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This paper utilizes an improved undesirable output DEA model to measure the eco-efficiency of cities in five major urban agglomerations in China during 2006–2020. It employs the Theil Index and Geodetector to investigate the spatial-temporal distribution differentiation characteristics and driving factors of urban eco-efficiency. The main findings are as follows. Firstly, the eco-efficiency of all urban agglomerations showed a fluctuating upward trend, but the eco-efficiency performance of different urban agglomerations in China shows a stratification characteristic. Specifically, the Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration consistently ranks first in China, while the mean values of the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration, and Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration are lower than the national average. Secondly, the overall differences in the urban eco-efficiency of all sample cities show a consistently fluctuating downward trend. The factor that affects the level differences of eco-efficiency in different cities is the intra-regional differences. Last but not least, the top three factors affecting the spatial distribution difference of urban eco-efficiency in the whole sample are environmental pollution control investments, innovation level, and environmental infrastructure investments. In the end, this paper proposes that reducing the intra-regional differences is the primary task to achieve the coordinated improvement of urban eco-efficiency in urban agglomerations, and then puts forward some policy suggestions to improve eco-efficiency for the five major urban agglomerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Owing to the increasingly complex economic environment and difficult employment situation, a large number of new occupations have emerged in China, leading to job diversification. Currently, the overall development status of new occupations in China and the structural characteristics of new occupation practitioners in different cities are still unclear. This study first constructed a development index system for new occupation practitioners from five dimensions (group size, cultural appreciation, salary level, occupation perception, and environmental perception). Relevant data to compare and analyze the development status of new occupation practitioners were derived from the big data mining of China's mainstream recruitment platforms and the questionnaire survey of new professional practitioners which from four first-tier cities and 15 new first-tier cities in China. The results show that the development level of new occupation practitioners in the four first-tier cities is the highest, and the two new first-tier cities, Chengdu and Hangzhou, have outstanding performance. The cities with the best development level of new occupation practitioners in Eastern, Central, and Western China are Shanghai, Wuhan, and Chengdu, respectively. Most new occupation practitioners in China are confident about the future of their careers. However, more than half of the 19 cities are uncoordinated in the five dimensions of the development of new occupation practitioners, especially those cities with middle development levels. A good policy environment and social environment have not yet been formulated to ensure the sustainable development of new occupation practitioners. Finally, we proposed the following countermeasures and suggestions: (1) Establish a classified database of new occupation talents. (2) Implement a talent industry agglomeration strategy. (3) Pay attention to the coordinated development of new occupation practitioners in cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of urban resilience plays great significance and value for the sustainable development of cities, which has attracted increasing attention from scholars and governments, especially in the western region of China. Based on the Production-Living-Ecological (PLE) system, this study attempts to describe urban resilience by the combination system that contains with P,L,E subsystem. The integrated approach including FAHP-EM,GRA-TOPSIS, CCDM, and ODM is proposed to reveal the urban resilience level and seek out the key constraints' indicators. Then, an empirical analysis of panel data of 18 cities in Sichuan Province from 2011 to 2021 was conducted to analyze the development process. The valuation results suggested that:(1)for urban resilience level, most cities at the moderate imbalance level and basically maintained at this level, only Chengdu is reaching the basic coordination level since in 2013.(2)The insufficient development of P,L,E subsystem is the reason for the moderate imbalance development, especially the key limiting factor is the P subsystem's low development level.(3)the most prominent obstacle indicators are x1(per capita local financial expenditure on science and technology), x2(per capita of R&D spending), x8(total export-import per capita), x14(number of people with basic medical insurance), x22(length of urban drainage pipeline), x23(number of public toilets per person) and the contribution values reach 7.56%,7.49%,11.02%, 9.14%,12.53%, 12.60% respectively. The detailed reference suggestions and effective measures put forwarded for policy makers and planners to promote urban resilience in Western China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The home language environment is a critical point of investment in early language skills. However, few studies have quantitatively measured the home language environment of low-socioeconomic-status households in non-western settings. This mixed methods study describes the home language environment and early child language skills among households in a low-socioeconomic-status, peri-urban district of Chengdu, China, and identifies factors influencing parental investment in the