Search Results (21)

The classified water pricing system is an effective measure for promoting the rational utilization of water resources under market mechanisms. Studying the water prices of three different types of water sources, including reservoir water, river water, and wastewater treatment plant effluent, is the basis for promoting the use of reclaimed water. However, there remains a spectrum of viewpoints on how to establish a pricing mechanism for reclaimed water at present. This study primarily focuses on the multi-level quality-separated water supply system in Yiwu City, China. It analyzes the limitations of the current water pricing formation mechanism and the externality of integrating reclaimed water into the unified allocation of multiple water sources. Based on the principles of full-cost water pricing and externality theory, a supply-side classified water pricing permit cost and pricing calculation model, covering the entire process of the social water cycle, is proposed. It focuses on the analysis of the impact of equity costs and environmental costs on supply-side classified water pricing. The Shapley value method is used for the technology of cost allocation among stakeholders to reasonably distribute the calculated water pricing of reclaimed water. The price of reclaimed water varies depending on the user type, with residential users paying 2.93 CNY/t, industrial users 4.00 CNY/t, and government allocations at 8.52 CNY/t. Compared with the classified water prices of various stakeholders on the user side of reservoir water, reclaimed water has a significant price advantage. This research demonstrates that the supply-side classified water pricing model, which includes a permit cost and pricing calculation framework, can encourage the supply of higher-quality water at corresponding higher prices, while also providing the internalization of external costs. Furthermore, the Shapley value method of cost allocation can realize the fair burden of stakeholders on the calculated water price and maintain the competitive advantage of reclaimed water prices. Full article

This article explores the mechanism for constructing and the path for implementing an industrial brain in the development of smart cities, with a focus on the case of the Yiwu knitting industry platform in China. Accordingly, our study involved a literature review, questionnaire survey, data analysis, qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), and discussion. Our key finding was that the manufacturing brain evolves in three distinct stages: platform creation, growth, and expansion. The mechanisms of implementing these are functional development, trust creation, and value co-creation, respectively. Specifically, functional development marks the commencement of the industrial brain’s construction, which involves enterprise demand analysis, capability bottleneck identification, data value formation, and platform architecture simplification. Trust building serves as the central mechanism of evolving the manufacturing brain, comprising institutional, relational, and computational trust. Lastly, value co-creation proceeds, which is pivotal for a business paradigm revolution, encompassing connection, linkage, and integration. The main theoretical contribution of this article is to propose a normative analytical framework for revealing the mechanism of construction and the path of implementation of industrial platforms in smart city development. Meanwhile, in its practical contribution, this article provides policy guidance, as developed through our analysis of how an industrial platform can promote the transformation and upgrading of the urban manufacturing industry, to realize smart city construction and the economy and society’s coordinated development. Full article

The diversification of business forms leads to functional and spatial complexity in cities. The efficient determination of the complexity of an urban system is the basis for the scientific monitoring of the multi-functional aggregation within cities. Previous studies on the urban spatial structure were limited by the difficulty of collecting micro-data and the high time cost, and they focused on the macro-spatial structure, lacking fine-grained investigations of the micro-spatial structure. Additionally, high-resolution remote sensing images, which mainly rely on the textural characteristics of the spectrum of ground objects, cannot detect the social and economic functions of ground objects. Thus, it is difficult to meet the actual needs of urban planning and management. The purpose of this paper is to automatically identify the spatial heterogeneity and temporal variation of urban land use functions in the context of complex urban systems. The TF-IDF (term frequency–inverse document frequency) algorithm, a machine learning classification algorithm, and other methods are applied to identify the urban functions and distribution characteristics of the main urban area based on the POI (point of interest) data and urban form data. The results show the following: (1) From 2012 to 2022, all types of land use in Yiwu city grew at different rates, with logistics and warehousing space growing the fastest, which is in line with Yiwu’s goal of building a national logistics center for trade and services. (2) The residential area has a spatial structure with a dense central circle and a scattered periphery extending from northeast to southwest and from east to west. (3) The commercial service sector shows clear spatial differentiation between the core and the periphery. The commercial functional areas of Niansanli, Houzhai, and Chengxi, where the number of commercial POIs is relatively small, are located at the intersection of the administrative subdistricts near the city center, indicating that the commercial economic activities of the downtown subdistrict have a certain spillover effect on adjacent subdistricts. (4) The public facilities of each subdistrict are generally located in the core of each subdistrict, which ensures better convenience and accessibility. (5) Industrial land with a large total area that is scattered and mixed with urban residential land gradually tends to be centralized, forming an industrial belt around the city. This study comprehensively considers the aggregation relationship between urban buildings and land use and improves the accuracy of land identification and functional zoning. Full article

