulation. To overcome the limitation of the " limited outlook " of water-conducting fracture zone investigation, the spatial development characteristics of roof fissures in coal seam mining were determined by on-site " the underground - ground" combined microseismic monitoring and follow-up monitoring, and the development of overlying rock fracture under the large depth of burial was concluded. The fractures were mainly distributed in the upper part of the protective coal pillar on both sides of the working face, but less in the upper part of the working face, and primarily distributed in the protective coal pillar on the side of the working face and the adjacent mining area. To verify the accuracy of the conclusion, the overlying bedrock movement and deformation characteristics and the development process of the hydraulic fracture zone during coal seam mining were analyzed by simulating similar materials in the laboratory, using the monitored area as a prototype. The results show that the development height of the mining fracture zone obtained from microseismic monitoring is basically consistent with the simulation results of similar materials. The research finding have significant implications for the study of fracture distribution characteristics and the evolution law of mining overburden, and provide a foundation for scientific prevention and control of water damage on the roof. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural revitalization strategies are an important task in China. Currently, it is in the transition from poverty alleviation to rural revitalization. This paper proposes an evaluation index of rural revitalization and development potential based on a summary of previous studies. Together with the TOPSIS method, the corresponding coefficients of each index layer and the weight coefficient of the criterion layer were analyzed. This shows that during the process, the work direction of rural revitalization varies based on different revitalization types. In this study, diagnostic tools are utilized to conduct a potential development analysis of rural human settlements by identifying the main influencing factors for rural revitalization. In addition, an index system for improving rural human settlement strategies is established. Overall, it helps in defining the interventions of reducing and managing the risk of rural vitalization and evaluating the potential ability of rural revitalization. It also suggests that Anhui Province should focus on carrying out the comprehensive revitalization of rural areas according to the different functional positions of the countryside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water system management is a worldwide challenge, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. Ecological water conveyance projects aim to raise the groundwater table, thereby saving natural vegetation and curbing ecological deterioration. Since 2000, these projects have been implemented in the arid zone of northwest China, with generally successful outcomes. Taking a portion of the lower reaches of the Tarim River as the study area, this paper analyzes in detail the ecohydrological effects which have occurred since the launching of artificial water conveyance 20 years ago. The results show that the groundwater table in the upper, middle and lower segments of the Tarim River's lower reaches has been raised on average 4.06, 4.83 and 5.13 m, respectively, while the area of surface water bodies connected to those sections has expanded from 49.00 km2 to 498.54 km2. At the same time, Taitema Lake, which is the terminal lake of the Tarim River, has been revived and now boasts a water area of 455.27 km2. Other findings indicate that the surface ecological response is extremely sensitive and that the area of natural vegetation has expanded to 1423 km2. Furthermore, the vegetation coverage, vegetation index (NDVI), and Net Primary Productivity (NPP) have increased by 132 km2, 0.07 and 7.6 g C m−2, respectively, and the Simpson dominance, McIntosh evenness, and Margalef richness indices have risen by 0.33, 0.35 and 0.49, respectively, in the monitored sample sites. As well, the carbon sink area has expanded from 1.54% to 7.8%. Given the increasing intensity of the occurrence of extreme hydrological events and successive dry years, similar ecological water conveyance projects should be considered elsewhere in China and in other parts of the world. The water conveyance scheme has generally proven successful and should be optimized to enhance the benefits of ecological water conveyance under water resource constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an analysis of the formation mechanism, stability state and development trend, this paper focuses on monitoring key indicators, such as surface deformation and rainfall, to realize the early warning of landslides and provide some guidance for landslide disaster prevention and avoidance in the alpine mountainous area of Nangqian, Qinghai Province. The landslide of the Baima Elin Monastery has the topographic and geomorphological conditions of landslide formation and has the basic characteristics indicating that it can be influenced by rainfall and climate, so a landslide warning should be comprehensive. At the same time, the landslide is currently in an unstable state, and the seasonal freeze–thaw cycle will cause it to become more unstable. Based on macroscopic signs, it is predicted that the deformation of the Baima Elin Monastery landslide will continue to intensify without abatement, the stability will be further reduced after winter, developing in an unfavorable direction, and engineering measures should be taken as soon as possible to manage the landslide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To