Search Results (1,684)

As an industry policy commonly adopted by governments worldwide, the digital industry cluster policy facilitates data resource accessibility. Whether this policy can also promote enterprise collaborative innovation, especially facilitating strong alliances among enterprises with high breakthrough innovation capabilities, is the key to cultivate internationally competitive advantages. To address this question, this paper takes China’s digital industry cluster policy as a quasi-natural experiment and employs the staggered difference-in-differences model to analyze the impact of digital industry clusters on enterprise collaborative innovation. This study finds that digital industry cluster policy drives an increase in the number of scientific, technological, and legal intermediaries, improves the level of judicial protection, and thus optimizes the external environment for enterprise collaborative innovation. Meanwhile, the policy promotes the deepening of enterprise division of labor, strengthens specialized agglomeration, and improves the allocation efficiency of data and labor factors, thereby stimulating the internal demand of enterprise collaborative innovation. Further analysis reveals that the policy does not facilitate strong–strong enterprise partnerships; instead, it promotes weak–weak and strong–weak enterprise partnerships. The academic contributions of this research are twofold: first, it investigates the impact of improved enterprise conditions on collaborative innovation from the perspective of enterprises’ own factor allocation capabilities; second, it examines the cooperative characteristics of enterprises with distinct breakthrough innovation capabilities, which expands the research scope of cooperative innovation characteristics. Full article

Economic development is multidimensional, yet provincial comparisons in Thailand often rely on individual indicators or broad sustainability indices. This study constructs separate TOPSIS rankings of economic prosperity and distributional outcomes for all 77 Thai provinces. Six prosperity indicators capture economic output, human capital, spatial agglomeration, labor market outcomes, and structural transformation, while four distributional indicators capture income inequality, economic vulnerability, informal employment, and household dependency. The analysis uses 2024 provincial accounts and Labor Force Survey microdata, with comparisons for 2022–2024. Prosperity is concentrated in Bangkok, the surrounding metropolitan region, and the Eastern Seaboard, while Phuket represents a distinct tourism-led pathway. Favorable distributional outcomes are concentrated within the metropolitan–industrial corridor, whereas disadvantage is more prevalent in the North and Northeast. The rankings are associated but conceptually distinct, and the prosperity ranking differs meaningfully from one based solely on GPP per capita. The prosperity ranking is highly stable over time, while the distributional ranking exhibits substantial stability after harmonizing income coverage. Both rankings are robust to alternative normalization procedures, weighting schemes, and aggregation methods. Spatial statistics confirm clustering. The findings demonstrate the value of separating economic prosperity from distributional disadvantage when benchmarking provincial development and assessing urban–regional disparities. Full article

Understanding the spatiotemporal dynamics of carbon emissions and developing differentiated governance strategies for urban agglomerations are essential for achieving regional low-carbon transformation. This study aims to identify the spatiotemporal patterns, driving mechanisms, and development-stage differences of carbon emissions across China’s urban agglomerations and to establish a type-specific governance framework. Based on multi-source geospatial and socioeconomic data from 19 urban agglomerations for the period 2006–2023, this study integrates spatial autocorrelation analysis, standard deviation ellipse analysis, hotspot analysis, random forest regression with SHAP interpretation, K-medoid clustering, and the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) model to systematically examine emission evolution, influencing factors, and governance pathways. The results indicate the following: (1) carbon emissions in China’s urban agglomerations increased continuously during the study period and exhibited significant spatial heterogeneity, characterized by a “high east–low west” pattern, expanding eastern emission hotspots, and a gradual southwest shift in the emission centroid; (2) industrial structure and economic development level were identified as the dominant factors associated with carbon-emission differences, while energy efficiency, urbanization, and population density showed heterogeneous relationships across regions; (3) five carbon-emission development types were identified, including high-carbon high-development, transition-pressure, resource-dependent, stable-development, and low-carbon potential agglomerations, each exhibiting distinct development characteristics and governance requirements; and (4) EKC analysis revealed differentiated development stages among these types, suggesting that carbon governance should be tailored according to regional development conditions, dominant drivers, and emission-transition stages. This study provides an integrated geospatial modeling framework for understanding carbon-emission heterogeneity and offers scientific support for differentiated low-carbon planning and collaborative governance of urban agglomerations. Full article

