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Osteosarcoma is the most common malignant bone tumor without efficient management for improving 5-year event-free survival. Immunotherapy is also limited due to its highly immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME). Pore-forming gasdermins (GSDMs)-mediated pyroptosis has gained increasing concern in reshaping TME, however, the expressions and relationships of GSDMs with osteosarcoma remain unclear. Herein, gasdermin E (GSDME) expression is found to be positively correlated with the prognosis and immune infiltration of osteosarcoma patients, and low GSDME expression was observed. A vector termed as LPAD contains abundant hydroxyl groups for hydrating layer formation was then prepared to deliver the GSDME gene to upregulate protein expression in osteosarcoma for efficient TME reshaping via enhanced pyroptosis induction. Atomistic molecular dynamics simulations analysis proved that the hydroxyl groups increased LPAD hydration abilities by enhancing coulombic interaction. The upregulated GSDME expression together with cleaved caspase-3 provided impressive pyroptosis induction. The pyroptosis further initiated proinflammatory cytokines release, increased immune cell infiltration, activated adaptive immune responses and create a favorable immunogenic hot TME. The study not only confirms the role of GSDME in the immune infiltration and prognosis of osteosarcoma, but also provides a promising strategy for the inhibition of osteosarcoma by pore-forming GSDME gene delivery induced enhanced pyroptosis to reshape the TME of osteosarcoma.

IntroductionXuanwu Lake in Nanjing has undergone a rich history, evolving from native Sangbo to a naval training ground, from an imperial garden to farmland, and finally to a vibrant urban landscape. The lake's legacy can be attributed to its unique geographical and hydrological conditions. Exploring historical transformations of the lake and surrounding landscape patterns provides insights for optimizing urban water space in contemporary China.MethodsTraditional analyses of lake changes based solely on historical records may lack precision due to deviations and artistic interpretations found in ancient maps. However, considering the reciprocal compatibility between local geomorphology, undulating terrains, and water bodies allows for accurate reduction of the lake's morphology by inferring and validating its geographical features. This research combines historical interpretation and geographical analysis to reconstruct the historical shape of Xuanwu Lake, uncover the intrinsic mechanisms driving spatial changes over time, and analyze the morphological changes and connectivity patterns of its hydrological system.ResultsThe morphology and hydrological dynamics of Xuanwu Lake are deeply intertwined with the policies prevailing in different eras. In antiquity, Xuanwu Lake, as a natural body of water, sustained the surrounding ecosystem and the livelihoods of local inhabitants. During the imperial period, it was integrated into the royal gardens, with its utilization and configuration modified by political directives, including the establishment of a naval training facility and its conversion into a royal recreational venue. Subsequently, in response to economic imperatives, Xuanwu Lake was transformed into agricultural land, which led to challenges such as flooding and drought. Ultimately, due to ecological security and recreational needs under urbanization, it was restored to lake form.DiscussionBy interpreting the bidirectional adaptation between the lake's ecosystem functions and city development activities, this research provides insights for water space management and ecological restoration in contemporary Xuanwu Lake. The findings provide guidance for the sustainable development of city-lake relationships to enhance the resilience of urban ecological spaces.

Abstract Urban lakes serve as vital ecological and recreational anchors within built environments, essential for enhancing urban resilience. Evaluating lake health predominantly focuses on water quality, assessing indicators such as nutrient levels, toxicity, pH balance, and water clarity to monitor changes. This study proposes a comprehensive evaluation framework that systematically describes specific spatiotemporal manifestations and periodic exogenous regulation characteristics across five dimensions: physical structure, water quality, shoreline dynamics, external regulation, and social service. Furthermore, it introduces an urban lake health assessment model based on synergistic development to evaluate the integrated development and interaction between water environments and social services. This model is applied across urban lakes in various developmental stages in China. Key findings include: 1) Urban development often impacts lake health disparately, with varying degrees of synergy observed between water environments and social services across different urban lakes. However, shifts in urban ideologies and improvements in governance, along with protective policies and project implementations, have contributed to improving water quality to some extent. 2) Engineering interventions do not consistently correspond with improvements in water quality, and governance measures sometimes yield mixed outcomes, underscoring the necessity for systematic solutions to lake health. Restoring hydrological processes emerges as crucial for enhancing sustainability.

