Previous studies have considered the effect of financial development on carbon emissions; however, few studies have explored the role of green finance in carbon mitigation. To bridge this gap, the ...current study constructs a green finance development index based on four indicators: green credit, green securities, green insurance, and green investment. A vector error correction model is used to analyze relationships between the development level of green finance, non-fossil energy consumption, and carbon intensity using data from 2000 to 2018. We find that China’s green finance industry developed rapidly, and improvements in the green finance development index, as well as the increasing use of non-fossil energy, contributed to a reduction in carbon intensity. Simultaneously, an increase in carbon intensity inhibited the expansion of non-fossil energy use, impeded the investment flow to green projects, and ultimately led to a deterioration of green finance development. In addition, non-fossil energy consumption in China was primarily influenced by green finance and carbon intensity, with clear policy-driven effects. However, the impacts of green finance policies continually fell short and lacked continuity. This study proposes ways in which to improve the effect of green finance policy implementation, expand the consumption of non-fossil energy, and develop a carbon trading market.
•The green finance–new energy use–carbon intensity nexus is explored for China.•A vector error correction model is employed.•A green finance development index is constructed based on four green indicators.•Green finance and new energy use are found to reduce carbon intensity.•Carbon intensity increases are found to inhibit green finance and new energy use.
Express delivery services are booming in both developed and emerging economies due to their low cost, convenience, and the fast growth in online shopping. The increasing environmental impacts of ...express delivery services and mitigation potentials, however, remain largely unexplored. Here we addressed such a gap for China, a country which is expanding online retail sales and express delivery rapidly. We found a total of 8.8 Mt of scrap packaging materials were generated by the express delivery sector in China in 2018. Its transportation-related GHG emissions surged from 0.3 Mt in 2007 to 13.7 Mt of CO
-equivalent (CO
e) in 2018, with an average of 0.27 kgCO
e per piece. Over 80% from online shopping deliveries. We predict these emissions will reach 75 MtCO
e by 2035. Nevertheless, it is possible to mitigate such GHG emissions by 102~134 MtCO
e between 2020 and 2035 if a suite of policies is adopted, including a slowdown of delivery speed, fuel system upgrades, packaging materials reduction, logistics optimization, and carbon pricing.
Over the past decades, nanoparticles have increased in implementation to a variety of applications ranging from high-efficiency electronics to targeted drug delivery. Recently, microfluidic ...techniques have become an important tool to isolate and enrich populations of nanoparticles with uniform properties ( e.g. , size, shape, charge) due to their precision, versatility, and scalability. However, due to the large number of microfluidic techniques available, it can be challenging to identify the most suitable approach for isolating or enriching a nanoparticle of interest. In this review article, we survey microfluidic methods for nanoparticle isolation and enrichment based on their underlying mechanisms, including acoustofluidics, dielectrophoresis, filtration, deterministic lateral displacement, inertial microfluidics, optofluidics, electrophoresis, and affinity-based methods. We discuss the principles, applications, advantages, and limitations of each method. We also provide comparisons with bulk methods, perspectives for future developments and commercialization, and next-generation applications in chemistry, biology, and medicine.
Newly developed acoustic technologies are playing a transformational role in life science and biomedical applications ranging from the activation and inactivation of mechanosensitive ion channels for ...fundamental physiological processes to the development of contact-free, precise biofabrication protocols for tissue engineering and large-scale manufacturing of organoids. Here, we provide our perspective on the development of future acoustic technologies and their promise in addressing critical challenges in biomedicine.
Droplet microfluidics has revolutionized the biomedical and drug development fields by allowing for independent microenvironments to conduct drug screening at the single cell level. However, current ...microfluidic sorting devices suffer from drawbacks such as high voltage requirements (e.g., >200 Vpp), low biocompatibility, and/or low throughput. In this article, a single‐phase focused transducer (SPFT)‐based acoustofluidic chip is introduced, which outperforms many microfluidic droplet sorting devices through high energy transmission efficiency, high accuracy, and high biocompatibility. The SPFT‐based sorter can be driven with an input power lower than 20 Vpp and maintain a postsorting cell viability of 93.5%. The SPFT sorter can achieve a throughput over 1000 events per second and a sorting purity up to 99.2%. The SPFT sorter is utilized here for the screening of doxorubicin cytotoxicity on cancer and noncancer cells, proving its drug screening capability. Overall, the SPFT droplet sorting device shows great potential for fast, precise, and biocompatible drug screening.
Single phase focused transducer (SPFT) is a novel acoustofluidic tool for droplet sorting, using a unique interdigital transducer design. The capability of the SPFT to generate high acoustic intensities enables high efficiency cell‐laden droplet sorting with a low input voltage and a high biocompatibility. This new sorting technology shows significant potential as a tool for droplet‐based screening and analysis.
