Research on the Quality Management Mechanism of Chinese Government Procurement of Public Services

The government meets the growing surge of social supply and demand through the purchase of public services from social organizations. Since the introduction of concept to China in the 1990s, government procurement of services has become one of the main ideas of public service reform; government procurement plays an increasingly important role in constructing a service-oriented government and improving public services. In recent years, China attaches a growing importance to the government procurement of public services and starts to reform the way, process and scope of government procurement of public services, and constantly improves quality control mechanisms of government procurement of public services. Based on a wide literature review of texts on the purchase of public services at home and abroad, this paper combines with the actual needs of our citizens and studies the quality control mechanisms of government procurement of public services

Study on the trade-off/synergy spatiotemporal benefits of ecosystem services and its influencing factors in hilly areas of southern China

IntroductionThis study aims to investigate the factors influencing ecosystem service trade-offs/synergies (TOSs) in major agricultural production areas in the southern hilly region and to propose optimization strategies to promote ecosystem sustainability in agricultural areas.MethodsThe study used a geographical detector to analyze the determinants influencing the ecosystem service trade-offs as well as correlation analysis, geographically weighted regression (GWR), and a geographical detector to analyze the spatial and temporal evolution of ecosystem service and TOS relationships from 2000 to 2020 in Hunan Province.ResultsThe results showed that the comprehensive value of ecosystem services in Hunan Province showed an increasing trend from 2000 to 2020. With spatial heterogeneity, the areas with high values were mainly distributed in the hilly areas in the west, south, and east of Hunan Province, and the areas with low values were mainly distributed in the Dongting Lake Plain and the Xiangzhong Hilly Basin. There was a trade-off relationship between food production (FP) and all other ecosystem services, of which FP has the strongest trade-off effect with habitat quality (HQ). The synergy effect between HQ, water yield (WY), carbon storage (CS), and soil conservation (SC) shows an increasing trend. Gross domestic product (GDP) and SLOPE are the dominant factors for the strength of trade-offs between food supply and other ecosystem services, and Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) are the dominant factors for the strength of synergy effects among ecosystem services. The strength of TOS effects of ecosystem services is determined by interactions or co-influences between the two services rather than by a single component.DiscussionThe results of this study can provide a reference basis for the enhancement of ecosystem services and the sustainable planning of agricultural landscapes in the southern hilly areas

Towards Complex Real-World Safety Factory Inspection: A High-Quality Dataset for Safety Clothing and Helmet Detection

Safety clothing and helmets play a crucial role in ensuring worker safety at construction sites. Recently, deep learning methods have garnered significant attention in the field of computer vision for their potential to enhance safety and efficiency in various industries. However, limited availability of high-quality datasets has hindered the development of deep learning methods for safety clothing and helmet detection. In this work, we present a large, comprehensive, and realistic high-quality dataset for safety clothing and helmet detection, which was collected from a real-world chemical plant and annotated by professional security inspectors. Our dataset has been compared with several existing open-source datasets, and its effectiveness has been verified applying some classic object detection methods. The results demonstrate that our dataset is more complete and performs better in real-world settings. Furthermore, we have released our deployment code to the public to encourage the adoption of our dataset and improve worker safety. We hope that our efforts will promote the convergence of academic research and industry, ultimately contribute to the betterment of society.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure

Deformation mechanism and microstructure evolution during on-line heating rolling of AZ31B Mg thin sheets

An AZ31B sheets were processed by on-line heating rolling (ON-LHR) in five passes. Roll and sheets temperatures were 473 K and 533 K, respectively. The grain size was reduced in the first three roll passes, to a minimum of 4.1 μm, due to dynamic recrystallization, and coarsened in the last two passes due to a combination of dynamic recrystallization and grain growth. The yield strength, ultimate tensile strength and elongation to fracture reached 232 MPa, 347 MPa and 21% in the rolling direction. The maximum yield strength occurred after the fourth pass. The maximum is attributed to the small grain size and the formation of networks of sub-grains and deformed grains. The rolled sheets had a strong basal texture, which was largely unchanged with the number of roll passes. The existence of the strong texture after rolling indicated discontinuous dynamic recrystallization

Meta-analysis Followed by Replication Identifies Loci in or near CDKN1B, TET3, CD80, DRAM1, and ARID5B as Associated with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus in Asians

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a prototype autoimmune disease with a strong genetic involvement and ethnic differences. Susceptibility genes identified so far only explain a small portion of the genetic heritability of SLE, suggesting that many more loci are yet to be uncovered for this disease. In this study, we performed a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies on SLE in Chinese Han populations and followed up the findings by replication in four additional Asian cohorts with a total of 5,365 cases and 10,054 corresponding controls. We identified genetic variants in or near CDKN1B, TET3, CD80, DRAM1, and ARID5B as associated with the disease. These findings point to potential roles of cell-cycle regulation, autophagy, and DNA demethylation in SLE pathogenesis. For the region involving TET3 and that involving CDKN1B, multiple independent SNPs were identified, highlighting a phenomenon that might partially explain the missing heritability of complex diseases

Sustainability indexes in water–food–energy nexus to develop strategies with respect to virtual water

