Over the past four decades, China’s extensive economic growth mode has led to substantial greenhouse gas emissions, and China has become the world’s largest emitter since 2009. In order to alleviate ...the dual pressures from international climate negotiations and domestic environmental degradation, the Chinese government has pronounced it will reach its emission peak before 2030. However, through analyzing 12 scenarios, we found that it will be very difficult to meet this ambitious goal under the current widely used policies. With the trial implementation of China’s carbon emission trading system (ETS), concerns arise over whether national ETS can accelerate the carbon peak process. In this paper, we propose a new proactive data envelopment analysis approach to investigate the impacts of national carbon ETS on carbon peak. Several important results are obtained. For example, we find that carbon ETS has a significant accelerating effect on carbon peak, which effect will advance the carbon peak by one to 2 years, and the corresponding peak values are reduced by 2.71–3 Gt. In addition, the setting of carbon price in the current Chinese pilot carbon market is found to be overly conservative. Last, our estimation on the carbon trading volume indicates that the ETS lacks vitality as the annual average carbon trading volume only represents approximately 4.3% of the total average carbon emissions. Based on these findings, several policy implications are suggested regarding the means by which China can more smoothly peak its carbon emissions before 2030 and implement national carbon ETS.
The Chinese high-tech industry has developed greatly since the beginning of China's “National High-tech R&D (863) Program” and “China Torch Program”. This paper introduces a conceptual model extended ...from the innovation value chain model to simultaneously estimate the R&D and commercialization efficiencies for the high-tech industries of 29 provincial-level regions in China. To match reality, a network DEA incorporating both shared inputs and additional intermediate inputs is constructed to open the “black box” view of decision making units used in single-stage DEA. This study is the first attempt to link the R&D and commercialization with a solid theoretical foundation and feasible mathematical methods. The empirical findings show that most of the 29 regions have low efficiency in the commercialization sub-process compared to the R&D sub-process, although there are regional differences in China's high-tech industry. Pearson correlation shows that the R&D sub-process is not closely correlated to the commercialization sub-process in terms of efficiency. Our analysis can provide information for the formulation of policies to achieve high innovation efficiency.
•It constructs a two-stage conceptual framework for performance evaluation under the innovation value chain theory.•It gives insight into the appropriate proportion of shared resources in each sub-process.•It analyzes the high-tech industry innovation activities from the perspective of the regional innovation system.•It provides some policy implications and recommendations of China's high-tech innovation.
The rapid economic development of China has intensified the country’s many problems. Among them, energy shortage and environmental pollution are two main problems, which highly affects the economic ...growth and sustainable development. To achieve more rapid green growth, the innovative technology by reusing the environmental wastes has been widely used since doing so not only decreases the environment pollution, but also further brings more natural resource. The present paper establishes a two-stage structure for evaluating the regional green growth and sustainable development in China by calculating the efficiency of “energy saving” and “pollution treatment” separately. Specifically, a set of models based on slack-based measure approach are constructed in which non-discretionary inputs can be calculated in both resource utilization stage and pollution treatment stage. Comparing with the traditional models, the new proposed models can measure the performance of resources saving and pollution treatment with considering the influence of non-discretionary inputs. An empirical application on Chinese 30 regions during 2011–2015 have been done to illustrate the use of our framework and the performance of regional green growth and sustainable development. Based on the efficiency results, we find that the efficiency scores of the provinces in central and northeast area are lower, which is mostly caused by their poor performance on “pollution treatment”. Both the environmental efficiency scores and target values for performance improvement are obtained in this paper to enlighten the corresponding decision-makers.
