Review on the challenges and strategies in oil and gas industry's transition towards carbon neutrality in China

In light of carbon-neutral pledge, the oil and gas industry has been facing several critical new challenges in China. The current status and new challenges in terms of market mechanism reform, supply-consumption balance and key technology innovation in China's oil and gas industry are reviewed in the present study, and new strategies and roadmaps are proposed to cope with the challenges. The study found that (i) the oil and gas market faces challenges such as incomplete pricing mechanisms, unclear subject rights, and the lack of recognition and trading of carbon assets. (ii) the trade-off between short-term supply security and long-term low-carbon supply is the most critical issue. (iii) in addition to typical challenges such as immature technology and lack of funding support, the unclear multiple technology coupling development mode also poses problems for the low-carbon transformation of the oil and gas industry. To address these new challenges, comprehensive strategies and roadmaps for China's oil and gas industry towards carbon neutrality are proposed and discussed in the aspects of participating in market transactions, restructuring production and consumption, deploying key technology innovations, and planning enterprise strategies. The present study is expected to provide a blueprint for the future development of China's oil and gas industry towards carbon neutrality.

Improving social media use for disaster resilience: challenges and strategies

This paper develops a social media-disaster resilience analysis framework by categorizing types of social media use and their challenges to better understand and assess its role in disaster resilience research and management.The framework is derived primarily from several case studies of Twitter use in three hurricane events in the United States-Hurricanes Isaac,Sandy,and Harvey.The paper first outlines four major contributions of social media data for disaster resilience research and management,which include serving as an effective communication platform,providing ground truth information for emergency response and rescue operations,providing information on people's sentiments,and allowing predictive modeling.However,there are four_key challenges to its uses,which include,easy spreading of false information,social and geographical disparities of Twitter use,technical issues on processing and analyzing big and noisy data,especially on improving the locational accuracy of the tweets,and algorithm bias in Al and other types of modeling.Then,the paper proposes twenty strategies that the four sectors of the social media community-organizations,individuals,social media companies,and researchers-could take to improve social media use to increase disaster resilience.

Challenges and strategies in progress of drug delivery system for traditional Chinese medicine Salviae Miltiorrhizae Radix et Rhizoma(Danshen)

Traditional Chinese medicines(TCMs), with a history of thousands of years, are widely used clinically with effective treatment. However, the drug delivery systems(DDSs) for TCMs remains major challenges due to the characteristics of multi-components including alkaloids, flavones, anthraquinones, glycosides,proteins, volatile oils and other types. Therefore, the novel preparations and technology of modern pharmaceutics is introduced to improve TCM therapeutic effects due to instability and low bioavailability of active ingredients. Salviae Miltiorrhizae Radix et Rhizoma, the radix and rhizomes of Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge(Danshen in Chinese), is a well known Chinese herbal medicine for protecting the cardiovascular system, with active ingredients mainly including lipophilic tanshinones and hydrophilic salvianolic acids.In this review, this drug is taken as an example to present challenges and strategies in progress of DDSs for TCMs. This review would also summary the characteristics of active ingredients in it including physicochemical properties and pharmacological effects. The purpose of this review is to provide inspirations and ideas for the DDSs designed from TCMs by summarizing the advances on DDSs for both singleand multi-component from Danshen.

COVID-19 and Learning Styles: GCET as Case Study

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused higher educational institutions around the world to close campus-based activities and move to online delivery.The aim of this paper is to present the case of Global College of Engineering and Technology(GCET)and how its practices including teaching,students/staff support,assessments,and exam policies were affected.The paper investigates the mediating role of no detriment policy impact on students’result along with the challenges faced by the higher educational institution,recommendations and suggestions.The investigation concludes that the strategies adopted for online delivery,student support,assessments and exam policies have helped students to effectively cope with the teaching and learning challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic without affecting their academic results.The study shows that 99%of students were able to maintain the same or better level of performance during the 1st COVID-19 semester.One percent of students had shown a slight decrease in their performance(about 1%–2%)with respect to their overall marks pre-COVID-19.The no detriment policy has succoured those 1%of the students to maintain their overall performance to what it used to be pre-COVID-19 pandemic.Finally,the paper provides the list of challenges and suggestions for smooth conduction of online education.

Main group metal elements for ambient-condition electrochemical nitrogen reduction

Electrocatalytic N_(2) reduction under ambient-condition is considered to be the most appealing strategy to the conventional Haber-Bosch process for synthetic ammonia to alleviate greenhouse emissions and reduce environmental pollution, mainly powered by renewable energy. Recent years, rapid advances have been gained in this attractive research field, and numerous electrocatalysts have been exploited. However, its conversion efficiency is still far behind the requirement of industrial applications owing to the breakage of the N≡N triple bond, which is an energetically challenging kinetically complex multistep reaction and the strong competing reaction of hydrogen evolution reaction. Recently, main group metal-based catalysts have been demonstrated promising application prospect for ammonia production, significantly boosting their further application in this field. However, a comprehensive review of main group metal-based catalysts towards electrochemical ammonia production applications is still lacking. In this review, the fundamentals of N_(2) reduction, such as the reaction pathways, the reaction potential and the challenges of N_(2) reduction have been comprehensively discussed. And then, the role, mechanism, and effect of each main group element-based catalysts used for N_(2) reduction (Li, K, Al, Ga, Sn, Sb, Bi, and their compounds) are systematically summarized. Finally, several state-of-the-art strategies to promote their NRR catalytic performance, as well as the existing problems and prospects are put forward. This review is expected to guide the design and establishment of more efficient electrocatalytic N_(2) reduction systems based on main group metal elements in the future.