Flood footprint assessment: Assessing external assistance' impact on post-disaster recovery.

Mitigating the risks posed by natural disasters has become a pressing public concern due to their increasingly frequent and intense occurrences, which threaten human lives and socio-economic development. External assistance (EA), as a common form of support for post-disaster reconstruction, has been recognized as significant in several studies. However, the lack of an assessment method has made it unclear to what extent economic recovery can be affected by EA.

Real-time optimized inverse kinematics of redundant robots under inequality constraints.

Inverse kinematics of redundant robots presents a challenging problem for real-time applications due to the lack of uniqueness of solution and the low computational efficiency caused by redundancy and hard limits. In this work, a general and efficient method for addressing the real-time optimized inverse kinematics of redundant robots is proposed, taking into account hard limits in joint and Cartesian space that can never be violated. The proposed method proceeds by using constrained linear programming instead of quadratic programming to solve the inverse kinematics problem.

The impact of latent policy synergy between cities on air pollution: An empirical analysis from China's 12,764 air policies.

Policy synergy plays a crucial role in managing regional air pollution. However, the current process of formulating collaborative policies often focuses too heavily on achieving optimal emission reduction outcomes, while neglecting the execution costs at the local level. This not only leads to a lack of coordination between existing governance measures and new policies but may also result in inefficient policy implementation and the wastage of administrative resources.

The synergistic impact of incentive and regulatory environmental policies on firms' environmental performance.

The imperative to enhance corporate environmental performance is not only pivotal for a company's growth but also crucial for fulfilling societal responsibilities and protecting global environmental interests. Recognizing the inadequacies of standalone environmental policies, our study delves into the synergistic effects of incentive-based and regulatory approaches on the environmental performance of listed firms in China. We meticulously examine the interplay between environmental punishment and subsidies over the period of 2015-2019.

Generating synthetic population for simulating the spatiotemporal dynamics of epidemics.

Agent-based models have gained traction in exploring the intricate processes governing the spread of infectious diseases, particularly due to their proficiency in capturing nonlinear interaction dynamics. The fidelity of agent-based models in replicating real-world epidemic scenarios hinges on the accurate portrayal of both population-wide and individual-level interactions. In situations where comprehensive population data are lacking, synthetic populations serve as a vital input to agent-based models, approximating real-world demographic structures.

Impacts of poverty eradication on carbon neutrality in China.

China is facing challenges to tackle the threat of climate change while reducing social inequality. Poverty eradication requires improvement in the living conditions of low-income households, which leads in turn to higher carbon footprints and may undermine the efforts of climate change mitigation. Previous studies have assessed the climate impacts of poverty eradication, but few have quantified how the additional carbon emissions of poverty eradication are shared at the subnational level in China and the impact on China's climate targets.

Assessing Transboundary Impacts of Energy-Driven Water Footprint on Scarce Water Resources in China: Catchments under Stress and Mitigation Options.

The energy supply chains operating beyond a region's jurisdiction can exert pressure on the availability of water resources in the local area. In China, however, there is a lack of transboundary assessments that investigate the effects of energy consumption on water stress within and across river basins. In this study, we therefore investigate transboundary impacts on scarce water resources that are induced by energy demands (i.

Air pollution control or economic development? Empirical evidence from enterprises with production restrictions.

Production restriction is an environmental regulation adopted in China to curb the air pollution of industrial enterprises. Frequent production restrictions may cause economic losses for enterprises and further hinder their green transformation. Polluting enterprises are faced with the dilemma of choosing environmental protection or economic development.

Relocating Industrial Plants Delivers Win-Win Emission Reduction Benefits to Origin and Destination Regions.

Relocating pollution-intensive factories is one of the most effective measures to meet mandatory environmental regulations in developed cities while simultaneously imposing environmental pressure on the receiving cities. Existing studies often assume that relocated plants produce the same or higher emissions when relocated. However, the current pollution mitigation policies enforce even higher emission standards in the destination after plant relocation.

Green recovery or pollution rebound? Evidence from air pollution of China in the post-COVID-19 era.

Under the strict control measures, China has achieved phased victory in combating with the COVID-19, production activities have gradually returned to normal. This paper examined whether air pollution was rebounded or realized green recovery in the post-COVID-19 era with a dataset of weather normalized pollutant concentrations using difference-in-differences models. Results showed that air pollution experienced a significant decline due to the wide range of control measures.

Air Pollutant Emission Inventory of Waste-to-Energy Plants in China and Prediction by the Artificial Neural Network Approach.

The waste-to-energy (WTE) plant has been deployed in 205 cities in China. However, it always faces public resistance to be built because of the great concerns on flue gas pollutants (FGPs). There are limited studies on the socioeconomic heterogeneity analysis and prediction models of WTE capacity/ FGP emission inventories (EIs) based on big data.

A Novel Four Genes of Prognostic Signature for Uveal Melanoma.

Autophagy and immunity play critical roles in various cancers, but the prognostic impact of autophagy and immunity for uveal melanoma (UM) remains lacking. Therefore, the RNA sequencing of data in the TCGA-UVM dataset was downloaded from UCSC Xena database. The prognostic autophagy- and immunity-related genes (AIRGs) were selected via univariate Cox regression.

