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With the ability to understand linkages and feedbacks between land use dynamics and human–land relationships, cellular automata (CA) are extensively applied in land use/cover change (LUCC) simulation. However, with complex transition rules and a growing volume of spatial data, conventional serial CA models cannot meet the demands of efficient computation. In this article, a Tensor‐CA model using vectorization and Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) technology based on a tensor computation framework for optimizing multiple LUCC simulations is presented. Complex transition rules of LUCC‐CA models are vectorized and formalized to tensor operations which are effectively solved by GPU. The proposed Tensor‐CA model was applied to LUCC simulations in the Pearl River Delta of China. The experimental results indicate that the proposed model effectively improved the performance compared to Serial‐CA, Parallel‐CA, and GPU‐CA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dramatic land cover changes related to the accelerated urbanization process have led to habitat fragmentation and loss, resulting in biodiversity loss. Ecological Networks (ENs) have been seen as an effective solution for ecological conservation targeting habitat connectedness and ecosystem functions. The EN research is, however, generally depicted by current or historical landscape data, devoid of the potential future disturbances, which is detrimental to maintaining EN's stability and sustainability. This study combines the system dynamics (SD) model and patch-generating land use simulation (PLUS) to simulate land use patterns in Wuhan urban agglomeration (WUA), China. The simulated land use data were incorporated into EN modeling to assess the long-term dynamics of EN in WUA, considering two scenarios related to human activities and climate change. In parallel, a landscape graphs approach is used to estimate the spatial priority of EN for conservation in landscape dynamics. The results show that: (1) The grassland decreased from 2000 to 2020 and is expected to increase from 2020 to 2035. The area of construction land would reach its peak in 2035 while cultivated land would hit a low point. (2) Analysis of EN reveals habitat fragmentation and reduced connectivity from 2000 to 2020. From 2020 to 2035, an increase in EN connectivity is expected to be observed in the SSP5–8.5 scenario, while SSP2–4.5 is the reduced scenario. (3) Southern and eastern WUA exhibit high conservation priority. The hotspots of local landscape changes are mainly the corridors that traverse through human activity areas and the edges of core habitats, which is critical to conserving. (4) The impact of natural and socioeconomic factors on EN exhibits spatial heterogeneity. This paper provides new insights to protect habitats and biodiversity to mitigate the challenge of human activities and climate change. [Display omitted] • Scenario simulation evaluates the impacts of human and climate change on ecological network. • The SSP5-8.5 indicates an increase in connectivity of the ecological networks. • The impact of urban development on the ecological network varies depending on urban structures. • More emphasis should be focused on the hotspot areas where the local landscape changes. • A scenario of increased connectivity does not imply that it should be prioritized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Warm-sector torrential rainfall (WSTR) events that occur in the annually first rainy season in south China are characterized by high rainfall intensity and low radar echo centroids. To understand the synoptic characteristics related to these features, 16 WSTR events that occurred in 2013-2017 were examined with another 16 squall line (SL) events occurred during the same period as references. Composite analysis derived from ERA-Interim reanalysis data indicated the importance of the deep layer of warm and moist air for WSTR events. The most significant difference between WSTR and SL events lies in their low-level convergence and lifting; for WSTR events, the low-level convergence and lifting is much shallower with comparable or stronger intensity. The trumpet-shaped topography to the north of the WSTR centers is favorable for the development of such shallow convergences in WSTR events. Results in this study will provide references for future studies to improve the predictability of WSTR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its small land coverage, urban land and its expansion have exhibited profound impacts on global environments. Here, we present the scenario projections of global urban land expansion under the framework of the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). Our projections feature a fine spatial resolution of 1 km to preserve spatial details. The projections reveal that although global urban land continues to expand rapidly before the 2040s, China and many other Asian countries are expected to encounter substantial pressure from urban population decline after the 2050s. Approximately 50–63% of the newly expanded urban land is expected to occur on current croplands. Global crop production will decline by approximately 1–4%, corresponding to the annual food needs for a certain crop of 122–1389 million people. These findings stress the importance of governing urban land development as a key measure to mitigate its negative impacts on food production. Shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) is a crucial scenario describing the potential of future socio-economic development. The authors here investigate long-term effects of various government policies suggested by different SSPs on urban land and reveal the impact of future urban expansion on other land and food production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies emphasize the important role of a "north-ridge versus south-trough" dipole (affecting the latitudes from 20° to 75° N around the Tibetan Plateau) of anomalous geopotential