Investigating the impacts of urban built environments on users of multiple services in elderly care facilities

t This paper aims to characterize the varied urban settings community-based elderly care facilities are located,and examine whether characteristics of urban built environments influence the number of older people attending care facilities for multiple services.The dataset incorporates 108 cases of community-based elderly care facilities and usage records from over 17000 users collected in the Chinese city of Nanjing.A network-based approach was employed to comprehensively describe urban built environments surrounding care facilities with a series of metrics on street morphology and land-uses.It was found that urban built environments significantly influenced the number of users attending care facilities.Facilities having more users tended to locate in places with more shops and stores,on major arterial streets of the city,or inside large housing estates in the outer city.Moreover,urban factors performed differently in affecting users of different services as services accepting spontaneous users were more likely to be influenced by street morphology.This study revealed specific urban factors facilitating older people’s usage of care resources.It also generated practical implications regarding the strategies for the planning of spatial locations and service provision to improve the utilization of community-based elderly care.

Multiple Collaborative Service Model and System Construction Based on Industrial Competitive Intelligence

This paper constructs a multiple collaborative service model of industrial competition intelligence with the main purpose of promoting the development of regional industries. The multiple service subjects include enterprises, governments, colleges and universities, scientific research institutes, industry associations and for-profit institutions. This article starts from the overall development of regional industrial economy, weighs the mutual relationship between the elements of the service model, and promotes multiple service subjects such as enterprises, governments, universities, research institutes, industry associations, and profit-making organizations to realize the collaborative service of resource intelligence, demand intelligence and data intelligence provides linkage intelligence service for the development and innovation of regional industries. This service model can improve the efficiency of industrial competitive intelligence services and the overall competitiveness of regional industries.

Layered heuristic algorithm for multiple restriction routes

A layered algorithm by bidirectional searching is proposed in this paper to solve the problem that it is difficult and time consuming to reach an optimal solution of the route search with multiple parameter restrictions for good quality of service. Firstly, a set of reachable paths to each intermediate node from the source node and the sink node based on adjacent matrix transformation are calculated respectively. Then a temporal optimal path is selected by adopting the proposed heuristic method according to a non-linear cost function. When the total number of the accumulated nodes by bidirectional searching reaches n-2, the paths from two directions to an intermediate node should be combined and several paths via different nodes from the source node to the sink node can be obtained, then an optimal path in the whole set of paths can be taken as the output route. Some simulation examples are included to show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method. In addition, the proposed algorithm can be implemented with parallel computation and thus, the new algorithm has better performance in time complexity than other algorithms. Mathematical analysis indicates that the maximum complexity in time, based on parallel computation, is the same as the polynomial complexity of O(kn2-3kn+k), and some simulation results are shown to support this analysis.

Construction and Implementation of Multi Collaborative Service Platform Based on Industrial Competitive Intelligence

With the economic globalization and the increasingly fierce industrial competition at home and abroad, the importance of industrial competitive intelligence service is becoming increasingly prominent. Under the policy background of cooperation and sharing, pluralistic coordination has become a new trend in regional economic development. The multi collaborative online service platform of industrial competitive intelligence is jointly constructed by all service subjects. The platform is guided and promoted by the government. Colleges and universities provide support for industrial competitive intelligence theory and professionals, scientific research institutes provide talent and advanced technology support, industry associations are responsible for dynamic monitoring of industrial development, and profit-making institutions are responsible for supplementing industrial competitive intelligence achievements. All service subjects integrate and explore existing intelligence resources and services through the unified online industrial competitive intelligence sharing platform, so as to realize benign cooperation, collaborative management, resource integration, user integration and service integration among subjects, so as to realize multiple collaborative services of industrial competitive intelligence.

Metropolitan Emblems or Symbols in Globalization？ Both for the Future of Metropolises and Their Citizens

This research concerns on ＂metropolis and metropolisation＂： what is new with the symbols of city local life and the emblems of global competition？ From New York, Rome, Barcelone, Paris and Bordeaux, the same question demands specific answers： can we live and appreciate urban and metropolitan symbols and emblems together or on their own？ That is the question for towns and the future of their citizens. Confrontation of urban sites and observed places with the plural points of view of their establishment, their designers and urban skills, and their inhabitants and citizens. The combination of these several points of view always make a richer discovery than their disciplinary partition and monopoly.

Business cases for energy storage with multiple service provision

Energy storage(ES)has been considered as the key source of flexibility to support the integration of renewable energy.Previous studies have demonstrated the substantial system cost savings by the deployment of ES,including both investment and operation of generation,transmission and distribution infrastructure.However,this societal benefit may not be realized if industry actors do not have a viable business case to appropriately capture these multiple value streams.In this context,this paper investigates the value that ES may deliver to its owner over two specific business cases in a 2030 UK system.Firstly,the application of large-scale ES in the wholesale market is analysed.It is demonstrated that the optimal allocation of ES to provide multiple services is the key element for ES to become competitive in the electricity market.In the second business case,this paper analyses the value of kilowattscale ES combined with roof photovoltaic(PV)system in the household and community level.The study shows that multiple service provision of ES through advanced pricing schemes,for example time-of-use(ToU)tariff and dynamic distribution use of system(DUoS),lead to higher value and the coordination in the community level could further justify the application of domestic ES.

Incorporating novelty and novel ecosystems into restoration planning and practice in the 21st century

Novelty pervades the biosphere.In some cases,potentially irreversible abiotic and/or biotic changes have led to the crossing of thresholds and thus the formation of“novel ecosystems.”Their widespread emergence(particularly on land)and the presence of continued environmental change challenge a traditional restoration goal of restoring an historical ecosystem.Instead,we argue that restoration could broaden its frame of reference to consider how novel ecosystems might be used to maintain global biodiversity and provide ecosystem services and,in doing so,save potentially wasted efforts in attempting to fulfil traditional goals.Here we explore this contention in more depth by addressing:Are novel ecosystems innovative planning or lowering the bar?We show that novel ecosystems were not innovative planning in their original conception.On the contrary,they were recognized as ecosystems that were recalcitrant to traditional restoration approaches,coupled with an awareness that they had arisen inadvertently through deliberate human activity,either on-or off-site.Their recalcitrance to traditional restoration suggests that alternative goals may exist for these ecosystems using sometimes innovative intervention.This management may include biodiversity conservation or restoration for ecological function.We elucidate the latter aspect with reference to an experiment in the wheatbelt of Western Australia—The Ridgefield Multiple Ecosystem Services Experiment—the design of which has been informed by ecological theory and the acceptance of novelty as an ecosystem component.Although novel ecosystems do provide opportunities to broaden restoration planning and practice,and ultimately maintain and conserve global biodiversity in this era of environmental change,they necessarily“lower the bar”in restoration if the bar is considered to be the historical ecosystem.However,in these times of flux,such a bar is increasingly untenable.Instead,careful and appropriate interventions are required at local,regional,and global scales.These interventions need to take history into account,use ecological and evolutionary theory to inform their design,and be mindful of valid concerns such as hubris.Careful interventions thus provide an opportunity for broadening restoration’s framework to focus on maintaining global biodiversity and delivering ecosystem services as well as the traditional goals of restoring historical ecosystems.