As the second largest economic entity in the world, China plays an important role in controlling global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The land transportation sector (including railway ...transportation and road transportation) has been the most important source of emissions in China and the average CO2 emissions of land transportation were 529.31 million tons during the period 2009–2012. In this study, a parallel Slack-Based Measure Data Envelopment Analysis model is proposed, which is used for evaluating the overall efficiency of the land transportation sector and individual efficiencies of the railway transportation and highway transportation subsectors at the same time, considering CO2 emissions. The empirical results lead to three conclusions: (a) only Anhui province is efficient each year during 2009–2012. (b) The environmental efficiency of the Eastern area in China is the best, followed by the Central area, with the Western area being the worst. (c) The performance of railway transportation is better than that of highway transportation. These three conclusions lead to policy suggestions to promote highway transportation technological innovation and narrow the regional imbalances in land transportation. This paper makes two main contributions: the model advances improvements to methods used in the Data Envelopment Analysis technique, and also provides governments with a practical and yet easy-to-adopt perspective to implement land transportation performance measurement that aids in decision making.
This study focuses on the analysis of optimal energy allocation and environmental performance of China’s three major urban agglomerations. Specifically, this paper first uses a fixed-input DEA model ...to obtain the optimal allocation of energy input. Then, an evaluation model based on the optimal allocation of energy input is proposed to evaluate environmental performance. Finally, these models are applied to the empirical analysis of the three major urban agglomerations in China. This article mainly draws the following conclusions. First, energy is wasted in most cities in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. Second, from 2012 to 2016, the environmental performance of each urban agglomeration showed a downward trend and then an upward trend. Third, the overall environmental performance of the three major urban agglomerations is not high. Some specific regions, such as Handan, Anyang, Xingtai, and Baoding, behave not well in protecting the environment.
•We measure the green growth degree of China’s industrial sectors by considering the constraint of total energy consumption.•We proposed a new common equilibrium efficient frontier, which considers ...each DMU’s own adjustment strategy on fixed-sum energy input.•The proposed approaches are applied to analyze the green growth and energy and environmental efficiency of 36 of China’s industrial sectors.
Tight energy constraints and severe environmental pollution are two main problems affecting economic growth and sustainable development. As an important economic growth mode, green growth seeks to achieve both economic growth and environmental sustainability. Previous studies on the efficiency evaluation of green growth ignored fixed-sum energy consumption; this is a significant omission because this constraint is general in China: the government has set targets to reduce energy consumption by 20% and 16% per unit of GDP during its the eleventh (2006-2010) and twelfth (2011-2015) five-year plans. To fill this gap, we propose a new data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to analyze the green growth degree of China’s industrial sectors. The proposed DEA model considers the constraint of total energy consumption in order to conform to the policy of energy and emission reduction. Previous theoretical studies on fixed-sum output construct the common equilibrium efficient frontier (CEEF) only by considering the minimal reduction strategy for the fixed-sum output of all decision making units (DMUs), while ignoring each DMU’s adjustment strategy for fixed-sum input/output. In this paper, we construct a new CEEF by considering each industrial sector’s adjustment of energy consumption. The new CEEF not only guides the industrial sectors to alter their energy consumption structure to achieve green growth but also allows a more accurate evaluation of the energy and environmental efficiency (EEE) of industrial sectors. Last, our proposed model is applied to analyze the green growth and EEE of 36 of China’s industrial sectors.
Whole-brain mesoscale mapping in primates has been hindered by large brain sizes and the relatively low throughput of available microscopy methods. Here, we present an approach that combines ...primate-optimized tissue sectioning and clearing with ultrahigh-speed fluorescence microscopy implementing improved volumetric imaging with synchronized on-the-fly-scan and readout technique, and is capable of completing whole-brain imaging of a rhesus monkey at 1 × 1 × 2.5 µm
voxel resolution within 100 h. We also developed a highly efficient method for long-range tracing of sparse axonal fibers in datasets numbering hundreds of terabytes. This pipeline, which we call serial sectioning and clearing, three-dimensional microscopy with semiautomated reconstruction and tracing (SMART), enables effective connectome-scale mapping of large primate brains. With SMART, we were able to construct a cortical projection map of the mediodorsal nucleus of the thalamus and identify distinct turning and routing patterns of individual axons in the cortical folds while approaching their arborization destinations.