Agro-food processing activities are increasingly recognized as important levers of sustainable rural development, contributing to territorial attractiveness, local economic diversification, and more resilient rural livelihoods. However, despite growing recognition of their contribution to sustainable rural transformation, the territorial implications of agro-food processing remain insufficiently documented and quantified in Sub-Saharan Africa, a gap that is particularly pressing in the current context of Benin’s ongoing decentralization reforms, which increasingly call for territorially grounded evidence to inform local development policy. This study addresses this gap by assessing the contribution of agro-food processing to territorial attractiveness in central Benin, as a pathway toward more sustainable and spatially balanced local economic development. Data were collected from 204 individual and cooperative processing units surveyed via KoboCollect (version 2025.3.3) using snowball sampling. As the data are cross-sectional, the reported associations should be interpreted as descriptive rather than causal. A Territorial Attractiveness Index (TAI), combining indicators of investment, business creation, and agglomeration effects, was developed as a quantitative tool to measure and monitor this contribution. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and, following verification of ANOVA assumptions, the non-parametric Kruskal–Wallis test with Bonferroni-adjusted pairwise comparisons. The results show that 74% of surveyed units made investments (mean CFAF 248,919.5), 76% reported an association with local business creation, and 90.7% reported agglomeration effects linked to economic concentration. The mean TAI was 4.559 out of 7, indicating a substantial association with territorial attractiveness. Significant differences were observed among municipalities (Kruskal–Wallis χ² = 43.27, df = 5, p < 0.001), with Bantè exhibiting markedly lower attractiveness than the other five municipalities, which did not differ among themselves, a pattern that appears more closely linked to structural deficits in collective coordination than to a general absence of processing activity. These findings suggest that sustainable rural development policies should promote context-specific, territorially anchored agro-industrial clusters to reduce spatial disparities and strengthen the long-term economic sustainability of rural territories. Full article

To address the environmental threats posed by antibiotic residues in water and the engineering bottlenecks of traditional powder photocatalysts—such as high cost, complicated preparation processes—a novel Bi₂WO₆-doped geopolymer composite photocatalytic material was successfully constructed through a facile and green synthesis strategy, utilizing low-cost and readily available geopolymers as the supporting matrix. The adsorption and degradation performance of this material toward tetracycline hydrochloride (TC), a typical antibiotic in aquatic environments, was systematically evaluated under visible-light irradiation. Experimental results demonstrate that the composite system exhibits a synergistic effect of adsorption enrichment by geopolymers and in situ photodegradation by Bi₂WO₆. Under the optimized conditions of merely 4% Bi₂WO₆ loading, catalyst dosage of 1 g/L, and an initial pH of 8.0, the degradation efficiency of TC reached 82.7% after 300 min of visible-light illumination. Even in real and complex water matrices, the material maintained a stable microstructure and highly efficient targeted removal capability. Radical scavenging experiments confirmed that the highly oxidative photogenerated holes (h⁺) generated by Bi₂WO₆ and the superoxide radicals (O²⁻) derived from the reduction of dissolved oxygen are the primary active species governing the efficient decomposition of TC. This study not only ameliorates the agglomeration tendency of pure-phase Bi₂WO₆ but also, by virtue of its inexpensive raw materials, facile synthesis process, and excellent adaptability to the weakly alkaline environments of actual water sources, provides a highly feasible strategy for the future low-cost, large-scale remediation of realistic aquatic environments and the treatment of industrial antibiotic wastewater. Full article

