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This paper examines the long-term and short-run causative relationship among environmental sustainability, energy efficiency, renewable energy and carbon emissions from all over sources (coal, oil and fossil fuels) and sector wise division (heat and power, transportation, residential, manufacturing and other sectors. The empirical evidence presented in this study is derived from a balanced panel dataset spanning the annual periods from 2000 to 2021. The dataset specifically focuses on a selection of BRI Countries. The Kao test demonstrates the presence of cointegration across variables such as carbon dioxide emissions, environmental suitability, energy efficiency and renewable energy. The Panel Pooled Mean Group-Autoregressive Distributed Lag (PMG-ARDL) model indicates a statistically significant positive association between the environmental sustainability and disaggregated CO2 emissions over a long-term period. The study found a positive relationship between disaggregated CO2 emissions and environmental sustainability and energy efficiency, with renewable energy sources reducing emissions. It suggests a need for a structural transition from an energy-intensive economy to a decarbonized one, with sectors like heat and power positively impacting sustainability. Implementing measures to reduce emissions is crucial for tackling climate change., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Meng et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

This paper investigates the long-run and short-run relationship between money supply and inflation in Pakistan, utilizing annual data spanning from 1981 to 2021. The key objective is to assess the impact of monetary policy, specifically money supply, on inflation dynamics in the country. To achieve this, the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach is employed, which is suitable for analyzing cointegration among variables with mixed integration orders. The results reveal both short and long-run cointegration between inflation, money supply, unemployment, and interest rates. Notably, unemployment demonstrates a negative correlation with inflation, while money supply and interest rates exhibit a positive relationship. These findings underscore the importance of dedicated policy measures to manage inflation effectively. The paper concludes by recommending the establishment of a policy implementation body and collaboration between the government and the central bank to ensure financial stability and control inflation through well-calibrated monetary and fiscal policies., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Stylianou et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

In order to explore whether China-Africa exchange will influence on the African environment. This paper selects four paths of China-Africa exchanges and explores the impact of each path on the African environment under the influence of different factors. We found that construction income and Africa's exports to China will increase Africa's carbon emissions. Foreign direct investment and China's exports to Africa will lead to a reduction in carbon emissions in Africa. The resource moderation will reduce the significance of the environmental impact of each path on Africa. Based on the above conclusions, several suggestions are made on the policies and actual operations in the path of China-Africa exchanges., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Li et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

This paper constructs a theoretical model of biased production decisions due to the import of environmental intermediate goods. Additionally, it analyzes the influence of these imports on CO2 emissions based on the trade and CO2 emission data of Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2000 to 2016. Furthermore, it empirically explores how environmental intermediate imports affect CO2 emissions. The study found the following: first, the import of environmental intermediate goods can effectively reduce CO2 emissions; this conclusion still holds under robustness and endogeneity tests. Second, the carbon emission reduction effect related to the import of environmental intermediate goods is affected by differences in geographical location, environmental pollution, sustainable development ability and government efficiency. Third, the mechanism test found that the import of environmental intermediate goods exerts emission reduction effects through the green technological innovation and industrial structure upgrading mechanisms. The conclusions of the research in this article provide a reference for coordinating trade development and environmental protection., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.)

This paper constructs a matching index model to research the matching degree of embodied carbon trade and value-added trade among eight regions and 31 provinces in China in 2012 and 2015. The study finds that (1) At the regional level, a mismatch is shown between embodied carbon trade and value-added trade among regions, for example, in 2015, the northwest region has output embodied carbon to the north coast, while input the value-added trades from the north coast. (2) At the provincial level, a mismatch is displayed between embodied carbon transaction and value-added trade, for example, Beijing had a net shift of embodied carbon from Xinjiang in 2015, but Xinjiang had a net transfer of added value from Beijing. Therefore, the Chinese government needs to establish an ecological compensation mechanism to improve the mismatch between embodied carbon trade and value-added trade among Chinese regions (provinces)., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Li et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Cerebrovascular Reactivity (CVR) provides an assessment of the brain's vascular reserve and has been postulated to be a sensitive marker in cerebrovascular diseases. MRI-based CVR measurement typically employs alterations in arterial carbon dioxide (CO2) level while continuously acquiring Blood-Oxygenation-Level-Dependent (BOLD) images. CO2-inhalation and resting-state methods are two commonly used approaches for CVR MRI. However, processing of CVR MRI data often requires special expertise and may become an obstacle in broad utilization of this promising technique. The aim of this work was to develop CVR-MRICloud, a cloud-based CVR processing pipeline, to enable automated processing of CVR MRI data. The CVR-MRICloud consists of several major steps including extraction of end-tidal CO2 (EtCO2) curve from raw CO2 recording, alignment of EtCO2 curve with BOLD time course, computation of CVR value on a whole-brain, regional, and voxel-wise basis. The pipeline also includes standard BOLD image processing steps such as motion correction, registration between functional and anatomic images, and transformation of the CVR images to canonical space. This paper describes these algorithms and demonstrates the performance of the CVR-MRICloud in lifespan healthy subjects and patients with clinical conditions such as stroke, brain tumor, and Moyamoya disease. CVR-MRICloud has potential to be used as a data processing tool for a variety of basic science and clinical applications., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

