Search Results (744)

Digital infrastructure (DI) plays a dual role in the low-carbon transition. It supports economic operation but also consumes substantial energy. This study explores DI’s impact on carbon emission efficiency (CEE) using data on 41 cities in China’s Yangtze River Delta from 2011 to 2024. The methods used in this study include a two-way fixed effects model, mediation analysis, a panel threshold model, and a spatial Durbin model. The results show that the impact of DI on CEE is U-shaped. Industrial upgrading and technological innovation are the potential channels through which DI affects CEE. Energy efficiency has a single threshold value of 8.533. DI enhances CEE when energy efficiency exceeds this threshold. Spatial analysis indicates that both the direct and indirect effects of DI follow a U-shaped pattern. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the environmental impact of DI varies depending on resource endowments, policy environments, and economic development levels. This study provides insights for global urban agglomerations to balance digital transformation and sustainable development. Full article

Refugee camps have evolved from temporary shelters into permanent, complex urban systems, yet policy models often fail to address their long-term systemic marginality. To bridge this gap, this study conducts a comparative qualitative analysis of three protracted cases in the Middle East: Shatila (Lebanon), Yarmouk (Syria), and Jabalia (Gaza). Using a directed qualitative content analysis, the study evaluates secondary data, spatial reports, and institutional archives across five core System Pillars: Governance Configurations, Legal Regimes, Humanitarian Mediation, Spatial Violence, and Grassroots Agency. Findings show that conditions of urban exception are sustained by a self-reinforcing nexus of these processes. Furthermore, a dual-process model of refugee agency emerges, distinguishing short-term adaptive survival tactics (e.g., informal DIY utility grids) from constitutive practices of urban citizenship that reconfigure institutional aid protocols. In post-conflict contexts, physical destruction is systematically coupled with state-led property legislation to enforce permanent displacement. We conclude that protracted camps must be recognized as dynamic, co-produced urban systems rather than static zones of exception. Effectively breaking cycles of socio-spatial marginalization requires international actors to transition from short-term emergency assistance to rights-based metabolic planning, legal tenure protection, and formalized institutional co-production frameworks. Full article

This study analyzes the relationship between economic inequality, social capital, and crime across Mexican municipalities in 2020, adopting a mediation approach and an exploratory territorial analysis. Using data from the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL), the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System (SESNSP), the National Statistical Directory of Economic Units (DENUE), and the National Electoral Institute (INE), a structural social capital index was constructed through Principal Component Analysis (PCA), a structural social capital index was constructed through Principal Component Analysis (PCA), incorporating indicators of civic participation, associational density, and local social infrastructure. The empirical strategy combines ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models, Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA), bootstrap mediation models with 5000 resamples, and spatial regression robustness checks. The results show that inequality is positively and significantly associated with municipal crime rates; the Gini index is associated with vehicle theft (β = 0.115, p < 0.001) and homicide (β = 0.073, p < 0.001). After structural covariates are included, inequality loses statistical significance for property crime but remains associated with homicide (β = 0.098, p < 0.001). Social capital shows a significant negative association with both crime outcomes. The mediation analysis indicates a statistically significant indirect pathway linking inequality and crime through structural social capital; however, the form of mediation differs by crime type. For homicide, the evidence is consistent with complementary or partial mediation, whereas the covariate-adjusted vehicle theft model shows a competitive mediation or suppression pattern. The spatial analysis reveals territorial autocorrelation in all variables. Spatial regression robustness checks further show that structural social capital remains negatively associated with both crime outcomes after accounting for spatial dependence. The findings suggest that the inequality–crime relationship depends on contextual factors and local social structures and should be interpreted as statistical associations rather than causal effects. Full article

The development of plant-based functional beverages is often limited by inherent matrix defects, particularly undesirable off-flavors, astringency, and colloidal instability. Water kefir (WK), a highly resilient multispecies symbiotic consortium, offers a robust biorefining platform to address these challenges. This review systematically elucidates the underlying micro-ecological logic and biochemical mechanisms of WK-mediated plant matrix remodeling. We first detail how spatial niche differentiation and cross-feeding networks among lactic acid bacteria, yeasts, and acetic acid bacteria drive ecological homeostasis. Next, we highlight core molecular events that elevate sensory quality: protein unfolding for off-flavor elimination, enzymatic depolymerization of phenolics to mitigate astringency, and exopolysaccharide synthesis for rheological and flavor diffusion control. Finally, to overcome industrial scale-up challenges, we outline a precision fermentation framework, integrating systems multi-omics, real-time biomimetic monitoring, and sensory topological modeling. Ultimately, this synthesis provides theoretical guidance for the reverse flavor engineering and targeted nutritional design of novel plant-based beverages. Full article