better implement the Strategy of Rural Revitalization, it is essential to characterize the rural settlements and understand their roles in the socio-environmental interactive system. This paper is hence aimed at achieving such a study using different spatial analysis such as kernel density and spatial autocorrelation (SA) and modeling approaches, e.g., simple and multiple linear regression analyses taking Jiangxi, a province in China as an example. Remote sensing, topographic and socioeconomic data were employed for this purpose. Through these analyses, it is found that the rural settlements in the study area appear to have a spatial distribution pattern of "dense north and sparse south" as an "F" type, and are quantitatively characterized as low elevations, flat terrain, high river and road densities, rich cultivated land resources and susceptible to the impact of urban radiation with a R2 of 0.520–0.748. Based on this understanding, a new inequality evaluation indicator of rural development, i.e., socio-environmental evaluation index (SEI), was developed. Areas with SEI lower than 0.40 should be given a priority to implement the revitalization strategy in the province. This index can also be extended to study of the imbalance of rural development in other regions and countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arid area is very sensitive to global warming and are extremely vulnerable to climate change. Moreover, the water resources system in the arid area is fragile and will undergo tremendous changes with climate change. Therefore, the interaction of climate and hydrology in arid area has an important impact on the formation of regional microclimate and hydrological changes. Daihai Lake is a typical closed inland lake in arid area of China, and a key area for ecological protection in North China. In this paper, WRF-Hydro model is used to simulate the climate hydrological coupling situation of Daihai Basin from 1980 to 2020, and the coupling results are verified and calibrated by meteorological statistics, runoff calculation and remote sensing analysis. Based on the synopsis of climate and hydrology in the past 40 years, the causes and future trends of the hydrological elements in Daihai Basin are analyzed. Through the analysis, it is found that the interannual variation of precipitation in Daihai Basin is sharp, with 401.75 mm as the average from 1980 to 1994; and drastic fluctuations from 1995 to 2011, with a difference of nearly 400 mm between the interannual maximum and minimum; From 2012 to 2020, the fluctuation is small. Although the interannual variation of evaporation fluctuated, it showed an upward trend with a slope of 8.855 mm/year. The annual average temperature showed an obvious upward trend with a slope of 0.040 °C/year. From 1980 to 2020, the inflow of Daihai Lake shows a downward trend; Since 2013, the runoff into the lake has tended to be flat. Climate change and human activities are the decisive factors leading to the change of water quantity in Daihai, among which human activities play a greater role. Cultivated land irrigation and industrial water use are highly correlated with the lake discharge, and these two factors have a great influence on the lake discharge. If the current agricultural and industrial water consumption does not increase, Daihai still has a lifespan of nearly 120 years. If human activities do not change and any protective measures are not taken in time, under the background of global climate change, the flow of the Daihai Lake into the lake will be reduced to zero in 2025, and the Daihai Lake will completely dry up in 2031–2033. The study of climate hydrological coupling of long time series in Daihai Basin can not only make up for the lack of runoff data, but also provide the basis for water resources management, disaster prevention and mitigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an experimental study to assess the behaviour of coal samples under tensile loadings to better understand the failure mechanisms and the interactions with the coal characteristics. A set of Brazilian splitting tests were carried out using disk specimens obtained from Tashan Coal Mine in China. The digital speckle correlation method and acoustic emission (AE) were used to capture the deformation localisation and AE characteristics of each specimen during the loading process. The precursor characteristics of AE and the failure mechanism are discussed. It was found that the entire loading process mainly consists of compaction, elastic and post-peak dropping stage without an obvious yielding stage. Two kinds of deformation localisation were observed: central symmetry and axis symmetry. The corresponding AE evolution patterns have different phases, including gradual rise, step rise, transient rise and steady rise. During the subcritical failure stage, AE counts demonstrate a "rapidly increasing + flatten" intermittent feature. The results provide a reference for a better understanding of the damage process of the brittle coal material and its application in ground control design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, more patients suffer from multiple chronic diseases. However, the hospital's existing chronic disease management is carried out according to the department. This means that a patient needs to go to more than one department for a chronic disease treatment. Therefore, this study proposes 6 dimensions (organizational management, medical service support, medical service, community alliance, self-management support, management information system) and 36 questions, to help evaluate the current chronic disease management system in China's large third-class hospitals. In this study, 143 survey samples