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.
The wealth of air quality information provided by satellite infrared observations of ammonia (NH3), carbon monoxide (CO), formic acid (HCOOH), and methanol (CH3OH) is currently being explored and used for a number of applications, especially at regional or global scales. These applications include air quality monitoring, trend analysis, emissions, and model evaluation. This study provides one of the first direct validations of Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) satellite-retrieved profiles of NH3, CH3OH, and HCOOH through comparisons with coincident aircraft profiles. The comparisons are performed over the Canadian oil sands region during the intensive field campaign (August-September, 2013) in support of the Joint Canada-Alberta Implementation Plan for Oil Sands Monitoring (JOSM). The satellite/aircraft comparisons over this region during this period produced errors of (i) +0.08 +/- 0.25 ppbv for NH3, (ii) +7.5 +/- 23 ppbv for CO, (iii) +0.19 +/- 0.46 ppbv for HCOOH, and (iv) 1.1 +/- 0.39 ppbv for CH3OH. These values mostly agree with previously estimated retrieval errors; however, the relatively large negative bias in CH3OH and the significantly greater positive bias for larger HCOOH and CO values observed during this study warrant further investigation. Satellite and aircraft ammonia observations during the field campaign are also used in an initial effort to perform preliminary evaluations of Environment Canada's Global Environmental Multi-scale-Modelling Air quality and CHemistry (GEM-MACH) air quality modelling system at high resolution (2.5 +/- 2.5 km(2). These initial results indicate a model underprediction of similar to 0.6 ppbv (similar to 60 %) for NH3, during the field campaign period. The TES/model CO comparison differences are similar to+20 ppbv (similar to +20 %), but given that under these conditions the TES/aircraft comparisons also show a small positive TES CO bias indicates that the overall model underprediction of CO is closer to similar to 10% at 681 hPa (similar to 3 km) during this period.
A series of triscyclometalated iridium complexes with oligofluorene-substituted ppy ligands manifest impressive two-and three-photon absorption properties. In particular, a star-shaped complex bearing three carbazole-terminated trifluorenyl ppy demonstrates a large three-photon absorption cross section up to 81 x 10(-78) cm(6) s(2) photon(-2). In combination with optimal phosphorescence quantum yields (0.5-0.8), such iridium complexes are effective two-and three-photon excited phosphorescence emitters.
In this paper, two different technical criteria, i.e., the oil recovery factor (ORF) and break-over pressure (BOP), are studied and compared to determine the minimum miscibility pressures (MMPs) of two light crude oil–CO2 systems. More specifically, five slim-tube tests with the live light crude oil–CO2 system and five coreflood tests with the dead light crude oil–CO2 system are conducted to measure the ORFs at different injection pressures and the actual reservoir temperature of Tres=53.0°C. The linear and quadratic extrapolation methods as well as the linear intersection method are applied by using the ORF criterion. Three different high threshold ORFs of 88% for the slim-tube tests or 87% for the coreflood tests, 90% and 95% are chosen to determine the MMPs by means of the linear and quadratic extrapolation methods. On the other hand, the linear intersection method is used to determine the MMP by finding a sudden slope change point in the measured ORF versus injection pressure curve for the slim-tube or coreflood tests. Moreover, the BOP criterion is based on the cubic regression of the measured ORF versus injection pressure data and used to determine the MMPs, which correspond to four different low threshold slopes or incremental ORFs per incremental injection pressure increase of 5, 3, 2, and 1%/MPa. It is found that different MMP ranges can be obtained from the same measured ORF versus injection pressure data if different MMP criteria, regression methods, and threshold values or numerical options are adopted. The determined MMP is better given in a small pressure range than specified as a definitive pressure value. Two MMP ranges of the live and dead light crude oil–CO2 systems are determined to be 15.2–15.4MPa and 12.4–12.9MPa at Tres=53.0°C, respectively.
In this investigation, we reported the two-dimensional (2D) self-assembly of a pair of triangular macrocycles (TMC1 and TMC2) at a highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG)/1-phenyloctane interface. Although with the similar triangle-shaped phenyl backbones, TMC1 and TMC2 displayed different 2D nanopatterns. Control experiments with varying concentrations and temperatures have been carried out. Phase separations were recorded in the coassembly of TMC1 and TMC2. Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) measurements, as well as density function theory (DFT) calculations, revealed the formation mechanism of the TMC1 and TMC2 nanoarrays. Moreover, minor ring-opening phenomena of TMC2 were detected by STM, which demonstrates the advantages of STM in trace content analysis.
Using a double-slit structure fabricated on a gold film or a subwavelength (300 nm) plasmonic waveguide, high-contrast and broadband plasmonic sensors based on the interference of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are experimentally demonstrated on chips. By adjusting the focused spot position of the p-polarized incident light on the double-slit structure to compensate for the propagation loss of the SPPs, the interfering SPPs from the two slits have nearly equal intensities. As a result, nearly completely destructive interference can be experimentally achieved in a broad bandwidth (>200 nm), revealing the robust design and fabrication of the double-slit structure. More importantly, a high sensing figure of merit (FOM*) of >1 x 10(4) RIU-1 (refractive index unit), which is much greater than the previous experimental results, is obtained at the destructive wavelength because of a high contrast ratio (C = 0.96). The high-contrast and broadband on-chip sensor fabricated on the subwavelength plasmonic waveguide may find important applications in the real-time sensing of particles and molecules.
