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Considering China's 'isolated' digital ecosystem, this paper examines China's 'check-in' activities to understand how the wanghong economy is driving China's new rounds of urban development, with the purpose of supplementing existing research on digital economies from the Chinese context. Focusing on a representative case study area called Dongshankou in Guangzhou, which is regarded as one of the most popular wanghong places and an emerging commercial centre, I sought to enrich existing studies about digital economies and extend scholarship on platform urbanism from the cultural economy perspective. First, I argue that Chinese consumers' check-in activities function as the data accumulation process, structuring Dongshankou's digital capital through the assemblage of online posts and geotags. Therefore, Dongshankou's urban development challenges the conventional view of creativity as the key factor in the cultural economy for urban development, given that digital capital is now the key driver for urban development in the digital age. Second, the growth of wanghong stores in Dongshankou reveals how the wanghong economy is materialised into urban cultural objects. Emotional value – a crucial selling point that these wanghong stores aim to provide to facilitate consumers' check-in activities – illustrates how China's highly participatory digital ecosystem extracts users' emotions and bodily experiences into the process of capital accumulation, which structures the 'platform urbanism' through our daily lives. This paper broadens the horizon for an alternative theoretical agenda in platform urbanism: beyond focusing solely on platform algorithms, how digital platforms and emotions become inextricably linked in economic production should be further explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of the trade in artists' materials in Canton between 1750 and 1842. Through an investigation of China's foreign trade archives and records, this study gives a picture of international trade in artists' materials, particularly pigments, during this period in Canton. Furthermore, it reveals a close trade in Western modern pigments between the West and China. The results of this research may be helpful to conservators and conservation scientists conducting treatments or technical studies on Chinese export paintings of this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how latecomer firms manage to achieve industrial upgrading through strategic coupling with global lead firms in automotive production networks. Drawing upon the example of the Guangzhou Automotive Corporation in southern China, this paper theorizes 'cross‐scalar tension' as a key factor to explain why the four cases of strategic coupling between lead firms, the same domestic firm and state ended in different results, from decoupling to a sustainable coupling with local upgrading. This paper contributes to the pertinent literature by demonstrating that cross‐scalar tension is inherent to the nature of global production networks, and unreconciled tension concerning different corporate strategies on technological transfer, localization and product development could lead to decoupling. Importantly, good coordination and matching on corporate strategies between lead and domestic firms could relieve cross‐scalar tensions, thus fostering local industrial upgrading and sustainable strategic coupling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban night tourism is a new form o£ urban tourism development and an important driving force for the prosperity of urban night economy. As the most prestigious business card among many night tour projects in Guangzhou, the Pearl River water night tour has contributed to the development of Guangzhou's night economy, which cannot be underestimated. However, in the process of rapid development, there are also problems such as diversified operators, insufficient integration of intangible cultural elements, excessive commercial attributes, issues of tourism facilities and service facilities. Under the new stage of integrated development of culture and tourism, how to use mutual promotion of culture and tourism in the Pearl River night tour to seek innovative paths for high-quality development in the future is the main problem expected to be solved in this paper. Therefore, based on the perspective of culture and tourism integration, this paper analyzes the general situation and development status of the Pearl River night tour, and proposes five development strategies; the overall planning of culture and tourism integration, the deep integration of intangible cultural elements, the balance of commercial attributes and tourism attributes, the high integration of culture, business, tourism and education, and the creation of tourism atmosphere, in order to provide inspiration for the healthy, orderly and high-quality development of the Pearl River night tour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historic timber structures face substantial fire loads and complex fire risks. Subsequent renovations and utilization may influence their fire safety performance. Therefore, accurately predicting indoor fire development in historic buildings and assessing their fire safety performance is crucial. Numerical fire simulation is currently at the forefront of analyzing and assessing fire risks in historic buildings. However, there is a shortage of globally accessible historic building fire data. This paper proposes a method to determine fire scenarios, peak heat release rates, and development curves of indoor fires in wooden historic buildings through a fire load investigation. Using the Guangzhou ancestral hall as an example, PyroSim fire dynamics simulation software is employed to calculate fire development and assess the available safe evacuation time. The simulation results are subsequently input into the Pathfinder evacuation simulation software to ascertain the required safe evacuation time for indoor occupants. A comparative assessment is conducted to evaluate the fire safety performance before and after the renovation of historic buildings. The research findings indicate that installing closed glass curtain walls in the courtyards of ancestral hall buildings in Guangzhou accelerates the infiltration of smoke during fires, leading to rapid fire spread and long-distance ignition, significantly reducing the time available for safe evacuation. Therefore, when renovating and utilizing the ancestral hall buildings in Guangzhou, the installation of ventilation and smoke extraction systems should be prioritized to slow down fire development. Additionally, controlling the number of indoor occupants is an effective management measure to mitigate fire damage in historic buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of clan paintings reveals a shift in perspective from art aesthetics to cultural connotations to cultural identity, yet literature seldom discusses the relationship between art and kinship culture. Taking the murals of ancestral hall architecture in Guangzhou as an example, this paper utilizes text mining to identify factors influencing its decorative art. It reveals the traditional rites' artistic expression through dimensions of characters' demeanor and the transmission of content values, offering a fresh perspective for heritage value research. Findings: (1) themes and implications are mostly oriented towards positive value transmission, transitioning from idealistic layman life to the realism of lower-class existence, emphasizing humanization; (2) the extroverted portrayal of characters contrasts with the dignified, restrained etiquette of traditional rites, with some characters' portrayal and facial expressions exuding approachability; (3) murals conveying positive emotions are mostly related to longevity, auspiciousness, fortune, and heroic deeds, while those conveying negative emotions mainly involve elderly male figures, reflecting a content bias related to characters; (4) historical allusion murals with complex content reduce the emotional resonance and arousal efficiency of the viewer; (5) incomplete mural content increases negative emotions in perceivers, highlighting the impact of mural preservation on emotional resonance. To delve into the formation of clan painting art, it is essential not only to interpret the diversity of its patterns but also to demonstrate the representation of its social attributes in decorative art. The formation of clan painting decorative art exhibits kinship cultural attributes, epitomizing the essence of traditional ceremonial thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

