The article addresses consumer ethnocentrism (CET) and consumer decision-making styles (CDMS) of young-adult consumers. We explore the level of between- and within-regional differences in CDMS in ...East Asia and Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on Social identity theory, we explore various “constellations” of young-adult consumers with regards to their CDMS and assess to what extent can we discriminate between various consumer segments based on CET. We test hypotheses on matched samples' survey data from China, Japan, Slovenia and Croatia. Our study confirms low ethnocentric tendencies of young-adult consumers at regional, country and segment levels. We identify diverse CDMS archetypes between and within the respective countries and regions. Inter-regional differences are not bigger than country-level differences. We find weak pair-wise correlations between CET and some CDMS only in the case of Central and Eastern Europe.
•Errors of evaporation and transpiration were computed separately by triple collocation.•Direct reflection of error in merging enables to leverage the strengths of each one.•Accuracy of the merged ET ...estimates yielded good agreement with the reference.•Improved transpiration in spring/summer enhanced the accuracy of ET at forest sites.
The main objective of this study is to combine three reanalysis-based evaporation (E) and transpiration (T) estimates (i.e., ERA5-Land, GLDAS, and MERRA2) to improve the accuracy of evapotranspiration (ET) over East Asia. Here, we calculate the uncertainty of E and T separately through triple collocation (TC), which then used as a weighting factor to produce merged estimates of E and T. The combination of the two was quantitatively evaluated by comparing it with ground-based measurements. Before assessing the merged ET estimates, the error standard deviation (σmean) of TC was analyzed. ERA5-Land showed the smallest σmean for E for most of the study region, although MERRA2 achieved superior performance for T compared with ERA5-Land. This behavior further resulted in the highest weighting factors of ERA5-Land (59%) and MERRA2 (49%) for E and T, respectively. An evaluation of merged ET estimates by comparison with flux tower measurements revealed the close agreement of the two datasets in crop and forest regions. For croplands, the merged ET estimates showed better statistics compared with the two worst original products. However, the merged ET showed limitation in reflecting crop rotation due to the uncertainty of ERA5-Land E, which yielded the largest weighting factor over cropland. At forest sites, merged ET estimates yielded better statistical performance than the three individual ET products as well as the ET estimated through TC without separating E and T. Detailed analysis of the ratio of T and ET revealed that the merged ET was similar in magnitude to ground-based measurements. Spatial distribution of annual and seasonal ET indicated that the overall improvement of merged ET resulted from superior estimates of T during the spring and summer. These results confirm that separate error characterization of E and T through TC can enhance the accuracy of terrestrial ET estimates.
Gas-particle partitioning of oxidized mercury (Hg) plays an important role in governing the speciation, transport and deposition of atmospheric Hg. Although studies on gas-particle partitioning of ...oxidized Hg have been conducted at some urban sites, comparable studies at remote mountain sites are still limited. This study analyzes multi-year (2014–2016) data of speciated atmospheric Hg concentrations from Lulin Atmospheric Background Station (LABS, 2862 m above sea level), Taiwan, to explore the factors that influence the gas-particle partitioning of atmospheric oxidized Hg. Mean concentrations (±S.D.) of gaseous elemental mercury (GEM), gaseous oxidized mercury (GOM), and particulate-bound mercury (PBM) were 1.54 ± 0.34 ng m−3, 14.5 ± 26.5 pg m−3, and 5.0 ± 12.0 pg m−3, respectively. In addition, our results indicated that the partitioning of Hg(II) toward particles was favored in the upper free troposphere and/or lower stratosphere. Both temperature (T) and relative humidity (RH) were found to strongly affect the gas-particle partitioning of oxidized Hg. Significant negative correlations between the partitioning coefficient (Kp) and T were obtained for all seasons, but peaked in summer. When RH<30%, Kp decreased with increasing RH. However, Kp and RH were positively correlated when RH>30%. Two empirical Kp-T and Kp-T-RH regression equations: log(1/Kp) = 15.0 – 3887.6(1/T) and log(1/Kp) = 17.92 – 4390.0(1/T) – 0.016RH were developed for free tropospheric air downwind of continental East Asia, which could be implemented in a chemical transport model to improve our understanding of the Hg biogeochemical cycle.
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•Gas-particle partitioning of Hg(II) was characterized at a mountain site in East Asia.•Partitioning coefficient (Kp) correlated with temperature negatively.•Kp increased with increasing relative humidity (RH) when RH>30%.•However, Kp decreased with increasing RH when RH<30%.•Partitioning of Hg(II) toward particles was favored in the upper free troposphere.
Exploring prehistoric variation in human–environmental interaction is critical for understanding the historical patterns and mechanisms of long-term human–land evolution. In this paper we review the ...published radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) data from Late Paleolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in China, analyze the spatial–temporal distribution of these sites, and compare it with the results of recent paleoclimatic and archaeological studies. We seek to study the trajectory and influencing factors of human–environmental interactions in late prehistoric China. We detect changing patterns in the relationship between humans and the environment during different phases of the prehistoric era in China. Climate change clearly affected the environment of hunter-gatherer groups between 50,000–10,000 BP (before present, defined as 1950AD), and variation in human population in Neolithic China (∼10,000–4000 BP) was likely influenced primarily by the development of agriculture, in addition to substantial climate events. The spatial scale of human settlements expanded in the Bronze Age (∼4000–2200 BP) in a period of cooling climate. During this time the impact of human activities on the environment increased significantly, primarily caused by technological innovations related to the onset of prehistoric transcontinental cultural exchange in Eurasia.
