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In order to analyze the impact of COVID-19 prevention and control measures on the hotspots of residential burglary, the data of crimes that occurred during the First Level Response period of Major Public Health Emergencies in Beijing in 2020 and the same period in 2019 were collected, and the changes of hotspots during the two periods were compared by using kernel density estimation and predictive accuracy index. Consequently, the environmental features such as street network, point of interest (POI) diversity, crime locations, and repeat victimization in significantly varied hotspot areas were investigated. The results show that: 1) After the outbreak of the pandemic, the occurrence of residential burglary in the core urban areas of Beijing dropped significantly, and daily occurrence of crimes during the First Level Response period in 2020 decreased by 66.8% compared with the same days in 2019. 2) The eight major hotspots that existed in 2019 apparently declined during the corresponding days in 2020, five of them basically disappeared, and three hotspots weakened. 3) The declined hotspots were generally clustered around traffic hubs, areas with high diversity of POIs, clustered crimes, and repeat victimizations. 4) Home isolation and social restriction strategies implemented during the First Level Response period reduced the opportunities of offenders, and the real-name inspection adopted in public places increased the exposure risk of offenders, which are the main reasons for the hotspots decline during the pandemic. This work has some implications for crime prevention and police resources optimization during the pandemic. © 2023, Editorial office of PROGRESS IN GEOGRAPHY. All rights reserved.
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Traditional villages are a valuable cultural asset that occupy an important position in Chinese traditional culture. This study focuses on 206 traditional villages in Hebei Province and aims to explore their spatial distribution characteristics and influencing factors using ArcGIS spatial analysis. The analysis shows that traditional villages in Hebei Province were distributed in clusters during different historical periods, and eventually formed three core clusters in Shijiazhuang, Zhangjiakou and Xingtai-Handan after different historical periods. Moreover, the overall distribution of traditional villages in Hebei Province is very uneven, with clear regional differences, and most of them are concentrated in the eastern foothills of the Taihang Mountains. To identify the factors influencing traditional villages, natural environmental factors, socio-economic factors, and historical and cultural factors are considered. The study finds that socio-economic and natural environmental factors alternate in the spatial distribution of traditional villages in Hebei Province. The influence of the interaction of these factors increases significantly, and socio-economic factors have a stronger influence on the spatial distribution. Specifically, the spatial distribution of traditional villages in Hebei Province is influenced by natural environmental factors, while socio-economic factors act as drivers of spatial distribution. Historical and cultural factors act as catalysts of spatial distribution, and policy directions are external forces of spatial distribution. Overall, this study provides valuable insights into the spatial distribution characteristics and influencing factors of traditional villages in Hebei Province, which can be used to develop effective strategies for rural revitalisation in China.
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Simple SummaryDuring the long-term co-evolution of the virus and the host, even closely related vaccines may emerge with incomplete protective immunity due to the mutations or deletions of amino acids at specific antigenic sites. The mutation of PEDV was accelerated by the recombination of different strains and the mutation of the strains adapting to the environment. These mutations either cause immune escape from conventional vaccines or affect the virulence of the virus. Therefore, researching and developing new vaccines with cross-protection through continuous monitoring, isolation and sequencing are important to determine whether their genetic characteristics are changed and to evaluate the protective efficacy of current vaccines. The porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) can cause severe piglet diarrhea or death in some herds. Genetic recombination and mutation facilitate the continuous evolution of the virus (PEDV), posing a great challenge for the prevention and control of porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED). Disease materials of piglets with PEDV vaccination failure in some areas of Shanxi, Henan and Hebei provinces of China were collected and examined to understand the prevalence and evolutionary characteristics of PEDV in these areas. Forty-seven suspicious disease materials from different litters on different farms were tested by multiplex PCR and screened by hematoxylin-eosin staining and immunohistochemistry. PEDV showed a positivity rate of 42.6%, infecting the small and large intestine and mesenteric lymph node tissues. The isolated strains infected Vero, PK-15 and Marc-145 multihost cells and exhibited low viral titers in all three cell types, as indicated by their growth kinetic curves. Possible putative recombination events in the isolates were identified by RDP4.0 software. Sequencing and phylogenetic analysis showed that compared with the classical vaccine strain, PEDV SX6 contains new insertion and mutations in the S region and belongs to genotype GIIa. Meanwhile, ORF3 has the complete amino acid sequence with aa80 mutated wild strains, compared to vaccine strains CV777, AJ1102, AJ1102-R and LW/L. These results will contribute to the development of new PEDV vaccines based on prevalent wild strains for the prevention and control of PED in China.
