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Female athletes' participation in the Olympic Games has increased over the years, however, they are still underrepresented or not covered in global media. Prior literature about gender studies and sport reveals that female athletes were often described through stereotypes, or other linguistic features minimizing their achievements, or focusing on their physical appearance rather than their sports abilities. The present study adopts textual analysis to examine how female athletes were represented during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games in two Italian leading newspapers. The findings show that there have been positive changes in the portrayal of women in sports, but this may be influenced by the increased nationalism during these mega events. The Italian media are more open to gender equality, and adopt different strategies to describe female athletes, nonetheless, some very limited negative cases are still found. The press tended to emphasize some main themes: female athletes as heroines of the nation, friendship, rivalries and conflicts, and athletes' private lives. This demonstrates that the Italian newspapers are now more focused on non-sports related stories, to make the articles more interesting in terms of entertainment and emotional stories, to attract more readership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of China's dual carbon target, Beijing, as the capital of China, should play an exemplary role in carbon emission reduction. On the premise of optimizing high-emission sectors such as coal and industry, Beijing is still a certain distance from the goal of carbon neutrality. Therefore, on the basis of Beijing's energy resource endowment, considering Beijing's economic development and carbon neutrality goals and scientifically and reasonably planning Beijing's carbon emission reduction path are important tasks. We construct an energy structure optimization model to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050. The model analysis concludes that the residents and transportation sectors will account for a large proportion of Beijing's total carbon emissions in the future. To achieve the goal of carbon neutrality, the electricity substitution of fossil energy and the high proportion of external power are two necessary measures, and the optimal path of carbon emission reduction is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The location of the homestay agglomeration is closely related to its proximity to the resources environment and the humanities and social environments. From the macroscopic and microscopic aspects, this study uses the analytic hierarchy process and the expert consultation method to construct a relatively comprehensive evaluation system including economic and environmental factors, tourism development factors, geographical environment factors, supporting facilities and operating conditions. The evaluation index system consists of 20 evaluation indexes and 35 evaluation factors. Taking the Baileqiao in Hangzhou and Qianjiadian Town in Beijing as examples, the evaluation indexes are verified and applied. The results show that the main factors affecting the location of the homestay agglomeration are the economic and environmental factors. The evaluation index system is composed of a target layer, a comprehensive evaluation layer, a factor evaluation layer and an index layer. The target layer takes reasonable location of the homestay agglomeration as the overall objective; the comprehensive evaluation layer includes economic and environmental factors (0.4396), tourism development (0.3039), geographic and environmental factors (0.1405), and supporting facilities (0.0545). The comprehensive evaluation scores of Baileqiao and Qianjiadian homestay agglomerations are 92.644 and 88.734, respectively, indicating that both are reasonable homestay sites. This study is helpful for promoting the understanding of the homestay agglomeration location selection and the development and construction of homestay agglomeration sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On November 28, 2013, Beijing’s carbon emissions trading opened on Beijing’s Environmental Exchange. As one of the pilot cities, Beijing has been pursuing low-carbon development strategies under state intervention and market regulation. This paper chooses the carbon market, a medium through which Beijing manages emission reduction, as the object of study. Firstly, we compare the basic construction circumstances of Beijing with other pilot cities. Then we qualitatively analyze the development of Beijing’s carbon market from the perspective of transaction status, execution of the contract, and improvement of the policies and regulations. Finally, we use the TOPSIS model to develop a comprehensive evaluation system of Beijing’s carbon market. It is used to quantitatively evaluate the operational performance and maturity of the mechanism. The results show that: Beijing’s carbon market has good comprehensive capabilities, ranking second place among seven pilot markets; but the maturity of Beijing’s carbon market is relatively poor for insufficient market liquidity; its operations are well managed, but economic efficiency still need to be improved; the depth of transaction and the effect of reduction in emissions make it meaningful. Therefore, in order to improve the construction of Beijing’s carbon market, measures should be taken as follows:(1) strengthening the quota management, and increasing carbon trading activity to avoid poor market liquidity; (2) accelerating emission reduction actions and encouraging technology innovation, such as: carrying out several policies and measures supporting new energy and energy saving & emission reduction, and increasing investment and subsidy in research and development for the technology innovation of firms etc.; (3) improving regulatory mechanism and enhancing the disclosure of carbon trading, such as: drawing lessons from the EU Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) about measuring, reporting and verification system (MRV). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon prices are low and fluctuate greatly since Chinese carbon emissions trading scheme pilots were operated. This paper discusses the price drivers in the pilots, using structural breaks test and autoregressive distributed lag model. The results indicate that oversupply of allowances, low auction prices and use of China certified emission reductions will cause remarkable decline on carbon prices; the expansion of carbon market and centralized trading will rise carbon prices. Oil prices are positively correlated with carbon prices, and coal prices are negatively related with carbon prices. Carbon-intensive product prices also affect carbon prices. Chemical prices are positively linked with carbon prices in Shenzhen, while negatively related with those in Beijing and Shanghai, for differences in sectoral coverage. Nonferrous prices have positive impacts on carbon prices in Beijing but negative impacts on those in Shenzhen, for differences in industrial structure. Financial markets and weather have limited impacts on carbon prices. Our results provide policy implications for the development of pilots and the national carbon market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]