Abstract
We use monthly birth data collected by the Human Fertility Database to analyze the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on birth trends until September 2022 in 38 higher‐income countries. We also ...present estimates of the monthly total fertility rate adjusted for seasonality. Our analysis reveals that the pandemic led to distinct swings in births and fertility rates. The initial pandemic shock was associated with a fall in births in most countries, with the sharpest drop in January 2021. Next, birth rates showed a short‐term recovery in March 2021, following the conceptions after the end of the first wave of the pandemic. Most countries reported a stable or slightly increasing number of births in the subsequent months, especially in autumn 2021. Yet another, quite unexpected, downturn in births started in January 2022, linked with the conceptions in spring 2021 when the pandemic measures were mostly eased out and vaccination was gaining momentum. Taken together and contrary to some initial expectations, the coronavirus pandemic did not bring a lasting “baby bust” in most of the analyzed countries. Especially the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Germany, and the United States experienced an improvement in their birth dynamics in 2021 compared with the prepandemic period.
•We find there indeed existed long-term change trends of COT for both water and ice clouds in some sub-regions over East Asia.•It is the first time to quantify both water and ice COT and their change ...effects on local radiative budget with satellite observational dataset in detail.•The major contribution from liquid/ice cloud path and cloud effective radius changes to the COT changes are discussed too.
The climatologic mean and changes in cloud optical thickness (COT) of water and ice clouds in East Asia and their influence on the local radiation budget are studied quantitatively by using the Beijing Climate Center Radiative Transfer Model of BCC_RAD combined with satellite observational datasets from March 2000 to February 2018. Our results show that the annual mean COT over East Asia decreases from the southeast to the northwest, and the annual mean COT of water (COTw) and ice cloud (COTi) in this region are 15.0 and 11.6, respectively. The anomaly variations of COT illustrate that the variation intensity of COTw is stronger than that of COTi. Moreover, COT varies with sub-regions and seasons in East Asia. The trends of COTw in the northeastern and southern China are found to be 0.022 yr-1 and -0.071 yr-1, respectively, while the COTi trends over the two regions are 0.062 yr-1 and -0.009 yr-1, respectively. The annual mean shortwave-, longwave-, and net-radiative effects for the 18 years caused by water clouds in East Asia at the top-of-atmosphere (TOA)/surface are -72.4/-97.9, 15.7/31.1, and -56.7/-66.7 W m-2, respectively. The corresponding effect caused by ice clouds are -88.5/-107.5, 55.7/12.2, and -32.7/-95.3 W m-2, respectively. The shortwave cloud radiative effects (CREs) dominate the longwave CREs not only at the TOA but also at the surface, and the effects of COTi changes on the radiative budgets are stronger than those of COTw over the East Asia region.
Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema portrays a group of important contemporary women filmmakers working across the Sinophone world including Taiwan, Hong Kong, the mainland, and beyond. The ...book delineates and conceptualizes their cinematic and trans-media practices within an evolving, multifaceted feminist intimate-public commons. The films by these experienced and emerging filmmakers, including Huang Yu-shan, Yau Ching, Ai Xiaoming, Wen Hui, Huang Ji and others, represent some of the most innovative and socially engaged work in both fictional and non-fictional modes in Chinese-language cinema as well as global women's cinema. Their narrative, documentary, and experimental film practices from the 1980s to the present, along with their work in sister media such as dance, theater, literature, and contemporary art, their activities as scholars, educators, activists, and film festival organizers or jurors, have significantly reshaped the landscape of Sinophone film culture and expanded the borders of world cinema.
The Yanshan movement/orogeny has been proposed for 90 years, which is of special significance in the history of geological research in China. This study conducted a review by synthesizing major ...achievements regarding episodic deformation features, sedimentary and magmatic records of the Yanshan orogeny in China, and clarified the episodic tectono-magmatism and its geodynamic origins. The tectonic implications of the Yanshan orogeny are discussed in the context of global plate tectonics and supercontinent reconstruction. Lines of evidence from structural, sedimentary and magmatic data suggest that the Yanshan orogeny represents a regional-scale tectonic event that affected the entire China continent in late Mesozoic period. Numerous age and structural constraints consistently indicate that the Yanshan orogeny was initiated in the Jurassic (at ∼170±5 Ma). and was characterized by alternating stages of crustal shortening at ∼170–136 Ma, crustal extension at ∼135–90 Ma, and weak shortening at ∼80 Ma. The 170–136 Ma crustal shortening was reflected in the generation of two regional stratigraphic unconformities (the Tiaojishan and Zhangjiakou unconformities), which were initially named the A and B episodes of “the Yanshan Orogeny” by Mr. Wong Wenhao in 1928. Geodynamically, the Yanshan orogeny in East Asia was associated with nearly coeval oceanic subduction and continental convergence in the Paleo-Pacific, Neo-Tethys, and Mongol-Okhotsk tectonic domains. As a consequence, three giant accretionary-collisional tectonic systems were formed along the continental margins of East Asia, i.e., the Mongol-Okhotsk, Bangonghu-Nujiang, and SE China subduction- and collision-related accretionary systems. The Yanshan orogeny induced widespread crustal-scale folding and thrusting, tectonic reactivation of long-lived zones of crustal weakness, and extensive magmatism and mineralization in intraplate regions. Based on the time principle of supercontinent assembly and break-up, we propose that the mid-Late Jurassic multi-plate convergence in East Asia might represent the initiation of the assembly of the Amasia supercontinent, and the Yanshan orogeny might be the first “stirrings” that is a prerequisite for the birth of the Amasia supercontinent.
