Conceptualizing sustainability in China's belt and road initiative: A longitudinal analysis of scholarship (2013 - 2024)

One decade after China's announcement of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), theoretical and practical debates linger about the environmental impacts. However, no studies have systematically analyzed how academic research conceptualizes BRI and sustainability within it. This study reviews definitional aspects and sustainability discourses concerning the BRI. Analyzing a sample of 171 peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2013 and 2024, the study uses a coding framework comprising eight categories broadly covering the sustainability building blocks of the BRI. Additionally, a comparison of academic conceptualizations and China's policy practices reveals several gaps on the topics of stakeholders, investment agencies, investment volumes, and sectors. Outdated or vague conceptualizations are found in research that examines (i) China as a unitary actor, (ii) the centrality of China-led organizations like the AIIB, and (iii) BRI investment volumes and impacts. Findings also reveal that scholarly knowledge about the BRI, a decade after the initiative's announcement, remains limited and disparate. The study's meta-framework advances the literature by providing a template for bringing sustainability studies and BRI studies together into more meaningful interface

Circular economy as crisis response: A primer

The early 2020s have been characterized by multiple convergent crises, including the Covid-19 pandemic and economic fallout of mitigation measures, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the ongoing sustainability and climate change crisis. This article discusses how the concept of the circular economy can inform responses to such crises by addressing four elements of a socio-economic system: technological innovation, supply chains and markets, public policy, and consumer behaviour. Synthesizing emerging insights from the scholarly and policymaking arenas, the article identifies the following ways that the circular economy concept can be effectively framed as crisis response: focusing on circularity in a more holistic way, adopting global value chains as the primary unit of analysis, pinpointing specific circularity aspects like drivers and barriers in value chains and business models, and extending the prevailing focus on technical aspects and material flows to often overlooked trade and geopolitical considerations. This discussion aims to articulate lessons for industry, policymakers, and scholars in leveraging a circularity approach to address the world's most pressing issues

Barriers to the circular economy: The case of the Dutch technical and interior textiles industries

The academic literature offers some insights about lagging progress on circular economy (CE) transition, including cultural, regulatory, market, and technical barriers. There is also an increasing body of knowledge about barriers to CE adoption that takes a macro-level perspective across industries. However, such studies have largely neglected the industry scale. This study fills that gap by examining barriers to CE transition in the Dutch technical and interior textiles industries. Using data from 27 interviews with manufacturers and retailers, the study finds that high costs for production and marketing, along with lack of consumer interest, are among the most substantial barriers. To provide a system-wide perspective, the study conceptualizes relationships among barriers as a chain reaction: limited knowledge of CE design options raises the difficulty and cost of delivering high-quality circular products at the firm level, while limited availability of circular supply streams combined with the orientation of existing production systems toward linear supply chains constrain CE transition at the industry level. These findings highlight the need for intervention at levels beyond the scale of individual firms, a key implication for public policy

Conceptualizing the Circular Economy (Revisited):An Analysis of 221 Definitions

In the past decade, use of the circular economy (CE) concept by scholars and practitioners has grown steadily. In a 2017 article, Kirchherr et al. found that the CE concept is interpreted and implemented in a variety of ways. While multiple interpretations of CE can enrich scholarly perspectives, differentiation and fragmentation can also impede consolidation of the concept. Some scholarship has discussed these trends in context-specific cases, but no large-scale, systematic study has analysed whether such consolidation has taken place across the field. This article fills this gap by analysing 221 recent CE definitions, making several notable findings. First, the concept has seen both consolidation and differentiation in the past five years. Second, definitional trends are emerging that potentially have more meaning for scholarship than for practice. Third, scholars increasingly recommend a fundamental systemic shift to enable CE, particularly within supply chains. Fourth, sustainable development is frequently considered the principal aim of CE, but questions linger about whether CE can mutually support environmental sustainability and economic development. Finally, recent studies argue that CE transition relies on a broad alliance of stakeholders, including producers, consumers, policymakers, and scholars. This study contributes an updated systematic analysis of CE definitions and conceptualizations that serves as an empirical snapshot of current scholarly thinking. It thereby provides a basis for further research on whether conceptual consolidation is needed and how it can be facilitated for practical purposes.</p

Entropy as a function of Geometric Phase

We give a closed-form solution of von Neumann entropy as a function of geometric phase modulated by visibility and average distinguishability in Hilbert spaces of two and three dimensions. We show that the same type of dependence also exists in higher dimensions. We also outline a method for measuring both the entropy and the phase experimentally using a simple Mach-Zehnder type interferometer which explains physically why the two concepts are related.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figure

Employee skills for circular business model implementation: A taxonomy

A growing body of scholarship has examined circular business models as a pathway towards sustainability. However, employee skills to support such business models have been largely overlooked. Addressing this research gap, this article proposes a comprehensive skill taxonomy for start-ups embracing circular economy transition. As the first large-N effort to develop a comprehensive skill taxonomy for circular business model implementation, this study uses a clustering analysis of self-reported skill profiles for 2407 staff working in circular start-ups. The taxonomy outlines 40 skills across six categories: business innovation, operations, social dimensions, systems, digitization, and technical issues. Findings suggest that circular business model implementation requires a set of general, sustainable, and circular skills, but some of these skills have been neglected in scholarship. Promoting circular narratives as a framing device for skill development can help advance CE towards mainstream uptake, and this study's taxonomy offers a practical framework for using talent to accelerate CE transition

Replication factory activation can be decoupled from the replication timing program by modulating Cdk levels

In the metazoan replication timing program, clusters of replication origins located in different subchromosomal domains fire at different times during S phase. We have used Xenopus laevis egg extracts to drive an accelerated replication timing program in mammalian nuclei. Although replicative stress caused checkpoint-induced slowing of the timing program, inhibition of checkpoint kinases in an unperturbed S phase did not accelerate it. Lowering cyclin-dependent kinase (Cdk) activity slowed both replication rate and progression through the timing program, whereas raising Cdk activity increased them. Surprisingly, modest alteration of Cdk activity changed the amount of DNA synthesized during different stages of the timing program. This was associated with a change in the number of active replication factories, whereas the distribution of origins within active factories remained relatively normal. The ability of Cdks to differentially effect replication initiation, factory activation, and progression through the timing program provides new insights into the way that chromosomal DNA replication is organized during S phase