from doctors and nurses were collected. A principal component analysis was used to extract three key elements of chronic disease management service delivery system (service management organization, management information system, medical core service). Then, multiple regression was used to establish the relationship model between the overall performance of the system and the main elements. Three key service nodes of the system (medical specialist support, patient tracking management and personalized intervention) were determined according to the weight of the regression model. The regression coefficients of the above three main elements show a similar impact on the overall performance of the system, but the key service nodes under each major element have relative differences, including medical specialist support, patient tracking management and personalized intervention. Finally, to establish a chronic disease management system with multiple departmental continuous care for chronic diseases, it is necessary to improve the chronic disease management system from three aspects of medical specialty support, patient tracking management and personalized intervention. This paper proposes corresponding improvement strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of industry has brought about the pollution of the atmospheric environment. Pollution is harmful to people's health. Realizing the real-time monitoring of atmospheric environmental quality parameters can improve the above-mentioned effects. China's existing environmental monitoring systems focus on the accuracy of the system hardware itself for assessment, lack of data analysis and forecasting and early warning, and cannot provide managers and ordinary people with decision-making and activity guidance. This paper develops an IPV6-based high-spatial–temporal precision air pollutant monitoring and early warning platform. The feasibility of the system is verified through networking tests, operation tests, and early warning tests. Through actual data analysis and comparison, it is concluded that the monitoring system has field feasibility, and the atmospheric environment monitoring for the target observation area has achieved the desired observation function. This system integrates GIS technology and B/S architecture to analyze changes in the regional environment to provide support for regional environmental air quality management. The forecast and early warning module constructed by combining the weight method of the influence of different input factors on the environmental quality index and minute-level observations can provide technical support for the government to improve the level of supervision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Titanium alloy has become a promising candidate material for oil country tubular goods (OCTGs) in harsh service environments owing to its high specific strength, low density, low elastic modulus, excellent toughness, excellent anti-fatigue and corrosion resistance. However, because the high-quality natural gas resources in China are mainly concentrated deep underground, titanium alloy tubing and casing will bear great external pressure loads underground, so the collapse strength of titanium alloy tubing and casing is very important for the safety of the string in the well. In this paper, a new collapse strength calculation model, the strength collapse criterion model (SCM), was proposed for titanium alloy tubing and casing. 35 different specifications of titanium alloy tubing and casing were selected for the full-scale collapse tests to verify the reliability of the established SCM model. Furthermore, the effect of different key parameters (such as strength, ovality, eccentricity and residual stress) on collapse strength of titanium alloy pipes were investigated systematically and compared with the same specifications of steel pipes. The strength collapse criterion model and analysis results can provide a technical reference for the design and use of titanium alloy OCTGs in the petroleum and natural gas industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China suffers from frequent large-scale earthquakes, posing a significant challenge to the development and integrity of its rural water supply system (RWSS). The earthquake resilience of water supply systems is understood to be a function of multifaceted factors, which are time- and space-dependent. Measuring the seismic-resilience of RWSS in China remains a challenge. This paper proposes a multi-stage comprehensive evaluation framework, focusing on the relationship between multi-dimensional factors and the seismic- resilience of RWSS in rural areas, across three stages: before, during and after earthquake events. This study comprises four steps: (1) Development of a multi-stage evaluation conceptual framework; (2) identification of seismic-resilience factors; (3) verification of the relationships between factors and stages; and (4) formation of the final evaluation framework. The relationship between multi-dimensional factors is confirmed by a method of triangulation through the quantitative analysis of PLS-SEM combined with the qualitative literature analysis, highlighting the causal approach of the resilience of RWSSs, so as to better understand the resilience state of each stage of disaster. Understanding these factors and their influence on the seismic capacity of RWSS will enable local authorities to recognize the existing advantages and disadvantages of these factors, so as to carry out better resilience practice in all stages of disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dithionite-citrate-bicarbonate (DCB) treatment is a classical method for removing iron oxides from soil. The DCB-induced dissolution