Search

Under the concept of "government-guided, enterprise-led, and market-oriented" operation, the Chinese Overseas Economic and Trade Cooperation Zones (COCZs) have developed a new type of international production pattern, which has become an effective way for developing countries to integrate into the global production network sustainably. Based on the COCZ data collected manually and country-level panel data from 1997 to 2019, this study innovatively analyzes the sustainable trade effect of COCZs with the difference-in-differences method. The research finds that the establishment of COCZs significantly boosts the import and export of the host country in a sustainable manner. Further analysis finds that COCZs can promote the sustainable trade growth of the host country in three aspects: economic, societal, and environmental. This sustainable trade effect is closely related to the institutional improvement and infrastructure construction generated by COCZs. By providing a comprehensive and rigorous analysis of the impact of COCZs on the host country's trade performance, the paper effectively responds to the criticisms on China's "going out" strategy, which is often based on biased assumptions and a lack of empirical evidence. It also provides policy implications for both China and the host countries to enhance the cooperation and mutual benefits of COCZs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was conducted to evaluate the potential effects of dietary grape residue levels on the slaughter indicators, meat quality, meat shelf-life, unsaturated fatty acid content, and expression of fatty acid deposition genes in the muscle of lambs. Sixty 30-month-old male Dorper and Small-Tailed Han F1 hybrid lambs were assigned to a single factor complete randomized trial design and fed with four different diets including 0%, 8%, 16%, and 24% grape dregs, respectively. The findings regarding meat production efficacy in the lambs revealed substantial differences. The control group showed notably lower dressing percentage, carcass weight, net meat weight, meat percentage concerning carcass, meat-to-bone ratio, relative visceral and kidney fat mass, and rib eye area compared to the other groups (p < 0.05). Additionally, the meat shearing force of lambs fed a diet with 16% grape pomace (GP) was significantly higher than that of the 24% GP group (p < 0.05), while the 24 h meat color parameter a* value of the control group was notably higher than that of the 8% GP group (p < 0.05). In addition, compared to the control group, lambs fed with a diet containing 16% GP had higher levels of oleic acid (C18:1n-9c), linoleic acid (C18:2n-6c), behenic acid (C22:0), tricosanoic acid (C23:0), lignoceric acid (C24:0), and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), at a ratio of ∑CLA/TFA, ∑n-6, ∑MUFA, and ∑PUFA in the longissimus dorsi muscle (p < 0.05), but the reverse case was applicable for Total Volatile Basic Nitrogen (TVB-N) content (p < 0.05). GP supplementation did not substantially affect the expression of stearoyl-CoA desaturase (SCD), peroxisome proliferator activated receptor alpha (PPARα), and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARγ) genes (p > 0.05). The findings indicated that incorporating grape dregs in the diets of fattening lambs leads to notable enhancements in meat production and the antioxidant capacity of lamb meat, and effectively extends the shelf life of the meat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Air transportation, which is a derived demand, is booming following the rapid development of the world economy, and carbon emissions from the air transportation industry, which takes fossil fuels as its main energy source, have been increasing. Therefore, with global warming attracting considerable attention, the issue of how to reduce carbon emissions from air transportation has become a hot issue. We take China Eastern Airlines Corporation Limited (China Eastern) as an example to analyze the main factors influencing airlines' carbon emissions, specifically around the impact of airline internal operating indicators, such as available seat kilometers (ASK), passenger load factor (PLF), fuel consumption per unit passenger kilometer, the average age of operated aircraft, on-time performance (OTP), etc. This paper uses a correlation analysis, panel regression analysis, and other ways to explore the influence mechanism of the above factors on carbon emission intensity. The conclusions for China Eastern are the following: first, PLF has a significant negative relationship with carbon emission intensity; second, fuel consumption per passenger kilometer has a significant negative relationship with carbon emission intensity. Third, OTP has a significant positive relationship with carbon emission intensity. Fourth, fleet size has a significant positive relationship with carbon emission intensity. Finally, we propose several targeted carbon abatement measures for China Eastern, such as improving PLF and OTP, reducing fuel consumption per unit passenger kilometer, speeding up fleet renewal, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid increase of the vehicle population in the Guanzhong Plain (GZP), the fine particulate matter (PM2.5) emitted by vehicles has an impact on regional air quality and public health. The spatial distribution of primary and secondary PM2.5 concentrations from vehicles in GZP in January and July 2017 was simulated in this study by using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and the California Puff (CALPUFF) air quality model. The contributions of vehicle-related emission sources to total PM2.5 concentrations were also calculated. The results show that although the emissions of primary PM2.5, NOx, and SO2 in July were greater than those in January, the hourly average concentrations of primary and secondary PM2.5 in January were significantly higher than those in July. The highest concentrations of primary and total PM2.5 were mostly located in the urban areas of Xi'an and Xianyang in the central region of GZP. The contributions of exhaust emissions, secondary nitrates, brake wear, tire wear, and secondary sulfate to the total PM2.5 concentrations in GZP were 50.37%, 34.76%, 10.79%, 4.06%, and 0.04% in January and 71.91%, 11.14%, 11.89%, 5.03%, and 0.03% in July, respectively. These results will help us to further control PM2.5 pollution caused by vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the stability of an age-structured susceptible–exposed– infective–recovered–susceptible (SEIRS) model with time delay. Firstly, the traveling wave solution of system can be obtained by using the method of characteristic. The existence and uniqueness of the continuous traveling wave solution is investigated under some hypotheses. Moreover, the age-structured SEIRS system is reduced to the nonlinear autonomous system of delay ODE using some insignificant simplifications. It is studied that the dimensionless indexes for the existence of one disease-free equilibrium point and one endemic equilibrium point of the model. Furthermore, the local stability for the disease-free equilibrium point and the endemic equilibrium point of the infection-induced disease model is established. Finally, some numerical simulations were carried out to illustrate our theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]