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Recently, the environmental microplastic pollution has aroused wide interdisciplinary attentions. However, the occurrence of microplastics in agricultural soils is rarely understood, especially in eastern China. In this work, the occurrence and characteristic property of microplastics in agricultural soils in Anhui province, which is situated in eastern China, was investigated for the first time according to the density separation and filtration method. The concentration of microplastic in agricultural soils varied from 0.66 to 17.66 (103 kg−1 dry soil), and the fiber (~ 55.1%), film (~ 34.7%) were the main types in farmland soils. In addition, the small size (250 ~ 500 µm) was the dominant size of microplastics in agricultural soils in Anhui province. The concentration of microplastics was closely related to geographical location and planting patterns. Meanwhile, the types of microplastics were polystyrene (PS), polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), and high-density polyethylene (HDPE). Finally, the environmental risk of microplastics in farmland soil in Anhui Province was evaluated. The overall risk index of farmland soil microplastics in Anhui Province was less than 1000, and the content of soil microplastics was high, but the overall risk level was low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extant literature on international immigrants has discussed migrants' entrepreneurial activities in the context of Western countries but has paid little attention to return-home entrepreneurial intention (RHEI). Rural migrant workers (RMWs) in China, who used to promote rural development by remittances and were characterized by similarities with early international migrants, have gradually returned to their hometowns to initiate entrepreneurial activities. Based on the structured questionnaire conducted in 2015 and 2020 in Anhui Province, China, this article combines the concept of mixed embeddedness with the idea of double-layered embeddedness and analyzes the impacts of the social, economic and institutional context in RMWs' hometowns and migration destinations on RMWs' RHEI by using binary logistic regression. The article shows that the social, economic, and institutional environments of RMWs' hometowns and migration destinations have effects on their RHEI. The embeddedness in the economic and informal institutional context in RMWs' RHEI is even more important than personal characteristics. Compared with migration destinations, RMWs' hometowns exert a more influential effect on their RHEI. However, that does not mean that the role of migration destinations can be undervalued. Actually, the better the social, economic, and institutional environments of migration destinations RMWs moved into is, the higher entrepreneurial intention they will have after returning to their hometowns. The article proposes a modified framework in combination of mixed embeddedness with double-layer embeddedness and proves that it is suitable for analyzing RMWs' RHEI. The framework has important implications for strengthening China's RMWs to return home to start their own businesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the background of the new urbanization, this paper performs an empirical analysis of requisition-compensation balance indicators in Chuzhou City, and points out the problems in the land transaction. At the national level, it is necessary to intoduce the measures to regulate the market transactions of requisi/on-compensation balance indicators as soon as possible, put safeguarding the interests of the majority of farmer in the frst place during market transactions, and establish the a unified market pla/orm for the transaction of land-related indicator, so as to boost te urban construction, promote the integration of urban and rural areas, and speed up the new urbanization process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using stakeholder survey, documentation and policy analysis, through the survey of stakeholders, this paper aims to explore the problems in the collectively owned land requisition compensation system and their causes, and put forth the reform ideas and measures to provide a reference for the development of new urbanization. The results show that there are some problems in the current land requisition compensation system, such as improper land requisition compensation standard and calculation method, low compensation standard, unsound social security system, irrational compensation and placement methods and low satisfaction of farmers whose land is requisitioned. Therefore, it is necessary to accelerate the reform of land requisition compensation system and smooth progress of new urbanization construction in accordance with the requirements of 3rd Plenum of the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Orthocerids from the Upper Gufeng Formation, Guadalupian (middle Permian), from Anhui Province (China) are described for the first time in this article. The specimens are mainly Pseudorthoceratidae characterised by slender orthocones that have been studied under CT-Scan. A new genus and species have been described, Houdongoceras chaohuensis gen. et sp. nov., with seven morphotypes that presumably relate to new ones. Seventeen per cent of the specimens have epibiotic bacterial colonies associated indicating suboxic environments restating redox conditions during their deposition. This is also the first report of Permian macrofossils presenting bacterial colonies