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Objective: To assess the effect of the hospital-community integrated management model of tobacco dependence on smoking cessation among community residents compared with a brief smoking cessation intervention. Methods: Our study recruited 651 smokers who were willing to quit in 19 communities in Beijing and conducted a 6-month smoking cessation intervention. The control group receiving a brief smoking cessation intervention and the pilot group receiving an integrated smoking cessation intervention. Intention-to-treat analysis (ITT) and generalized estimating equations were used to assess the effects of the integrated intervention and smoking cessation medication on average number of cigarettes smoked per day (ACSD) and smoking cessation rate. Results: Simple effects analysis showed that smokers taking medication had significantly lower ACSD than those not taking medication at follow-up, the control group reduced smoking by 3.270, 4.830, and 4.760 cigarettes in the first, third and sixth months, respectively, while the pilot group reduced by 6.230, 5.820, and 4.100 cigarettes. The integrated intervention significantly reduced ACSD among medication-taking smokers at 1st month (reduced by 3.420, P < 0.05) and 3rd month (reduced by 2.050, P < 0.05), but had no significant effect among non-medication taking smokers. The 3rd month smoking cessation rate among medication-taking smokers was 27.0%, which was significantly higher than the smokers with brief smoking cessation intervention. Conclusion: The integrated hospital-community intervention can significantly promote smoking cessation among smokers taking medication, but the issue of payment for medication and additional labor compensation for medical staff should be addressed before its popularization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid economic and social development has triggered competition for limited land space from different industries, accelerating the evolution of Beijing's urban landscape types. The increase in impermeable surfaces and the decrease in ecological land have led to an increase in the impact on the urban thermal environment. Since previous studies have mainly focused on the impact of a single urban landscape on the urban thermal environment and lacked an exploration of the combined impact of multiple landscapes, this study applied standard deviation ellipses, Pearson correlation analysis, land surface temperature (LST) profile analysis, and hot spot analysis to comprehensively explore the influence of the evolving production–living–ecological space (PLES) pattern on LST. The results show that the average LST of various spaces continued to increase before 2009 and decreased slowly after 2009, with the highest average temperature being living space, followed by production space, and the lowest average temperature being ecological space for each year. The spatiotemporal shift path of the thermal environment is consistent with the shift trajectory of the living space center of gravity in Beijing; LST is positively correlated with living space (LS) and negatively correlated with production space (PS) and ecological space (ES). LST is positively correlated with LS and negatively correlated with PS and ES. Influenced by the change in bedding surface type, the longitudinal thermal profile curve of LST shows a general trend of "low at both ends and high in the middle". With the change in land space type, LST fluctuates significantly, and the horizontal thermal profile curve shows a general trend of "first decreasing, followed by increasing and finally decreasing". In addition, the hot spot analysis shows that the coverage area of very hot spots, hot spots, and warm spots increased by 0.72%, 1.13%, and 2.03%, respectively, in the past 30 years, and the main expansion direction is southeast, and very cold spots and cold spots are distributed in the northwest ecological space, and the area change first decreases and then increases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The human leukocyte antigen (HLA) susceptibility gene is the main genetic risk factor for primary biliary cholangitis (PBC). The prognosis of patients with PBC is linked to gut microbiota dysbiosis. However, whether the HLA alleles are associated with the gut microbiota distribution and disease severity remains unknown. Methods: A cohort of 964 Chinese patients with PBC was enrolled at Beijing YouAn Hospital, Beijing, China. High-resolution genotyping of the HLA class I and class II loci from 151 of these patients was performed using sequence-based PCR. Stool samples were collected from43 of the 151 fully HLA-typed patients to analyze their microbiota compositions via 16S RNA gene sequencing. Results: Of the 964 patients, the male:female ratio was 114:850, and 342 of these patients (35.5%) had already developed liver cirrhosis (LC) before enrollment. Patients with PBC showed a significantly higher frequency of HLA DRB1*08:03 than did the controls (21.2% vs. 9.0%, P=0.0001). HLA-DRB1*03:01, DRB1*07:01, DRB1*14:05, and DRB1*14:54 frequencies were also increased but did not reach significance after Bonferroni's correction. Conversely, the DQB1*03:01 frequency was significantly lower in patients with PBC than in the controls (24.5% vs. 39.2%, P=0.0010). The