height ( Z ) in the early-2008 abnormal cryogenic freezing-rain-and-snow events in the southern part of China. The present study intends to extract the leading signal facilitating the dipole based on the numerical outputs of a full Z -linear model for diagnosing the global Z . Using this model built on full primitive equations in spherical-isobaric coordinates, we can further split the anomaly of Z Z ƒζ-uβ (representing the Z component not explicitly associated with the Coriolis parameter ƒ and its meridional derivative β) into 15 components. With the model-output Z ƒζ-uβ (mainly accounting for the dipole under the geostrophic balance) and Z-Z ƒζ-uβ matrices as the left and right singular vectors respectively, a maximum covariance analysis (MCA) is performed to extract the significant 2-4-day leading signal carried by the MCA Z-Z ƒζ-uβ mode in the upstream area of the dipole. This leading signal is mainly attributed to 1) the abnormally strong westerlies centered around the exit region of the Atlantic jet-stream and 2) the corresponding anomalous 950-300 hPa anticyclone to the south of the abnormally strong center of westerlies. The energy of the positive wave center around this jet exit region favors the downstream north-ridge while the energy of the negative wave center associated with the anomalous anticyclone favors the downstream south-trough. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Open space and urban land are interactively attractive in the simulation. • Simulated OS is evaluated with walking accessibility and population coverage rate. • Different mean sizes and time-lags of OS are considered in the simulation. • OS-CA is an effective tool for assessing the policies for creating new OS. Open spaces (OSs) in urban areas play a vital role in providing space for habitat conservation and recreation, improving the mental health of urbanites. OSs consist of complicated elements, such as parks, green landscapes and public squares. Few studies have simulated the dynamics of OS with a complete set of these elements. This study proposes a new Open-Space simulation model using cellular automata (OS-CA). A system dynamics model is used to generate scenarios for creating new OS with different construction time-lags. The spatial simulation of OS is allowed to interact with the urban dynamics, constrained by the policies controlling different mean sizes of new OSs. The effectiveness of creating new OS is assessed using the walking accessibility and the population coverage rate. The OS-CA was applied to Dongguan, South China, and validated with multi-source data. The OS simulation from 2015 to 2030 shows that the longer time-lag in building new open spaces, the higher the demand for open space will be in the future. We found that new open spaces are most likely to appear at places near rivers, forests, wetlands, lakes, along the roads, road intersections, or near residential areas. With the growth of OS, the increase rate of OS population coverage becomes slower than that of walking accessibility. We suggest that governments building more small OS within the central urban areas while constructing larger and fewer OS outside of the core urban areas to help improve the overall service level of OS. The OS-CA is available for download at https://github.com/HPSCIL/Open-Space-Cellular_Automata. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A mixed-cell CA (MCCA) is proposed to simulate the structural change of land use. • The cell state, lattice, and neighborhood of CA is re-designed based on mixed cells. • Continuous and quantitative change of multiple land use components can be simulated. • MCCA enables mixed land use studies to leap from static analysis to dynamic simulation. When used for land use change modeling, Cellular Automata (CA) usually assume that each cell has only one land use type at each time step, ignoring the mixed land use structures that are often found in land units. Mixed cells, composed of cover proportions of multiple land use types, provide a new perspective for modeling the spatio-temporal dynamics of mixed land use structures. Simulating land use change with mixed cells is challenging because mixed-cell CAs are fundamentally different from conventional CAs. This study develops a mixed-cell CA (MCCA). The structure of the CA is re-designed based on the cover proportion of land uses, including the representations of cell state, lattice, and neighborhood. The transition rules are automatically constructed by random-forest regression using historical data and a competition mechanism among multiple land use types at the sub-cell scale is proposed. In addition, a mixed-cell figure of merit (mcFoM) accuracy measure is proposed to validate the MCCA. The MCCA was applied to the Wuhan metropolitan area in China, and the results show that the MCCA was able to simulate the subtle changes of land use proportions within land units. The MCCA represents a new breed of geospatial CA models for spatio-temporal dynamics of mixed land use structures, which enables mixed land use research to leap from static analysis to dynamic simulation. The software for MCCA has been made available at https://github.com/HPSCIL/Mixed_Cell_Cellullar_Automata. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the establishment of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals in China, developing low-carbon cities has become crucial. Previous studies primarily focus on the quantitative structure of land use to achieve low carbon optimization, while ignoring the spatial integration between urban form and carbon emissions. To fulfill this gap, this paper proposed a dual-scale low carbon oriented multi-objective land use allocation (DOLA) optimization model, utilizing idea-point multi-objective linear programming (IMLP) and non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) to optimize the low-carbon-emission pattern of the city at both the structural and spatial scales respectively. By innovatively linking the urban shape index with carbon emissions, this model aims to minimize urban carbon emissions, while maximizing economic development, urban development suitability, and the compactness of city. The proposed method is applied to Wuhan's main urban area in China, the DOLA model shows significant improvements in target values across all scenarios. Among them, the scenario that prioritized low carbon emissions at both the structural and spatial scales achieved the most significant reduction of 6.43 % in carbon emissions. The DOLA effectively contributes to achieving multiple spatial targets, thereby aiding in reducing carbon emissions. It offers technical support for developing pathways towards China's "dual carbon" target. • A dual-scale low carbon oriented multi-objective land use allocation (DOLA) optimization model is proposed. • The DOLA model innovatively incorporates urban form indices to carbon emissions. • The DOLA model achieves spatial aggregation targets, thereby facilitating significant reductions in carbon emissions. • The DOLA model generates a series of land use optimization scenarios, offering a valuable reference for land use planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Chinese peasants in the middle of Anhui Province and north of Dabieshan Mountain are accustomed to using industrial alcohol to kindle honeycomb briquettes in their household coal stoves. Pouring alcohol into the stove often results in flame burns when the honeycomb briquettes inside are not completely extinguished. The purpose of this study is to describe the unique cause and clinical characteristics of this type of injury. Methods: A retrospective review was performed in the Anhui Medical University Hospital Burn Center during a 10-year period, from January 1998 to December 2007, on the records of patients, who sustained burns by alcohol-based firing in household coal stoves. A total of 180 patients were identified and divided into two groups: children (<14 years of age) and adults (>14 years of age). Results: Boys and housewives were at greatest risk for this burn. As many as 115 patients (64%) sustained more than 10% burns, and children had a significantly larger full-thickness burn area than that of adults. The upper limbs of children and the lower limbs of adults were the most common areas to be injured. All patients came from Shucheng and its neighbouring counties, all of which are located in the middle of Anhui Province and to the north of Dabieshan Mountain. Summer months and daytime, especially during 16:00–17:59h and 8:00–11:59h, were the times of the highest incidence. A total of 80 patients underwent surgical intervention. The mean lengths of stay in hospital of children and adults patients were 21.38 days and 16.96 days, respectively. Two children died of severe shock, leading to a mortality rate of 1.11%. Conclusion: Burns caused by alcohol-based fires in household coal stoves is a common thermal injury in the middle of Anhui Province in China with characteristic clinical presentation and calls for preventive educational intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land use projections are crucial for climate models to forecast the impacts of land use changes on the Earth's system. However, the spatial resolution of existing global land use projections (e.g., 0.25°×0.25° in the Land-Use Harmonization (LUH2) datasets) is still too coarse to drive regional climate models and assess mitigation effectiveness at regional and local scales. To generate a high-resolution land use product with the newest integrated scenarios of the shared socioeconomic pathways and the representative concentration pathways (SSPs-RCPs) for various regional climate studies in China, here we first conduct land use simulations with a newly developed Future Land Uses Simulation (FLUS) model based on the trajectories of land use demands extracted from the LUH2 datasets. On this basis, a new set of land use projections under the plant functional type (PFT) classification, with a temporal resolution of 5 years and a spatial resolution of 5 km, in eight SSP-RCP scenarios from 2015 to 2100 in China is produced. The results show that differences in land use dynamics under different SSP-RCP scenarios are jointly affected by global assumptions and national policies. Furthermore, with improved spatial resolution, the data produced in this study can sufficiently describe the details of land use distribution and better capture the spatial heterogeneity of different land use types at the regional scale. We highlight that these new land use projections at the PFT level have a strong potential for reducing uncertainty in the simulation of regional climate models with finer spatial resolutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unprecedented urbanization in China has directly resulted in residential vacancies, which has seriously stunted sustainable development, a part of China's new-type urbanization plan. Understanding the various types and mixes of residential vacancies is critical for the advancement of our knowledge of speculative urbanism and for devising vacancy-mitigation policies, but this issue remains insufficiently studied. Using municipal water consumption data, this study proposes a feasible and general-purpose framework for providing innovative insights into the variability in residential vacancies at the household level and the mixture of residential vacancies at the building level. This framework was applied to the city of Changshu, China, and four categories of vacant residences at the household level were identified: seasonally vacant residences, long-term vacant residences, newly built residences and occasionally vacant residences. The first category is closely related to tourism and seasonal industries, while the last three exhibit a Matthew effect. In addition to revealing significant and intensifying spatial clustering and three patterns of changes in vacancy mixtures (i.e., emergence, disappearance, and increases or decreases), the results identify particular types of vacant