Search Results (635)

Land consolidation (LC) is increasingly expected to support food security, ecological restoration, rural development, and climate mitigation, yet evidence on its carbon effects remains fragmented across engineering, ecological, spatial, and governance research. This review combines bibliometric mapping with structured evidence synthesis of 355 records from WoS and CNKI to examine knowledge evolution, analytical paradigms, and their integration. The field has expanded from component-based assessments of construction emissions, soil carbon, and land-cover change toward life-cycle accounting, carbon fractions, ecosystem-service interactions, spatial optimization, and policy evaluation. WoS-indexed and Chinese-language literature show distinct but increasingly convergent orientations shaped by differences in intervention contexts, disciplinary traditions, analytical scales, and available evidence. Four complementary paradigms are identified: carbon accounting, biogeochemical processes, spatial land systems, and decision support and governance. Together, these paradigms reveal interconnected carbon pathways but remain constrained by inconsistent accounting boundaries, weak process–scale–time linkages, and limited integration with land-governance decisions. Future research should therefore advance standardized life-cycle and multi-scale accounting, mechanism-based assessment of long-term carbon and ecosystem-service dynamics, and digitally and institutionally enabled low-carbon governance. Full article

Soil erosion is a major environmental issue that threatens watershed ecological security and the sustainable use of land resources. Quantifying its spatiotemporal variability and associated environmental controls is important for sustainable land use planning and watershed management. To characterize the spatiotemporal variation in CSLE-simulated soil erosion and the relative explanatory contributions of environmental variables in the Qingyi River Basin, this study integrated rainfall, soil type, digital elevation model, land use, and vegetation coverage data for six observation years from 2000 to 2025 with GIS spatial analysis and the Chinese Soil Loss Equation (CSLE). Geodetector and CatBoost–SHAP were further applied to evaluate the explanatory contributions and interaction patterns of the selected environmental variables on the simulated erosion results. The results showed the following: (1) Woodland and cropland dominated the land use structure of the basin, while construction land increased from 90.95 km² to 164.21 km². Land use patterns differed markedly between the upstream and downstream areas, with woodland and grassland dominating the upstream area and cropland and construction land accounting for higher proportions in the downstream area. (2) Across the six observation years, the mean soil erosion modulus ranged from 135.74 to 378.39 t·km⁻²·a⁻¹, indicating generally low erosion levels, with the highest value occurring in 2015 and the lowest in 2025. (3) Soil erosion intensity was mainly characterized by slight and mild erosion, which together accounted for more than 95% of the basin area, whereas areas of moderate erosion and above were mainly concentrated in downstream mountainous areas and along both sides of river valleys. (4) The explanatory analysis showed that elevation, land use, and vegetation coverage made relatively high contributions to the spatial variability in the CSLE-simulated erosion results. Topographic and vegetation-related variables showed higher explanatory contributions in the upstream area, whereas land use showed a higher contribution in the downstream area. These findings provide a quantitative basis for soil erosion monitoring, the identification of priority areas for soil and water conservation, sustainable land use optimization, and region-specific watershed management in the Qingyi River Basin. Full article

Fingertrap is a network encryption and authentication protocol that extends the X3DH and Double Ratchet frameworks with three novel mechanisms inspired by the Chinese finger trap (zhĭ wăng): a friction ratchet that exponentially increases computational cost for each failed authentication attempt; a recursive annihilation protocol that irreversibly destroys all cryptographic state after a configurable failure threshold; and a commit-then-challenge handshake that requires a counterintuitive “inward” action for legitimate authentication. A bidirectional weave hash extends the Double Ratchet’s transcript binding to cover every message in both directions. Together, these mechanisms provide per-message forward secrecy, post-compromise security (self-healing), clock-free operation, and a self-destruct capability. The individual ingredients-client puzzles, key erasure, and ratcheting-each build on established lines of work; their combination into a single stateful protocol, in which failed authentication attempts cryptographically tighten the session state and ultimately destroy it, is not to our knowledge offered by deployed transport protocols such as TLS 1.3, Signal, or WireGuard. The design targets deployments in which interception or capture of a device implies endpoint compromise, such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) telemetry links and body-worn sensors, where denial of exploitation requires guaranteed loss of past and future session material. We describe the full protocol, provide game-based security arguments under an explicit adversarial model, give analytic cost estimates for the friction mechanism, analyse the denial-of-service surface and a two-layer mitigation strategy, and specify a post-quantum extension using hybrid $\mathsf{X25519}\text{/}\mathsf{ML}\text{-}\mathsf{KEM}\text{-}\mathsf{768}$ ratcheting. Full article