​​​​​​​As a crucial constituent of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), secondary organic aerosols (SOAs) influence public health, regional air quality, and global climate patterns. This paper highlights the use of hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) which effectively retains strongly polar analytes that might exhibit incomplete or no retention in reverse chromatography, resulting in superior separation efficiency. A HILIC column was used to analyze six standards, environmental standards (1648a and 1649b), and samples collected in urban environments in Guangzhou in the Pearl River Delta region, which serve as valuable reference points for evaluating the organic composition of the atmospheric environment. The results indicate a high degree of accuracy in the analytical method. Sodium octyl- d17 sulfate serves as the internal standard, with a linear correlation coefficient of the six standards, boasting a linear correlation coefficient r ranging from 0.993–0.9991 and a slope, k , of the linear equation from 0.966–1.882. The instrument detection limits (IDLs) are established at 0.03–0.20 µgmL-1 , while the method detection limits (MDLs) fall within the range of 0.30–1.75 ngm-3 , demonstrating the method's exceptional sensitivity. Since isoprene-derived organosulfates (iOSs) are highly polar due to containing a hydrophilic bond to the hydroxyl group and a hydrophobic bond to the sulfate, and as such showed strong retention using this method, this technique employs sodium ethyl sulfate and sodium octyl sulfate standards for semi-quantitative compound analysis of iOSs. The error in sample analysis (EA) ranged from 12.25 %–95.26 %, and the two standards maintained a consistent recovery rate between 116 %–131 % and 86.4 %–127 %. These findings indicate a high level of precision when semi-quantifying compounds with similar structural characteristics, affirming the analysis method's minimal relative error and underscoring its repeatability, process stability, and the reliability of its results for iOSs. To enhance the method's reliability assessment, the study analyzed polar organic components of standard particulate matter samples (1648a and 1649b), providing precise determinations of several iOSs using this method. Methyltetrol sulfate (m/z 215, C5H11SO7-) is the highest concentration in the ambient samples, up to 67.3 ngm-3 in the daytime. These results serve as valuable reference points for assessing the organic composition of the atmospheric environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate and fast traffic prediction is the data-based foundation for achieving traffic control and management, and the accuracy of prediction results will directly affect the effectiveness of traffic control and management. This paper proposes a new spatiotemporal periodic polynomial model for road traffic, which integrates the temporal, spatial, and periodic features of speed time series and can effectively handle the nonlinear mapping relationship from input to output. In terms of the model, we establish a road traffic speed prediction model based on polynomial regression. In terms of spatial feature extraction methods, we introduce a maximum mutual information coefficient spatial feature extraction method. In terms of periodic feature extraction methods, we introduce a periodic trend modeling method into the prediction of speed time series, and effective fusion is carried out. Four strategies are evaluated based on the Guangzhou road speed dataset: a univariate polynomial model, a spatiotemporal polynomial model, a periodic polynomial model, and a spatiotemporal periodic polynomial model. The test results show that the three methods proposed in this article can effectively improve prediction accuracy. Comparing the spatiotemporal periodic polynomial model with multiple machine learning models and deep learning models, the prediction accuracy is improved by 5.94% compared to the best feedforward neural network. The research in this article can effectively deal with the temporal, spatial, periodic, and nonlinear characteristics of speed prediction, and to a certain extent, improve the accuracy of speed prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The park-level integrated energy system (PIES) can realize the gradient utilization of energy and improve the efficiency of energy utilization through the coupling between multiple types of energy sub-networks. However, energy analysis and exergy analysis cannot be used to evaluate the economics of PIES. In addition, conflicts of interest among integrated energy suppliers make the economic scheduling of the PIES more difficult. In this paper, we propose a multi-objective collaborative game-based optimization method based on exergy economics, in which the introduction of exergy economics realizes the economic assessment of any link within the PIES, and the optimization model constructed based on the potential game solves the problem of conflict of interest among multiple energy suppliers and improves the benefits of each supplier. Finally, taking a PIES in Guangzhou as an example, the rationality of the optimization scheme proposed in this paper is demonstrated by comparing it with the classical optimization scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a questionnaire survey and semistructured interviews, this paper adopts a structural equation model to analyze the impact of official hospital WeChat accounts on urban residents' spatial perceptions and interactions with technology in Guangzhou, China. We find that official hospital WeChat accounts have a significant remodeling effect on urban residents' spatial behaviors and perceptions, mainly affecting the improvement in medical efficiency and the expansion of medical scope and convenience. Such accounts also reduce the psychological distance between urban residents and hospitals. Furthermore, online medical service platforms restructure urban residents' physical spatial movement, which is characterized by spatiotemporal compression and technical interaction. Spatiotemporal compression is manifested in the reduction in invalid time for residents in urban medical spaces and the expansion of the scope of medical treatment. Technical interaction is reflected in the mutual consultation and promotion between urban residents and technology. This paper aims to improve our understanding of the influence of technology on urban medical space and residents, and provides a reference for the optimization of urban space governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To provide diverse book lending channels and services to the public and to guide healthy competition in library industry, this paper discusses the coopetition relationship between online shared bookstores and libraries from the perspective of readers' choice behavior. According to the questionnaire survey from 187 readers in Guangzhou, MNL model is adopted to quantitatively analyze the effect of various factors such as personal attributes, borrowing requirements and habits on readers' choice. Research shows that online shared bookstore and library, mainly public library, have different competition in terms of multi-dimensional needs and preferences. Thus, this paper proposes the potential cooperation mode between online bookstore and library in collection, data and space, so as to promote the mutually beneficial coexistence between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As high-speed rail (HSR) and air transportation developed rapidly in the last decade, their coopetition and interactional relationship has reshaped China's urban networks. Based on HSR and flight schedule data from 2009 to 2019, this paper constructs a weighted network to compare China's urban networks and their evolution, and employs machine learning to investigate the potential determinants. The results indicated that both networks tend toward polarization in the overall distribution and that the structure of urban networks under HSR networks is more hierarchical. That of HSR networks gradually forms a corridor structure along the trunk lines, while that of airline networks mainly shows a diamond spatial structure with Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Chengdu as the cores. As for the evolution of urban networks, geographical factors, per capita GDP, and the tourism function of cities have more important impacts on that of HSR networks, while the network's topological structure and education resources have a greater impact on that of airline networks. Some socioeconomic attributes, such as urban administrative level, population, and the proportion of tertiary industry, have similar and limited influences on the two networks. • The paper constructed a comparative analysis on the evolution of China's urban networks during the last decade. • Employing machine learning to investigate the potential determinants. • The study examined the distinct attributes of the evolution and structure of high-speed rail and airline networks. • The study contrasts the determinants influencing the evolution of high-speed rail and airline networks at the city level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between social factors and the formation of exported mug designs is blurred. This study addresses how they influence material design. Based on a quantitative typological analysis, this paper interprets the cultural relationships underlying the evolution of mug designs exported during the Ming and Qing dynasties. The study reveals: (1) the typology and handle styles of mugs can be categorized into six types, with a predominance of Cylindrical bodies and Ear-shaped handles. Notably, artistic emphasis is concentrated on Bulbous cup bodies and Tail outward curved handles; (2) the design of mugs in the eighteenth century exhibited diversity, morphological similarities, and feature continuity, evolving from representational (Ming Dynasty) to abstract and then to minimalistic styles (Qing Dynasty), particularly evident in the three-dimensional modeling of handles for ergonomic comfort (transitioning from a singular Outward curved form to Ear-shaped form, and then to Entwined branch form); (3) the body shape of mugs transformed from Arc-barrel bodies to Bulbous bodies (focusing on heat retention), and eventually to Cylindrical bodies (prioritizing heat retention, practicality, and cost-efficiency).; (4) the volume of mugs steadily increased from the early eighteenth century, generally classified into large volume (≥ 500 ml), medium volume (200-499 ml), and small volume (< 200 ml); (5) considering the extreme range of volume (11090 ml) and height (25 cm), it indicates that these two variables do not necessarily have a direct positive correlation; (6) the low center of gravity in handle design (average width of 3.4 cm against an average height of 9.9 cm for the body) reflects considerations for the distribution of liquid weight and operational convenience. The volume of sample-10 (11127 ml) notably exceeds the typical range for tea-drinking utensils, revealing the mechanism of wealth and status symbolism. Market demand orientation emerged as the primary driver for the evolution of export mug designs during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, with adjustments in the merchant system playing a secondary role. The transformation in mug design reflects the interplay of multiple factors, with the trend toward minimalist design being a response to market demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of the multi-scale evaluation of port city's international trade goal