As the largest carbon dioxide emitter, China is working towards the direction of a green economy. As an irreplaceable part of establishing a green economy, the low-carbon city pilot (LCCP) policy is implemented in many large cities in China, and the scope of implementation will be further expanded. However, to date, there has been an absence of empirical studies basing on prefecture-level cities about the evaluation of China's LCCP policy. Evaluating and optimizing the LCCP policy is constructive to achieve the goal of China's green economic transition. In this paper, we evaluated the effect of the LCCP policy on China's low-carbon economic transition by using the difference-in-difference (DID) approach which can effectively alleviate endogenous problems and better evaluate this effect and the panel data of 210 prefecture-level cities in China from 2008 to 2016. The empirical analysis revealed that the LCCP policy inhibited China's low-carbon economic transition in general. Specifically, the policy worked well in the eastern region but failed in the central region and western region by studying the regional heterogeneity and influence mechanism. The reason is that the LCCP policy can stimulate low-carbon innovation with the help of innovation offset effects in the eastern region, but it failed to do so in the central region and western region. In addition, this paper analyzed the performance of three types of policy tools adopted by local governments to implement the policy, we found that market-economic tools are valuable to improving the low-carbon economic transition in pilot areas, but command-mandatory tools and voluntary tools have failed to achieve the expected objectives. The research results of this article can provide policy recommendations for optimizing the low-carbon policy and provide a reference for countries that are determined to develop a green economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past 40 years, the continuous strengthening of the greenhouse effect has led to a significant increase in the global average temperature. Although people's understanding of climate change has been strengthened, the world has not yet witnessed a significant decline in pollutant emissions; hence it is imperative to get to the root cause. This paper is based on the STIRPAT model framework and uses the panel data of G20 countries over the period 1999-2019 to examine the role of financial development on carbon emissions under good governance. The results show that financial development significantly promotes carbon dioxide emissions, and the impact presents an inverted "U"-shaped trend when the quadratic term of financial development is introduced. Surprisingly, governance quality indicators increase carbon emissions. However, financial development accompanied by good governance suppresses carbon emissions. Moreover, according to the grouped results of developed and developing countries, different nations should adopt differentiated strategies in development finance to implement the carbon emission targets proposed by the G20. In addition, this paper also confirms the existence of the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis. In light of this, policymakers should optimize the quality of governance while shifting their agendas toward environmentally responsible financial practices to promote financial development to improve environmental quality effectively. Furthermore, strengthen international cooperation, enhance public environmental protection concepts, and take joint actions to achieve low-carbon and win-win results., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

In the context of China's commitment to peak carbon emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, as well as its strategy to build a strong transportation country, it is of foremost importance to study the carbon emission reduction effect of the opening of high-speed rail (HSR). This paper innovatively introduces the frequency of HSR stops as an indicator of HSR operation, and uses a time-varying difference-in-difference (DID) model, a mediating effect model and a spatial DID model to assess the direct and indirect impact, transmission mechanism, and spatial spillover effects of the opening and operation of HSR on carbon emission reduction based on a panel of 279 prefecture-level cities from 2003 to 2017. We found that the opening and operation of HSR significantly reduced urban carbon emissions. The direct transmission mechanism analysis shows that the opening of HSR can reduce carbon emissions by replacing highway passenger traffic. Indirect mechanism analysis shows that the opening of HSR can reduce carbon emissions through technological effect, structural effect and opening effect. The test of spatial spillover effect shows that the opening of HSR can promote carbon emission reduction not only in node cities, but also in neighboring cities., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Most developing economies have recently experienced significant economic growth without corresponding substantial poverty reduction and improved population wellbeing. This paper uses a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model to explore the growth-poverty relationship in Tanzania using annual time series data on per capita consumption expenditure, real GDP, GINI index, and unemployment from 1991-2020. To explore the causality among the variables and long-run asymmetry between per capita consumption expenditure and economic growth, the study employs Granger causality and Wild test respectively. The results confirm the presence of long and short-run asymmetric behavior of economic growth. Besides, in the short-run, the Granger causality test supported the feedback hypothesis between economic growth and consumption expenditure, and the unidirectional hypothesis from income inequality and unemployment to consumption expenditure. In the long-run, unidirectional causality was observed from consumption expenditure to both economic growth and unemployment. The study submits that while economic growth exhibits poverty reduction features, growth alone is not sufficient to alleviate poverty because the interaction of income inequality with economic growth dampens the poverty-reducing effects of economic growth. Therefore, economic growth has a significant explanation for poverty but not all about the evolution of poverty. The study opens policy perspectives with wide international relevancy as outlined in the policy implication section., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Understanding the determinants of the shadow economy plays a vital role in formulating policies for economic growth and development, particularly for the Southeast Asian countries-a new economic force for a global economy. The key drivers of a shadow economy, such as institutional quality, taxation, government expenditure, are widely examined. However, the effect of national intellectual capital, which affects macroeconomic indicators, on the shadow economy has largely been ignored in the existing literature. Our paper examines this critical link and its causality relationship for eight Southeast Asian countries from 2000 to 2017. This paper uses the dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) and fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS), which allow cross-sectional dependence and slope homogeneity in panel data analysis. Empirical findings from this paper indicate that national intellectual capital impacts negatively and significantly the shadow economy size. This finding implies that enhancing national intellectual capital reduces the shadow economy size. These two forces lead to enhanced economic growth. Our Granger causality tests confirm a bi-directional relationship between national intellectual capital and the shadow economy. As a result, policies targeted to reduce the shadow economy size can now include the accumulation of national intellectual capital, particularly for Southeast Asian Countries., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist

As a responsible country, China should take on heavy responsibility of energy conservation and emission reduction, and it is an inevitable choice for China to develop high-tech industries and improve the innovation efficiency of high-tech industries in order to alleviate the current environmental pressure. Therefore, this paper takes the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2016 as the research sample, on the basis of using DEA Global-Malmquist index to measure the innovation efficiency of high-tech industries, it constructs three spatial weight matrices, by including spatial geography, spatial economic geography nesting and innovation, and then it uses Spatial Durbin Model to empirically analyze the effect of innovation efficiency of high-tech industry on CO2 emissions in China from spatial perspective. The results indicate: firstly, in China, CO2 emissions gradually increase from 2006 to 2012, however, some provinces have declined after 2012. And CO2 emissions present a descending trend from eastern coastal area to central and western region. Secondly, affected by "warning effect", CO2 emissions show a significant negative spatial spillover effect. Thirdly, the overall level of innovation efficiency of high-tech industries in China is not high, and its impact on CO2 emissions is not a simple linear relationship, but shows an "inverted N-shaped" curvilinear relation, and its decomposition index EC and TC also have similar characteristics. Obviously, the research in this paper provides a necessary theoretical support for China and some emerging developing countries to rational formulating and effective implementing the energy conservation and emission reduction policies., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

The primary aim of this paper is to provide fresh evidence by testing the linkage between renewable energy consumption, financial development, and external debts in Turkey, using the Bootstrap ARDL test (McNown et al. 2018). The Bootstrap ARDL test is desired over traditional co-integration tests due to its ability to predict when resolving power and size limitation issues, and its corresponding features, which have not been addressed by traditional co-integration tests. The ARDL testing model is employed to investigate the coefficients amongst the selected variables. The findings from the ARDL test illustrate that there is a positive linkage between renewable consumption and Turkey's financial development. Furthermore, the outcomes illustrate that the coefficient of external debt is negative and significant. The results indicate that policymakers in Turkey must use the growth of the financial sector to minimize environmental degradation by promoting investment in energy and production through renewable energy sources. Furthermore, the research suggested that Turkey's policy-makers should reformulate the external debt policy to reduce the negative influence of external debt on sustainable energy development. This could potentially be achieved by removing any restrictions on international capital flow or barriers on foreign capital and foreign investment. Hence, the findings of this paper provide valuable conclusions and recommendations for Turkey heading to sustainable and green financial sector., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

This paper investigates the causal relationship between bank development and economic growth in the US before and after the financial crisis in 2008. Based on the quarterly panel data of US states for 2002Q1-2012Q4, this paper uses two-step system GMM method to test the long-term and short-term impact of bank on growth. In addition, panel Granger causality test is used to verify the causality between bank and growth in different periods. The study finds that banks have played a significant role in the long-run economic growth process and there exists a bidirectional causality between bank and growth among US states. In the short term, the financial crisis has corrected the short-run relationship between bank and growth. The relationship between bank and growth has changed from one-way causality before the crisis to two-way causality after the crisis. Before the crisis, economic growth promotes bank credit, but bank development does not promote growth. After the crisis, banks play the role of economic driver through credit, savings and services, and economic growth drives bank savings and scale expansion. The financial intermediary service functions of banks, especially credit to private sector and absorbing savings to transfer loans, determine the role of bank development in economic growth. Policy makers should support bank development in the long run to establish a mature financial intermediary system and promote regional economic development., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

The excessive carbon emissions not only intensify the global climate change, but also seriously restrict the sustainable development of social economy. However, improving industrial carbon emissions efficiency is the most directly effective way to reduce emissions. Therefore, accurate measurement and analysis of carbon emissions efficiency and evolution characteristics of China's industrial system is the basis for China to improve carbon emissions efficiency. Based on this, we adopted energy consumption method and input-output method to calculate and analyze the industrial carbon emissions efficiency and evolution characteristics of China from 2002 to 2015. The results show that (1) If carbon emissions from cement production are ignored and only energy-related carbon emissions are considered, the calculation results of carbon emissions efficiency of heavy industry will be overestimated about 30%. (2) Compared with 2002, China's industrial carbon emissions efficiency increased by about twice in 2015. Specifically, the optimization of carbon emissions efficiency in agriculture, construction, light industry and service industry is very obvious, which has increased by 5.65, 5.00, 4.69 and 4.68 times respectively; The optimization of carbon emissions efficiency in power sector, heavy industry, transportation and chemical industry was obvious, which increased by 2.55, 2.01, 1.86 and 1.47 times respectively; The carbon emissions efficiency of the fossil energy sector has decreased by 0.36 times. (3) The carbon emissions efficiency of various industries has significant differences. Among them, agriculture, service industry, light industry and construction industry are generally industries with higher carbon emissions efficiency, while power sector, fossil energy sector, transportation industry, chemical industry and heavy industry are generally industries with lower carbon emissions efficiency, especially power and fossil energy sectors. Based on these, this paper provides policy implications and scientific evidence for accurately improving carbon emissions efficiency from the perspective of carbon emissions efficiency., Competing Interests: NO authors have competing interests.

