No. 01: The Urban Food System of Nanjing, China

With a population of 8.2 million people, Nanjing is the 14th largest city in China. China became a predominantly urban nation in 2011, when its urban population surpassed its rural population for the first time. The declining farming population and area of farmland along with the increased food consumption of urban residents have had significant implications for China’s food security, including in cities such as Nanjing. As with many other Chinese cities, Nanjing’s informal economy has become an important source of income for the poor, including migrant workers. Since the beginning of economic reform in 1978, street vendors have become an integral part of urban China. Their activities are diverse and include selling fresh and processed food, as well as cooking it. The diversity of food outlets in big Chinese cities like Nanjing makes the foodscape extremely complex. There are thousands of supermarkets, small stores and more than 100 wet markets and wholesale markets in Nanjing. Food safety has become an urgent and important issue in the last few years, and the most relevant dimension of food security for Chinese urban residents might well be access to safe food. This audit of the city of Nanjing and its food system highlights the fact that there are major gaps in our understanding of the food system. As the Hungry Cities Partnership research program progresses, accurate information on a range of food issues in the city will fill many of these gaps

No. 09: The State of Household Food Security in Nanjing, China

This report on the state of food security in Nanjing, China, is based on a 2015 city-wide survey conducted by Nanjing University and the Hungry Cities Partnership. The research found that most of the city’s residents are food secure, with access to desirable foods and high dietary diversity throughout the year. Nanjing has a high level of economic development, low unemployment, and spatially dense food supply networks. However, a high average level of food security obscures the finding that about one household in five is food insecure according to the Household Food Insecurity Access Prevalence indicator. Female-centred households, households that have no formal wage worker, and households with only one member tend to be the most food insecure. The proximity of wet markets and supermarkets to food retail and food procurement by households across Nanjing emerges clearly in this survey, and the relationship between wet markets and supermarkets appears to be more complementary than competitive. The survey found that three in four respondents feel exposed to threats of unsafe food from the production and processing stages of food supply chains, especially from the overuse of agrochemicals in the agriculture and livestock industry. There is a widespread perception that the ineffective enforcement of regulations by local governments is the major cause of food safety problems

Redox potentials of aryl derivatives from hybrid functional based first principles molecular dynamics

Acknowledgements We acknowledge the National Science Foundation of China (No. 41222015, 41273074, 41572027 and 21373166), Special Program for Applied Research on Super Computation of the NSFC-Guangdong Joint Fund (the second phase), the Foundation for the Author of National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation of P. R. China (No. 201228), Newton International Fellowship Program and the financial support from the State Key Laboratory at Nanjing University. We are grateful to the High Performance Computing Center of Nanjing University for allowing us to use the IBM Blade cluster system. Open access via RSC Gold for GoldPeer reviewedPublisher PD

Acidity constants and redox potentials of uranyl ions in hydrothermal solutions

Acknowledgements We thank Matthias Krack for supplying us with the pseudopotential and basis sets for U. We acknowledge the National Science Foundation of China (No. 41222015, 41273074, 41572027 and 21373166), Special Program for Applied Research on Super Computation of the NSFC-Guangdong Joint Fund (the second phase), the Foundation for the Author of National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation of PR China (No. 201228), Newton International Fellowship Program and the financial support from the State Key Laboratory at Nanjing University. We are grateful to the High Performance Computing Center of Nanjing University for allowing us to use the IBM Blade cluster system. Open access via RSC Gold 4 Gold.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Emerging from Anonymity: The First Generation of Writers of Songs and Drama in Mid-Ming Nanjing

This article traces the first generation of writers of songs and drama in Nanjing who emerged from the anonymous context of early Ming court entertainment and established their name and reputation in the second half of the fifteenth century. These writers—Shi Zhong (1437-after 1516), Chen Duo (1454?-1507?), and Xu Lin (1462-1538)—represented a different mode of writing songs and drama. For them it was no longer a professional occupation, as in the case of the court performers, but became part of their cultural and social life. The extent to which our knowledge of these first generation qu writers depends on local sources and on acts of remembrance by later Nanjing authors is also examined

Workshop Report: Hungry Cities Partnership Knowledge Mobilization Workshop in Nanjing