Influenced by the water design principle of Chinese classical garden, the design of urban waterbodies (lakes, ponds and wetlands) in China typically exhibits natural-like morphological characteristics, but what similarities and differences among these characteristics remain unclear. Also, the morphology of urban waterbodies is mostly designed with beauty and lacks quantitative research and methodological support, which is not favourable to the exploration of the correlation between waterbody morphology and ecology. In this study, 11 quantifiable morphological indicators are selected from water surface, shoreline complexity and water-land spatial morphology. A Grasshopper-based model for waterbody morphology quantification and analysis was constructed and applied to 42 cases in China. Combined with frequency, correlation and PCA analysis, the cases and indicators with higher composite scores generally showed more natural water surface morphology, island distribution, and diversified land and water spaces. The thresholds for the more representative indicators are 0.10–0.60 for the circularity ratio (C), 1.01–1.15 for the shoreline fractal dimension (D0), 1.58–29.42 for the island nearest-neighbour index (NN), 1.20–2.50 for the shoreline development index (SDI), 0.20–0.55 for the compactness ratio (Rc) and 0.30–0.85 for the unit water surface morphological difference ratio (ΔB). Focusing on these indicators, along with ΔB and I which describe spatial inclusiveness and island distribution, their regression equations and threshold ranges provide a primary basis for developing waterbody morphology designs and generative algorithms. This methodology has been experimentally applied in the design of a case waterbody in Suqian City Park. Overall, this study constructs and validates the feasibility of a Grasshopper-based algorithm for the quantitative analysis and morphogenetic design of waterbody morphology. It demonstrates the potential of this method for understanding complex waterbody morphology and water-land spaces, and supports a new digital methodology for the optimisation of waterscape design.

Abstract Background Because cities prioritize economic development and face ecological space and resource constraints, the development of rural areas, which have untapped potential, should receive increased attention. Consequently, rural ecological landscapes should be constructed through the control of land use types and quality to fully ensure the sustainable development of urban and rural ecosystems. The digital twin is a philosophy and a methodology that connects the digital and physical realms, facilitating realistic and dynamic mapping simulations of the real world. This capability offers valuable insights for digital decision-making, maintenance, and optimization of rural ecological landscapes. Given the digital transformation of rural ecological landscape control, this paper proposes a rural intelligent control approach based on the digital twin concept and new technology. Methods Five components of the rural ecological landscape digital twin framework are selected to collectively facilitate the monitoring and analysis of rural conditions, formulate strategic solutions, implement management and control behaviors, and enhance participant interaction. The method includes three steps: mapping and fusing information, constructing and managing a database, and constructing a digital platform. Data mining and spatial fusion are performed through targeted mapping methods, and Oracle and ArcGIS SDE are utilized for database construction and fused data management. The twin platform is generated via HTML, desktop application development and geographic information system development technologies using a distributed system as the core. Results Based on multiple case studies, our platform efficiently gathers system information on rural ecological landscapes using a twin model. Through evaluation and analysis, it determines landscape governance zones, adjusting them based on land use conditions. The platform refines control schemes with feedback from diverse users, ensuring effective control in various scenarios. Its key advantages include high development efficiency, flexible access, and smooth cross-platform integration. Although implemented in rural China, the proposed digital twin framework is applicable to any rural area requiring ecological landscape digital control. Conclusions The value of the platform lies in its powerful information processing capability, overcoming the limitations of time and space and enabling the presentation and integration of fictional scenes Thus, the platform provides a reference for the digital transformation of rural ecological landscape control.

It is crucial to employ scientifically sound models for assessing the quality of the ecological environment and revealing the strengths and weaknesses of ecosystems. This process is vital for identifying regional ecological and environmental issues and devising relevant protective measures. Among the widely acknowledged models for evaluating ecological quality, the ecological index (EI) and remote sensing ecological index (RSEI) stand out; however, there is a notable gap in the literature discussing their differences, characteristics, and reasons for selecting either model. In this study, we focused on Fangshan District, Beijing, China, to examine the differences between the two models from 2017 to 2021. We summarized the variations in evaluation indices, importance, quantitative methods, and data acquisition times, proposing application scenarios for both models. The results indicate that the ecological environment quality in Fangshan District, Beijing, remained favorable from 2017 to 2021. There was a discernible trend of initially declining quality followed by subsequent improvement. The variation in the calculation results is evident in the overall correlation between the RSEI and EI. Particularly noteworthy is the significantly smaller correlation between EI and the RSEI in 2021 than in the other two years. This discrepancy is attributed to shifts in the contribution of the evaluation indices within the RSEI model. The use of diverse quantitative methods for evaluating indicators has resulted in several variations. Notably, the evaluation outcomes of the EI model exhibit a stronger correlation with land cover types. This correlation contributes to a more pronounced fluctuation in RSEI levels from 2017 to 2021, with the EI model's evaluation results in 2019 notably surpassing those of the RSEI model. Ultimately, the most prominent disparities lie in the calculation results for water areas and construction land. The substantial difference in water areas is attributed to the distinct importance assigned to evaluation indicators between the two models. Moreover, the notable difference in construction land arises from the use of different quantification methods for evaluation indicators. In general, the EI model has suggested to be more comprehensive and effectively captures the annual comprehensive status of the ecological environment and the multiyear change characteristics of the administrative region. On the other hand, RSEI models exhibit greater flexibility and ease of implementation, independent of spatial and temporal scales. These findings contribute to a clearer understanding of the models' advantages and limitations, offering guidance for decision makers and valuable insights for the improvement and development of ecological environmental quality evaluation models.

