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Coal mining under the Quaternary thick loose layer affects key strata breakage, Bed-separations development, ground subsidence, and other studies. This paper presents a method for solving the deflection of a large-deflection inclined thin plate under a thick loose-layer cover with additional lateral loads and midplane forces. The methods presented are based on the principle of large-deflection of thin-plate, energy method, and fracture mechanics theory. The 7225 work face in Anhui Province, China, was studied. Combined with the large-deflection inclined thin plate model, the initial breakage distance within the main roof plate was calculated to be 33 m with the initial breakage angle of 61.2°, and the period breakage distance was calculated to be 21 m with the period breakage angle of 55.4°. The distribution range of "Vertical Three Zones" from 7225 working face to the ground, including the height of the caved zone is 38.07 m, the height of the fractured zone is 41.13 m, and the height of the curved zone with the thick loose layer removed is 187.56 m. During the dynamic development of the principal key strata (PKS), the deflection value develops from 0 mm to 2714 mm with 7225 working face mining, and the maximum value of the spatial volume is 56,485 m3, which is verified by Three-dimensional Discrete Element Code (3DEC) numerical simulation. The dynamic development of Bed-separation within the overlying strata, with a maximum development height of 545.2 mm and a maximum volume of 11,228.1 m3 of the Bed-separation cavity. The dynamic development of the Bed-separation height and the cavity under different mining length and width conditions of the working face are also discussed. The large-deflection inclined thin plate model proposed in this paper effectively explores the dynamic deflection and fragmentation law of the overlying strata induced by the inclined working face of Longwall mining and provides a theoretical basis and computational model for quantitatively evaluating the dynamic development of the Bed-separation cavity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-resolution remote sensing image-based vegetation monitoring is a hot topic in remote sensing technology and applications. However, when facing large-scale monitoring across different sensors in broad areas, the current methods suffer from fragmentation and weak generalization capabilities. To address this issue, this paper proposes a multisource high-resolution remote sensing image-based vegetation extraction method that considers the comprehensive perception of multiple features. First, this method utilizes a random forest model to perform feature selection for the vegetation index, selecting an index that enhances the otherness between vegetation and other land features. Based on this, a multifeature synthesis perception convolutional network (MSCIN) is constructed, which enhances the extraction of multiscale feature information, global information interaction, and feature cross-fusion. The MSCIN network simultaneously constructs dual-branch parallel networks for spectral features and vegetation index features, strengthening multiscale feature extraction while reducing the loss of detailed features by simplifying the dense connection module. Furthermore, to facilitate global information interaction between the original spectral information and vegetation index features, a dual-path multihead cross-attention fusion module is designed. This module enhances the differentiation of vegetation from other land features and improves the network's generalization performance, enabling vegetation extraction from multisource high-resolution remote sensing data. To validate the effectiveness of this method, we randomly selected six test areas within Anhui Province and compared the results with three different data sources and other typical methods (NDVI, RFC, OCBDL, and HRNet). The results demonstrate that the MSCIN method proposed in this paper, under the premise of using only GF2 satellite images as samples, exhibits robust accuracy in extraction results across different sensors. It overcomes the rapid degradation of accuracy observed in other methods with various sensors and addresses issues such as internal fragmentation, false positives, and false negatives caused by sample generalization and image diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To facilitate accurate prediction and empirical research on regional agricultural carbon emissions, this paper uses the LLE-PSO-XGBoost carbon emission model, which combines the Local Linear Embedding (LLE), Particle Swarm Algorithm (PSO) and Extreme Gradient Boosting Algorithm (XGBoost), to forecast regional agricultural carbon emissions in Anhui Province under different scenarios. The results show that the regional agricultural carbon emissions in Anhui Province generally show an upward and then downward trend during 2000–2021, and the regional agricultural carbon emissions in Anhui Province in 2030 are expected to fluctuate between 11,342,100 tones and 14,445,700 tones under five different set scenarios. The projections of regional agricultural carbon emissions can play an important role in supporting the development of local regional agriculture, helping to guide the input and policy guidance of local rural low-carbon agriculture and promoting the development of rural areas towards a resource-saving and environment-friendly society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the built heritage studies, the intricate web of social and selective processes that define heritage is evident. These processes are, in many cases, intertwined with the notion of scale, examplified through the production of heritage sites at the local, national, and transnational scales. While heritage and geography scholars have articulated the role played by scale in heritage-making and argue against a rigid, fixed, and hierarchical understanding of scale, they highlight the constant reproduction of scale. There is, so far, limited explanation of how the perception of scale gets reproduced and how crucial actors manipulate scalar power and resources for heritage making and the reproduction of scale. To fill this gap, this paper delves into mainland China's heritage-making, using the southern Anhui historical villages as an example. Based on intensive 5-month field research, this paper has three findings: 1) The nomination process for a World Heritage Site is notably influenced by politics and selectivity; 2) Diverse stakeholders are pivotal in shaping heritage narratives; 3) Individual contributions to heritage creation directly interact with, and subsequently reshape, 'scale', an entity that is simultaneously discursive and tangible. By integrating the notion of 'scale' into heritage discussions, we illuminate two concurrent processes: creating hierarchies through rule assimilation by interpreting the UNESCO standard internally and evolving socio-spatial dynamics via the manifestation of individual agency with resource manipulation, scale jumping, and reproduction of scale. This approach aligns with the material orientation in human geography and repositions 'scale'. Here, it's not just an epistemological framework but also a tangible force that steers individual perceptions and actions and yields measurable material impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power systems with a high proportion of inverter-based sources like photovoltaics require a substantial short-circuit current ratio to ensure strong voltage support capabilities. However, this also increases the system's short-circuit current capacity and levels, which may potentially affect the safe operation of system equipment and current-carrying conductors. To evaluate the operational risks, this paper proposes a quantitative calculation model for the critical integration proportion of grid-connected inverter-interfaced power sources based on short-circuit current over-limit probability. Firstly, according to the verification criterion about short-circuit current during the selection of the switching equipment and conductors in the power system, the short-circuit current over-limit probability evaluation system with five indices is established. Secondly, considering the impact of the increased grid integration proportion of inverter-based power sources on short-circuit currents, an evaluation process for operational risk probabilities is proposed. Based on this, the critical access proportion for inverter-based power source integration in the power grid can be calculated. Finally, the proposed model is used to assess the operational risk probability for a 220 kV system which includes a high proportion of inverter-based power sources in the Anhui area, China. Through the analysis of cumulative probability distribution curves, the critical grid integration proportion interval for the transition from normal to high proportion stages of inverter-based power sources is determined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The TRIZ theory was used to accurately discover the problems to be solved in the design of roadway surrounding rock control technology. This paper tried to solve the complex issue of surrounding rock control in deep roadways from a new perspective. Based on the functional component analysis and causal axis analysis of the problem's primary reason, simultaneously, the surrounding rock control technology was optimized through technical contradiction analysis, physical contradiction analysis, and substance and field model analysis. As a result, a fully enclosed wire-shell support technology was proposed. Finally, taking the typical soft rock roadway engineering of Pansan Coal Mine in Huainan Mining Area, Anhui Province, China, as the engineering background, the engineering application and effect evaluation were completed. This paper provides a reference for controlling the instability of deep soft rock roadways in coal mines. A new idea of optimizing roadway support engineering