is conducive to the sustainable development of port city's international trade. In order to make a more in-depth study on the realization ability of port city's international trade sustainable development goal, this paper proposes a new multi-scale evaluation method of port city's international trade goal. This method selects the evaluation indexes, uses the improved normalization method to process the indexes, uses the combination of AHP and factor analysis method to form the subjective and objective combination weighting method, brings the processed indexes into the least square optimization combination evaluation model, calculates the index weight, and uses the fuzzy evaluation method to carry out multi-scale index evaluation on the international trade of port cities to realize its multi-scale evaluation and analysis. The results show that the standardized index of Shanghai's foreign trade dependence is 0.0056, indicating its independence in international trade. In the comprehensive evaluation, the evaluation values of Shanghai, Tianjin, and Guangzhou are 92.56, 87.89, and 88.45, respectively, which are very close to the actual results, which shows that the accuracy of the evaluation method is high, and provides a theoretical basis for the sustainable development of international trade in port cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research has failed to find consistent relationships between criminal victimization and fear of crime. Except for neighborhood disorder and crime rate, few studies have examined whether other neighborhood conditions matter the victimization—fear relationship. Using survey data in Guangzhou neighborhoods, the present analysis employs multinomial logistic regression models to examine whether neighborhood characteristics moderate the relationship between violent victimization and fear of violence, and between burglary victimization and fear of burglary, separately. Some aspects of the neighborhood environment do differentially influence victims' and non-victims' fear levels. Besides verifying the interaction effect of neighborhood disorder and victimization, the present study finds that neighborhood policing alleviates the harmful effect of violent victimization on fear, while collective efficacy fosters the harmful effect of burglary victimization on fear. This paper underscores the significance of the social context of urban China in explaining the interplay of neighborhood characteristics and victimization on fear of crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent advances in knowledge graphs show great promise to link various data together to provide a semantic network. Place is an important part in the big picture of the knowledge graph since it serves as a powerful glue to link any data to its georeference. A key technical challenge in constructing knowledge graphs with location nodes as geographical references is the matching of place entities. Traditional methods typically rely on rule-based matching or machine-learning techniques to determine if two place names refer to the same location. However, these approaches are often limited in the feature selection of places for matching criteria, resulting in imbalanced consideration of spatial and semantic features. Deep feature-based methods such as deep learning methods show great promise for improved place data conflation. This paper introduces a Semantic-Spatial Aware Representation Learning Model (SSARLM) for Place Matching. SSARLM liberates the tedious manual feature extraction step inherent in traditional methods, enabling an end-to-end place entity matching pipeline. Furthermore, we introduce an embedding fusion module designed for the unified encoding of semantic and spatial information. In the experiment, we evaluate the approach to named places from Guangzhou and Shanghai cities in GeoNames, OpenStreetMap (OSM), and Baidu Map. The SSARLM is compared with several classical and commonly used binary classification machine learning models, and the state-of-the-art large language model, GPT-4. The results demonstrate the benefit of pre-trained models in data conflation of named places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• ON particles increased as NO x enhancement at night. • ON particles were mainly produced via heterogeneous reactions between NO x and organics. • The decrease of ON particles was associated with photo-bleaching effect. Organic nitrogen (ON) compounds play a significant role in the light absorption of brown carbon and the formation of organic aerosols, however, the mixing state, secondary formation processes, and influencing factors of ON compounds are still unclear. This paper reports on the mixing state of ON-containing particles based on measurements obtained using a high-performance single particle aerosol mass spectrometer in January 2020 in Guangzhou. The ON-containing particles accounted for 21% of the total detected single particles, and the particle count and number fraction of the ON-containing particles were two times higher at night than during the day. The prominent increase in the content of ON-containing particles with the enhancement of NO x mainly occurred at night, and accompanied by high relative humidity and nitrate, which were associated with heterogeneous reactions between organics and gaseous NO x and/or NO 3 radical. The synchronous decreases in ON-containing particles and the mass absorption coefficient of water-soluble extracts at 365 nm in the afternoon may be associated with photo-bleaching of the ON species in the particles. In addition, the positive matrix factorization analysis found five factors dominated the formation processes of ON particles, and the nitrate factor (33%) mainly contributed to the production of ON particles at night. The results of this study provide unique insights into the mixing states and secondary formation processes of the ON-containing particles. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficient monitoring of water quality parameters (WQPs) is crucial for environmental health. Drone hyperspectral images have offered the potential for the flexible and accurate retrieval of WQPs. However, a machine learning (ML)-based multi-process strategy for WQP inversion has yet to be established. Taking a typical urban river in Guangzhou city, China, as the study area, this paper proposes a machine learning-based strategy combining spectral preprocessing and ML regression models with ground truth WQP data. Fractional order derivation (FOD) and discrete wavelet transform (DWT) methods were used to explore potential spectral information. Then, multiple methods were applied to select sensitive features. Three modeling strategies were constructed for retrieving four WQPs, including the Secchi depth (SD), turbidity (TUB), total phosphorus (TP), and permanganate index (CODMn). The highest R2s were 0.68, 0.90, 0.70, and 0.96, respectively, with corresponding RMSEs of 13.73 cm, 6.50 NTU, 0.06 mg/L, and 0.20 mg/L. Decision tree regression (DTR) was found to have the potential with the best performance for the first three WQPs, and eXtreme Gradient Boosting Regression (XGBR) for the CODMn. Moreover, tailored feature selection methods emphasize the importance of fitting processing strategies for specific parameters. This study provides an effective framework for WQP inversion that combines spectra mining and extraction based on drone hyperspectral images, supporting water quality monitoring and management in urban rivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predicting carbon prices is crucial for the growth of China's carbon trading industry. This paper proposes a residual correction model that considers multiple influencing factors. First, the best historical data and main external factors input by the model are determined by using the partial autocorrelation function and Spearman correlation analysis, and the carbon price forecasting index system is constructed. Second, the whale optimization algorithm (WOA) is utilized to determine the optimal parameters of the extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), and the WOA‐XGBoost model is built to perform preliminary carbon price forecasts and obtain the residual series. Finally, the carbon price residual series undergoes decomposition into multiple components utilizing the complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition for subsequent forecasting and the aggregation of outcomes. Experiments are conducted to predict two carbon trading markets in Hubei and Guangzhou, and a feature importance analysis is performed. The results indicate that the proposed hybrid model consistently outperforms the comparative models in terms of prediction accuracy. Furthermore, it is revealed that historical carbon prices and European Union carbon prices are the key factors influencing the prediction of carbon market prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of digital and mobile technology has led to the emergence of digital scholarship, which is a challenge but also an opportunity for higher education institutions to improve their space and relevant services to support students' success. The purpose of this study is to explore university students' needs and expectations on digital scholarship spaces and relevant services in an academic library, as well as the differences in this based on gender, academic identity, and subject being studied. We conducted a survey at Shipai campus of Jinan University in Guangzhou to collect and analyze users' needs and expectations. Among the digital scholarship service, the demand scores of the top three services are text recognition and full-text processing with 7.00, academic paper writing, submission, publication, and dissemination consulting services with 6.86, and digitization of printed documents with 6.72. Elsewhere, the demand score of the top three spaces are the online digital scholarship space with 6.57, the research project application and exchange space with 6.43, and the text analysis, data analysis, Big Data, and visualization service center with 6.27. With the improvement of academic identity, the demand for