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) targeting PD-1/PD-L1 have improved outcomes across squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) of the head and neck, lung, esophagus, and skin, yet durable responses remain confined to a subset of patients in every subtype. Objective response rates vary substantially across SCCs despite overlapping genomic alterations, comparable tumor mutational burden, and high PD-L1 expression, indicating that tumor-intrinsic biomarkers alone do not explain this variability. Growing evidence points to the tumor immune microenvironment, and in particular the myeloid compartment, as a critical determinant of immunotherapy responsiveness. In this review, we synthesize current evidence on myeloid-mediated immune regulation across SCC subtypes, focusing on tumor-associated macrophages, myeloid-derived suppressor cells/tumor-associated neutrophils, and dendritic cells, and the mechanisms by which these populations impair antigen presentation, restrict T cell infiltration, and sustain immunologically “cold” tumor states. We further examine therapeutic strategies aimed at reprogramming rather than simply depleting suppressive myeloid populations, including radiation therapy, STING agonism, and myeloid-targeted agents (CSF1R, PI3Kγ, and CXCR2 inhibition), each of which has shown encouraging preclinical and early clinical activity in combination with ICI. Collectively, this evidence supports a model in which the myeloid compartment functions as an actionable, convergent determinant of ICI resistance across SCC subtypes, rather than merely a passive biomarker. We propose that through the integration of spatial and single-cell profiling of myeloid states with clinical history it will be possible to predict response to immune checkpoint therapy and personalize myeloid-directed combination strategies, though the specific biomarkers needed to match individual patients to a given myeloid-targeted approach remain to be defined. We further discuss the toxicity considerations associated with both immune checkpoint blockade and radiation-based combination approaches, the early-phase status of most myeloid-targeted agents currently in clinical development, and the extent to which mechanistic insight, derived predominantly from HNSCC, generalizes to squamous cell carcinomas arising at other anatomic sites. Full article

The pervasive rise in digital platforms has fundamentally recalibrated the relationship between urban communities and their cultural landscapes, reconfiguring not only the sensory experience of these environments but also their interpretive frames and the everyday contestations that surround them. Using coffee spaces in Beijing as an empirical lens, this study integrates 630 validated POI locations, 287,632 online reviews from Dianping, GIS spatial analysis, LDA topic modelling, semiotic coding, and a fine-tuned RoBERTa (Robustly Optimized BERT Pretraining Approach) text classifier to examine the convergence between platform-mediated public perceptions and urban spatial differentiation. Our spatial interrogation identifies a statistically significant centre–periphery divide within this platform-curated corpus—a pattern that describes the geography of platform-mediated visibility rather than the total physical distribution of coffee outlets in Beijing, characterised by pronounced high-density agglomerations nesting within historic urban cores, central business districts, nascent knowledge hubs, and gentrifying lifestyle enclaves. Three landscape prototypes are derived from the data—business corridors, cultural experimental fields, and social-media spectacles. Each type exhibits discernibly different patterns of spatial density, adjacent land-use configurations, perceived experiential qualities, and underlying symbolic discourses. While positive sentiments dominate platform discourse, localised anxieties emerge regarding visual homogenization, intense queuing, premium pricing, and loss of place authenticity. The 630 venues analysed here represent a platform-visibility stratum—establishments sufficiently reviewed to feature on digital intermediaries—and the spatial patterns we map describe the geography of this visibility rather than the total physical distribution of coffee outlets. Full article