Digital transformation in logistics contributes to logistics cost reduction, helps optimize resource allocation and achieves sustainable economic development. This study constructs an evaluation indicator system for digital transformation in logistics and sustainable economic development, adopts the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2010 to 2023, and empirically explores the impact of digital transformation in logistics on sustainable economic development. The results show that logistics digital transformation can positively promote the sustainable development of the economy. Factor market development plays a mediating role, whereas information technology industry agglomeration plays a moderating role. The impact of digital transformation in logistics on sustainable economic development shows a nonlinear threshold effect. A heterogeneity analysis suggests that the impact of digital transformation in logistics on sustainable economic development is more significant in the eastern region, especially from 2015 to 2023. This study helps increase our understanding of the macroeconomic impact of digital transformation in logistics, provides new perspectives and empirical evidence on the economic outcomes of digital transformation in the logistics industry, enriches the investigation of influencing factors for sustainable economic development, and provides new insights for sustainable economic development. Full article

Heat pumps are core equipment for efficient low-grade thermal energy utilization and low-carbon transformation of the energy structure, offering significant energy-saving potential in building heating and industrial waste heat recovery. This paper reviews the research progress and technical challenges of compression, absorption, and adsorption heat pumps as well as nanofluid-enhanced heat transfer technology and elastocaloric heat pump systems. Air source heat pumps can delay frosting through variable frequency, heat storage, and waste heat recovery. However, accurate prediction models for performance degradation under extreme cold conditions are lacking. Although ground source and water source heat pumps exhibit significant energy efficiency advantages, ground source systems may suffer from performance degradation due to underground thermal imbalance. The application of water source systems is strictly constrained by water resource conditions. Driven by low-grade waste heat, absorption heat pumps employing traditional working pairs suffer from crystallization, corrosion, or high rectification energy consumption. The COP of a single-effect cycle under 80~100 °C waste heat is only 1.2~1.9, while hybrid cycles can reach approximately 3.2 at 120~150 °C. Although adsorption heat pumps achieve significantly improved performance under continuous heat recovery cycles, the full-scale power density of novel adsorbents such as metal–organic frameworks is inferior to the power density of traditional silica gel. Moreover, under off-design conditions, the performance drops by 23~48% compared to theoretical values. Nanofluids can enhance heat transfer, but the long-term effects of particle agglomeration at high temperatures on pump power consumption and system compatibility remain to be systematically evaluated. Elastocaloric heat pump systems can achieve refrigerant-free cooling, but current prototypes still cannot compete with traditional vapor compression systems in long-cycle fatigue reliability and power density. Current heat pump technologies generally face challenges such as insufficient adaptability to extreme conditions, bottlenecks in working fluids and materials, and a lack of long-term validation. Future research must construct a multi-source coupling optimization system, address common problems in working fluids and materials, promote long-term validation and kilowatt-level prototype demonstrations, and drive the large-scale deployment and engineering application of heat pump technology toward high efficiency, intelligence, and high reliability. Full article

Lake Baikal is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the largest freshwater reservoir on the planet. It is located in the center of Eurasia, in an industrially developing region—Eastern Siberia. Although a regulatory and legal framework exists, quantitative estimates of the pathways of pollutant transport from industrial sources to the lake water area remain insufficiently studied, particularly in the context of seasonal dynamics and the influence of developing industrial sectors. In the present work, a quantitative analysis of the direct atmospheric transport of pollutants from three groups of stationary sources (the Irkutsk agglomeration, the Republic of Buryatia, and the oil-and-gas production areas of Irkutsk Oblast) to the lake surface was carried out for the first time using the HYSPLIT model for the period 2005–2025. About 4.7 million forward trajectories were computed at three heights (250, 500, 1000 m AGL) for each group of sources. It was established that conditions favorable for the transport of impurities to the lake occur in more than half of the cases. However, the spatial distribution of the impact on the Baikal air basin is heterogeneous: the Irkutsk agglomeration accounts for 67.5% of the “hits” (the main contribution being to the air basin of the Southern Basin), the Republic of Buryatia 18.8% (to the Central Basin), and the oil-and-gas areas 19.9% (to the Northern Basin). On the basis of a multifactor analysis, a combined Potential Impact (PI) index was developed that makes it possible to rank regional sources by the degree of their impact on the lake ecosystem, taking into account the emission volume, the probability of delivery, the residence time, and the height of trajectory passage. The results form a scientific basis for optimizing the spatial placement of environmental monitoring networks and for preliminary zoning of environmental risk assessment over the Lake Baikal water area. Ultimately, this study contributes to the sustainable management of the Baikal Natural Territory by providing actionable insights for balancing regional industrial growth with the long-term ecological preservation of the planet’s largest freshwater reservoir. Full article