digital scholarship services is higher. Gender has led to differences in a small number of space needs, while the differences brought about by the subject being studied are more significant. This research contributes to the understanding of how the digital technology, the students' spaces needs, and relevant management practice merge in academic libraries for students' learning and research purposes. These have implications for universities to improve their libraries' space services oriented to the diverse users' digital scholarship needs in the current digital learning environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traffic speed is an essential indicator for measuring traffic conditions. Real-time and accurate traffic speed prediction is an essential part of building intelligent transportation systems (ITS). Currently, speed prediction methods are characterized by insufficient short-term prediction accuracy and stability, nonlinear, nonstationary, strong fluctuation and relatively small sample size. To better explore the traffic characteristics of the road networks, a hybrid prediction model based on wavelet transform (WT) of the autoregressive moving average model (ARIMA) and gate recurrent unit (GRU) was constructed. First, this model decomposes the original traffic speed data into low-frequency data, and high-frequency data by WT. Second, the ARIMA and GRU models are used to model data predictions in two frequency bands, respectively. Finally, the prediction result of the predicted value is fused. In addition, in this paper, traffic speed data of four sections in Guangzhou from 1 August to 31 September 2016 are taken as examples to test the validity, applicability, and practicability of the model. The results show that compared with ARIMA, LSTM, GRU, RNN, and other single models and hybrid models, the prediction method proposed in this paper has higher prediction accuracy and can provide a more scientific decision-making basis for urban traffic management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with reducing traffic congestion, electric car-sharing (ECS) can also solve travel demand, utilize idle resources, and enhance forms of transportation. Accordingly, university students are identified in Guangzhou, China as a promising customer group for ECS companies. Although university students in Guangzhou, China are unique in the context of ECS, few researchers have studied the factors that influence their willingness to use such services. Hence, this paper investigates the key determinants that affect university students' behavioral intention (BI) to use ECS in Guangzhou, China. Based on an extension of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT), this paper examines the effects of the constructs on BI to use ECS and the moderating role of trust in ECS. Based on results from a questionnaire of 486 university students in Guangzhou, China, conditional value (CV) was the most critical driver of BI, followed by personal attitude (PA) and sustainability (SUST). The moderating analysis showed that taking gender, education, and driving experience of university students as control variables, trust was found to have a significant positive moderating impact on the relationship between PA and BI to use ECS, and a significant negative moderating effect of trust on the relationship between CV and BI to use ECS. The implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reorganization of the global production network and the increased mobility of urban-rural elements have accelerated the differentiation of rural spaces, resulting in a trend towards specialization in rural areas. This paper focuses on the concept of specialization, and takes a renowned bonsai specialized village in Guangzhou City, China as a typical case to explore its transformation and development process, action logic and coupling mechanism with the social governance. The results show that: 1) the development of rural specialization in Ruiling Village is shaped by several key actors, such as local governments, grassroots organizations, villagers, social organizations, policies, markets and infrastructure. The transfer of these key actors and the reconstruction of actor-networks in different stages have an important influence on the transformation and realization of rural development goals. 2) Through subjects-driven, organization management and resource connection, social governance supports the specialization of rural industrial organization, operation, technology and mode. The governance structure shifts from decentralization to networking, refinement and integration. A coupling community of social governance and specialization is created by the social governance system of 'local government-grassroots organizations-economic cooperatives-villagers', which links industries, industrial chains and cooperatives. 3) Social governance integrates into the value chain extension process of rural specialized development with a central, multi-level organizational structure. It promotes the construction of the whole value chain through organizational planning, resource integration and image shaping, thus realizing the value, branding and organization of the industry, as well as the integration of rural sustainable development and governance mechanism. Social governance has a profound impact on the development of rural specialization in terms of subject, structure and mode, and participates in the construction of the whole value chain of rural areas. This paper provides a new perspective for understanding the coupling effect of social governance in the rural development transformation, and promotes the rural sustainable development and governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Busy, complex railway stations that serve as origin and termination points for a significant proportion of trains are essential to regional railway networks. Resolving conflicts between arrival–departure operations and shunting operations of cross-line trains and originating or terminating passenger trains in the throat area is important for safety in these multidirectional stations. The main task of this paper is to study the train platforming problem, and we consider the integration of track and route allocation with shunting route allocation on the basis of the traditional TTP problem, so as to formulate a strong anti-interference track allocation plan for busy, complex railway stations. Therefore, in view of the complex characteristics of train operation in busy, complex railway stations, we extensively examine the technical operational characteristics of various trains in multidirectional stations, which are the key constraints of the model, and establish a mixed-integer linear programming model. This model aims to balance the buffer time for track occupation and optimize the routing and scheduling of trains in stations. Furthermore, an improved genetic algorithm is proposed to effectively implement the developed model. In the case study of Guangzhou Station, the occupation analysis after the optimization of the method in this paper indicates that the shunting operations significantly interfere with arrival–departure operations in throat areas. The optimization of buffer times and track utilization times resulted in notable reductions of 30.55% and 77.82%, respectively, in quadratic differences. These outcomes provide empirical evidence supporting the feasibility of the proposed model and algorithm for addressing train platforming problems, particularly in complex, multidirectional, and heavily trafficked railway stations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The background of "emotional turn" calls for the study of affective geography to move away from the paradigm of subjective experience to a broader study of social space. As a complex social and cultural integration, the learning space for the elderly is no longer only a pure facility for the aged. The daily life, stage performance and social interaction of the elderly in the space are endowed with more special emotional significance. Taking Guangdong Old Cadres University as the main case study, this paper deconstructs the spatial perception of elderly students into three emotional stages, namely Cognition, Identity and Spillover, from the perspective of emotional geography, through long-term observation, participation and integration into the learning and social life of the elderly in and out of class. This paper holds that the learning place is not only a substantial spatial scale, but also a space with special social connection and sense of belonging around "community" and "emotion". Back to the old place by learning a positive space projection self definition, "to participate in learning" dynamic atmosphere triggers the elderly, the young positive emotions, space of social network also intimacy, a sense of belonging for the old emotional support, a positive local identity and sense of community ACTS on the spatial construction become stable, ageing resistant negative positive spillover benefits. This paper provides real case support for deconstructing learning space from the perspective of emotional geography, focuses on active actors in urban daily life, and provides empirical suggestions for the development of geriaterriendly communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated by the fast-emerging literature on African immigrants in new destinations, this paper examines the role of religion in the African immigrants' perceived attitudes of Chinese people toward them. Building on the triple-market model, we identify different ways Islam and Christianity influence African immigrants' perceived attitudes in Guangzhou, the most popular gateway city for African immigrants to China. Using both survey and in-depth interview data, we find that Muslim Africans tend to perceive better attitudes of local Chinese toward them than their Christian counterparts. African-dominated congregations, where Christian Africans are used to participating, are negatively associated with African immigrants' perceived attitudes. We argue that the mechanism underlying the relationships