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Cancer research is occasionally described as being in a reproducibility crisis. The cancer literature has ample papers retracted due to misconduct, including the use of paper mills, invalid authorship, or fake data. The objective of this paper was to gain an appreciation of the balance of retractions and associated retraction notices of 23 retracted Cancer Biotherapy and Radiopharmaceuticals papers associated with paper mills. By 23 March 2023, these retracted papers had already accumulated 287 citations according to Web of Science Core Collection, 253 according to Scopus, and 365 according to Google Scholar, i.e., metrically speaking, they were highly rewarded. All authors had an affiliation (71% being a hospital) in China. Most (12/21; 57%) of corresponding authors had emails with a @163.com suffix. Four of the retraction notices (i.e., 17%) explicitly indicated paper mills as a reason for retraction although, in general, the retraction notices lacked details and background that could assist readers' understanding of the retractions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of retracted papers from Chinese university-affiliated hospitals is increasing, which has raised much concern. The aim of this study is to analyze the retracted papers from university-affiliated hospitals in mainland China from 2000 to 2021. Data for 1,031 retracted papers were identified from the Web of Science Core collection database. The information of the hospitals involved was obtained from their official websites. We analyzed the chronological changes, journal distribution, discipline distribution and retraction reasons for the retracted papers. The grade and geographic locations of the hospitals involved were explored as well. We found a rapid increase in the number of retracted papers, while the retraction time interval is decreasing. The main reasons for retraction are plagiarism/self-plagiarism (n=255), invalid data/images/conclusions (n=212), fake peer review (n=175) and honesty error(n=163). The disciplines are mainly distributed in oncology (n=320), pharmacology & pharmacy (n=198) and research & experimental medicine (n=166). About 43.8% of the retracted papers were from hospitals affiliated with prestigious universities. This study fails to differentiate between retractions due to honest error and retractions due to research misconduct. We believe that there is a fundamental difference between honest error retractions and misconduct retractions. Another limitation is that authors of the retracted papers have not been analyzed in this study. This study provides a reference for addressing research misconduct in Chinese university-affiliated hospitals. It is our recommendation that universities and hospitals should educate all their staff about the basic norms of research integrity, punish authors of scientific misconduct retracted papers, and reform the unreasonable evaluation system. Based on the analysis of retracted papers, this study further analyzes the characteristics of institutions of retracted papers, which may deepen the research on retracted papers and provide a new perspective to understand the retraction phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese industrial heritage is the materialized carrier and historical witness of the evolution of urban spatial structure and industrial development. As an inseparable part of cultural heritage, it has rich historical, social, economic, scientific, technological, and aesthetic value. However, industrial heritage as a value is not suffi ciently acknowledged in the Chinese society. The factories, their activity, and their historical evolution are often disconnected and isolated from the daily life of the cities, being quite an unknown aspect for most citizens. In addition, due to the acceleration of urbanization, many industrial heritages in cities have disappeared. China has spent two decades promoting sustainable development of its industrial heritage, but there is still a lack of knowledge on how to promote sustainable development of industrial heritage through digital education. Based on these findings the paper discusses our research that promotes sustainable development aspects of industrial heritage, and our subsequent work has particularly focussed on associated landscape recovery. It does so by focussing on the particular highly valued heritage case of the Anshan Steel production site in China, and the environmental consequences of the Dagushan Open mine on the landscape. The paper ends with a critical reflection on how a digital tool can help to shape industrial heritage education, appreciation and involvement, and hence foster sustainable development processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 5th Plenary Session of the 19th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee clearly states that developing science and technology through self-reliance and self-strengthening provides the strategic underpinning for China's development. Based on this background, this paper explores a metric model for assessing national scientific research strength through collaboration on research papers. We propose a novel metric model for assessing national scientific research strength, which sets two indicators, national scientific self-reliance (SR) and national academic contribution (CT), to reflect "self-reliance" and "self-strengthening" respectively. Taking the research papers in quantum technology as an example, this study analyzes the scientific research strength of various countries around the world, especially China in quantum technology. The results show that the research of quantum technology in China has always been relatively independent with fewer international collaboration papers and located in a more marginal position in cooperation networks. China's academic contribution (CT) to global quantum technology research is increasing and has been greater than that of the United States in 2020. Combining the two indicators, CT and SR, China's research strength in the quantum field closely follows the United States, and the United States is the most powerful with high research autonomy. This paper only reflects China's scientific research strength in quantum technology from collaboration on research papers and doesn't consider the segmentation of quantum technology and the industrial upstream and downstream aspects, which need further study. The model is helpful to better understand the national scientific research strength in a certain field