The 2023 report of the synergetic roadmap on carbon neutrality and clean air for China: Carbon reduction, pollution mitigation, greening, and growth.

The response to climate change and air pollution control demonstrates strong synergy across scientific mechanisms, targets, strategies, and governance systems. This report, based on a monitoring indicator system for coordinated governance of air pollution and climate change, employs an interdisciplinary approach combining natural and social sciences. It establishes 20 indicators across five key areas: air pollution and climate change, governance systems and practices, structural transformation and technologies, atmospheric components and emission reduction pathways, and health impacts and co-benefits.

An inter-regional input-output table series of China from 1987-2017 with integrated carbon emission data.

Inter-regional input-output (IRIO) tables are essential for socioeconomic and environmental analysis. This paper compiled a continuous time series of Chinese IRIO tables with a detailed regional and sectoral classification, covering a longer period from 1987 to 2017 than existing Chinese IRIO tables. Additionally, we integrated the China provincial CO emission inventory data (1987-2017) to analyze trends and identify the main driving factors behind regional economic linkages and carbon emissions changes.

Climate change challenges coastal blue carbon restoration in China.

Coastal blue carbon has become an emerging natural climate solution (NCS) that offers significant potential for mitigating global climate change while providing various ecosystem services. However, blue carbon ecosystems, including mangroves, tidal salt marshes, and seagrass meadows, are susceptible to the impacts of climate change, which in turn affects their potential to mitigate climate change. In this study, we employed the MaxEnt to evaluate the potential suitable areas and carbon sink potential of China's Coastal blue carbon ecosystem under three climate scenarios for the present and projected conditio ns in 2050.

Monetizing shipping emission reduction: Environmental benefit analysis of domestic emission control areas policy 2.0 in China.

Shipping is a major contributor to anthropogenic emissions, exerting complex effects on both the environment and climate. To improve the air quality of coastal areas, China adopted an upgraded policy on domestic emission control areas (DECA 2.0) for shipping in December 2018, which expanded the geographical scope of ECAs from three designated heavy-traffic coastal regions to the entire 12 nautical mile-territorial seas and also introduced more stringent ship emission requirements.

Embodied CO emissions of equity portfolios for Chinese asset managers.

The 2015 Paris Agreement has set out the climate change target of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C, which poses a serious challenge to countries to reduce emissions. As the world's largest carbon emitter, promoting the realization of the "dual-carbon" goal is the key to realizing China's green transformation and high-quality development.

A regional cooperative reduction game model for air pollution control in North China.

Due to variations in economic scale, economic structure, and technological advancement across different Chinese provinces and cities, the cost of air pollution reduction differs significantly. Therefore, the total reduction cost can be decreased by capitalizing on these regional discrepancies in reduction cost to carry out cooperative emission reduction. In this paper, taking NO reduction in North China as an example, a regional cooperative reduction game (CRG) model was constructed to minimize the total cost of emission reduction while achieving future emission reduction targets.

Leveraging opportunity of low carbon transition by super-emitter cities in China.

Chinese cities are core in the national carbon mitigation and largely affect global decarbonisation initiatives, yet disparities between cities challenge country-wide progress. Low-carbon transition should preferably lead to a convergence of both equity and mitigation targets among cities. Inter-city supply chains that link the production and consumption of cities are a factor in shaping inequality and mitigation but less considered aggregately.

Revealing Inter-regional Environmental Inequities Hidden in China's Energy Transition.

Energy transition is an important way to control air pollution, but it may conflict with the economic goal of alleviating regional inequality due to its inherently different cost burdens. As one of the effective measures of energy transition, this paper takes small coal-fired boiler (SCB) upgrading as an example to explore the regional mismatch between upgrading costs and health benefits. Here, we construct a boiler-level inventory of SCB upgrades for the North China Plain (NCP) during 2013-2017 and propose an integrated modeling framework to quantify the spatial contribution of economic costs and health benefits associated with SCB upgrading.

The narrowing gap in developed and developing country emission intensities reduces global trade's carbon leakage.

International trade affects CO emissions by redistributing production activities to places where the emission intensities are different from the place of consumption. This study focuses on the net emission change as the result of the narrowing gap in emission intensities between the exporter and importer. Here we show that the relocation of production activities from the global North (developed countries) to the global South (developing countries) in the early 2000s leads to an increase in global emissions due to the higher emission intensities in China and India.

Value chain carbon footprints of Chinese listed companies.

Measuring the value chain carbon footprints of listed companies is essential for cumulative climate actions and climate-efficient capital allocation. We trace the carbon emissions embodied in the value chains of Chinese listed companies and find that there is an increasing trend in terms of the carbon footprints of listed companies over the period 2010-2019. In 2019, the direct emissions from these companies reached 1.

Consumption-based emissions at city level in China and the spatial heterogeneity analysis of the influential factors.

It is of great significance to identify the critical influential factors of pollutant emissions for emission mitigation. However, city disparity implies different priorities for regional mitigation. This study aims to estimate the consumption-based emissions of 309 prefecture-level cities in China based on the multi-region input-output table and the sectoral NOx emission inventory and investigate the emission transfer phenomenon among cities and sectors.

Economic environmental imbalance in China - Inter-city air pollutant emission linkage in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) urban agglomeration.