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The three-dimensional (3-D) structure of the spike protein suggests that it binds more tightly to human cell surface receptors than SARS-CoV, a possible reason that this coronavirus exhibits greater infectivity (2). The Vaccine Research Center (VRC) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), collaborated with Moderna to design the vaccine. Moderna's mRNA vaccines can contain multiple mRNAs coding for different proteins and mimic natural infection, thus stimulating a more potent response, according to the company. Stabilizing the pre-fusion virus form A fourth group receiving funding from CEPI for application of a vaccine platform technology to accelerated development and manufacture of a COVID-19 vaccine is located at Australia's University of Queensland (UQ) School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences (7).
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PurposeThe aim of this study was to examine the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak and the international communication management of Chinese diplomats as a case for extending the definition of intermestic public diplomacy. The goal was to reveal how Beijing subtly used both domestic and foreign social media to organize a network for communication about COVID-19 and purposefully soften the highly centralized and hierarchical political propaganda of the Communist Party of China (CPC).Design/methodology/approachBased on the literature on digital public diplomacy, the authors applied the existing concept of intermestic to Chinese politics in order to demonstrate the digitalization of public diplomacy, along with its forms and strategies under an authoritarian regime. A hybrid methodology combining quantitative network analysis and qualitative discourse analysis permits examination of China's intermestic online communication network dynamics, shedding light on how such an intermestic practice promoted Chinese values and power to international publics in the early stages of the COVID-19 crisis.FindingsThe authors' findings extend the implications of intermestic public diplomacy from a democratic context to an authoritarian one. By analyzing the content of public diplomacy and para-diplomatic social media accounts in China and abroad at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, the authors outlined China's early crisis management, explaining its intermestic public diplomacy transmission modes and strategies. Moreover, the authors identified changes in the narrative strategies of Chinese diplomats and journalists during this process.Social implicationsThe findings of this study underline that Beijing established a narrative-making virtual communication structure for disseminating favorable Chinese strategic narratives and voices through differentiated communication on domestic and foreign social media platforms. Such intermestic communication strategies were particularly evident and even further weaponized by Beijing in its large-scale Wolf Warrior diplomacy in the spring of 2020. Thus, the study's findings help readers understand how China digitalized its public diplomacy, its digital communication patterns and strategies.Originality/valueOn the one hand, geopolitical uncertainty and the popularity of social media have contributed to the evolution of the intermestic model of public diplomacy. This model allows actors to coordinate homogenous and differentiated communication practices to deploy their influence. On the other hand, the authors did not examine how intermestic audiences perceive and receive public diplomacy practices. In future studies, scholars should measure the agenda-setting capacity of diplomatic actors by examining the effects of such intermestic communication efforts.