based on TRIZ theory was proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anhui province faces a twofold challenge of reconciling the opportunities presented by the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta region, alongside the pressures of achieving sustained economic growth. This paper studies tourism and logistics industries in Anhui Province, utilizing the entropy weight-Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method to conduct a comprehensive analysis of their development levels over the past seven years. The coupling coordination degree model is also employed to evaluate the current state of coordination between the two industries and to identify the obstacle factors for their progress. The findings demonstrate the logistics industry in Anhui province achieves some limited and substantive progress in the sample period, the tourism industry encounters a discernible negative trend. The lack of star-rated hotels, specialized travel agencies, inadequate domestic tourism income, relatively fewer international routes, and lower volumes of express deliveries present significant challenges to achieving high-quality development. The highlight of this paper is to propose feasible suggestions to enhance the coupling coordination between tourism and logistics industries and promote their important role in high-quality economic development in Anhui Province, China. These suggestions provide policymakers with a clear decision-making basis, which is of great significance for the long-term sustainable development of the tourism and logistics industries. Finally, the research methods and findings of this paper have noteworthy implications and useful references for related research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the popularity of Internet technology, reading has developed in the direction of digitalization and mobileization. And entering the metaverse era, both the subject and object of reading may be redefined, presenting a new developmental pattern. This process brings a crisis to reading, such as the fragmentation of reading, the obstruction of reading needs, and the replacement of classical reading. However, reading is still an important way for college students to acquire new knowledge, broaden their horizons and improve their skills. The existence of reading crises inevitably affects the academic achievement of college students. Therefore, from the perspective of university management, this paper conducts regression analysis on 1,155 effective samples of colleges and universities in Anhui Province, extracts the factors that affect college students' reading engagement, and further explores the relationship between college students' reading engagement and academic achievement. The study concluded that: (1) in terms of family reading culture, students who grow up in families with good family reading culture perform better in reading engagement. The amount of family books, family reading education and family reading atmosphere all have significant positive effects on reading time and reflective reading strategies of college students. (2) In the cultivation of reading habits in colleges and universities, the course-driven mechanism and the atmosphere stimulating mechanism have a significant positive effect on students' reading time. The course-driven mechanism, resource supporting mechanism and atmosphere stimulating mechanism have a significant positive effect on the critical reading strategy of college students. (3) In terms of reading time, it is only found that the reading time spent on paper books has a significant positive effect on college students' academic achievement and professional quality. (4) In terms of reading strategies, the replicative reading strategy only has a significant positive effect on the improvement of college students' academic achievement and professional quality. The critical reading strategy has a significant positive effect on the professional quality, general ability and career planning ability of college students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the increasing growth of economy in the last few years, environmental problems have become a prominent difficulty in Chinese economic growth and social development. Therefore, in order to respond to the environmental protection policy of Anhui Province, all prefecture-level cities need to be evaluated for their environmental efficiency. A study of environmental efficiency in Anhui Province is presented in this paper. The time period is from 2015 to 2020. By exploiting MaxDEA software, the input–output system in different years is taken as the decision-making unit, and slacks-based model (SBM-DEA) which is based on an unexpected output is used to construct the index system by selecting two output indexes and four input indexes, so as to calculate the environmental efficiency of Anhui Province, including 16 prefecture-level cities, under the condition of constant non-radial and non-angle scale benefits. In addition, based on the persistence and anti-persistence theory of fractal theory, in this paper, we have analyzed the future trend of environmental efficiency of prefecture-level cities in Anhui Province by rescaled range analysis (R/S). The results show that Anhui province has 16 prefectures that have not achieved an optimal level of environmental performance and fluctuates downward from 2015 to 2020. The average value of comprehensive efficiency is 0.846. As for technical efficiency, the mean value is 0.954, and scale efficiency has an average value of 0.887. The technical progress of environmental efficiency development in Anhui Province is small and the room for improvement is large. Finally, according to the results of the study, some suggestions on environmental technology are put forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roads are a type of typical artificial terrain, and are key components of urban terrain. Road networks formed by connections between different roads not only form the skeleton of urban terrain, but also plays an important role in transmitting energy and matter on the urban surface. Therefore, how to consider characteristics when constructing the digital road elevation model (DEM) has become an important research topic in the field of geographic information and mapping. Using high-definition unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) images as the basic data source, this study proposes a new method for constructing the road DEM by analyzing semantic features such as road shape and function. This method first takes the sideline and centerline of the road as the macroscopic undulation morphological constraints. It uses the shape control equation of the local domain to constrain the morphological change characteristics of the road surface in the transverse and longitudinal directions, in order to construct the road DEM with high fidelity to the surface shape characteristics. Then, in terms of the water catchment function of the road surface, a road DEM correction method considering surface flow direction characteristics is designed to ensure that the water catchment path of the road surface conforms to the actual situation. For this paper, several typical roads in Chuzhou University in Anhui Province, China, were selected as the experimental objects to carry out a DEM construction experiment. The results indicate the following: (1) compared with the traditional construction method, the DEM shape of the road constructed by this research method is more consistent with the actual road shape, and the smoothness of the road surface is better; (2) due to the high density and high elevation accuracy of the point cloud used in modeling, the elevation adjustment strategy of the sideline and centerline of the road implemented in this study does not reduce elevation accuracy, indicating that an adjustment to the elevation information is necessary for constructing the DEM of special artificial terrain; and (3) the DEM correction method proposed in this paper to find the correct catchment path can ensure that the processed DEM can accurately simulate the surface catchment process, and the correction of the elevation of the road DEM is also controlled within a small range without affecting the elevation accuracy of the regional DEM. This study has reference value for implementing projects such as urban terrain expression in the construction of 3D China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Huizhou villages are representatives of traditional villages and have a high historical, cultural, and tourism value. In view of the problems of low commercial efficiency due to the small scale of commercial space and the imperfect layout in Longchuan Village, Jixi County, Xuancheng City, Anhui Province, this research explores the spatial advantages of Longchuan Village's commercial layout through an analysis of street and lane space syntax and a commercial space resistance model. The research on the spatial syntax of streets mainly focuses on the analysis of the spatial accessibility, line-of-sight integration, and spatial comprehensibility of Longchuan Village's streets. The commercial space resistance model mainly studies the attraction of tourism resources to tourists in order to select the most suitable area for the layout of commercial space. The results of the analysis show the following: (1) The integration degree of traffic and the sight line is relatively high at County Road and Water Street in Longchuan Village, so these two places have better accessibility and more sight lines. (2) Longchuan Village has a good spatial understanding in a small area, so it is not suitable to distribute commercial space but rather to centralize it. (3) In the commercial space layout resistance model, the area around Water Street and Qixing Pond has the smallest spatial resistance and the greatest opportunity for population gathering, making it the most suitable for a commercial layout. On the basis of the analysis results, this paper puts forward an