In this paper, we investigate the distributed load frequency control problem in a multi-area smart grid under external load disturbances and measurement noise. The novelty lies in that the information privacy is fully taken into account, that is, the internal structural parameters and operational states of each area are not shared with non-neighboring areas, which makes traditional distributed optimal control methods ineffective. The main contribution is to propose a distributed algorithm for the global optimal power regulation command under information privacy constraints via distributed approximation of the control Riccati equation, the estimation Riccati equation, and the state estimation. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can approximate the performance of centralized optimal control, and the performance index under the proposed distributed controller is smaller than that under the commonly used distributed control.
BackgroundChina’s internal migration poses major challenges to cancer surveillance systems that rely on household-registered populations (HRP). Excluding migrants can lead to biased incidence estimates and misinformed public health planning.MethodsThis study estimated the prostate cancer incidence among the resident population (RP) using a Bayesian integrated nested Laplace approximation with stochastic partial differential equation (INLA-SPDE) model, incorporating inter-provincial migrant weights, and explored spatial clustering.ResultsThe findings revealed a substantial interprovincial migrant population of 73,459,708 individuals, based on data from the 2016 China Migrants Dynamic Survey conducted by the Migrant Population Service Center, National Health Commission of China. With Shanghai and Beijing showing relatively high difference proportions of 40.7 and 37.9%, respectively. Nationally, the differences in estimated incidence between RP and HRP were substantial, ranging from 1.1/100,000 in Guizhou (HRP 5.4/100,000, RP 6.5/100,000) to −9.9/100,000 in Shanghai (HRP 27.6/100,000, RP 17.7/100,000). The analysis estimated that the provinces with the largest differences between incident cases among RP and HRP were Guangdong (469 cases, 9.7% relative to HRP cases) and Jiangsu (305 cases, 6.2% relative to HRP cases). Inflow provinces tended to have their cases underestimated and their incidence overestimated, whereas the opposite pattern was observed in outflow provinces. Incidence exhibits significant spatial clustering, with higher incidence in eastern coastal metropolitan areas and lower incidence in central-western regions and northeastern parts.ConclusionMigration substantially influences prostate cancer incidence surveillance in China. Incorporating migrant-adjusted estimates provides a more accurate representation of disease burden, supports equitable allocation of healthcare resources, and offers methodological guidance for improving cancer registration systems in regions with high population mobility.
In some cases in two and three bulk dimensions without bulk local degrees of freedom, I look for area operators in a fixed boundary theory. In each case, I define an exact quantum error-correcting code (QECC) and show that it admits a central decomposition. However, the area operator that arises from this central decomposition vanishes. A non-zero area operator, however, emerges after coarse-graining. The expectation value of this operator approximates the actual entanglement entropy for a class of states that do not form a linear subspace. These non-linear constraints can be interpreted as semiclassicality conditions. The coarse-grained area operator is ambiguous, and this ambiguity can be matched with that in defining fixed-area states.
Background: Despite an established association between heart failure (HF) and lung cancer (LC), there is limited evidence available regarding mortality patterns among the older (≥65 years) population in the United States. Methods: The mortality data, spanning 1999 to 2019, was surveyed using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (CDC WONDER) database with HF and LC identified as underlying or contributing causes of death. Crude and age-adjusted mortality rates (AAMR) were calculated per 100,000 individuals. Joinpoint regression was applied to establish annual percent changes (APCs) for the trends in years, demographics (sex, race), and geographical regions. Results: Between 1999 and 2019, the overall AAMR slightly decreased from 13.0 to 11.4. However, the AAMRs significantly increased (APC: 6.37; 95 % CI: 3.39 to 8.23) from 2017 to 2019. Males had double the AAMRs compared to females (overall AAMR: 15.7 vs. 8.0), yet both sexes experienced a final incline in death rates. Among the distinct racial and ethnic groups, non-Hispanic (NH) Whites (11.9) and NH Black/African Americans (10.9) portrayed the highest AAMRs. Patients most commonly died in medical facilities (41.03 %). Geographical disparities were evident with higher AAMRs in non-metropolitan areas (14.3) and the Midwest (12.7). States with the highest fatality involved West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Conclusion: The abrupt rise in overall mortality rates for HF and LC from 2017 to 2019 is noteworthy. A focused analysis of demographic and geographic disparities is warranted to address this emerging trend.