With the vigorous development of big data and cloud computing, containers are becoming the main platform for running applications due to their flexible and lightweight features. Using a container cluster management system can more effectively manage multiocean containers on multiple machine nodes, and Kubernetes has become a leader in container cluster management systems, with its powerful container orchestration capabilities. However, the current default Kubernetes components and settings have appeared to have a performance bottleneck and are not adaptable to complex usage environments. In particular, the issues are data distribution latency, inefficient cluster backup and restore leading to poor disaster recovery, poor rolling update leading to downtime, inefficiency in load balancing and handling requests, poor autoscaling and scheduling strategy leading to quality of service (QoS) violations and insufficient resource usage, and many others. Aiming at the insufficient performance of the default Kubernetes platform, this paper focuses on reducing the data distribution latency, improving the cluster backup and restore strategies toward better disaster recovery, optimizing zero-downtime rolling updates, incorporating better strategies for load balancing and handling requests, optimizing autoscaling, introducing better scheduling strategy, and so on. At the same time, the relevant experimental analysis is carried out. The experiment results show that compared with the default settings, the optimized Kubernetes platform can handle more than 2000 concurrent requests, reduce the CPU overhead by more than 1.5%, reduce the memory by more than 0.6%, reduce the average request time by an average of 7.6%, and reduce the number of request failures by at least 32.4%, achieving the expected effect.

An English-Bengali machine translation (MT) application can convert an English text into a corresponding Bengali translation. To build a better model for this task, we can optimize English-Bengali MT. MT for languages with rich resources, like English-German, started decades ago. However, MT for languages lacking many parallel corpora remains challenging. In our study, we employed back-translation to improve the translation accuracy. With back-translation, we can have a pseudo-parallel corpus, and the generated (pseudo) corpus can be added to the original dataset to obtain an augmented dataset. However, the new data can be regarded as noisy data because they are generated by models that may not be trained very well or not evaluated well, like human translators. Since the original output of a translation model is a probability distribution of candidate words, to make the model more robust, different decoding methods are used, such as beam search, top-k random sampling and random sampling with temperature T, and others. Notably, top-k random sampling and random sampling with temperature T are more commonly used and more optimal decoding methods than the beam search. To this end, our study compares LSTM (Long-Short Term Memory, as a baseline) and Transformer. Our results show that Transformer (BLEU: 27.80 in validation, 1.33 in test) outperforms LSTM (3.62 in validation, 0.00 in test) by a large margin in the English-Bengali translation task. (Evaluating LSTM and Transformer without any augmented data is our baseline study.) We also incorporate two decoding methods, top-k random sampling and random sampling with temperature T, for back-translation that help improve the translation accuracy of the model. The results show that data generated by back-translation without top-k or temperature sampling (“no strategy”) help improve the accuracy (BLEU 38.22, +10.42 on validation, 2.07, +0.74 on test). Specifically, back-translation with top-k sampling is less effective (k=10, BLEU 29.43, +1.83 on validation, 1.36, +0.03 on test), while sampling with a proper value of T, T=0.5 makes the model achieve a higher score (T=0.5, BLEU 35.02, +7.22 on validation, 2.35, +1.02 on test). This implies that in English-Bengali MT, we can augment the training set through back-translation using random sampling with a proper temperature T.

Abstract Osteosarcoma is the most common malignant bone tumor, tending to be aggressive and recurrent. The therapeutic development for treating osteosarcoma has been largely hampered by the lack of effective and specific targets. Using kinome-wide CRISPR-Cas9 knockout screens, we systematically revealed a cohort of kinases essential for the survival and growth of human osteosarcoma cells, in which Polo-like kinase 1 (PLK1) appeared as a specific prominent hit. PLK1 knockout substantially inhibited proliferation of osteosarcoma cells in vitro and the tumor growth of osteosarcoma xenograft in vivo. Volasertib, a potent experimental PLK1 inhibitor, can effectively inhibit the growth of the osteosarcoma cell lines in vitro. It can also disrupt the development of tumors in the patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models in vivo. Furthermore, we confirmed that the mode of action (MoA) of volasertib is primarily mediated by the cell-cycle arrest and apoptosis triggered by DNA damage. As PLK1 inhibitors are entering phase III clinical trials, our findings provide important insights into the efficacy and MoA of the relevant therapeutic approach for combating osteosarcoma.