Improving cropland carbon performance while maintaining food security is central to China’s agricultural transition and climate goals This study examines low-carbon cropland use performance (PCLU) and its model-implied interprovincial association network across 31 Chinese provinces from 2010 to 2023. A global super-efficiency slacks-based measure model estimated PCLU by incorporating agricultural output, carbon emissions, nonpoint-source pollution, and crop sequestration; annual directed networks were constructed with a modified gravity model and analyzed using social network analysis, a temporal exponential random graph model (TERGM), and complementary quadratic-assignment analyses. Mean PCLU increased from 0.524 to 0.861, while the interquartile range widened from 0.146 to 0.310; network density declined before partially recovering as hierarchy increased, indicating improvement without provincial convergence and reconnection within a more differentiated multi-hub structure. Persistence (β = 4.510) and reciprocity (β = 2.376) dominated network evolution, whereas shared partners produced neither additional triadic closure nor expanding open chains; similarities in urbanization and planting structure favored ties, while rural-income differences reflected socioeconomic complementarity. External validation showed moderate overall correspondence with green-technology patent collaboration (mean annual QAP r = 0.335) but limited overlap among the strongest dyads. Overall, China’s low-carbon cropland transition combined rising but increasingly uneven performance with a path-dependent and selective interprovincial structure, providing an empirical basis for differentiated coordination based on provincial performance and network position. Full article

Global warming-induced temperature increases adversely affect plant growth, exacerbating agricultural risks and threatening global food security. These challenges are particularly acute for important crops like non-heading Chinese cabbage (NHCC; Brassica campestris L. syn. B. rapa), a nutritionally and economically significant leafy vegetable cultivated worldwide. While breeding for thermotolerance has been explored to stabilize summer supplies, these efforts remain insufficient under complex field conditions, necessitating cost-effective and practical alternatives. Here, we demonstrate that biochar derived from enoki mushroom (Flammulina velutipes) spent mushroom substrate (SMS-BC) significantly alleviates heat-induced growth suppression in greenhouse-cultivated NHCC. SMS-BC alters the soil nutrient profile and enhances available phosphorus and potassium through its unique feedstock properties, including its filamentous architecture and surface functional groups. Furthermore, SMS-BC may reshape microbial community composition of NHCC under heat stress. Our findings establish SMS-derived biochar as an effective soil amendment for alleviating heat stress-induced growth suppression in NHCC. Full article

National governments increasingly promote corporate sustainability through approaches ranging from rigid mandates to voluntary market-based compliance. State auditing may offer a middle-ground governance mechanism, but its role in improving Corporate Sustainability Performance (CSP) remains underexplored. China provides a distinctive setting: the China National Audit Office (CNAO), the country’s supreme audit institution under the State Council, audits state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Exploiting staggered CNAO interventions, we apply a staggered difference-in-differences design to 7883 firm-year observations of Chinese A-share-listed SOEs from 2009 to 2022. Government audit exposure is associated with a statistically significant but modest 0.118-point increase in CSP, measured using Huazheng (Sino-Securities) ESG ratings, equivalent to about 0.12 standard deviations. The result is robust to propensity score matching, parallel-trend and placebo tests, ESG-pillar decomposition, and external validation using green patent filings. Information disclosure quality and media attention strengthen the effects, indicating that transparency and public scrutiny amplify government oversight. Effects are more pronounced among non-heavily polluting industries, larger firms, firms with fewer financing constraints, and enterprises located in eastern China. These patterns suggest that audited SOEs respond as cost-benefit-sensitive market participants rather than passive state agents. These findings imply that structured governmental oversight can promote sustainability when complemented by transparency mechanisms and adequate firm-level capacity. Full article

