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In recent years, with the rapid development of the Internet industry, the publicity effect of paperbark walnuts has been substantially increased, and the consumption and demand of paperbark walnuts have been rising, and the output of paperbark walnuts in China has also increased year by year. This paper takes the panel data of the top three prefecture-level cities in each GDP ranking of five provinces in northwest China from 2012 to 2021 as the sample and combines the DEA model with Malmquist to evaluate and analyze the logistics efficiency of paper walnuts in northwest China. It is found that the overall logistics efficiency of paperback walnuts in Northwest China has been improved in recent years, but there are still areas that need to be improved, such as the factor distribution is not reasonable enough; the logistics efficiency of paperback walnuts in Northwest China from 2012 to 2021 is in a fluctuating state; the logistics efficiency of paperback walnuts in Shaanxi Province is better than the other provinces and is in the leading position; the improvement of technological progress has a key role in the total factor productivity improvement. As a result, this paper puts forward five specific suggestions based on the research results to help accelerate the improvement of paper walnut logistics efficiency in Northwest China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To solve the problem where the prediction formula for vibration velocity by dynamic compaction cannot fully reflect the elevation amplification effect, the elevation amplification effect of vibration velocity by dynamic compaction was studied theoretically, and the factors that influence the elevation amplification effect of vibration velocity by dynamic compaction were systematically analyzed in this paper. The elevation amplification effect of a loess high slope under dynamic compaction is coformed by the refraction and reflection superposition effect of dynamic compaction vibration waves at the soil layer interface and the diffraction effect of dynamic compaction vibration waves. The propagation path of dynamic compaction vibration waves in soil was analyzed, and the elevation amplification effect was verified theoretically. The related physical quantities that affected the dynamic compaction vibration velocity of a loess high slope were analyzed based on the dimensional analysis method, and the calculation and improved calculation formulas that considered the elevation amplification effect of dynamic compaction vibration velocity were obtained. The multiple regression analysis of the calculation and improved calculation formula that considered the elevation amplification effect of the dynamic compaction vibration velocity was carried out using MATLAB with engineering examples. The results show that the relative error of the two formulas is small when the elevation difference is small; when the elevation difference is large, the calculation accuracy of the improved calculation formula that considered the elevation difference is higher, and it is more in line with the actual situation. Finally, according to the selected maximum allowable value of the slope particle velocity (e.g., 1.5, 2.0, and 2.5 cm/s), the allowable safe distance for dynamic compaction on a loess high slope is proposed area of northern Shaanxi Province, China. The results of this paper could provide a reliable basis for predicting vibration velocity by dynamic compaction in the Loess Plateau area of northern Shaanxi Province, China. They might have a reference value for dynamic compaction vibration control under similar terrain environments with large elevation differences and provide a safe guide for a dynamic compaction construction site in the Loess Plateau area of northern Shaanxi Province, China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the rural areas of Northwest China, the utilization of clean and renewable energy is deemed a crucial measure for reducing building energy consumption and environmental pollutant emissions. This paper focuses on constructing a simulation platform for a solar-assisted air source heat pump heating system. A rural residential building in Yongshou County, Shaanxi Province, serves as an illustrative example. A novel flexible temperature control method with a feedback controller in sub-area and period is proposed in this paper, alongside the selection of three distinct objective functions aimed at optimizing the heating system. The simulation results indicate an average temperature of 17.0 °C throughout the heating cycle, with a peak temperature of 18.7 °C. Moreover, the solar fraction is measured at 25.11%, underscoring the significance of collector area and heat storage tank volume as primary factors in system design. The results also demonstrate that across various optimization objectives, the life cycle cost optimization scheme yields greater economic benefits, while the target building unit heating cost optimization scheme boasts the shortest static payback period and lowest unit heating cost. Conversely, the solar fraction optimization scheme stands out for its superior environmental benefits. These findings offer valuable insights for the design of heating systems tailored to diverse objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, with the rapid development of the Internet industry, the publicity effect of paperbark walnuts has been substantially increased, and the consumption and demand of paperbark walnuts have been rising, and the output of paperbark walnuts in China has also increased year by year. This paper takes the panel data of the top three prefecture-level cities in each GDP ranking of five provinces in northwest China from 2012 to 2021 as the sample and combines the DEA model with Malmquist to evaluate and analyze the logistics efficiency of paper walnuts in northwest China. It is found that the overall logistics efficiency of paperback walnuts in Northwest China has been improved in recent years, but there are still areas that need to be improved, such as the factor distribution is not reasonable enough; the logistics efficiency of paperback walnuts in Northwest China from 2012 to 2021 is in a fluctuating state; the logistics efficiency of paperback walnuts in Shaanxi Province is better than the other provinces and is in the leading position; the improvement of technological progress has a key role in the total factor productivity improvement. As a result, this paper puts forward five specific suggestions based on the research results to help accelerate the improvement of paper walnut logistics efficiency in Northwest China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Yaozhou Kiln is a famous ancient center for celadon production in China, located in present-day Shaanxi Province. While analyzing its olive-green celadon produced during the Song Dynasty, a common occurrence of brownish base (foot and bottom) was observed. This phenomenon can also be found in porcelain produced at other kilns in China and Vietnam. However, previous research has not systematically explored the coloration mechanism behind it. Through different analytical methods, coupled with reproduction firing experiments, this paper concludes that the brownish base is attributed to the diffusion of iron from the body and sand cushion into the thinly applied glaze on the base, as well as the crystallization formed by the combination of the sand cushion and the surface glaze. Factors influencing the depth of the brownish color include: (1) the iron content of the body; (2) the thickness of the base glaze; and (3) the sand cushion material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptive farming behavior is a key strategy for farmers to cope with climate change. This paper aims to explore the potential impacts of climate change information sources on farmers’ adaptive farming behavior. This paper clarifies the internal mechanism of three typical information sources, namely government departments, scientific research institutions and neighborhood communication, affecting farmers' adaptive farming behavior. Based on the sample data of 1200 farmers in the main wheat producing areas of Shaanxi Province, the theoretical conjecture is empirically tested. The results showed that the climate change information from government departments and scientific research institutions has a significant positive impact on farmers' adaptive farming behavior, but in the case of considering the three sources of information at the same time, the information source of scientific research institutions has the strongest positive impact on farmers' adaptive farming behavior. After farmers have access to climate change information exchanged by government departments, scientific research institutions and neighbors, their differences in climate change adaptive farming behavior mainly depend on their climate change cognition rather than subject trust factors. Formally organized climate change information represented by government departments and scientific research institutions has a more significant positive impact on farmers' adaptive farming behavior, but this impact depends largely on whether the information obtained by farmers can improve their climate change awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared with the stock-land exploitation of developed regions in eastern China, the development path in the western regions still relies on land expansion. Among them, Shaanxi stands out as an early-developing region with the highest comprehensive social and economic development level in the west, presenting a more significant and typical phenomenon of urban expansion. This paper utilizes remote sensing image data and socioeconomic statistical data, employing mathematical and statistical analysis methods to examine the types and patterns of urban spatial expansion in Shaanxi over multiple years. It also summarizes the laws of expansion and subsequently delves into the driving factors of the spatial expansion. The result shows that the important driving factors of urban expansion in Shaanxi include natural geographical conditions, the economic development basis, the development of new towns and new areas, the drive of large-scale projects, and the guidance of urban and rural planning. The differences in driving factors between the east and west can be explained by the stages of regional development and the effects of administrative boundaries. This research aims to provide localized insights into the rational regulation of urban spatial evolution and efficient land use in similar regions and latedeveloping regions in western China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agro-pastoral ecotone of northern China is the prominent area for agricultural production, but it is also the most typical ecological fragile area with frequent drought disasters. Taking Yulin City at Shaanxi Province in China as the case area, the paper aims to investigate the spatio-temporal changes of agricultural vulnerability to drought in China's agro-pastoral ecotone in the period 2000 to 2020. The results show that: 1) the agricultural vulnerability to drought in Yulin City has shifted from high vulnerability in the period 2000–2010 to low vulnerability in the period 2011–2020. 