optimization strategy of Longchuan Village's commercial space layout in a targeted manner to help Longchuan Village achieve a better commercial layout. The research contribution of this paper will help planners and architects to take advantage of space to plan the commercial space of traditional tourist villages so that they can exert a better commercial value and tourism effect and to promote the tourism development of traditional villages across the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Green economy and economic development with high quality have set higher requirements for the development of the urban logistics industry. It can grasp the recent development level of the urban logistics industry by measuring its environmental efficiency to guide its future development direction. The purpose of this study is to improve the environmental efficiency and development level of the urban logistics industry by using a reasonable evaluation method. Design/methodology/approach: This paper uses information entropy to directly aggregate index weights from different models to acquire comprehensive index weights (CIWs) for calculating peer-evaluation efficiency. Then, we weight self and peer-efficiencies to obtain final efficiency. The environmental efficiencies of the urban logistics industry in Anhui Province in 2019 are obtained according to the above method. Findings: Several findings are summarized below. The logistics industry in Anhui is in urgent need of improving environmental efficiency. The environmental efficiency of the logistics industry in North Anhui is the highest one, showing that the logistics industry in North Anhui has achieved a relative balance between economic development and environmental protection. Their final cross-efficiency values based on the CIWs are smaller than those based on the comprehensive efficiency. And the environmental efficiency of almost all urban logistics industries is lower than its economic efficiency. The findings show that the proposed method is feasible and more reasonable. More economic implications and suggestions are proposed. Originality/value: This paper proposes an extended cross-efficiency evaluation method based on information entropy to measure the environmental efficiency of the urban logistics industry, effectively avoiding the overestimation of efficiency results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The surface deformation caused by underground mining seriously affects the normal life and personal safety of local residents and also causes unfavorable factors for the safe and efficient exploitation of underground resources. While the study of surface deformation caused by underground mining of metal mines requires a large amount of measured data as support, the measured data is particularly scarce, which severely hinders the study of surface deformation caused by underground mining. In this paper, in order to study the impact of underground mining on surface structures in metal mines, we take the Fu Lao Zhuang Iron Mine in Anhui Province, China, as the research object and put forward a comprehensive measurement method based on the flat plate beam theory. Using empirical formulas combined with the methods of thickness-to-span ratio and the relaxation coefficient, etc., we carry out numerical simulation calculations for the displacement of the surface triggered by the mining of the ore body by using FLAC3D software. We calculate the maximum inclination deformation, curvature, and horizontal deformation values of the ground surface by referring to the displacement and deformation with reference to the displacement and deformation formula; the maximum tilt deformation, curvature, and horizontal deformation values of the ground surface are calculated, and finally, the permissible values of the design specifications are combined to make a judgment. The research results of this paper put forward the prerequisite for improving the surface deformation induced by underground mining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the development trend of industrial carbon emissions in Bengbu city, Anhui Province in the next ten years, and how to help the industry reach the carbon peak as soon as possible. The research process and conclusions are as follows: (1) Through literature review and carbon emission index method, five main factors affecting industrial carbon emission are identified. (2) The resistance model is used to analyze the main resistance factors of industrial carbon emission reduction in Bengbu city. (3) Based on the existing data of Bengbu city from 2011 to 2020, the grey prediction EGM (1,1) model is used to predict the industrial carbon emissions of Bengbu city from 2021 to 2030. The results show that among the five factors, the urbanization rate has the most significant impact on industrial carbon emissions, while energy intensity has the least impact. Bengbu's industrial carbon emissions will continue to increase in the next decade, but the growth rate will be flat. Based on the findings of the analysis, specific recommendations on urbanization development, energy structure, and industrial structure of Bengbu city are put forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facing the severe situation of environmental problems, coordinating the sustainable development of tourism and the construction of new urbanization is conducive to regional sustainable development. Based on the perspective of uncoupling coordination, this paper evaluates the coordination relationship between the sustainable development of tourism and the development of new urbanization, analyzes their temporal and spatial characteristics, and analyzes the restriction mechanism behind the uncoordinated relationship from the dynamic interaction. The findings are as follows: (1) At present, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Anhui are at a low level of uncoordinated development, while other regions are at an antagonistic uncoordinated development stage. (2) The regional difference of uncoupling coordination degree between tourism eco-efficiency and new urbanization is getting smaller and smaller, and it tends to develop in a balanced way, which accords with the strategic goal of coordinated development. However, the degree of uncoupling coordination changes from relatively weak aggregation to relatively strong aggregation. (3) From the long-term dynamic impact, the eco-efficiency of tourism has a negative impact on the development of new urbanization in Shanghai, Chongqing, Yunnan and a positive impact on Jiangsu and Hubei, with the contribution rates of 26%, 66%, 58%, 24% and 51%, respectively. New urbanization has a positive impact on the eco-efficiency of tourism in Anhui and a negative impact on Guizhou, with the contribution rates of 65% and 57%, respectively. The uncoupling coordination relationship and the interaction between the two systems are closely related. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of industrialization and urbanization, untreated domestic sewage, industrial sewage and pollutants of surface runoff in the rainy season are discharged into the river system, leading to the serious urban water pollution. Due to the complexity and variability of the sources of urban polluted water bodies and environmental conditions, the current river restoration focuses on the rapid recovery of water quality, but does not fundamentally clarify the source of pollution, and does not consider the restoration of river water ecosystem damage. It leads to the fact that urban river is characterized with poor ability of self-purification and imperfect biodiversity, meanwhile, it is difficult to maintain and continuously improve water quality. This paper systematically illustrates the development process and inherent science of the concept of near naturalization restoration and urban sponge city. Both of them have separate characteristics, the concept and measures of which have commonality with the urban river restoration. The ecological restoration under the guidance of near-naturalization concept is beneficial to restore the hydrological continuity of river channels, to reshape the meandering and winding landscape of rivers, to increase the biodiversity index, making full use of their original ecological functions and values. Whereas, the concept of sponge city can effec tively reduce surface runoff, purify, accumulate, utilize rainwater and alleviate the discharge of pollutants into river or water bodies. They also contribute to the mitigation of flooding risk and improvement of river dredging and drainage functions. In addition, this paper summarizes the near-naturalized and sponge city part from the project carried out in Fuyang City, Anhui Province. Through the combination technology of "source control, pollution interception, dredging, water diversion and management", ecological restoration makes the near naturalization and sponge city integrated, which also emphasizes the construction of food chain system and greening management in the river channels. The two concepts focus on the restoration of self-purification capacity of the river and the reconstruction of ecosystem integrity, emphasize the treatment and reuse of rainwater resources, achieving the harmonious development of urban ecological restoration and landscape. Finally, to ensure the sound cycle and sustainable development of urban water ecosystem, the paper develops the direction of urban river restoration under the concept of near naturalization and sponge city intersection based on the current advanced environmental remediation and administration of domestic and foreign countries. It mainly includes two aspects: one is that the river restoration should be implemented in combination with the over-all planning of urban areas, making the river channel construction as an organic component of urban landscape; the other one is to gradually establish the evaluation indicators and standard for urban river restoration, including the traditional water quality indicators and