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Human settlements are areas closely related to human production and life, and their quality directly affects people's physical health and quality of life. However, with air pollution continuing to worsen, people are becoming increasingly concerned about the exposure to air pollution in their residential regions. In addition, many studies ignore the long-term impact of environmental factors on the evolution of human settlement quality (HSQ). This study aims to assess the HSQ in the Mid-Spine Belt of Beautiful China (MSBBC) from 2000 to 2020 and to analyze the changes in its driving forces during different time periods. We divided the HSQ into five dimensions: terrain conditions, climate conditions, hydrological conditions, ground cover conditions, and air pollution exposure. The Entropy-TOPSIS and grey relational degree model were used to assess the HSQ in the MSBBC. To analyze the driving forces of HSQ, the optimal-parameters-based geographic detector model was utilized. The results show the following: (1) Within the study area, the degree of the population exposure risk to PM2.5 and its change trend were significantly different on both sides of the Hu Line, with the east showing higher levels than the west. (2) The HSQ of the MSBBC decreased from east to west. Moreover, the HSQ in the metropolitan area of the urban agglomeration was characterized from low to high. The HSQ underwent three phases, consisting of an increase (2000–2010), a decrease (2010–2015), and an increase again (2015–2020). (3) Among the driving factors, the impact of PM2.5 on the HSQ weakened year by year. The driving force of meteorological parameters on the HSQ was the strongest. Furthermore, the interactions of each factor could enhance the HSQ. The results of this study not only provide a strong reference for creating livable areas and promoting sustainability in the MSBBC but also contribute to addressing challenges such as pollution and climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remote sensing and deep learning are being widely combined in tasks such as urban planning and disaster prevention. However, due to interference occasioned by density, overlap, and coverage, the tiny object detection in remote sensing images has always been a difficult problem. Therefore, we propose a novel TO–YOLOX(Tiny Object–You Only Look Once) model. TO–YOLOX possesses a MiSo(Multiple-in-Single-out) feature fusion structure, which exhibits a spatial-shift structure, and the model balances positive and negative samples and enhances the information interaction pertaining to the local patch of remote sensing images. TO–YOLOX utilizes an adaptive IOU-T (Intersection Over Uni-Tiny) loss to enhance the localization accuracy of tiny objects, and it applies attention mechanism Group-CBAM (group-convolutional block attention module) to enhance the perception of tiny objects in remote sensing images. To verify the effectiveness and efficiency of TO–YOLOX, we utilized three aerial-photography tiny object detection datasets, namely VisDrone2021, Tiny Person, and DOTA–HBB, and the following mean average precision (mAP) values were recorded, respectively: 45.31% (+10.03%), 28.9% (+9.36%), and 63.02% (+9.62%). With respect to recognizing tiny objects, TO–YOLOX exhibits a stronger ability compared with Faster R-CNN, RetinaNet, YOLOv5, YOLOv6, YOLOv7, and YOLOX, and the proposed model exhibits fast computation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How to develop the west of China and how to balance the development between the east and the west of China is a longstanding topic. More than 80 years ago, Mr. Hu Huanyong researched population distribution and agricultural regional development based on China's traditional agriculture and the sharp contradiction between 450 million people and arable land at that time. Today, what we call the development of the west is by no means the issue of the traditional agricultural planting industry, but the issue of how to put forward new business forms and new high-quality developments that are suitable to the western region under the national conditions of the new era. This study combines Hu Huanyong Line with Mid-Spine Belt of Beautiful China (MSBBC) and expounds different themes under different times background. Hu Huanyong Line is a reflection of the characteristics of the sudden change of population density dividing line in modern China as a traditional agricultural country. MSBBC is the strategic need of the new land space planning with high-quality development in the contemporary new era, and is the strategic move to reduce the imbalance of development between the east half and the west half. The study puts forward the following suggestions: (1) Taking the MSBBC as the pioneer and demonstration belt of new infrastructure construction; (2) Taking the MSBBC as an important part of the unified and differentiated strategic planning for constructing a new developing pattern; (3) Building the MSBBC into a hub channel of internal and external circulation; (4) Building the MSBBC into an ecological security barrier belt, a national defense security belt, and a new livable living area; (5) Constructing the MSBBC into a new type of urbanization development mode; (6) Connecting the development strategy of the MSBBC with other national strategies to help realize the dream of Chinese rejuvenation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]