effects on iron oxides are controversial. In this paper, samples from a typical loess-paleosol sequence in the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) and from other aeolian dust deposits in southern China were collected, and changes in the grain size composition and magnetic properties of the samples after DCB treatment were analyzed. The results show that the dissolution of iron oxides in loess-paleosol samples from the CLP is highly grain size dependent. In addition to completely dissolving nanometer-sized pedogenic iron oxides (< 0.2 μm), the standard DCB procedure can also dissolve submicron- and micron-sized aeolian iron oxides (0.2–6 μm). For these aeolian iron oxides, the submicron-sized (0.2–1 μm) iron oxides are sufficiently dissolved, and the solubility of the micron-sized (1–6 μm) iron oxides decreases with increasing particle size. The dissolution of > 6 μm aeolian iron oxides is negligible. DCB can neither separate pedogenic iron oxides from aeolian iron oxides nor selectively dissolve magnetite or maghemite. Although the total amount of dissolved iron oxides in the profiles from southern China is higher than that in the LC profile from northern China, the submicron- and micron-sized aeolian iron oxides in the latter are more easily dissolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the demand for health grows, the increase in medical waste generation is gradually outstripping the load. In this paper, we propose a deep learning approach for identification and classification of medical waste. Deep learning is currently the most popular technique in image classification, but its need for large amounts of data limits its usage. In this scenario, we propose a deep learning-based classification method, in which ResNeXt is a suitable deep neural network for practical implementation, followed by transfer learning methods to improve classification results. We pay special attention to the problem of medical waste classification, which needs to be solved urgently in the current environmental protection context. We applied the technique to 3480 images and succeeded in correctly identifying 8 kinds of medical waste with an accuracy of 97.2%; the average F1-score of five-fold cross-validation was 97.2%. This study provided a deep learning-based method for automatic detection and classification of 8 kinds of medical waste with high accuracy and average precision. We believe that the power of artificial intelligence could be harnessed in products that would facilitate medical waste classification and could become widely available throughout China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soil microbial community were usually reconsidered as a sensitive indicator in soil quality and soil environment change of paddy field. However, the effects of different tillage and crop residue incorporation managements on soil bacterial community under the double-cropping rice cropping system were still need to further investigated. Therefore, the impacts of different tillage and crop residue incorporation managements on soil bacterial community under the double-cropping rice cropping system in southern of China were studied by using phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs) profile method in the present paper. The experiment included four different tillage treatments: rotary tillage without crop residue input as a control (RTO), no-tillage with crop residue retention (NT), rotary tillage with crop residue incorporation (RT), and conventional tillage with crop residue incorporation (CT). Compared with RTO treatment, grain yield of rice with NT, RT and CT treatments increased by 1.21%, 3.13% and 6.40%, respectively. This results showed that soil aC15:0, C16:0, iC17:0, C19:0c9, 10 fatty acids with CT and RT treatments were higher than that of RTO treatment, while soil C16:1ω6c and C18:1ω9t fatty acids with NT treatment were higher than that of RTO treatment, respectively. Soil G+ and G− bacteria PLFAs contents with CT treatment were higher than that of NT, RT and RTO treatments, while the value of soil G+/G− bacteria PLFAs with NT treatment were higher than that of CT, RT and RTO treatments. This results indicated that Richness and McIntosh indices with CT treatment were significantly higher than that of RTO treatment. Principal component analysis (PCA) results showed that the first and second principal components (PC1 and PC2) were explained 93.2% of total variance with all tillage treatments. Except C12:0, C14:0 2OH and C18:2ω6, all unsaturated and cyclopropyl PLFAs contents were belong to PC1. PC1 and PC2 were explained 88.4% of total variance with all tillage treatments. There had significantly positive correlation between soil Richness, Shannon indices and soil PLFAs, G+ bacteria, G− bacteria, fungi contents. As a result, it were benefit practices for increasing soil bacterial community structure in the double-cropping rice field of southern China by combined application of rotary, conventional tillage with crop residue incorporation managements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep coal seam mining often leads to water resource loss due to bedrock water entering the workings of the mine and is discharged adjacent to the mining area. Using the geological conditions of the Maiduoshan coal mine, this paper applied a physical simulation experiment. The specified rock above the coal seam was hydraulically fractured in advance to form a postmining grouted fracture network, followed by grouting to construct a flexible isolation layer that blocked the infiltration of groundwater from the aquifer into the water-conducting fracture zone. Stress sensors, flow sensors and strata displacement monitoring technology were deployed inside the