Building highway landscapes: innovative directions for urban wastewater treatment in the face of new challenges in China

AbstractUrban development in China has caused many problems of urban water management. Today we have to face new challenges about decreasing water resources, wastewater treatment, limited spaces and ecological preservation. Solving these problems should be in sustainable ways with innovative approaches. This paper proposed a highway landscape strategy that contains four major green directions for urban water management. The strategy combined several disciplines of ecology, civil engineering, landscape design and agricultural irrigation. This conceptual idea is demonstrated through a design of a complex constructed wetland system for Huai’an city wastewater plant in Jiangsu province, which sits on the East-route Water Transfer Project of China. The designed project in this paper consists of retention facilities, ecotype corridors, surface flow wetlands and stabilization ponds. Especially, it is designed beside a highway around the city. Normally, the whole system could treat effluents from wastewater plants and irrigation fields. In rainy seasons, it could store and treat extra urban sewer discharges and road surface runoff. During farming season, it is also designed that the outflow of the system would be reused to irrigate. Moreover, this proposal illustrated that the landscape design of the system on a highway side could achieve multiple benefits for the highway surrounding environment. It would provide as much education, recreation, and habitat creation as possible to local community

The Perceived Impact of COVID-19 on Student Well-Being and the Mediating Role of the University Support: Evidence From France, Germany, Russia, and the UK

The rapid and unplanned change to teaching and learning in the online format brought by COVID-19 has likely impacted many, if not all, aspects of university students' lives worldwide. To contribute to the investigation of this change, this study focuses on the impact of the pandemic on student well-being, which has been found to be as important to student lifelong success as their academic achievement. Student well-being has been linked to their engagement and performance in curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular activities, intrinsic motivation, satisfaction, meaning making, and mental health. The purpose of this study was to examine how student perceptions of their degree completion and future job prospects during the pandemic impact their well-being and what role university support plays in this relationship. We used the conservation of resources theory to frame our study and to develop five hypotheses that were later tested via structural equation modeling. Data were collected from 2,707 university students in France, Germany, Russia, and UK via an online survey. The results showed that university support provided by instructors and administration plays a mediating role in the relationship between the perceived impact of COVID-19 on degree completion and future job prospects and levels of student well-being. Student well-being is decreased by their concerns for their degree completion but not by their concerns for future job prospects. In turn, concerns for future job prospects affect student well-being over time. These results suggest that in a “new normal,” universities could increase student well-being by making support to student studies a priority, especially for undergraduates. Also, universities should be aware of the students' changing emotional responses to crisis and ensure visibility and accessibility of student support.Peer reviewe

One-step construction of ZnS/C and CdS/C one-dimensional core-shell nanostructures

ZnS/C and CdS/C coaxial core-shell nanowires, which consist of single-crystal semiconductor nanowires encapsulated by carbon nanotubes ( CNTs), have been synthesized by simple one-step thermal processes. These coaxial core-shell nanowires have uniform outer diameters ( 80-180 nm for ZnS/C, 60-130 nm for CdS/C), and uniform shell thicknesses ( ca. tens of nanometers) along their entire lengths up to tens of microns. The growth of the core-shell nanowires follows a novel metal reaction and self-catalysis vapor-liquid-solid ( VLS) mechanism. The simple method could, in principle, be extended to synthesize other metal sulfide single-crystal nanowire-filled carbon nanotubes, which can find potential applications in various fields of nanotechnology

Transfer of HRM Practices in French Multinational Companies – The Case of French Subsidiaries in China

International audienc

An Exploratory Study on the Workplace Health Management in French Multinationals in China

International audienc

Recent sex ratio at birth in China

Background China’s sex ratio at birth (SRB) has declined in the past decade but still exceeds the normal level. This study seeks to depict the SRB trend in the past two decades.Methods We depicted the SRB trend, including SRB by birth order, children composition, residence and hukou type, education, race and province using latest data available from multiple data sources and standardisation and decomposition methods.Results The SRB remained around 120 in the first decade from 2000 to 2010, and recently declined and approached the normal level during 2010–2020. The SRB for second births and first births converged to the normal level, whereas the SRB for third and above births exceeded the normal level. The rising proportion of second births increased, whereas the decreasing proportion of first births reduced the overall SRB. Parents with only daughters are more likely to abort a female fetus in pursuit of a son, while parents with only sons are more likely to abort a male fetus in pursuit of a daughter. It also shows difference in SRB by residence, hukou type, educational attainment and race. Urban SRB was lower than rural SRB, by the residence and hukou type, but higher than rural SRB after being standardised. Provinces still exhibit differences by original categorised policy even after the implementation of the universal two-child policy.Conclusions China’s SRB has declined substantially during the past two decades, but the negative effects need to be tackled

An Exploratory Study on the Workplace Health Management in French Multinationals in China

International audienc

Influence of Salinity Gradient Changes on Phytoplankton Growth Caused by Sluice Construction in Yongjiang River Estuary Area

Though the number of sluices and dams in coastal areas has increased rapidly in recent years, the influence of their construction on phytoplankton in estuary areas is hardly known. This paper aims to provide a reference for quantitative research on the ecological influence of sluice construction and give ecological justifications for the setting of environmental standards in the estuary areas. The survey data gained at the lower reach of the Yongjiang River and its estuarine areas in June 2015 were used in MIKE21 software (Danish Hydraulic Institute (DHI), Denmark)) for establishing a two-dimensional numerical model to simulate the salinity field distribution after sluice construction. Based on the simulation results, the salinity gradient changes caused by the construction were analyzed. The one-dimensional Gaussian model was applied to calculated the phytoplankton’s ecological threshold interval over the salinity changes, which helped predict the influence of salinity changes on phytoplankton cell density. The study shows that salinity in the Yongjiang estuary increases obviously, beyond the phytoplankton ecological threshold, after sluice construction without water discharge. Salinity will become a restriction factor to phytoplankton growth after sluice construction in the study area, which may cause a sharp decrease of certain phytoplankton species

Synthesis of ternary PtPdCu spheres with three-dimensional nanoporous architectures toward superior electrocatalysts

We report a simple method for the preparation of ternary PtPdCu spheres with a three-dimensional (3D) nanoporous structure in a solution phase. The structure, composition, and electronic states of the obtained material are characterized and studied by various physical techniques. By varying the amount of Cu precursor involved in the reaction, the composition of the spheres can be adjusted without affecting the morphology. Due to the nanoporous structure and the multimetallic synergetic effect, our ternary nanoporous PtPdCu spheres exhibited 1.7, 2.8, and 4.9 times higher activity than that of binary nanoporous PtPd spheres, dendritic Pt, and commercial Pt black catalysts, respectively