Relaxation Of Restrictions Research Articles

The Impact of Firework Ban Relaxation on Variations in SO2 Emissions in China During the 2023 Chinese New Year

During the 2023 Chinese New Year (CNY), many city governments temporarily relaxed firework restrictions, leading to increased sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions from the combustion of sulfur-containing fireworks. This study employed the four-dimensional variational (4DVar) assimilation system to examine variations in SO2 emissions in China by assimilating hourly ground-based observations. Two experiments were conducted during CNY in 2022 and 2023 to quantify the variations in SO2 emissions. On CNY’s Eve in 2023, following the relaxation of the firework ban, SO2 emissions surged by 8.22 Gg nationwide compared to the previous day with significant increases in the Energy Golden Triangle (2.037 Gg), the North China Plain (1.709 Gg), and northeast China (0.945 Gg). Emissions peaked on CNY’s Eve and rapidly declined in the following two days but remained elevated compared to the pre-CNY period, indicating lingering effects of firework burning. Compared to the forecasts using the prior emissions, the optimized emissions markedly improved the model forecasts of SO2 during the 2023 CNY period, with an increase in the correlation coefficient (R) from 0.13 to 0.64 and a reduction in the root mean square error (RMSE) by 49.2%, demonstrating the effectiveness of the optimized emissions. These findings will be useful for local governments in formulating strategies for firework burning during CNY.

Exploring the Impact of Institutional Innovation in Free Trade Zones and Free Trade Ports on Cultural Exchange and Soft Power Construction

This paper explores how institutional innovations in Free Trade Zones (FTZ) and Free Trade Ports (FTP) promote cultural exchange and soft power construction. Through a systematic literature review and policy analysis, it is found that institutional innovations in FTZs and FTPs, including relaxed restrictions on foreign investment in the cultural industry, streamlined approval processes for cultural exchange activities, the establishment of diverse cultural exchange platforms, and optimization of cultural talent introduction policies, effectively enhance the depth and breadth of international cultural exchange. These efforts have significantly improved China’s cultural soft power. A case study of the Hainan Free Trade Port demonstrates how proactive cultural policy innovations have led China to achieve notable success in international cultural exchanges, offering new ideas for global soft power competition. This study provides reference recommendations for future policy formulation and academic research, especially in optimizing cultural policies in FTZs and FTPs to further enhance cultural soft power.

PMO factor crowding and returns: evidence from China

ABSTRACT Using data from the Chinese stock market from 2000–2023, we first re-examine the Pessimistic-Minus-Optimistic (PMO) effect induced by the abnormal turnover rates in the A-share market. Next, we construct a crowding index of the PMO factor. And the findings show that the crowding index of the PMO factor could have a significant negative impact on the future PMO returns and vice versa, considering the realistic strict short-selling constraint. These mutual influences are short-term and will quickly decay. However, we do not observe a similar pattern in the ideal context of no restrictions on short-selling. This implies that relaxing restrictions in the stock market is beneficial for reducing mispricing errors in China to some extent.

Hukou Stratification and Job Precariousness between the State and Market Sectors in Contemporary China, 2010–2021

Echoing the global expansion of precarious employment, China has experienced a surge in labor flexibility and job deterioration since its integration into global capitalism. Existing research also highlighted the distinct features of the Chinese labor market related to its post-socialist nature. The Chinese household registration system, known as hukou, has been critical in explaining stratification and shaping labor market outcomes in China. However, hukou reforms in the recent decade have further relaxed restrictions on labor mobility and hukou conversion, suggesting that hukou may gradually lose its importance in transitional China. Building upon the global research on precarious work and dynamics of precariousness in employment in the Chinese context, I conceptualize job precariousness in the contemporary Chinese labor market in three dimensions. Using pooled data from the 2010 to 2021 Chinese General Social Survey, I examine how hukou stratification is associated with the three aspects of job precariousness, compare the relative importance of hukou with other market-related factors, and identify the disparities of the state and market sectors. The findings help contextualize global trends of precariousness by broadening the evidence base through a case in China.