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The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long sought to influence media coverage about China in other countries. Over the past decade, this campaign has accelerated, reaching new world regions and topics. This article examines how CCP-linked actors seek to manipulate foreign information environments in four key ways: disseminating propaganda, spreading disinformation, censoring critical coverage, and controlling the infrastructure used to convey news. This article considers which efforts have yielded gains for the regime, obstacles that Beijing has encountered, and the response of nongovernmental actors. It concludes by considering how to enhance democratic resilience to the covert and coercive dimensions of the CCP's global media influence.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has offered China a unique opportunity for worldwide deployment of its longstanding health diplomacy, renamed the Health Silk Road (HSR), now an integral part of its Belt and Road Initiative. As a self-proclaimed South-South collaborator and developer,11Niall Duggan, ‘China's changing role in its all-weather friendship with Africa', In, Sebastian Harnisch, Sebastian Bersick, and Jörn-Carsten Gottwald (Eds). China's International Roles: Challenging or Supporting International Order? (Role Theory and International Relations) (London: Routledge, 2015), pp. 207-225..Beijing has assumed a leadership role, grounded in ‘moral realism', in the world's health governance. Beijing's health diplomacy has received acclaim in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). However, the pandemic has exacerbated preexisting tensions between China, the United States (US) and European Union (EU). Western countries, wary of China's rising power, reacted resentfully, confirming underlying systemic rivalry. This article argues that the currently disputed, or shifting, world order accounts for the diametrically opposed reactions between the West and the MENA toward China's Health Silk Road.
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Examining these data, this report elucidates and partially compares the status quo, attitudes, difficulties, and needs among school principals and frontline teachers in elementary and secondary schools during the COVID-19 response effort of "suspending classes without suspending teaching and learning.” Status quo of the adoption of online teaching in elementary and secondary schools Understanding the status quo of the adoption of online teaching and teachers' relevant work experiences is integral to the effectiveness of "suspending classes without suspending teaching and learning.” According to the results (Figure 2), 28.2% of the surveyed teachers selected online interactive Q&A as their preferred online teaching activity, followed by webcasting/video on demand (27.5%) and live streaming (26.7%). [...]a survey was conducted on the provision of training by schools and teachers' participation in training offered by the superior education department over the last 3 years.
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Powerful, imaginative, and long-lasting, the half-year mobilisation and its iconography are hard to forget, and the ongoing political crackdown keeps our memory alive with constant republications of photographs and video clips of the events. Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and the proclamation of the National Security Law (NSL) on 30 June 2020, protests have, however, almost disappeared from Hong Kong's public spaces. [...]many films, books, and artworks have vanished from screening venues, shops, and libraries. Soon after the end of the movement, two anonymous books documented these ephemeral displays challenging authorities and urban order (Abaddon 2020;Guardian of Hong Kong 2020). [...]in October 2021, the Film Censorship Ordinance was amended to align with the NSL (Ho 2021b).
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Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) swept the world at the beginning of 2020, and strict activity control measures were adopted in China's concentrated and local outbreak areas, which led to social shutdown. This study was conducted in southwest China from 2019 to 2021, and was divided into the year before COVID-19 (2019), the year of COVID-19 outbreak (2020), and the year of normalization of COVID-19 prevention and control (2021). A geographically and temporally weighted regression (GTWR) model was used to invert the spatial distribution of PM2.5 by combining PM2.5 on-site monitoring data and related driving factors. At the same time, a multiple linear regression (MLR) model was constructed for comparison with the GTWR model. The results showed that: (1) The inversion accuracy of the GTWR model was higher than that of the MLR model. In comparison with the commonly used PM2.5 datasets "CHAP” and "ACAG”, PM2.5 inverted by the GTWR model had higher data accuracy in southwest China. (2) The average PM2.5 concentrations in the entire southwest region were 32.1, 26.5, and 28.6 μg/m3 over the three years, indicating that the society stopped production and work and the atmospheric PM2.5 concentration reduced when the pandemic control was highest in 2020. (3) The winter and spring of 2020 were the relatively strict periods for pandemic control when the PM2.5 concentration showed the most significant drop. In the same period of 2021, the degree of control was weakened, and the PM2.5 concentration showed an upward trend.
