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Pollution and environmental health threats are not new issues in China. For example, Beijing’s smog and disastrous air quality were extensively covered by international media during the 2008 Olympi...

Promoting active travel behavior and decreasing transport-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have become a priority in many Chinese cities experiencing rapid urban sprawl and greater automobile dependence. However, there are few studies that holistically examine the physical and social factors associated with travel CO2 emissions. Using a survey of 1525 shoppers conducted in Shenyang, China, this study estimated shopping-related travel CO2 emissions and examined how the built environment and individual socioeconomic characteristics contribute to shopping travel behavior and associated CO2 emissions. We found that, firstly, private car trips generate nearly eight times more carbon emissions than shopping trips using public transport, on average. Second, there was significant spatial autocorrelation with CO2 emissions per trip, and the highest carbon emissions were clustered in the inner suburbs and between the first and second circumferential roads. Third, shopping travel CO2 emissions per trip were negatively correlated with several built environment features including population density, the quantity of public transport stations, road density, and shop density. They were also found to be significantly related to the individual socio-economic characteristics of car ownership, employment status, and education level using a multinomial logistic regression model. These empirical findings have important policy implications, assisting in the development of measures that contribute to the sustainability of urban transportation and meet carbon mitigation targets.

Using data from the Economic Advisory Center of the State Information Center (SIC), we examined the spatial patterns of car sales in China at the prefectural level in 2012. We first analyzed the spatial distributions of car sales of different kinds of automakers (foreign automakers, Sino-foreign joint automakers, and Chinese automakers), and then identified spatial clusters using the local Moran’s indexes. Location quotient analysis was applied to examine the relative advantage of each type of automaker in the local markets. To explain the variations of car sales across cities, we collected several socioeconomic variables and conducted regression analyses. Further, factor analysis was used to extract independent variables to avoid the problem of multicollinearity. By incorporating a spatial lag or spatial error in the models, we calibrated our spatial regression models to address the spatial dependence problem. The analytical results show that car sales varied significantly across cities in China, and most of the cities with higher car sales were the developed cities. Different automakers exhibit diverse spatial patterns in terms of car sales volume, spatial clusters, and location quotients. The scale and incomes factor were extracted and verified as the two most significant and positive factors that shape the spatial distributions of car sales, and together with the spatial effect, explained most of the variations of car sales across cities.

Hong Kong is a Special Administration Region of the People’s Republic of China and one of the most developed cities in the country. Although Hong Kong has good potential solar, wind, and waste-to-energy, the development of renewable energy in the region has been lagging. Renewable energies remain a negligible player in the city’s energy system, contributing to less than 1% of total energy consumption. This article critically reviews the potential and current development of renewable energy in Hong Kong and identifies key barriers. In concluding, this article outlines some considerations that need to be made to advance renewable energy development in Hong Kong.

Land appropriation and subsequent resettlement of rural inhabitants are central to urbanisation in China. Often, the result is the impoverishment of landless farmers, who are a principal source of social unrest in the country. In the literature, landless farmers are often wrongly assumed to be a homogeneous group. In contrast, this paper presents the age-differentiated experiences of land appropriation and resettlement among farmers. Using the case study of Xinghua village in China, and by reference to data collected via surveys and interviews, we show that even within a single community, there can be significant age-related differences in terms of compensation, livelihood changes, income, living conditions, and satisfaction. Older farmers tend to receive more compensation, and the negative impact of land appropriation is felt most acutely by middle-aged farmers. Viewed from a broader theoretical perspective, this study demonstrates the importance of understanding the impact of land appropriation and resettlement and shows how this impact is distributed unevenly across the affected communities.

In this first article in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Asian Energy Studies (JAES), the scene is set for further discussions and debates on the energy challenges in Asia. Energy is fundamental to economic development. Thus far, Asia has been largely meeting its skyrocketing energy demand through conventional technologies based on fossil fuels. However, challenges relating to energy security, local pollution, and global climate change mean that such a path is no longer feasible and Asian countries must meet their growing energy demands in a more sustainable manner. Addressing these challenges is not only critical to the realization of the Asian century, but also to global sustainable development. Multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary energy studies have much to offer in addressing these pressing issues. The mission of JAES is to provide a free and international forum for scholars and professionals working in this exciting and important field of study. DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 830 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