experimental material to study the spatial distribution characteristics and evolution law of the water-conducting fracture zone in the overlying rocks. Analysis of the water-conducting fracture zone development law, stress variation, overburden evolution characteristics, fracturing and grouting sequence of the flexible isolation layer and the effect of postmining grouting on the water barrier was conducted. These experiments verified the feasibility of fracture and grouting of the flexible isolation layer. These research results will provide practical guidance for the transition from the current safe and efficient mining methods to safe and green mining methods of deep coal mining in the western mining areas of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Isatis indigotica planting is the backbone of the medicinal industry in Hexi Oasis, Gansu. In order to solve the problems insufficient water resources and excessive application of nitrogen fertilizer in this area, this paper explored the irrigation and nitrogen levels that can meet the multiple goals of Isatis indigotica. The two-factor split-plot field experiment (2018‒2019) was conducted in Minle County, Gansu Province, China, which contains 9 treatments. There were three levels of irrigation water: W1(low), W2(medium), and W3(high). The soil moisture contents were 60–70%, 70–80%, and 80–90% of the field water-holding capacity, respectively. The nitrogen application rate was classified into three levels, N1(low), N2(medium) and N3(high), which were 150, 200 and 250 kg N/ha, respectively. The standard local irrigation water amount and nitrogen application rate corresponded to W3N3. The results showed that the yield of Isatis indigotica increased first and then decreased with the increase of irrigation amount and nitrogen application rate, the yield of W2N2 is 12.2–17.1% higher than that of W1N1, the yield of W3N3 was 12.1–17.5% lower than that of W2N2. Saving water and reducing nitrogen can improve the quality of Isatis indigotica, compared with W3N3, the indigo, indirubin, (R,S)-epigoitrin and polysaccharides of W2N2 increased by 4.5–5.9%, 2.7–3.1%, 5.2–6.0%, and 1.8–2.1%, respectively. With the increase of nitrogen application rate, the water use efficiency (WUE) first increased and then decreased, as the irrigation volume increases, WUE decreases. Compared with W3N3, the WUE of W2N2 increased by 24.3–27.2%. With the increase of water input, the nitrogen fertilizer use efficiency (NUE) first increased and then decreased, as the nitrogen application rate increases, NUE decreases. Compared with W3N3, the NUE of W2W2 increased by 31.8–34.5%. Therefore, W2N2 can improve quality and increase water and nitrogen utilization efficiency on the basis of ensuring yield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Loess presents very unique collapsible behaviour due to its special under-compactness, weak cementation and porousness. Many environmental issues and geological hazards including subgrade subsidences, slope collapses or failures, building cracking and so on are directly caused by the collapsible deformation of loess. Such collapsible behaviour may also severe accidents due to sinkholes, underground caves or loess gullies. Moreover, with the increasing demand of construction and development in the loess areas, an in-depth research towards effective evaluation of loess collapsibility is urged. Currently no studies have made attempts to explore a rather complete and representative area of Loess Plateau. This paper thus provides a novel approach on spatial modelling over Jin-Shan Loess Plateau as an extension to experimental studies. The in-lab experiment results have shown that shown that the porosity ratio and collapsibility follow a Gaussian distribution and a Gamma distribution respectively for both sampling areas: Yan'an and Lv Liang. This establishes the prior intuition towards spatial modelling which provides insights of potential influential factors on loess collapsibility and further sets a potential direction of the loess studies by considering an extra dimension of spatial correlation. Such modelling allows robust predictions taken into account of longitudinal information as well as structural parameters and basic physical properties. Water contents, dry densities, pressure levels and elevations of samples are determined to be statistically significant factors which affect the loess collapsibility. All regions in Lv Liang area are at risk of high collapsibility with average around 0.03, out of which roughly a third of them are predicted to be at high risk. Clear spatial patterns of higher expected collapsibility in the southwest comparing to the northeast are shown adjusting for influential covariates. On reference guidelines for potential policy makings, county-level regions with the highest expected loess collapsibility are also identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a generalized partially functional linear regression model is proposed and the asymptotic property of the proposed estimated coefficients in the model is established. Extensive simulation experiment results are consistent with the theoretical result. Finally, two application examples of the model are given. One is sleep quality study where we studied the effects of heart rate, percentage of sleep time on total sleep in bed, wake after sleep onset and number of wakening during the night on sleep quality in 22 healthy people. The other one is mortality rate where we studied the effects of air quality index, temperature, relative humidity, GDP per capita and the number of beds per thousand people on the mortality rate across 80 major cities in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To scientifically and reasonably evaluate