•The previous literature about closest targets satisfying (strong) monotonicity is mostly based on complicated multi-stage procedure.•A simple MILP is proposed to find the closest targets that ...satisfies strong monotonicity.•The proposed approaches are applied to industrial production processes of China.
The benchmarking information targets based on Data envelopment analysis (DEA) are commonly classified into two groups: the farthest targets and the closest targets. Many methods have been introduced to derive the closest projection to the strongly efficienct frontier, most of them merely based on the computation of closest efficient targets. Although there are several measures that satisfy a set of interesting properties from an economic and mathematical point of view, they are based on output-oriented models with a multi-stage procedure and cannot be extended easily to the situation of non-orientation, or they are mostly based on a conceptual framework which could not be solved easily. In this paper, we provide an easy, well-defined efficiency measure based on non-oriented closest targets that satisfies strong monotonicity and that is calculated by a simple mixed integer linear program (MILP). A real case of industrial production processes of 30 provincial level regions in mainland China was analyzed to verify the applicability of our proposed approach.
Data envelopment analysis (DEA) has proven to be a powerful technique for performance evaluation since its inception. Since the traditional DEA approaches lack discrimination power among efficient ...decision-making units (DMUs), the cross efficiency method has been proposed for peer appraisal in the literature. However, the previous cross efficiency approaches imposed a single and identical evaluation strategy across all DMUs simultaneously. In addition, all the related studies have considered a static issue without the dynamic alternation of evaluation strategies. In this paper, the reciprocal behaviors among DMUs are considered to address the cross efficiency evaluation, and a novel threshold value is used to determine positive or negative reciprocal behaviors by comparing the peer-evaluated efficiency with the threshold value based efficiency. This study assumes that a DMU would show positive behavior and apply a benevolent strategy toward other DMUs that evaluate it friendly, while it also shows negative behavior and apply an aggressive strategy toward DMUs that evaluate it hostilely. Furthermore, a game-like iteration process is developed for each DMU to determine and further adjust its evaluation strategy toward other DMUs in the evaluation process. Afterward, we calculate the optimal ultimate cross efficiency score with reciprocal behaviors. Finally, the proposed approach is applied to both a numerical example and an empirical study of 31 Chinese manufacturing industries to demonstrate its usefulness and efficacy.
Castleman disease, also known as giant lymph node hyperplasia or angiofollicular lymph node hyperplasia, is a highly heterogeneous clinicopathological entity that belongs to the family ...lymphoproliferative disorders. Castleman disease accompanied by bronchiolitis obliterans is uncommon and often poses a great diagnostic challenge, which is easily confused with respiratory diseases and impeding the correct diagnosis and treatment. The main aim in presenting such rare case studies is to raise awareness and expand the diagnostic horizon of clinicians for appropriate management.
Here, we present a 69-year-old Chinese male who was admitted to our hospital due to right chest pain for 6 months, accompanied by cough, expectoration, and fever. Laboratory examinations revealed elevated immunoglobulin G and C-reactive protein, and normal serum levels of tumor markers and interleukin-6. Computed tomography scan detected diffuse bronchial wall thickening and patchy area of air trapping consistent with small airway disease. Pulmonary function test showed mild small airway obstructive ventilation dysfunction and moderate decrease in diffusion capacity. The pathological result of the right axillary lymph node was consistent with the plasma cell type Castleman disease. According to the above examinations, the patient was finally diagnosed with the plasma cell type Castleman disease accompanied with bronchiolitis obliterans. He received immunosuppressive medication after surgery and has been followed up for 11 months. Now the patient is currently in stable condition without recurrence.
Castleman disease is a rare lymphoproliferative disorder with a variety of symptoms. At present, the treatment of Castleman disease accompanied with bronchiolitis obliterans is mostly based on experiences or previous case reports, and there is no standard treatment. Here, we report an uncommon case of Castleman disease accompanied with bronchiolitis obliterans in which the patient received immunosuppressive medication after surgery and has been followed up for 11 months without experiencing a recurrence, which may deepen and extend our understanding of this disease.
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