Androgen analogy (Oxandrolone) have been reported to better maintain lean body mass, with improved hypermetabolic responses and shortened healing time for major burn injured patients. This is contradictory to that androgens inhibit local wound repair in men and male mice. The aim of this study therefore is to identify the role of pure androgen dihydrotesterone (DHT) in complex major burn injury, in particularly whether androgen targets local healing process or systemic burn induced hypermetabolism. A DHT silastic tube was subcutaneously implanted to male Balb/c mice prior to surgery as the treatment group. A 2 X 2 cm2 full thickness contact burn wound was created on the dorsal skin of wild type littermates (control) or DHT treated mice. Wound healing rate and body weight changes were measured and compared between treatment and non-treatment group. The serum level of inflammatory cytokine/chemokine was measured using a Multiplex Immunoassay System. Spleen immune cells enumeration was analysis by flow cytometry. Inflammation, re-epithelialization, cell proliferation and collagen deposition was analysed using histology, immunohistochemistry and RT-PCR. In the present study, we found DHT treatment better maintained the body weight in mice and significantly promoted wound healing over 14 days, whereas DHT treatment had no effect on burn-induced hypermetabolism. In control group, major burn injury triggered an acute systematic inflammation response, resulting in significant increased weight of spleen, excess infiltration of nucleated erythroid cells in red pulps of spleen and a significant increase in number of splenic monocytes over 21 days. DHT treatment shortened the systemic inflammation response, evidenced via reduced splenic weight and the number of monocytes in spleen and circulation at day 14 and 21. This finding is further confirmed by less infiltration of macrophages in wound area at day 14 and 21 compared to control group. Taken together, our results suggesting the DHT treatment significantly improve wound healing by accelerated turnover of inflammation response but not through the metabolism. Further studies are necessary to define the exact mechanisms and DHT treatment could be a new therapeutic approach to improve the survivability of major burn injured patient.

Poverty alleviation resettlement (PAR) is one of China’s key poverty reduction initiatives. Through this state-led resettlement programme, the government aims to improve the living standards and access to infrastructure and services of the rural poor. This paper examines PAR from the perspective of spatial restructuring through a household survey conducted in Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces. A total of 30 resettlement sites were examined. The results show that PAR has two spatial forms: long-distance resettlement, which resettles people to cities or towns, and short-distance resettlement, which resettles people within the administrative boundaries of their village or to a nearby village. Furthermore, the type of spatial restructuring is an important factor shaping the outcome of resettlement. While long-distance resettlement outperforms short-distance resettlement in terms of gains in income, the advantage is offset by higher post-resettlement expenses. Furthermore, long-distance resettlers face a greater challenge in securing non-agricultural employment. Consequently, the level of satisfaction is lower among long-distance resettlers. Significant challenges remain to be addressed for both types of resettlement, including establishing two-way communication between villagers and the government about resettlement plans and providing better financial support for the resettlers, safeguards for the livelihoods of non-movers, and post-resettlement support programmes to help resettlers adjust to their new environments.

This paper challenges the prevailing perception that the environmental governance of China is a case exemplar of authoritarian environmentalism. Using low-carbon governance as an example, it shows that although China's national low-carbon policy appears highly authoritarian, the situation on the ground is much more ambiguous, displaying a mixture of authoritarian and liberal features. While China's top-down and non-participatory policy environment has been crucial in stimulating a low-carbon transition, the failure of the central government to control local actors has created a situation of de facto neoliberal environmentalism, where local governments and energy-intensive enterprises enjoy a high degree of freedom and flexibility to manage their own energy consumption in spite of the overt authoritarian rule. The findings of this research show that viewing China's environmental governance as a clear-cut instance of authoritarian environmentalism should be done with circumspection, and that studying the nature of environmental governance as a complex process requires a thorough understanding of not just national policy but also local politics and the ways the two are connected.

A Y-vector oscillator network is devised to configure (sub)-mm-wave/terahertz (THz) beamforming systems with minimized footprint and energy consumption. It requires no traditional adjustable phase shifter at multi-channel front end which usually suffer from high insertion loss at these frequencies. A compact (1.4mm2) CMOS lx4 Beam Steering Phased Array (BSPA) based on this network is validated at 0.55THz with $\pm \mathbf{30}^{\circ}$ steering angle range. This is the first monolithic BSPA reported beyond 0.5THz.

