The present study demonstrates the effect of direct solar drying (DSD) and hot air drying (HAD) on the quality attributes of Fuji apple slices. DSD samples took a longer time (150–180 min) to dry and simultaneously reached higher equilibrium moisture content at the end of rehydration than HAD samples. DSD samples have higher rehydration ability, dry matter holding capacity, and water absorption capacity than HAD samples. Among several empirical models, the Weibull model is the best fit with higher R² (0.9977), lower root mean square (0.0029), and chi-square error (0.0031) for describing the rehydration kinetics. Rehydrated HAD samples showed better color characteristics than DSD in terms of overall color change, chroma, and hue angle values. Whereas the hardness and chewiness of rehydrated DSD samples were better than HAD samples because of higher dry matter holding capacity in DSD. Apart from color retention, the DSD samples showed better rehydration capacity and a good texture upon rehydration than HAD slices.

A panel data analysis of nonlinear government expenditure and income inequality dynamics in a macroprudential policy regime was conducted on a panel of 15 emerging countries from 1985–2019, where there had been a non-prudential regime from 1985–1999 and a prudential regime from 2000–2019. The paper explored the validity of the nonlinearity between government expenditure and income inequality in the macroprudential policy regime as well as the threshold level at which excessive spending reduces income inequality using the Bayesian spatial lag panel smooth transition regression (BSPSTR) and fix effect models. The BSPSTR model was adopted due to its ability to address the problems of heterogeneity, endogeneity, and cross-section correlation in a nonlinear framework. Moreover, as the transition variable often varies across time and space, the effect of the independent variables can also be time- and space-varying. The results reveal evidence of a nonlinear effect between government spending and income inequality, where the minimum level of government spending is found to be 29.89 percent of GDP, above which expenditure reduces inequality in emerging countries. The findings confirmed an inverted U-shaped relationship. The focal policy recommendation is that fiscal policy decisions that will reinforce the need for more emphasis on education and public expenditure on education and health, as important tools for improving income inequality, are crucial for these economies. Caution is needed when introducing macroprudential policies, especially at a low level of government expenditure.

The contradiction between the ability of forestry that provides high-quality and abundant forestry products and good ecological services, and the demand for high-quality and diversified forestry products and service in order to meet the people’s rapid growing, has become the main contradiction faced by forestry development in new era. Since the area of forest resources in China is restricted by the expansion space, expanding the effective supply of forestry must mainly depends on the improvement of the quality and structure of forestry resources. Therefore, the focus of promoting forestry development is to comprehensively improve the level of forest management in the new era. Based on the analysis of the causes for the low level of forest management, it is proposed that forestry development in the new era should focus on the positively stimulating and strengthening the human capital development, etc., which come from the current following aspects: innovating forest management theory and model, clarifying the relationship between government and market.

Seawater desalination has been studied with interest due to the scarcity of fresh water for human consumption. Solar distillation is an old method; the productivity, energy consumption of the process and the cost of the desalinated water thus obtained depend on the efficiency achieved in each of the stages of these systems. The limited capacity to absorb solar radiation and transform it into useful heat for evaporation, interaction with the surrounding medium, and heat losses restrict the overall efficiency of the thermal process and productivity. Since the energy comes from solar radiation, the maximum productivity of this process will be constrained by the magnitude of the total solar radiation available in an area of the planet due to its geographic location, time of year and local climatic conditions. The processes of this energy will be thermodynamically limited by the heat transfer coefficients achieved in the equipment, the maximum value that the evaporation heat can reach, as long as the losses to the environment by convection and radiation are minimal. Comparative analyses of several proposed models, reported data of distillers, reported data of solar radiation that reach average values of up to 7.2–7.4 kwh/m² in some regions of the planet are presented and estimates are made for productivity of these equipments that they reach between 6.7 and 6.9 kg/m² day with a theoretical maximum efficiency of about 0.16 of the total solar radiation.

Ce⁴⁺-doped nanometer ZnO powder was synthesized by so-l gel method. The microstructures and properties of the samples were characterized through XRD, UV-Vis and FTIR. The results indicated that the Ce⁴⁺ was successfully incorporated into ZnO, and the diameter of the nanometer was about 10.7nm. It induced the redshifting in the UV-Vis spectra. The photocatalytic activity of the samples was investigated using methylene blue (MB) as the model reaction under irradiation with ultraviolet light. The results showed that the doping of Ce⁴⁺ could increase the photocatalytic activities of ZnO nanopowders and that the best molar ratio of Ce⁴⁺ was n(Ce)/n(Zn) = 0.05, that the surfactant was sodium dodecyl sulfate, and that the nanometer ZnO was calcinated at 550 ℃ for 3 hours. Meanwhile, it inspected the effect of photocatalytic efficiency through the pH of MB, the amount of catalyst, and illumination time. The experimental results revealed that the initial mass concentration of MB was 10 mg/L, that the pH value was 7-8, that the dosage of Ce⁴⁺/ZnO photo-catalyst was 5 g/L, that the UV-irradiation time was 2 h, and that the removal rate of MB reached above 85%. Under the optimized conditions, the degradation rate of real dye wastewater was up to 87.67% and the removal efficiency of COD was 63.5%.