The People's Republic of China (PRC) wants to become a key regional actor in the Arctic. PRC's underlying priority in the region is gaining access to commercial opportunities from trade and natural resources. To this end, PRC is building its domestic capacities for research and commercial development in the Arctic, increasing its involvement in multilateral forums on Arctic governance and deepening ties to Arctic nations, especially Russia.

Attitudes towards PRC among Arctic nations are diverging, but Beijing generally faces high levels of skepticism and opposition to its Arctic involvement, explicitly grounded in perceptions of PRC as a state undermining the rules-based international order and potential military build-up in the high north.

The analytical framework in this article builds on an outline authored by Exner-Pirot in 2012 (Exner-Pirot, 2012) to detail the current schools of thought within Arctic governance, and builds on it by including more recent developments in Arctic governance, incorporating the updated Arctic policies of most Arctic countries and connecting it to PRC.

This article contends that Beijing wants to change the status quo of Arctic governance and shift it towards a more accommodating approach to non-Arctic states. This article finds, based on the stated Arctic strategies of the eight Arctic states and PRC, that there are different views on Arctic governance where Arctic countries for the most part indicate an openness to a Chinese entry into the Arctic, albeit in diverging ways. This creates a complex governance scenario for PRC to navigate as it seeks to become a key Arctic player

Application of nanoparticles have been proven to aid heat transfer in engineering systems. This work experimentally investigated the performance of a domestic refrigerator under the influence of Al₂O₃ nanoparticles dispersed in mineral oil based lubricant at different charges (40, 60 and 80 g) of LPG refrigerant. The performance of the system was then investigated using test parameters including: power consumption, evaporator air temperature (pull-down time), to attain the specified International Standard Organisation (ISO) requirement for standard evaporator air temperature with small refrigerator size. Results showed improved pull down time and steady state evaporator air temperatures for the nano-lubricant based LPG. Improvement of about 11.79% in coefficient of performance (COP) was obtained with Al₂O₃-lubricant based LPG at 40g charge on the refrigerator system, while reduction of about 2.08% and 4.41% in COP were observed at 60 and 80 g charge of LPG based on Al₂O₃-lubricant respectively. Furthermore, reduction of about 13.4% and 19.53% in the power consumption of the system were observed at 40 and 60g charges of Al₂O₃-lubricant based LPG, whereas at 80 g, an increase of about 1.28% was recorded. Using Al₂O₃-LPG nano-refrigerant in domestic refrigerators is economical  and also a better alternative to pure LPG.

Cucumber Variety ‘Drite L108’ (Cucumis sativus L. Cv. Derit L108) was selected as the test material. In the solar greenhouse, different days (1, 3, 5, 7, 9 d) of light (PAR < 200 µmol·m^-2·s^-1) and normal light conditions were designed with shading nets to observe the growth indexes of cucumber plants and the changes of antioxidant enzyme activities in leaves. The results showed that: (1) continuous low light increased the SPAD (relative chlorophyll) value of cucumber leaves and decreased the net photosynthetic rate. The longer the continuous low light days are, the smaller the net photosynthetic rate of cucumber leaves and the worse the photosynthetic recovery ability would be. (2) The plant height, stem diameter and leaf area per plant were lower than CK, and the above indexes could not return to the normal level after 9 days of normal light recovery; the yield and marketability of cucumber fruit decreased under continuous low illumination. (3) The activities of SOD (superoxide dismutase) and POD (peroxidase) in cucumber leaves increased, the activities of CAT (catalase) first increased and then decreased, and the content of MDA (malondialdehyde) continued to increase. The longer the days of continuous light keep, the more seriously the cucumber leaves were damaged by membrane lipid peroxidation. After continuous light for more than 7 days, the metabolic function of cucumber leaves was difficult to recover to the normal level.

In this policy insight, the author lays out the context of the BRI and its role in global development. He also explains why the US should consider working with China on the BRI. The author opines on China’s possible approach and strategy to get global private investors to come on board for the massive BRI projects. He suggests that the global players can establish a third-party market cooperation and coordination mechanism to turn the BRI into a platform for win-win global collaboration.

The objective of this work was to evaluate the combined effect of bovine manure, Pseudomonas putida and Trichoderma aureoviride on the development of lettuce (Lactuca sativa). The promotion of plant growth by microorganisms may be a viable and sustainable alternative for lettuce crop management. The experimental design was entirely randomized with five treatments: T0 (witness without fertilization, P. putida and T. aureoviride), TE (cattle manure), TEB (cattle manure + P. putida), TEF (cattle manure + T. aureoviride), TEFB (cattle manure + P. putida + T. aureoviride) and ten repetitions each. The following variables were analyzed: germination velocity index (GVI), first count (FC), germination percentage (GP), leaf area index and productivity. The TEFB treatment proved to be a viable alternative for the production of lettuce, especially for small producers, since all the vegetable production in the region comes from family farming.

No less than 60% of timber production in Peru’s natural forests is the result of informal or illegal extractive activities that, by definition, are not sustainable. This article aims to demonstrate that even legitimate timber, such as timber harvested in more than 6 million hectares of forest concessions, does not meet the basic requirements of sustainable forest management. Forestry legislation itself, which does not emphasize forest management, institutional weaknesses and the socioeconomic environment are the main causes. In addition, the cutting cycles and the authorized minimum diameters, among other practices, do not allow the renewal of the resource and increase its degradation.