Shifting toward sustainable daily travel will play a significant role in the future of sustainable development and the lowering of carbon emissions. This study provides an in-depth comparison of transport mode choice and corresponding CO2 emissions between private cars and public transport used for shopping trips based on individual data from a travel survey conducted in Shenyang, China. The analysis found that bus travel accounted for the majority of motorized transportation. Public transport users were closely distributed along the bus or metro lines, and aggregated private car users were mainly clustered within the second circumferential road. Furthermore, average per trip emissions for private car travel were 8-fold that of public transport. Binary logistic regression modeling was employed to examine factors that were related to the choice between private car and public transport, and the results indicated that car ownership and gender were the most important factors in explaining the preference of car driving. Age and per capita monthly income were negatively correlated with car driving. In addition, there were also negative impacts associated to the built environment factors of access to the closest metro stations and the number of bus stops near the residence on car driving. This study is vital to formulate more effective transportation policy measures in the future development for a sustainable low-carbon city. DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 775 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

With rising income and the emergence of modern shopping centers in urban China, shopping trips by private car becomes more and more common, leading to higher carbon emissions in the transport sector. Encouraging car owners to shift transport mode from private car to public transport could achieve significant emissions reductions. This study estimate carbon emissions savings by shifting from private cars to public transport for shopping trips in urban China, using Shenyang, one of the largest cities in China, as a case study. Our results show that the average carbon emissions per shopper is 426.9 g, and the carbon emissions on weekends is 13% higher than weekdays. Moreover, shoppers travelling by private car emitted five times more carbon emission than those by public transport. We also found that car ownership gradually increased as accessibility to public transport decreased, and that more car owners chose to travel by private cars than public transport in areas with limited access. This study, thus, highlights the potential for high-quality public transport to reduce the transport sector’s carbon emissions in urban China.

The Ten-Thousand Enterprises Program is China’s keystone energy conservation and climate change program. The program has effectively created a class of energy-intensive enterprises that are regulated by the government for energy conservation purposes. Through an empirical study conducted in Changchun, this paper shows that the adoption of energy efficiency technologies and practices has been highly uneven in this class of enterprises because of two reasons. First, a de facto two-tier regulatory system has emerged within the framework of the Ten-Thousand Enterprises Program. Central state-owned enterprises are closely regulated by the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) which is a central government apparatus, whereas local state-owned enterprises and privately owned enterprises are regulated by the local government, which has fewer resources and incentives to implement the program rigorously. Second, the Ten-Thousand Enterprises Program bundles together different types of enterprises. This approach places smaller enterprises at a disadvantage and limits their ability to conserve energy.

All mining cities need to address the problems associated with resource depletion. However, there are crucial differences between mining cities in transition economies and those in market economies. Through a case study from Daqing, which is also known as the oil capital of China, this article sheds light on how mining cities in transition economies transform economically in anticipation of the eventual decline in mining prosperity. With rich empirical evidence gathered through extensive fieldwork, this article argues that mining cities in transition economies are faced not only with problems stemming from the boom-and-bust economic cycles of the dominant mining industry and the inevitable exhaustion of resources, but also with issues associated with the legacy of planned economies. Therefore, the transformation of mining cities in transition economies is often situated in a multi-level governance framework. In contrast, the transformation of mining cities in market economies is mainly a local process in ...

The importance of insulating the existing building stock in the age of climate change and energy scarcity is well recognized, but effective public policies for doing so have not been forthcoming. This paper analyzes a novel approach pioneered by the city of Changchun in northeast China. Since 2010, the municipal authority has implemented a program to refurbish nearly half a million homes with wall and roof insulation and energy-efficient windows and doors. The success of this program is attributed to an assertive approach and an efficient, government-sponsored funding model. However, the program faces several challenges, including a lack of effective supervision, the negative impact on poor households, and ineffective energy-saving due to a lack of progress in heat-metering reform. This paper concludes by discussing the policy implications of this analysis.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the focuses, motivations and challenges of achieving campus sustainability in Chinese higher education institutions (HEIs). Design/methodology/approach – A multisite case study was conducted in Changchun City, Jilin, where eight HEIs of various types were examined. Structured interviews with school managers, students and government officials were accompanied with analysis of relevant documents. Findings – The focuses of sustainability among the studied HEIs were on water and energy conservation and on non-technical initiatives. The focuses can be explained by motivations and challenges. The HEIs are motivated by government and financial pressures and face challenges in limited accessibility to funding. The reliance of non-technical initiatives has negatively impacted student welfare and has become unpopular among students. Practical implications – The government is advised to increase funding to HEIs in relation to sustainability and to make the funding more equitable. The HEIs are advised to modify sustainability practices that severely affect the daily lives of students, to share the benefits of water and energy conservation with their students and to involve students in sustainability governance. Originality/value – This paper adds to the existing literature in two ways. First, it expands the geographical reach of the literature to developing countries, in general, and to China, in particular. Second, it adopts the multisite case study research approach to study the whole spectrum of Chinese HEIs and highlights the differences among these HEIs when it comes to sustainability.