(1) Background: Sequential landscape changes give people experiences of dynamic beauty, and the key to creating spatial sequences lies in the organization of spatial changes. The purpose of this study is to use a 3D point cloud model to achieve a refined description of spatial sequences’ organizational characteristics from information acquisition to description and explore the quantitative interpretation methods of typical sequence organizational characteristics. (2) Methods: The proposed model contains three main steps: data acquisition and extraction, characteristic index system construction and data processing, and quantitative characterization analysis. A typology research method that combines quantitative induction with qualitative statistical verification is proposed. (3) Results: Seventy-two spatial sequence point cloud models of study cases are obtained; 4 indicators are established; 3 typical organization types are summarized, namely fluctuating, reversal and moderate type; and the characterization factors and threshold intervals for each sequence organization type are analyzed to validate the type classification result. (4) Conclusions: This research improves the accuracy of spatial data, the comprehensiveness of sequence organization characterization factors, and the reliability of classification results. It supplements the existing spatial sequence theoretical knowledge system and provides parameters that can be referred to in practical design.

A sponge city is an established urban stormwater management approach that effectively reduces urban runoff and pollutant discharges. In order to plan and design, estimate costs, and evaluate the performance of urban sponge city systems, it is essential to calculate the storage scale. In this context, a sponge city storage scale and calculation method based on a multifactor spatial overlay was designed, utilising the starting area of the Dafeng Hi-tech Development Zone in Yancheng City, China, as an illustrative example. The indicators for assessing the impact of sponge city systems on river plain networks are constructed based on four aspects: land planning, building density, water surface rate and green space rate. The relative importance of each indicator was determined based on the necessity of controlling runoff from land parcels and the appropriateness of facility construction. The annual runoff control rate of the 39 low-impact development control units in the study area was calculated using ArcGIS through multifactor spatial overlay mapping and weighting. The results showed that (1) the Geographic Information System (GIS)overlay technology can effectively assist in the decomposition of LID scales; (2) data can be derived, including the design storage volume and other basic control scale indicators for each unit. The study results are expected to serve as a reference for the preparation of special low-impact development plans in the river plain network area of China and the promotion of the construction of a sustainable blue–green system in the city.

Osteosarcoma (OS) is a rare primary malignant bone tumor in adolescents and children with a poor prognosis. The identification of prognostic genes lags far behind advancements in treatment. In this study, we identified differential genes using mRNA microarray analysis of five paired OS tissues. Hub genes, gene set enrichment analysis, and pathway analysis were performed to gain insight into the pathway alterations of OS. Prognostic genes were screened using the Therapeutically Applicable Research to Generate Effective Treatments (TARGET) dataset, then overlapped with the differential gene dataset. The carboxypeptidase E (CPE) gene, found to be an independent risk factor, was further validated using RT-PCR and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) datasets. Additionally, we explored the specific expression of CPE in OS tissues by reanalyzing single-cell genomics. Interestingly, CPE was found to be co-expressed with osteoblast lineage cell clusters that expressed RUNX2, SP7, SPP1, and IBSP marker genes in OS. These results suggest that CPE could serve as a prognostic factor in osteoblastic OS and should be further investigated as a potential therapeutic target.

Abstract HBP1 is a sequence-specific transcription factor which generally considered as a crucial growth inhibitor. Posttranslational modification of HBP1 is vital for its function. In this study, we demonstrate that HBP1 is methylated at R378 by PRMT1, which decreases HBP1 protein stability by promoting its ubiquitination and proteasome-mediated degradation. PRMT1-mediated methylation of HBP1 alleviates the repressive effects of HBP1 on tumor metastasis and growth. GSN is identified as a novel target gene of HBP1. Methylation of HBP1 promotes actin cytoskeleton remodeling, glycolysis and tumor progression by downregulating GSN (a vital actin-binding protein) levels. The methylated HBP1-GSN axis is associated with the clinical outcomes of cancer patients. This investigation elucidates the mechanism of how methylated HBP1 facilitates actin cytoskeleton remodeling, thus attenuates its tumor-suppressive function and promotes tumor progression. Targeting methylated HBP1-GSN axis may provide a therapeutic strategy for cancer.

Tourism is an important industry that promotes national economic and social progress. All-for-one tourism is a new concept of regionally coordinated development that uses the tourism industry as an engine to boost resource integration, industrial integration, and social sharing. Tourism service is the main embodiment of cultural ecosystem services for all-for-one tourism cities. Taking the city of Liyang in China as an example, this paper used a combination of GIS spatial analysis and big data text mining to evaluate tourism service from three aspects: the quality of tourism resources, the comprehensiveness of tourism service facilities, and the satisfaction of tourists. The results show that (1) tourism service is better in the northwestern and eastern areas of the city, while it is lower in the northeastern and southwestern parts; (2) the hotspot areas should focus on improving tour routes, transport capacity, and excessive charges; the cold spot areas should work on ecological restoration and creating new tourism attractions by combining the local industries; and (3) rural tourism integrating agriculture and visitation should be highlighted as a key growth point to improve the city’s tourism service function.