those indicators related to the biological habitat and biodiversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital technology has already permeated the production and operations of organizations, with many incorporating it into employee performance evaluations. However, there remains a research gap in identifying effective approaches to achieving digital performance. Furthermore, while scholars have often mentioned the differences in employee attitudes, and employee dynamic capability (EDC) in the dynamic digital market, empirical evidence supporting this notion is scarce. This paper investigates the influence of high-involvement human resource management practices (HI-HRMPs) on employee digital performance (EDP) within Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), focusing on specific cultural regions in China. Using purposive sampling, four representative regions (Guangzhou, Shanghai, Guizhou, and Anhui) were selected for Survey. Structural equation modeling (AMOS) was employed to examine the relationships between HI-HRMPs as the independent variable and employee competitive attitudes, employee competitive behaviors, and employee dynamic capabilities as mediating variables, with a focus on their impact on employee digital performance. Contrary to direct effects, the study reveals that HI-HRMPs do not directly influence employee digital performance. Instead, employee competitive attitudes and behaviors, along with their dynamic capabilities, emerge as significant mediating variables in this relationship. Specifically, employee competitive attitudes and behaviors, as well as employee dynamic capabilities, play crucial roles in mediating the relationship between HI-HRMPs and employee digital performance. Furthermore, the findings indicate that employee dynamic capabilities exhibit greater influence on employee digital performance compared to employee competitive attitudes and behaviors, particularly in the context of a rapidly evolving digital marketplace. These results underscore the importance of fostering employee dynamic capabilities within SMEs to enhance digital performance in the ever-changing business landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To fully comprehend the patterns of land and ecological damage caused by coal mining subsidence, and to scientifically carry out ecological mine restoration and management, it is urgent to accurately grasp the information of coal mining, particularly in complex coaling areas, such as North Anhui, China. In this paper, a space–air–ground collaborative monitoring system was constructed for coal mining areas based on multi-source remote sensing data and subsidence characteristics of coaling areas were investigated in North Anhui. It was found that from 2019 to 2022, 16 new coal mining subsidence areas were found in northern Anhui, with the total area increasing by 8.1%. In terms of land use, water areas were increased by 101.9 km2 from 2012 to 2022, cultivated land was decreased by 99.3 km2, and residence land was decreased by 11.8 km2. The depth of land subsidence in the subsidence areas is divided into 307.9 km2 of light subsidence areas with a subsidence depth of less than 500 mm; 161.8 km2 of medium subsidence areas with a subsidence depth between 500 mm and 1500 mm; and 281.2 km2 of heavy subsidence areas with a subsidence depth greater than 1500 mm. The total subsidence governance area is 191.2 km2, accounting for 26.5% of the total subsidence area. From the perspective of prefecture-level cities, the governance rate reaches 51.3% in Huaibei, 10.1% in Huainan, and 13.6% in Fuyang. The total reclamation area is 68.8 km2, accounting for 34.5% of the subsidence governance area. At present, 276.1 km2 within the subsidence area has reached stable subsidence conditions, mainly distributed in the Huaibei mining area, which accounts for about 60% of the total stable subsidence area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unearthed in 1987 from the Neolithic site in a village called Lingjiatan in Anhui Province, China, a Jade Tortoise and a Jade Tablet are believed to be components of a set of divination tools that retain both astronomical and cosmological meaning. On the basis of the works by previous scholars, this paper aims to study this special set of jade artifacts from a syncretic point of view. After a verification of the previous researchers' opinions that the eight arrows carved in the central position of the Jade Tablet represent the Eight Cardinal Directions while the four arrows carved at its four conners represent the rising and setting positions of the Sun at the March and December Solstices. I argue that the five pairs of round holes on the Tablet's two short sides may represent the five pairs of the horizontal positions of sunrise and sunset corresponding to the later Eight Festivals in the Chinese calendar, i.e. the Beginning of Spring, the Spring Equinox, the Beginning of Summer, the Summer Solstice, Beginning of Autumn, Autumn Equinox, Beginning of Winter, and Winter Solstice. Together with the other twelve round holes on the two long sides of the same Tablet, they might have been used by the residents of the Lingjiatan site as a date-counting device related to the Eight Festivals in a year. Put together as a unified set, the Jade Tortoise and the Jade Tablet indicate an early model of the cosmos, reflecting the image of space and time in the minds of the residents of the site, which made the set a 'standard model' of the other tortoise-divination tools unearthed at the same site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Meteorological disasters are one of the major risks to agricultural production, causing huge losses to agriculture. Agricultural insurance is an important part of the agricultural security system and can effectively spread agricultural risks and losses. Weather index insurance, which emerged in the late 1990s, has received a lot of attention, research, and applications due to its objectivity, standardization, and robust liquidity. In this paper, authors analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of weather index insurance compared to traditional agricultural insurance. The development of weather index insurance technology at home and abroad was reviewed. Authors introduced the development and practical application of weather index insurance model for Anhui grain crops (winter wheat, one season rice, summer corn), and discussed and prospected the future development of weather index insurance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water resources security is an important cornerstone of regional sustainable development, but the current evaluation system of water resources security is not scientific, and the measurement of safety level has not been optimized by combining algorithms. In this paper, indicators are selected according to the actual situation in Anhui Province. Firstly, correlation analysis (CA) and principal component analysis (PCA) are used to reduce the dimensionality of indicators, and then, the scientific evaluation is carried out based on genetic algorithm optimized back propagation neural network (GA-BP). This paper improves the generalization ability of the evaluation model and overcomes the shortcomings of the traditional model, which is slow in convergence and easy to fall into local optimality. The results showed that the water resources security level showed an obvious improvement trend from 2006 to 2020 and stabilized at a relatively safe level from 2014 to 2020. The subsystem of water resources environmental security is the least secure, followed by the subsystem of social and economic security, and the security of water resources regulation and response is basically stable at a relatively safe level. The conclusion of this study can provide decision-making basis for the relevant research of government, society, and scientific community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantifying the drivers of water footprint evolution in the Yangtze River Delta is vital for the optimization of China's total water consumption. The article aims to decompose and predict the water footprint of the Yangtze River Delta and provide policy recommendations for optimizing water use in the Yangtze River Delta. The paper applies the LMDI method to decompose the water footprint of the Yangtze River Delta and its provinces into five major drivers: water footprint structure, water use intensity, R&D scale, R&D efficiency, and population size. Furthermore, this paper combines scenario analysis and Monte Carlo simulation methods to predict the potential evolution trends of water footprint under the basic, general, and enhanced water conservation scenario, respectively. The results show that (1) the expansion of R&D scale is the main factor promoting the growth of water footprint, the improvement of R&D efficiency, and the reduction of water intensity are the main factors inhibiting the increase of water footprint, and the water footprint structure and population size have less influence on water footprint. (2) The evolution trend of water footprint of each province under three scenarios is different. Compared to the basic scenario, the water footprint decreases more in Shanghai, Zhejiang, and Anhui under the general and enhanced water conservation scenario. The increase in water footprint in Jiangsu under the enhanced scenario is smaller than that of the general water conservation scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regulating the number of breeding sows (NBS) is crucial for pork supply–demand balance. Current forecasting methods for NBS fail to consider the principle of pig's months of age (MOA) transfer and the impact of factors like diseases and policies on NBS fluctuations, leading to unsatisfactory accuracy. To bridge the research gap, a two-part forecasting model for the NBS was developed. In the first part, a recurrence forecasting model was established according to the growth characteristics of pigs and the principle of pig's MOA