Stabilization of nonhomogenous semi-Markov jump linear systems with synchronous switching delays via aperiodically intermittent control

A type of nonhomogenous semi-Markov jump linear systems with synchronous switching delays is considered in the present paper. Owing to the existence of time-varying delays and nonhomogenous semi-Markov switching process, the selection of Lyapunov functional and the transformation of some time-varying parameters become more complicated in comparison with many existing works. To overcome these difficulties, a sort of Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional related to switching delays is introduced. Simultaneously, the technique of convex combination is applied to tackle a variety of time-varying terms including transition probabilities (TPs), probability distribution function and probability density function (PDF). Then, a time-invariant stability criterion superior to many relevant works in conservativeness is obtained to ensure mean-square exponential stability (MES). Based on this result, time-invariant conditions for mean square exponential stability of the controlled system are also attained by the continuous feedback control. Subsequently, to stand on the point of cost reduction, an aperiodically intermittent control (AIC) is adopted in such a system and a stability criterion is attained as well under more relaxed restrictions on relative parameters. Finally, a numerical example is provided to verify the effectiveness and correctness of the results.

Democracy in distress? Examining the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on voter behavior in the 2020 general election in the Greater Boston Area

The conditions of a highly anticipated election during the COVID-19 pandemic present an opportunity to further understand how voting accessibility influenced voting behavior in the 2020 United States general election. At the time of the election, nonpharmaceutical interventions, such as wearing a facemask, physical distancing, and crowd avoidance, were the primary defenses against contracting and spreading the virus. In response to the pandemic, several states enacted emergency voting laws that extended early voting days, loosened restrictions on acquiring an absentee ballot, and provided accessible ballot drop-off locations to reduce health and safety barriers to voters during the pandemic. This study uses a mixed methods design to investigate the motivating factors of voting behavior among Democrat and Independent voters in the Greater Boston Area in the 2020 general election. Based on data from an original survey of 169 individuals and 56 follow-up interviews conducted in early 2021, we find that the predicted probability of being a convenience voter (voting by mail, early voting, ballot drop box, or dropping their ballot at their polling location) goes from 50 % (p < .001) among those who did not express safety concerns related to voting to 82 % (p < .0001), an increase of 32 %. These findings were further triangulated in follow-up interviews with the survey participants. In our follow-up interviews, we also found that electoral integrity was a concern among both traditional and convenience voters; many individuals made a plan to vote in person, vote early, or drop their ballot off at a polling site or drop box to ensure their vote was counted. More broadly, the implications of this research place importance on state election law and election administration in a time of crisis. We expect that in a future crisis, such as a natural disaster or disease outbreak, convenience voting such as extended early voting options, ballot drop boxes, and relaxed restrictions around absentee voting options, may reduce barriers to voting experienced during uncertain or unsafe conditions and facilitate institutional certainty.

Ultimate boundedness and stability of highly nonlinear neutral stochastic delay differential equations with semi-Markovian switching signals

The ultimate boundedness and stability of highly nonlinear neutral stochastic delay differential equations (NSDDEs) are investigated in this paper. Different from many previous works, the highly nonlinear NSDDEs with semi-Markov switching signals are considered for the first time in this paper. Meanwhile, the time delay function in this paper is only required to meet much more relaxed restrictions, which can invalidate plentiful methods with requirements on its derivatives for the stability of NSDDEs. To overcome this difficulty, several novel techniques to tackle NSDDEs with such a delay are developed. Furthermore, a crucial property on the ergodic semi-Markov process is established, which plays a key role in the proof on the existence and boundedness of global solution. The generalized Khasminskii-type theorems are established for the existence and uniqueness of global solution by applying new methods and this property, and the criteria for boundedness and stability are also provided. In particular, feasible measures are provided to deal with the neutral term in our stability criteria. Finally, the effectiveness is verified by a numerical example.

Consensus and attack-decomposition of switched one-sided Lipschitz multi-agent systems via event-triggered intermittent control

This paper considers the exponential consensus of nonlinear switched multi-agent systems (MASs) subject to random attacks. The proposed model is enhanced by introducing the concept of mode-dependent average dwell time (MDADT) and the one-sided Lipschitz (OSL) condition, making it more practical and versatile with relaxed restrictions. Due to the unavailability of direct access to the states of MASs and the vulnerability of their output signals to unknown random attacks, achieving consensus through traditional methods becomes challenging. Hence, a novel attack-decomposition approach is proposed to extract the attack-free output signals from the attacked output signals. Then, the observer is constructed by utilizing attack-free output signals and employed to estimate the states of MASs. A mode-dependent event-triggering mechanism is presented to conserve resources for the observer-controller channels. In order to save control costs, the intermittent control scheme is designed for different switching modes whose control width depends on the minimum dwell time. Finally, an illustrative example is used to showcase the advantages of the theoretical method.

Epidemic forecast follies

We introduce a simple multiplicative model to describe the temporal behavior and the ultimate outcome of an epidemic. Our model accounts, in a minimalist way, for the competing influences of imposing public-health restrictions when the epidemic is severe, and relaxing restrictions when the epidemic is waning. Our primary results are that different instances of an epidemic with identical starting points have disparate outcomes and each epidemic temporal history is strongly fluctuating.