from "self-reliance" and "self-strengthening". We propose a novel metric model to measure the national scientific research strength from the perspective of "self-reliance" and "self-strengthening", which provides a solid basis for the assessment of the strength level of scientific research in countries/regions and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As China's rapid development has gradually expanded beyond urban areas, vernacular landscape as a significant expression of local conditions receives more and more attention. This paper aims to formulate a comprehensive zoning scheme for vernacular landscapes of China. The zoning applies zoning methods and technical means of the Geographic Information System. Based on the understanding of the vernacular landscape concept, the main factors that determine the feature of the vernacular landscape are identified, including landforms, climate, hydrology, vegetation, land use, settlements, housing, population, economy, and customs. Then, the indicators that can significantly reflect the characteristics of each factor are selected to construct an indicator system for comprehensive zoning. We combine quantitative and qualitative analysis to examine the spatial differentiation patterns of Chinese vernacular landscapes comprehensively. The prior zoning principle is a combination of the principles of relative consistency of natural constituents of vernacular landscape and relative consistency of human constituents of vernacular landscape. Simultaneously, it considers the combination of the principles of synthesis and dominant factors, the combination of the principles of top-down and bottom-up, the combination of the principles of spatial integrity and continuity, and the principle of hierarchical zoning. Based on indicator evaluation and essential zoning basis, using overlay analysis and comparative analysis methods, the country is divided into two-grade spatial units of vernacular landscapes by two steps: 8 vernacular landscape regions and 56 vernacular landscape sub-regions. It provides theoretical support for protecting and developing vernacular landscape characteristics, and exerting regional advantages to achieve comprehensive development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Real estate management systems differ all over the world. Differences arise from the different history of regions, different cultures and customs. The paper presents information about the real estate management systems in China and Poland, two extremely different countries. The authors have tried to show the differences and similarities between the countries. The research methods that were used to prepare the paper include a TOWS/SWOT analysis and a comparative analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a case study of the well irrigation in Guanzhong Plain during the Qing dynasty. The paper analyses the scales and results of well irrigation campaigns sponsored by the government in the mid-eighteen century and the late nineteenth century. Limited by the natural environment and technical conditions, the efficiency of well irrigation is poor. Farmers' choices also affect the development of well irrigation. Moreover, a lack of management led to the unsustainable use of groundwater. Historical groundwater policies were mainly aimed at increasing agricultural production. Policies should be made according to local conditions. It is important to ensure the sustainable development of groundwater. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the ex-post trade effects of China's multilateral, regional and bilateral trade liberalization using augmented gravity and panel data estimation methods for the period 1995–2016. China's accession to the WTO was revealed to have had a significant impact on the volume of trade as well as on bilateral exports and imports. Regional trade agreements and the majority of bilateral trade agreements were found not to be effective in increasing China's foreign trade. Only the agreements with Chile, Costa Rica and Switzerland were effective in increasing China's trade volume. Moreover, the results for Chile were driven by increases in both exports and imports, while for Costa Rica and Switzerland only by increased imports from these countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main goal of this paper is to show that international peer review can work in China's context with satisfactory outcomes. Moreover, this paper also provides a reference for the practice of science and technology management. This paper starts with a discussion of two critical questions about the significance and design of international peer review. A case study of international peer review of CAS Centers for Excellence is further analyzed. International peer review may provide a solution to address the problem of quantitative oriented research evaluation in China. The case study of research evaluation of CAS Centers for Excellence shows that it is possible and feasible to conduct an international peer review in China's context. When applying this approach to other scenarios, there are still many issues to consider including individualized design of international peer review combined with practical demands, and further improvement of theories and methods of international peer review. 1) Only the case of international peer review of CAS Centers for Excellence is analyzed; 2) A relatively small number of respondents were surveyed in the questionnaire. The work presented in this study can be used as a reference for future studies. Currently, there are no similarly detailed studies exploring the significance and methodology of international peer review in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate the scientific productivity of China's science system. This paper employs the Malmquist productivity index (MPI) based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The results reveal that the overall efficiency of Chinese universities increased significantly from 2009 to 2016, which is mainly driven by technological progress. From the perspective of the functions of higher education, research and transfer activities perform better than the teaching activities. As an implication, the indicator selection mechanism, investigation period and the MPI model can be further extended in the future research. The results indicate that Chinese education administrative departments should take actions to guide and promote the teaching activities and formulate reasonable resource allocation regulations to reach