2) There exist obvious spatio-temporal differences of the agricultural vulnerability to drought in Yulin City during the research period. 3) Four sensitive events and 14 resilient events were identified in the research and the crops of Yulin had become more resilient to drought. Finally, the paper put forward with policy implications to make adaptive strategies of agriculture to climate change in China's agro-pastoral ecotone in the future, e.g., carrying out agricultural zoning based on agricultural production conditions, intensifying the construction of disaster prevention and relief system, and integrating with modern agricultural technology to develop new type agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of rural tourism destinations in China is confronting multiple issues, including blind expansion and a repetitive developmental model, causing the sector to enter a vicious competition cycle. The perception among tourists of rural tourism destinations, and their willingness to revisit places will provide insights for service providers that will enable them to form better strategies to stand out in the fiercely competitive market. Understanding tourist perception will enable providers to contribute to the construction of rural tourist destinations. Taking Ma Wei Yi Folk Culture Village as a case study, this paper combines the development status of rural tourism in Ma Wei Yi, obtains first-hand data through questionnaire interviews, verifies the research hypothesis, and uses Pearson coefficient to carry out correlation analysis. The paper concluded that tourists' rural perception has a positive and strong impact on their willingness to revisit, and its factors have different impacts. According to the empirical results, tourist destination providers should pay attention to rural perceptual development in their follow-up development and operation processes. They can effectively attract tourists to visit multiple times, enhance tourist's sense of enjoyable experience, and achieve sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an essential way to enhance farmers’ self-development ability, off-farm employment plays an indispensable role in farmers’ multidimensional poverty reduction in many countries. Employing a survey of 1926 farmers in five provinces of the Yellow River Basin in China, this paper examined the multi-dimensional poverty reduction effect of off-farm employment and the heterogeneous influence of different dimensions of off-farm employment (modes, levels, distances and frequency). The results showed that (1) although absolute poverty in the income dimension was largely eliminated in the Yellow River Basin, the poverty in social resources, transportation facilities, employment security were the key bottlenecks restricting farmers’ self-development. (2) The province with the best multidimensional poverty reduction effect for non-farm employment was Shaanxi, with the largest contribution to employment security. (3) Improving off-farm employment level, distance and time can significantly alleviate the multi-dimensional poverty of farmers. Therefore, to lessen the multi-dimensional poverty of farmers in the Yellow River Basin, it is necessary to focus on the governance of multi-dimensional key poverty-stricken areas, such as the middle and upper courses of the Yellow River, adopting multidimensional poverty alleviation strategy of off-farm employment according to local conditions, working on the farmers’ deficiencies in social resources, mobility, employment security, and deepening the effect of off-farm employment on benefiting farmers and helping the poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural nonpoint source (NPS) pollution is still the main factor that affects the quality of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. Starting from the study of the mechanism of NPS, taking the Yangliu small watershed in the Shaanxi section of the Hanjiang River Basin in China as an example, and based on the combination of measured data and models, this paper focused on the analysis of the characteristics of NPS between the runoff plot and small watershed. The results showed that with the rainfall and surface runoff, the nutrient concentration increased first and then decreased, and the highest occurred in the first half of the whole rainfall process. Rainfall, maximum rainfall intensity at 60 min (I60), runoff, and suspended sediment (SS) were all related to nutrient diversion loss. However, the correlation among rainfall, I60 , and runoff and the content of various forms of nitrogen and phosphorus were significantly higher than that of SS. Crop interplanting and terrace planting could play a significant role in reducing sediment and nutrient loss. For the analysis of NPS pollution in small watersheds, the time-variant gain model (TVGM) was used to simulate the missing flow in some months of the basin during the flood season. The average concentration method was used to calculate the NPS pollution load in flood season. It was found that total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) accounted for more than 92% and 69%, respectively. This study is expected to provide scientific basis for NPS pollution control in areas both regionally and worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional historical buildings carry the culture and spirit of China for thousands of years and have a unique charm that modern buildings do not have. However, traditional historical buildings have gradually declined over time, and their restoration not only takes time and materials but also causes certain harm to the environment. Therefore, this paper has aimed to explore how traditional historical buildings can develop in a sustainable and ecologically adaptive image in modern times. For traditional historical buildings, this paper has taken traditional cave dwellings in northern Shaanxi as an example to analyze their ecological adaptability, and based on the analysis results, traditional cave dwellings have been transformed. Specifically, this paper has taken the comfort of residential houses as the evaluation standard and has selected the thermal stability of the building and the energy consumption of heat supply as indicators to compare and analyze the traditional cave dwellings and the renovated cave dwellings. The experimental results of this paper have found that the traditional historical buildings are the crystallization of the wisdom of the ancients for thousands of years. However, due to the limitation of technology, the lighting and thermal stability of traditional cave dwellings are not high. After scientific design, the lighting and thermal stability of the transformed cave are 100% and 30% higher than those of the traditional cave, respectively, and the heating energy consumption is reduced by 50%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an important resource for human survival, soil plays an important role in maintaining productivity, environmental quality, animal and plant health, etc. Soil quality evaluation, as a decision-making tool to improve understanding of soil quality, can effectively indicate soil status. Mu Us sandy land of Daji Khan in northern Shaanxi Province is one of the serious desertification areas in China. The phenomenon of soil erosion and ecological deterioration is extremely serious. Therefore, it is urgent to strengthen to pay attention to the research of Mu Us sandy land, to help the restoration of damaged soil, and to build a powerful soil ecosystem. In this paper, the soil quality in the process of development and utilization of the Mu Us sandy land was evaluated based on fuzzy sets for the purpose of sustainable utilization of compound soil. Based on soil structure and soil fertility, 16 evaluation indexes of soil quality in Mu Us sandy land were screened, and then the evaluation index system of soil quality was constructed. The fuzzy multi-objective decision-making model based on fuzzy sets was used to comprehensively evaluate the soil quality from 2013 to 2019. We calculated that the year-on-year growth rates of soil quality from 2013 to 2019 are 13.56, 0.16, 12.81, 33.84, 9.68, and 14.80%, respectively. The results showed that the overall soil quality in the study area showed a trend of increasing year by year, and the year-on-year increase was the largest in 2017. Meanwhile, the reasons for the sudden increase in soil quality in typical years were analyzed. The results showed that the dominant factor of this phenomenon was the comprehensive influence of soil fertility. Furthermore, the relationship between soil fertility and cultivated horizon in typical years was analyzed one by one, and the specific factors affecting soil fertility were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The higher contribution of traffic delay to environmental impacts is urging the highway agencies to take work zone management into the maintenance schemes decision-making. Aiming to understand the role of work zone management in user CO2 emissions reduction, this paper firstly developed a practical methodological framework of traffic delay-related CO2 emissions caused by highway maintenance based on a popular life cycle user cost analysis approach in regard of the microscopic vehicle operation analysis. The method was applied in an actual freeway flexible pavement with 15-year design life in Shaanxi Province, China, covering three types of preventive maintenance, correction maintenance, and rehabilitation. In addition, the impacts of key inputs of proposed method on work zone user CO2 emissions results were checked. The results show that traffic delay attributes to 29.4% of total CO2 emissions of the life cycle of highway pavement maintenance, and 51.8% of work zone user CO2 emissions result from preventive maintenance, especially from micro vehicle operations including speed change and queue near work zone (62% of total work zone user CO2 emissions). The work zone management alternative strategies related to less traffic volume or higher highway capacity including vehicle type limitation and the