residences at the building level (e.g., extremely low-entropy long-term multihousehold buildings). The insights from this study can contribute to devising customized policies for alleviating residential vacancies. • The proposed framework reveals variability in and mixtures among residential vacancies using municipal water consumption. • The document representations of vacant residences are extracted based on the vacant residence corpus and Doc2Vec method. • Four categories of vacant residences at the household level are identified using the Doc2Vec and K-means++ methods. • Seasonally vacant residences are closely related to tourism and seasonal industries. • Long-term, newly built and occasionally vacant residences exhibit a Matthew effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, the illegal adoption of missing persons and especially of missing children is a major public safety issue that affects social and family stability. Recent work has established a trafficking information network developed from a volunteer-managed database of missing persons that identifies and locates node cities and critical paths of illegal adoption. In order to evaluate locations where trafficking can be identified and provide direct advice for affected families, this study analyses the temporal and spatial distribution of the missing population and explores factors that affect their transfer. We use spatiotemporal information to construct multiple random forest (RF) models for predicting the locations of missing persons transfer on a larger spatial scale. The proposed independent RF models, namely, provinces potentially entered, destination grids, relative distances and relative directions models, achieve high levels of accuracy. Moreover, an integrated RF-based city-level prediction model can effectively locate the city a missing person was trafficked to. From our driving factor analysis, the transfer paths are strongly correlated with source provinces and grids. The study also shows that the transfer of missing persons is driven by multiple factors rather than by a single element. • The spatiotemporal distribution characteristics of the missing people were revealed. • A model is proposed to predict the current location of missing people. • The study can effectively help families determine the location of missing relatives. • This model can exploit the driving factors of missing population's transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the unprecedented pace of urbanization in recent decades, urban vacant residences have increased dramatically. The problem of numerous vacant residences has been severely criticized. The lack of comprehensive data obstructs revealing the spatiotemporal dynamics and the contributing factors of the vacant residences at a fine scale. This study proposes a feasible and general-purpose framework to analyze the vacant residences using municipal water consumption data. First, a residential vacancy identification method is proposed to identify the vacant residences, and the spatiotemporal characteristics of the vacant residences are analyzed using the spatial analysis methods. Second, the relationships between the residential vacancies and the service environments of the neighborhoods are examined using the random forest method. The framework was applied in Changshu city, China, and the results revealed a concentric circular spatial structure for residences. The results also indicated that the diversity of the facilities and services (FASs) has the highest impact on residential vacancies. As the degree of enrichment of the FASs approximates 1 or the percentage/diversity of the FASs increase, the residential vacancy length decreases. This study not only draws a detailed picture of vacant residences but also sheds light on policy implications for mitigating residential vacancies. • The municipal infrastructure and service data are first applied for monitoring residential vacancy at a fine scale. • The proposed framework reveals the spatiotemporal dynamics of vacant residences and the impact of service factors on them. • The areas in need of improvement and the contributing factors for mitigating residential vacancies can be identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A cross-sectional field survey was conducted from November 2020 to January 2021 among 7259 participants to investigate the public perception, willingness, and information sources for COVID-19 vaccination, with the focus on the elderly and non-communicable chronic disease (NCD) population. Multiple logistic regressions were performed to identify associated factors of the vaccination willingness. The willingness rate of the elderly to accept the future COVID-19 vaccine (79.08%) was lower than that of the adults aged 18-59 (84.75%). The multiple analysis didn't identify significant relationship between NCD status and the vaccination intention. The main reasons for vaccine hesitancy by the public were: concern for vaccine safety, low infection risk, waiting and seeing others getting vaccinated, concern of vaccine effectiveness and price. Their relative importance differed between adults aged 18-59 and the elderly, and between adults aged 18-59 with or without NCD. Perception for vaccination importance, vaccine confidence, and trust in health workers were significant predictors of the vaccination intention in both age groups. The elderly who perceived high infection risk or had trust in governments were more likely to accept the vaccine. Compared with the adults aged 18-59, the elderly used fewer sources for COVID-19 vaccination information and more trusted in traditional media and family, relatives, and friends for getting vaccination recommendations. To promote vaccine uptake, the vaccination campaigns require comprehensive interventions to improve vaccination attitude, vaccine accessibility and affordability, and tailor strategies to address specific concerns among different population groups and conducted via their trusted sources, especially for the elderly.