Flying Ad Hoc Networks (FANETs) composed of highly mobile Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly employed in mission-critical applications. However, the open wireless medium, high mobility, and resource constraints of UAVs expose FANETs to severe security and privacy threats, particularly at the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer. Existing authentication and key agreement schemes often suffer from high computational overhead and insufficient protection against advanced attacks. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a Lightweight Key Agreement Scheme (LWKAS) based on signcryption using Hyper Elliptic Curve Cryptography (HECC) and one-way cryptographic hash functions. The proposed scheme integrates MAC-layer security while simultaneously ensuring secure authentication, confidentiality, and location privacy through the Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT). The security analysis demonstrates that LWKAS resists multiple attacks, including Man-In-The-Middle (MITM), replay, impersonation, Ephemeral Secret Leakage (ESL), cloning, desynchronization, and DoS attacks. The proposed scheme is implemented in NS-3 and evaluated against existing state-of-the-art methods in terms of authentication delay, communication overhead, and computational cost. The results demonstrate that LWKAS achieves significantly lower computational complexity and communication overhead while providing stronger security guarantees suitable for resource-constrained FANET environments. Full article

Optimizing the allocation of national land resources is a crucial measure for safeguarding food security and ecological security, as well as a key pathway for achieving urbanrural integration and coordinated regional development. Against the backdrop of the global digital transformation, artificial intelligence offers new opportunities for intelligent and refined land resource management. However, existing research has not sufficiently explored the impact of AI on land resource allocation. Using panel data of 265 Chinese cities from 2010 to 2023, this study investigates the effect of artificial intelligence level (AIL) on land resource misallocation (LRM) and its underlying mechanisms. The findings demonstrate the key conclusions: (1) AIL significantly reduces urban LRM. This result remains robust after adjusting the sample, accounting for province–time interactions, controlling for other policy effects, excluding outliers, and addressing endogeneity concerns. (2) Mechanism analysis indicates that AIL reduces urban LRM by enhancing government environmental concerns, promoting land transfer marketization and industrial structure upgrading. (3) Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the inhibitory effect of AIL on LRM is more pronounced in non-old industrial base cities, low-population-density cities and strong government intervention cities. These findings suggest that local governments should tailor AI research, development, and application strategies according to their cities’ resource endowments and developmental foundations. This study not only enriches empirical evidence on AI’s role in reducing LRM but also offers practical pathways and decision-making references for other countries to optimize territorial governance and achieve sustainable land resource utilization through digital and intelligent technologies. Full article

China’s forest ecological security (FES) system is currently undergoing a transformative phase characterized by the synergy between quantitative expansion and qualitative improvement. Against the backdrop of advancing ecological civilization, China has particular difficulties juggling economic expansion with ecological preservation. Improving forestry green total factor productivity (FGTFP) is regarded as a crucial pathway to achieving the dual objectives of “sustaining forestry growth without deforestation and ensuring ecological security without compromising output.” This study employs panel data from 30 Chinese provinces spanning 2004 to 2018. The entropy weight method and super-efficiency SBM-GML index model are utilized to quantitatively measure FES and FGTFP, respectively. This empirically examines the underlying mechanisms and threshold effects governing their relationship. The results indicate that FGTFP significantly improves FES, with urbanization exerting a positive moderating effect. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that FES dividends derived from FGTFP are more pronounced in southern collective forest regions and economically developed areas. Further threshold testing uncovers distinct patterns: once economic agglomeration surpasses specific thresholds, FGTFP triggers a stepwise surge in its positive effect on FES. While crossing its respective threshold, the tertiary industry share exhibits an inverted U-shaped trajectory. This research elucidates the stage-specific patterns of China’s green forestry transition, offering differentiated policy insights for fostering high-quality forestry development and strengthening the national ecological security barrier. Full article

