Impact of lockdown on the growth of children in China aged 3-6 years during the COVID-19 pandemic

BackgroundLockdowns in COVID-19 pandemic led to less physical activity and more intake of unhealthy food in children. The aim of this study was to investigate the negative impact of major lockdowns on the growth of children aged 3-6 years during COVID-19 pandemic period.MethodsPhysical examination results in 2019 to 2022 from 5834 eligible children (2972 males and 2862 females) from Southwestern China who were 3 years old in 2019 were retrospectively collected. Height and weight data points were extracted from the results, and percentiles of height (height%), weight (weight%), and BMI (BMI%), and rates of overweight and obesity were calculated and compared between different years during the pandemic.ResultsAfter analyzing the 15404 growth data points from 5834 children, a slowly increasing trend of height% from 2019 to 2022 was observed. Weight%, BMI%, overweight rate, obesity rate, and combined overweight and obesity rate had two peaks in 2020 and 2022 when major lockdowns were adopted and a drop in between (year 2021), except for obesity rate which did not drop in 2021. Similar results were shown after stratification by gender.ConclusionThe lockdowns in COVID-19 pandemic promoted obesity of kindergarten children, but did not show any negative impact on their height growth possibly due to over-nutrition of children during lockdowns. More efforts need to be made to limit the increase of obesity rate in kindergarten children during possible future lockdowns

Pivot or periphery? Xinjiang\u27s regional development and Chinese-Central Asian relations at the century\u27s end

Xinjiang, once described by Owen Lattimore as the pivot of Asia , has played a strategically important role in China\u27s national defense and security. Historically linked on the famous Silk Road with Central Asia, Xinjiang was crucial to East-West economic and cultural exchanges. During the period of Russian/Soviet expansion into Central Asia and Sino-Soviet rivalry, China\u27s need for Xinjiang\u27s defense and territorial integrity became paramount, and consequently Xinjiang\u27s economy was relegated to the periphery. The demise of the Soviet Union--which resulted in the independence of five Central Asian states--and China\u27s reform suggest dramatic new possibilities for Xinjiang\u27s regional development as well as interregional cooperation. As China has begun to shift regional emphasis to the interior, Xinjiang\u27s economic development will be accelerated. With the growth of Sino/Xinjiang-Central Asian relations, Xinjiang\u27s importance will not only be borne out in terms of defense and security, but more significantly in terms of trade and economics. At the century\u27s end and the beginning of the 21st century, Xinjiang will likely move away from the periphery and play an increasingly pivotal role in the economy

Xinjiang and Central Asia: Ethno-religious, political, and economic interactions

The neighboring regions of Xinjiang and Central Asia, linked historically on the famous Silk Road, later developed separately as a result of the incorporation of the former into China and the latter into the Russian Empire and Soviet Union. Thus, interaction between Xinjiang and Central Asia has been constrained by the nature of the Sino-Russian or Sino-Soviet relationship. However, the demise of the Soviet Union--which resulted in the independence of five Central Asian states--and the recent economic reforms in the People\u27s Republic of China suggest dramatic new possibilities for interregional cooperation. In this thesis, an historical and comparative approach is employed to study Chinese policies in Xinjiang and Soviet policies in Central Asia, and concludes that despite several decades of separate development, the common ethnic and religious origins of the indigenous peoples and their former ties will facilitate greater interaction between the two regions

Deformation prediction analysis of vertical displacement of deep foundation pit based on LIBSVM

The reliable prediction of the surface vertical displacement deformation of deep foundation pits is of great significance to the excavation of large foundation pits. The support vector machine model (LIBSVM) has become a hot spot in the prediction of deep foundation pit deformation and provides a new prediction for the deformation of deep foundation pits. In this paper, taking the deep foundation pit of Daoxianghu Road Station in xx as an example, a prediction model of vertical displacement on the ground is established based on LIBSVM and analysis shows that the prediction results based on the model are in good agreement with the measured data, and the MSE reaches 0.0323. The model is effective and has an effective prospective skill

Detection of groundwater storage variability based on GRACE and CABLE model in the Murray-Darling Basin