the balanced development in Chinese universities. This paper selects 58 Chinese universities and conducts a quantified measurement during the period 2009–2016. Three main functional activities of universities (i.e. teaching, researching, and application) are innovatively categorized into different schemes, and we calculate their performance, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the changes that occurred in the rural area of the Sai Kung Peninsula in Hong Kong's New Territories from the 16th century, and uses it as a case-study to show the complex range of forces that can act on a locale. Throughout its history, land use and economic activities on the Sai Kung Peninsula have been driven to a great extent by non-local factors, including distant warfare leading to mass immigration and political decisions leading to mass emigration. However, once Hong Kong became an important outpost of Britain's colonial empire it became integrated into a global trade network and thus became sensitive to economic and technological changes taking place thousands of miles away. In the 20th century, the Sai Kung Peninsula developed in response to Hong Kong's growth as an international trade hub, finding its agricultural output overwhelmed by cheap foreign products, and its industry challenged by foreign technological advances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bohai is a typical marginal oil field in an ice region, where most of the oil and gas platforms are economical. Sea ice is the main factor that affects the safety of oil and gas platforms in Bohai. Due to the complexity of the ice load and ice-induced vibrations, there are large security risks when developing Bohai oil and gas in the winter. It is difficult to ensure the safe production of oil and gas in winter using existing sea ice disaster warning technologies. Based on winter oil and gas production in the Bohai Sea's Liaodong Bay, a set of suitable sea ice management systems is proposed in this paper. These systems integrate sea ice monitoring, risk assessment and risk prediction technologies. Based on the risk warning system, an ice management model of a Bohai ice platform has been put into practice, which ensures the safe production of the platform in winter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coastline is one type of valuable non-renewable resources. From the perspective of economic theory, it can gather population, promote traffic construction, and then improve the level of international trade. The research object of this paper is the coastline resource in Dafeng area. Firstly, we have a brief summary of the existing coastline evaluation literature, then introduce the location and natural attributes of the coastline resources in Dafeng. Following that, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) model is used to build the economic evaluation index system based on the characteristics of coastline in Dafeng. Specially, this index system consists of 6 factors, and a total of 41 detailed indicators were chosen including water depth, GDP, etc. On this basis, we use the assignment method to quantify the weight of each index, and calculate the comprehensive score of coastline resource by using the YAAHP software. The final conclusion is as follows: The total score of economic evaluation of coastline resource in Dafeng is 0.87. Therefore, the coastline resource in Dafeng will eventually be constructed a unique coastal economic zone, where the implemented port industrial projects will include shipbuilding, logistics, mechanical processing etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a new exponential formed vertical distribution of near shore flow velocity is constructed, which is simpler inform and more suitable for engineering application. The physical meaning of the new formula is more specific than that of Soulsby. Compared with those logarithmic formed ones, the new one does not need the maximum velocity and only needs the mean velocity in vertical, which gives it better engineering practicability. Apply the new formula to Jiangsu coastal area and compare the results with that of Soulsby whose results show the new formula agrees better with the measured flow velocity, which reasonably reflects the basic principles of vertical distribution of flow velocity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the regional variation of minimum wage in China. We first introduce the institutional background of China's minimum-wage policy and then describe the regional variation of the minimum wages using detailed minimum-wage data since the late 1990s. A large regional variation exists in the period studied, and the regional variation has been declining since the late 1990s. Economic factors, including GDP, economic structure, and consumption level, are the main determinants for the large regional variation in the minimum wages. There is evidence suggesting that the regional variation is influenced by political factors, such as competition of local officials. Jel codes: J3, E2 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many hotels are owned by a few dozen so-called hotel chains or hotel systems. The rapid growth of big hotel companies can be regarded as proof of the entrance of hotel systems into the globalisation phase. Since 2006, companies from the People's Republic of China (PRC) have been among the world's top hotel systems. This year can be considered as the symbolic beginning of a new stage in the history of the largest hotel systems. This paper shows two main trends. On the one hand, the processes that could be observed in the market of the major global hotel systems from the 1990s are still discernible (for example, the position of the so-called hotel megasystems). On the other hand, new trends have come to the fore in recent years, notably the emergence of systems from the People's Republic of China among the world's largest hotel systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Qingdong area, located in Bohai bay basin, was suspected good exploration prospects. In order to study tectonic features and find out favourable petroleum prospects in the area, the gravity data at a scale of 1:50,000 were interpreted. This paper, through data processing and synthetic interpretation of the high-precision gravity data in the area, discusses characteristics of the gravity field and their geological implications, determines the fault system, analyses features of the main strata, divides structure units and predicts favourable petroleum zones. The results