limited work zone speed have an advantage in reducing the work zone CO2 emissions over changing work zone length or work zone timing. The findings in this paper may present a useful tool and reference for robustly supporting the decision-making on highway maintenance carbon mitigation in work zone traffic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When stratified mining is used in extrathick coal seam, the gas emission in goaf of the first mining face is large, and it is easy to cause gas overrun in the upper corner during the rapid advance of the working face, which seriously affects the safe and efficient mining of the working face. The gas drainage in goaf by roof high-drainage way is the fundamental solution to solve the gas overrun in the upper corner, and the reasonable layout position is related to the drainage effect of high-drainage way. In this paper, 206 slicing mining face of Tingnan Coal Mine in Binchang Mining Area of Shaanxi Province is taken as an engineering example. Theoretical analysis, fluent numerical simulation, and field verification are used to study and analyze the reasonable layout position and drainage effect of roof high-drainage way in working face. The research results show that the reasonable position of the high-drainage way layout is the horizontal distance of 15 m, the vertical distance of 21 m and 26 m, the horizontal distance of 25 m, and the vertical distance of 21 m and 26 m. In the layout position of 15 m horizontal and 21 m vertical, the gas drainage volume of high-drainage roadway is 16.4~23.3 m3/min, and the average gas drainage volume is 20.45 m3/min. The gas drainage volume of high-drainage roadway accounts for 52.1% of the gas emission, which achieves the expected effect and realizes the safety requirements of gas prevention and control in working face. The research results of this paper can provide guidance for the layout of high-drainage way in Tingnan Coal Mine and adjacent mines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, northern China has suffered from the severe haze in autumn and winter, a phenomenon to which coal-fired heating appliances contribute significantly. To reduce pollution and achieve sustainability in the electricity industry, government departments have proposed the "Electricity Substitution" strategy, and the State Grid Corporation has also proposed the "coal-to-electricity" transformation movement. Against this background, our study aims to identify the impact factors of electricity consumption behavior among customers who have completed this transformation. Based on customers' monthly electricity consumption data in Shaanxi from 2017 to 2019 and on-site survey results, this paper constructs a multiple regression model and utilizes SPSS25.0 to analyze the relationship between residents' electricity consumption and related factors. The research results revealed that after the implementation of the "coal-to-electricity" transformation, residential customers' electricity consumption tended to rise. Consequently, winter temperature, appliance power, and heating area negatively correlate with residents' electricity consumption. Simultaneously, customers' habits, subsidies, and electricity pricing positively correlate with residents' electricity consumption. Finally, this paper offers some practical management suggestions for power companies based on the analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shortage of available water resources and climate change are major factors affecting agricultural irrigation. In order to improve the irrigation water use efficiency, it is necessary to predict the water requirements for crops in advance. Reference evapotranspiration (ETo) is a hypothetical standard reference crop evapotranspiration, many types of artificial intelligence models have been applied to predict ETo; However, there are still few in the literature regarding the application of hybrid models for deep learning model parameters optimization. This paper proposes two hybrid models based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) and long-short-term memory (LSTM) neural network, used to predict ETo at the four climate stations, Shaanxi province, China. These two hybrid models were trained using 40 years of historical data, and the PSO was used to optimize the hyperparameters in the LSTM network. We applied the optimized model to predict the daily ETo in 2019 under different datasets, the result showed that the optimized model has good prediction accuracy. The optimized hybrid models can help farmers and irrigation planners to make plan earlier and precisely, and can provide valuable information to improve tasks such as irrigation planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Toll-gates are crucial points of management and key congestion bottleneck for the freeway. In order to avoid traffic deterioration and alleviate traffic congestion in advance, it is necessary to predict and evaluate the congestion in toll-gates scattering in large-scale region of freeway network. In this paper, traffic volume and operational delay time are selected from various traffic indicators to evaluate congestion considering the particular characteristics of the traffic flow within the toll-gate area. The congestion prediction method is designed including two modules: a deep learning (DL) prediction and a fuzzy evaluation. We propose a modified deep learning method based on graph convolutional network (GCN) structure in the fusion of dilated causal mechanism and optimize the method for spatial feature extraction by constructing a new adjacency matrix. This new AI network could process spatiotemporal information of traffic volume and operational delay time, that extracted from large-scaled toll-gates spontaneously, and predict key indicators in 15/30/60 min future time. The evaluation module is proposed based on these predicted results. Then, fuzzy C-means algorithm (FCM) is further modified by determining coupling weight for these two key indicators to detect congestion state. Original traffic data are obtained from the current 186 toll-gates served on the freeway network in Shaanxi Province, China. Experimental tests are carried out based on historical data of four months after preprogressing. The comparative tests show the proposed CPT-DF (congestion prediction on toll-gates using deep learning and fuzzy evaluation) outperforms the current-used other models by 6-15%. The successful prediction could extend to the real-time prediction and early warning of traffic congestion in the toll system to improve the intelligent level of traffic emergency management and guidance on the key road of disasters to some extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crystal-facet dependent CeO 2 results different charge transferring pathways and activities. [Display omitted] • With richer social capital, peasants are more willing to recycle garbage. • Social engagement becomes an important factor influencing garbage recycling. • Class identity had a significantly positive effect on the garbage recycling. • Class identity moderates the relationship between social capital and HGSR. Based on the literature review, this paper analyzes how social capital and class identity influence peasants' behavior in household garbage sorting and recycling. We carried out field study in Shaanxi Province, China and collected 686 valid questionnaires as basic data for this study. The empirical results of Logit regression model indicate that social network, social prestige and social engagement are all positively correlated with household garbage sorting and recycling behavior of peasants, and class identity is also positively correlated with household garbage sorting and recycling behavior of peasants. The results also show that smaller families are more likely to carry out garbage sorting and recycling. In addition, we also found that class identity moderates the relationship between social trust and household garbage sorting and recycling behavior of peasants. Finally, the theoretical and practical significance, limitations of the study, and future directions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predation is one of the most important extrinsic factors acting upon animal populations and is a strong selective force in the evolution of form and function. Understanding the impact of predation on bird population dynamics is crucial for understanding the predation pressure of bird populations and implementing conservation strategies, especially for threatened or endemic bird species. In this paper, we sorted the predation events in the wild Crested Ibis population in Yangxian County, Shaanxi Province, from 1981 to 2021 and in the reintroduced Crested Ibis population in Ningshan from 2008 to 2021. With the use of age‐classified Leslie matrix models to simulate Crested Ibis populations under different predation pressures, the random population growth rate was estimated, and the impact of predation on population dynamics was evaluated. The results showed that snakes and raptors were the main predators of Crested Ibis in the wild and reintroduced populations, and the number of dead individuals was unevenly distributed within the three age classes in both the wild population (df = 2, χ2 = 13.236, p < 0.05) and reintroduced population (df = 2, χ2 = 49.273, p < 0.01). Predation caused a reduction in the potential annual population growth rate of 2.37% (confidence interval [CI]: 2.29–2.45) in the wild population and 2.88% (CI: 2.82–2.94) in the reintroduced population. The overall average growth rates of the wild and reintroduced populations derived from population model simulations were 12.84 and 18.13%, respectively, which suggested that the wild and reintroduced populations was increasing under the current predation pressure and that the impact of predation on the population was acceptable and sustainable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of urbanization, fire risk factors have increased greatly, indicating a higher requirement for urban firefighting security. Fire rescue capabilities can be effectively improved by the scientific layout of fire stations, and therefore, the optimal spatial arrangement of fire stations has practical implications for urban safety. In this paper, a method for planning the locations of urban fire stations is presented, taking into account the fire risk points of interest (POIs) data, road networks and fire station planning principles. The combined model method is validated against the nearest facility point model, and the service area model is proposed for the coverage of POIs and regional areas of planned new sites. The efficacy of the model is demonstrated through