air quality with a large amount of monitored data, this paper proposes a new evaluation method called ideal grey close function cluster correlation analysis (IGCFCCA). Taking the air quality in Ningxia Province, China, as an example, according to China's air quality standard, SO2, NO2, PM10, PM2.5 and O3 are selected as evaluation indexes to perform the evaluation. The results show that the air quality in this region in 2018 can be divided into three classifications, among which the relatively poor air quality in March, April and May is the first classification, the better air quality in August and September is the third classification, and the air quality in other months falls under the second classification. Correlation analysis is used to qualitatively determine that these three classifications correspond to first-level air quality in China's air quality standard, and the correlation degree, which is the distance between the three classifications and the first-level air quality, is quantitatively determined. Specifically, the correlation degrees of the first-classification, second-classification and third-classification of air quality are 0.674, 0.697 and 0.71, respectively. The research results indicate potential directions and objectives for air quality management to achieve scientific management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses a two-step approach to construct a multi-period double-difference model and introduces a quasi-natural experiment of the Broadband China pilot policy to investigate whether household financial market participation at the urban level is affected by the digital economy, which is significant for promoting Chinese households' shift from savings to investment and alleviating the long-standing problem of insufficient household financial market participation in China. In terms of direct impact, the digital economy increases the household financial market participation rate of urban residents by 3.26%, and increases the financial market participation rate of highly financially literate households by 2.14%; in terms of indirect impact, the development of the digital economy increases the total number of household smart Internet devices by 8.27%, and similarly increases the attention to household financial information by a significant 4.22%, which further positively influences the household financial market participation rate. This paper also evaluates the individual and regional differences of the digital economy on household financial market participation, and the estimated causal effect of the digital economy on household financial market participation is purer, which expands the scope of research on the digital economy and household financial market participation, and provides a certain reference basis and policy inspiration for the government to promote the construction of the digital economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is of much importance to clarify the impact of technological innovation on carbon emission intensity for the low-carbon transformation of China's economy. This study, based on the panel data of 30 Chinese provinces and municipalities from 2010 to 2020, measures and analyzes the carbon emission intensity and the level of technological innovation, establishing a spatial econometric model to study the spatial spillover effect and a panel threshold model to analyze the nonlinear influence of technological innovation level on carbon emission intensity. The findings are as follows: First, the overall carbon emission intensity in China shows a decreasing trend from 2010 to 2020, with the average dropping from 3.09 in 2010 to 1.98 in 2020; Second, the spatial autocorrelation results reveal that the level of technological innovation and carbon emission intensity in China are obviously aggregated in the global spatial distribution pattern. Third, the regression results of the spatial econometric model show that the direct effect of technological innovation on carbon emission intensity is significantly negative at the level of 1%, that is, the improvement of the technological innovation in a certain area has a significant inhibitory effect on carbon emission intensity. Fourth, based on the level of economic development, there is a significant three-threshold effect of the level of technological innovation on carbon emission intensity in China, and the influence of the level of technological innovation on carbon emission intensity varies in the direction of existence and coefficient values within different threshold intervals. As economic development reaches the third interval, the technological innovation level has the most significant inhibition on carbon emission intensity. These findings enriches the research of the nonlinear relationship between technological innovation and carbon emission intensity, clarifies the spatial spillover effect and threshold effect between among them, and provides inspiration for better promote the low-carbon transformation of economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart city construction represents an advanced stage of China's urbanisation process and plays an important role in promoting green economic growth and sustainable development. Propensity score matching is combined with the difference-in-difference method to analyse the data of 221 prefecture-level cities in China from 2006 to 2020 to assess the impact of smart city construction on urban green development. We found that smart city construction can significantly contribute to urban green development; this contribution has long-term benefits. Further analysis shows that smart city construction promotes urban green development via industrial structure and green technology innovation and that smart