Diseases of the circulatory (Cardiovascular) system
Research and policy efforts have focused on the expansion of teleworking over the last few years, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, not all occupations and areas are suitable for teleworking. Using the Location Quotient and Pearson’s correlation coefficient index, this study examined the relationship between sectoral specialization and the possibility of telework at regional level in Greece, in order to identify the most suitable economic sectors and regions for telework. Spatial sectoral differentiation is related to the extent of telework diffusion, which appears to be more common in the tertiary sector. Teleworking appears to have exacerbated regional disparities in areas more specialized in trade and tourism activities. A contemporary digital strategy could contribute to a more balanced development of the country. These developments may reverse existing trends in the attractiveness of telecommuting in metropolitan areas and large urban centers.
We consider the occupation area of spherical (fractional) Brownian motion, i.e. the area where the process is positive, and show that it is uniformly distributed. For the proof, we introduce a new simple combinatorial view on occupation times of stochastic processes that turns out to be surprisingly effective. A sampling method is used to relate the moments of occupation times to persistence probabilities of random walks that again relate to combinatorial factors in the moments of beta distributions. Our approach also yields a new and completely elementary proof of Lévy's second arcsine law for Brownian motion. Further, combined with Spitzer's formula and the use of Bell polynomials, we give a characterisation of the distribution of the occupation times for all Lévy processes.
In the context of rural revitalization strategies and humans’ increasing leisure pursuits, rural tourism has begun to act as a new development path of rural economic growth and industrial transformation. This phenomenon generally occurs in rural areas around metropolitan areas, manifesting as the transformation or reconstruction of rural spaces. As a result, many new types of tertiary industry spaces utilizing rural land for leisure activities have emerged. We analyze the connotations of rural spatial and industrial transformation from the perspective of spatial production and innovatively propose that the transformed space is an ecological product, which includes three types in practice: industrial space, consumption space, and residential space. This study facilitates urban–rural integration and common prosperity. Given the lack of analysis of rural ecological products, especially rural spatial ecological products (e.g., rural B&Bs and other tertiary industry spaces), this study aims to explore the value expression and driving factors of rural spatial ecological products based on geo-visual (spatially visualizing) analytical tools looking at 10361 B&Bs in Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces of China as typical examples. Our results show that (1) the value of rural spatial ecological products is reflected in the price that urban consumers are willing to pay for rural natural landscapes, which constitutes an ecological premium; and (2) the prices of rural spatial ecological products are strikingly different at multiple spatial scales, and this difference is related to the local ecological resources. This study provides insights into the rational allocation of the limited resources required for rural construction, which helps optimize the spatial planning of rural ecotourism and enhance the gametogenous development momentum of rural areas. At the same time, this study theoretically expands the research results of cultural ecosystem services.
We analyze physical spacings between locations of safety rest areas on interstates in the United States. We show normalized safety rest area spacings on major interstates exhibit Wigner surmise statistics, which align with the eigenvalue spacings for the Gaussian Unitary Ensemble from random matrix theory as well as the one-dimensional gas interactions via the Coulomb potential. We identify economic and geographic regional traits at the state level that exhibit Poissonian statistics, which become more pronounced with increased geographical obstacles in interstate travel. Other regional filters (e.g., historical or political) produced results that did not diverge substantially from the overall Wigner surmise model.