The core predicament of energy transition lies not in the availability of clean technologies, but in whether an economy possesses the institutional capacity and social foundation to systematically regulate its carbon-energy metabolic processes. Drawing upon co-evolutionary theory from evolutionary economics, this paper constructs a composite indicator of Low-Carbon Green Energy Eco-Co-evolution (LCEE) encompassing three functional dimensions: efficiency advancement, kinetic energy replacement, and boundary adherence. Concurrently, by integrating innovation ecosystem theory with inclusive development theory, we propose the concept of “Inclusive Potential of Regional Innovation Ecosystems” (IEP), characterizing the systemic potential for transforming innovation outcomes into social welfare across four dimensions: Knowledge Matrix Abundance (KMF), Cultural Capillary Permeation (CCP), Technological Community Succession (TCS), and Social Root Nourishment (SRN). Taking China’s 2016 intellectual property (IP) powerhouse construction pilot as the institutional prototype of Industrial Intellectual Property Upgrading Reform (IPR), we incorporate IPR, IEP, and LCEE into a unified causal analytical framework, proposing a testable transmission logic of ‘institutional supply → ecological development → co-evolutionary synergy. Using panel data from 30 Chinese provincial-level administrative regions over 2010–2022, we employ a Spatial Durbin Difference-in-Differences (SDM-DID) model to identify the direct and spatial spillover effects of IPR on LCEE, and embed a Double Machine Learning (DML) framework to test the mediating mechanism of IEP while controlling for high-dimensional nonlinear interference. The findings reveal that IPR exerts a significant and robust direct promoting effect on LCEE, generating positive spatial spillovers to neighboring regions through the public disclosure of patent information. IEP significantly promotes local LCEE, yet its spatial spillover lacks statistical support due to structural conflicts in inter-dimensional transmission attributes. IEP plays a significant partial mediating role between IPR and LCEE, with the indirect effect accounting for over one-third of the total effect, a finding robust to alternative machine learning algorithms, sample split adjustments, and exclusion of contemporaneous competing policies. Sub-path tests reveal that KMF bears the strongest mediating efficacy, serving as the primary transmission channel, while CCP exhibits full mediation—the institutional effect on LCEE in the cultural dimension depends almost entirely on the mediating transformation through the public cultural service system. Heterogeneity analysis further demonstrates full mediation in the Low-Carbon Green Energy Eco-Kinetic Replacement (KER) dimension, indicating that the institutional catalytic effect on clean energy substitution must be realized through IEP transformation. This paper provides empirical evidence for the proposed causal pathway through which institutional public goods indirectly enhance the synergistic quality of carbon-energy transition via the inclusive potential of innovation ecosystems, providing theoretical foundations and policy implications that, while grounded in China’s institutional context, may offer valuable reference points for emerging market economies facing similar dual pressures of technological constraints and green transition. Full article

With increasing interest in nature-based and biophilic built environments, understanding how users perceive natural characteristics embedded in sports venues and how these perceptions are associated with psychological experiences and behavioural intentions has become an important research topic. However, limited studies have examined the psychological mechanisms through which perceived nature-based characteristics of sports venue design are related to users’ revisit intention. Based on restorative environment theory and place attachment theory, this study investigates the relationship between nature-based sports venue design and revisit intention from a user-perceived built environment perspective, with a particular focus on the mediating roles of perceived restorativeness and place attachment. A questionnaire survey was conducted among university students in Shandong Province, China, and 623 valid responses were obtained. Structural equation modelling and bootstrap analysis were employed to examine the proposed relationships. The results showed that perceived nature-based sports venue design characteristics were positively associated with revisit intention, perceived restorativeness, and place attachment. Perceived restorativeness was positively associated with both place attachment and revisit intention, while place attachment was positively associated with revisit intention. Furthermore, mediation analysis indicated that perceived restorativeness and place attachment separately mediated the relationship between perceived nature-based sports venue design characteristics and revisit intention, and together formed a sequential mediation pathway. These findings suggest that nature-based characteristics embedded within sports venues may support users’ restorative experiences and emotional connections with places, which are associated with continued engagement with sports spaces. This study provides user-centred evidence for built environment design and sports venue planning by highlighting the potential importance of natural lighting, spatial openness, visual connections with nature, and restorative spatial experiences. Full article

We develop a reaction–diffusion–chemotaxis model for spatial tumour–immune–chemokine dynamics that couples logistic tumour growth, immune-mediated killing, chemokine-dependent immune recruitment, chemotactic migration, and signal production. For the non-dimensional system, we establish local classical solvability, nonnegativity, a uniform tumour-density bound, and global mass estimates for the immune and chemokine components. The tumour-free equilibrium is stable precisely when the baseline immune-control index satisfies ${\sigma }_0/\delta >1$, whereas positive homogeneous coexistence is characterized by a scalar nonlinear equation. Linearization in the Neumann Laplacian eigenbasis yields a mode-dependent cubic dispersion relation, showing that chemotaxis does not alter the tumour-invasion threshold but can destabilize homogeneous coexistence through a finite-wavelength oscillatory instability above a critical sensitivity ${\xi }_c$. A conservative finite-volume discretization with upwind chemotactic fluxes and implicit backward differentiation formula time integration is used to test these predictions. Numerical experiments recover the analytical equilibria and growth rates, identify the dominant unstable mode, reproduce the transition to spatial heterogeneity, and quantify the effects of immune recruitment, decay, and diffusion on the stability boundary. Grid-refinement, mass-balance, residual, and nonnegativity diagnostics support the computational reliability of the results. Full article

