Assessing the Sustainability Index of Part-Time and Full-time Hazelnut Farms in Giresun and Ordu Province, Turkey

The study's primary purposes were to assess the sustainability index of hazelnut farms and explore the effects of part-time and full-time farming types on sustainability index in hazelnut production in the Giresun and Ordu Province of Turkey. One hundred fifty-two hazelnut farms were selected using the stratified sampling method, and data were collected. Several steps were taken, including using factor analysis after standardizing the variables to determine their weights to calculate the composite hazelnut farms sustainability index. The research findings showed that overall hazelnut sustainability scores of farms varied from 0.28 to 0.59, and the average score was 0.44 at sampled farms. The composite hazelnut sustainability index was at an unsatisfactory level. The social and economic sustainability index value of farms was equal, and they were higher than the environmental index value. The values were 0.50 and 0.30, respectively. While the economic sustainability index score of full-time farms was higher than that of part-time farms, and part-time farms had higher environmental sustainability index scores than that of full-time farms. Social sustainability scores were not different in terms of farm type. It was recommended that when designing and regulation support policies, policy-makers should differentiate part-time and full-time hazelnut farming. Training and extension programs must be planned to increase the level of knowledge of every willing farmer. In addition, training and certification programs must be implemented to enhance the quality of the foreign labor force.

Turning inserts the selection approach based on fuzzy comprehensive evaluation

Tool selection is a multi-criteria decision-making problem in the presence of various selection criteria and a set of alternatives, but previous works are limited to evaluating the tools within the workshop tool library. To intelligently select proper inserts across suppliers under the Internet environment, an insert data format based on ISO 513 was established, and a framework was then designed to obtain a set of alternatives from different suppliers based on fuzzy intervals. Then, knowledge was described with convenient language and the simple membership function to build an intelligent system, which would infer the matching degree of insert characteristics to the machining conditions. Furthermore, analytic hierarchy process was applied to sort the alternatives. Finally, the case study shows that compared with previous works and machinists, this work not only obtains a set of alternatives from all suppliers who uploaded their product data with the designed format but comprehensively evaluates the insert (take finishing low-carbon steel as an example, both cemented carbide and cermet are recommended, the nose radius reduces 25%, the environmental index increases 25%, while the rake reduces 11.25%, when compared with machinists who tend to select the larger rake angle foe finishing). A platform was also developed based on Visual Studio 2015 and SQL Server 2012 to improve selection efficiency for inexperienced CNC operators, purchasers, and vendors.

Developing a Method for Assessing Environmental Sustainability Based on the Google Earth Engine Platform

Environmental sustainability is the foundation and of great significance for the sustainable development of urban agglomerations. Taking the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration as an example, we developed a method to effectively assess long-term regional environmental sustainability based on the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform. We used the GEE to obtain 5206 Landsat remote sensing images in the region from 1983 to 2016 and developed the comprehensive environmental index (CEI) to assess regional environmental sustainability based on the theme-oriented framework proposed by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. We found that the environmental sustainability of the urban agglomeration showed a trend of first rising, then falling, and then rising again in the past 30 years. The average CEI increased from 0.621 to 0.631 from 1985 to 1990, dropped to the lowest value of 0.618 in 2000, and then rose to the highest value of 0.672 in 2015. In particular, the extent of areas in which environmental sustainability improved (56% of the region) was greater than the extent of areas in which environmental deterioration occurred. The environmental sustainability of Hengshui, Xingtai and Cangzhou in the southeast of the region has been significantly improved. The method proposed in this study provides an automatic, rapid and extensible way to assess regional environmental sustainability and provides a scientific reference for improving the sustainability of the regional ecological environment.

Statistical Research on the Development of Rural Tourism Economy Industry under the Background of Big Data

China is rich in rural tourism resources. In recent years, rural tourism has been the focus of tourism development in various regions, which has greatly promoted the development of rural economy. But at the same time, low efficiency, unreasonable development, and homogeneous tourism environment have affected rural tourism and reduced the competitiveness of rural tourism. In order to explore innovative ideas and countermeasures for the development of “big data + rural tourism,” improve the development of rural tourism economy and industry, and improve the competitiveness of rural tourism, based on related researches on rural tourism, tourism competitiveness, coordination, etc., starting from the particularity of the rural tourism system, this paper proposes the use of coordination and coupling theory to analyze the status quo of rural tourism economic industry in a certain place in Jiangxi. The interaction of efficiency and competitiveness of rural tourism, such as infrastructure, has been studied in depth. The study found that, in rural tourism, efficiency and competitiveness are positively related. The higher the environmental index, the stronger the competitiveness. When the environment and competitiveness are coordinated, the economic benefits that can be created are about 30% higher than normal. This shows that, for rural tourism to develop better, it is an indispensable condition for the coordination of competitiveness and the environment.