This study examines how immigrants build the everyday foundations of life in the host society through food provisioning practices. Many previous studies have explored immigrant adaptation from organizational or cultural perspectives. By contrast, this study focuses on the daily procurement of familiar food. It views food provisioning as part of the ongoing process of home in the making, through which home gradually takes shape in everyday life by linking material access, social relations, and cultural continuity. The desire for familiar food is common among immigrants and reflects the habitus embodied through everyday food practices. As migrants enter a new social and material field, this habitus is continuously negotiated and adapted, giving rise to new food provisioning practices. Against this theoretical background, this study examines how these everyday practices shape immigrants’ lives in the host society. This study takes Chinese residents in Japan as research subjects. Based on a questionnaire survey of 317 Chinese residents, this study shows that fresh vegetables and fruits are perceived as particularly difficult to obtain. Some Chinese residents therefore use diverse provisioning practices, including home gardening, sharing, exchange, and small-scale sales. The study then examines cases of Chinese residents’ home gardens and small-scale commercial gardens as sites of food provisioning. The qualitative cases reveal that crop choices, cultivation methods, circulation routes, and garden scale are flexibly adjusted according to family needs, customer demand, land access, labor capacity, and seasonality. These practices enable Chinese residents to secure familiar food, organize everyday life, and develop social relations with co-ethnic residents and members of the wider local society. The findings suggest that garden-based food provisioning represents an informal, everyday pathway of integration shaped by the material and social conditions of life in Japan. Full article

Amid intensifying global geopolitical conflicts and increasingly frequent market fluctuations, enhancing the resilience of agricultural sustainable development has become a core issue for ensuring food security and promoting rural revitalization. Digital infrastructure offers a crucial pathway for addressing the pain points in agricultural development and improving resilience levels. Using panel data from 30 Chinese provinces over the period 2013–2024, this paper employs the entropy method to measure agricultural sustainable development resilience and the level of digital infrastructure development. It empirically examines the empowering effect and mechanism of digital infrastructure on agricultural sustainable development resilience through FE two-way models, mediation models, and other econometric approaches. The findings are as follows: (1) digital infrastructure can enhance agricultural sustainable development resilience in the long term; (2) digital inclusive finance plays a significant partial mediating role, and this empowering effect exhibits a double-threshold characteristic; (3) marketization exerts a positive moderating effect; (4) the empowering effect is more pronounced in the central region. Accordingly, this paper proposes policy recommendations including optimizing the regional layout of digital infrastructure, implementing threshold-based differentiated policies for digital inclusive finance, and improving market-oriented supporting mechanisms, thereby providing practical support for international academic research on enhancing agricultural sustainable development resilience. Full article

Against the backdrop of deepening global digital economic integration and intensifying geopolitical competition, cross-border data flow regulation has become a core institutional arrangement for coordinating development and security. Based on panel data from 31 Chinese provinces from 2015 to 2025, this study proposes an adapted provincial DFRI and a comprehensive resilience index, which together provide an operational foundation for examining the relationship between data regulation and industrial chain resilience across Chinese regions. It empirically examines the effects, transmission mechanisms, and configurational pathways through which regulation influences industrial chain resilience. The results show that cross-border data flow regulation significantly enhances the resilience of the core industrial chains of the digital economy. The balance between efficiency and security plays a key mediating role in the process through which regulation affects industrial chain resilience. Moreover, the regulatory effect exhibits significant heterogeneity in the level of digital economic development. The coefficient of REG is higher in provinces whose digital economy development index exceeds the sample mean than in provinces at or below the sample mean. Further, fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) identifies four equivalent pathways through which regulatory improvement, infrastructure development, innovation investment, digital trade, and industrial compatibility jointly drive high resilience. The findings provide empirical evidence and policy implications for constructing regionally differentiated data governance systems and enhancing the resilience of China’s core digital economy industrial chains. Full article

