| 1. |
- Zeng, Jiangyuan, et al.
(författare)
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Innovations in science, technology, engineering, and policy (iSTEP) for addressing environmental issues towards sustainable development
- 2024
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Ingår i: The Innovation Geoscience. - : Innovation Press. - 2959-8753. ; 2:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sustainable development depends on the integration of the economy, society, and environment. Yet, escalating environmental challenges pose threats to both society and the economy. Despite progress in addressing environmental issues to promote sustainability, knowledge gaps in scientific research, technological advancement, engineering practice, and policy development persist. In this review, we aim to narrow these gaps by proposing innovation-based solutions and refining existing paradigms. Reviewing past research and actions, we first elucidate the evolution of sustainability science and the essence of sustainable development and its assessment. Secondly, we summarize current major environmental issues, including global warming and climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation and desertification, and environmental pollution, as well as their relationships with sustainability and the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Subsequently, this review critically evaluates the role of innovations in science, technology, engineering, and policy (iSTEP) and their synergies in advancing sustainability and SDGs. While their sequential relationships may vary based on specific contexts or sustainability scenarios within the iSTEP framework, each component reinforces the others, fostering continuous improvement. Finally, this review offers recommendations and future perspectives for formulating sustainability roadmaps. Recommendations include fostering a vision of sustainability, promoting interdisciplinary collaboration, and encouraging transboundary cooperation among stakeholders for future sustainability endeavors.
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| 2. |
- Gu, Song, et al.
(författare)
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Gaze Estimation via a Differential Eyes' Appearances Network with a Reference Grid
- 2021
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Ingår i: ENGINEERING. - : Elsevier BV. - 2095-8099. ; 7:6, s. 777-786
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A person's eye gaze can effectively express that person's intentions. Thus, gaze estimation is an important approach in intelligent manufacturing to analyze a person's intentions. Many gaze estimation methods regress the direction of the gaze by analyzing images of the eyes, also known as eye patches. However, it is very difficult to construct a person-independent model that can estimate an accurate gaze direction for every person due to individual differences. In this paper, we hypothesize that the difference in the appearance of each of a person's eyes is related to the difference in the corresponding gaze directions. Based on this hypothesis, a differential eyes' appearances network (DEANet) is trained on public datasets to predict the gaze differences of pairwise eye patches belonging to the same individual. Our proposed DEANet is based on a Siamese neural network (SNNet) framework which has two identical branches. A multi-stream architecture is fed into each branch of the SNNet. Both branches of the DEANet that share the same weights extract the features of the patches; then the features are concatenated to obtain the difference of the gaze directions. Once the differential gaze model is trained, a new person's gaze direction can be estimated when a few calibrated eye patches for that person are provided. Because person specific calibrated eye patches are involved in the testing stage, the estimation accuracy is improved. Furthermore, the problem of requiring a large amount of data when training a person-specific model is effectively avoided. A reference grid strategy is also proposed in order to select a few references as some of the DEANet's inputs directly based on the estimation values, further thereby improving the estimation accuracy. Experiments on public datasets show that our proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art methods.
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| 3. |
- Wang, Yutao, et al.
(författare)
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Implementing stricter environmental regulation to enhance eco-efficiency and sustainability: a case study of Shandong Province's pulp and paper industry, China
- 2011
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Ingår i: Journal of Cleaner Production. - : Elsevier BV. - 0959-6526. ; 19:4, s. 303-310
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- There has been much debate on the topic of whether stricter environmental regulations can promote environmental performance and economic performance at the same time. Different researchers have used different indicators to measure environmental performance and economic performance in their empirical studies. However, it is a surprise that few studies have checked the relationship between environmental regulation and eco-efficiency, as the latter is widely regarded as a quite powerful tool of considering ecology and economy together. In this study the background is the implementation in 2003 of the Stricter Discharge Standard (SDS) in Shandong Province's Pulp and Paper Industry (SPPI), compared to the national standards of China. The stricter regulations were intended to promote corporate change from passive management to active control and from end-of-pipe treatment to cleaner production. This study investigated the eco-efficiency trends of SPPI from 2001 to 2008 in three fields: water efficiency, energy efficiency and environment efficiency. A "de-linking" and "re-linking" tool was used to attain a further evaluation. The study showed that with the implementation of stricter regulation most of the efficiency indicators (except CO2 emission and energy consumption) had achieved significant improvements, and the overall environmental performance trends of SPPI showed it to be more sustainable. However, the study also found that it was not enough to address a single indicator in the environmental regulation of the pulp and paper industry. More holistic eco-efficiency indicators need to be further considered and introduced to the industry as the next step to create true sustainable development. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved,
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| 4. |
- Wang, Yutao, et al.