reflects how religion influences immigrants' social experiences in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guangzhou is located in the southern part of China, near the South China Sea, belongs to Guangdong Province. It serves as China's southern gateway to the world and was historically called "The Southern Treasure of the Emperor", playing a crucial role in China's maritime trade history. Throughout Chinese history, Guangzhou underwent several cycles of "closure" and "opening", policies that severely impacted trade. However, foreign merchants never ceased to request permission from the Chinese government to engage in trade. In 1757, Emperor Qianlong decreed Guangzhou as the only one official port for foreign trade. This edict led to the establishment of the one port trading system in Guangzhou, as the Qing government aimed to counter foreign influences and local uprisings while maintaining a self-sufficient small-scale agricultural economy. Western nations and their traders sought opportunities within this system, aspiring to expand trade to other regions of China, even the inland areas. The exclusive status of Guangzhou as China's only one trading port persisted until 1842, following the defeat of the Qing government in the Opium War against Britain, the Nanjing Treaty was signed. This treaty opened Guangzhou, Shanghai, Ningbo, Fuzhou, and Xiamen as trading ports, bringing an end to the one port trading system. The reasons and impacts of the establishment of this system have not been comprehensively analyzed to date. Therefore, this paper based on historical archives, analyzes both the direct and underlying reasons behind Emperor Qianlong's decision and elucidates the system's diverse impacts on various aspects of Qing-era China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a crucial constituent of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), secondary organic aerosols (SOA) influence public health, regional air quality, and global climate patterns. This paper highlights the use of Hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) which effectively retains strongly polar analytes that might exhibit incomplete or no retention in reverse chromatography, resulting in superior separation efficiency. A HILIC column was used to analyze 7 standards, environmental standards (1648a and 1649b), and samples collected in urban environments in the Pearl River Delta region of Guangzhou. That serve as valuable reference points for evaluating the organic composition of the atmospheric environment. The results indicate a high degree of accuracy in the analytical method, sodium octyl-d17 sulfate serves as the internal standard, with a linear correlation coefficient of the 7 standards, boasting a linear correlation coefficient R ranging from 0.987-0.999 and a slope, k, of the linear equation from 0.9662-2.2927. The instrument detection limit (IDLs) is established at 0.0026-0.0300 µg mL-1, while the method detection limit (MDLs) falls within the range of 0.0077-0.2300 ng m-3, demonstrating the method's exceptional sensitivity. Since isoprene sulphates are highly polar due to containing a hydrophilic bond to the hydroxyl group and a hydrophobic bond to the sulphate, and as such showed strong retention using this method. This technique employs Sodium ethyl sulfate and Sodium octyl sulfate standards for semi-quantitative compound analysis isoprene-derived OSs, the error in sample analysis (EA) ranged from 12.25-95.26% and the two standards maintaining a consistent recovery rate between 116%-131% and 86%-127%. These findings indicate a high level of precision when semi-quantifying compounds with similar structural characteristics, affirming the analysis method's minimal relative error and underscoring its repeatability, process stability, and the reliability of its results for isoprene OSs. To enhance the method's reliability assessment, the study analyzed polar organic components of standard particulate matter samples (1648a and 1649b), providing precise determinations of several isoprene OSs using this method. Methyltetrol sulfate (m/z 215) is the highest concentration in the ambient samples, up to 67.33 ng m-3 at daytime. These results serve as valuable reference points for assessing the organic composition of the atmospheric environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurately predicting carbon price is crucial for risk avoidance in the carbon financial market. In light of the complex characteristics of the regional carbon price in China, this paper proposes a model to forecast carbon price based on the multi-factor hybrid kernel-based extreme learning machine (HKELM) by combining secondary decomposition and ensemble learning. Variational mode decomposition (VMD) is first used to decompose the carbon price into several modes, and range entropy is then used to reconstruct these modes. The multi-factor HKELM optimized by the sparrow search algorithm is used to forecast the reconstructed subsequences, where the main external factors innovatively selected by maximum information coefficient and historical time-series data on carbon prices are both considered as input variables to the forecasting model. Following this, the improved complete ensemble-based empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise and range entropy are respectively used to decompose and reconstruct the residual term generated by VMD. Finally, the nonlinear ensemble learning method is introduced to determine the predictions of residual term and final carbon price. In the empirical analysis of Guangzhou market, the root mean square error(RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE) and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of the model are 0.1716, 0.1218 and 0.0026, respectively. The proposed model outperforms other comparative models in predicting accuracy. The work here extends the research on forecasting theory and methods of predicting the carbon price. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Everyday leisure creates opportunities for migrant–local encounters and these encounters play important roles in urban migrants' lives as they further their integration into the city. However, migrant workers are not homogeneous, with prominent identifiable differences between generations. This current paper analyses migrant workers' leisure patterns and constraints in Guangzhou, China, with a particular focus on generational differences. Based on survey data collected in 2018, we have identified three leisure patterns, namely Transformed (i.e., higher leisure consumption and longer travelled distance for leisure), Prolonged (i.e., longer leisure time) and Traditional (i.e., lower leisure consumption, shorter leisure time and shorter travelled distance). In addition, significant generational differences are observed: first, while the Transformed Pattern is predisposed to be the new generation's choice, almost half of the first generation retains the Traditional pattern; second, the first generation tends to report more substantial leisure constraints subjectively, but their leisure patterns are contrarily more affected by objective constraint indicators, such as gender, working hours, living with family members and residential location. The new generation is more influenced by subjective constraint indicators such as their attitude towards leisure, lack of like-minded companions or mobility choices. This study contributes to the extant literature by offering a typology of leisure patterns considering multiple dimensions of leisure behaviours, and further revealing the diversification of migrant workers' leisure life in the dynamic urban context. Findings suggest that the two generations may value leisure differently, indicating inevitable lifestyle changes of the newcomers in Chinese cities. Our findings may also provide some suggestions for policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate forecasting of bus travel time and its uncertainty is critical to service quality and operation of transit systems: it can help passengers make informed decisions on departure time, route choice, and even transport mode choice, and it also support transit operators on tasks such as crew/vehicle scheduling and timetabling. However, most existing approaches in bus travel time forecasting are based on deterministic models that provide only point estimation. To this end, we develop in this paper a Bayesian probabilistic model for forecasting bus travel time and estimated time of arrival (ETA). To characterize the strong dependencies/interactions between consecutive buses, we concatenate the link travel time vectors and the headway vector from a pair of two adjacent buses as a new augmented variable and model it with a mixture of constrained multivariate Gaussian distributions. This approach can naturally capture the interactions between adjacent buses (e.g., correlated speed and smooth variation of headway), handle missing values in data, and depict the multimodality in bus travel time distributions. Next, we assume different periods in a day share the same set of Gaussian components, and we use time-varying mixing coefficients to characterize the systematic temporal variations in bus operation. For model inference, we develop an efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm to obtain the posterior distributions of model parameters and make probabilistic forecasting. We test the proposed model using the data from two bus lines in Guangzhou, China. Results show that our approach significantly outperforms baseline models that overlook bus-to-bus interactions, in terms of both predictive means and distributions. Besides forecasting, the parameters of the proposed model contain rich information for understanding/improving the bus service, for example, analyzing link travel time and headway correlation using covariance matrices and understanding time-varying patterns of bus fleet operation from the mixing coefficients. Funding: This research is supported in part by the Fonds de Recherche du Quebec-Societe et Culture (FRQSC) under the NSFC-FRQSC Research Program on Smart Cities and Big Data, the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute (CANSSI) Collaborative Research Teams grants, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada. X. Chen acknowledges funding support from the China Scholarship Council (CSC). Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2022.0214. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) causes a high mortality rate each year, which is a threat to human well-being and health. An automated external defibrillator (AED) is an effective device for heart attack-related diseases and is a panacea to save OHCA. Most relevant literature focuses on the spatial distribution, accessibility, and configuration optimization of AED devices, which all belong to the characteristics of the spatial distribution of AED devices. Still, there is a lack of discussion on related potential influencing factors. In addition, analysis of AED facilities involving multiple city comparisons is less considered. In this study, data on AED facilities in two major cities in China were obtained through the WeChat applet. Then, the AED equity at the city and block scales and its socioeconomic factors were analyzed using the Gini coefficient, Lorenz curve, and optimal parameters-based geo-graphical detector (OPGD) model. Results show that the number of AEDs in Shenzhen was about eight-times that of in Guangzhou. The distribution of AEDs in Shenzhen was more equitable with a global Gini of 0.347, higher than that in Guangzhou with a global Gini of 0.504. As for the determinants of AED equity, residential density was the most significant determinant in both Guangzhou and Shenzhen from the perspective of individual effects on AED equity. Differently, due to the aging population in Guangzhou, the proportion of the elderly in blocks was influential to local AED equity. The local economic development level was crucial to local AED equity in Shenzhen. The results of the interaction detector model illustrate that relatively equitable AED distributions were found in the high-density residential areas with a balance of employment and housing, high-aging residential areas, and high-mobility residential areas in Guangzhou. The area with a high level of local economic development, dense population, and large mobility was the area with a relatively equitable distribution of AEDs in Shenzhen. The results of this paper are conducive to understanding the equity of AEDs and its socio-economic determinants, providing scientific reference for the optimization and management of AEDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2019, triggered lightning was used to directly strike phase C of a 1.5 km, 10 kV double‐circuit distribution line in Guangzhou, China, with 2 flashes (13 return strokes) recorded. This paper presents the characteristics of induced voltage at the closest pole on the parallel line. The induced voltage is bipolar, which can be divided into 3 stages: negative increase stage, fast and positive transition stage and slowly returning to zero stage. The positive peak value of phase A voltage ranges from 111.4 to 228.9 kV and that of phase C voltage is from 90.1 to 200.9 kV, corresponding to lightning current from −8.9 to −29.9 kA. The positive peak value of the induced voltage is approximately 3 to 10 times the negative peak value. The negative peak, positive peak and positive 10%–10% duration time of induced voltage show a good linear relationship with the peak value of the return stroke current. There was no flashover occurred during the whole process. The result in this paper can provide data support for numerical simulation and line protection analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Night tourism often involves a large number of lighting facilities, which consume a large amount of energy. Therefore, one of the unique low energy consumption natural ecological tourism activities -- firefly night tour has attracted attention and become an important breakthrough point for night tourism in tourist destinations. In this paper, Guangzhou firefly night tour project is taken as the research object. Based on the comprehensive economic, environmental, and socio-cultural benefits brought by the development of firefly night tour, the resources distribution, current development status, and existing problems of firefly night tour in Guangzhou are analyzed, and its high-quality development paths are proposed from three levels: government, industry, and tourist. The aim is to explore a new model for the economic development of Guangzhou night tour, boosting the transformation and upgrading of the night tourism economy, while also providing reference ideas and value for the development of night tourism economy in other tourist destinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the exported paintings recording realistic themes with realistic skills was popular in Guangzhou. Pith painting was the watercolor painting drawn on rice paper, which was thin and colorful, in which characters and scenes were vivid, recording production and life at that time in details. Therefore, it is the precious image data to study the society, production, life and folk customs of that time. Based on the analysis and research of a set of pith paintings with the theme of Pekoe in China (Hainan) Museum of the South China Sea, the cultivation, production, trade and circulation of Pekoe in the Qing Dynasty are discussed in details. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid expansion of metro networks, e.g., in many cities of China, continuously introduces the operation of new stations every year. Due to the lack of historical data and complicate variations of short-term passenger flow in the early stage of operation, it is difficult to accurately predict inbound and outbound passenger flows of new metro stations in the short term, which would be the database for train scheduling for new stations before operation, dynamic capacity optimization for new stations under operation, short-term prediction of cycle sharing demands near new stations, and so on. Traditional methods usually failed to exactly reflect the complicate rules or were unusable without the new station's historical data. In order to solve the above problems, this paper proposes a short-term inbound and outbound passenger flow prediction model for new metro stations at the early stage of operation by combining the K-means clustering algorithm, an improved spatiotemporal long short-term memory model (Sp-LSTM), and a real-time feedback error model (mean absolute error, MAE), where passenger flows' spatial-temporal characteristics and land-use relevance are considered. The application in Guangzhou Metro, China, where Line 21 is regarded as a new line, shows that the proposed K-Sp-LSTM model has the best prediction accuracy compared with traditional methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accurate prediction of passenger flow is crucial in improving the quality of the service of intercity high-speed railways. At present, there are a few studies on such predictions for railway origin–destination (O-D) pairs, and usually only a single factor is considered, yielding a low prediction accuracy. In this paper, we propose a neural network model based on multi-source data (NN-MSD) to predict the O-D passenger flow of intercity high-speed railways at different times in one day in the short term, considering the factors of time, space, and weather. Firstly, the factors that influence time-varying passenger flow are analyzed based on multi-source data. The cyclical characteristics, spatial and temporal fusion characteristics, and weather characteristics are extracted. Secondly, a neural network model including three modules is designed based on the characteristics. A fully connected network (FCN) model is used in the first module to process the classification data. A bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory (Bi-LSTM) model is used in the second module to process the time series data. The results of the first module and the second module are spliced and fused in the third module using an FCN model. Finally, an experimental analysis is performed for the Guangzhou–Zhuhai intercity high-speed railway in China, in which three groups of comparison experiments are designed. The results show that the proposed NN-MSD model can predict many O-D pairs with a high and stable accuracy, which outperforms the baseline models, and multi-source data are very helpful in improving the prediction accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate and reliable prediction of PM2.5 concentrations is the basis for appropriate warning measures, and a single prediction model is often ineffective. In this paper, we propose a novel decomposition-and-ensemble model to predict the concentration of PM2.5. The model utilizes Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (EEMD) to decompose PM2.5 series, Support Vector Regression (SVR) to predict each Intrinsic Mode Function (IMF), and a hybrid algorithm based on Differential Evolution (DE) and Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO) to optimize SVR parameters. The proposed prediction model EEMD-SVR-DEGWO is employed to forecast the concentration of PM2.5 in Guangzhou, Wuhan, and Chongqing of China. Compared with six prediction models, the proposed EEMD-SVR-DEGWO is a reliable predictor and has achieved competitive results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urban road network is a large and complex system characterized by significant heterogeneity arising from different spatial structures and traffic demands. To facilitate effective management and control, it is necessary to partition the road network into homogeneous sub-areas. In this regard, we aim to propose a hybrid method for partitioning sub-areas with intra-area homogeneity, inter-area heterogeneity, and similar sizes, called CSDRA. It is specifically designed for bidirectional road networks with segment weights that encompass traffic flow, speed, or roadside facility evaluation. Based on community detection and spectral clustering, this proposed method comprises four main modules: initial partition, partitioning of large sub-areas, reassignment of small sub-areas, and boundary adjustment. In the preliminary partitioning work, we also design a road network reconstruction method which further helps to enhance the intra-area homogeneity and inter-area heterogeneity of partitioning results. Furthermore, to align with the requirement for comparable work units in practical traffic management and control, we control the similarity in the size of sub-areas by enforcing upper and lower bound constraints on the size of the sub-areas. We verify the outperformance of the proposed method by an experiment on the partitioning of an urban road network in Guangzhou, China, where we employ sidewalk barrier-free score data as segment weights. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of both the road network reconstruction method and the CSDRA proposed in this paper, as they significantly improve the partitioning outcomes compared with other methods using different evaluation indicators corresponding to the partitioning objectives. Finally, we investigate the influence of constraint parameters on the evaluation indicator. Our findings indicate that appropriately configuring these constraint parameters can effectively minimize sub-region size variations while having minimal impact on other aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The regional energy system (RES) is a system that consumes multiple forms of energy in the region and achieves coordinated and efficient utilization of energy resources. The RES is composed of multiple micro energy systems (MESs); however, due to the mismatch of energy resources and different energy consumption within each MES, a large amount of clean energy is wasted, and each MES has to acquire extra energy. This significantly increases operation costs and contributes to environmental pollution. One of the promising ways to solve this problem is to deploy an energy storage system in the RES, which can make use of its advantages to transfer energy in space-time and fulfill the demand for loads in different periods, and conduct unified energy management for each MES in the RES. Nevertheless, a large number of users are deterred by the high investment in energy storage devices. A shared energy storage system (SESS) can allow multi-MESs to share one energy storage system, and meet the energy storage needs of different systems, to reduce the capital investment of energy storage systems and realize efficient consumption of clean energy. Taking multiple MESs as the object, this paper proposes a model and collaborative optimal strategy of energy management for the RES to accomplish high utilization of clean energy, environmental friendliness, and economy. First, the paper analyzes the internal energy supply characteristics of the RES and develops a model of the RES with an SESS. Then, the paper poses the management concept of load integration and unified energy distribution by using the operational information of each subsystem. An optimal operation strategy is established to minimize daily operation costs and achieve economic, environmentally friendly, and efficient operation of the RES. Third, by setting up scenarios such as no energy storage system and an independent energy storage system (IESS) of each MES and SESS, a case of a science and education park in Guangzhou, China, is illustrated for experiments. Numerical experiment results show that with an SESS built by the investor in the RES and applying the mentioned energy management strategy, the utilization of clean energy can be 100%, the operation costs can be reduced by up to 9.78%, the pollutant emission can be reduced by 3.92%, and the peak-to-valley difference can be decreased by 20.03%. Finally, the influence of energy storage service fees and electricity tariffs on daily operation costs is discussed, and the operation suggestions of the SESS are proposed. It validates the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the second half of the 19th century, Shamian was established and developed as a colonial island enclave in the Chinese city of Guangzhou. Simultaneously, literary and cultural imaginations, depictions, and narrations of the place produced a discourse of Shamian as a utopian island: geographically insular and bounded, environmentally beautiful and peaceful, socially exclusive and harmonious, and technologically progressive and advantageous. This paper examines contemporaneous (predominantly English) literary and cultural representations of Shamian as a colonial utopia and their interrelations with the island's spatial formation and evolution. These texts (primarily written and pictorial descriptive, nonfictional accounts) reflected the spatial reality but also promoted spatial practices that reinforced the physical utopian island. This process exemplifies the theories of performative geographies in island studies and intertextuality in geocriticism, showing how a place's spatial representations and reality are mutually constructed. Adopting a conceptual model of intertextual performative geographies, this paper investigates the dynamic interplay of these literary and cultural texts with the spatial reality, arguing that literary and cultural representations of Shamian (re)produced the colonial enclave as a utopian island, both conceptually and practically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Woody plants are crucial biotic components of greenway in urban areas. Taking Guangzhou greenway as the research object, the present paper carried out a synthetic analysis on tree species composition, flowering periods of ornamental species, important value, and the usage of native plants in the whole municipality and each district in Guangzhou city, based on field investigations and statistical processing. The results were the follows: (1) More than 28 common species were used as ornamental purpose in Guangzhou. Flowering species existed almost throughout the whole year, but concentrated on the summer season; specifically, there were 15, 14 and 12 flowering species found in June, July and August, respectively. (2) The dominant plant species in Guangzhou greenway were Ficus microcarpa, Bauhinia purpurea, F. altissima, and Mangifera indica based on analyzing the relative important values for all species. The proportional rate of native plants was around 73% of the total, but several species (e.g., F. microcarpa) was planted too many to form a simple community composition. (3) Woody plants grew well along all greenway with few reports on disease or insect pests, but regular monitoring and controlling measures were indispensable. (4) DBH of nine major tree species showed a linear positive correlation with crown width and height. Therefore, both city managers and forest researchers should enrich plant taxa in subsequent afforestation activities and keep standardized management measures to avoid homogeneous community composition, to improve overall forest landscape, and to maintain high-quality ecological services in urban regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canton (present-day Guangzhou) has long flourished as a port city. As the city expanded in the nineteenth century, the risks of conflagrations increased; streets became more crowded, buildings were more often made of wood, and there was more use of open fires. The reconstruction of Canton after conflagrations provides an excellent way to observe the resilience of urban space, understood here as the result of interactions among different stakeholders. This paper explores how authorities, local communities, foreigners, and Hong merchants addressed fires and rebuilt through laws, regulations, technologies and cooperation, and how responses to fire destruction shaped urban space. Divers stakeholders affected the reconstruction of buildings and streets. The government made laws to widen streets, communities built watchtowers, and foreigners made new plans for Thirteen Factories, a neigbhorhood along the Pearl River. At the same time, conflicts between communities and foreigners obstructed plans for urban transformation and maintained the stability of urban structures. The communities kept the traditional local community organizations the 'Kaifong' (local organization in street) who opposed the widening streets and fought against proposed fire zones around Thirteen Factories, thus pitching local interests against those of the foreigners in a complex social, political, and cultural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A special design of new berm reinforced with geotextile layers is reported. • Field tests conduct to show the performance of the berm with special design method. • Results explore the failure mechanism of the berm with special design method. This paper reports a case study of an extension design of an existing municipal solid waste (MSW) earth berm in Guangzhou, China. The berm has limited space for extension and was constructed during a rainy season. Due to the space constraint, the extended berm was designed with a steep slope 1.1 horizontal to 1.0 vertical (1.1 H :1.0 V). Due to the rainy season, the new extended earth berm was built with a mix of gravel and sandy clay (i.e. V gravel / V clay = 50:50). To make the new berm design satisfies the stability requirement, it has been reinforced with geotextile layers within the berm and piles at the toe of the berm. A 2D finite-element analysis has been conducted to demonstrate the rationality of the design. The performance of the new berm was monitored using field sensors, which include the vertical and lateral displacements of the berm, vertical earth pressure of the berm, and tensile strain of the geotextile layers during and after the berm construction. Numerical and field tests results show that the failure surface appears along the interface between the old berm and the horizonal displacements are mainly observed in the new berm. The results of this study proven that a steep slope berm with geotextiles reinforcement can resistant the load from extended MSW landfill, which can provide a guidance for the design and construction of the extension of MSW