an improvement in the coverage of crosspoints of the regional area and points of interest (POIs), with increases of 10.20% and 12.43%, respectively. We applied the combined model method to Fengdong New Town, Shaanxi Province, China. A total of 11 new potential sites were proposed to improve the efficiency of spatial coverage, and subsequently, the coverage rate of the POIs and regional area reached 97.66% and 84.80%, respectively. This study provides application guidelines for the decision-making of fire services and the allocation of firefighting resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fluctuation and uncertainty of the electricity load bring challenges to load forecasting. Traditional point forecasting struggles to avoid errors, and pure interval forecasting may cause the problem of too wide an interval. In this paper, we combine point forecasting and interval forecasting and propose a point-interval forecasting model for electricity load based on regular fluctuation component extraction. Firstly, the variational modal decomposition is combined with the sample entropy to decompose the original load series into a strong regular fluctuation component and a weak regular fluctuation component. Then, the gate recurrent unit neural network is used for point forecasting of the strong regular fluctuation component, and the support vector quantile regression model is used for interval forecasting of the weak regular fluctuation component, and the results are accumulated to obtain the final forecasting intervals. Finally, experiments were conducted using electricity load data from two regional electricity grids in Shaanxi Province, China. The results show that combining the idea of point interval, point forecasting, and interval forecasting for components with different fluctuation regularity can effectively reduce the forecasting interval width while having high accuracy. The proposed model has higher forecasting accuracy and smaller mean interval width at various confidence levels compared to the commonly used models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are a variety of land cover products generated from remote-sensing images. However, misclassification errors in individual products and inconsistency among them undermine their utilities for research and other applications. While it is worth developing advanced pattern classifiers and utilizing the images of finer spatial, temporal, and/or spectral resolution for increased classification accuracy, it is also sensible to increase map classification accuracy through effective map fusion by exploiting complementarity among multi-source products over a study area. This paper presents a novel fusion method that works by weighting multiple source products based on their map-reference cover type transition probabilities, which are predicted using random forest for individual map pixels. The proposed method was tested and compared with three alternatives: consensus-based weighting, random forest, and locally modified Dempster–Shafer evidential reasoning, in a case study, over Shaanxi province, China. For this case study, three types of land cover products (GlobeLand30, FROM-GLC, and GLC_FCS30) of two nominal years (2010 and 2020) were used as the base maps for fusion. Reference sample data for model training and testing were collected following a robust stratified random sampling design that allows for augmenting reference data flexibly. Accuracy assessments show that overall accuracies (OAs) of fused land cover maps have been improved (1~9% in OAs), with the proposed method outperforming other methods by 2~8% in OAs. The proposed method does not need to have the base products' classification systems harmonized beforehand, thus being robust and highly recommendable for fusing land cover products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the BP neural network has poor performance and unstable learning rate in the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm of photovoltaic (PV) system, an adaptive particle swarm optimization BP neural network-fuzzy control PV MPPT algorithm (APSO-BP-FLC) is proposed in this paper. First, the inertia weight, learning factor and acceleration factor of particle swarm optimization (PSO) are self-updating, and the mutation operator is adopted to initialize the position of each particle. Second, the APSO algorithm is used to update the optimal weight threshold of BP neural network, where the input layer is irradiation and temperature, and the output layer is the maximum power point (MPP) voltage. Third, the fuzzy logical control (FLC) is employed to adjust the duty cycle of Boost converter. The inputs of FLC are voltage difference and duty ratio D(n-1) at the previous time, and the output is duty ratio D(n). Moreover, D(n-1) is optimized by |dP/dU| to improve the search range of FLC. The irradiation, temperature and MPP voltage of PV cell are adopted as the datasets for simulation in a city in Shaanxi province, China. Simulation results show that the proposed MPPT algorithm is superior to the APSO-BP, FLC and perturbation and observation (P&O) algorithm with tracking performance, steady state oscillation rate and efficiency. In addition, the efficiency of proposed MPPT algorithm is improved by 0.37%, 6.2%, and 6.8% as compared to APSO-BP, FLC and P&O algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the continuous construction of transportation infrastructure, intersection nodes have been increasing rapidly, bringing growing numbers of tunnel- and exit-adjacent sections (TEAS) in mountain expressways in China. With the complex variation in the surrounding environment, drivers always face congestion and confusion on tunnel and the exit connecting sections (TECS) without adequate length, meanwhile excessively long TECS create detours. To better provide a sustainable design strategy for TEAS, based on a certain section of expressway in Shaanxi, China, this paper establishes a theoretical calculation model through analysis. The characteristics of traffic flow and drivers' light adaptation at tunnel exit are obtained through data collection and driving tests, and the length requirements of the tunnel and exit connecting sections (TECS) are discussed. A VISSIM microscopic simulation model is also built under various design schemes and entropy-based multi-attribute decision making (EBMADM) is used to objectively calculate the weights of the four selected evaluation indexes. Then, the design schemes of the TECS with different lengths have been comprehensively evaluated. The results show the match between the evaluation results of EBMADM with theoretical calculations under existing traffic conditions, which proves the rationality of EBMADM in such problems. For more cases, the results of the EBMADM evaluation show a positive correlation between the length of TECS for the best performing design scheme with traffic volume and diverging ratio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world's key renewable power markets are generally challenged by wind and solar power curtailment. Research on the influencing factors of curtailment improvement can provide a reference for the further penetration of renewable energy (RE) into the power system. Based on the logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) method, this paper analyzes the factors influencing the wind and solar power consumption rate in China from 2015 to 2018, and four typical provinces are discussed in detail. By decomposing the consumption rate into six factors (transmission structure, generation proportion, power self-sufficiency, resource development, resource utilization, and power consumption), and focusing on the transmission structure factors, this paper further clarifies the contributions of local use, ultra-high-voltage (UHV) transmission, and conventional transmission to the improvement of curtailment. The results reveal the following. (1) At the national level, the power mixing effect and the resource development effect have played major roles in the change of the consumption rate, but the influences of these two effects have been decreasing. (2) The UHV power lines provide a robust resource for the inter-provincial deployment of renewable power (such as the RE power transfer in Inner Mongolia and Gansu), but the role of UHV transmission has not yet been fully utilized. (3) The impact of the electricity consumption effect on renewable power consumption is increasing year by year, but the local consumption capacity remains insufficient (both at the national level and in the four typical provinces analyzed), so it is necessary to further increase the share of renewable electricity in UHV power transmission and the local consumption capacity. (4) The expanding development of wind and solar power may be the reason for the curtailment in Shaanxi, and a reasonable renewable power development plan must be further formulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Study Question: Are there temporal trends of sperm concentration (SC) and total sperm count (TSC) in Chinese healthy males from 1981 to 2019?Summary Answer: Our result indicated a temporal decrease in SC and TSC among 327 373 healthy Chinese men in the recent four decades.What Is Known Already: A review of 61 papers reported a temporal decline in SC and TSC from 1938 to 1990. This trend was later confirmed by a systematic review of 185 published papers from 1981 to 2013. However, the majority of the included individuals were from western countries. In China, whether SC and TSC have declined remains controversial.Study Design, Size, Duration: This systematic review of published articles used data extracted from Pubmed, Science Direct, Embase, China-National-Knowledge-Infrastructure (CNKI) and Wanfang Data to assess changes in SC and TSC in China from 1981 to 2019.Participants/materials, Setting, Methods: A total of 111 studies including 327 373 individuals who provided semen samples from 1981 to 2019 were extracted for the present analysis. Study selection and data extraction were performed by two independent researchers. The trends in SC and TSC were analysed using liner-regression and meta-regression before and after adjusting for potential covariates. Moreover, subgroups, categorised based on geographic region, fertility status or recruitment source, were also analysed.Main Results and the Role Of Chance: SC declined significantly (slope liner-regression = -0.748 million/ml/year; P = 0.005; slope meta-regression = -0.824 million/ml/year; P < 0.001) between 1981 and 2019 in China. Trends for TSC was similar to that for SC (slope liner-regression = -2.073 million/year; P = 0.032; slope meta-regression = -2.188 million/year; P = 0.003). In subgroup meta-regression analyses, males with definite fertility had continuous declines in SC (slope northern group=-2.268, P = 0.009; slope southern group=-1.014, P = 0.009) and TSC (slope northern group=-9.675, P = 0.010; slope southern group=-3.215, P = 0.042). However, in the unselected group, where fertility status was unknown, the obvious downward trend in SC was only seen in males from Northern regions (slope = -0.836, P = 0.003). Another subgroup analysis demonstrated that obvious decreases in SC (slope = -1.432, P < 0.001) and TSC (slope=-4.315, P = 0.001) were only seen in volunteer groups but not in pre-pregnancy examination groups and other recruitment groups. The results changed minimally in multiple sensitivity analyses.Limitations, Reasons For Caution: The validity of the meta-analysis results was limited mainly by the quality of the included studies. Additionally, our study spanned many decades and the recommended criteria for some semen parameter assessments have significantly changed, which may bring about some unavoidable bias. Moreover, the data remain insufficient especially in some provinces of China.Wider Implications Of the Findings: The present study is the first study to report significant decreases in SC and TSC in 327 373 healthy Chinese men between 1981 and 2019, indicating a serious reproductive health warning. Further studies on the causes of the declines are urgently needed.Study Funding/competing Interest(s): D.Z. is supported by the National Natural Science Funding of China, Natural Science Funding of Shaanxi Province, Science Funding of Health Department, Shaanxi Province, Fundamental Research Funds for the Central University and the Project of Independent Innovative Experiment for Postgraduates in Medicine in Xi'an Jiaotong University. The authors have no conflicts of interests to declare.Trial Registration Number: N/A. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because the penetration depth of electromagnetic waves in forests is large in the longer wavelength band, most traditional forest height estimation methods are carried out using polarimetric interferometry synthetic aperture radar (PolInSAR) data of the L or P band, and the estimation method is a three-stage method based on the random volume over ground (RVoG) model. For X-band electromagnetic waves, the penetration depth of radar waves in forests is limited, so the traditional forest height estimation method is no longer applicable. In view of the above problems, in this paper we propose a new forest height estimation strategy for airborne X-band PolInSAR data. Firstly, the sub-view interferometric SAR pairs obtained via frequency segmentation (FS) in the Doppler domain are used to extend the polarimetric interferometry coherence coefficient (PolInCC) range of the original SAR image under different polarization states, so as to obtain the accurate ground phase. For the determination of the effective volume coherence coefficient (VCC), part of the fitting line of the extended-range PolInCC distribution that is intercepted by the fixed extinction coherence coefficient curve (FECCC) of the fixed range is averaged to obtain the accurate effective VCC. Finally, the high-precision forest canopy height in the X-band is estimated using the effective VCC with the ground phase removed in the look-up table (LUT). The effectiveness of the proposed method was verified using airborne-measured data obtained in Shaanxi Province, China. The comparison was carried out using different strategies, in which we substituted one step of the process with the conventional method. The results indicated that our new strategy could reduce the root mean square error (RMSE) of the predicted canopy height vastly to 1.02 m, with a lower estimation height error of 12.86%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Borehole cataloguing is an important task in geological drilling. Traditional manual cataloguing provides the stratification of underground boreholes based on changes in core lithology. This paper proposes a novel borehole cataloguing method using a drilling process monitoring (DPM) system. This DPM cataloguing method stratifies a borehole according to the drilling speed through the rock. A 102 m borehole was drilled and cored in Baota district, Yan'an city, Shaanxi Province, China. The rock-breaking response parameters of the drill bit displacement, drill rod rotation speed and inlet pipe and outlet pipe oil pressures were monitored throughout the drilling process, and the drilling depth-penetration rate curve during the net drilling process was obtained. The changes in drilling speed show that the DPM cataloguing can identify the depths of the layer interfaces of the borehole and describe the stratification. The interface depth values obtained by DPM have little difference from the interface depth values obtained by manual cataloguing, and the errors are between −0.04% and 4.29%. From the DPM stratification results, the engineering quality evaluation of the rock mass can be realized without coring. DPM is fast, convenient, accurate, can greatly improve the efficiency of existing catalogues, and can be applied to scientific research in any underground space. DPM is a measurement-while-drilling technology. According to DPM data, the operating state of a drilling rig and the parameter changes while drilling can be obtained in situ and in real time throughout the drilling process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solar composting chamber is an important way for disposing rural domestic waste locally, which requires the participation of farmers. However, few studies have explored farmers' cooperation preference for solar composting chamber, even without considering farmers' heterogeneity. Therefore, this paper divides the farmers into three types: economic, social, and cognitive dominant. The Choice Experiment method is used to investigate all types of farmers' cooperation preference and willingness to accept subsides for the solar composting chamber, using the survey data of China's Shaanxi province. The findings show that social-dominant farmers favor supply models that incorporate government subsidies, more participating farmers, and technical support, while economic-dominant farmers prefer models that include closer construction distances in addition to those. In contrast, cognitive-dominant farmers prefer models with more withdrawal flexibility in addition to the aforementioned factors. Furthermore, economic-dominant farmers have the lowest value of willingness to accept subsidies, i.e., 10,923 dollars, while cognitive-dominant farmers have the highest, i.e., 22,197 dollars. According to the results, policy implications are suggested, including incentivizing farmers' participation by enhancing government subsidies and technical support, and developing diverse cooperation models. • Farmers play an important role in supply of solar composting chamber. • The farmers are categorized into economic, social, and cognitive types. • Choice experimental is used to measure all types of farmers' cooperation preference. • The farmers' willingness to accept subsidies are calculated. • Supply model with subsidies, participants and technical support are most favored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plowing refers to the phenomenon by which a landslide displaces and pushes the path material forward. Despite its importance in shaping the dynamics of many rapid flow-like loess landslides, the mechanism of plowing is not fully understood. Therefore, this paper presents an improved numerical model based on the material point method (MPM). This model takes into account the interactions between the landslide mass and the path material. The reliability of this model was validated by simulating two granular column collapse experiments involving interaction with an erodible mass. The model was then applied to analyze the plowing dynamics of the Ximiaodian loess landslide in Jingyang County, Shaanxi Province, China. A series of well-designed simulations were conducted to investigate this specific landslide event, contributing to a deeper understanding of the plowing phenomenon in loess landslides. The simulation results show that our model can satisfactorily simulate the plowing process of the Ximiaodian landslide. The plowing process of a rapid-flow loess landslide is proposed to consist of four distinct stages: 1) the collision stage, when the landslide strikes the terrace, resulting in the bending of its strata; 2) the shear failure stage, characterized by significant plastic shear deformation within the bent strata, resulting in the formation of multiple shear failure planes; 3) the steady plowing stage, during which the deformation structure in the affected terrace stabilizes and plowing continues in a steady pattern; and 4) the stopping stage, when the propagation of the disturbed terrace gradually stops. Furthermore, the disturbed terrace zone exhibits three distinct deformation structures. In the rear part, a stable zone develops where the terrace layers are compressed. However, due to the compressive forces exerted by the overlying loess, no significant shear deformation is observed. The middle part is the shear failure zone, characterized by the formation of multiple shear failure planes. The front part is the upheaval zone, where the terrace layers are slightly bent and tilted. • An improved MPM model is proposed to simulate the plowing process of rapid flow-like landslides. • The plowing mechanism of a real loess landslide is analyzed by the MPM model for the first time. • The plowing process of a rapid flow-like loess landslide consists of four stages. • Three distinct deformation structures are formed in the disturbed terrace zone during the plowing process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantity-based and concentration-based limits are two common environmental permitting approaches utilized by government worldwide in environmental management. While existing literature is still unambiguous about roles played by quantity-based versus concentration-based limits in environmental management, it becomes evident that relying exclusively on concentration-based or quantity-based limits to control plant emissions may not necessarily result in improved environmental quality. This paper leverages a unique opportunity arising from a recent reform in China's Pollutant Emission Permit System (PEPS) initiated in 2016 to analyze how the introduction of quantity-based limits in addition to concentration-based limits through the PEPS reform impact emissions at the plant level. Utilizing a unique plant-level continuous emission monitoring system data