High-altitude balloons (HABs) are platforms for collecting astrophysical and planetary science data that offer a number of advantages compared to conventional ground-based or space-based systems. However, they also pose a set of new environmental challenges that must be addressed in order to offer a viable alternative to ground-or space-based assets. In particular, maintaining science-quality pointing stability is a critical challenge for HAB platforms. For these missions, dynamic errors must be limited to a fraction of the observation wavelength, so as the wavelength becomes smaller, it becomes more difficult to meet the needed performance. As a result, there are very few existing pointing stabilization solutions that use visible-spectrum guide stars, despite their relatively wide distribution across the sky. This paper describes the results achieved with the STABLE (Sub-arc second Telescope And BaLloon Experiment) project whose goal is to provide the fine pointing stage for a balloon-borne platform observing in the visible wavelength.

Grassroots environmentalism has emerged as a key driver for low-carbon cities. This chapter describes and analyses three cases of grassroots environmentalism: the transition town movement, the ecovillage movement, and community renewable energy initiatives. It shows that, rather than business-as-usual, advocates of grassroots environmentalism envision a fundamental transformation of everyday practices based on community building, resilience, economic localisation, and dematerialisation.

This paper reviews the literature on urban carbon governance, which has become a burgeoning area of research. Since the early 1990s, the field has grown and diversified geographically, theoretically and methodologically, and now encompasses a wide range of topics, including governing techniques, limitations and challenges, central-local relations, municipal networks, network governance and grassroots initiatives. Given the increasingly global nature of low-carbon urbanism and governance, these studies have expanded our knowledge on the complexity and plurality of the role of cities in addressing climate change. This review serves as a consolidated guide for researchers, policymakers and students in this field.

In a remote part of Northeast China, thousands of villages have disappeared from the map. Their inhabitants, more than 600,000 farmers, have been instructed by the government to relocate to nearby towns and commute to their farms to work. By concentrating the dispersed rural population in a small number of urban cores, the government hopes to improve housing conditions and accessibility to services, stimulate economic development, and free up more land for farming. This paper analyzes this kind of urbanization, which is distinct from the much-studied city-centered urbanization and in situ urbanization in coastal China. In addition to the resettlement program, this urbanization process is driven by agricultural modernization and economic liberalization. Urbanization has produced a rural–urban hybrid settlement system where urban construction coexists with a mostly agrarian economy. Urbanization has also improved the livelihood of many rural households, but there are significant social, economic, and environmental challenges.

The Chinese government has promulgated a wide variety of low-carbon initiatives to control the rapid growth of energy consumption and carbon emissions in the cities. Past records, however, show that the central government's policies are often poorly implemented or distorted by local officials. Using a case study from the city of Changchun, this paper examines how and why the issue of poor implementation persists despite the establishment of the Energy Conservation Target Responsibility System (ECTRS). As a key institutional mechanism providing local officials with political incentives to implement low-carbon policies, the ECTRS has been constrained by a number of problems, including a poorly designed scoring system, weak targets, the use of energy intensity instead of absolute energy consumption as a policy objective, and the lack of reliable local energy statistics.

This paper identifies three types of model environmental cities in China and examines their levels of energy-related carbon emissions using a bottom-up accounting system. Model environmental cities are identified as those that have been recently awarded official recognition from the central government for their efforts in environmental protection. The findings show that, on average, the Low-Carbon Cities have lower annual carbon emissions, carbon intensities, and per capita emissions than the Eco-Garden Cities and the Environmental Protection Cities. Compared internationally, the Eco-Garden Cities and the Environmental Protection Cities have per capita emissions that are similar to those of American cities whereas per capita emissions from the Low-Carbon Cities are similar to those of European cities. The result indicates that addressing climate change is not a priority for some model environmental cities. Policy changes are needed to prioritize climate mitigation in these cities, considering that climate change is a cross-cutting environmental issue with wide-ranging impact.