Urban forests by the riverside are important habitats for various animals and contribute various soundscapes for citizens. Unfortunately, urban forests are exposed to the influence of riverside traffic noises from freeways. This study aims to explore the spatial and temporal variation of soundscape, conduct soundscape optimization for multiple parameters, and find a balance and its interval of soundscape elements through optimizing a soundscape map. Questionnaires and measuring equipment were used to gather soundscape information in an urban forested area in Fuzhou, China. Diurnal variations and soundscape mapping were used to analyze spatial and psychophysical relationships between soundscape drivers. We then conducted optimization for a soundscape map, which included normalization, critical value determination, target interval of optimal SPL determination, and modification of SPL and mapping. Our findings suggest that biological activities and natural phenomena are potential drivers for diurnal variation of soundscapes, especially tidal phenomena contributing water and shipping soundscapes. Our results also suggest that all the high values of perceived soundscapes were found at the southwest corner of the study area, which includes both riverside and urban forest elements. Furthermore, we suggest combining both optimal soundscape and SPL correction maps to aid in sustainable design in urban forests. This can contribute to the understanding and methodology of soundscape map optimization in urban forests when proposing suitable design plans and conservation of territorial sound.

Abstract Golgi protein 73 (GP73) and alpha fetoprotein (AFP) serve as biomarkers for the diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and their serum levels correlate with patients’ outcomes. However, the mechanisms underlying these correlations are unknown. Here we show that GP73 increased the secretion of AFP through direct binding to AFP, thereby promoting the proliferation and metastasis of HCC cells that expressed AFP and its receptor (AFPR). Extracellular GP73 contributed to the proliferation and metastasis of HCC cells independent of AFP and AFPR. Moreover, extracellular AFP and GP73 synergized to enhance the malignant phenotype of HCC cells. Furthermore, extracellular GP73 and AFP inhibited the antitumor effects of sorafenib and synergistically increased the drug resistance of HCC cells. These findings, which reveal the mechanism of GP73-mediated secretion of AFP and its effects on the malignant phenotype of HCC cells, provide a comprehensive theoretical basis for the diagnosis and treatment of HCC and identify potential drug targets.

Abstract Background Hepatoma is a common malignancy of the liver. The abnormal high expression of alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) is intimately associated with hepatoma progress, but the mechanism of transcriptional regulation and singularly activation of AFP gene in hepatoma is not clear. Methods The expression of transcription factor HBP1 and AFP and clinical significance were further analyzed in hepatoma tissues from the patients who received surgery or TACE and then monitored for relapse for up 10 years. HBP1-mediated transcriptional regulation of AFP was analyzed by Western blotting, Luciferase assay, Realtime-PCR, ChIP and EMSA. After verified the axis of HBP-AFP, its impact on hepatoma was measured by MTT, Transwell and FACS in hepatoma cells and by tumorigenesis in HBP1−/− mice. Results The relative expressions of HBP1 and AFP correlated with survival and prognosis in hepatoma patients. HBP1 repressed the expression of AFP gene by directly binding to the AFP gene promoter. Hepatitis B Virus (HBV)-encoded protein HBx promoted malignancy in hepatoma cells through binding to HBP1 directly. Icaritin, an active ingredient of Chinese herb epimedium, inhibited malignancy in hepatoma cells through enhancing HBP1 transrepression of AFP. The repression of AFP by HBP1 attenuated AFP effect on PTEN, MMP9 and caspase-3, thus inhibited proliferation and migration, and induced apoptosis in hepatoma cells. The deregulation of AFP by HBP1 contributed to hepatoma progression in mice. Conclusions Our data clarify the mechanism of HBP1 in inhibiting the expression of AFP and its suppression in malignancy of hepatoma cells, providing a more comprehensive theoretical basis and potential solutions for the diagnosis and treatment of hepatoma.

Abstract Background Icaritin, an active ingredient of the Chinese herb Epimedium, plays an anti-tumor role in liver cancer by inhibiting the proliferation of hepatocellular cells and promoting their apoptosis. In China, phase II and a large phase III clinical trial of icaritin reagent for the treatment of hepatocellular cancer is under-going, but the specific mechanism of icaritin action was unclear. Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), an oncofetal protein, produced in the healthy fetal liver and yolk sac. Intracellular AFP promoted cellular proliferation and inhibited cellular apoptosis in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The study was aimed to investigate the effect of icaritin on HCC through p53/AFP pathway. Methods Real-time RT PCR and western blot were used to detect p53 and AFP expression levels in HCC cells treated with icaritin. The mechanism of icaritin affecting p53 expression was verified by ubiquitination experiment, and the binding activity of icaritin on p53 in AFP promoter region was verified by luciferase experiment. EdU, MTT and flow cytometry were used to determine whether icaritin affected HCC cellular proliferation and apoptosis through p53/ AFP pathway. Expression levels of p53 and AFP in xenograft mouse model were determined by western blotting. Results Our results showed icaritin inhibited AFP expression at mRNA and protein level. AFP was also identified as the target gene of the p53 transcription factor. Icaritin abrogated murine double minute (Mdm) 2-mediated p53 ubiquitination degradation to improve the stability of p53. Up-regulated p53 protein levels then transcriptionally inhibited the AFP promoter. Icaritin-mediated decrease of AFP through Mdm2/p53 pathways inhibited HCC cellular proliferation and promoted HCC cellular apoptosis. Conclusion Our findings revealed the mechanism of icaritin in promoting apoptosis and inhibiting proliferation in liver cancer cells. The regulatory mechanism of icaritin in AFP protein down-regulation provides a theoretical and experimental basis for further research into new drugs for the treatment of liver cancer.