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While the two statements available on the websites vary in length - the Russian statement runs into 5000 words,2 while the Chinese statement is crisper and is about 1200 words.3 Another difference between the two statements on the websites posts about the Putin-Xi meeting is that Russia calls out countries by names for being disruptors of peace in the international system, while China without mentioning countries' names, talks about disruptors to peace in the international system. [...]Russia states how the trilateral security partnership between Australia, the US and the UK (AUKUS) is a concerning development in international relations, how Japan's plans on the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant are deeply concerning, how the U.S. plans in the Asia-Pacific and in the European regions are "risks to international and regional security", how Russia and China through the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) grouping, aim at deepened strategic partnerships and how the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) aims at enhancing a "polycentric world order". On the eve of the 2013 state visit of Xi to Moscow, he remarked that the two sides were forging a "special relationship". Landmark contracts were signed in 2015 for the sale of Su-35 combat aircraft and S-400 air defense systems worth USD 5 billion.10 There have also been a series of transactions involving the transfer of helicopters, submarine technology and aircraft engines.
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PurposeIn this paper, the authors introduce supply disruption ambiguity as the inability of a sourcing firm to attach probability point estimates to the occurrence of and to the magnitude of loss from supply disruptions. The authors drew on the "ambiguity in decision-making” literature to define this concept formally, connected it to relevant supply disruption information deficit, positioned it relative to supply chain risk assessment and hypothesized and tested its negative associations with both supply base ties and inventory turnover.Design/methodology/approachThe authors analysed survey data from 171 North American manufacturers and archival data for a subset (88 publicly listed) of these manufacturers via Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimation after ensuring that methodological concerns with survey research have been addressed. They used appropriate controls and employed the heteroskedasticity-based instrumental variable (HBIV) approach to ensure that inferences from our results are not unduly influenced by endogeneity.FindingsStrong supply base ties decrease supply disruption ambiguity, which, in turn, increases inventory turnover. Moreover, strong supply base ties and data integration with the supply base have indirect and positive effects on inventory turnover. As sourcing firms strengthen ties and integrate data exchange with their supply base, their inventory turnover improves from access to information relevant to detect and diagnose supply disruptions effectively.Originality/valueResearch on supply disruption management has paid more attention to the "disruption recovery” stage than to the "disruption discovery” stage. In this paper, the authors add novel insights regarding the recognition and diagnosis aspects of the "disruption discovery” stage. These novel insights reveal how and why sourcing firms reduce their overall ambiguity associated with detecting and assessing losses from supply disruptions through establishing strong ties with their supply base and how and why reducing such ambiguity improves inventory turnover performance.
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Aerosol pollution in urban areas is highly variable due to numerous single emission sources such as automobiles, industrial and commercial activities as well as domestic heating, but also due to complex building structures redirecting air mass flows, producing leeward and windward turbulences and resuspension effects. In this publication, it is shown that one or even few aerosol monitoring sites are not able to reflect these complex patterns. In summer 2019, aerosol pollution was recorded in high spatial resolution during six night and daytime tours with a mobile sensor platform on a trailer pulled by a bicycle. Particle mass loadings showed a high variability with PM10 values ranging from 1.3 to 221 µg m-3 and PM2.5 values from 0.7 to 69.0 µg m-3. Geostatistics were used to calculate respective models of the spatial distributions of PM2.5 and PM10. The resulting maps depict the variability of aerosol concentrations within the urban space. These spatial distribution models delineate the distributions without cutting out the built-up structures. Elsewise, the overall spatial patterns do not become visible because of being sharply interrupted by those outcuts in the resulting maps. Thus, the spatial maps allow to identify most affected urban areas and are not restricted to the street space. Furthermore, this method provides an insight to potentially affected areas, and thus can be used to develop counter measures. It is evident that the spatial aerosol patterns cannot be directly derived from the main wind direction, but result far more from an interplay between main wind direction, built-up patterns and distribution of pollution sources. Not all pollution sources are directly obvious and more research has to be carried out to explain the micro-scale variations of spatial aerosol distribution patterns. In addition, since aerosol load in the atmosphere is a severe issue for health and well-being of city residents more attention has to be paid to these local inhomogeneities.