collected from Shaanxi Province (located in western China), the paper finds a significant reduction in air pollutant emissions as a result of the PEPS reform (nitrogen oxides (NOx) by 39%, sulfur dioxide (SO 2) by 15% and particulate matter (PM) by 13%). The heterogeneity analyses show emission reductions in plants differ across those with varying quantity limits specified in their permits, distinct emission ratios and diverse ownership structures. Furthermore, plants that fall under the classified management system with more stringent regulations imposed, especially those operating in high-pollution sectors, situated within industrial parks, or classified as large-sized plants, attain higher pollutant quantity limits. Findings of the paper carry important implications for effective environmental management, particularly within developing countries, and shed some light on carbon emission reduction policies in China. [Display omitted] • Quantity-based limits reduce air pollutant emissions significantly. • Distinct behaviors observed in air and water pollutants. • Varied quantity limits and emission ratios influence emission behavior. • State-owned plants show better emission reduction under quantity limits. • Stricter regulations could allow higher quantity limits for plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A woman's crown made of fine gilt bronze with refined glass inlay work was excavated from a Sui-Tang tomb called Kunlun M2 in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, China. Very few female crowns and crown ornaments have been excavated in China thus far, and there has been a lack of systematic research into the technologies used to manufacture them. Importantly, this paper uses the M2 crown to investigate its surface inlays and overall shape, then conducts a comparative analysis of women's crown ornaments of the same type, providing a reference for study of the crown. Non-invasive and micro-destructive analysis including optical microscopy (OM), optical coherence tomography (OCT), micro X-ray fluorescence imagery (XRF), and Raman spectroscopy were applied. These identified the crown's inlays as potash-lime glass, composed mainly of the raw materials: vein quartz or quartzite with potassium nitrate as flux. The inlays were sintered before embedding into gilt copper wire filigree. In comparison to the composition proportions in other ancient potash-lime glass, there is no specific percentage of the raw materials in Chinese potash-lime glass, where the ingredients were likely determined by the experience of the craftsman. Compared with existing research on other crowns and their inlays, this study speculates that the crown dates from the Sui dynasty (581–618) or early Tang dynasty (618–649), was made locally by Chinese craftsmen and belonged to the wife of a high official. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effect of lateral deformation on subgrade settlement is often ignored. This paper discusses this effect under different constraint conditions. Compression tests of typical Q2 remoulded loess from Shaanxi Province, China, were conducted under different confining pressures using a self-developed three-dimensional loading test device. The vertical and lateral deformation characteristics of loess samples were analysed, and a model of lateral strain in subgrade soil was derived. Then, a model of total subgrade settlement with consideration of lateral deformation was established based on the equal volume concept. The stratified summation calculation formula was also revised, and correction coefficients under different constraints are given. The results show that the accuracy of the revised method is positively correlated with the number of lateral constraints. The correction coefficient can reflect the influence of different subgrade constraints. Importantly, the modified model was verified by field measurements and found to be more accurate than the stratified summation method. These results help to understand the influence of lateral deformation on total settlement and the mechanism of subgrade settlement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drought prediction plays an important guiding role in drought risk management. The standardized precipitation index (SPI) is a popular meteorological drought indicator to measure the degree of drought. The SPI time series is non-stationary, whereas the conventional artificial neural network (ANN) model has limitations to predict non-stationary time series. To overcome this limitation, it is essential to investigate input data preprocessing to improve the ANN model. In this paper, a hybrid model coupled with singular spectrum analysis (SSA) and backpropagation ANN is proposed (SSA-BP-ANN). The advantage of this model is that the SSA of finite-length SPI sequences does not require the adoption of boundary extensions to suppress boundary effects, while the most predictable components of the SPI can be efficiently extracted and incorporated into the model. The proposed SSA-BP-ANN model is tested in case studies at three meteorological stations in Northern Shannxi Province, China. The results show that the SSA-BP-ANN model can produce more accurate predictions than the BP-ANN model. In addition, the performance improvement of SSA on the BP-ANN model is slightly better than wavelet decomposition and empirical mode decomposition. This new hybrid prediction model has great potential for promoting drought early warning in arid regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coal resources have always been an important driving force for macroeconomic growth and GDP growth in resource‐rich regions. However, this growth has also caused inequality of household income in developing regions. Using survey data on rural household livelihoods in Shenmu county, Shaanxi Province, in northwestern China, this paper analyzes the relationship between coal exploitation and income inequality. Four multivariate econometric analyses are developed. We find evidence for the resource curse theory of natural resource exploitation leading to inequality: the Gini coefficient for household revenue is discovered to be markedly related with the location of and participation in coal exploitation. Nevertheless, this correlation is not linear. Rather, household income inequality primitively rises with environmental and resource subsidies. We analyze the impacts of household income inequality and contrast the characteristics of household livelihood and location characteristics in the coal exploitation site of northern Shenmu with those in the whole survey site. Our statistical analysis shows that out‐migration, the level of total household income, and convenience of household transportation are the important elements devoting to household income in northern Shenmu, the coal resources endowment region. However, the environmental damage and pollution caused by coal exploitation has substantial negative impacts upon household income, especially for households not participating in coal activities. Overall, we found that coal exploitation did not develop local industries. Adversely, the ecological environment problem and the high subsidy for coal mining caused by the exploitation of coal resources have aggravated the inequality of household income in the sample areas. Additionally, the development of coal resources attracted youth labor from agriculture to the coal industry, which exacerbated the lack of labor force and weakened village agricultural productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alternaria leaf blotch, and rust are two common types of apple leaf diseases that severely affect apple yield. A timely and effective detection of apple leaf diseases is crucial for ensuring the healthy development of the apple industry. In general, these diseases are inspected by experienced experts one by one. This is a time-consuming task with unstable precision. Therefore, in this paper, we proposed a LOW-COST, STABLE, HIGH precision apple leaf diseases identification method. This is achieved by employing MobileNet model. Firstly, comparing with general deep learning model, it is a LOW-COST model because it can be easily deployed on mobile devices. Secondly, instead of experienced experts, everyone can finish the apple leaf diseases inspection STABLELY by the help of our algorithm. Thirdly, the precision of MobileNet is nearly the same with existing complicated deep learning models. Finally, in order to demonstrated the effectiveness of our proposed method, several experiments have been carried out for apple leaf diseases identification. We have compared the efficiency and precision with the famous CNN models: i.e. ResNet152 and InceptionV3. Here, the apple disease datasets (including classes: Alternaria leaf blotch and rust leaf) were collected by the agriculture experts in Shaanxi Province, China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shaanxi is one of China's most important cradles of civilization. The main vein of Chinese culture is rich history and culture, and brilliant red culture embodies the essence of socialist core values. It is still relatively weak to deeply analyze the related research of Shaanxi Province's cultural province construction on the basis of studying the achievements of cultural development in foreign countries and China and combining with the reality of Shaanxi Province. In this paper, a BPNN (BP neural network) model is selected to study the comprehensive evaluation of tourism competitiveness of smart tourism cities, and the software is used to realize the simulation of the comprehensive evaluation system of tourism competitiveness of smart tourism cities, which more comprehensively and objectively reflects the level of comprehensive competitiveness of each city. It is believed that there are some problems in Shaanxi regional cultural communication, such as insufficient exploration of content resources, insufficient communication channels, and low audience awareness, hoping to provide ideas and reference for further exploring the promotion of cultural communication power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the construction of tunnels in the central and western regions of China, diorite is frequently affected by vibration, blasting and water which will lead to the questions of the quality and operational safety of project. However, there are few studies on the dynamic characteristics of diorite under the action of dry–wet cycles. Therefore, this paper selected the gray–green altered diorite from Ning shan County, Shaanxi Province, China, mainly composed of plagioclase, and used the Slit Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) to study the effect