By predicting and analyzing regional land use conflicts (LUCs), the contradictory relationship between urban development and land resources can be revealed, which can assist in achieving the rational use of land resources. Taking Liyang as a case study, this paper simulated land use in 2030 under three scenarios, namely, the natural growth scenario (NGS), economic development scenario (EDS), and ecological protection scenario (EPS), using the CLUMondo model. The ecological risk assessment model was used to measure the LUCs under each scenario. Through the comprehensive analysis of land use conversion, spatial distribution, and the change characteristics of LUCs, optimization strategies for future land use are proposed. The results indicate that (1) the intensity of land conversion under the three scenarios is ranked as EDS > NGS > EPS; (2) there is little change in the LUCs under the EPS, while significant deterioration is observed under the NGS and EDS; (3) the intensity of LUCs is positively correlated with the degree of land use conversion; and (4) in the future, particular attention should be paid to areas around the city center, the Caoshan Development Zone in the northwest, and Nanshan Bamboo Sea in the south, where high-intensity land use conflicts may occur.

The modernization of Shanghai has experienced two boosting periods. The first appeared in the 1930s, when it formed the civil society of Shanghai and initially facilitated the trade port into an international metropolis. The second started after the nation's reform and opening-up, which attempted to promote the city into a global metropolis in the 2010s. In order to evaluate the socio-spatial transitions of communities in Shanghai during the process, Lilong historical neighborhoods in the 1930s and 2010s are successively chosen as research objects. Meanwhile, three specific neighborhoods in each period are selected for case study, so as to depict different symbiosis patterns of the socio-spatial structures under different spatiotemporal conditions by means of a cross-sectional analysis of the consumption level. By pointing out Shanghai in the 1930s was marked with social integration and local-based consumption, while it was inundated with administration tendency and global-oriented consumption in the 2010s, the article believes the dual integration of local-based and global-oriented consumptions is an alternative solution for Shanghai. Finally, the article proposes that Shanghai's current urban regeneration should rely on the multi-centered symbiotic structure to create a compound network, during which territorial socio-spatial structures and basic living needs of the plebeian can be simultaneously preserved.

The provision of open space is seen as a feasible solution in mitigating the challenges of urbanization, which accommodates the daily leisure activities of residents and contributes to sustainable development. This study aims at understanding how users perceive open space in 29-3 Park in Da Nang, Vietnam. This understanding may help to adopt a better approach to development and improvements. More specifically, it focuses on identifying roles and attributes of the space and determining those elements which affect how users of the space gather, based on their perspective. Residents' behaviour parameters were identified and classified based on activities that occurred in this space, and were collected using a behavioural mapping survey method. The analysis of 20 in-depth interviews, and 287 questionnaires, show existing problems that need to be improved and detail 11 physical factors that have potential to impact on users’ satisfaction. These results may have the potential to play an important role in assisting designers and administrators to create successful open space in urban areas of Vietnam or other developing countries in the future. Keywords: Open space, Environmental behaviour, Behaviour mapping, Da Nang, 29-3 park

Natural soundscape is considered a dominant type of hearing in forested areas and contributes to health and recovery effects from exposure to the biophilic outdoor environment. This study focuses on the different forest structures, and aims to explore the relationship between perceived soundscape and acoustical parameters, observe physiological indicators, and model the physiological restorative role of soundscape. Questionnaires and measuring equipment were used to gather psychophysical and physiological information at 20 observation sites in urban forested areas. Back-propagation neural network techniques were conducted to determine the forecasting model from psychophysical to physiological parameters. Our results suggested that LAeq and L10 are important factors that influence questionnaire responses. Our findings also showed that electromyogram (EMG) signals were the most obvious and sensitive in physiological parameters. Additionally, we found that L10–90 played the most important role among all physical parameters in the physiological restorativeness soundscape model. This can facilitate the understanding of the physiological restorative role of soundscape in different forest structures when proposing suitable forest-based health care strategies.