home language environment. Audio recordings were collected from 81 peri-urban households with children ages 18–24 months and analysed using the Language Environment Analysis (LENATM) system. The Mandarin version of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory was administered to each child's primary caregiver. The quantitative results revealed large variation in home language environments and child language skills among the sample, with relatively low average scores when compared to other Chinese samples. Qualitative interviews with a subset of 31 caregivers revealed that many caregivers face constraints on their knowledge of interactive parenting, compounded, in some households, by time constraints due to work or household responsibilities. The findings indicate a need for increased sources of credible parenting information for peri-urban caregivers of young children to promote investment in the home language environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: For decades the development of community health services has been emphasized in China to cope with the growing burden of chronic diseases by providing basic medical services. This survey aims at investigating factors associated with the use of Community Health Centers (CHCs) for the management of hypertensive patients in Chengdu, China. Methods: We used a systematic sampling method to select 2,030 patients with hypertension or diabetes registered in 29 CHCs in Chengdu in 2007. Researchers interviewed patients who consented to participate at their home. This paper reports findings from the survey of 1,716 hypertensive patients with completed questionnaires. Univariate analyses and multiple logistic regression analyses were conducted to explore factors influencing the use of CHCs for the management of hypertensive patients. Results: 81.4% of hypertensive patients regularly used CHCs for hypertension monitoring and treatment in Chengdu. Univariate analyses indicated that use of CHCs was associated with the education level, occupation, types of medical insurance, Body Mass Index(BMI), patients' knowledge on hypertension, awareness of CHCs functions, satisfaction of the service of CHCs. Multiple regression analyses found that use of CHCs was positively associated with the following factors: the Urban Resident Basic Medical Insurance(URBMI), knowledge on blood pressure, awareness of the sites in CHCs to measure blood pressure, awareness of having to take life-long antihypertensive medicine once the treatment started, awareness of the health records registration in CHCs, regular follow up, improved convenience of seeing doctor. Patients with professional job were less likely to use the services of CHCs. Conclusions: The use of CHCs for hypertension management could be increased by improving residents' knowledge on the monitoring and treatment of hypertension, and the awareness of CHCs functions. The CHCs could play an important role in providing medical care to low-income, unemployed and other disadvantaged patients with hypertension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data about human trajectories has been widely used to study urban regions that are attractive to researchers and are considered to be hotspots. It is difficult, however, to quantify the function of urban regions based on the varieties of human behavior. In this research, we developed a clustering method to help discover the specific functions that exist within urban regions. This method applies the Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) to classify regions’ inflow and trip count characteristics. It regroups these urban regions using the Pearson Correlation Coefficient (PCC) clustering method based on those typical characteristics. Using a large amount of vehicle trajectory data (approximately 1,500,000 data points) in the Chinese city of Chengdu, we demonstrate that the method can discriminate between urban functional regions, by comparing the proportion of surface objects within each region. This research shows that vehicle trajectory data in different functional urban regions possesses different time-series curves, while similar types of functional regions can be identified by these curves. Compared with remote sensing images and other statistical methods which can provide only static results, our research can provide a timely and effective approach to determine an urban region’s functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Air pollution is well-known as a major risk to public health, causing various diseases including pulmonary and cardiovascular diseases. As social concern increases, the amount of air pollution data is increasing rapidly. The purpose of this study is to statistically characterize dependence between major cities in China based on a measure of directional dependence estimated from PM2.5 measurements. As a measure of the directional dependence, we propose the so-called copula directional dependence (CDD) using beta regression models. An advantage of the CDD is that it does not rely on strict assumptions of specific probability distributions or linearity. We used hourly PM2.5 measurement data collected at four major cities in China: Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, and Shanghai, from 2013 to 2017. After accounting for autocorrelation in the PM2.5 time series via nonlinear autoregressive models, CDDs between the four cities were estimated to produce directed network structures of statistical dependence. In addition, a statistical method was proposed to test the directionality of dependence between each pair of cities. From the PM2.5 data, we could discover that Chengdu and Guangzhou are the most closely related cities and that the directionality between them has changed once during 2013 to 2017, which implies a major economic or environmental change in these Chinese regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]