The Hungry Cities Partnership (HCP) and Nanjing University, China organized a workshop entitled “Wet Market and Urban Food System in Nanjing” on January 12, 2017 at the School of Geographic and Oceanographic Sciences of Nanjing University in Nanjing, China. The workshop aimed to disseminate the results of the HCP household food security survey in Nanjing to government officials and researchers and to discuss the management of the urban food system. It also facilitated communication and understanding between the HCP team and local government officials regarding research themes in 2017. Presenters included Prof. Jonathan Crush, HCP Postdoctoral Fellow Zhenzhong Si, and officials from Nanjing City Administration Bureau, Nanjing Urban Planning Bureau, Commerce Bureau of Jianye District, the manager of the Nanjing Wholesale Market and the manager of Heyuan Wet Market. The officials gave presentations on various relevant policies and regulations and the government’s efforts to manage street vending, and govern the development of wet markets and wholesale markets in Nanjing. Other participants included Professor Xianjin Huang (Vice Dean of the School of Geographic and Oceanographic Sciences of Nanjing University), Associate Professor Dr. Taiyang Zhong, Associate Research Fellow Dr. Shuangshuang Tang and Dr. Jinliao He from Nanjing University, HCP PDF Cameron McCordic, Mr. Roger Dickinson from South Africa, and other researchers and graduate students from Nanjing University

Cosmology-Independent Distance Moduli of 42 Gamma-Ray Bursts between Redshift of 1.44 and 6.60

This report is an update and extension of our paper accepted for publication in ApJ (arXiv:0802.4262). Since objects at the same redshift should have the same luminosity distance and the distance moduli of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) obtained directly from observations are completely cosmology independent, we obtain the distance modulus of a gamma-ray burst (GRB) at a given redshift by interpolating or iterating from the Hubble diagram of SNe Ia. Then we calibrate five GRB relations without assuming a particular cosmological model, from different regression methods, and construct the GRB Hubble diagram to constrain cosmological parameters. Based upon these relations we list the cosmology-independent distance moduli of 42 GRBs between redshift of 1.44 and 6.60, with the 1-$\sigma$ uncertainties of 1-3%.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, 3 tables. To appear in the proceedings of "2008 Nanjing GRB conference", Nanjing, 23-27 June 200

The GRB-Supernova Connection

Long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are believed to be produced by the core collapse of massive stars and hence to be connected with supernovae (SNe). Indeed, for four pairs of GRBs and SNe, spectroscopically confirmed connection has been firmly established. For more than a dozen of GRBs the SN signature (the `red bump') has been detected in the afterglow lightcurves. Based on the four pairs of GRBs and SNe with spectroscopically confirmed connection a tight correlation was found between the peak spectral energy of GRBs and the peak bolometric luminosity of the underlying SNe. The recent discovery of X-ray flash 080109 associated with a normal core-collapse SN 2008D confirmed this relation and extended the GRB-SN connection. Progress on the GRB-SN connection is briefly reviewed.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures. To appear in the proceedings of "2008 Nanjing GRB conference", Nanjing, 23-27 June 200

The Wide-Field X and Gamma-Ray Telescope ECLAIRs aboard the Gamma-Ray Burst Multi-Wavelength Space Mission SVOM

The X and Gamma-ray telescope ECLAIRs is foreseen to be launched on a low Earth orbit (h=630 km, i=30 degrees) aboard the SVOM satellite (Space-based multi-band astronomical Variable Objects Monitor), a French-Chinese mission with Italian contribution. Observations are expected to start in 2013. It has been designed to detect and localize Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) or persistent sources of the sky, thanks to its wide field of view (about 2 sr) and its remarkable sensitivity in the 4-250 keV energy range, with enhanced imaging sensitivity in the 4-70 keV energy band. These characteristics are well suited to detect highly redshifted GRBs, and consequently to provide fast and accurate triggers to other onboard or ground-based instruments able to follow-up the detected events in a very short time from the optical wavelength bands up to the few MeV Gamma-Ray domain.Comment: Proccedings of the "2008 Nanjing GRB Conference", June 23-27 2008, Nanjing, Chin