in China. This fauna is interpreted as autochthonous or parautochthonous which originally lived nektobenthically in shallow marine waters above the sediments or close to the sea bottom on the eastern margin of the Palaeotethys Ocean during the late Guadalupian faunal crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fast non-convex low-rank matrix decomposition method for potential field data separation is presented. The singular value decomposition of the large size trajectory matrix, which is also a block Hankel matrix, is obtained using a fast randomized singular value decomposition algorithm in which fast block Hankel matrix-vector multiplications are implemented with minimal memory storage. This fast block Hankel matrix randomized singular value decomposition algorithm is integrated into the algorithm, which is a standard non-convex method for solving the robust principal component analysis optimization problem. The integration of this improved estimation for the partial singular value decomposition avoids the construction of the trajectory matrix in the robust principal component analysis optimization problem. Hence, gravity and magnetic data matrices of large size can be computed and potential field data separation is achieved with better computational efficiency. The presented algorithm is also robust and, hence, algorithm-dependent parameters are easily determined. The performance of the algorithm, with and without the efficient estimation of the low rank matrix, is contrasted for the separation of synthetic gravity and magnetic data matrices of different sizes. These results demonstrate that the presented algorithm is not only computationally more efficient but it is also more accurate. Moreover, it is possible to solve far larger problems. As an example, for the adopted computational environment, matrices of sizes larger than generate "out of memory" exceptions without the improvement, whereas a matrix of size can now be calculated in s. Finally, the presented algorithm is applied to separate real gravity and magnetic data in the Tongling area, Anhui province, China. Areas which may exhibit mineralizations are inferred based on the separated anomalies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The characterization of lime mortars has become of primary importance in order to obtain information about the raw ingredients and building technology of ancient masonry structures. Five different samples from Anhui province, China, representing two types of lime mortar‐based materials: joint mortars between the bricks of the city wall and lime mortar sealing a tomb coffin, were collected for analysis. Archaeological information about the samples was reported and studies into the microtextural features and mineralogical compositions of those mortars were performed via a multi‐analytical approach. The joint lime mortars between the bricks of city walls, including Mingzhongdu city wall, Mingzhongdu Xihua gate foundation, Zhengyangguan city wall and She county city wall, were found to be aerial lime mortars. The lime mortar from Nanling Tieguai Song dynasty tomb was analysed and found to be a pozzolanic mortar consisting of lime, clay, sand and cocciopesto‐like materials. The analytical results serve as a critical reference for the maintenance and restoration of ancient city walls in Anhui province, and as a starting point for searching for ancient Chinese pozzolanic mortars and technology for making those mortars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Typhoon is one of the most frequent meteorological phenomena that covers most of central-eastern China during the summer. Typhoon-induced precipitation is one of the most important water resources, but it often leads to severe flood disasters. Accurate typhoon precipitation prediction is crucial for mitigating typhoon disasters and managing water resources. Anhui Province, located in East China, is a typhoon affected region. Typhoon-related disasters are its major natural disasters. This study aims at developing a new back propagation (BP) neural network model to predict both the typhoon precipitation event and the typhoon precipitation amount. The predictors in the model are identified through correlation analysis of the above two target variables and a large set of candidate variables. We further improve the predictor selection through an iterative approach, which proposes new predictors for the BP model in each iteration by analyzing the differences of candidate predictors between the years with large prediction errors and the normal years. The results show that the accuracy of the BP-based summer typhoon event prediction model in the simulation period from 1957 to 2006 is 100%, and its accuracy in the validation period from 2007 to 2016 is 90%. In addition, the absolute value of the mean relative error predicted by the typhoon precipitation amount model for the simulation period is 20.9%. A significant error can be found in 2000 as the mechanism of typhoon precipitation in this year is different from that of other normal years. The error in 2000 is probably caused by the impact of vertical shear anomalies over the western Pacific which hinders the development of typhoon embryos. Additionally, the absolute value of the mean relative error predicted by the typhoon precipitation amount model in the validation period is 14.2%. A significant error also can be found in 2009, probably due to the influence of the asymmetry in the typhoon cloud system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]