Background: Sexual health is one of the principal components of human well-being. Traditional methods for observing human sexual behavior typically adopt manual intervention approaches (eg, interviews). However, the data obtained by such traditional approaches suffer from intrinsic bias and limited sample sizes. Sexual behavioral data that are more reflective of the actual situation can be collected by equipping sex toys with sensors., Objective: To address the limitations of traditional human sexual behavior data observation methods, a novel cyberphysical system is proposed to capture natural human sexual behavior data in China at the nationwide level., Methods: A cyberphysical human sexual behavior acquisition system (SeBA) was designed and implemented. SeBA jointly utilizes state of the art information and communication technologies such as smart sex toys, smartphones, and mobile social networks. Smart sex toys enable objective collection of data on human sexual behavior, while the mobile social network provides the possibility of partnered sex in a cyberphysical manner. The objectives and function settings are discussed, and the overall framework of the system architecture is presented., Results: Operation and privacy policies are proposed and the technical solution of SeBA is described. The effectiveness of SeBA was verified based on analysis of users' human sexual behavior data collected from January 2016 to June 2017. A total of 103,424 solo sexual behaviors were recorded involving 13,047 users, and 61,007 partnered sexual behaviors from 7,140 users were observed. The proportions of males and females in the solo and partnered sex groups were fairly consistent with recent statistics on unmarried individuals in China. We also found that only a small portion of individuals provided information on at least one other attribute besides the required input of gender, such as age, height, location, job, sex preferences, purposes, and interests., Conclusions: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to analyze objective human sexual behavior data at the nationwide level. Although the data are restricted to China, this study can provide insight for further research on human sexual behavior based on the huge amount of data available from wireless smart sex toys worldwide. It is anticipated that findings from such objective big data analyses can help deepen our understanding of sexual behavior, as well as improve sexual health and sexual wellness., (©Xiaoping Zhou, Jichao Zhao, Xun Liang. Originally published in JMIR mHealth and uHealth (http://mhealth.jmir.org), 03.04.2020.)

Understanding the impact of urban expansion on functional connectivity is significant to biodiversity conservation. Particularly, in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area (TGRA, Southwest China), the urban land has rapidly expanded to provide settlements for an enormous population of TGRA migrants. However, the consequence of future land-use changes to the functional connectivity of the local habitat network has rarely been studied. To extend this knowledge, this paper proposes a framework that integrates a novel cellular automata (CA) simulation model and ecological network analysis, taking the TGRA as the study area, to predict how different urban expansion scenarios might affect functional connectivity for a nationally protected species, the leopard. The least-cost path modeling is used, and a set of connectivity indicators are adopted to evaluate functional connectivity. The results show that, the population-growth-based urban expansion maintains a higher connectivity than the business-as-usual and fast-urban-growth scenarios. In addition, the connectivity loss due to urban expansion can be offset by the reforestation efforts of the Green-for-Grain Project. Finally, we identify habitat patches that act as key connectivity providers, and suggest that those patches be prioritized for protection to avoid significant connectivity loss., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Since 2005, the project of comprehensive control of schistosomiasis has been implemented in Yangxin County. In 2010, the infection rates of residents and domestic animals were both below 2%, comparing to 2004, the rates decreased by 92.42% and 92.91%, respectively, and the area of susceptible zone and the infection rate of Oncomelania snails decreased by 86.25% and 84.93%, respectively. The county achieved the objective of endemic control in 2008.

Objective: To evaluate the reliability, validity and sensitivity of a Family Burden Scale (FBS) of disease used on schistosomiasis., Methods: 224 schistosomiasis patients were investigated, using the FBS. Reliability was estimated by Cronbach's alpha coefficient and split-half reliability. Validity was tested by factor analysis. Sensitivity was evaluated by comparison of patients with different income levels., Results: The Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.874 and split-half reliability was 0.939 for FBS, respectively. Most values of Cronbach's alpha and split-half reliability for each component of scale were above 0.70. Construct validity was appraised by factor analysis, and 6 factors were identified. These factors could explain 66.76% of the total variance. Patients with different income levels showed significant difference in terms of family burden for schistosomiasis (P < 0.001)., Conclusion: This FBS appeared to have satisfactory reliability, validity and sensitivity and could be used in evaluating family burden of schistosomiasis patients.