Urban fringe areas are locations that compete between urban development and ecological protection; their ecological spatial boundaries face the risk of erosion and degradation. Previous studies have so far focused on the core area inside the ecological space. However, research on the ecological boundary zone has so far been insufficient. The delineation of ECR is based on large-scale administrative units, while it is less precise at the level of small-scale rural areas. This study selected Paifang village in Nanjing City as the study area and built a Bayesian network model to predict the ecological space boundary for 2030. The study also identified the driving factors and their mechanisms affecting the changes in the rural ecological space in an urban fringe area and put forward targeted suggestions for its protection. The results suggested that: (1) The ecological space of Paifang village will expand in 2030. Specifically, agricultural land has the greatest potential for restoration of ecological space, followed by shrubland and grassland, and water bodies and their surrounding areas are potentially shrinking ecological space. (2) Artificial construction activities will disturb the ecological space, with the change in agricultural land being the main factor affecting the change in the ecological space boundary. (3) The Ecological Conservation Redline has a significant effect on the protection of the rural ecological space. The results of this study can provide a reference for rural planning and the formulation of protection policies in urban fringe areas.

Urban block-scale sponge system design needs address how to specify the optimal approach to combine the number of areas and types of sponge facilities for diverse land conditions and sponge system design objectives, while ensuring sponge performance and economic efficiency. With the gradual application of multi-objective optimization algorithms in the design of sponge cities, multi-objective combinatorial problem solving for sponge facilities based on optimization algorithms is more accurate and efficient than traditional design methods based on the designer’s experience. This study utilizes a residential complex in Nanjing as a practical example, selects six types of typical sponge facilities to construct a multi-objective optimization combination model for sponge facilities, and employs the SPEA-2 algorithm to determine the optimal combination of sponge facility types and quantities. Finally, 186,754 combinations of sponge facilities were calculated. For the three sponge objectives of optimal performance and economy for stormwater infiltration and storage, optimal performance and economy for runoff pollution control, and optimal average overall performance for stormwater infiltration, runoff pollution control, and economy, a number of combinations of sponge types and numbers were obtained.

Rapid urbanization with unreasonable human disturbances has caused a serious ecological crisis. By constructing an ecological-security pattern (ESP), key landscape elements can be effectively identified. ESP optimization helps to improve a city’s ecosystem services and achieve the harmonious development between man and nature. Therefore, it is crucial to construct an accurate ESP and propose practical ESP optimization strategies. Taking Liyang City as an example, this paper first constructed the ESP with a combination methodology of circuit theory, graph theory, the granularity-reverse method, and the comprehensive-evaluation method. Then, strategies for ESP optimization were proposed in terms of ecological restoration and ecological source promotion. Finally, the optimized ESP was verified by quantitative assessment involving landscape connectivity and network structure. Research results show that the current ESP includes 24 ecological sources, 41 ecological corridors, and 50 ecological nodes that need ecological restoration. In the optimized ESP, 31.5 km2 of ecological land is added, 3 ecological sources are added, 55 ecological corridors are generated, and the number of nodes in the ecological network is increased by 4. By comparing the evaluation results before and after optimization, it can be seen that the optimization scheme has a positive effect on landscape connectivity and ecological coordination of the whole region.

Recently, the spatial contradiction in rural construction has intensified. Production–living–ecological (PLE) spaces, as important load-bearing spatial patterns of rural revitalization, have become a research focus of territorial space planning. Because of the lack of studies on the scale and accuracy at the township level in rural PLE spaces, the objective of this study is to quantify the subfunctional and functional areas of PLE spaces, weigh the relationship between PLE functions, and conduct feature identification and strategy formulation of the PLE synergistic functional areas. Combined with multitype measurement methods, the study constructed a township-level PLE space evaluation system composed of 12 subfunctional indicators. Taking Guli Street in Nanjing city as an example, Spearman correlation analysis, spatial local autocorrelation analysis, and cold/hot spot identification were used to analyze the synergies and tradeoffs between PLE functions. On this basis, the evaluation model of the PLE synergies area was constructed. The results showed that the production function showed a fragmented distribution pattern. The proportion of high-intensity living function areas was very small. The ecological function area had good patch integrity. In the PLE functions, obvious synergies exist between any two functions, and the tradeoff between the third one and any of the two functions. The seven types of PLE synergistic potential areas were dominated by the dual-function high synergistic zone (DF-H-Z). The zoning scheme and governance strategy proposed in this paper have important practical value for solving the contradiction of sustainable and coordinated development of township-scale spatial resources.

Within the concept of sponge city in China, green stormwater measures have been widely used in urban mountain parks. This study provides an integrated assessment framework for hydrological cost-effectiveness in the Nanjing Guanyao Mountain Park under various precipitation scenarios. A grey drainage basic strategy and four multi-level control strategies with progressively increasing graded interception or storage facilities at mid-and terminal levels were designed and evaluated. Results show that the multi-level interception and storage strategy (S4) proved to be the most beneficial, followed by the multi-level interception strategy (S2) having slightly lower results than the multi-level storage strategy (S3), while the terminal strategy (S1) showed poor results. However, the hydrological cost-effectiveness exhibits the opposite trend under 2–5-year storms. A high multi-level strategy limited by life-cycle costs may not impart high hydrological cost-effectiveness in response to each return period of storms in this mountain stormwater practice. This study validates the hydrological performance and cost-effectiveness of multi-level distributed strategies in an urban mountain park, bridges the limitations of the previous studies on single scheme design and hydrological performance assessment for sloped sites, and provides a technical reference and design basis for similar studies and practices.