city construction has a significant positive spatial spillover effect, i.e., it promotes urban green development locally while significantly contributing to urban green development in neighbouring regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's Green Space System Planning (GSSP) research has gradually expanded from central urban areas to municipal and provincial scales in recent years. Besides, the research on the role of green space in the water environment has also attracted much attention. However, the study of green corridors usually ignored hydrological data, which widespread absence especially in the large area scale. And the scale of green corridor construction mainly focused on central urban areas. This paper took China's Fujian province as an example. Based on the DEM elevation data, the article identified blue corridors without hydrological data. In addition, the green corridors were determined based on the land use data. According to the green corridors and blue corridors protection, we identified the ecological networks and nodes by the network analysis method. The results showed that the blue corridors identified by DEM data were consistent with the hydrological status quo. The regional status of the identified ecological networks and nodes were basically in line with their characteristics, proving the value of the planning methods. Finally, based on the identification results, suggestions for Fujian's ecological networks and nodes are put forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coping with the outbreak of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), many countries have implemented public-health measures and movement restrictions to prevent the spread of the virus. However, the strict mobility control also brought about production stagnation and market disruption, resulting in a severe worldwide economic crisis. Quantifying the economic stagnation and predicting post-pandemic recovery are imperative issues. Besides, it is significant to examine how the impact of COVID-19 on economic activities varied with industries. As a reflection of enterprises' production output, high-frequency electricity-consumption data is an intuitive and effective tool for evaluating the economic impact of COVID-19 on different industries. In this paper, we quantify and compare economic impacts on the electricity consumption of different industries in eastern China. In order to address this problem, we conduct causal analysis using a difference-in-difference (DID) estimation model to analyze the effects of multi-phase public-health measures. Our model employs the electricity-consumption data ranging from 2019 to 2020 of 96 counties in the Eastern China region, which covers three main economic sectors and their 53 sub-sectors. The results indicate that electricity demand of all industries (other than information transfer industry) rebounded after the initial shock, and is back to pre-pandemic trends after easing the control measures at the end of May 2020. Emergency response, the combination of all countermeasures to COVID-19 in a certain period, affected all industries, and the higher level of emergency response with stricter movement control resulted in a greater decrease in electricity consumption and production. The pandemic outbreak has a negative-lag effect on industries, and there is greater resilience in industries that are less dependent on human mobility for economic production and activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terrestrial vegetation growth activity plays pivotal roles on regional development, which has attracted wide attention especially in water resources shortage areas. The paper investigated the spatiotemporal change characteristics of vegetation growth activity using satellite-based Vegetation Health Indices (VHIs) including smoothed Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (SMN), smoothed Brightness Temperature (SMT), Vegetation Condition Index (VCI), Temperature Condition Index (TCI) and VHI, based on 7-day composite temporal resolution and 16 km spatial resolution gridded data, and also estimated the drought conditions for the period of 1982–2016 in Jing-Jin-Ji region of China. The Niño 3.4 was used as a substitution of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) to reveal vegetation sensitivity to ENSO using correlation and wavelet analysis. Results indicated that monthly SMN has increased throughout the year especially during growing season, starts at approximate April and ends at about October. The correlation analysis between SMN and SMT, SMN and precipitation indicated that the vegetation growth was affected by joint effects of temperature and precipitation. The VCI during growing season was positive trends dominated and vice versa for TCI. The relationships between VHIs and drought make it possible to identify and quantify drought intensity, duration and affected area using different ranges of VHIs. Generally, the intensity and affected area of drought had mainly decreased, but the trends varied for different drought intensities, regions and time periods. Large-scale global climate anomalies such as Niño 3.4 exerted obvious impacts on the VHIs. The Niño 3.4 was mainly negatively correlated to VCI and positively correlated to TCI, and the spatial distributions of areas with positive (negative) correlation coefficients were mainly opposite. The linear relationships between Niño 3.4 and VHIs were in accordance with results of nonlinear relationships revealed using wavelet analysis. The results are of great importance to assess the vegetation growth activity, to monitor and quantify drought using satellite-based VHIs in Jing-Jin-Ji region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]