Renewable energy and energy efficiency (REEE) policies have far-reaching implications for energy security, climate change, economic competitiveness, pollution, and human livelihood. For these reasons, REEE has become a national priority for the Chinese government, particularly since 2005. This paper aims to critically review China's REEE policies in six sectors: electricity, industry, transportation, buildings, and local government. In addition to examining the progress China has made in the development and implementation of REEE policies, this review also identifies limitations and room for improvement. Finally, five policy recommendations are presented.

Eco-efficiency is an important sustainable development and circular economy construct that conceptualizes the relationship between industrial output, resource utilization, and environmental impacts. This paper conducts an eco-efficiency analysis for basin industrial systems using the decomposition model approach. Using data on 10 cities in China’s Songhua River basin, we illustrate the evolutionary characteristics and influencing factors of industrial systems’ eco-efficiency. The results indicate that cities in upstream and midstream areas focus on improving resource efficiency, whereas cities in downstream areas focus on improving terminal control efficiency. The results also show that the government plays an increasingly important role in promoting eco-efficiency and that significant differences in the influencing factors exist among the upstream area, midstream area, and downstream area. Our results offer deeper insights into the eco-efficiency of industrial systems and give further hints on how policy-making can help achieve sustainable development, balancing between economic activities and environmental protection.

Village hollowing is a growing policy problem globally, but accurately estimating housing vacancy rates is difficult and costly. In this study, we piloted the use of power consumption data to estimate the vacancy rate of rural housing. To illustrate the method used, we took power consumption data in 2014 and 2017 in an area of rural China to analyze the change in housing vacancies. Results indicated that the rural vacancy rates were 5.27% and 8.69%, respectively, while underutilization rates were around 10% in 2014 and 2017. Second, there was significant spatial clustering of vacant rural housing, and the hotspots were mainly distributed in western mountainous areas, whereas villages near urban areas had lower vacancy rates. Third, rural vacancies increased from 2014 to 2017. Compared with other methods, our method proved to be accurate, very cost-effective and scalable, and it can offer timely spatial and temporal information that can be used by policymakers to identify areas with significant village hollowing issues. However, there are challenges in setting the right thresholds that take into consideration regional differences. Therefore, there is also a need for more studies in different regions in order to scale up this method to the national level.

This paper analyzes the energy conservation situation in China's higher education institutions (HEIs). A case study was conducted in Changchun, Jilin, where eight HEIs of various types were examined. An analysis of government policies was also performed. The findings indicate that the HEIs have implemented comprehensive non-technical initiatives to conserve electricity, including electricity restrictions and extensions of winter breaks, as well as certain technical initiatives. The HEIs are less enthusiastic in conserving thermal energy due to a lack of financial incentives and resources. Differences between the HEIs are also noted. This paper discusses the role of key players, including administrators, government agencies, networks, students and non-government organizations (NGOs). Challenges to energy conservation are also identified, such as the lack of investment by schools, lack of government funding, quality problems in energy conservation products, inadequate heat metering reform, underperformance of energy service companies (ESCOs), and conflicts between energy conservation and student welfare. Policy recommendations are offered based on the analysis results.

The release of the Twelfth Five-Year Guideline for National Economic and Social Development in March 2011 marked the beginning of China’s Twelfth Five-Year Plan (12th FYP) period (2011–2015). Energy conservation continues to be a national priority. Since the release, new energy conservation policies and programs have been announced by many central ministries in accordance with the 12th FYP. Is this the beginning of a new paradigm or merely a continuation of the 11th FYP model? This paper describes and analyzes key changes in energy conservation since 2011, including a more conservative national energy conservation target, a more logical way of breaking down the target, new sectoral targets, the introduction of new programs, and the expansion of existing programs. However, one key problem of the 11th FYP period remains unresolved, namely the inability to shift the economy away from heavy industry.

The emergence of gated communities for foreign residents in large Chinese cities is the result of economic globalisation, local institutional changes, social relations and cultural globalisation. Using a case study performed in Beijing, this paper seeks to analyse the complex dynamics of foreign gated communities through a critical examination of their key actors. The history of the gated community studied here is divided into two phases: development and localisation. During the development phase, the property developer not only attracted foreign residents through building an international community but also lured Hong Kong investors through the promise of soaring rental returns fuelled by strong demand. During the localisation phase, Chinese residents gradually replaced the developer as the project’s key actors. While the Chinese residents were attracted by the idea of international community, their arrival significantly transformed the community. This paper demonstrates how the survival, character and appearance of a foreign gated community was influenced by temporally and geographically dispersed actors who were subjected to a number of economic, social and cultural forces on a global and a local scale.