The role of olfactory cues such as carbon dioxide, pheromones, and kairomones in bed bug, Cimex lectularius L. behavior has been demonstrated. However, the role of vision and mechanoreception in bed bug behavior is poorly understood. We investigated bed bug vision by determining their responses to different colors, vertical objects, and their ability to detect colors and vertical objects under low and complete dark conditions. Results show black and red paper harborages are preferred compared to yellow, green, blue, and white harborages. A bed bug trapping device with a black or red exterior surface was significantly more attractive to bed bugs than that with a white exterior surface. Bed bugs exhibited strong orientation behavior toward vertical objects. The height (15 vs. 30 cm tall) and color (brown vs. black) of the vertical object had no significant effect on orientation behavior of bed bugs. Bed bugs could differentiate color and detect vertical objects at very low background light conditions, but not in complete darkness. Bed bug preference to different substrate textures (mechanoreception) was also explored. Bed bugs preferred dyed tape compared to painted tape, textured painted plastic, and felt. These results revealed that substrate color, presence of vertical objects, and substrate texture affect host-seeking and harborage-searching behavior of bed bugs. Bed bugs may use a combination of vision, mechanoreception, and chemoreception to locate hosts and seek harborages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of globalization has separated the production and consumption of products spatially, and the international trade of products has become a carrier of embodied carbon trade. This paper adopted the perspective of value-added trade to calculate the amount of embodied carbon trade of China from 2006 to 2015 and perform a structural decomposition analysis of the changes in China's embodied carbon trade. This study found that: (1) China's embodied carbon exports are much larger than its embodied carbon imports, and there are differences between countries. China imported the largest amount of embodied carbon from South Korea, and it exported the largest amount of embodied carbon to the United States. (2) The structural decomposition analysis shows that changes in the value-added carbon emission coefficient during the study period would have caused China's embodied carbon trade to decrease, and changes in value-added trade would have caused China's embodied carbon trade to increase. Therefore, countries trading with China need to strengthen their cooperation with China in energy conservation, emission reduction, and product trade. In order to accurately reflect China's embodied carbon trade, it is necessary to calculate embodied carbon trade from the perspective of value-added trade., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

China has set a goal to achieve peak CO2 emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. To achieve the goals of carbon peak and carbon neutrality, China needs to address the challenge of the large and still growing CO2 emission base. This paper investigated the energy consumption and CO2 emission in Beijing from 2020-2035 based on the energy elasticity coefficient and contribution value of the sub-energy increment (CVSI) method. Beijing is one of the first cities in China to propose the "carbon peak" target as of 2020. From 2020 Beijing will strive to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality. The results show that in 2035 the CO2 emission in Beijing may drop to 50% of 2020. This decline would be affected by economic growth, energy efficiency and the proportion of renewable energy use. Beijing's energy supply mainly comes from outside the region. Therefore, for Beijing, in addition to increasing the proportion of renewable energy sources outside the region, its own energy acceptance also needs to be strengthened, including strengthening energy storage construction, actively researching and promoting carbon capture and utilization of gas-fired units, which are effective ways to achieve carbon neutrality target., Competing Interests: No authors have competing interests.

This paper utilizes spatial econometric reenactments to examine the geographic effects of different types of environmentally friendly power on corban discharges. The example covers 31 nations in the Asia-Pacific district during the time frame 2000 to 2018. The spatial connection in the model was affirmed by symptomatic testing, and the spatial Durbin model was picked as the last model. Results show that Gross domestic product per capita, receptiveness to business sectors, unfamiliar direct venture, energy force, and urbanization critically affect CO2 emanations. In correlation, just wind and sunlight-based energy have added to a generous abatement in ozone harming substance emanations in nations over the long run. In contrast, hydropower, bioenergy, and geothermal energy discoveries have been irrelevant. A cross-sectional examination worldview delineated that nations with more elevated sunlight-based energy yield have higher CO2 outflows, while nations with lower levels have lower CO2 emanations. The presence of spatial impacts in the model gave off an impression of the negative consequences for homegrown CO2 outflows of Gross domestic product per capita and exchange transparency of adjoining nations. Furthermore, energy power and higher creation of sustainable power in adjoining nations will prompt lower homegrown CO2 outflows., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the research work presented in this article.

China's announcement of its goal of carbon neutrality has increased the practical significance of research on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that result from urbanization. With a comprehensive consideration of population migration in China, this study examines the impact of urbanization on CO2 emissions based on provincial panel data from 2000 to 2012. Two indicators (resident population and household registration population) are used to measure urbanization rate. The results reveal that the impact of urbanization on CO2 emissions in China is closely correlated with the structure of urban resident population and interregional population migration. The estimation results are still robust by using generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator and two-stage least squares (2SLS) estimator. The proportion of temporary residents is introduced as a proxy variable for population migration. The panel threshold model regression results show that the proportion of temporary residents has a marginal effect on the relationship between urbanization and CO2 emissions. In regions with a higher proportion of temporary residents, the positive effects of resident population urbanization on CO2 emissions tend to be weaker. These findings are consistent with the theories of ecological modernization and urban environmental transition. This paper makes suggestions on China's urbanization development model and countermeasures are proposed to minimize the CO2 emissions caused by urbanization., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

