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Currently, the hazy weather in China is increasingly serious. It is urgent for China to reduce haze emissions in environmental governance. A feasible way is to control haze emissions by optimizing the input sources. This paper proposed an innovative method in which the haze emission is controlled by readjusting input indicators. The output efficiency of input indicators in 29 provinces in China is calculated through 7 input indicators (namely, SO emissions, NO emissions, soot emissions, coal consumption, car ownership, capital, and labor force) as well as GDP (desirable output) and PM emissions (undesirable output). The results showed that the input indicators are excessive in redundancy on condition that PM emissions and GDP are equal. The input indicators are high in redundancy rate except labor force. The redundancy rates of soot emissions, SO emissions and coal consumption are relatively high and, respectively, are 78, 67.18, and 61.14%. Moreover, all the provinces are redundant in inputs except Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai which are optimal in input-output efficiency. The redundancy of middle and western provinces, such as Ningxia, Guizhou, and Shanxi, is relatively large. The ideas and methods proposed in this paper can provide a reference for the future researches that aim to reduce the input indicators of undesirable output, and the empirical results can provide empirical support for the PM abatement in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: There have been no previous report of hand joint destruction prevalence in Chinese rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence and potential factors of hand joint destruction among RA patients from Nantong China. In addition, we wanted to examine the differences between functional capacity, psychological status, and quality of life in patients with hand joint destruction compared to those without hand joint destruction.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted from the Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University between July 2015 and June 2016. RA patients completed questionnaires for demographic or clinical variables, the 10-cm Visual Analog Scale for pain, the 28-joint Disease Activity Score-erythrocyte sedimentation rate for disease activity, the Health Assessment Questionnaire-disability index for physical function, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale for anxiety and depression, and the Short Form 36 health survey for quality of life. Laboratory examinations were taken to obtain some biochemical indicators (e.g., rheumatoid factor, anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibody). X-ray assessment of hand was performed and hand joint destruction was defined as Sharp score > 0. Independent sample t-test, Mann-Whitney U-test, Chi-square test, and multivariate analysis using backward stepwise logistic regression model were used to analyze these data.Results: One hundred and sixty-one RA patients were included in this study. Radiographic findings revealed that almost 47.2% (n = 76) of patients had hand joint destruction. Multivariate analysis found that education ≤ 9 years (p = 0.041), anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibody positive (p = 0.021), high disease activity (p = 0.020), and long disease duration (p < 0.001) were important potential risk factors of hand joint destruction. Participants with hand joint destruction tended to have lower physical function and quality of life, and more severe depressive symptoms compared to individuals without hand joint destruction.Conclusions: 47.2% of people with RA from Nantong China experienced hand joint destruction. Education, anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibody, disease activity, and disease duration had great impacts on hand joint destruction. The results suggested that rheumatologists should pay attention to RA patients' hand joint destruction, especially those with low education levels, anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibody positive, high disease activity, and long disease duration by patient education or other ways to improve patients' prognosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessment of the health and economic impacts of PM2.5pollution is of great importance for urban air pollution prevention and control. In this study, we evaluate the damage of PM2.5pollution using Beijing as an example. First, we use exposure–response functions to estimate the adverse health effects due to PM2.5pollution. Then, the corresponding labour loss and excess medical expenditure are computed as two conducting variables. Finally, different from the conventional valuation methods, this paper introduces the two conducting variables into the computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to assess the impacts on sectors and the whole economic system caused by PM2.5pollution. The results show that, substantial health effects of the residents in Beijing from PM2.5pollution occurred in 2013, including 20,043 premature deaths and about one million other related medical cases. Correspondingly, using the 2010 social accounting data, Beijing gross domestic product loss due to the health impact of PM2.5pollution is estimated as 1286.97 (95% CI: 488.58–1936.33) million RMB. This demonstrates that PM2.5pollution not only has adverse health effects, but also brings huge economic loss. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has high sensitivity but low specificity for breast cancer, and consequently, new techniques to improve the specificity of breast MRI in diagnosing breast cancer are under development.Purpose: To assess the ability of the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) compared with the ADC ratio (ADCr) to differentially diagnose benign compared with malignant breast lesions.Material and Methods: Forty-eight women with breast lesions (average age, 45 years) underwent MRI scanning including T1-weighted dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) scanning and diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI). The average ADC and ADCr values for both lesions and pectoralis major muscles (ADCrmuscle and ADCrmuscle) were measured in patients with malignant (n = 25) and benign (n = 23) breast lesions. The ADCr of the contralateral breast (ADCr contralateral) was also evaluated. All histology was confirmed by pathological analysis of biopsied tissue. ADC and ADCr values were analyzed using receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curves.Results: For benign lesions compared with malignant lesions, lesion-side ADC was 1.45 vs. 1.05, respectively (P < 0.001), normal-side ADC was 1.82 vs.1.64 (P = 0.002), ADCrmuscle was 1.35 vs. 0.9 (P < 0.001), and ADCrcontralateral was 0.79 vs. 0.64 (P = 0.001). ADCrmuscle showed higher sensitivity (82.61%) and specificity (96.00%) than ADCrcontralateral (60.87% and 92.00%, respectively) and ADC (69.57% and 96.00%) for discriminating malignant from benign lesions. The AUC using ADCrmuscle had higher discriminatory power (0.92, P < 0.001) for malignant versus benign breast lesions compared with either ADC (0.82, P < 0.001) or ADCrcontralateral (0.78, P = 0.001).Conclusion: The ADCrmuscle value showed higher sensitivity and specificity and improved diagnostic accuracy compared with either ADC or ADCrcontralateral in differentiating benign from malignant breast lesions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While political disputes occur frequently and widely among many countries, their impact on the international trade is unclear and less systematically investigated. Considering the 2012 Diaoyu Islands Dispute, under several premised assumptions, this paper applies the international trade Inoperability Input-Output Model to determine the indirect economic loss and to screen out Chinese industries that are sensitive to the dispute. Results based on Leontief's technical coefficients matrix show that the total indirect economic loss of China's gross trade is between RMB 540.4226 billion and RMB 1023.3068 billion. Industries that are sensitive to the dispute include electrical equipment and machinery, general special equipment manufacturing, metal smelting and rolling processing, manufacture and processing of metals and metal products, and chemical. The empirical findings suggest that China establish an early-warning mechanism and trade assistance system, so that key industries that were damaged could be properly compensated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since December 2019, the COVID-19 epidemic has been spreading continuously in China and many countries in the world, causing widespread concern among the whole society. To cope with the epidemic disaster, most provinces and cities in China have adopted prevention and control measures such as home isolation, blocking transportation, and extending the Spring Festival holiday, which has caused a serious impact on China's output of various sectors, international trade, and labor employment, ultimately generating great losses to the Chinese economic system in 2020. But how big is the loss? How can we assess this for a country? At present, there are few analyses based on quantitative models to answer these important questions. In the following, we describe a quantitative-based approach of assessing the potential impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on the economic system and the sectors taking China as the base case. The proposed approach can provide timely data and quantitative tools to support the complex decision-making process that government agencies (and the private sector) need to manage to respond to this tragic epidemic and maintain stable economic development. Based on the available data, this article proposes a hypothetical scenario and then adopts the Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model to calculate the comprehensive economic losses of the epidemic from the aspects of the direct shock on the output of seriously affected sectors, international trade, and labor force. The empirical results show that assuming a GDP growth rate of 4-8% in the absence of COVID-19, GDP growth in 2020 would be -8.77 to -12.77% after the COVID-19. Companies and activities associated with transportation and service sectors are among the most impacted, and companies and supply chains related to the manufacturing subsector lead the economic losses. Finally, according to the calculation results, the corresponding countermeasures and suggestions are put forward: disaster recovery for key sectors such as the labor force, transportation sector, and service sectors should be enhanced; disaster emergency rescue work in highly sensitive sectors should be carried out; in the long run, precise measures to strengthen the refined management of disaster risk with big data resources and means should be taken., (© 2021 Society for Risk Analysis.)