Monitoring groundwater storage is in great importance for economic and social development. In this paper, the monthly GRACE data from 2003 to 2015 is combined with the Community Atmosphere Biosphere Land Exchange (CABLE) model to estimate the variations of groundwater storage (GWS) in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB). The results show that (1) the simulations of TWS from CABLE are more accurate than GLDAS over the MDB, and there is a higher correlation coefficient of 0.94 and a lower RMSE of 15.74 between CABLE and GRACE. (3) The spatial pattern of GWS trends shows decline trends in the southwest, east and south, and increasing trends in the north and south central (3) For the whole MDB, the average GWS has strong seasonality and shows an increasing trend with a rate of 1.19 0.41 mmyyear between 2003 and 2015

Do Community Home-Based Elderly Care Services Improve Life Satisfaction of Chinese Older Adults? An Empirical Analysis Based on the 2018 CLHLS Dataset

Population aging has become a major challenge for the Chinese government. Based on the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS) in 2018, this study adopts the propensity score matching (PSM) method to assess the effect of community home-based elderly care services (CHECS) on the life satisfaction of the elderly in China. The results demonstrate that CHECS can improve their life satisfaction. Compared with life care services (LCS) and medical care services (MCS), the positive effect of spiritual and cultural services (SCS) and reconciliation and legal services (RLS) is more obvious. Moreover, the heterogeneity test demonstrates that the effect is more significant for the elderly who live with their families, whose activities of daily living are unrestricted, and whose depression levels are lower. The results obtained indicate that CHECS need precise policies for different elderly groups, attention to the positive impact of SCS and RLS on the life satisfaction of the elderly, and the substantive effectiveness of LCS and MCS

Investigating the Influence of Age-Friendly Community Infrastructure Facilities on the Health of the Elderly in China

Global population aging has become a continuous and irreversible trend. Most of the elderly in China prefer “aging in place” owing to the influence of traditional concepts and social welfare, but many communities, as a basic place for the elderly to live, generally lack age-friendly infrastructure facilities. Based on the 2018 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study database, this study applies the propensity score matching method to empirically investigate the influence of the infrastructure facilities on the health of the elderly in China. The results show that adding elevators, installing bathing facilities, supplying gas or natural gas, and changing squatting toilets into sitting toilets, positively influence the health of the elderly, but there are some differences. The order of the degree of impact on self-rated health (SRH) was elevator > toilet type > kitchen gas supply > bathing facility, while that of activities of daily living (ADL) was bathing facility > toilet type > elevator > kitchen gas supply. Elderly people with different personal characteristics and family status have different degrees of ownership for the infrastructure facilities. It is suggested that age-friendly regeneration schemes be developed according to the different impacts and demands of the facilities

Environmental Heterogeneity Affecting Community Assembly Patterns and Phylogenetic Diversity of Three Forest Communities at Mt. Huangshan, China

Studying community assembly has always been a central issue in ecological research and is necessary for understanding mechanisms of species coexistence and biodiversity. Environmental heterogeneity is a driver of biodiversity, but much remains to be learned about how evolutionary processes are affected by environmental factors. We aimed to clarify the evolutionary processes in different vegetation communities in the Huangshan Scenic Area, Anhui Province, China. We constructed a phylogenetic tree of these communities based on a constraint tree and three DNA barcode regions. Community I was characterized by a weakly overdispersed phylogenetic structure for all three plant groups. The structure of Community II showed clustered for total plants and shrubs, overdispersed for trees. However, the phylogenetic structure was clustered for total plants, overdispersed for trees and shrubs in Community III. The main drivers of these patterns were spatial and climatic factors. Phylogenetic α-diversity had a significant positive relationship with species richness. The values of phylogenetic β-diversity reached their maximum at intermediate elevations among three vegetation communities for total plants. The main factors that affected diversity patterns were spatial variables, not climatic factors, indicating that environmental heterogeneity determined the mechanisms of biodiversity and species coexistence in the community. Our results showed that deterministic processes may control community assembly in three different vegetation regions