In many physiological systems, real-time endogeneous and exogenous signals in living organisms provide critical information and interpretations of physiological functions; however, these signals or variables of interest are not directly accessible and must be estimated from noisy, measured signals. In this paper, we study an inverse problem of recovering gas exchange signals of animals placed in a flow-through respirometry chamber from measured gas concentrations. For large-scale experiments (e.g., long scans with high sampling rate) that have many uncertainties (e.g., noise in the observations or an unknown impulse response function), this is a computationally challenging inverse problem. We first describe various computational tools that can be used for respirometry reconstruction and uncertainty quantification when the impulse response function is known. Then, we address the more challenging problem where the impulse response function is not known or only partially known. We describe nonlinear optimization methods for reconstruction, where both the unknown model parameters and the unknown signal are reconstructed simultaneously. Numerical experiments show the benefits and potential impacts of these methods in respirometry., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

With the change of social economic system and the rapid growth of agricultural economy in China, the amount of agricultural energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions has increased dramatically. Based on the estimation of agricultural carbon dioxide emissions from 1991 to 2018 in China, this paper uses EKC model to analyze economic growth and agricultural carbon dioxide emissions. The Kaya method is used to decompose the factors affecting agricultural carbon dioxide emissions. The experimental results show that there is a co-integration relationship between economic growth and the total intensity of agricultural carbon emissions, and between economic growth and the intensity of carbon emissions caused by five types of carbon sources: fertilizer, pesticide, agricultural film, agricultural diesel oil and tillage. Economic growth is the main driving factor of agricultural carbon dioxide emissions. In addition, technological progress has a strong role in promoting carbon emission reduction, but it has a certain randomness. However, the impact of energy consumption structure and population size on carbon emissions is not obvious., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

It is estimated that about 1/4th of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions may be caused by the global food system. Reducing the GHG emissions from food production is a major challenge in the context of the projected growth of the world's population, which is increasing demand for food. In this context, the goal should be to achieve the lowest possible emission intensity of the food production system, understood as the amount of GHG emissions per unit of output. The study aimed to calculate the emission intensity of food production systems and to specify its determinants based on a panel regression model for 14 countries, which accounted for more than 65% of food production in the world between 2000 and 2014. In this article, emission intensity is defined as the amount of GHG emissions per value of global output. Research on the determinants of GHG emissions related to food production is well documented in the literature; however, there is a lack of research on the determinants of the emission intensity ratio for food production. Hence, the original contribution of this paper is the analysis of the determinants of GHG emissions intensity of food production systems. The study found the decreased of emission intensity from an average of more than 0.68 kg of CO2 equivalent per USD 1 worth of food production global output in 2000 to less than 0.46 in 2014. The determinants of emission intensity decrease included the yield of cereals, the use of nitrogen fertilizers, the agriculture material intensity, the Human Development Index, and the share of fossil fuel energy consumption in total energy use. The determinants of growth of emission intensity of food production systems included GDP per capita, population density, nitrogen fertilizer production, utilized agriculture area, share of animal production, and energy use per capita., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

The credible sources of fossil energy efficiently are a vital cause of economic growth and considerable influence on adequate security. Whereas radiant energy positively enhances or ostensibly promotes socio-economic stability and the controlled environment. The fossil energy sources supply has become progressively stern in China and reconnoitering the beta decoupling relationships between CO2 emissions, GDP, energy consumption, electricity consumption, value-added industries, and population. The results will be favorable for illustrative the security of the valuable resources. This study adopts the extended stochastic model (STIRPAT) with Beta Decoupling Techniques (BDT). This modern technique merely employs the decoupling situation by the alpha and beta effects from 1989 to 2018 and calculates the % change in CO2 emissions by GDP growth and energy consumption. The estimated results represent negative and economic growth depends on coal and natural gas. First, CO2 emissions annually increasing cause of rapid growth, energy consumption, and electricity production, and the structural contradiction of energy remained static. Second, the Value-added industries estimated that CO2 emissions reduce by primary industries. Third, the decoupling states of CO2 emissions and population show an inverse relationship. This paper tentatively suggests China is sustainable, naturally strengthens energy output, transmutes the energy consumption structure, and advances development policies under environmental circumstances., Competing Interests: We have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

This paper studies the heterogeneous effects of exchange rate and stock market on carbon emission allowance price in four emissions trading scheme pilots in China. We employ a panel quantile regression model, which can describe both individual and distributional heterogeneity. The empirical results illustrate that the effects of explanatory variables on carbon emission allowance price is heterogeneous along the whole quantiles. Specifically, exchange rate has a negative effect on carbon emission allowance price at lower quantiles, while becomes a positive effect at higher quantiles. In addition, a negative effect exists between domestic stock market and carbon emission allowance price, and the intensity decreasing along with the increase of quantile. By contrast, an increasing positive effect is discovered between European stock market and domestic carbon emission allowance prices. Finally, heterogeneous effects on carbon emission allowance price can also be proved in European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU-ETS). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of economic development on natural environment is explored by momentous literature, this study focuses on exploring the role of institutional quality for environmental protection in the selected One Belt One Road (OBOR) economies. The main goal of the paper is to find the threshold level of institutional quality that may minimize CO2 emissions in the atmosphere due to widespread industrialization and transportation. The data is selected for the panel of 33 OBOR economies over the time period of 1986-2018. The panel threshold regression technique is applied to determine the threshold level of institutional quality. The estimated results of the study reveal that 2.315 is the threshold level of institutional quality in selected partner OBOR countries. If quality of institutions is above the threshold level then CO2 emission do not contribute significantly for environmental deterioration in spite of growing industrialization and transportation and vice versa. The study emphasized to improve the institutional quality up to threshold level to get potential gains from industrialization and transportation., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