Soil erosion on sloping cropland is a major threat to agricultural sustainability and ecological security in mountainous regions, yet its spatial distribution and landscape-level structural characteristics remain insufficiently quantified. Taking Zhaotong in northeastern Yunnan, China, as a typical mountainous agricultural region in the upper Yangtze River Basin, this study integrated Sentinel-2 imagery, high-resolution reference data, field survey information, the Google Earth Engine platform, a random forest classifier, the Chinese Soil Loss Equation, and landscape pattern metrics to assess soil erosion on sloping cropland. The land use classification achieved an overall accuracy of 90.70% and a Kappa coefficient of 0.88, providing a reliable basis for sloping cropland extraction. Sloping cropland covered 4218.77 km², accounting for 84.64% of total cropland area, but contributed 1.84 × 10⁷ t·yr⁻¹ of annual soil loss, equivalent to 97.51% of total cropland erosion. The mean erosion rate of sloping cropland reached 4260.50 t·km⁻²·yr⁻¹, and 95.84% of sloping cropland exceeded the soil loss tolerance threshold. County-level analysis revealed strong spatial heterogeneity, with high erosion risks concentrated in northern and eastern mountainous counties. Intensive, Severe, and Extreme erosion occupied only 26.14% of the sloping cropland area but contributed 62.21% of total soil loss. Landscape metrics further showed that Moderate erosion had the highest patch density and edge density, indicating a critical fragmentation stage in erosion development. These findings support a tiered conservation strategy in which high-intensity patches are prioritized for immediate sediment reduction, while fragmented Moderate-erosion (2500–5000 t·km⁻²·yr⁻¹) areas receive preventive management. The proposed framework provides a useful approach for identifying erosion hotspots and supporting targeted soil and water conservation in mountainous agricultural landscapes. Full article

Background/Objectives: Nursing informatics (NI) competence is becoming increasingly essential for nursing students; however, previous research has largely relied on quantitative surveys and provided limited insights into why positive attitudes may not be accompanied by practical competence. This study examined Chinese undergraduate nursing students’ self-assessed NI competence and qualitatively explored their conceptual understanding, perceptions, and experiences related to NI and digital health. Methods: A convergent parallel mixed-methods design was employed in Guangzhou, China. Quantitative data were collected from 149 undergraduate nursing students across two nursing schools using the Chinese Self-Assessment of Nursing Informatics Competencies Scale (SANICS), whereas qualitative data were gathered from 23 students at one of the participating schools through six semi-structured focus groups. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and exploratory Spearman correlations, while qualitative data were analyzed thematically. Findings from both strands were integrated during interpretation using a joint display matrix. Results: The mean self-assessed NI competence score was 2.78 ± 0.54 (scale 1–5). Among the five SANICS subscales, attitudes toward NI scored highest (4.16 ± 0.76), whereas applied computer skills scored lowest (2.02 ± 0.80), confirming an attitude-competence paradox. Exploratory correlation analyses showed neither year of study nor clinical exposure was significantly associated with the total competence score, although both were negatively associated with attitudes. Three qualitative themes contextualized this paradox: (1) a fragmented conceptual understanding centered primarily on basic functions and tools; (2) positive but cautious perceptions that recognized the value of NI while expressing concerns about humanistic care; and (3) passive skill acquisition, limited hands-on learning, and insufficient awareness of higher-order informatics roles. Conclusions: In this two-school sample, students valued NI but reported limited applied and clinically situated competence. The findings suggest that curricula should move beyond generic computer courses and unstructured exposure toward practice-embedded NI education, including electronic health record simulation, digital documentation, data security, and clinically relevant digital skills. Full article

Agricultural intensification in the steppe zone of Central Asia has increasingly exacerbated the tension between food security and the conservation of natural ecosystems. This study proposes an integrated landscape planning methodology for Kazakhstan by adapting the German Landschaftsplanung approach and the Chinese concept of “ecological red lines” to the conditions of post-Soviet land use. The focus is on the analysis of soil degradation and biodiversity loss. It is applied to the Ayyrtau district of the North Kazakhstan region, an area characterized by a heterogeneous landscape mosaic composed of arable land, a substantial share of degraded land, vulnerable steppe ecosystems, and woodlands. Using GIS analysis and remote sensing data, we identify nine types of landscape units, which are operational units for evaluating landscape functions and planning priorities. The result of this work is a map of the zoning of the planning area, which defines seven modes of eco-oriented management, ranging from strict protection to active agricultural production. The study demonstrates that the transition from an extensive monocultural system to a landscape-adaptive strategy can improve the spatial coordination between agricultural use and ecological protection, strengthen the regional ecological framework, and enhance ecotourism potential. For the first time, an integrated zoning system is presented, designed for use by local authorities as a decision support tool aimed at preventing land degradation. Full article