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Objective: To investigate the quality of life (QOL) of coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19) patients in the recovery stage of six months after discharge and to analyze the influence factors. Methods: Based on the COVID-19 case registration system whose establishment was led by Beijing University of Chinese Medicine Third Affiliated Hospital, 117 COVID-19 patients in the recovery stage hospitalized in designated hospitals of COVID-19 in Wuhan, Hubei Province from January 17th to March 17th, 2020 were taken as the research objects and were followed up for six months after discharge. The QOL of patients was investigated with the World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) face to face. The score of the QOL of patients with different clinical characteristics was analyzed and compared. The relationship between different clinical characteristics and the total score of the QOL of patients was analyzed by Pearson correlation analysis. Statistically significant factors were included in the linear regression analysis and the linear correlation equation of the total score of the QOL was obtained. Results: The total score of the QOL of patients in the WHOQOL-BREF scale was 75.79 +or- 13.80 points, the self-evaluation of the QOL was 3.20 +or- 0.78 points, and the self-evaluation of health condition was 2.60 +or- 0.79 points. The total score of the QOL of female patients, patients with high sequelae grade, and patients with history of smoking was lower than that of male patients, patients with low sequelae grade, and patients without history of smoking. The Pearson correlation analysis showed that the typing of the acute stage of COVID-19, sequelae grade, gender, and history of smoking were related to the total score of the QOL of patients at six months after discharge. The linear regression analysis showed that sequelae grade was linearly correlated with the total score of the QOL of patients at six months after discharge. Linear correlation equation was Y=94.179-9.153X. Conclusions: At six months after discharge, COVID-19 patients in the recovery stage were generally dissatisfied with their QOL and health condition. Their overall QOL was relatively low. It was affected by factors such as gender, BMI, underlying diseases, and history of smoking. And the sequelae symptoms had the most significant impact.
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As a global crisis, COVID-19 has altered how nation-states project influence. Public health has risen to the top of every agenda as individuals, societies, and nation-states focus on a common goal. With the advent of COVID-19 vaccines, home-grown national vaccines when distributed all over the world can play an integral role in nation branding as a technique for projecting soft power. This paper applies the theoretical lenses of nation branding and soft power to examine China's bilateral vaccine diplomacy efforts, specifically the motivations and outcomes. The findings suggest that Chinese vaccines are used not only for image repair and for expanding Beijing's great power ambitions, but also to reinforce and leverage existing soft power programs, and to capitalize on new economic and geopolitical opportunities. Vaccine diplomacy is a natural extension of Chinese soft power including prior engagement in health diplomacy. Sentiment analyses of social media and international media coverage suggest that where vaccines go, influence may follow. Although international sentiments are not all positive—with concerns over Chinese vaccines' efficacy, safety, and data availability, Beijing reaped substantial soft power dividends through its ability to project influence in scientific prowess and civic virtue by providing the vaccines as International Public Goods through aid and gifts to countries left behind by the vaccine inequity.
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With the rapid growth of automobile numbers and the increased traffic congestion, traffic has increasingly significant effects on regional air quality and regional sustainable development in China. This study tried to quantify the effect of transportation operation on regional air quality based on MODIS AOD. This paper analyzed the space-time characteristics of air quality and traffic during the epidemic by series analysis and kernel density analysis, and quantified the relationship between air quality and traffic through a Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) model. The main research conclusions are as follows: The epidemic has a great impact on traffic and regional air quality. PM2.5 and NO2 had the same trend with traffic congestion delay index (CDI), but they were not as obvious as CDI. Both cities with traffic congestion and cities with the worst air quality showed strong spatial dependence. The concentration areas of high AOD value in the east areas of the Hu line were consistent with the two gathering centers formed by cities with traffic congestion in space, and also consistent with the gathering center of cities with poor air quality. The concentration area of AOD decline was consistent with the gathering center formed by cities with the worst air quality. AOD had a strong positive correlation with road network density, and its GWR correlation coefficient was 0.68, then These provinces suitable for GWR or not suitable were divided. This study has a great significance for the transportation planning, regional planning, air quality control strategies and regional sustainable development, etc.