Spatiotemporal differentiation and coupled driving mechanisms of urban ecological resilience in transboundary composite economic belts remain an understudied niche within human–land coupling system research. Taking 29 prefecture-level and county-level units of the Huaihe River Eco-Economic Belt from 2014 to 2023 as research samples, this study constructs an ecological resilience evaluation framework tailored to the pollution disturbance characteristics of the Huaihe River Basin under a three-dimensional theoretical framework encompassing resistance, adaptability, and recoverability. The entropy weight method is adopted to calculate comprehensive ecological resilience values, while the geographically and temporally weighted regression (GTWR) model is applied to identify spatiotemporal heterogeneous correlations among multiple influencing factors. This paper further characterizes the spatiotemporal evolutionary patterns of urban ecological resilience across the study area and unpacks the coupled associative effects of natural, economic, and social driving factors. The empirical results reveal three key findings: (1) Temporally, the overall comprehensive ecological resilience of the study region rose from 0.318 to 0.416, with a total growth rate of 30.91%. Its evolutionary trajectory follows three successive phases: rapid growth, steady improvement, and slow saturation. Adaptability, which is predominantly boosted by anthropogenic environmental governance, constitutes the primary contributor to resilience growth. The range of urban resilience values narrowed by 9.97%, indicating continuous advancement in balanced regional development. (2) Spatially, ecological resilience presents a prominent core-periphery pattern, with high-resilience zones concentrated in mountainous southwestern areas and low-resilience zones distributed across northeastern plains. All low-resilience county-level units were eliminated by 2023. (3) In terms of driving associations, topographic relief and environmental governance investment maintain persistent positive correlations with ecological resilience, while per capita GDP acts as the core economic supportive factor. The proportion of secondary industry and population density exhibit significant negative correlations with resilience. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) shifts from a negative correlation to a weak positive correlation alongside progressive ecological restoration, whereas river network variables exert negligible long-term associative impacts. Collectively, the spatiotemporally heterogeneous coupling of natural endowments, industrial-economic conditions, and social governance factors shapes the evolutionary patterns of regional ecological resilience. This study fills the research gap regarding long-timescale resilience driving mechanisms for transprovincial composite river basins covering five provinces. It identifies novel human–land coupling mechanisms, including the temporal reversal of vegetation’s ecological benefits and the dual stress imposed by industrial agglomeration and dense human settlements in plain regions. The quantitative outputs of this research can provide data-based references for differentiated coordinated ecological governance across the Huaihe Ecological Economic Belt. Full article

China is rich in magnetite mineral resources, but they are generally characterized by low grade, fine dissemination size, and a high content of harmful impurities. Wet low-intensity magnetic separation (WLIMS) is an important method for processing fine-grained magnetite. However, during the separation process, fine magnetite particles are prone to magnetic agglomeration, which makes it difficult for conventional WLIMS separators to achieve high-selectivity separation. To address this issue, a novel WLIMS separator based on a rotating magnetic system was developed in this investigation, and its separation characteristics were systematically investigated through a combined approach comprising CFD–DEM–FEM multiphysics coupling simulations and experimental validation. Simulation results indicate that the rotating magnetic system significantly reduces the chain length and the structural stability of magnetic agglomerates just as magnetite particles enter the magnetic field region. Furthermore, under the rotating action of the magnetic system, the magnetic chains only enclose a portion of the intergrowth minerals, while gangue minerals remain unattached, which positively contributes to improved separation selectivity. Both laboratory-scale experimental results and industrial production data indicate that, compared to the conventional WLIMS separator, the rotating magnetic system WLIMS separator achieves significantly superior separation performance. For a magnetite ore with a grade of 57.68%, the rotating magnetic system WLIMS separator achieved an optimal concentrate grade of 65.43% (with a recovery of 94.78%), whereas the conventional WLIMS separator attained only 60.32% at a similar recovery rate. This investigation provides an important basis for the large-scale industrial application of rotating magnetic system WLIMS separators and the efficient development and utilization of fine-grained magnetite resources. Full article