Hydrogeochemical Responses of Cave Drip Water to the Local Climate in Liangfeng Cave, Southwest China

The hydrogeochemistry of cave drip water is an important environmental index in cave systems, and drip water monitoring may be an essential solution for paleoclimate reconstructions. We measured the hydrogeochemical properties of the seasonal and perennial drip water and CO2 concentrations from 2015 to 2019 in Liangfeng Cave, Guilin, Southwest China. This study identified the difference in the regional environmental records in perennial and seasonal drip water. By comparing the regional climate data recorded by the drip water, the results showed the perennial drip water recorded regional climate information throughout the year, while the seasonal drip water only recorded the high precipitation periods. The precipitation during the 2015 dry season was abnormally high, which not sure what index is higher than the values in other rainy seasons. This indicates that hydrogeochemistry only represents changes in precipitation and not the alternation of dry and rainy seasons during this period.

Analyzing the Performance of the Population Health Environment on the Promotion of Provincial Governors in China

China's economy has achieved rapid growth, but the change has also brought about serious environmental degradation, which is the main factor endangering human health. This study empirically investigates the impact of the population health environmental index on the promotion of provincial governors using an ordered probit model. The sample of the study consists of regions where provincial governors, municipal mayors, and autonomous region chairmen were stationed from 1995 to 2015. The results show that the population health environmental index had a significant and positive impact on governors' promotions, especially in the eastern region. The reformation of the population health environmental index assessment system for government officials was the initial factor that brought about these effects.

Thermal Comfort Index for Lactating Water Buffaloes under Hot and Humid Climate

Heat stress results in serious performance losses and adversely affects animal health and welfare under various production systems. This study was conducted to develop a thermal comfort model for lactating buffaloes under hot and humid climate. Twenty Nili-Ravi buffaloes were randomly enrolled for this one-year study. Physiological parameters including rectal temperature (RT), respiratory rate (RR), and body surface temperature (BST) and environmental variables such as wet bulb temperature (WBT), dew point temperature (DPT), and black globe temperature (BGT) were recorded twice a week on each Tuesday and Thursday (n = 1602 and 1560, respectively) at 8:00 am and 2:30 pm. Moreover, ambient temperature (AT, °C) and relative humidity (RH, %), at an interval of every 30 min were recorded. We used a typical correlation analysis to build the index models for thermal comfort. The results revealed that AT positively correlated with BGT, WBT, DPT, BST, RT, and RR, while RH negatively correlated with RT. Moreover, a physiological index model consisting of BST, RT and RR (P1 = 0.578 × BST + 0.047 × RT + 0.429 × RR) and an environmental index model (E1 = 0.881 × AT + 0.194 × RH + 0.455 × BGT − 0.347 × WBT + 0.032 × DPT) proved to be a more accurate index as a pair to reveal the state of thermal comfort in lactating buffaloes. Moreover, these models correlated well with physiological variables, indicating that this this pair of index models can be used to effectively evaluate the thermal comfort in buffaloes.

Characteristics of interconnections of construction sector and environment: regional study of Ukraine

The proposed modelling of the relationship between the spatial and component structure of the construction industry development and the environment helped to obtain combinations of high and medium levels of the impact of integral indicators of labour, productive and foreign economic components of the construction sector on the environmental index of the region. The high level of adaptability of the models used for the period 2013– –2018 confirms the relationship between the development of the construction sector in most regions of Ukraine and the lowest level of the ecological index. This proves the scientific hypothesis about the negative impact of construction on the country’s ecosystem. The study indicates that the dynamic characteristics of the relationship between the building system and the environment should take into account the existence of direct and indirect or even “hidden” relationships between the components. The scientific value of the study consists in using models of fuzzy sets to assess the relationship between the construction system and the ecosystem based on defuzzification, which preserves the flexibility of the process of assessing the development of subsystems in construction and making decisions as to reducing the negative environmental impact in regions.