Revealing the inherent relationship between urban water systems and carbon emissions has important theoretical and practical significance for promoting “water conservation and carbon reduction” in cities. This study utilizes the 2021 social water cycle statistical data of Yiwu City to quantify the carbon emissions of urban water systems. It analyzes the “water–carbon” related characteristics and carbon emission intensities under different water sources and stages and explores the carbon reduction potential of urban water systems under different scenarios. The results show that the operational phase is the main contributor to the carbon emissions of the urban water system in the research area, accounting for approximately 86% of the total carbon emissions. Over the entire process, the carbon emissions from the water supply and drainage stages are the largest, accounting for 39% and 31% of the total carbon emissions, respectively. In terms of carbon emission intensity, the carbon footprint of the water cycling process using reclaimed water as the water source is higher than that of high-quality water and conventional water sources. This is primarily due to the significantly higher carbon emission intensity in the reclaimed water phase compared with the other phases. In terms of influencing factors, the differences in the “water–carbon” correlation characteristics of different links in the water system in the research area are mainly affected by changes in urban water consumption, water treatment methods and processes, and other related factors. For the coordinated development of “water conservation and carbon reduction” in urban areas, future efforts should focus on improving the reuse rate of reclaimed water in urban life and industry, reducing the leakage rate of water distribution networks, and enhancing water treatment processes. These measures aim to increase water efficiency in urban water systems and reduce carbon emissions. Full article

In this paper, the silver-coated large-core suspended-core fiber (LSCF) probe was fabricated by the dynamic chemical liquid phase deposition method for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) sensing. The 4-mercaptophenylboronic acid (4-MPBA) monolayer was assembled in the LSCF as the recognition monolayer. Taking advantage of the appropriate core size of the LSCF, a custom-made Y-type optical fiber patch cable was utilized to connect the semiconductor laser, Raman spectrometer, and the proposed fiber SERS probe. The SERS signal is propagated in the silver-coated air channels, which can effectively reduce the Raman and fluorescence background of the silica core. Experiments were performed to measure the Raman scattering spectra of the 4-MPBA in the silver-coated LSCF in a non-enhanced and enhanced case. The experiment results showed that the Raman signal strength was enhanced more than 6 times by the surface plasmon resonance compared with the non-enhanced case. The proposed LSCF for SERS sensing technology provides huge research value for the fiber SERS probes in biomedicine and environmental science. The combination of SERS and microstructured optical fibers offers a potential approach for SERS detection Full article

A large body of research has explored various factors influencing volunteer participation, particularly revealing the association between religious beliefs and volunteer engagement. However, there was relatively limited research on volunteer participation among international immigrants in China, a newly emerging immigrant country. Further investigation was needed to identify the factors influencing the volunteer engagement of international immigrants in China and the underlying mechanisms. This study analyzed data from international immigrants in Yiwu, China and found that their volunteer behavior was significantly influenced by their religious beliefs. Additionally, social resources were closely related to their volunteer participation. Furthermore, although perceived discrimination among international immigrants in China was not directly associated with volunteer participation, it promoted their religious participation and frequency, consequently encouraging their volunteer engagement. Further analysis also revealed two mechanisms through which religion impacted volunteer participation. On the one hand, religious beliefs influenced volunteer participation through the mechanism of religious indoctrination. On the other hand, though perceived discrimination among international immigrants did not directly influence volunteer participation, it did encourage them to engage in religious meetings to establish social networks for support, thereby enriching their social resources and subsequently promoting volunteer engagement. We discussed the implications of our findings for encouraging volunteer participation and for promoting the social integration of international immigrants. Full article