In recent years, the global greenhouse effect caused by excessive energy-related carbon emissions has attracted more and more attention. In this paper, we studied the dynamic evolution of factors driving China's energy-related CO2 emissions growth from 2007 to 2015 by using energy consumption method and input-output analysis and used the IO-SDA model to decompose the energy carbon emissions. Within the research interval, the results showed that (1) on the energy supply-side, the high carbon energy represented by raw coal was still the main factor to promote the growth of energy-related CO2 emissions. However, the optimization of energy consumption structure is conducive to reducing emissions. Specifically, the high carbon energy represented by raw coal exhibited a downward trend in promoting the increment of energy-related CO2 emissions, while the clean energy represented by natural gas showed an upward trend in promoting the increment of CO2 emissions. It is worth noting that there is still a lot of room for optimization of China's energy consumption structure to reduce emissions. (2) On the energy demand-side, the final demand effect is the main driving force of the growth of carbon emissions from fossil energy. Among them, the secondary industry plays a major role in the final demand effect. The "high carbonization" of the final product reflects the characteristics of China's high energy input in the process of industrialization. At the same time, since the carbon emission efficiency of the tertiary industry and the primary industry is better than that of the secondary industry, actively optimizing the industrial structure is conducive to slowing down the growth of carbon emission brought by the demand effect. (3) The input structure effect is the main restraining factor for the growth of energy carbon emissions, while the energy intensity effect has a slight driving effect on the growth of energy carbon emissions. The results show that China's "extensive" economic growth model has been effectively reversed, but the optimization of fossil energy utilization efficiency is still not obvious, and there is still a large space to curb carbon emissions by improving fossil energy utilization efficiency in the future., Competing Interests: NO authors have competing interests.

China has conducted a long-term low-carbon technology innovation (LCTI), but there was a faster increase of CO2 emission in 2017 and 2018 than in 2016, which has lead scholars to doubt the effect of LCTI on CO2 emission. This paper builds a spatial auto regression (SAR) model with provincial panel data from 2011 to 2017 to calculate the spatial spillover effect of China's LCTI on regional CO2 emission. The results show that regional LCTI can reduce the local CO2 emission, but will increase the CO2 emission of adjacent regions due to spatial spillover effect. This produces the uncertainty of the promotion effect of LCTI on China's low-carbon transformation. Therefore, this paper suggests innovation resources should be appropriately and evenly distributed among regions to avoid their agglomeration in few regions., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Carbon emissions are the primary reason that contributes to global warming. The gradient has a significant impact on the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions produced by trucks. The aim of the current paper is to propose a carbon emission quantification model for diesel trucks on longitudinal slope sections and investigate the influence of gradient on the carbon emissions of trucks for use in the low-carbon highway design. The law of conservation of mechanical energy, the first law of thermodynamics, and the vehicle longitudinal dynamics theory were adopted for deriving the carbon emission model of the trucks on the flat, uphill, downhill and round-trip longitudinal slope segments. Three kinds of common trucks were chosen to conduct the field test. Following the test data, the model demonstrates a high accuracy. The minimum gradient which is expected to impact carbon emissions of trucks on the round-trip longitudinal slope sections was the balance gradient as revealed. The gradient of the longitudinal slope is required to be avoided to be greater in comparison with the balance gradient for the achievement of the two-way traffic low carbon operation on a highway. The results of this study are valuable to researchers interested in low carbon road design and low carbon transportation control., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Modern cities are engines of production, innovation, and growth. However, urbanization also increases both local and global pollution from household consumption and firms’ production. Do emissions change proportionately to city size or does pollution tend to outpace or lag urbanization? Do emissions scale differently with population versus economic growth or are emissions, population, and economic growth inextricably linked? How are the scaling relationships between emissions, population, and economic growth affected by environmental regulation? This paper examines the link between urbanization, economic growth and pollution using data from Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in the United States between 1999 and 2011. We find that the emissions of local air pollution in these MSAs scale according to a ¾ power law with both population size and gross domestic product (GDP). However, the monetary damages from these local emissions scale linearly with both population and GDP. Counties that have previously been out of attainment with the local air quality standards set by the Clean Air Act show an entirely different relationship: local emissions scale according to the square root of population, while the monetary damages from local air pollution follow a 2/3rds power law with population. Counties out of attainment are subject to more stringent emission controls; we argue based on this that enforcement of the Clean Air Act induces sublinear scaling between emissions, damages, and city size. In contrast, we find that metropolitan GDP scales super-linearly with population in all MSAs regardless of attainment status. Summarizing, our findings suggest that environmental policy limits the adverse effects of urbanization without interfering with the productivity benefits that manifest in cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The production of concrete for construction purposes is a major source of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. One promising avenue towards a more sustainable construction industry is to make use of naturally occurring mineral-microbe interactions, such as microbial-induced carbonate precipitation (MICP), to produce solid materials. In this paper, we present a new process where calcium carbonate in the form of powdered limestone is transformed to a binder material (termed BioZEment) through microbial dissolution and recrystallization. For the dissolution step, a suitable bacterial strain, closely related to Bacillus pumilus, was isolated from soil near a limestone quarry. We show that this strain produces organic acids from glucose, inducing the dissolution of calcium carbonate in an aqueous slurry of powdered limestone. In the second step, the dissolved limestone solution is used as the calcium source for MICP in sand packed syringe moulds. The amounts of acid produced and calcium carbonate dissolved are shown to depend on the amount of available oxygen as well as the degree of mixing. Precipitation is induced through the pH increase caused by the hydrolysis of urea, mediated by the enzyme urease, which is produced in situ by the bacterium Sporosarcina pasteurii DSM33. The degree of successful consolidation of sand by BioZEment was found to depend on both the amount of urea and the amount of glucose available in the dissolution reaction., Competing Interests: Røyne, Wentzel and Sikorski are inventors on the patent application PCT/EP2017/065509 BIO-CATALYTIC CALCIUM CARBONATE CEMENTATION. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