Identifying the spatio-temporal evolutionary patterns and driving mechanisms of rural tourism network attention is essential for predicting the development trends of the rural tourism industry and delivering refined industrial governance. Taking 356 prefecture-level cities in China from 2015 to 2024 as basic research units, this paper constructs a comprehensive evaluation system for rural tourism network attention based on multi-source data. Furthermore, its spatio-temporal evolution characteristics and internal influencing factors are systematically investigated by means of spatial autocorrelation analysis and geographically weighted regression. The results indicate that the overall level of rural tourism network attention in China shows an obvious fluctuating growth trend, which can be divided into three successive stages, namely steady growth (from 0.8530 in 2015 to 1.2028 in 2019), explosive growth (from 1.9563 in 2020 to 3.7471 in 2021) and high-level fluctuation (maintained in the high range of 2.4–3.4). In addition, with the continuous iteration of internet communication media, the guiding influence of traditional search platforms has gradually weakened, while emerging social media and short-video platforms have become the core carriers of online tourism traffic. Correspondingly, media innovation persistently reshapes the spatial distribution pattern of rural tourism network attention. In terms of spatial characteristics, rural tourism network attention has undergone a significant transformation from geographical gradient polarization to overall regional equilibrium. Specifically, from 2015 to 2024, the overall Moran’s I index remained positive, with values ranging from 0.0116 to 0.1358, indicating an overall trend of gradual decline. High-attention areas are predominantly concentrated in economically developed urban agglomerations, whereas remote and economically underdeveloped regions exhibit contiguous low-value aggregation characteristics, which reveals a remarkable trend of balanced development nationwide. In view of driving mechanisms, highway network density, tourism income, rural tourism resource and enrollment of university students are identified as the core driving factors dominating the spatio-temporal evolution of rural tourism network attention. Moreover, the intensity of the influence of each factor presents distinct spatial heterogeneity. This study further reveals that the spatial heterogeneity of rural tourism network attention calculated using multi-source fused data shows a remarkable convergent characteristic, which can reflect the actual distribution of the rural tourism market more objectively and accurately. Meanwhile, rural tourism network attention is typically characterized by scale-dependent with the spatial distribution at the macro-scale being more balanced than that at the meso- and micro-scales. Full article

Agro-industrial by-products from beetroot, raspberry, sea buckthorn, and shadbush are valuable sources of natural pigments and renewable filler materials, but their hydrophilic surfaces limit compatibility with hydrophobic polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) matrices. This study evaluated the effect of catalyst-free vapor-phase hexamethyldisilazane (HMDS) treatment of pigment-rich powders and their incorporation into PDMS composites at 5 and 20 wt.% filler loadings. Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and contact angle measurements were used to characterize surface modifications. Mechanical behavior under puncture loading was evaluated using texture analysis. FTIR confirmed successful silylation through the reduction in hydroxyl groups and the emergence of silicon-containing functionalities. Treated fillers exhibited rougher, more irregular surfaces, which suggested improved filler dispersion and interfacial compatibility within the PDMS matrix. Modified composites showed enhanced hydrophobicity, with contact angles up to 102.84°. Composites containing 5 wt.% HMDS-treated raspberry filler demonstrated the highest puncture resistance and elasticity, indicating improved interfacial interactions. In contrast, 20 wt.% filler loading generally reduced puncture resistance and elasticity, possibly due to increased particle agglomeration and reduced matrix continuity, as suggested by the SEM observations, whereas shadbush-filled composites showed decreased performance after treatment. Overall, HMDS surface modification effectively improves the compatibility of pigment-rich agro-waste fillers with PDMS and supports their use as functional fillers and natural colorant sources in silicone-based composites, providing a value-added route for the utilization of agro-industrial by-products. Full article