Flooding is one of the leading challenges faced by delta cities in the world. Flood risk management using flood control infrastructure (FCI) is a popular solution to prevent flood damage; however, this is receiving enormous criticism due to its negative impacts on urban ecosystems. Recently, there have been new approaches to flood risk management that gradually shifted the focus away from FCI, such as ecological infrastructure (EI) based approaches. However, the conventional thinking that cities cannot be safe without FCI seems an immutable one, especially in developing countries. This study firstly assessed human–river interaction in direct relation to FCI and outlined the limitations of FCI. Then, an urban ecology research model was used to conduct a case study in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD), in which the interaction between factors, including riverine urbanization, FCI formation dynamics, the changing hydrological regime, flood risk, and riverine ecosystem degradation were evaluated. Due to the dynamism and complexity of the interactions between humans and rivers at the VMD, this study attempts to demonstrate that building the ability to adapt to flood risks based on EI will have a crucial role in enhancing the sustainability of delta cities. Through a case study in My Tho City (MTC) a flood resilience management scenario for a riverine urban area along the Mekong River was developed to discuss the role of EI in flood risk reduction and the restoration of riverine native ecosystems. The findings from this study suggests that EI should be considered as an effective and indispensable design tool for the conservation of riparian ecological corridors and public open spaces—which is a major challenge for urban areas in the context of increasing climate change impacts in the VMD.

Urban green infrastructure (UGI) can be used as a sustainable stormwater management approach. UGI can bring numerous ecological benefits to cities, including increased urban resilience, increased availability of water resources, and optimization of habitats. This paper used empirical research methods to describe an Internet of things (IoT)-based UGI monitoring and control system for stormwater management (MCSSWM). Using a Xuzhou-based practical project in China as a case study, we introduce the construction process, method, and monitoring results of the system. The results showed that the MCSSWM could be beneficial for UGI ecological performance evaluation and management.

An investigation into the effectiveness of bioretention cells (BCs) under potential climatic changes was conducted using representative concentration pathways. A case study of Guangzhou showed changes in peak runoff in climate change scenarios, with obvious growth in RCP8.5 and slight growth in RCP2.6. The performance of BCs on multiple parameters, including reduction of runoff volume, peak runoff, and first flush, were examined in different design storms using a hydrology model (SWMM). The effectiveness of BCs varied non-linearly with scale. Their performance fell by varying amounts in the various scenarios. BCs could provide sufficient effects in response to short-return-period and short-duration storms, but the performance of BCs decreased with heavy storms, especially considering climate change. Hence, BCs cannot replace grey infrastructure but should be integrated with them. The method developed in this study could be useful in the planning and design of low impact development in view of future climate changes.

Courtyards are claimed to be extremely effective in improving the freshening and decreasing the humidity level, also showed a strong correlation between courtyard wall surface temperatures. The article aims to evaluate the thermal effects of a Mosque courtyard quantitatively and to suggest guidelines to design more sustainable built environments in the climate zone. In this part, Chinese Mosques in Nanjing city with different layouts and weather conditions were analyzed. The Mosque climate design discussed in this study is temperature and wind velocity. Briefly, the main essence is to clarify the differences between different Mosque layouts and to determine if the feature of courtyard orientation would make this Mosque style efficient.

A bioretention system is a low-impact and sustainable treatment facility for treating urban stormwater runoff. To meet or maintain a consistently satisfactory performance, especially in terms of increasing nitrogen removal efficiency, the introduction of a submerged (anoxic) zone (SZ) combined with a module-based carbon source (C) has been recommended. This study investigated the removal of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and heavy metals with a retrofitted bioretention system. A significant (p < 0.05) removal enhancement of N as well as total phosphorus (TP) was observed, in the mesocosms with additions of exogenous carbon as opposed to those without such condition. However, even in the mesocosm with SZ alone (without exogenous C), TP removal showed significant enhancement. With regard to the effects of SZ depth on nutrient removal, the results showed that the removal of both N and P in module with a shallow SZ (200 mm) showed significant enhancement compared to that in module with a deep SZ (300 mm). Removal efficiencies greater than 93% were observed for all three heavy metals tested (Cu, Pb, and Zn) in all mesocosms, even in the bioretention module without an SZ or plants, and it indicated that adsorption by the filtration media itself is probably the most important removal mechanism. Only Cu (but not Pb or Zn) showed significantly enhanced removal in module with an SZ as compared to those without an SZ. Carbon source played a minor role in metal removal as no significant (p > 0.05) improvement was observed in module with C as compared to that without C. Based on these results, the incorporation of SZ with C in stormwater biofilters is recommended.