Background: The county is the basic unit of national economic and social development, and is also the foothold and starting point of public sports services. Purpose: Taking the top 100 economic counties of China in Zhejiang Province as the research object, this study explores the allocation efficiency and influencing factors of public sports resources in the period of 2016 to 2020. Methods: The output-oriented Super-SBM model, which is used to measure the static efficiency of its public sports resource allocation, is combined with the DEA–Malmquist model to measure the total factor productivity from the perspectives of overall characteristics, regional heterogeneity, and individual differences. Moreover, we objectively evaluate the dynamic evolution and spatiotemporal characteristics of resource quality growth, financial management technology, and allocation efficiency from the horizontal cross-section and vertical time series. Results: (1) The efficiency of allocation of public sports resources in the top 100 economic counties in Zhejiang Province is relatively high, but it presents the characteristics of “extensive” allocation, and the allocation structure is unreasonable. (2) The super-efficiency gradient division of public sports resources shows that Yuhuan City ranks first with a state of super-efficiency allocation; Ruian, Linhai, Wenling, Yiwu, and Haining have a state of high-efficiency allocation; and other regions are characterized by a state of medium- or low-efficiency allocation. (3) The improvement of total factor productivity depends on the catching-up feature of technological efficiency on the production frontier, but it has not yet compensated for the negative effect of the decline of technological progress, resulting in a decline in total factor productivity with an average annual trend of 0.3%. (4) The level of county economic development has a highly significant positive effect on the allocation efficiency of public sports resources, while the per capita sports ground area has a highly significant negative effect on efficiency. The county population density has a highly significant impact, and regional factors have no significant effect on efficiency. Conclusions: The results of this study provide useful insights for the development of sound public sports service improvement policies. Full article

Two-dimensional (2D) materials and their van der Waals stacked heterostructures (vdWH) are becoming the rising and glowing candidates in the emerging flexible nanoelectronics and optoelectronic industry. Strain engineering proves to be an efficient way to modulate the band structure of 2D materials and their vdWH, which will broaden understanding and practical applications of the material. Therefore, how to apply desired strain to 2D materials and their vdWH is of great importance to get the intrinsic understanding of 2D materials and their vdWH with strain modulation. Here, systematic and comparative studies of strain engineering on monolayer WSe₂ and graphene/WSe₂ heterostructure are studied by photoluminescence (PL) measurements under uniaxial tensile strain. It is found that contacts between graphene and WSe₂ interface are improved, and the residual strain is relieved through the pre-strain process, which thus results in the comparable shift rate of the neutral exciton (A) and trion (A^T) of monolayer WSe₂ and graphene/WSe₂ heterostructure under the subsequent strain release process. Furthermore, the PL quenching occurred when the strain is restored to the original position also indicates the pre-strain process to 2D materials, and their vdWH is important and necessary for improving the interface contacts and reducing the residual strain. Thus, the intrinsic response of the 2D material and their vdWH under strain can be obtained after the pre-strain treatment. These findings provide a quick, fast and efficient way to apply desired strain and also have important significance in guiding the use of 2D materials and their vdWH in the field of flexible and wearable devices. Full article

Reclaimed water is considered to be an important alternative to freshwater to solve the imbalance between the supply and demand of regional water resources; it is also recognized as an effective tool for alleviating ecological problems caused by insufficient water flow. Yiwu City is a typical area experiencing a water shortage in southeastern China because the regional water resources are limited. In this study, the multiple water resource allocations in Yiwu City are optimized, the complex coupling model of multiple water resource allocation is established, and both the economic and ecological effects of multiple water resource allocation in Yiwu City are simulated and analyzed. The simulation results of optimizing the multiple water resource allocations show an efficient way of reclaimed water utilization in this typical Chinese city. In order to ensure the future economic and social development of Yiwu City, it is necessary to introduce reclaimed water into different fields, such as residential water, industrial water, agricultural water, and environmental water. Reclaimed water has also proven to have a high capability for pollutant control and reduction, which is also important to the ecology and environmental protection. Full article