Dynamic phase-differencing profilometry with number-theoretical phase unwrapping and interleaved projection

High-speed 3D measurement is receiving increasing attention. However, simultaneously achieving high computational efficiency, algorithmic robustness, and reconstructing ratio is challenging. Therefore, a dynamic phase-differencing profilometry (DPDP) is proposed. By capturing the minimum three phase-shifting sinusoidal deformed patterns and establishing a brand-new model, the phase difference between the object on the reference plane and the reference plane is directly resolved to effectively improve computational efficiency. Although it is wrapped, by using only two auxiliary complementary gratings with a purposely designed lower frequency, a DPDP-based number-theoretical temporal phase unwrapping (NT-TPU) algorithm is also proposed to unwrap the wrapped phase difference rather than the phase itself with high robustness. Furthermore, compared to existing PSP-based NT-TPU, the proposed NT-TPU can normally work under more relaxed restrictions. In order to accomplish a high reconstructing ratio, a pentabasic interleaved projection (PIP) strategy based on time division multiplexing is proposed. It can improve the reconstructing ratio from one reconstruction per every five patterns to an equivalent of one reconstruction per every 1.67 patterns. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves high computational efficiency, high algorithmic robustness, and high reconstructing ratio simultaneously and has prospective application in high-speed 3D measurement.

China’s policies: post-COVID-19 challenges for the older population

ABSTRACT On 7 December 2022, the State Council of China released ‘Measures to Further Optimize the Implementation of the Prevention and Control of the New Coronavirus Epidemic’. The previous three-year dynamic zero epidemic prevention policy was then replaced with a full liberalization policy. On 5 May 2023, the World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 no longer constituted a ‘public health emergency of international concern.’ However, given the ongoing prevalence of coronavirus, emerging mutations, and the liberalization of restrictions, there are increased risks of vulnerable people contracting new variants. Low vaccination coverage among older people with compromised immune systems, puts them at further risk. The policy shift will increase pressure on already stretched health infrastructure and medical resources. This short article adds to the current debate arguing that the Chinese government should take commensurate preventive measures, including strengthening medical facilities and equipment and targeting ongoing vaccination in older people.

SARS-CoV-2 Transmission in Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario, Canada, January 2020-January 2022.

We estimated COVID-19 transmission potential and case burden by variant type in Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario, Canada, during January 23, 2020-January 27, 2022; we also estimated the effectiveness of public health interventions to reduce transmission. We estimated time-varying reproduction number (Rt) over 7-day sliding windows and nonoverlapping time-windows determined by timing of policy changes. We calculated incidence rate ratios (IRRs) for each variant and compared rates to determine differences in burden among provinces. Rt corresponding with emergence of the Delta variant increased in all 3 provinces; British Columbia had the largest increase, 43.85% (95% credible interval [CrI] 40.71%-46.84%). Across the study period, IRR was highest for Omicron (8.74 [95% CrI 8.71-8.77]) and burden highest in Alberta (IRR1.80 [95% CrI 1.79-1.81]). Initiating public health interventions was associated with lower Rt and relaxing restrictions and emergence of new variants associated with increases in Rt.

Changes in Use of Hepatitis C Direct-Acting Antivirals After Access Restrictions Were Eased by State Medicaid Programs

Direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) are safe and highly effective for curing hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, but their high cost led certain state Medicaid programs to impose coverage restrictions. Since 2015, many of these restrictions have been lifted voluntarily in response to advocacy or because of litigation. To estimate how the prescribing of DAAs to Medicaid patients changed after states eased access restrictions. This modified difference-in-differences analysis of 39 state Medicaid programs included Medicaid beneficiaries who were prescribed a DAA from January 1, 2015, to December 31, 2019. DAA coverage restrictions were measured based on a series of cross-sectional assessments performed from 2014 through 2022 by the US National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable and the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation. Calendar quarter when states eased or eliminated 3 types of DAA coverage restrictions: limiting treatment to patients with severe liver disease, restricting use among patients with active substance use, and requiring prescriptions to be written by or in consultation with specialists. States with none of these restrictions at baseline were excluded. Quarterly number of HCV DAA treatment courses per 100 000 Medicaid beneficiaries. Of 39 states, 7 (18%) eliminated coverage restrictions, 25 (64%) eased restrictions, and 7 (18%) maintained the same restrictions from 2015 to 2019. During this period, the average quarterly use of DAAs increased from 669 to 3601 treatment courses per 100 000 Medicaid beneficiaries. After states eased or eliminated restrictions, the use of DAAs increased by 966 (95% CI, 409-1523) treatment courses per 100 000 Medicaid beneficiaries each quarter compared with states that did not ease or eliminate restrictions. The results of this study suggest that there was greater use of DAAs after states relaxed coverage restrictions related to liver disease severity, sobriety, or prescriber specialty. Further reductions or elimination of these rules may improve access to a highly effective public health intervention for patients with HCV.