The effective and convenient detection of single photons via advanced detectors with a large active area is becoming significant for quantum and classical applications. This work demonstrates the fabrication of a superconducting microstrip single-photon detector (SMSPD) with a millimeter-scale active area via the use of ultraviolet (UV) photolithography. The performances of NbN SMSPDs with different active areas and strip widths are characterized. SMSPDs fabricated by UV photolithography and electron beam lithography with small active areas are also compared from the aspects of the switching current density and line edge roughness. Furthermore, an SMSPD with an active area of 1 mm * 1 mm is obtained via UV photolithography, and during operation at 0.85 K, it exhibits near-saturated internal detection efficiency at wavelengths up to 800 nm. At a wavelength of 1550 nm, the detector exhibits a system detection efficiency of ~5% (7%) and a timing jitter of 102 (144) ps, when illuminated with a light spot of ~18 (600) um in diameter, respectively.
Susana Mourão, Sara Pinheiro, Maria Manuela Mendes
et al.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced the Portuguese government to declare various lockdowns between 2020 and 2022. The first State of Emergency was enforced in March 2020, in which face-to-face classroom teaching was repeatedly interrupted. At that time, families were expected to provide the necessary supplies for digital learning, with some support from the government, municipalities, civil society, and local institutions. Nevertheless, many families already lived under precarious conditions before the pandemic, and so the lockdown measures increased their vulnerability, with a probable impact on student school attendance and conditions enabling academic success. Since Ciganos/Roma are part of this vulnerable population, we intend to explore how the COVID-19 pandemic impacts the school pathways of these students, namely in secondary education, where they represent a minority group. The data are derived from a variety of qualitative sources collected during research carried out in the two Metropolitan Areas in Portugal. The COVID-19 pandemic affected the youngsters’ access to classes and their motivation to attend school, and opens the discussion about how because of the government’s universal measures, by failing to consider social diversity, in particular Ciganos/Roma Ciganos/Roma families, this pandemic crisis may disproportionally affect the education of their children and youth. The findings highlight, firstly, that these impacts continue to be rendered invisible and naturalized in the public sphere and, secondly, that the measures and legislation underlying the pandemic effects continue not to include Ciganos in policymaking processes.
The South-to-North Water Diversion (SNWD) is a multi-decadal infrastructure project in China aimed at alleviating severe water shortages in north China. It has imposed broad social, economic, environmental, and ecological impacts since 2015, particularly in the Beijing-Tianjin metropolitan area. Sentinel-1A/B Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) (2014–2021), Global Positioning System (GPS) (2010–2021), and hydraulic-head data are used to assess the impacts on ongoing land subsidence in Tianjin in this study. Additionally, the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is employed to highlight primary factors controlling the recent land subsidence. Our results show that the reduced groundwater pumping has slowed down the overall subsidence since 2019 due to SNWD. As of 2021, the subsiding area (>5 mm/year) has reduced to about 5400 km<sup>2</sup>, approximately 85% of the subsiding area before SNWD; the areas of rapid subsidence (>30 mm/year) and extremely rapid subsidence (>50 mm/year) have reduced to 1300 km<sup>2</sup> and 280 km<sup>2</sup>, respectively, approximately 70% and 60% of the areas before SNWD. Recent subsidence (2016–2021) was primarily contributed by the inelastic compaction of clays in deep aquifers of Aquifers III and IV ranging from approximately 200 to 450 m below the land surface. The ongoing rapid subsidence (>30 mm/year) in Tianjin is limited to border areas adjacent to large industrial cities (e.g., Langfang, Tanshan, Cangzhou) in Hebei Province. Ongoing subsidence will cease when hydraulic heads in the deep Aquifers (IV and V) recover to the new pre-consolidation head, approximately 45 m below the land surface, and subsidence will not be reinitiated as long as the hydraulic heads remain above the new pre-consolidation head. This study reveals the importance of coordinating groundwater and surface water uses at local, regional, and national scales for land subsidence mitigation.