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Objective: To study students' mental health status during epidemic of novel coronavirus pneumonia, and to explore the influence of mindfulness level and perceived social support on mental health. Methods: A total of 240 undergraduate nursing students were investigated with Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale, Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire, Perceived Social Support Scale and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. SAS and Mplus were applied to describe the data and conduct mediation analysis. Results: About 18.8% of the participants were depressed and 27.9% were anxious, 13.3% were stressed, and 31.7% had problems of sleeping. The mindfulness level could directly affect sleep disorder (beta = - 0.242, P < 0.001), stress (beta = - 0.397, P < 0.001), anxiety (beta = - 0.350, P < 0.001)and depression(beta = - 0.484, P < 0.001), and could also indirectly affect sleep disorder (beta = - 0.171, P < 0.001), stress (beta = - 0.105, P = 0.029), anxiety (beta = - 0.102, P = 0.034) and depression (beta = - 0.180, P < 0.001) via the mediation role of perceived social support with the mediating effects accounted for 41.40%, 20.92%, 22.52% and 37.19%, respectively. Conclusions: Mindfulness level can improve the mental health of nursing undergraduates through direct action and understanding the intermediary role of social support. Nursing educators can consider integrating mindfulness decompression training into daily teaching, and give nursing undergraduates enough psychological and emotional support and encouragement to improve their mental health level.
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In order to estimate the transmission of COVID-19, the asymptomatic class is introduced to the SEIADR model, an improved SEIADR model is proposed to analyze the influence of wearing face masks on the final size and the basic reproduction number of COVID-19. To study the impact of face masks on the transmission of COVID-19, the population is divided into two groups;one group wearing face masks (including susceptible, exposed, infectious, asymptomatic, dead and recovered), and the other not wearing face masks (including susceptible, exposed, infectious, asymptomatic, dead and recovered). The group dynamic model is used to determine the basic reproduction number and the control reproduction number of the epidemic. Then the final size of disease is simulated based on data. Finally, the dynamic influence of face masks on epidemic transmission is simulated by numerical analysis. Data simulations show that without any intervention, the basic reproduction number is 1.35. If 50% of population wear face masks, the susceptibility and infectivity are reduced by 50% 9 then the control reproduction number will decreased to 0.39, and the final epidemic size Will reduce from 73.20% to 16.15%.
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China's socioeconomic transformation and rapid urbanization since the end of the 20th Century have had an important impact on the social spatial structure of large cities. Social differentiation within cities is becoming increasingly prominent. Using detailed data gathered by the Fifth National Population Census of 2000, this study compares the social spatial structure and dynamic mechanisms of the core areas of the cities of Beijing and Chengdu. Factorial ecology analysis is used at the mesoscale to explore the following research questions: ‘How did factors shape the social spaces of two cities with similar topography but at different stages of development during China's transition from a planned to a market economy?';and ‘Are the traditional Western theories of socio-spatial interpretation equally applicable to China?'. The results show that Chengdu exhibits a combination of a concentric circle, fan-shaped, and multi-core socio-spatial structure, while Beijing shows a fan-shaped structure. In 2000, influenced by its overall level and stage of socioeconomic development, Beijing was experiencing a faster socio-spatial transformation than Chengdu, and the driving effect of capital on social differentiation and spatial competition was more obvious. The main dynamic mechanisms driving the formation of socio-spatial structures in Beijing and Chengdu include the natural environmental foundation, historical inheritance, urban planning, housing policies, and international influence. The three major variables in the study of traditional Western social spaces, namely economy, family, and ethnic status, were confirmed as applicable to our two case study cities with socioeconomic status as measured by occupation and housing conditions exerting the strongest effect. This perspective of comparing different cities in the same transitional period offers unique insights in identifying the key drivers of socio-spatial differentiation and polarization and their relative magnitude of effect, while enriching the catalog of empirical urban social space research both in China and in the rest of the world.