(författare)
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Strategic assessment of fuel taxation in energy conservation and CO2 reduction for road transportation: a case study from China
- 2013
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Ingår i: Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1436-3240 .- 1436-3259. ; 27:5, s. 1231-1238
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Road transportation has attracted extensive attention throughout the world because of its high energy demands and numerous externalities. Sustainable road transportation has thus become a great challenge for politicians and decision-makers all over the world. There have been a series of studies indicating that appropriate pricing of fuel can be both effective and efficient for reducing overconsumption of transport fuel. However, relatively little research has been done on fuel price approaches in developing country contexts. For a country like China, where road traffic today is growing more than in other countries, there is a strategic interest to do more economic analyses of fair and efficient pricing of fuel. In this study, we present a strategic assessment of fuel pricing in energy conservation and CO2 reduction from road transportation in China, both in a retrospective and a prospective perspective. First of all, the correlation between fuel price and road transport gasoline demand, based upon data from 1995 to 2007, was examined with an econometric model. Secondly, on basis of the elasticity model, the potential reductions with respect to fuel demand and Green House Gas (GHG) emissions as a consequence of a strategic fuel tax implementation in China were examined up to 2030. The results indicate that such strategic fuel taxation can play a considerable role in steering the growth of road transport gasoline demand, and thus also Chinese GHG emissions.
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| 5. |
- Hallquist, Mattias, 1969, et al.
(författare)
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Photochemical smog in China: scientific challenges and implications for air-quality policies
- 2016
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Ingår i: National Science Review. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 2095-5138 .- 2053-714X. ; 3:4, s. 401-403
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In large areas of China severe air pollution events pose a significant threat to human health, ecosystems and climate. Current reduction of primary emissions will also affect secondary pollutants such as ozone (O3) and particulate matter (PM), but the magnitude of the effects is uncertain. Major scientific challenges are related to the formation of O3 and secondary particulate matter including Secondary Organic Aerosols (SOA). Large uncertainties also remain regarding the interactions of soot, SOA and O3 under the influence of different SO2, NOX and VOC concentrations. To improve the understanding of these secondary atmospheric interactions in China, scientific areas of central importance for photochemically induced air pollutants have been identified. In addition to the scientific challenges, results from research need to be synthesized across several disciplines and communicated to stakeholders affected by air pollution and to policy makers responsible for developing abatement strategies. Development of these science-policy interactions can benefit from experience gained under the UN ECE Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP)
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| 6. |
- Weatherby, Robert, et al.
(författare)
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Contestability between Road and Rail for Non-bulk Freight
- 2012
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Bok (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This scoping study is a first step in determining a way to examine contestability of freight flows to rail and road in Australia. It The study reviews current freight and commodity modelling practice to identifying the most effective model for further study. A four-step commodity flow approach was first identified being most suitable and a proposed model was scoped. However, lack of available data made the preferred model impractical. The relatively new spatial computable general e(SCGE) model is recommended as the most suitable alternative approach; it requires less data than the four-step commodity flow approach and performs well in technically. It is proposed to test this model for determining non-bulk freight contestability for the East Coast corridor that links Melbourne and Brisbane. This scoping study includes extracts from a proposal for a full study to beundertaken under the leadership of Professor Edward Chung.
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| 7. |
- Shibayama, Sotaro, et al.
(författare)
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Measuring originality in science
- 2020
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Ingår i: Scientometrics. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1588-2861 .- 0138-9130. ; 122:1, s. 409-427
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Originality has self-evident importance for science, but objectively measuring originality poses a formidable challenge. We conceptualise originality as the degree to which a scientific discovery provides subsequent studies with unique knowledge that is not available from previous studies. Accordingly, we operationalise a new measure of originality for individual scientific papers building on the network betweenness centrality concept. Specifically, we measure the originality of a paper based on the directed citation network between its references and the subsequent papers citing it. We demonstrate the validity of this measure using survey information. In particular, we find that the proposed measure is positively correlated with the self-assessed theoretical originality but not with the methodological originality. We also find that originality can be reliably measured with only a small number of subsequent citing papers, which lowers computational cost and contributes to practical utility. The measure also predicts future citations, further confirming its validity. We further characterise the measure to guide its future use.
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| 8. |
- Wang, Jian, et al.
(författare)
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Mentorship and creativity: Effects of mentor creativity and mentoring style
- 2022
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Ingår i: Research Policy. - : Elsevier BV. - 0048-7333. ; 51:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper examines mentorship as a mechanism for individuals to acquire and develop creativity. More specifically, we study the effect of mentor creativity on protégé creativity and how this effect is moderated by the mentoring styles of autonomy and exploration. Our empirical analysis focuses on formal PhD supervision and training, drawing on survey and bibliometric data for 143 life-science professors (mentors) and their 685 PhD students (protégés). We find that the effect of mentor creativity on protégé creativity is insignificant during protégés’ PhD studies but becomes significantly positive after protégés hold faculty positions, suggesting that the mentorship effect takes time to manifest but is enduring. Furthermore, the effect of mentor creativity on protégé creativity is significant only when protégés have high levels of autonomy and exploration during PhD studies. This suggests the importance of autonomy and exploration in the effective transfer of creativity from mentors to protégés.
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