The 21st century expansion of built-up areas due to rapid urbanization has recently been at the forefront of global land use/land cover research. Knowledge of the changing dynamics of urban land use is crucial for the monitoring of urbanization and the promotion of sustainable urban development. In this paper, Zhejiang Province was selected as the study area. It is a region with rapid urban growth located along the southeastern coast of China, with a highly developed economy but with a shortage of land resources. We employed remotely sensed and socio-economic panel data for the period between 1990 and 2020 to monitor urban land use changes and utilized the spatial Durbin model (SDM) to examine the urbanization process and the various driving factors of rapid urban expansion in Zhejiang Province, China, from 1990 to 2020. The study’s results revealed substantial urban growth of about 6899.59 km², i.e., 6.6%, whereas agricultural land decreased by 4320.68 km², i.e., 4.19%. The rapid urban development was primarily attributed to the transformation of farmlands, forestlands, and water bodies into built-up areas by nearly 86.9%, 6.94%, and 6.06%, respectively. The built-up areas revealed features of spatial clustering. The study showed that the expansion hotspots were mainly distributed within the urban fabric of cities such as Hangzhou, Ningbo, Jinhua–Yiwu, and Wenzhou–Taizhou. The results further revealed the substantial influence of urban growth on the local areas of the province. As the core explanatory variables, population and economic development significantly promoted local urban expansion. The study’s findings indicated a positive spatial spillover effect as regards the influence of economic development on the study area’s urban growth, whereas the spatial spillover effect of the population was negative. Therefore, economic development was a major driving factor contributing immensely to the expansion of urban areas in Zhejiang Province, especially in the 26 mountainous counties of the province. The study enriches our understanding of the transformation of LULC and the changing dynamics of urban areas in China and provides the necessary research data that are vital for urban land-use planners and decision-makers to overcome the negative consequences of the expansion of urban areas due to the continuous economic growth of China. Full article

Automatic extraction of the skeleton lines of river systems from high-resolution remote-sensing images has great significance for surveying and managing water resources. A large number of existing methods for the automatic extraction of skeleton lines from raster images are primarily used for simple graphs and images (e.g., fingerprint, text, and character recognition). These methods generally are memory intensive and have low computational efficiency. These shortcomings preclude their direct use in the extraction of skeleton lines from large volumes of high-resolution remote-sensing images. In this study, we developed a method to extract river skeleton lines based entirely on run-length encoding. This method attempts to replace direct raster encoding with run-length encoding for storing river data, which can considerably compress raster data. A run-length boundary tracing strategy is used instead of complete raster matrix traversal to quickly determine redundant pixels, thereby significantly improving the computational efficiency. An experiment was performed using a 0.5 m-resolution remote-sensing image of Yiwu city in the Chinese province of Zhejiang. Raster data for the rivers in Yiwu were obtained using both the DeepLabv3+ deep learning model and the conventional visual interpretation method. Subsequently, the proposed method was used to extract the skeleton lines of the rivers in Yiwu. To compare the proposed method with the classical raster-based skeleton line extraction algorithm developed by Zhang and Suen in terms of memory consumption and computational efficiency, the visually interpreted river data were used to generate skeleton lines at different raster resolutions. The results showed that the proposed method consumed less than 1% of the memory consumed by the classical method and was over 10 times more computationally efficient. This finding suggests that the proposed method has the potential for river skeleton line extraction from terabyte-scale remote-sensing image data on personal computers. Full article

Multi-sensor defect detection technology is a research hotspot for monitoring the powder bed fusion (PBF) processes, of which the quality of the captured defect images and the detection capability is the vital issue. Thus, in this study, we utilize visible information as well as infrared imaging to detect the defects in PBF parts that conventional optical inspection technologies cannot easily detect. A multi-source image acquisition system was designed to simultaneously acquire brightness intensity and infrared intensity. Then, a multi-sensor image fusion method based on finite discrete shearlet transform (FDST), multi-scale sequential toggle operator (MSSTO), and an improved pulse-coupled neural networks (PCNN) framework were proposed to fuse information in the visible and infrared spectra to detect defects in challenging conditions. The image fusion performance of the proposed method was evaluated with different indices and compared with other fusion algorithms. The experimental results show that the proposed method achieves satisfactory performance in terms of the averaged information entropy, average gradient, spatial frequency, standard deviation, peak signal-to-noise ratio, and structural similarity, which are 7.979, 0.0405, 29.836, 76.454, 20.078 and 0.748, respectively. Furthermore, the comparison experiments indicate that the proposed method can effectively improve image contrast and richness, enhance the display of image edge contour and texture information, and also retain and fuse the main information in the source image. The research provides a potential solution for defect information fusion and characterization analysis in multi-sensor detection systems in the PBF process. Full article