patients' gutmicrobiotawere analyzed from four perspectives. The microbial community abundances were significantly lower in FHRAC-positive patients (patients with a combination of five HLA DRB1 high-risk alleles) than in FHRAC-negative patients (P<0.05). Of the top 10 microbial genera, Lachnospiraceae_incertae_sedis was higher in the FHRACpositive patients than in the FHRAC-negative patients (P<0.05). linear discriminant analysis (LDA) effect-size (LEfSe) analysis showed different microbes at different levels in the FHRAC-negative patients but not in the FHRAC-positive patients. DQB1*03:01-positive patients contained mostly Lactobacillaceae at the family level. A comparison of the FHRAC-positive patients with and without liver cirrhosis showed that the abundances of Veillonella were significantly higher in patients with cirrhosis and FHRAC than in those without cirrhosis and are FHRAC-negative. Conclusion: The HLA class II genes may influence the gut microbiota compositions in patients with PBC. Differential gut microbiota were expressed at different taxonomic levels. Some bacterial abundances may be increased in FHRAC-positive patients with PBC and cirrhosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Will China's rise lead to Chinese hegemony? Most International Relations scholars would answer in the negative, contending the road to a global hegemony remains well beyond Beijing's interests and capabilities. In Asia, however, China's formidable economy, technological advancement, rapidly modernizing military forces, and recent geopolitical moves look outright hegemonic - a fact that United States attempts to "pivot" and "rebalance" to that region have put into sharp relief. To assess the prospects of a new regional hegemony, this article considers the "economic," "security" and "cultural" relations of eleven Asian states with both Beijing and Washington. The overall results induce skepticism about the latter's ability to reorder the region. Although growing and in some cases significant, China's provision of international goods to neighboring countries still pales in comparison to that centered on the United States and its allies. Sightings of an Asian Pax Sinica are at best premature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assessment of ecological security patterns is a topic of conversation in landscape ecology in recent years. However, ecosystem services and human activities are seldom considered comprehensively in the assessment of ecological security patterns. The present study employs the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei urban agglomeration as a study area, and uses ecological services to determine the ecological sources. The importance of ecological sources is classified based on logical coding and functional types of ecological services. The research combines regional characteristics to select and quantitatively calculate three human disturbance factors: soil erosion sensitivity, geological hazard sensitivity, and night lighting. Then the basic surface resistance of land use to limit migration is modified and ecological corridors are identified by combining these three disturbance factors. The results indicate that the sources of water production, soil and water conservation, and carbon fixation are mainly provided in mountainous areas, recreation sources are mostly distributed in the plains, and these ecological sources improve the maintenance of ecological corridors. The modification of resistance surfaces significantly changes the length of ecological corridors in Tianjin, Tangshan, Cangzhou, and Beijing, and the modified resistance surface improves the recognition of ecological corridors. This study provides a new research framework for identifying the ecological security patterns of urban agglomerations and provides scientific guidance related to ecological protection and urban planning for the Beijing−Tianjin−Hebei urban agglomeration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No abstract received. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the valid use of urban land and the safety of public health, an extensive contamination survey of organochlorine pesticides from five soil cores was conducted in the highly urbanized areas of Beijing in China. For topsoils in five soil cores, level of ∑HCHs and ∑DDTs varied from 0.174 to 4,783 ng g and 0.62 to 57,849 ng g, respectively. The profile in topsoil of cores displayed that levels of pollutants in four soil cores from the urban areas with dense population are higher than that from outskirts. The depth characteristics of pollutants indicated that the level of ∑HCHs and ∑DDTs in BY and WU was close to/below the background value of soil in China (50 ng g), but those in some soil samples from A, B and ZX core, especially A and B, was above the threshold value for the soil safety (1,000 ng g). In views of the usage history of the land and profiles of contaminants, the source in A and B probably came from the dumped waste chemical materials in the old chemical factories. The study of soil cores sampled revealed the existence of chemical 'time bomb' in urban regions of Beijing. Also, the finding indicated the absolute necessity of assessing the soil quality with the unprecedented land use changes in the big city community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]