This paper analyzes the interaction between regional economic growth and air pollution in China and Korea. The relationship between gross regional product per capita and industrial emission of sulfur dioxide emission is examined at the regional level using simultaneous equation models covering 286 cities in China and 228 cities and counties in South Korea of the period 2006–2016. The results find that regional differences existed in the relationship between air pollution and economic growth in two countries. In both countries, an inverted U-shaped pattern was found in metropolitan areas while a U-shaped pattern of non-metropolitan areas. Although the emissions of pollutants in metropolitan areas of both countries have shown a downward trend in recent years, there is still a large gap between the overall emission levels of China and South Korea. Moreover, the level of pollutant emissions of China’s metropolitan areas is much higher than in non-metropolitan areas, while the opposite result has occurred in Korea. In China, there was an inverted U-shaped relationship of the eastern and northwest region, while U-shaped relationships existed in the southwest, central and northeast regions.
We study the action of Hubeny-Rangamani-Takayanagi (HRT) area operators on the covariant phase space of classical solutions. It has been previously proposed that this action generates a transformation which, roughly speaking, boosts the entanglement wedge on one side of the HRT surface relative to the entanglement wedge on the other side. We give a sharp argument for a precise result of this form in a general theory of Einstein-Hilbert gravity minimally coupled to matter, taking appropriate care with asymptotically Anti-de Sitter (AdS) boundary conditions. The result agrees with direct computations of commutators involving HRT areas in pure 2+1 dimensional Einstein-Hilbert gravity on spacetimes asymptotic to planar AdS. We also clarify the sense in which this transformation is singular in the deep UV when the HRT-surface is anchored to an asymptotically AdS boundary.
As China's ecological civilization gains momentum and the ecological development of the ‘Yangtze River Economic Belt’ strategy pushes forward, the research on water environment protection and management in Wuhan Metropolitan Area (the central urban agglomeration) is of great significance. According to the data of the industrial wastewater discharge in the nine cities of the Wuhan Metropolitan Area from 2005 to 2015, the study will construct a decomposition model to analyze the pattern of the discharge with reference to the Kaya identity and the LMDI decomposition model. By doing so, the pattern and driving factors of industrial wastewater discharge can be cleared. The following conclusions on the industrial wastewater discharge of the Wuhan Metropolitan Area can be achieved. Firstly, industrial wastewater discharge in the Wuhan Metropolitan Area shows a decreasing trend year by year (684 million tons to 433 million tons) from 2005 to 2010, but rises sharply (504 million tons to 652 million tons) from 2010 to 2011, reaching a peak in 2011. After that, it witnesses a quick and stable drop. Secondly, the absolute differences in industrial wastewater discharge among cities are continuously narrowed, in which Wuhan (the highest value is 260 million tons, the lowest value is 155 million tons) and Ezhou (the highest value is 181 million tons, the lowest value is 0.25 million tons) show the most striking abnormal statistics. Thirdly, the discharge follows the trend of expansion from Wuhan as a center to its neighboring cities from 2005 to 2015. For spatial pattern, it presents a picture of decreasing from the center to the surrounding. Lastly, for all driving factors affecting the discharge, the contribution of economic growth is always positive, which can increase the discharge greatly (the average annual contribution reaches 0.64 billion m3). The population size has little effect. The industrial structure has an uncertain influence on it since it is decided by government policies. The influence of technological improvement is negative, which can control the discharge a lot. In the last part of this essay, the research will explore the ways to promote the saving and discharge reduction of industrial wastewater for future potential metropolitan areas, thus providing a reference for macro water environment protection and governance in the Yangtze River Basin and other regional urban areas. HIGHLIGHTS
The statistical data of industrial wastewater discharge (2005–2015) are analyzed.;
The decomposition model of industrial wastewater discharge is constructed.;
Decomposing the factors into technological improvement, industrial structure, economic growth, and the population size.;
The temporal and spatial characteristics and driving factors are defined.;
Guiding the protection and control of macro viewing water environment.;
