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The densified MnZn ferrite ceramics were prepared using the cold sintering process under pressure, with an acetate ethanol solution used as the transient solvent. The effects of the transient solvent, the pressure and annealing temperature on the density, and the micromorphology and magnetic properties of the sintered MnZn ferrites were studied. The densified MnZn ferrite was obtained using the cold sintering process and its relative density reached up to 85.4%. The transient solvent and high pressure are essential to the cold sintering process for MnZn ferrite. The annealing treatment is indispensable in obtaining the sample with the higher density. The relative density was further increased to 97.2% for the sample annealed at 950 °C for 6 h. The increase in the annealing temperature reduces the power loss at high frequencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The exploration of the dependency structure of the Chinese and EU carbon trading markets is crucial to the construction of a globally harmonized carbon market. In this paper, we studied the characteristics of structural interdependency between China's major carbon markets and the European Union (EU) carbon market before and after the launch of the national carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS) and the occurrence of the new coronavirus (COVID-19) by applying the C-vine copula method, with the carbon trading prices of the EU, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Shenzhen and Hubei as the research objects. The study shows that there exists a statistically significant dependence between the EU and the major carbon markets in China and their extremal dependences and dependence structures are different at different stages. After the launch of the national carbon ETS, China has become more independent in terms of interdependency with the EU carbon market, and is more relevant between domestic carbon markets. Most importantly, we found that the dependence between the EU and Chinese carbon markets has increased following the outbreak of COVID-19, and tail dependency structures existed before the launch of the national carbon ETS and during the outbreak of the COVID-19. The results of this study provide a basis for the understanding of the linkage characteristics of carbon trading prices between China and the EU at different stages, which in turn can help market regulators and investors to formulate investment decisions and policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federated learning (FL) aims to address the challenges of data silos and privacy protection in artificial intelligence. Vertically federated learning (VFL) with independent feature spaces and overlapping ID spaces can capture more knowledge and facilitate model learning. However, VFL has both privacy and utility problems in framework construction. On the one hand, sharing gradients may cause privacy leakage. On the other hand, the increase in participants brings a surge in the feature dimension of the global model, which results in higher computation costs and lower model accuracy. To address these issues, we propose a vertically federated learning algorithm with correlated differential privacy (CRDP-FL) to meet FL systems' privacy and utility requirements. A privacy-preserved VFL framework is designed based on differential privacy (DP) between organizations with many network edge devices. Meanwhile, feature selection is performed to improve the algorithm's efficiency and model performance to solve the problem of dimensionality explosion. We also propose a quantitative correlation analysis technique for VFL to reduce the correlated sensitivity and noise injection, balancing the utility decline due to DP protection. We theoretically analyze the privacy level and utility of CRDP-FL. A real vertically federated learning scenario is simulated with personalized settings based on the ISOLET and Breast Cancer datasets to verify the method's effectiveness in model accuracy, privacy budget, and data correlation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High land use efficiency is the key to improving total factor productivity, and also an important force behind achieving sustained economic growth. Existing studies have mainly focused on the land use efficiency of the industry sector. Yet, the issue of land use efficiency of the service sector (SLUE) has been largely overlooked. This study examines regional differences and efficiency decomposition by using a slack based model (SBM) of undesirable output, and the Malmquist productivity index (MPI) under a data envelopment analysis framework. The results reveal that: (1) In China, the land use efficiency of the service sector is unbalanced, showing an inverted growth law of "low in developed areas and high in backward areas". (2) The land use efficiency of the service sector can be decomposed into technical progress, pure technical efficiency, and scale efficiency. From the decomposition results, the growth rate of pure technical efficiency presents a trend of "low in the east and high in the west"; the scale efficiency also falls into the situation of weak group growth. Technological progress has maintained steady improvement. (3) The coordinated improvement of land use efficiency of the service sector needs to focus on resolving the "beggar-thy-neighbor" issue caused by existing large regional differences. In this article, the puzzle of land use efficiency differences in the service industry is well solved, and thus provides valuable enlightenment for the benign growth of service industries in countries and regions around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships between the construction sector and the rest of the Chinese economy in the energy consumption as it is crucial in energy consumption of the whole economy. Therefore, this paper uses the Modified Hypothetical Extraction Method (MHEM) to quantify the linkages of energy consumption in 2002, 2005, 2007, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2017 and 2018, providing a new perspective for energy consumption linkage studies in China. In this paper we discover the volumes and paths of energy consumption net flows from other blocks to the construction sector and identify the key energy suppliers of the construction sector. The empirical findings show that the indirect energy consumption exceeded the direct energy consumption between 2002 and 2018, representing more than 90% of total (direct plus indirect) energy consumption of the construction sector. Between 2002 and 2018, the indirect energy consumption of the construction sector increased from 27,579 to 111,760 × 104 tons of coal equivalent (tce). We further find that the construction sector has the largest inflows of energy consumption to obtain its own demand than other sectors from 2002 to 2018. The average annual energy consumption net flows from other seven sectors to the construction sector were 1477, 687, 47,998, 6067, 1483, 7362 and 1923 × 104 tce in 2002–2018, respectively. Moreover, we find that the Manufacturing sector is the largest energy supplier of the construction sector between 2002 and 2018. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accessibility to transportation is a crucial factor for economic growth. Transportation land, defined as the land used to support transportation infrastructure, such as city and inter-city rail, ports, and air travel, is a critical element for constructing transportation facilities and has attracted increasing attention from researchers and policy makers. Transportation land transfer (TLT) is defined as the act by which the state transfers transportation land-use rights to a land user (collective or individual) within a certain period of time as the land owner (all land in China is owned by the state). The land user pays a land-use right transfer fee to the state. This article first reveals the multidimensional effect between TLT and economic growth based on data from China's 30 provinces for 2007–2019. The study found the following. (1) A continuous increase in the availability of transportation land is vital to ensure sustainable economic growth, and the construction of transportation land between adjacent areas has positive spatial spillover effects. (2) These positive effects work through three mechanisms, i.e., increased employment, industrial interactions, and improvements in economic operational efficiency, with a time lag. (3) The positive effects of TLT on economic growth have significant heterogeneous moderating effects on the differences in the economic development stage, the level of industrial structure, and urbanization rate. The study expands the front-end to back-end analysis of land use, provides a reference for countries and regions at different stages of development to promote economic growth using transportation land construction, and presents beneficial insights for governments to efficiently avoid the mismatch of transportation land resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]