transfer. In the second part, the random disturbance term was introduced to consider the influence of plague, policy and other factors on the NBS, and a forecasting method for random disturbance term based on Improved Flower Pollination Algorithm-Back Propagation Neural Network (IFPA-BPNN) was given. Subsequently, the proposed IFA and other newer optimization algorithms were evaluated on CEC 2017 test suite to verify the effectiveness and superiority of IFA. Lastly, the proposed model was employed to forecast the NBS in Heilongjiang Province and Anhui Province of China from 2009 to 2021. Compared to other time series forecasting models, the proposed model showed superior accuracy, confirming its scientific and effective nature. Relevant managerial insights were provided at the end of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural hazards are considered to have a strong link with climate change and human activities. With the rapid advancements in remote sensing technology, real-time monitoring and high-resolution remote-sensing images have become increasingly available, which provide precise details about the Earth's surface and enable prompt updates to support risk identification and management. This paper proposes a new network framework with Transformer architecture and a Residual network for detecting the changes in high-resolution remote-sensing images. The proposed model is trained using remote-sensing images from Shandong and Anhui Provinces of China in 2021 and 2022 while one district in 2023 is used to test the prediction accuracy. The performance of the proposed model is evaluated by using five matrices and further compared to both convention-based and attention-based models. The results demonstrated that the proposed structure integrates the great capability of conventional neural networks for image feature extraction with the ability to obtain global context from the attention mechanism, resulting in significant improvements in balancing positive sample identification while avoiding false positives in complex image change detection. Additionally, a toolkit supporting image preprocessing is developed for practical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) has become the primary remote sensing detection method for monitoring significant surface subsidence and deformation caused by underground coal mining. Time Series InSAR has been intensively researched in mining-caused deformation monitoring for its ability to provide surface deformation time series, with Small Baseline Subset InSAR (SBAS-InSAR) and Permanent Scatter InSAR (PS-InSAR) being two classical methods. To obtain the incline and curvature in mining areas and assess the building damage, this paper exploits the SBAS-InSAR and PS-InSAR techniques to estimate surface incline and curvature, following the principle of directional derivatives. The surface beneath the villages and the industrial square near the 7221 Grout-filled working face in the Huaibei mining area of Anhui Province, China, was analyzed. The estimated surface incline and curvature with SBAS-InSAR were within the threshold values specified for Class I damage, while PS-InSAR showed <1% of measurements that exceeded this threshold. This paper provides a method for monitoring the surface deformation beneath the buildings in the mine area. Meanwhile, the dynamic analysis of the damaged buildings provides a basis for determining the influence range with grout-filled working faces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To further quantitatively assess the water resources carrying capacity (WRCC) system and analyze and identify the regional water resources carrying state and the physical mechanism of the state change, WRCC and obstacle factor diagnosis were carried out. In this paper, we proposed the mobility matrix to determine the connection number components, considered the dynamic attributes of the difference degree coefficient, and calculated it using the semi-partial subtraction set pair potential and triangular fuzzy number, so as to construct the quantitative diagnosis method of regional WRCC obstacle factors based on the connection number and TOPSIS. The results applied to six cities in the Huaibei Plain showed that the WRCC fluctuated around grade 2 and was in a poor state, which was mainly due to the insufficient support force; the water resources carrying state of the six cities gradually improved from 2011 to 2018, but the state became worse in 2019, which was related to the low precipitation in that year, the reduction in water resources, and the high degree of water resource utilization. The WRCC of Fuyang and Huainan was worse than that of the other four cities; over the 9 years, the average grades of Fuyang and Huainan were 2.26 and 2.43, while those of Huainan, Bozhou, Suzhou, and Bengbu were 2.19, 2.12, 2.05, and 2.05, respectively. The key obstacles limiting the improvement in the WRCC of the Huaibei Plain were per capita water resources, annual water production modulus, per capita water supply, vegetation coverage ratio, utilization ratio of water resources, water consumption per 104 yuan value-added by industry, and population density. In time, the key obstacle factors in neighboring years generally tended to have similarity, and conversely appeared as a difference; in space, neighboring regions showed similarity and conversely presented as a difference. The results of this study can offer technical support and a decision-making basis for water resources management in the Huaibei Plain. The method constructed in this paper is extremely interpretive, easy to calculate, highly sensitive, and reliable in application results, which opens up a new perspective for the rational determination of the connection number and the difference degree coefficient and provides a new intelligent way to determine the state of a complex set pair system and its causal mechanism analysis and diagnosis of obstacle factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtual water exerts an essential effect on water resources, yet such effect is rarely considered in current studies on water rights allocation in transboundary rivers. Hence, this paper ran a case study on Taihu Lake Basin, collecting data from 2017 to make clear the physical water rights of four regions—Jiangsu Province, Zhejiang Province, Anhui Province, and Shanghai City—in the Basin. After that, the multiregional input–output (MRIO) approach was utilized to measure the trade in value-added (TiVA) transfer and virtual water transfer (VWT) and construct an inequality index of VWT (VWI). Next, water efficiency coefficient was employed to convert the VWT into riparian level. Finally, VWT and VWI were incorporated into the water rights allocation model to form up a water rights allocation scheme for Taihu Lake Basin. Results showed: (1) Jiangsu enjoys the most allocated physical water rights, followed by Zhejiang, and Anhui ranks the lowest; (2) Anhui and Jiangsu are net virtual water exporters (2.259 billion m3 and 1.78 billion m3, respectively), while Zhejiang and Shanghai are net importers (2.344 billion m3 and 1.695 billion m3, respectively); (3) Anhui suffers the most inequality—0.4401—followed by 0.5076 of Jiangsu, while Zhejiang has the most equal environment—0.7012; (4) after the inclusion of virtual water, the quantity of water rights allocation changes, whereas Anhui experiences the largest growth—144 million m3—due to the dual effects from the highest VWT and inequality. In conclusion, the effect of virtual water is indispensable, so VWT and VWI should both be considered in the physical water rights allocation of transboundary rivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vegetation phenology and its spatiotemporal driving factors are essential to reflect global climate change, the surface carbon cycle and regional ecology, and further quantitative studies on spatiotemporal heterogeneity and its two-way driving are needed. Based on MODIS phenology, meteorology, land cover and other data from 2001 to 2019, this paper analyzes the phenology change characteristics of the Yangtze River Delta from three dimensions: time, plane space and elevation. Then, the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of phenology and its driving factors are explored with random forest and geographic detector methods. The results show that (1) the advance of start of season (SOS) is insignificant—with 0.17 days per year; the end of season (EOS) shows a significant delay—0.48 days per year. The preseason temperature has a greater contribution to SOS, while preseason precipitation is main factor in determining EOS. (2) Spatial differences of the phenological index do not strictly obey the change rules of latitude at a provincial scale. The SOS of Jiangsu and Anhui is earlier than that of Zhejiang and Shanghai, and EOS shows an obvious double-clustering phenomenon. In addition, a divergent response of EOS with elevation grades is found; the most significant changes are observed at grades below 100 m. (3) Land cover (LC) type is a major factor of the spatial heterogeneity of phenology, and its change may also be one of the insignificant factors driving the interannual change of phenology. Furthermore, nighttime land surface temperature (NLST) has a relatively larger contribution to the spatial heterogeneity in non-core urban areas, but population density (PD) contributes little. These findings could provide a new perspective on phenology and its complex interactions between natural or anthropogenic factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atmospheric resources provide important support for human economic and social systems through their unique ecosystem service functions. Implementing the off-office auditing of atmospheric resources for leading cadres holds great strategic significance for fundamentally solve air pollution problems. Exploring the compilation of an atmospheric resource balance sheet is a necessary pre-step in the implementation of outgoing audits. In this paper, atmospheric