Unleashing the real estate market: assessing the impact of relaxed housing purchase restriction policy on house prices in China

ABSTRACT This study examines the effects of the relaxed housing purchase restriction (RHPR) policy on house prices in China, using panel data from 41 cities between January 2021 and June 2022. The study finds that the RHPR policy has a positive effect on the existing housing market, contributing to its stabilization. However, the impact on new house prices is unclear. Mechanism analysis indicates that the policy effectively boosts house demand and fosters positive market expectations. The study also finds that the policy has a greater impact on second-tier and northern cities. Additionally, the research indicates that the policy has stimulated house demand among non-registered populations and in non-restricted purchase zones. These results emphasize the importance of timely adjustment and optimization of real estate policies to maintain a stable and sustainable market.

Hyper-feature aggregation and relaxed distillation for class incremental learning

Although neural networks have been used extensively in pattern recognition scenarios, the pre-acquisition of datasets is still challenging. In most pattern recognition areas, preparing a training dataset that covers all data domains is difficult. Incremental learning was proposed to update neural networks in an online manner, but the catastrophic forgetting issue still needs to be studied. Class-incremental learning is one of the most challenging incremental learning contexts; it trains a unified model to classify all incrementally arriving classes learned thus far equally. Prior studies on class-incremental learning favor model stability over plasticity to realize old knowledge reservation and prevent catastrophic forgetting. Consequently, the model’s plasticity is omitted, leading to difficult generalization on new data. We propose a novel distillation-based method named Hyper-feature Aggregation and Relaxed Distillation (HARD) to realize balanced optimization of old and new knowledge. The aggregation of features is proposed to capture the global semantics while maintaining the diversity of the feature distribution after promoting representations of exemplars to higher dimensions. The proposed algorithm also introduces a relaxed restriction in the hyper-feature space to conditions the hyper-feature space through a normalized comparison of the relation matrices. Following generalization on more classes, the model is encouraged to rebuild the feature distribution when meeting new classes and to fine-tune the feature space to realize more distinct interclass boundaries. Extensive experiments were conducted on two benchmark datasets, and consistent improvements under diverse experimental settings demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Harms and Benefits Inventory (HBI): initial validation of a novel assessment of perceived harms and benefits of firearm policies and practices

IntroductionUnderstanding gun owners’ perceptions of potential firearm policies’ harms and benefits is critical to successful policy development and implementation. We used national survey data to develop and validate a novel...

Cross-asset momentum and the hybrid fund transmission mechanism in China's stock and bond markets.

The allocation of assets across different markets is a crucial element of investment strategy. In this regard, stocks and bonds are two significant assets that form the backbone of multi-asset allocation. Among publicly offered funds (The publicly offered funds in China correspond to the mutual funds in the United States, with different names and details in terms of legal form and sales channels), the stock-bond hybrid fund gives investors a return while minimizing the risk through capital flow between the stock and bond markets. Our research on China's financial market data from 2006 to 2022 reveals a cross-asset momentum between the stock and bond markets. We find that the momentum in the stock market negatively influences the bond market's return, while the momentum in the bond market positively influences the stock market's return. Portfolios that exploit cross-asset momentum have excess returns that other asset pricing factors cannot explain. Our analysis reveals that hybrid funds play an intermediary role in the transmission mechanism of cross-asset momentum. We observe that the more flexible the asset allocation ratio of the fund, the more crucial the intermediary role played by the fund. Hence, encouraging the development of hybrid funds and relaxing restrictions on asset allocation ratios could improve liquidity and pricing efficiency. These findings have significant implications for investors seeking to optimize their asset allocation across different markets and for policymakers seeking to enhance the efficiency of China's financial market.