In an attempt to investigate the impact of major events on urban air quality in terms of the extent, duration and spatial scope, data on the daily air quality index and the concentrations of individual pollutants are collected in 140 cities of China from January 2, 2015, to November 28, 2017. Based on a spatial differences-in-differences, the impact of major events, such as political conferences, sporting events at the national level, on urban air quality in the dimensions of time and space are explored. It is concluded that major events not only affected the air quality of the host city, but also exercised influence on the air quality of the surrounding areas. Recommendations for mitigating the impact of major events on urban air quality have been proposed, such as establish regional atmospheric environment management system and formulate regional unified standards for pollutant discharge, industrial access and law enforcement., Competing Interests: Conflict of interestThe authors declare that they have no conflict of interest., (© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. part of Springer Nature 2021.)

As global climate warms, the occurrence frequency and loss of natural disaster are both increasing, posing a great threat to the sustainable development of human society. One of the most important approaches of disaster management is to prevent disaster and reduce disaster loss through fiscal expenditure of government; however, the optimal proportion of expenditure for disaster prevention and mitigation has always been a difficult issue that people concern about. First, this paper, after considering the impact of disaster on human capital, established a resident-manufacturer-government decision making model which contains the probability of disaster, and then solved the optimal proportion of government expenditure for disaster prevention and reduction as well as the expected economic growth rates under different conditions. Second, through numerical simulation method, this paper studied the impacts of such factors as coefficient of risk aversion and elasticity coefficient of substitution on the optimal proportion of disaster prevention and reduction expenditure. Third, through constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function and ridge regression method, this paper verified the applicability of the proposed model with the data of the expenditures for disaster prevention and mitigation of Hunan Province in 2014. Finally, this paper summarized the research results and put forward corresponding suggestions on policy. The theoretical model proposed in this paper enriches the related researches of disaster economics, and the conclusions of empirical analysis can provide government departments with useful reference for the practice of disaster prevention and mitigation., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Assessment of the health and economic impacts of PM2.5 pollution is of great importance for urban air pollution prevention and control. In this study, we evaluate the damage of PM2.5 pollution using Beijing as an example. First, we use exposure-response functions to estimate the adverse health effects due to PM2.5 pollution. Then, the corresponding labour loss and excess medical expenditure are computed as two conducting variables. Finally, different from the conventional valuation methods, this paper introduces the two conducting variables into the computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to assess the impacts on sectors and the whole economic system caused by PM2.5 pollution. The results show that, substantial health effects of the residents in Beijing from PM2.5 pollution occurred in 2013, including 20,043 premature deaths and about one million other related medical cases. Correspondingly, using the 2010 social accounting data, Beijing gross domestic product loss due to the health impact of PM2.5 pollution is estimated as 1286.97 (95% CI: 488.58-1936.33) million RMB. This demonstrates that PM2.5 pollution not only has adverse health effects, but also brings huge economic loss.

To mitigate and control the eutrophication of the waters in Fuxian Lake bay, 1 hm2 Yaonigou constructed wetland was built on the north Fuxian lakeshore, and the P removal of the wastewater from Yaonigou River was investigated by the techniques of precipitation pond, oxidation pond, and subsurface-and surface flow constructed wetland. The results demonstrated that this constructed wetland had a very strong capacity (7.8% - 81.1%) of total phosphorus (TP) removal. The average removal rate of TP was 54.9%, and the TP retention in the constructed wetland was 265mg x m(-2) x d(-1), of which, plant assimilation was 26.1 mg x m(-2) x d(-1), about 10% of the total. The TP removal was mainly through adsorption and sedimentation, but the seasonal growth dynamics of main plant Oenanthe javanica could have a definite effect on the efficiency of TP removal. During the examination, the TP retention capacity was in order of subsurface flow constructed wetland > oxidation pond > precipitation pond > surface flow constructed wetland.