Coordinating air pollution control with carbon mitigation is a central challenge for urban sustainability. However, there is currently a lack of sufficient research on whether digital infrastructure can complement environmental regulations to enhance the synergy of pollution and carbon emission reduction (SPCER). Using the overlapping implementation of China’s Key Air Pollution Control Zones (KAPCZs) and Broadband China (BC) policies as an empirical policy setting, this study applies a partially linear Double Machine Learning framework to panel data for 282 Chinese cities from 2006 to 2023. The results show that the dual-policy pilots significantly improve urban SPCER, while a unified interaction test further provides statistical evidence of a positive synergistic effect between the two policies. Mediation analyses provide evidence consistent with Green Technological Innovation, industrial structure upgrading, and green finance development as potential transmission mechanisms. Formal cross-group tests reveal significant heterogeneity across regions and city characteristics, with larger effects in highly urbanized, low industrial development, non-old industrial base, central, and non-resource-based cities. Spatial Durbin Model estimates further indicate positive spillovers to neighboring cities. These findings demonstrate the potential value of coordinating environmental regulation with digital infrastructure and provide evidence for differentiated policy design and cross-regional collaboration in urban digital–green transitions. Full article

Ordinary architectural conditions interact through arrangements that static representations often detach from time and use. This study examines six selected Turkish popular films as a mediated comparative corpus of apartments, neighborhood interfaces, mobile (route-vehicle) interiors, and domestic spaces in use. Comparative visual–spatial analysis of 24 scene-clusters traces how spatial domains and boundary/connection devices organize visibility, audibility, access, movement, bodily proximity, and collective attention. We define architectures of exposure as an event-level mismatch between scene-supported expected control over sight, sound, access, or bodily distance and the interactional field enabled by a configuration. A provisional, construction-corpus-derived layered model separates four primary spatial domains from boundary/connection devices, six interactional mechanisms, four control relations, three intensifiers, and contingent outcomes. Ten clusters directly demonstrate the mismatch; three show strategic or transformative widening, six provide partial or qualified evidence, and five delimit the concept through intended permeability or retained control. Cross-case comparison shows that the same device can preserve refusal, transmit distress, enable rescue, or support solidarity, while comparable spatial mechanisms acquire different narrative and ethical significance under comic and non-comic framing. The study contributes a scene-cluster method for treating fiction film as mediated architectural evidence and a diagnostic framework for future observation, acoustic assessment, visibility analysis, and post-occupancy research. Full article

Urban well-being in China emerges from spatially uneven configurations of development intensity, environmental pressure, governance input, public-service capacity, land-use transformation, and urban–rural conditions. Using a balanced panel of 294 Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2004 to 2023 (5880 city–year observations), this study combines spatial mapping, Local Moran’s I, Getis–Ord Gi*, and two-way fixed-effects (TWFE) models to examine how governance-related conditions and ecological and environmental pressure are associated with resident well-being. Prefecture-level cities are treated as urban–rural territorial governance units encompassing urban cores, peri-urban areas, and surrounding county-level jurisdictions. Spatial diagnostics reveal non-identical clustering of resource and environmental intensity (REI), government regulation and investment (GRI), ecological and environmental pressure (EEP), and resident well-being (RWB). REI is positively associated with EEP, and this association remains positive after excluding observations containing ordinary statistical completion. EEP is negatively associated with RWB in the full-sample TWFE and one-year-lagged specifications, but the association weakens in the 2014–2023 and restricted samples, indicating temporal and sample boundaries rather than a stable mediating mechanism. GRI shows contrasting cross-city and within-city patterns, consistent with a distinction between governance capacity and pressure-responsive adjustment. Dimension-level results further show that EEP is negatively associated with rural disposable income, whereas medical service capacity is positively associated with rural disposable income. Overall, the study provides a spatially grounded account of heterogeneous governance–environment–welfare relationships across Chinese prefecture-level territories. Full article