The management of water resources requires a correct understanding of the simultaneous management of food and energy resources. The framework of water–food–energy correlation with the approach of sustainability of resources and uses analyzes the combined management and exploitation of water, food, and energy resources with the help of scenario planning. In addition to sustainability concepts, environmental costs such as the emission of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels and its impact on the environment are also discussed. In this research, according to the five defined indicators and based on the potential of using solar energy and the possibility of exploiting renewable energy sources such as solar energy, various management scenarios have been developed. After examining the virtual water management model developed in the Hunan basin as a case study, the development of the water–food–energy nexus model and its calibration, and four scenarios including improving water use efficiency, energy saving, increasing food productivity, and nexus sustainability were developed. The results showed that the nexus strategy can provide sustainability goals according to the weight of each component. After the combined scenario, improving the efficiency of water consumption can be the component with the highest priority in the decision-making model in dry areas. HIGHLIGHTS The water–food–energy nexus is evaluated as a conceptual approach for achieving sustainable management.; Improving water use efficiency, energy saving, increasing food productivity, and nexus sustainability were considered.; The developed approach provides a significant contribution to achieving regional sustainable development goals.

Food Subsidies: Incentive Benefit and Competitive Design

Firstly, the evolution process of grain subsidy policy in China was introduced. In the first stage, the nation carried out grain policy of unified purchase and sale. In the second stage, the nation carried out price subsidy for grain purchasing. In the third stage, the nation carried out direct subsidy for grain production. Secondly, the incentive mechanism of grain subsidy was analyzed under two conditions based on the basic hypotheses. Under the condition of complete information, the effects of grain subsidy policy are optimal. Under the condition of information asymmetry, there are two cases. Grain subsidy policy shows zero effect when information is completely opaque. When information is translucence, the effect of the policy will be suboptimal due to the problem of adverse selection. The adjustment design for incentive mechanism of subsidy was made in order to improve the effects of subsidy policy. The grain production choice of farmers was also analyzed according to evaluation function of farmers’ achievements. Finally, the causes why the productive positivity of farmers was not improved with the development of economy and society were discussed

Sustainable Path of Food Security in China under the Background of Green Agricultural Development

In light of the increasing global food crisis, this study concentrated on the complex causality of sustainable food security in China. In the context of the agricultural green transformation, a comprehensive evaluation system of agricultural green development is constructed on China Yearbooks’ economic data and agricultural greening indices from 2012 to 2020. In addition, the coupling coordination degree model and fuzzy-set quantitative analysis are used to describe the path evolution of sustainable food security development in China. The results revealed that: (1) the comprehensive assessments were increased in recent years, and high score regions changed apparently, from the periphery to midland; (2) China’s green development and agricultural economic potential are currently in a transitional phase from basic to moderate synergy, and the higher coordinated degree is allocating to mid and southern areas during this period, and all of them keeps growing as well; and (3) under modern food security framework, the emphasis of China has gradually shifted from grain output and subsidy policies to high resources utilisation and human capital accumulation. Thus, China’s agricultural green transformation and sustainable food security are mutually reinforcing

Poverty Reduction in China: Does the Agricultural Products Circulation Infrastructure Matter in Rural and Urban Areas?

Since the reform and opening-up in 1978, a remarkable achievement has been made in poverty reduction in China. Many previous studies have analyzed the poverty reduction effects of economic growth, fiscal expenditure, education levels, information technology, urbanization, foreign trade, industrial development and other factors. As a bridge between production and consumption, the agricultural products circulation industry has an important role on the income growth of rural residents. However, the construction level of China’s agricultural products circulation infrastructure lags behind, resulting in a decline in the efficiency and quality of agricultural products supply, and farmers are also facing the embarrassing situation of increasing production without increasing income. Therefore, in this study, we selected the China’s provincial panel data from 2003 to 2017 to analyze the effect of agricultural products distribution infrastructure in narrowing the income gap between urban and rural residents and poverty reduction in China. First, we review the extant literature and elaborate the poverty reduction path of agricultural products circulation industry; secondly, we build models step by step and select nine variables; lastly, we carry out regression analysis on the overall poverty reduction effect of China’s agricultural products circulation industry, the poverty reduction effect of internal factors of agricultural products circulation industry and regional spatial heterogeneity with Stata software. Our results showed that the development level of the agricultural products circulation industry and the degree of opening-up have significant positive effects on narrowing the income gap between urban and rural residents and poverty reduction varied, with different regions in China. Among all the internal factors of development of agricultural products circulation industry in poverty reduction, the core explanatory variable is the investment in agricultural products circulation infrastructure with the largest poverty reduction effect, followed by the human capital, informatization level and number of employees of the agricultural products circulation industry, and the poverty reduction effects of the four internal development factors have had significant regional differences in China. Our findings further complement the internal mechanism of agricultural product circulation infrastructure on poverty reduction in China, suggest that we should apply appropriate strategies and give priority to the internal development factor of the agricultural product circulation industry, with the largest poverty reduction effect according to local conditions in different regions, and so be better able to achieve the targeted poverty alleviation and offer insights for the rural poverty reduction in other countries, especially in the developing countries