resources are innovatively divided into atmospheric capacity resources and atmospheric quality resources from the perspective of the ecosystem service functions of atmospheric resources. The value of atmospheric resource assets is calculated by combining the environmental capacity value method and the environmental loss evaluation method. This study evaluates atmospheric ecological achievements based on the atmospheric resources balance sheet and related accounts as the data carrier and opens up the key "blocking point" of the off-office auditing of atmospheric resources. This paper takes Anhui Province as an example and applies the accounting results of the prepared atmospheric resource balance sheet to evaluate the atmospheric resource ecological achievements of leading cadres from 2016 to 2020. The results clearly reflect the ecological achievements and shortcomings of local leading cadres during their tenure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a transmission line is covered by ice in winter, ice-shedding and vibration occurs under special meteorological and external dynamic conditions, which leads to intense transmission line shaking. Transmission line ice-shedding and vibration often cause line flashover trips and outages. In January 2018, three 500 kV transmission lines, namely, the 500 kV Guanli line, the 500 kV Dushan line, and the 500 kV Guanqiao line, tripped and cut off due to ice-shedding and vibration in Anhui province, seriously threatening the safe operation of a large power grid. Current studies mainly focus on analyzing the influence factors and characteristics of line ice-shedding and investigating suppression measures, but they only analyze the correlation between each influencing factor and icing or shedding, and do not consider the coupling effects between multiple factors. In this paper, the key influencing factors and the probability distribution of transmission line ice-shedding were analyzed, and a multiple-factor coupling fault probability calculation model of line ice-shedding based on Copula function was proposed. The fault probability was calculated directly by considering multiple influence factors at the same time, which effectively overcame the error caused by multi-factor transformation in fuzzy membership degree and other methods. It provided an important decision-making basis for preventing and controlling transmission line ice-shedding faults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper used the micro panel data from 2016 to 2019 of 2031 registered poor households in B Town, W County, Lu'an City of Anhui Province in China to analyze the diversified patterns and poverty alleviation effect of paired assistance based on the PSM-DID model. The empirical results show that paired assistance provided by social forces can significantly contribute to the poverty alleviation of poor households, promoting the poverty alleviation rate by 7.8%, which can be concluded through sample matching and control of relevant variables. Furthermore, based on the subsample of poor households with social assistance, we found that external social assistance subject to paired assistance can significantly improve the poverty alleviation rate of poor households by 14.26%, mainly hung on their economic base and strength of poverty alleviation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic put forward a new test for an economic resilience study. Its long-term and diffusive spatiotemporal characteristics suggest that we need to pay attention to the resilience and spatial heterogeneity of cities over a longer period. This paper applied SARIMA and the performance curve to measure the economic resilience of each city under the pandemic, and explored its influencing factors and spatial heterogeneity using a geodetector and geographically weighted regression model. The results show that: (1) From 2020 to 2022, the economic resilience in the Yangtze River Delta presented a downward to upward to slightly downward trend. High-resilience cities were concentrated in southern Jiangsu, while vulnerable cities were primarily located in western Anhui. The performance of regional core cities was not as strong as in previous research focusing on long-term economic resilience. (2) Fixed-asset investment, related variety, labor supply level, foreign trade dependence, and innovation level were the main influencing factors, on average. The effects of these factors had spatial heterogeneity related to the regional endowment and development quality. The findings suggest that the specificity of public health risks and the lack of coping experience may lead to a general failure of economic resilience. Identifying key factors and current weaknesses in each region can make resilience improvement strategies more targeted and effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main challenge in protecting ecosystems and improving the supply of ecosystem services is to quantify the ecological services value (ESV). However, the detailed spatiotemporal changes, sensitivity, spatial autocorrelation, and driving mechanisms of ESV are not clear in rapidly developing regions, particularly subsidence, floods, landslides, and the rapid urban development of Anhui province, China. In this paper, the ecological service value of Anhui Province in the past 30 years was calculated using the improved equivalent factor assessment method from satellite remote sensing such as Landsat. The spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of ESV were analyzed and the driving mechanism of ESV changes was studied using Geodetector. Finally, The GeoSOS-FLUS model was selected to predict the ecosystem service value until 2030 with three scenarios: business as usual (BAU), ecological protection (EP), and cultivated land protection (CLP). The main results were obtained: (1) the ESV in Anhui Province continued to decrease by 2.045 billion yuan (−6.03%) from 1990 to 2020. The top two contributors were the forest land, followed by water area. (2) The global Moran's I of ESV at the landform subdivision, county, town, and grid scales in Anhui Province were −0.157, 0.321, 0.357 and 0.759, respectively. (3) The order of influence degree of driving factors was: precipitation (F4), distance to intercity road (F9), net primary productivity, NPP (F6), distance to urban road (F8), population (F13), temperature (F5), aspect (F3), distance to settlement (F11), slope (F2), elevation (F1), GDP (F14), distance to water (F12), distance to railway (F10), and soil erosion (F7). (4) In 2030, the simulated ESV under the three scenarios will decrease to varying degrees. Compared with 2020, the ESV of the three scenarios will decrease successively as follows: BAU (−1.358 billion yuan), EP (−0.248 billion yuan), and CLP (−1.139 billion yuan). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The histopathological image classification method, based on deep learning, can be used to assist pathologists in cancer recognition in colon histopathology. The popularization of automatic and accurate histopathological image classification methods in this way is of great significance. However, smaller medical institutions with limited medical resources may lack colon histopathology image training sets with reliable labeled information; thus they may be unable to meet the needs of deep learning for many labeled training samples. Therefore, in this paper, the colon histopathological image set with rich label information from a certain medical institution is taken as the source domain; the colon histopathological image set from a smaller medical institution with limited medical resources is taken as the target domain. Considering the potential differences between histopathological images obtained by different institutions, this paper proposes a classification learning framework, namely unsupervised domain adaptation with local structure preservation for colon histopathological image classification, which can learn an adaptive classifier by performing distribution alignment and preserving intra-domain local structure to predict the labels of the colon histopathological images from institutions with lower medical resources. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed framework shows significant improvement in accuracy and specificity of colon histopathological images without reliable labeled information compared to models without unsupervised domain adaptation. Specifically, in an affiliated hospital in Fuyang City, Anhui Province, the classification accuracy of benign and malignant colon histopathological images reaches 96.21%. The results of comparative experiments also show promising classification performance of our method in comparison with other unsupervised domain adaptation methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the integration of biotechnology and information technology within the pharmaceutical industry, developing a multidimensional digital health framework tailored for this sector. Utilizing the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) research model, we design a health service platform that amalgamates biotechnology, information technology, and digital technology to enhance the capacity building of pharmaceutical associations in Anhui Province. This platform facilitates the efficient collection, analysis, and application of biological data, enabling precise health management services tailored to the needs of the pharmaceutical industry. The architecture of this information system is crafted to cater to the digital health requirements of the pharmaceutical industry, focusing on improving performance and user satisfaction within industry associations. Experimental validation of the platform reveals an average response time of 145.125ms, ensuring rapid user feedback. The platform achieves a satisfaction rate of 98.3% regarding the richness of health concept knowledge, with high satisfaction rates across other evaluative metrics as well. The results confirm that the multidimensional digital health service