After being the standard plant propagation protocol for decades, cultures of Arabidopsis thaliana sealed with Parafilm remain common today out of practicality, habit, or necessity (as in co-cultures with microorganisms). Regardless of concerns over the aeration of these cultures, no investigation has explored the CO2 transport inside these cultures and its effect on the plants. Thereby, it was impossible to assess whether Parafilm-seals used today or in thousands of older papers in the literature constitute a treatment, and whether this treatment could potentially affect the study of other treatments.For the first time we report the CO2 concentrations in Parafilm-sealed cultures of A. thaliana with a 1 minute temporal resolution, and the transcriptome comparison with aerated cultures. The data show significant CO2 deprivation to the plants, a drastic suppression of photosynthesis, respiration, starch accumulation, chlorophyll biosynthesis, and an increased accumulation of reactive oxygen species. Most importantly, CO2 deprivation occurs as soon as the cotyledons emerge. Gene expression analysis indicates a significant alteration of 35% of the pathways when compared to aerated cultures, especially in stress response and secondary metabolism processes. On the other hand, the observed increase in the production of glucosinolates and flavonoids suggests intriguing possibilities for CO2 deprivation as an organic biofortification treatment in high-value crops., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Every year, the oceans absorb about 30% of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) leading to a re-equilibration of the marine carbonate system and decreasing seawater pH. Today, there is increasing awareness that these changes–summarized by the term ocean acidification (OA)–could differentially affect the competitive ability of marine organisms, thereby provoking a restructuring of marine ecosystems and biogeochemical element cycles. In winter 2013, we deployed ten pelagic mesocosms in the Gullmar Fjord at the Swedish west coast in order to study the effect of OA on plankton ecology and biogeochemistry under close to natural conditions. Five of the ten mesocosms were left unperturbed and served as controls (~380 μatm pCO2), whereas the others were enriched with CO2-saturated water to simulate realistic end-of-the-century carbonate chemistry conditions (~760 μatm pCO2). We ran the experiment for 113 days which allowed us to study the influence of high CO2 on an entire winter-to-summer plankton succession and to investigate the potential of some plankton organisms for evolutionary adaptation to OA in their natural environment. This paper is the first in a PLOS collection and provides a detailed overview on the experimental design, important events, and the key complexities of such a “long-term mesocosm” approach. Furthermore, we analyzed whether simulated end-of-the-century carbonate chemistry conditions could lead to a significant restructuring of the plankton community in the course of the succession. At the level of detail analyzed in this overview paper we found that CO2-induced differences in plankton community composition were non-detectable during most of the succession except for a period where a phytoplankton bloom was fueled by remineralized nutrients. These results indicate: (1) Long-term studies with pelagic ecosystems are necessary to uncover OA-sensitive stages of succession. (2) Plankton communities fueled by regenerated nutrients may be more responsive to changing carbonate chemistry than those having access to high inorganic nutrient concentrations and may deserve particular attention in future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically investigated the spatiotemporal variations, influencing factors and future emission trends of China’s CO2 emissions based on a provincial panel data set. A series of panel econometric models were used taking the period 1995–2011 into consideration. The results indicated that CO2 emissions in China increased over time, and were characterized by noticeable regional discrepancies; in addition, CO2 emissions also exhibited properties of spatial dependence and convergence. Factors such as population scale, economic level and urbanization level exerted a positive influence on CO2 emissions. Conversely, energy intensity was identified as having a negative influence on CO2 emissions. In addition, the significance of the relationship between CO2 emissions and the four variables varied across the provinces based on their scale of economic development. Scenario simulations further showed that the scenario of middle economic growth, middle population increase, low urbanization growth, and high technology improvement (here referred to as Scenario BTU), constitutes the best development model for China to realize the future sustainable development. Based on these empirical findings, we also provide a number of policy recommendations with respect to the future mitigation of CO2 emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmentally extended input-output analysis (EEIOA) has long been used to quantify global and regional environmental impacts and to clarify emission transfers. Structural path analysis (SPA), a technique based on EEIOA, is especially useful for measuring significant flows in this environmental-economic system. This paper constructs an imports-adjusted single-region input-output (SRIO) model considering only domestic final use elements, and it uses the SPA technique to highlight crucial routes along the production chain in both final use and sectoral perspectives. The results indicate that future mitigation policies on household consumption should change direct energy use structures in rural areas, cut unreasonable demand for power and chemical products, and focus on urban areas due to their consistently higher magnitudes than rural areas in the structural routes. Impacts originating from government spending should be tackled by managing onsite energy use in 3 major service sectors and promoting cleaner fuels and energy-saving techniques in the transport sector. Policies on investment should concentrate on sectoral interrelationships along the production chain by setting up standards to regulate upstream industries, especially for the services, construction and equipment manufacturing sectors, which have high demand pulling effects. Apart from the similar methods above, mitigating policies in exports should also consider improving embodied technology and quality in manufactured products to achieve sustainable development. Additionally, detailed sectoral results in the coal extraction industry highlight the onsite energy use management in large domestic companies, emphasize energy structure rearrangement, and indicate resources and energy safety issues. Conclusions based on the construction and public administration sectors reveal that future mitigation in secondary and tertiary industries should be combined with upstream emission intensive industries in a systematic viewpoint to achieve sustainable development. Overall, SPA is a useful tool in empirical studies, and it can be used to analyze national environmental impacts and guide future mitigation policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of research into pathways leading to the production of methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) in sediments of two eutrophic reservoirs (Maziarnia and Nielisz), located in south-eastern Poland. In seeking to identify the pathways in question, use was made of analysis of stable carbon isotopes in CH4 and CO2 dissolved in pore water. This determined that CH4 is mainly produced through acetate fermentation, though the hydrogenotrophic methanogenic process may also be of importance, especially in deeper layers of sediments. Both the presence of autochthonous organic matter and increased pH values are shown to favour acetate fermentation. In turn, methanogenesis in sediments is assessed as capable of accounting for the generation of a considerable amount of CO2. Indeed, the role of methanogenesis in CO2 production is increasingly important further down in the layers of sediment, where allochthonous organic matter is predominant., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Super-critical carbon dioxide energy-storage (SC-CCES) technology is a new type of gas energy-storage technology. This paper used orthogonal method and variance analysis to make significant analysis on the factors which would affect the thermodynamics characteristics of the SC-CCES system and obtained the significant factors and interactions in the energy-storage process, the energy-release process and the whole energy-storage system. Results have shown that the interactions in the components have little influence on the energy-storage process, the energy-release process and the whole energy-storage process of the SC-CCES system, the significant factors are mainly on the characteristics of the system component itself, which will provide reference for the optimization of the thermal properties of the energy-storage system.