Objective: Previous studies on settlement intentions have mainly focused on the explanations of social and economic rationality, culture, and institution, but insufficient attention had been paid to the relationship between health and settlement intentions. This study explored the relationship between changes in the health status of immigrants and their settlement intentions. Method: A cross-sectional survey was conducted both in 2018 and 2019. Foreigners who visited the Yiwu Municipal Exit–Entry Administration Office to extend their visas were invited to participate in the study. Quantitative data, such as the participants’ sociodemographic characteristics, job status, employment, immigration experience, key factors associated with the intention to settle down, medical insurance coverage, and changes in health status, were collected by questionnaire. Results: A change in health status significantly affected the intention to settle down: the more healthy that people became, the more likely they intended to settle down (β = 0.233; p < 0.001), and, simultaneously, changes in health status were also moderated by the length of stay in China (β = 0.320; p < 0.001) and medical insurance (β = 0.134; p < 0.001), which affected people’s willingness to settle down. Conclusions: Changes in health status, and not health status itself, affected immigrants’ willingness to settle down. In addition, social insurance, and the length of stay in the place receiving immigrants, affected immigrants’ willingness to settle down not only directly, but also indirectly by moderating the impact of the change in health status on the willingness to settle down. Full article

Background: At present, the effects of discharge modes of multielectrode catheters on the distribution of pulsed electric fields have not been completely clarified. Therefore, the control of the distribution of the pulsed electric field by selecting the discharge mode remains one of the key technical problems to be solved. Methods: We constructed a model including myocardium, blood, and a flower catheter. Subsequently, by setting different positive and ground electrodes, we simulated the electric field distribution in the myocardium of four discharge modes (A, B, C, and D) before and after the catheter rotation and analyzed their mechanisms. Results: Modes B, C, and D formed a continuous circumferential ablation lesion without the rotation of the catheter, with depths of 1.6 mm, 2.7 mm, and 0.7 mm, respectively. After the catheter rotation, the four modes could form a continuous circumferential ablation lesion with widths of 10.8 mm, 10.6 mm, 11.8 mm, and 11.5 mm, respectively, and depths of 5.2 mm, 2.7 mm, 4.7 mm, and 4.0 mm, respectively. Conclusions: The discharge mode directly affects the electric field distribution in the myocardium. Our results can help improve PFA procedures and provide enlightenment for the design of the discharge mode with multielectrode catheters. Full article

This study aimed to identify multimorbidity patterns and explore the disablement process by utilizing the model raised by Verbrugge and Jette as a theoretical framework. This cross-sectional study used public Long-term Care Insurance (LTCI) claimants’ assessment data of Yiwu city in Zhejiang Province, China, for 2604 individuals aged 60 years and older, from September through December 2018. Latent Class Analysis (LCA) was conducted using 10 common chronic conditions. Structural Equation Modeling was used to examine the disablement process. The latent classes of multimorbidity patterns were the “coronary atherosclerotic heart disease” class (19.0%), the “lower limb fractures” class (26.4%), and the “other diseases” class (54.6%). The structural model results show that coronary atherosclerotic heart disease had a significant influence on incontinence, but it was not statistically significant in predicting vision impairment and mobility impairment. Lower limb fractures had significant effects on vision impairment, incontinence, and mobility impairment. Vision impairment, incontinence, and mobility impairment had significant effects on physical activities of daily living (ADLs). Our findings suggest that different impairments exist from specific patterns of multimorbidity to physical ADL disability, which may provide insights for researchers and policy makers to develop tailored care and provide support for physically disabled older people. Full article