platform is effectively applicable to the pharmaceutical sector within Anhui's industry associations. It demonstrates significant potential to support the development of personnel capacities within member enterprises, proving its value in fostering a more informed and capable pharmaceutical industry workforce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficiently obtaining tobacco planting area is significant for rationally allocating tobacco resources and realizing the balance between supply and demand. However, tobacco fields are characterized by fragmentation in hilly areas, which brings various challenges to extracting the tobacco planting area. A 16-square-kilometre tobacco planting region in Xuancheng City, Anhui Province, China, was selected as the study area in this paper. First, the single-temporal full-feature sets (STFFS), a time-series full-feature set (TFFS) and a time-series optimal-feature set (TOFS) were constructed from multi-period Sentinel-2 images, respectively. Then, we applied Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Neural Network Classification (NNC) and Maximum Likelihood Classification (MLC) to classify the feature sets and compare the classification accuracy. The experimental results demonstrate that: (1) The best growth stage of tobacco remote sensing recognition is the mulching film phase of the spherical plant stage (ST1 period). (2) The classification accuracy indicates that TOFS outperforms the STFFS. (3) TOFS can still maintain the same classification accuracy as TFFS with fewer feature dimensions. (4) The RF classifier has great stability and robustness, which achieve an overall accuracy (OA) of 90.65%, 93.50%, and 93.09% based on the feature sets of ST1 period, TFFS, and TOFS, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, Chinese villages are grappling with the issue of regional value collapse within the long-standing 'urban-rural dual system' strategy. Characteristic villages, as integral components of the urban–rural hierarchical spatial system and pivotal agents in rural development, wield significant influence in addressing China's rural crises. The construction practice of characteristic villages showcases the cognitive evolution of 'element-industry-function-type'. Within the value perception of characteristic villages, these practices reflect fundamental orientations in the interaction between humans and land, emphasizing the symbiotic relationship between production, life, and ecology. In alignment with this value perception, and drawing upon the existing studies on the classification of characteristic village types in Jixi County, this paper establishes a comprehensive type knowledge graph of characteristic villages. The framework of this graph's expression revolves around 'spatial elements-spatial combination-spatial organization'. This graph delineates a knowledge progression encompassing 'information-knowledge-strategy', characterized by three levels: the factual knowledge graph, conceptual knowledge graph and regular knowledge graph. The type knowledge graph systematically accumulates insights derived from the spatiotemporal transmission path of the village spatial structure. It formulates a structured progression of knowledge as follows: cognition of the village entity information → analysis of the village landscape structure → examination of the village social relationships. This constructed graph translates type-data information into spatial strategy knowledge, serving as a pivotal process in amalgamating characteristic village spatial data with semantic networks, particularly in expressing authenticity inspection and gene transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Coal Science & Technology (0253-2336) is the property of Coal Science & Technology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Because of severe water scarcity, it is crucial to quantify water use in China's water-scarce regions and to analyze the factors driving its use. In this paper, we analyze the driving factors behind the water footprint from 2007 to 2017 in the mildly water-scarce region of Anhui Province, using regional input–output models and structural decomposition analysis. The results show the following: (1) Although the average virtual water intensity of Anhui Province decreased by 52.58% from 2007 to 2017, the water-use efficiency was still low; (2) During the study period, the total water footprint of Anhui Province increased by 25.06%, with an obvious upward trend; (3) From 2012 to 2017, the net export volume of virtual water in Anhui Province was positive, and the flow volume decreased by 78.87%; (4) Technological progress contributed the most to reducing the water footprint of Anhui Province, followed by the increased counter-urbanization rate as the second-largest driving force. The expansion of the scale effect, including the size of the economy and the size of the population, was the main negative driving force for the increase in Anhui's water footprint. However, the proportion of economic scale in the water footprint drivers gradually decreased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, taking the jurisdiction of Anhui Province as the research area, a vulnerability assessment index system of human settlements was constructed from "exposure–sensitivity–coping ability". Based on the GIS spatial analysis method, the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics of human settlements in Anhui Province were analyzed. The influences of human factors and natural factors on the spatial differentiation of human settlement vulnerability were explored by using geographic detectors, and the driving mechanism of the evolution of human settlement vulnerability was analyzed. An analysis of the results showed the following: ① With a change in the time scale, the human settlement vulnerability index showed a trend of decreasing year by year, the exposure and sensitivity show a downward trend year by year in the three major subsystems, and the coping ability shows an upward trend year by year. ② The evolution of the vulnerability subsystems of exposure, sensitivity, and coping ability in human settlement environments showed the directions of "medium–high–low (M-H-L)" in the early stage, "low–high–medium (L-H-M)" in the middle stage, and "low–medium–high (L-M-H)" in the later stage. ③ The causes of high vulnerability were as follows: The leading factors in the early stage were natural factors, the leading factors in the middle period were natural and human factors, and the leading factors in the later stage were human factors. ④ One-factor and two-factor interactive detection using a geodetector showed that urbanization, industrialization, land use control, and per capita income levels have become key and "short-board" factors that control the vulnerability of human settlements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the characteristics of underdeveloped areas, this paper selects the panel data of 15 underdeveloped counties in Anhui Province from 2013 to 2019 and uses the panel threshold model to empirically analyze the sustainability of rural tourism development. The results show that: (1) Rural tourism development has a non-linear positive impact on poverty alleviation in underdeveloped areas and has a double threshold effect. (2) When the poverty rate is used to express the poverty level, it can be found that the development of rural tourism at a high level can significantly promote poverty alleviation. (3) When the number of poor people is used to express the poverty level, it can be found that the poverty reduction effect shows a marginal decreasing trend with the phased improvement of the development level of rural tourism. (4) The degree of government intervention, industrial structure, economic development, and fixed asset investment play a more significant role in poverty alleviation. Therefore, we believe that we need to actively promote rural tourism in underdeveloped areas, establish a mechanism for the distribution and sharing of rural tourism benefits, and form a long-term mechanism for rural tourism poverty reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban agglomerations are becoming an increasingly important factor in advancing regional development and reshaping a new pattern of regional competition. However, few studies are focused on the impact of expanding urban agglomerations on reducing carbon emissions and its possible mechanism. Based on 285 city-level panel data from 2006 to 2017, this paper uses a staggered Difference-in-Differences (DID) model to explore the reduction effect and its possible mechanism of sustainable regional development policy, characterized by urban agglomeration expansion policy in the Yangtze River Delta, on carbon emissions with policy shocks in 2010 and 2013. The results are as follows: (1) The urban agglomeration expansion policy shows a significant marginal contribution to the reduction of carbon emissions, especially for the later joined (new) cities, and the reduction effect is particularly significant in the first and third years after the expansion, indicating that there are significant short-term and long-term reduction effects of the expansion policy. (2) The heterogeneities of reduction effect among three provinces are significant. Zhejiang Province enjoys the largest proportion carbon emission reduction effect, followed by Anhui and Jiangsu provinces. To be specific, urban agglomeration expansion in Zhejiang Province reduced carbon emissions and carbon emissions intensity in the overall, incumbent cities and new cities, while it only increased the total carbon emissions of the incumbent cities in Jiangsu province. (3) The heterogeneities of reduction effect brought by 2010 and 2013 are also significant. The urban agglomeration expansion policy in 2010 reduced carbon emissions on the whole cities and the incumbent cities with later joined cities excluded, while it had a significant reduction effect on the total, incumbent cities, and the new cities in 2013. (4) There