Many countries have some kind of energy-system transformation either planned or ongoing for various reasons, such as to curb carbon emissions or to compensate for the phasing out of nuclear energy. One important component of these transformations is the overall reduction in energy demand. It is generally acknowledged that the domestic sector represents a large share of total energy consumption in many countries. Increased energy efficiency is one factor that reduces energy demand, but behavioral approaches (known as "sufficiency") and their respective interventions also play important roles. In this paper, we address citizens' heterogeneity regarding both their current behaviors and their willingness to realize their sufficiency potentials-that is, to reduce their energy consumption through behavioral change. We collaborated with three Swiss cities for this study. A survey conducted in the three cities yielded thematic sets of energy-consumption behavior that various groups of participants rated differently. Using this data, we identified four groups of participants with different patterns of both current behaviors and sufficiency potentials. The paper discusses intervention types and addresses citizens' heterogeneity and behaviors from a city-based perspective.

Understanding the causality between energy consumption, carbon emissions and economic growth is helpful for policymakers to formulate energy, environmental and economic policies. For the first time, based on nonlinear dynamics, this paper employs multispatial convergent cross mapping (CCM) to revisit the energy-carbon-economy causation for China, India and the G7 countries using both aggregate data and per capita data. The findings indicate that there are significant differences between developing countries and developed countries. A bidirectional nexus between energy consumption, carbon emissions and economic growth is found in China and India, but various causal relationships are identified in the G7 countries, including bidirectional, unidirectional and neutral nexus. The results confirm that the decoupling phenomenon is common in most G7 countries. By leveraging a variety of samples and a new approach, this study provides new evidence for policy authorities to formulate country-specific policies to obtain better environmental quality while achieving sustainable economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to develop a novel computational technique for the detection of the transit through the anaerobic threshold. This technique uses only cardiac intervals derived from the electrocardiogram and is based on algebraic relationships between RR and QRS intervals. Electrocardiograms are measured during the load and the recovery processes. Algebraic relationships between cardiac intervals are used not only to identify the anaerobic threshold but also to characterise individual features of the person during the transit through the threshold. The ratio between carbon dioxide and oxygen in the exhaled air is used to validate the results. The algebraic relationship between cardiac intervals serves as a stand-alone indicator for both the determination of the anaerobic threshold and the characterization of the performance of the person during the load and the recovery processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The production of concrete for construction purposes is a major source of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. One promising avenue towards a more sustainable construction industry is to make use of naturally occurring mineral-microbe interactions, such as microbial-induced carbonate precipitation (MICP), to produce solid materials. In this paper, we present a new process where calcium carbonate in the form of powdered limestone is transformed to a binder material (termed BioZEment) through microbial dissolution and recrystallization. For the dissolution step, a suitable bacterial strain, closely related to Bacillus pumilus, was isolated from soil near a limestone quarry. We show that this strain produces organic acids from glucose, inducing the dissolution of calcium carbonate in an aqueous slurry of powdered limestone. In the second step, the dissolved limestone solution is used as the calcium source for MICP in sand packed syringe moulds. The amounts of acid produced and calcium carbonate dissolved are shown to depend on the amount of available oxygen as well as the degree of mixing. Precipitation is induced through the pH increase caused by the hydrolysis of urea, mediated by the enzyme urease, which is produced in situ by the bacterium Sporosarcina pasteurii DSM33. The degree of successful consolidation of sand by BioZEment was found to depend on both the amount of urea and the amount of glucose available in the dissolution reaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]