Current literature highlights the role of commercial centers in cities in generating shopping trips and transport carbon emissions. However, the influence of the characteristics of commercial centers on consumer travel behavior and transport carbon emissions is not well understood. This study addresses this knowledge gap by examining shopping trips to eight commercial centers in Shenyang, China, and the CO2 emissions of these trips. We found that the locations and types of commercial centers strongly influence CO2 emissions. CO2 emissions per trip to commercial centers in the suburbs of Shenyang were on average 6.94% and 26.92% higher than those to commercial centers in the urban core and the inner city, respectively. CO2 emissions induced by wholesale centers were nearly three times higher than the lowest CO2 emissions of commercial centers in the inner city. These empirical results enhance our understanding of shopping-related transport carbon emissions and highlight the importance of optimizing urban space structure, in particular, the layout of commercial centers.

The global urbanization process poses a serious challenge to achieving sustainable development. The significance of sustainable urbanization has been increasingly appreciated, yet, very little empirical evidence has been provided for this prospect. In this paper, we use the Human Development Index and the ecological footprint to measure the sustainability of the coastal Liaoning area. We then use the quadrant map approach to determine the relationship between sustainability and urbanization. The results show that the coastal area has made progress in sustainable urbanization in the social dimension. Improvement in the environmental dimension has been dynamic. Our results indicate that sustainable urbanization is a dynamic, multi-dimensional progress that requires regular monitoring and reevaluation. This paper also highlights the importance of choosing more complete indicators for measuring the sustainability of urbanization, as no single model or measurement is sufficient for quantifying the different dimensions of sustainability.

Lithium is widely used as a treatment of bipolar disorder, a neuropsychiatric disorder associated with disrupted circadian rhythms. Lithium is known to lengthen period and increase amplitude of circadian rhythms. One possible pathway for these effects involves inhibition of glycogen synthase kinase-3β (GSK-3β), which regulates degradation of CRY2, a canonical clock protein determining circadian period. CRY1 is also known to play important roles in regulating circadian period and phase, although there is no evidence that it is similarly phosphorylated by GSK-3β. In this paper, we tested the hypothesis that lithium affects circadian rhythms through CRYs. We cultured fibroblasts and slices of the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), the master circadian pacemaker of the brain, from Cry1-/-, Cry2-/-, or wild-type (WT) mice bearing the PER2:LUC circadian reporter. Lithium was applied in the culture medium, and circadian rhythms of PER2 expression were measured. In WT and Cry2-/- fibroblasts, 10mM lithium increased PER2 expression and rhythm amplitude but not period, and 1mM lithium did not affect either period or amplitude. In non-rhythmic Cry1-/- fibroblasts, 10mM lithium increased PER2 expression. In SCN slices, 1mM lithium lengthened period ∼1h in all genotypes, but did not affect amplitude except in Cry2-/- SCN. Thus, the amplitude-enhancing effect of lithium in WT fibroblasts was unaffected by Cry2 knockout and occurred in the absence of period-lengthening, whereas the period-lengthening effect of lithium in WT SCN was unaffected by Cry1 or Cry2 knockout and occurred in the absence of rhythm amplification, suggesting that these two effects of lithium on circadian rhythms are independent of CRYs and of each other.

We use Lo and MacKinlay's [Lo, A.W., MacKinlay, C., 1990. When are contrarian profits due to stock market overreaction? The Review of Financial Studies 3, 175–205.] contrarian portfolio approach to examine the profitability of short-horizon contrarian strategies in the context of the Australian Stock Exchange. The results show that simple contrarian strategies lead to small but still statistically significant profits when applied to daily and intra-day portfolio formation. However, the profits are not sufficient to cover transaction costs for institutional investors. The source of contrarian profits is also analyzed leading to the conclusion that stock market overreaction is found to be the primary source of contrarian profits. We also examine the relation between the degree of return reversal and order flow activity after abnormal price changes. We find that the degree of return reversal is positively related to the level of order flow imbalance. Larger profits are generated from order flow based contrarian strategies when the order flow imbalances are high.

Segmentation of video data stream aims to divide the stream into temporally shorter, meaningful and manageable segments. This is the first step towards content-based multimedia database management, contented-based retrieval and browsing, and is very important to many other applications that aim to work with content. This paper presents a novel video mining algorithm that uses genetic programming for evolved rule-based scene boundary detection and whose key advantage is that is video content independent. Hence, the algorithm can be applied without modification to different video sequences just by feeding it different training data.