are two possible mechanisms of this reduction effect. One is the strengthening of economic ties and enhanced environmental synergy between governments, called the market integration mechanism, which only has a significant effect on carbon emission reduction in the incumbent cities. Another is through the upgrade of the structure of regional industries, which has a significant effect in both the incumbent and new cities. These findings suggest that when formulating urban agglomerations polices, governments must take into account the carbon emissions effect, and advance the upgrading of industrial structure in the urban agglomeration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tourism Tribune / Lvyou Xuekan is the property of Tourism Institute of Beijing Union University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper intends to clarify that the spatial and temporal evolutionary patterns of regional vegetation and their relationship with climate form a premise of ecological conservation and environmental governance, and play an important role in maintaining regional ecosystem balance and promoting sustainable development. Based on measured data collected from NDVI remote sensing products and meteorological stations, NDVI variation in Anhui Province from 2001 to 2019 was determined through trend analysis and measurement methods involving coefficient of variation and Hurst index; in addition, the response to climatic factors was also explored. It was concluded that, firstly, in terms of spatiotemporal analysis, the interannual variation of NDVI in Anhui Province showed an increasing trend with a rate of 0.024/10 a, while the monthly variation showed a weak bimodal pattern, with the highest value in August and the lowest value in January. Furthermore, NDVI in Anhui Province showed significant spatial heterogeneity, with high values concentrated in mountainous regions in southern Anhui and Dabie Mountain region, and low values concentrated in the hilly areas of Jianghuai and areas along the Yangtze River. At the same time, the overall spatial variation of NDVI showed an increasing trend, and the areas with extremely significant and significant improvement in vegetation coverage accounted for 54.69% of the total area of Anhui Province. Secondly, in terms of the analysis on variation characteristics, the variation of NDVI in Anhui Province was generally stable, with an average CV coefficient of variation of 0.089, which, however, was quite different in different regions; meanwhile, the future trend of NDVI variation in the study areas was mostly in a random manner. Thirdly, the response of NDVI in Anhui Province to climatic factors showed significant spatial heterogeneity. NDVI was found to be positively correlated with precipitation and negatively correlated with temperature; in general, the impact of precipitation on NDVI was greater than that of temperature. In the 19 years studied, NDVI in Anhui Province showed an increasing trend; and climate, topography and human activities led to heterogeneous spatial distribution of vegetation. Therefore, in the future, the evolutionary trend of vegetation will be relatively random, and NDVI will be more greatly affected by temperature, than by precipitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accuracy and integrity of structural deformation monitoring can be improved by the GNSS/accelerometer integrated system, and gross error detection is the key to further improving the reliability of GNSS/accelerometer monitoring. Traditional gross error detection methods assume that real-state information is known, and they need to establish state iterators, which leads to low computational efficiency. Meanwhile, in multi-sensor fusion, if the sampling rates are different, the change in the dimension of the observation matrix must be considered, and the calculation is complex. Based on state-domain consistency theory, this paper proposes the State-domain Robust Autonomous Integrity Monitoring by Extrapolation (SRAIME) method for identifying slow-growing gross errors for GNSS/accelerometer integrated deformation monitoring. Compared with the traditional gross error detection method, the proposed method constructs state test statistics based on the state estimated value and the state predicted value, and it directly performs gross error identification in the state domain. This paper deduces the feasibility of the proposed method theoretically and verifies that the proposed method does not need to consider the dimension change of the observation matrix in gross error detection. Meanwhile, in the excitation deformation experiments of the Suntuan River Bridge in Anhui and the Wilford Bridge in the United Kingdom, the slow gradient of the slope was added to the measurement domain, and the traditional AIME method and the method proposed in this paper were adopted for the gross error identification of the GNSS/accelerometer fusion process. The results demonstrate that both methods can effectively detect gross errors, but the proposed method does not need to consider the dimensional change in the observation matrix during the fusion process, which has better applicability to GNSS/accelerometer integrated deformation monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To boost the high-quality integrated development in late-developing regions, an examination of the temporal and spatial patterns of urban growth and the primary drivers of urbanization in these regions is crucial. An exemplar case study of Anhui Province is presented in this research. The extraction of urban built-up areas in Anhui Province was conducted using nighttime light (NTL) data and urban statistical information. The study investigated the dynamic transformations and evolutionary features of urban expansion by utilizing measurement indexes for urban growth and center of gravity transfers. By employing gray relational analysis on economic, demographic, and other statistical data, the key influencers behind urban expansion in Anhui Province were scrutinized. The results revealed a steady annual increase in the urban built-up area of Anhui Province from 1996 to 2020. Furthermore, the shift of the urban built-up area's center of gravity in Anhui Province transitioned toward the east–south direction between 1996 and 2008, but gradually shifted toward the west–north direction thereafter. These alterations were mainly driven by factors such as urbanization rate. This study is expected to help decision makers take appropriate countermeasures to achieve high-quality regional development. Practical Applications: Understanding the spatiotemporal dynamics and influencers of urban expansion is vital for fostering sustainable urban development, ecological conservation, and enhancing residents' quality of life. The dynamics and influencers of urban expansion vary across cities and different stages of urban development. This study aims to elucidate the dynamics of urban expansion in Anhui Province and identify the primary driving factors to assist urban policymakers and planners in making informed decisions regarding urban planning, land use, and ecological and environmental protection policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Banking is the key industry to guarantee the core leading role of finance in the process of economic development. It is important to study the bank efficiency and optimal allocation of bank's resources. The purpose of our paper is to study the optimal allocation of resources between the bank savings system and loan system under the premise of environmental heterogeneity. Design/methodology/approach: We use a two-stage meta-frontier Data Envelopment Analysis model to solve the relative efficiency of each city branch and use the multivariate statistical tools to analyze the empirical results. Findings: This paper measures the relative efficiency of 16 Bank Branches of a state-owned bank in Anhui province considering regional heterogeneity. Based on the optimal resource allocation, we get the two-stage operation performance of all banks under group-frontier and meta-frontier and analyze the impact of the technical differences between the branches. Originality/value: This study has a positive guiding significance for the banking industry to improve its operational efficiency in various business practices in the new era of big data. It will also provide practical suggestions and support for the government and relevant departments in the process of formulating macro-policies to ensure the healthy and stable development of the banking industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High cut-slopes are widespread in engineering constructions and often converted into landslides. Some extreme circumstances facilitate the landslide process, such as the weak bedding plane, rainfall, and faults. Therefore, this paper intends to offer insights into the influence of the weak bedding plane, extreme rainfall as well as faults on the landslide process of the high cut-slope. In this paper, the Anling landslide in Anhui Province, China, is selected as an example. Geological surveys, displacement monitoring, data analysis, as well as numerical simulation are carried out. The entire excavation construction and landslide deformation process are simulated to reveal the formation mechanism of the landslide using the finite difference code, FLAC3D. The effects of the fault on the landslide and the effectiveness of adjusting protection measures by adding piles are investigated on the basis of the finite difference analysis. According to monitoring data and numerical simulation, the weak bedding plane and extreme rainfall are considered the main factors leading to the Anling landslide. Field investigation and numerical experiments indicate that the fault shall facilitate and accelerate the landslide process. The construction of piles in a suitable position for the landslide is a reasonable and economical measure to stabilize the landslide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]