Abstract In China, booming tourism is considered to be a win-win solution to fight both ecosystem degradation and poverty in pastoral areas. However, whether this alternative livelihood can reduce pressure on rangeland and improve livelihood of indigenous peoples has not yet been explored. To examine tourism’s impacts on pastoral communities, we conducted field surveys at Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang and distributed questionnaires in 12 provinces including most of the grassland areas of China. On the basis of fieldwork and national survey data, we found that different types of operations have different impacts on livelihood and ecosystem in pastoral area. Pastoralists involved in tourism can increase the income of pastoral households during the summer tourism season, but that pastoralism still provides the main guarantee of a sustainable livelihood. However, along with the development of tourism, business enterprises from outside the pastoral area may replace local herders in tourism operations. As a result, a large area of rangeland may be lost to local herders, who only receive money if they rent their pastures or serve as laborers; unfortunately, many residents lack the training to perform better-paid roles. In addition, we found that pure tourism that replaces pastoralism does not necessarily protect the rangeland, as it brings a variety of environmental impacts and disrupts traditional use that the rangeland may be adapted to. On the basis of our findings, we recommend that tourism managed by local operators who also engage in pastoralism should become the main direction for economic development.
Zhang L, Liu C, Luo R, Yi H, Shi Y, Rozelle S. The transformation of public services in rural China. In: Dunford M, Liu W The Geographical Transformation of China. Vol. 1. New York: Routledge; 2015. pp. 164-205.
In two-dimensional (2D) electron systems, Wigner crystals (WC) and fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) liquids are competing ground states under low temperatures (T) and high magnetic fields (B). Here we report differential conductivity results demonstrating the reentrant insulating phase around ν=1/5 in a 2D hole system in AlGaAs/GaAs quantum wells and unexpected features in the solid-liquid phase transition between WC and FQHE liquids in ultrahigh magnetic fields up to 45 T. Remarkably, the electric field (E) plays an equivalent role as the temperature does in our phase diagram. From the E−T “duality” analysis, a characteristic length of 450 nm is derived, which can be understood as the phase-coherent domain size of WC. Moreover, evidence shows that with weak disorder the insulating phase and composite fermion liquid could be coexisting around ν= 1/5, pointing to the possibility that the insulating phase is the four flux quantum Wigner crystal, as proposed by theories.
Three triangular platinum(II) amine metallacycles incorporating large cyclic oligo(phenylene-ethynylene) (OPE) bisacetylide ligands are synthesized, and their photophysical properties are studied. Two types of triplet excited states with ligand/metal-to-ligand charge-transfer and acetylide-ligand-centered characteristics respectively, are exhibited by these complexes depending on the size (conjugation length) and electronic features of the cyclic OPE ligands. When the energy levels Of the two excited states are close to each other, the lowest triplet state is found to switch between the two in varied solvents, resulting from their relative energy inversion induced by solvent polarity change. Density functional theory and time-dependent density functional theory calculations provide corroborative evidence for such experimental conclusions. More importantly, the designed metallacycles show impressive WO-photon absorption (2PA) and two-photon excitation phosphorescing abilities, and the 2PA cross section reaches 1020 GM at 680 nm and 670 GM at 1040 nm by two different metallacycles. Additionally, pronounced reverse saturable absorptions are observed with these metallacycles by virtue of their strong transient triplet-state absorptions.