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The issue of black-odorous water (BOW) represents a formidable challenge to the current aquatic ecosystems, and its governance exhibits characteristics of low efficiency, susceptibility to relapse, and fragmented management under the Central Environmental Protection Inspection, thereby emerging as a dynamically complex issue in the ecological governance of urban and rural settings. This study introduces Gaussian white noise to simulate environmental uncertainty and design a stochastic evolutionary game model encompassing the central government, local governments, and societal forces based on evolutionary game theory and classical governance theories and concepts. Numerical simulations are conducted to explore trajectories of the strategic evolution of various subjects influenced by numerous factors. Results indicate that under the environment of random disturbances, the strategies of the game subjects show significant fluctuations, but actively cultivating the subject's initial willingness facilitates collaboration governance in inspection. Moreover, joint construction of a "belief system" by multi-subjects, the intensity of inspection interventions, the integration of heterogeneous resources, and effective punitive measures all influence the governance of BOW, but the efficiency of resource allocation should be considered throughout the governance process. Recommendations are made finally for collaborative governance of urban and rural BOW, promoting the sustainable development of the ecological environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While urban shrinkage has extensively befallen cities around the world, the current responses to urban shrinkage have been regarded as deficient and required optimization to help shrinking cities achieve sustainable economic growth and higher quality of life. This paper deploys difference-in-difference (DID) and successfully finds, based on China's national smart city pilot projects, significant effects of smart city development on shrinking cities in catalyzing sustainable economic growth by upgrading and diversifying local industries, promoting economic growth, and providing a better quality of life for citizens through improved wages, enhanced urban environment and public service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY: Carotenoids are isoprenoid pigments indispensable for photosynthesis. Moreover, they are the precursor of apocarotenoids, which include the phytohormones abscisic acid (ABA) and strigolactones (SLs) as well as retrograde signaling molecules and growth regulators, such as β‐cyclocitral and zaxinone. Here, we show that the application of the volatile apocarotenoid β‐ionone (β‐I) to Arabidopsis plants at micromolar concentrations caused a global reprogramming of gene expression, affecting thousands of transcripts involved in stress tolerance, growth, hormone metabolism, pathogen defense, and photosynthesis. This transcriptional reprogramming changes, along with induced changes in the level of the phytohormones ABA, jasmonic acid, and salicylic acid, led to enhanced Arabidopsis resistance to the widespread necrotrophic fungus Botrytis cinerea (B.c.) that causes the gray mold disease in many crop species and spoilage of harvested fruits. Pre‐treatment of tobacco and tomato plants with β‐I followed by inoculation with B.c. confirmed the effect of β‐I in increasing the resistance to this pathogen in crop plants. Moreover, we observed reduced susceptibility to B.c. in fruits of transgenic tomato plants overexpressing LYCOPENE β‐CYCLASE, which contains elevated levels of endogenous β‐I, providing a further evidence for its effect on B.c. infestation. Our work unraveled β‐I as a further carotenoid‐derived regulatory metabolite and indicates the possibility of establishing this natural volatile as an environmentally friendly bio‐fungicide to control B.c. Significance Statement: Plants rely on a wide range of metabolites to coordinate their growth and to respond to environmental stimuli. The family of carotenoid‐cleavage products, apocarotenoids, is emerging as a source of growth‐regulating and signaling molecules conferring protection against abiotic and biotic stresses. We show that the apocarotenoid, β‐ionone, is a regulatory metabolite that reshapes Arabidopsis transcriptome and hormone content, increasing resistance to the necrotrophic fungus Botrytis cinerea (B.c.) in Arabidopsis, tobacco and tomato plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While existing research has deepened our understanding of global urban shrinkage, studies on the governance of urban shrinkage in China remain deficient. Based on extensive field research in Suihua, in Northeast China, and applying an institutionalist perspective, this study explored two critical challenges faced by Chinese political institutions concerning their governance of urban shrinkage. First, the absence of well-articulated opinions and clearly defined policies of the central government render the governance of shrinking cities uncertain and over-dependent on the personal position of the shrinking city's immediate superior. Second, the local economic development path of China's shrinking cities often depends on land transactions and pollution-intensive industries, which appear not only to be the main cause of the worsening urban shrinkage, but also the biggest source of locally-generated income. As a result, re-industrialization as the apparently ideal strategy for local development in Northeast China undermines the local government's attempts to counter urban shrinkage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY: The enzyme DWARF27 (D27) catalyzes the reversible isomerization of all‐trans‐ into 9‐cis‐β‐carotene, initiating strigolactone (SL) biosynthesis. Genomes of higher plants encode two D27‐homologs, D27‐like1 and ‐like2, with unknown functions. Here, we investigated the enzymatic activity and biological function of the Arabidopsis D27‐like1. In vitro enzymatic assays and expression in Synechocystis sp. PCC6803 revealed an unreported 13‐cis/15‐cis/9‐cis‐ and a 9‐cis/all‐trans‐β‐carotene isomerization. Although disruption of AtD27‐like1 did not cause SL deficiency phenotypes, overexpression of AtD27‐like1 in the d27 mutant restored the more‐branching phenotype, indicating a contribution of AtD27‐like1 to SL biosynthesis. Accordingly, generated d27 d27like1 double mutants showed a more pronounced branching phenotype compared to d27. The contribution of AtD27‐like1 to SL biosynthesis is likely a result of its formation of 9‐cis‐β‐carotene that was present at higher levels in AtD27‐like1 overexpressing lines. By contrast, AtD27‐like1 expression correlated negatively with the content of 9‐cis‐violaxanthin, a precursor of ABA, in shoots. Consistently, ABA levels were higher in shoots and also in dry seeds of the d27like1 and d27 d27like1 mutants. Transgenic lines expressing GUS driven by the AtD27LIKE1 promoter and transcript analysis of hormone‐treated Arabidopsis seedlings revealed that AtD27LIKE1 is expressed in different tissues and affects ABA and auxin. Taken together, our work reports a cis/cis‐β‐carotene isomerase that affects the content of both cis‐carotenoid‐derived plant hormones, ABA and SLs. Significance Statement: AtD27LIKE1 is involved in the biosynthesis of the two carotenoid‐derived plant hormones ABA and strigolactones (SLs), by feeding SL biosynthesis at the same time as negatively impacting ABA content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]