of dry–wet cycle on the dynamic characteristics of Diorite. The test results show that the strength decay rate of the peak strength of diorite is the maximum under 1–3 dry–wet cycles, then decreases gradually. The dynamic elastic modulus of diorite dropped by 35.02% after three dry–wet cycles, accounting for 98.45% of the total attenuation. Compared the test result of three dry–wet cycles, the decrease volumes of the stress growth rate of diorite are the largest after six dry–wet cycles. Because of the actions of the dry–wet cycles, the growth rate of the rapid growth stage of the reflected energy–time history curve reduces and the growth rate of the rapid growth stage of the transmitted energy–time history curve improves. Under the action of the dry–wet cycles, the dissipation energy ratio gradually decreases, and the decrease of energy consumption density follows a negative exponential function relationship. Under the action of multiple dry–wet cycles, the tension and compression stress frequently change between the particles of rock, resulting in a significant increase of micro-cracks and an obvious degradation effect on the dynamical properties of diorite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• An approach for quantifying calcium leaching effect on service performance of concrete impermeable structures was developed. • The effectiveness of the proposed method was verified by a laboratory calcium leaching test. • Numerically investigated the seepage and dissolution evolution of the concrete cutoff wall during long-term service. • The safe service life of concrete cutoff walls considering the calcium leaching effect was evaluated. Calcium leaching is one of the essential diseases of concrete impermeable structures; therefore, an effective numerical approach to quantifying the effect of calcium leaching on concrete impermeable structures is critical for evaluating the long-term service performance of the structure. To this end, a seepage and dissolution coupling model for simulating the degradation of hydraulic concrete properties is proposed in this paper by introducing performance parameter evolutionary models based on saturated–unsaturated seepage and calcium dissolution and migration theories. The model is developed in COMSOL with a staggered solution scheme, and a detailed numerical implementation method is presented. The effectiveness of the proposed method is examined by laboratory calcium leaching tests. On this basis, the model was applied to evaluate the effect of calcium leaching on the service performance of a concrete cutoff wall (CCW) of an embankment dam in Shaanxi Province, China. The results demonstrate that the proposed method can effectively reproduce the calcium leaching process of concrete, and the variation of leaching depth based on model simulations is highly consistent with the experimental results. Calcium leaching primarily occurs at the CCW's upstream waterfront surface, bypass seepage area and the partition of adjacent soil layers where the permeability varies greatly. Under seepage dissolution, the amount of leached calcium, average porosity, diffusion coefficient and hydraulic conductivity of the CCW increased exponentially with service duration, and solid-phase calcium leaching was the underlying cause of structural performance degradation. The length of the seepage path in the CCW decreases as the service duration increases, and the hydraulic gradient within it gradually increases. Based on the allowable hydraulic gradient of CCW, the safe service life of the CCW considering the calcium leaching effect was determined to be approximately 52a. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Expression of geological map information in the form of knowledge graphs to shown regional geological characteristics and connections. • Using the knowledge embedding method to embed the geological map knowledge in order to show the mineralization characteristics. • Knowledge and geochemical data was aligned in space by knowledge embedding gridding to realize the forward integration of knowledge and data, and to realize bi-directional knowledge and data-driven mineral prospectivity. The knowledge graph in geological applications is highly regarded, and its usefulness requires the support of geological survey data. Therefore, this paper proposes a mineral prospectivity mapping (MPM) method that integrates geological map knowledge graphs with geochemical data. The geological map knowledge graph is used in the vectorized form as knowledge features in the training of the mineral prediction model. It is also used for knowledge-based ore-forming interpretation of prospective areas, achieving bidirectional application of knowledge in prediction and interpretation of prediction results. Unlike most knowledge graphs, the geological map knowledge graph represents spatial correlations and geological features in the form of "entity-relation-entity" triplets, with geological map units as entities and assigned geological attributes. Based on this, an MPM process driven by knowledge graph and data is proposed: (1) Convert the geological map knowledge graph into low-dimensional vectors using node2VEC. (2) Align geological knowledge with geochemical data spatially through knowledge embedding gridization, achieving a forward fusion of knowledge and data. (3) Collect the integrated data using window sampling as the training dataset for DenseNet to train the mineral prospection model. A case study was conducted to demonstrate the advantages of the method for producing a potential map linked to gold mineralization in the Rao Feng area, Shaanxi Province, China. The results show that the prospective areas with knowledge graph embedding and geochemical data are better and delineate six unmineralized prospective areas. Ore-forming interpretations based on knowledge graph information were conducted on the prospective areas, demonstrating strong consistency between the ore-forming geological features of the prediction areas and known mineral deposits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty alleviation resettlement (PAR) is a key poverty reduction initiative that has resettled nearly 9.6 million impoverished people during the tenure of China's 13th Five-Year Plan. Beginning in 2019 additional follow-up support measures have also been implemented to help resettled households integrate into their new communities. However, the question remains as to what extent these extra measures have actually aided in integration. In this paper, we consider not only the multi-dimensionality of the integration process but also how the diverse aspects of resettled households shape the integration process. Drawing on extensive primary data from 993 survey households collected at three cities in Shaanxi, China, along with a partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM), we systematically examine whether the PAR follow-up support measures have actually helped resettled household integration. Our results show that family capabilities and empowerment are both fundamental to ensuring integration and that the follow-up support measures did indeed help to improve these elements. Furthermore, we find that enhancing capabilities through follow-up support measures can facilitate resettled households to integrate both psychologically and economically and that empowerment has a large positive effect on social integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Proposed a knowledge transfer method to promote the utilization of emergency experience and get it reused. • Adaptively combined policy distillation with actor-critic structured multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithm. • Developed a fast emergency decision making method for freeway accident optimal onsite disposal. • Established an MDP model to simulate task-level accident disposal, modelled commonality among different freeway accidents. A large number of freeway accident disposals are well-recorded by accident reports and surveillance videos, but it is not easy to get the emergency experience reused from past recorded accidents. To reuse emergency experience for better emergency decision-making, this paper proposed a knowledge-based experience transfer method to transfer task-level freeway accident disposal experience via multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithm with policy distillation. First, the Markov decision process is used to simulate the emergency decision-making process of multi-type freeway accident scene at the task level. Then, an adaptive knowledge transfer method named policy distilled multi-agent deep deterministic policy gradient (PD-MADDPG) algorithm is proposed to reuse experience from past freeway accident records to current accidents for fast decision-making and optimal onsite disposal. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated on instantiated cases of freeway accidents that occurred on the freeway in Shaanxi Province, China. Aside from achieving better emergency decisions performance than various typical decision-making methods, the result shows decision maker with transferred knowledge owns 65.22%, 11.37%, 9.23%, 7.76% and 1.71% higher average reward than those without in the five studied cases, respectively. Indicating that the emergency experience transferred from past accidents contributes to fast emergency decision-making and optimal accident onsite disposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reliable weather forecasting is quite important for sectors with weather-dependent decision-making. To capture unknown and complex dependencies from multiple spatiotemporal factors, i.e., autocorrelated, meteorological causal, meteorological spatial factors, this paper proposes a spatiotemporal feature extraction and fusion network inspired by humans' multi-level cognition process, namely, SFEF-Net, including the data pre-processing stage, transfer pre-training stage, spatiotemporal feature extraction stage, and spatiotemporal feature fusion stage. Specifically, inspired by humans' empirical analysis, the 24 Solar Terms knowledge and Pearson correlation coefficient analysis are utilized to respectively select input timestamps and influencing factors in the first stage. Inspired by humans' associative learning, a Long Short-Term Memory Network (LSTM) layer with powerful remember capability is trained via weather data from multiple neighbored monitoring stations in the second stage, and further is transferred for better feature extraction. Inspired by humans' independent analysis, every factor is separately captured and analyzed via the pre-trained LSTM layer in the third stage, which also coincides with the philosophical idea of divide and conquer. Inspired by humans' comprehensive consideration, extracted features are fused level by level via the attention mechanism with dynamic weights in the fourth stage, which avoids invalid dependencies between multiple features and overfitting. The real-world daily average air temperature forecasting in Shaanxi Province, China is taken to demonstrate the SFEF-Net beyond 12 baseline methods. Additionally, forecasts of drastic change period, ablation analysis, multiple steps, and different stations further present the effectiveness of the SFEF-Net. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To reveal the effect of the molecular structure of coal on the gas adsorption ability of coal seams, this paper selects the high-quality bituminous coal in the Shenmu mining area of Shaanxi Province, China, as the research object. We changed the molecular structure of coal through pyrolysis experiments and studied the effect of changing coal molecular structure on methane adsorption capacity based on Langmuir adsorption equations, Infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and liquid nitrogen adsorption. The findings of the experiments reveal that d 002 reduces as pyrolysis temperature rises, but L a , N ave , and L c increase overall. The molecular structure of coal is restructured and layered, and the degree of polycondensation increases. Simultaneously, heating decomposes the active functional groups inside the coal sample, A C-O / A ar , A CH 2 / A CH 3 and A al / A ar decrease with the increasing pyrolysis temperature, and the aromatization degree of coal also deepens. The adsorption Langmuir constant a is well connected with d 002 , L a , N ave , L c , A C-O / A ar , A CH 2 / A CH 3 and A al / A ar. After high-temperature pyrolysis, A variety of chemical bonds in the coal sample are broken, resulting in the release of a substantial amount of light hydrocarbon, and then a large number of holes and cracks appear in the coal body, and the micropores are reduced, thus reducing the overall adsorption capacity of the coal. The findings of this study provide theoretical guidance for the development of new technologies to recover coal seam gas during mining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate acquisition of in-situ soil water content is of great significance for mastering the water content distribution of unsaturated soil and understanding soil engineering properties. The actively heated fiber-optic (AHFO) method has recently become a research focus because of the capability to realize distributed and real-time measurement of soil water content. However, most reported AHFO systems have been coupled to distributed temperature sensing (DTS) which does not allow for remote measurements with high spatial resolution. In this paper, a new AHFO method based on the quasi-distributed fiber Bragg grating (AHFO-FBG) technique is proposed for the large-scale in-situ measurement of soil water content. An AHFO-FBG in-situ monitoring system is developed which consists of a sensor module, heating module, data acquisition and transmission module, and data processing module. The established system is applied to a loess slope in Yan'an City, Shaanxi Province, China to monitor its water content distribution in real time. The effectiveness of the monitoring system is verified and the water content distribution of the monitored loess slope are analysed. The in-situ measurement results indicate that in the spatial dimension, the water content in the top and bottom of the slope is low, and that near the scarp is high; in the time dimension, the water content in winter is low while that in autumn and spring is high. The monitored results also suggest that soil water evaporation in winter can significantly enhance the spatial distribution difference of soil water content. • The AHFO-FBG soil water content in-situ monitoring system was developed. • The in-situ monitoring system was applied to a loess slope in Yan'an, China. • The loess water content distribution is mainly affected by climate and topography. • The AHFO-FBG method is much better than neutron scattering method in surface soil. • Large-scale and remote measurement of soil water content was achieved by the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Mining-induced pressures cause the further expansion of excavation damaged zones. • Field monitoring of borehole stresses during mining; borehole camera observations. • Roadway geometry affects the final failure patterns of excavation damaged zones. • Progressive failure process of heterogeneous rocks was presented numerically. • The developing remote cracks aggravate the development of excavation damaged zones. This paper presents an investigation of the development of excavation damaged zones (EDZs) around a rectangular coal roadway under mining-induced pressure in a longwall mining process. Field stress monitoring at a coal mine in Shaanxi Province, China was carried out to obtain stress distribution induced by mining in the surrounding rock mass. During longwall mining, a high-stress zone with a limited scope is distributed in front of longwall face, and a relatively low-stress increment occurs near the roadway wall due to the failure of rock mass. A borehole camera was employed to clearly observe the development state of cracks in the damaged zones around the roadway to capture the characteristics of the EDZ. To investigate the rock failure process and development patterns of the EDZ under mining-induced loading conditions, three numerical simulation cases considering the heterogeneity of rock were conducted with a proposed loading mode similar to the mining-induced pressure. The results of the simulations show that the complexity of EDZ development under the proposed loading conditions involves tensile and shear failures, the development of remote cracks, and the effect of roadway geometry. The development patterns of the EDZ around the rectangular roadway show agreement with field observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the background of growing rural domestic waste pollution, encouraging the source classification of rural domestic waste is a critical way to address the inadequacies of rural environmental problems. Using the micro-survey data of rural residents in Shaanxi province, China, this paper explores the decision-making behavior (classification willingness and degree of classification) of rural residents' domestic waste through a double-hurdle model (DHM). The results show that among the 1374 rural residents, 1274 samples are willing to be sorted and put into place. Of these, 45.21% of the rural residents are eager to classify household waste into four categories, namely recycling or saleable, food waste or perishable, toxic and harmful, and others. Besides, household income has a significantly negative impact on the domestic waste classification willingness of rural residents while the number of education years positively impacts the degree of rural domestic waste classification. It is an indication that the sense of environmental responsibility significantly and positively influences the decision-making behaviors of rural residents, not only promoting their willingness to classification but also increasing their degree of classification; the psychological perception of rural residents about the pollution of domestic waste significantly increases their willingness and degree of classification. Policy implications are further discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Energy consumption is introduced in the optimization model. • Eliminate the negative influence caused by weight distribution. • Optimal planting schemes were obtained. In order to multi objectives and uncertainties in the optimization allocation of irrigation water resources, this paper developed an improved interval multi-objectives programming method. The proposed model was then applied to a case study in Jinghuiqu irrigation district, Shaanxi Province, China. Maximum economic benefit and minimum energy consumption are regarded as planning objectives. A series of planting structure optimal schemes were obtained under different representative hydrological years. From the result, shortage of water resources has a negative effect on the development of Jinghuiqu irrigation district. Moreover, the remaining water resources prefer vegetable to wheat after meeting the minimum demand of the developed model, which characterized with high economic benefit and lower energy consumption. Moreover, due to the introduction of effective precipitation, a lot of irrigation water resources have been saved, such as 47.14% of total water consumption was saved when P = 25%. Furthermore, the desired optimal schemes can be obtained by the decision-makers based on the results of the developed model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Efflorescence of dense-graded asphalt paved on a cement concrete bridge deck. • Calcium Carbonate was found to be the main efflorescence material. • Cement concrete bridge deck provide the alkaline source for efflorescence materials. • Carbonation is the result of Ca(OH) 2 transformation in the presence of H 2 O and CO 2. • Migration model of the efflorescence material was established. A new distress type, namely alkali leaching, was recently observed to have developed on an as-built dense-graded asphalt concrete (DGAC) paved on a cement concrete bridge deck in China. Not only does alkali leaching affect the aesthetic appearance of the cement concrete bridge deck pavement (CCBDP) due to the distinctive color contrast, it also creates a potential threat to the service life of the bridge. In this paper, an alkali leaching distressed section of a CCBDP in Shaanxi Province (China) was studied. The study results indicated that whitish spots cannot be removed by natural water. In situ pH measurements indicated highly alkalinine materials appear on the surface of pavement layers. Based on these findings, the formation mechanism of alkali leaching on CCBDP was analyzed. The corresponding results showed that the main mineral of alkali leaching was Calcium Carbonate (CaCO 3). Under wet conditions, rainwater infiltrates into the cement bridge deck from the sides of the pavement. Continuous exposure to moisture or humid environments facilitates the subsequent hydration to generate Ca(OH) 2 , which is the alkaline source for alkali leaching. The generated Ca(OH) 2 migrates with rainwater to the pavement surface through capillary action. With the repeated circles of wet and dry conditions, the in-situ carbonation products lead to formation of alkali leaching on the pavement surface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]