In Korea, energy consumption within apartments in metropolitan areas accounted for more than 33% of the total energy consumption by buildings in 2020. In this study, in order to increase the energy efficiency of MDU (multi-dwelling unit) complexes in metropolitan areas, improvement factors and economic effects were analyzed using ECO2, a building energy efficiency evaluation program. Optimal improvement measures are proposed, to reduce the economic burden on users by applying energy saving technologies. This study was conducted in four stages; in the first stage, using ECO2 software, five types of apartments were selected as standards among 46 complexes. Standard MDUs were selected if more than two factors were satisfied from among the following: (1) household type, (2) average exterior wall insulation and window performance, (3) average energy consumption and demand per unit area per year, (4) average applied facility system, and (5) average monthly energy demand per unit area. In the second stage, improvement factors were derived by analyzing the 10 most recent energy efficient MDU complexes. The third stage involved analysis of the energy saving effect generated by the improvement of windows and total heat exchangers in five selected complexes. Primary energy consumption per unit area per year improved from 158.8 to 132. kWh/m<sup>2</sup>y in complex E, which had been upgraded from ‘floor heating system’ to ‘total heat exchanger’. Finally, in the fourth stage, optimal improvement factors were selected for economic analysis. By simultaneously applying the optimal improvement factors, such as windows and total heat exchanger, to the M complex, primary energy consumption per unit area per year was improved from 147.6 to 111.4 kWh/m<sup>2</sup> y. When optimal improvement factors were applied to 59 m<sup>2</sup>, 74 m<sup>2</sup>, 84 m<sup>2</sup> types in complex M, life cycle cost savings of energy consumption for 30 years became $1384~1970.
In developed economies, agglomeration is skill-biased: larger cities are skill-abundant and exhibit higher skilled wage premia. This paper characterizes the spatial distributions of skills in Brazil, China, and India. To facilitate comparisons with developed-economy findings, we construct metropolitan areas for each of these economies by aggregating finer geographic units on the basis of contiguous areas of light in nighttime satellite images. Our results validate this procedure. These lights-based metropolitan areas mirror commuting-based definitions in the United States and Brazil. In China and India, which lack commuting-based definitions, lights-based metropolitan populations follow a power law, while administrative units do not. Examining variation in relative quantities and prices of skill across these metropolitan areas, we conclude that agglomeration is also skill-biased in Brazil, China, and India.
Erica Frankenberg, Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, Jia Wang
The political popularity of charter schools is unmistakable. This article explores the relationship between charter schools and segregation across the country, in 40 states, the District of Columbia, and several dozen metropolitan areas with large enrollments of charter school students in 2007�08. The descriptive analysis of the charter school enrollment is aimed at understanding the characteristics of students enrolled in charter schools and the extent to which charter school students are segregated, including how charter school segregation compare to students in traditional public schools. This article examines these questions at different levels, aggregating school-level enrollment to explore patterns among metropolitan areas, states, and the nation using three national datasets. Our findings suggest that charters currently isolate students by race and class. This analysis of recent data finds that charter schools are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the nation. In some regions, white students are overrepresented in charter schools while in other charter schools; minority students have little exposure to white students. Data about the extent to which charter schools serve low-income and English Language Learners is incomplete, but suggest that a substantial share of charter schools may not enroll such students. As charters represent an increasing share of our public schools, they influence the level of segregation experienced by all of our nation�s school-aged children. After two decades, the promise of charter schools to use choice to foster integration and equality in American education has yet to be realized.
This past year proved to be yet another successful one for HMPA . Building on a long-standing tradition to promote the growth of the paralegal professional in the Houston metropolitan area, HMPA will continue to foster professional development of the paralegal profession and individual paralegals (working in all areas of the law) and maintain a high order of ethical and professional standards.