landfill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarizes the results of an effort aimed at improving train operation schedules on Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed railway (WG-HSR). The real-record train operation and passenger tickets-booking records of WG-HSR are used for statistical analysis on the train service quality and passenger distribution. More specifically, the train service frequency and interval time at each station are analyzed. Based on this, the temporal and spatial distribution of capacity utilization in each section are investigated. In order to get a holistic view of passenger flow characteristics, the passenger volume during different time periods and between several origin and destination (OD) pairs are investigated to characterize travellers' spatial-temporal preferences. The passenger distributions on some long-distance trains are shown to get the number and proportion of cross-line passengers travelling on the WG-HSR. Moreover, for a better understanding of the seat capacity utilization of trains, the load rates of trains in various sections and time periods are investigated. Specifically, the relationship between the average load rate of trains and trains' running distance is explored, finding that the longer the non-cross-line train travels is, the higher the average load rate is. This study provides insightful findings that help understanding HSR operation and conducting further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study on the equity of urban green space layout based on the quantification of ecosystem services is oriented to the improvement of human well-being, which is helpful to promote the equity of ecological environment and the sustainable development of cities. Based on the analysis of the urban green space distribution and ecosystem service value of green space of the blocks in Yuexiu District,Guangzhou in 2020, this study used the location entropy method to analyze the fairness of green space ecosystem services available per capita in each block. The results showed that: (1) The population and urban green space in Yuexiu District were significantly spatially heterogeneous. (2) The comprehensive ecosystem service value of green space varied greatly among the blocks in Yuexiu District, with a high spatial distribution in the north and a low spatial distribution in the south. (3) There were some unfair spatial distribution of green space in the district. The two blocks, Dengfeng and Hongqiao, had extremely high location entropy. The seven blocks of Renmin, Guangta, Zhuguang, Dadong, Datang, Meihua Village and Kuangquan had low or extremely low location entropy. It was proposed to optimize the green space layout of the study area by strictly protecting important ecological green space, inserting green space in subtleties, increasing urban public green space by using urban wasteland, adding riverside greenways with sports and leisure functions, increasing urban green space under the background of old city reconstruction, and increasing the urban vertical green area. The paper results can provide some reference for the study of the fairness of green space layout in the same type of high population density cities, which can help to improve the level of residents' health and well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-rise building areas (HRBs) provide significant social and environmental services and play a crucial role in modern urbanization. The large-scale and long-term spatial distribution of HRBs is of great interest to many fields, such as urban planning and local climate analysis. While previous studies have confirmed the value of Sentinel-2 images in extracting HRBs and their changes, current work is limited to relatively local areas and short-term analysis. One reason is due to the fact that the earliest Sentinel-2 image can only date back to 2015. To address this research gap, this paper proposes an efficient procedure to intelligently extract HRBs and their changes from multitemporal Landsat-7 and Sentinel-2 images, using a specifically designed fully convolutional network. To validate the proposed method, we selected four typical cities in China, namely, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Zhengzhou, as study areas. We utilized Landsat-7 images acquired in 2000 and 2010, along with Sentinel-2 images acquired in 2020, as experimental data. We extracted and analyzed three periods of HRBs and their changes in the four cities, along with urban rail terminal data and gross domestic product (GDP) data in the same period. The results show that the proposed method can efficiently extract HRBs and their changes in the four cities over the past 20 years, with an overall accuracy of more than 90%. HRBs changes are primarily driven by urban planning policies and geographical factors. There is a strong positive correlation between the increase in HRBs and the increase in rail terminals, both in terms of quantity and spatial distribution. Additionally, there is a positive correlation between HRBs increase and GDP increase in terms of quantity, but the trend varies in different cities due to their diverse developing modes. Overall, the results indicate that the proposed method can be a potential operational tool to extract large-scale and long-term HRBs and their changes in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban land change plays an essential role in the development of country's economy. Rapid and unplanned urban growth increases land surface temperature (LST) and reduces carbon storage (CS) by replacing the natural land use/land cover (LULC). This paper aims to monitor and predict the changes in urban growth patterns on LST and CS for the winter season in Guangzhou from 1989 to 2021. The integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) model is used to assess the existing (1989-2021) scenario of CS. The Cellular Automata-Artificial Neural Network (CA-ANN) and Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) based Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA) are used to predict the future LULC, CS and LST scenarios. The results indicate that an increase in urban areas by 63% causes an upsurge of high LST (≥34 °C) areas by 652 km2 and a decrease in carbon storage by 56,943.607 t from 1989 to 2021. In addition, the results demonstrate that 93% of lower temperature areas have higher CS capacity (65%), whereas 80% of higher temperature areas demonstrate a low CS capacity (89%). This study can provide effective mitigating measures for designing smart cities and valuable guidelines for ensuring environmental-friendly green cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quality of urban environment has a profound impact on the health of women – one of the core subjects of urban life. Based on neuroscientific methods, such as the Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) and the E4 wristband and taking a road section in Guangzhou as an example, this paper explores the impact of urban environment on women’s emotional health from both objective physiological indicators and subjective psychological reports. The study finds that both environment type and travel sequence have a different impact on women’s emotions. The level of spatial openness, the sudden change of environment type, and the mixed traffic flow are the main factors contributing to fluctuations in female participants’ emotional arousal. Combined with the neuroscience experiment results and an in-depth interview, it proposes women-friendly planning and design strategies, such as improving vision permeability and creating reasonable transitional space, in order to provide a reference for the construction of healthy cities focusing on key populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Adhesive tapes are as effective as baits and pitfall traps in monitoring Solenopsis invicta and Tapinoma melanocephalum in urban areas in southern China. However, adhesive tapes detected less ants and fewer species of non-target ants than baits and pitfall traps. Our study demonstrated that tape-paving behavior can potentially be used in developing more specific monitoring methods for S. invicta and T. melanocephalum in urban areas in southern China. Our previous study discovered that two urban pest ants, red imported fire ants, Solenopsis invicta Buren (Formicidae: Myrmicinae), and ghost ants, Tapinoma melanocephalum (Fabricius) (Formicidae: Dolichoderinae), can pave viscose surfaces with particles to facilitate food search and transport. We hypothesize that this paving behavior can be applied to monitor S. invicta and T. melanocephalum. In the present study, 3998 adhesive tapes, each with a food source (sausage), were placed in 20 locations around Guangzhou, China (181–224 tapes per location), and their efficiency to detect S. invicta and T. melanocephalum was compared with two traditional ant-monitoring methods, baiting and pitfall trapping. Overall, S. invicta was detected by 45.6% and 46.4% of baits and adhesive tapes, respectively. In each location, the percentage of adhesive tapes detecting S. invicta and T. melanocephalum was similar when compared to baits and pitfall traps. However, significantly more non-target ant species showed up on bait and pitfall traps. Seven non-target ant species—Pheidole parva Mayr (Formicidae: Myrmicinae), Pheidole nodus Smith (Formicidae: Myrmicinae), Pheidole sinica Wu & Wang (Formicidae: Myrmicinae), Pheidole yeensis Forel (Formicidae: Myrmicinae), Carebara affinis (Jerdon) (Formicidae: Myrmicinae), Camponotus nicobarensis Mayr (Formicidae: Formicinae), and Odontoponera transversa (Smith) (Formicidae: Ponerinae)—also showed tape paving behavior, but they can be easily distinguished morphologically from S. invicta and T. melanocephalum. Our study showed that the paving behavior occurs in different subfamilies of ants (i.e., myrmicinae, dolichoderinae, formicinae, and ponerinae). In addition, paving behavior can potentially be used to develop more specific monitoring methods for S. invicta and T. melanocephalum in urban areas in southern China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]