This study investigates the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis for 30 provinces in China from 2006 to 2015 by using energy consumption per capita and nitrogen fertilizer per capita as ...complementary variables of nitrogen oxides (NO
x
) emissions per capita. The panel unit root tests, Pedroni panel cointegration, long-term parameter estimates, and Dumitrescu–Hurlin (D–H) causality tests are used in the model. The results are consistent with the inverted U-shaped EKC hypothesis and show that the inverted U-shaped EKC exists between economic growth and NO
x
emissions. Energy consumption and nitrogen fertilizer has significantly positive effects on NO
x
emissions. These results give prominence to the need for decreasing NO
x
emissions and reducing energy consumption and nitrogen fertilizer. The novelty of this study is to add the nitrogen fertilizer as a new variable by a panel of 30 provinces in China covering 2006–2015 and extend the EKC model, which helps to fill the academic gap in the existing literature.
Graphic abstract
In recent years, global climate change has become an increasingly serious problem. Developing countries have assumed excessive responsibilities for carbon emissions under the principle of producer ...responsibility. A system that considers material flows to establish the responsibility for carbon emissions more accurately and fairly was proposed. In this study, the embodied carbon emissions (ECEs) of aluminum-containing commodities (ACC) in China’s international trade from 2008 to 2017 were analyzed via material flow analysis. The carbon emission coefficients of China’s imported and exported ACC were calculated and discussed. The main conclusions were as follows: (1)The annual imported and exported aluminum in ACC showed a fluctuating growth from 2008 to 2017. Overall, China imported a large amount of alumina and exports a large amount of aluminum-containing end products (ACEP) and semi-products (SP). (2) The imported and exported ECEs of ACC were mainly due to ACEP, which account for 57% and 68% of the imported and exported ECEs of ACC, respectively. (3) The ECEs of ACEP in international trade were mainly associated with vehicles, manufacturing equipment, and aircraft. (4) The share of exported and net exported ACC’s ECEs in domestic carbon emissions (calculated using the principle of producer responsibility) also increased from 1.3 and 0.9% to 2.8 and 1.7%. In addition, a more accurate share of international carbon emission responsibility was discussed, and policy recommendations to reduce carbon emissions and actively respond to global climate change were provided.
The current state of practice to interpret the thermal integrity profiling (TIP) data of drilled shaft is the so-called effective radius method. It uses the concrete pouring log and average ...temperature to construct a relationship between temperature distribution and effective radius that can be used to reconstruct a drilled shaft model. While this effective radius method is computationally inexpensive and has good operationality, it is not good at predicting the dimensions and shape of shaft defects. Upgrading the sensor used in conventional TIP from thermocouples/thermal wires to fiber optic sensors, the spatial resolution of the measured temperature will be enhanced. By using the newly proposed spiral fiber deployment strategy, we can improve the reconstruction of shaft defects in the integrity testing of drilled shafts. The corresponding inverse modeling of defected shaft reconstruction for spiral deployment is proposed in this paper based on the temperature distribution pattern that is learned from forward modeling. Through inverse modeling, the details of defects in drilled shafts can be reconstructed numerically. An analysis of the results shows that the prediction by inverse modeling has good agreement with the forward modeling set up initially. This work helps the evolution of the TIP from the nondestructive testing stage to the quantitative nondestructive evaluation stage.
While mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have gained enormous attention due to their unique properties of self-renewal, colony formation, and differentiation potential, the MSC secretome has become ...attractive due to its roles in immunomodulation, anti-inflammatory activity, angiogenesis, and anti-apoptosis. However, the precise stimulation and efficient production of the MSC secretome for therapeutic applications are challenging problems to solve. Here, we report on Acoustofluidic Interfaces for the Mechanobiological Secretome of MSCs: AIMS. We create an acoustofluidic mechanobiological environment to form reproducible three-dimensional MSC aggregates, which produce the MSC secretome with high efficiency. We confirm the increased MSC secretome is due to improved cell-cell interactions using AIMS: the key mediator N-cadherin was up-regulated while functional blocking of N-cadherin resulted in no enhancement of the secretome. After being primed by IFN-γ, the secretome profile of the MSC aggregates contains more anti-inflammatory cytokines and can be used to inhibit the pro-inflammatory response of M1 phenotype macrophages, suppress T cell activation, and support B cell functions. As such, the MSC secretome can be modified for personalized secretome-based therapies. AIMS acts as a powerful tool for improving the MSC secretome and precisely tuning the secretory profile to develop new treatments in translational medicine.
In the fourth industrial revolution, the fintech has significantly expanded during the last several years, and this has caused scholars to worry about how much electricity is being used. Because ...energy poverty is one of the most critical social policy concerns facing the majority of nations in the world in the modern era. This study adds to what has already been written by looking at how the fintech industry affects the environment and energy in European countries. The current study investigates how the growing awareness of the need to preserve energy and the environment has an effect on society, and analyzes the role of the fintech industry, green finance, energy efficiency, and research and development on energy poverty across European nations from 2013 to 2020. To estimate long- and short-term impacts, DOLS and FMOLS are used along with diagnostic tests. The outcomes found that there is a tight relationship between energy poverty and all the factors taken into consideration (fintech, green finance, energy efficiency, and R&D). EU governments should employ “green finance" to encourage and enable the fintech industry since fintech plays a vital role in enhancing environmental effectiveness. The financing of environmentally friendly projects is very beneficial and might help alleviate energy poverty. The findings also indicate that more financing, ecological subsidies, and social assistance programs are necessary in order to satisfy the needs for energy and put an end to energy poverty in Europe. Policymakers in the tech world may be especially interested in the results.
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