Production fragmentation makes the air pollution policy no longer at the local scale but requires accounting more about embodied emissions cross-region through supply chains. Here, we map the consumption-driven NO networks of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration (BTH) in China using the city-level multi-regional input-output model. The results show that the construction, service, and equipment manufacturing sectors in Beijing and Tianjin indirectly drive more than half of BTH NO emissions (54%).

Transcriptome analysis reveals the genetic basis of skeletal muscle glycolytic potential based on a pig model.

Glycolytic potential (GP) calculated based on glucose, glycogen, glucose-6-phosphate, and lactate contents is a critical factor for multiple meat quality characteristics. However, the genetic basis of glycolytic metabolism is still unclear. In this study, we constructed six RNA-Seq libraries using longissimus dorsi (LD) muscles from pigs divergent for GP phenotypic values and generated the whole genome-wide gene expression profiles.

Exploring the lncRNAs Related to Skeletal Muscle Fiber Types and Meat Quality Traits in Pigs.

The alteration in skeletal muscle fiber is a critical factor affecting livestock meat quality traits and human metabolic diseases. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are a diverse class of non-coding RNAs with a length of more than 200 nucleotides. However, the mechanisms underlying the regulation of lncRNAs in skeletal muscle fibers remain elusive.

Linkage analysis of economic consumption, pollutant emissions and concentrations based on a city-level multi-regional input-output (MRIO) model and atmospheric transport.

China is experiencing serious atmospheric pollution, which also exhibits significant spatial heterogeneity. The Chinese government has implemented targeted pollution control measures at the city level, emphasizing coordination among cities to prevent and control air pollution in key regions such as Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) urban agglomeration. This study combined an inter-city multi-regional input-output (MRIO) model with an air quality dispersion model consisting of a weather research and forecasting (WRF) model and the CALPUFF model (WRF/CALPUFF) to study the inter-city economic consumption, pollutant emission and concentration among 13 cities in BTH urban agglomeration.

Profiling and Functional Analysis of Circular RNAs in Porcine Fast and Slow Muscles.

The different skeletal muscle fiber types exhibit distinctively different physiological and metabolic properties, and have been linked to both human metabolic diseases and meat quality traits in livestock. Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a new class of endogenous RNA regulating gene expression, but regulatory mechanisms of skeletal muscle fibers involved in circRNAs remain poorly understood. Here, we constructed circRNA expression profiles of three fast-twitch biceps femoris (Bf) and three slow-twitch soleus (Sol) muscles in pigs using RNA-seq and identified 16,342 distinct circRNA candidates.

Effect of Mutation on Growth and Carcass Performance in Duroc x Meishan Hybrid Population.

The Meishan pig is a traditional Chinese native breed, known for its excellent reproduction performance that is widely used in commercial pig production through two-way or three-way crossbreeding systems. However, the lean meat yield of Meishan crossbred pigs is still very low and cannot meet the market demand. To evaluate the lean meat yield of Meishan crossbred pigs, six wild-type Meishan sows were artificially inseminated by using the Duroc boar semen in this experiment.

Impact of a Coal-Fired Power Plant Shutdown Campaign on Heavy Metal Emissions in China.

Recently, China has committed to decommissioning the heavy metal (HM) intensive coal-fired power plants (CFPPs), small units especially, yet a quantitative assessment for the impact on HM emissions remains poorly understood. This study, for the first time, compiles a plant-specific inventory for six HMs (Hg, As, Se, Pb, Cd, and Cr) avoided by CFPPs decommissioned in China during the 12th Five Year Plan period. The reduced HM amounts to 271.

MicroRNA-206 regulates cell proliferation by targeting G6PD in skeletal muscle.

Skeletal muscle is a major component of body mass and plays a central role in the control of whole-body metabolism in humans and animals. Therefore, elucidation of the underlying mechanisms of skeletal growth and development are expected to lead to the discovery of novel genes and pathways related to muscle disease. miR-206, a skeletal muscle-specific microRNA, plays a crucial role in myogenesis; however, miR-206 is known to function in myogenic differentiation, whether or not it affects muscle cells' proliferation, and the underlying mechanisms are unknown.

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).

Identification of a novel miR-206-Notch3 pathway regulating mouse myoblasts proliferation.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are endogenous short non-coding RNAs and exert their function by targeting mRNAs of genes. miRNA-206 (miR-206) is exclusively expressed in adult skeletal muscles and plays an important role in myogenesis. However, the regulatory mechanisms of miR-206 in myoblasts proliferation and differentiation are still limited.

A Key Gene, PLIN1, Can Affect Porcine Intramuscular Fat Content Based on Transcriptome Analysis.

Intramuscular fat (IMF) content is an important indicator for meat quality evaluation. However, the key genes and molecular regulatory mechanisms affecting IMF deposition remain unclear. In the present study, we identified 75 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between the higher (H) and lower (L) IMF content of pigs using transcriptome analysis, of which 27 were upregulated and 48 were downregulated.

The c.-360 T>C mutation affects PGAM2 transcription activity and is linked with the water holding capacity of the longissimus lumborum muscle in pigs.

The phosphoglycerate mutase 2 (PGAM2) gene encodes a key enzyme in the glycolytic process. This study examined a functional mutation in the PGAM2 gene and evaluated its relationship with water holding capacity (WHC). RT-qPCR analysis showed the PGAM2 mRNA level was significantly higher in the low-WHC group than in the high-WHC group (P<0.