Urban agglomerations concentrate activities that generate both PM2.5 pollution and carbon emissions, but the economic basis for governing them jointly remains unclear. Taking the Yangtze River Delta as a case, this study evaluates pollution–carbon co-governance from a marginal abatement cost (MAC) perspective. Using panel data for 41 cities from 2011 to 2023, we estimate shadow prices and MACs under joint and single-objective abatement scenarios with a non-radial directional distance function dual model. We then construct carbon-reduction and pollution-reduction cost-saving effects, classify synergy types, and examine their temporal, spatial, and nonlinear transition patterns. The results show that joint abatement generally lowers the MACs of both carbon mitigation and PM2.5 reduction, with stronger cost-saving on the pollution side. Under the baseline classification, the share of balanced synergy increases over time, and the balanced state shows high persistence in Markov transitions. Core cities show weaker measured cost-saving effects, which may reflect limited remaining low-cost co-abatement potential rather than weak governance. Semiparametric evidence further indicates that industrial upgrading, openness, and urbanization are nonlinearly associated with MACs and synergy balance. These findings suggest that urban pollution–carbon coordination should be guided by local cost structures and development stages. Full article

Rapid urbanization presents a fundamental challenge to global sustainable development, as urban expansion increasingly conflicts with resource constraints, ecological carrying capacity, and carbon emission mandates. Serving as a highly spatially heterogeneous laboratory, China offers a critical context for embedding green development into urban efficiency assessments. This study reconceptualizes new urbanization efficiency (NUE) through a multidimensional framework encompassing resource inputs, coordinated development processes, and sustainable outcomes. Using a panel of 281 prefecture-level cities, we evaluated NUE via a remote-sensing-constrained Super-SBM model, utilizing LISA time paths and an interpretable spatial machine learning framework (GWR-XGBoost-SHAP) to unpack its spatiotemporal dynamics. Key findings indicate: (1) China’s NUE exhibited a fluctuating upward trajectory, transitioning from an east-high/west-low to a south-high/north-low spatial pattern. (2) Spatiotemporal analysis revealed strong spatial inertia and profound path dependency in North China, characterizing it as a persistent low-value basin, whereas southeastern coastal cities demonstrated dynamic, path-breaking trajectories. (3) While green development intensity, industrial upgrading, and technological innovation emerged as primary drivers, they operate through complex nonlinear mechanisms. Specifically, green development and innovation exhibit threshold-triggered synergies, population agglomeration acts as a nonlinear amplifier, and external openness presents context-dependent negative interactions. These findings refine NUE measurement methodologies and provide a transferable analytical framework to inform differentiated, place-based urbanization policies for regions navigating the friction between urban growth and ecological limits. Full article

Understanding the interactions between water resource utilization, socioeconomic development, and the ecological environment is fundamental to ensuring ecological security and promoting sustainable development in the lower Yellow River region. This study developed a composite system integrating water resources, socioeconomic development, and ecological environment for 27 cities in the lower Yellow River Basin. The indicator weights were determined using the combined Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and entropy weight method. Subsequently, several models, including Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), the coupling coordination degree (CCD) model, spatial autocorrelation, and obstacle degree analysis, were integrated to systematically evaluate the spatiotemporal evolution, coordination patterns, and key constraints of the composite system. The findings indicate that the development of the three subsystems surged with fluctuations, following the gradient pattern of ecological environment > socio-economic development > water resources. The water resource subsystem improved slowly and remained the main constraint. The CCD gradually shifted from barely and primarily coordinated stages to intermediate and well-coordinated stages. Spatially, Shandong outperformed Henan, eastern areas exceeded western areas, and core cities showed higher coordination levels than inland cities. Significant and increasing positive spatial autocorrelation indicated strengthened spatial agglomeration, with high–high clusters in eastern Shandong and low–low clusters in western and northwestern Henan. The per capita water resource indicator emerged as the dominant obstacle, while forest and grassland area, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), agricultural water use, and the share of the tertiary industry also constituted major constraints. Full article