Machine Learning Analysis of Immune Cells for Diagnosis and Prognosis of Cutaneous Melanoma.

Tumor infiltration, known to associate with various cancer initiations and progressions, is a promising therapeutic target for aggressive cutaneous melanoma. Then, the relative infiltration of 24 kinds of immune cells in melanoma was assessed by a single sample gene set enrichment analysis (ssGSEA) program from a public database. The multiple machine learning algorithms were applied to evaluate the efficiency of immune cells in diagnosing and predicting the prognosis of melanoma.

Does travel closer to TOD have lower CO emissions? Evidence from ride-hailing in Chengdu, China.

Despite contributions to reducing private car dependency and carbon emissions, impacts of transit-oriented development (TOD) on ride-hailing usage are largely overlooked in existing studies. Using massive ride-hailing trips data in Chengdu, the influence of subway proximity on vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT) and corresponding CO emissions of ride-hailing is examined at the disaggregated level. Similarly, moderated multiple regression is adopted to investigate the interaction effects of subway proximity at pick-up and drop-off on VKT of ride-hailing.

Effects of the joint prevention and control of atmospheric pollution policy on air pollutants-A quantitative analysis of Chinese policy texts.

Joint prevention and control of atmospheric pollution (JPCAP) policies play a vital role in alleviating regional pollution. Based on Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model, we construct two policy strength measures of effectiveness and number, and investigate the effects of policy strength on air pollutant emissions for four types of JPCAP policies. The results show that the effects of economic incentive policy tools and supporting policy tools on emission reduction deviate significantly from policy preferences.

Do environmental taxes reduce air pollution? Evidence from fossil-fuel power plants in China.

Taking environmental protection into consideration, China introduced the new Environmental Protection Tax Law in 2018, which levies taxes for pollutants with higher standards. The vast majority of existing studies have investigated the impacts of environmental taxes (ETs) at the city level or province level. In contrast, we estimate their effects on pollutant reductions for fossil-fuel power plants in 30 provinces in China.

Understanding the industrial NO and SO pollutant emissions in China from sector linkage perspective.

Since the most stringent-ever clean air policy was implemented in 2013 in China, main industrial air pollutant emissions have notably decreased. However, there are few studies on air pollutant emissions of industrial sectors driven by supply chain before and after implementing this policy. This paper attempts to provide a new perspective from industrial linkage to understand the emission of air pollutants.

Spatial spillover effects of environmental regulations on air pollution: Evidence from urban agglomerations in China.

Environmental regulations affects the environmental quality of not only local areas but also surrounding regions. It remains unknown whether the effect of environmental regulations on the surrounding regions is free riding or pollution shelter. Based on the data from 2006 to 2018, the spatial correlation of PM in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH), Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and Pearl River Delta (PRD) urban agglomerations in China was examined in this study.

Re-examining the embodied air pollutants in Chinese exports.

China is the world's largest exporter and may release lots of air pollutants to produce exported commodities due to taking coal as its main source of energy. Processing exports play a significant role in Chinese exports, yet previous studies of embodied air pollutants in Chinese exports failed to distinguish processing exports from normal exports. This paper investigates the effect of trade heterogeneity on the estimation of embodied emissions by re-examining the embodied air pollutants in Chinese exports based on an extended non-competitive input-output table that distinguishes processing from normal exports.

Can virtual water trade save water resources?

At times, certain areas of China suffering from water shortages. While China's government is spurring innovation and infrastructure to help head off such problems, it may be that some water conservation could help as well. It is well-known that water is embodied in traded goods-so called "virtual water trade" (VWT).

A Review on Medical Image Registration as an Optimization Problem.

Objective: In the course of clinical treatment, several medical media are required by a phy-sician in order to provide accurate and complete information about a patient. Medical image registra-tion techniques can provide a richer diagnosis and treatment information to doctors and to provide a comprehensive reference source for the researchers involved in image registration as an optimization problem.

Methods: The essence of image registration is associating two or more different images spatial asso-ciation, and getting the translation of their spatial relationship.

Effect of Limbal relaxing incisions during implantable collamer lens surgery.

Background: The limbal relaxing incisions (LRIs) technique is a safe and an inexpensive procedure, which is simple for experts to perform. It can effectively reduce astigmatism and result in a rapid visual rehabilitation. But there are few reports about reducing pre-existing corneal astigmatism by LRI in ICL surgery.

Groundwater remediation from the past to the future: A bibliometric analysis.

Groundwater is an important component of terrestrial ecosystems and plays a role in geochemical cycling. Groundwater is also used for agricultural irrigation and for the domestic supply of drinking water in most nations. However, groundwater contamination has led to many research efforts on groundwater remediation technologies and strategies.

Data fusion of multiple kinect sensors for a rehabilitation system.

Kinect-like depth sensors have been widely used in rehabilitation systems. However, single depth sensor processes limb-blocking, data loss or data error poorly, making it less reliable. This paper focus on using two Kinect sensors and data fusion method to solve these problems.