showed that the faults controlled the development of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic strata and the distribution of local structures in this area. The study revealed that the Qingtuozi uplift and the Kendong uplift in the north were formed in Mesozoic, and the Qingdong depression in the middle was the rift basin in Mesozoic and Cenozoic. Thicker strata in Mesozoic and Cenozoic developed in the Dongying depression and the Qingdong depression, so there is abundant hydrocarbon in these two depressions, and then the Guangligang rise-in-sag and the Qingdong rise-in-sag developed in the center in these two depressions are also favorable places for prospecting [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. China is one of the most attractive investment destinations for the biggest global automotive players, and Lean Manufacturing (LM) is their most established business improvement methodology enhancing the automotive industry's performance. Despite intensive investments in LM, the automotive industry is still not able to employ Lean philosophy effectively at Chinese locations. Research aims. Theoretical and empirical questions arise on how to improve the situation in terms of Lean Manufacturing performance at Chinese locations. Thus, in the paper, we pose that if we assume leadership is the crucial enabler in LM implementation, there is an urgent need to address the conditions of Chinese leadership. Method. Basing on the content analysis of existing job offers we estimated the alignments of demands of the job posed by the unique context of Chinese culture with the profiles of candidates that are mostly wanted. Key findings. The content analysis revealed that in job offers there is an underestimation of cultural intelligence skills. The aforementioned analysis led us to the proposition of how to improve leadership in China by introducing a model of Chinese leadership center development denoted as a "China Lean Center". The Center can be used by practitioners to develop in-house skillful and culturally aware leaders in order to enable successful implementation of LM at Chinese locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we studied the thermal history of a clay core sample from one leg of a bronze tripod unearthed at Daxinzhuang Site, Shandong, China. The properties of the luminescence signals of quartz depend on the maximum temperature at which the quartz was annealed in the past. We examined the feasibility of measuring the thermoluminescence (TL) sensitivity change of quartz for exploring the firing temperature of archaeological materials. The sensitization factor of the 110°C TL peak (S/S) and the ratio of the 210°C TL peak to the 110°C TL peak at different annealing temperatures were utilized to unveil the firing temperature in the clay core sample. The firing temperature of the clay core sample was approximately 700°C-800°C, proving the clay core has been fired. This result proved that the clay core has been fired by human agencies and indicated on the temperature of the clay core in drying and firing given by the foundry workers before the actual casting step. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been suggested that the standardized growth curve (SGC) method can be used to accurately determinate equivalent dose (D) and reduce measurement time. However, different opinions regarding the applicability of the SGC method exist. In this paper, we evaluated quartz OSL SGCs of marine and coastal sediments of different grain sizes and different cores in the south Bohai Sea in China, and tested their applicability to the determination of D values. Our results suggested as follows: (1) The SGC method is applicable to both multiple- and single-aliquot regenerative-dose (MAR and SAR) protocols of OSL dating and efficiently provides reliable estimates of D. (2) Finesand quartz of different palaeodoses showed highly similar dose-response curves and an SGC was developed, but old samples using the SGC method have large uncertainties. (3) For coarse-silt quartz, two different types of dose-response curves were recorded: low-dose (≤60Gy) and high-dose (≥100Gy). The growth curves of low-dose quartz were similar to each other, facilitating the use of SGC in D estimations, but errors tended to be larger than those obtained in the SAR method. For high-dose (100-300Gy) quartz, the SGC was also found to be reliable, but there was large uncertainty in D (>300Gy) estimation. We suggest that SGC could be employed for the dating of marine and coastal sediments dating using either MAR or SAR OSL protocol and either fine-silt, coarse-silt or fine-sand quartz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language expresses and embodies cultural reality. People identify themselves and others through their use of language. There is no exception for Chinese language. Chinese language represents a system of signs with its own cultural value. The present paper focuses on the interdependence between Chinese culture and language and to what extent one may constitute the other. Three aspects will be discussed: characters, words, and grammar. We may conclude that characters contribute to keeping the old traditional culture alive after the lapse of a thousand years; numerous social values are encoded in words and the grammar is intimately linked to the way that Chinese people think or look at the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been suggested that the standardised growth curve (SGC) method can be used to de-terminate D accurately and reduce the measurement time. However, different opinions regarding the applicability of the SGC method exist. In this paper, we report the construction of quartz OSL SGC for 35 aeolian samples from different parts of the Horqin dunefield in northeastern China, and then test their applicability for D determination. Our results suggest that: 1) up to a regeneration dose of 80 Gy, the SGC of the Horqin dunefield can be fitted using the exponential plus linear equation, with the r value of 0.97, and all the regeneration dose points closely stick to the fitting line, implying that all samples share a very similar dose-response curve; 2) for samples with Des ranging from 1 to 50 Gy, the ratios of SAR D to SGC D fall within the range of 0.9-1.1, and the average ratio of SAR D to SGC D is 1.01±0.01, close to unity. Therefore, the construction of SGC is correct, and the SGC is an effective procedure for accurate D determination for samples from the study area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]