The role of collectivism, liberty, COVID fatigue, and fatalism in public support for the zero-COVID policy and relaxing restrictions in China

BackgroundChina was the last country in the world to relax COVID-19 restrictions. A successful public health policy requires public support. This analysis examined the factors associated with Chinese support for zero-COVID and relaxing COVID-19 restrictions in China.MethodTwo online surveys were conducted among Chinese participants in mainland China on June 10–13 (N = 460) and December 2, 2022 (N = 450). These two samples were similar based on the participants’ demographics.ResultsThe results revealed that the perceived health consequences of a COVID-19 policy, perceived norms of approving a COVID-19 policy, and hope positively predicted the participants’ support for the COVID-19 policy. The results further showed that collectivism and fatalism positively predicted support for zero-COVID and negatively predicted support for relaxing restrictions. COVID fatigue was negatively associated with support for zero-COVID and positively associated with support for relaxing restrictions. Liberty positively predicted support for relaxing restrictions in June and negatively predicted zero-COVID in December 2023. It did not positively or negatively predict support for the policy adopted by the government.ConclusionCollectivism, liberty, COVID fatigue, and fatalistic beliefs are important considerations connected to public support for a COVID-19 policy. The role of liberty was more nuanced and depended on the survey’s time and whether the government adopted the policy.

High order conservative Lagrangian schemes for two-dimensional radiation hydrodynamics equations in the equilibrium-diffusion limit

Radiation hydrodynamics equations (RHE) refer to the study of how interactions between radiation and matter influence thermodynamic states and dynamic flow, which has been widely applied to high temperature hydrodynamics, such as inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and astrophysical gaseous stars. Solving RHE accurately and robustly even under the equilibrium diffusion approximation is a challenging task. To address this, we develop two types of high order conservative Lagrangian schemes for RHE in the equilibrium-diffusion limit for the two dimensional case on the Lagrangian moving mesh. Based on the multi-resolution WENO reconstruction for the spatial discretization and strong stability preserving Runge-Kutta (SSP-RK) time discretization, we first develop an explicit Lagrangian scheme with the HLLC numerical flux to achieve high order accuracy in space and time. We also discuss the positivity-preserving property of the high order explicit Lagrangian scheme. To overcome the severe time step restriction arising from the nonlinear radiation diffusion term in the explicit scheme, we further present a high order explicit-implicit-null (EIN) Lagrangian scheme. By adding a sufficiently large linear diffusion term on both sides of the scheme, we treat the complicated nonlinear parts explicitly and efficiently, and treat the added linear diffusion term on the right-hand side implicitly with a relaxed time step restriction. According to our numerical experiments, these two types of Lagrangian schemes are high order accurate, conservative and can capture the interfaces automatically. Additionally, the explicit scheme is found to be non-oscillatory and can preserve positivity while maintaining the original high order accuracy.

Abstract WP1: Analyzing Door-to-Needle Time Trends: Tenecteplase vs. Alteplase in Acute Ischemic Stroke Treatment

Introduction: Tenecteplase (TNK) presents potential advantages in the treatment of acute ischemic stroke (AIS) and is hypothesized to reduce door-to-needle times (DTN). Methods: The Lone Star Stroke (LSS) registry incorporates data from 9 (6 CSC, 3 PSC) Texas hospitals which have and have not switched to TNK, mapping subject data to Get-With-the-Guidelines (GWTG) stroke variables and including patients who received alteplase (ALT) or TNK from October 2019 to March 2023. The dataset is stratified into ALT and TNK groups, generating a univariate table for each measured variable which is further analyzed by descriptive statistics. Polynomial regression models for both ALT and TNK are constructed to explore trends in DTN. Results: Of 621 patients, 459 received ALT and 162 received TNK. The groups had similar mean ages [66.8 (14.4) vs 69.2 (14.7); P=.074], and similar NIHSS scores [11.1 (8.1) vs 11.1 (7.5); P&gt;.977]. The median DTN for ALT of 44 (32-61) mins was similar to 43 (32-61) mins for TNK (P&gt;.05). The proportion of patients meeting DTN cut points was similar, comparing ALT to TNK for &lt;60 minutes (73.9% vs 74.5%); for &lt;45 minutes (50.3% vs 54.3%); and &lt;30 minutes (20.7% vs 21.0%). As shown in Figure 1, regression models indicate no significant temporal trends for ALT (r 2 =.006; P=.08) nor for TNK (r 2 =.015; P=.12). Conclusion: Both TNK and ALT displayed comparable DTN times and exhibited similar temporal trends. Given the timeframe of our cohort, these decreasing trends in DTN times may be influenced by relaxed COVID restrictions and reduced workflow delays. The transition to TNK does not appear to impact workflow nor does it appear to impact stroke core measures. This is likely due to similar inclusion and exclusion criteria, as well as similar administration processes for both medications. The results are encouraging for hospitals seeking to transition to TNK in that these hospitals are unlikely to experience a change in DTN or other stroke core measures during the transition period.