Chikungunya is undergoing global expansion, but how El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) influences its transmission remains unclear. We aim to assess the impact of ENSO phases on chikungunya incidence via temperature and precipitation teleconnections and to project future risk burden under climate change. We compiled annual national and subnational chikungunya case data (2008–2024), quantified ENSO–climate teleconnections using the E-index (eastern Pacific El Niño) and C-index (central Pacific La Niña), and applied distributed-lag time-series models to assess the teleconnection-mediated impact of ENSO on chikungunya incidence. We further projected future risk burden under climate change scenarios. Modelling shows that El Niño increased chikungunya risk after a 2-year lag (cumulative relative risk [CRR] = 1.40, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.02–1.85), while La Niña suppressed it (CRR = 0.09, 95% CI: 0.07–0.13). Temperature teleconnections were the dominant modifier of spatial heterogeneity in effects. Under all scenarios, El Niño-driven warming led to positive median excess cases, the highest under SSP2-4.5, whereas La Niña-driven changes projected smaller, highly uncertain reductions. ENSO influences chikungunya transmission through asymmetric and spatially heterogeneous teleconnection pathways. Integrating ENSO forecasts into surveillance efforts has the potential to enhance preparedness in climate-sensitive regions. Full article

Existing studies on cultural landscape genes in traditional villages have largely focused on the identification of objective elements, while paying insufficient attention to the associations between tourists’ subjective perceptions, Place identity, and Satisfaction. Taking the five nationally recognized traditional villages in Wuxi, China, as case studies, this study constructs an association model linking cultural landscape gene perception, Place identity, and Satisfaction. The model was tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling based on 392 tourist questionnaires. The results indicate that Perceived Environmental Character, Perceived Settlement Morphology, Perceived Architectural Characteristics, and Perceived Cultural Attributes are all significantly and positively associated with both Place identity and Satisfaction. Place identity is also significantly and positively associated with Satisfaction. In terms of the standardized path coefficients, Perceived Settlement Morphology shows a relatively strong association with Place identity (β = 0.285), while Perceived Architectural Characteristics shows a relatively strong association with Satisfaction (β = 0.257). The model explains 41.2% of the variance in Place identity and 54.1% of the variance in Satisfaction. Both the direct paths between the four dimensions of cultural landscape gene perception and Satisfaction and the indirect paths through Place identity are statistically significant, indicating that Place identity plays a partial mediating role. This study extends Cultural Landscape Gene Theory from the identification of objective landscape elements to the levels of tourist perception and tourism evaluation, and reveals that Place identity may constitute a psychological pathway linking cultural landscape perception with Satisfaction. In practice, the perceptibility of village spatial patterns, architectural appearance, environmental characteristics, and cultural content should be comprehensively maintained to enhance tourists’ Place identity and overall experience evaluations. Full article

As China’s dominant urban housing form, gated residential communities deploy layered spatial access controls governing who may enter and move through neighbourhood space. While neighbourhood social sustainability has attracted substantial scholarly attention, how micro-spatial governance arrangements affect the inclusiveness of residential built environments toward essential service workers remains underexplored. Drawing on Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space, this study uses food delivery riders—who navigate gated community access controls dozens of times daily—as an analytical lens to evaluate how neighbourhood spatial governance shapes social inclusiveness. Vignette-based survey data from 445 riders across 157 cities in 27 Chinese provinces were analysed using structural equation modeling. Results show that cumulative anxiety from procedural delays, detours, and elevator waiting is the dominant pathway through which spatial governance undermines riders’ perceived spatial inclusion—operationalised through occupational dignity indicators—with elevator-based spatial stratification identified as a concrete, low-cost intervention target within the spatial-channeling mechanism. Technology-mediated access partially mitigates face-to-face exclusion but leaves underlying spatial inequalities intact. Demographic invariance across all tested variables confirms that diminished inclusion arises from the governance regime itself. The findings position neighbourhood spatial governance as a measurable dimension of urban social sustainability—one concretely testable through the experience of essential service workers—and identify low-cost built-environment interventions for inclusive residential design. While the study focuses on riders as a single user group, the analytical framework is transferable to evaluating how residential built environments accommodate diverse non-resident populations. Full article