Total factor productivity (TFP) is the core driving force behind the high-quality de-velopment of Japan's beef cattle industry, and it is also a key factor that sustains the industry's long-term sustainable growth. Using panel data for 9 agricultural regions in Japan from 2004 to 2022, this study applies the Malmquist-Luenberger index to measuring and to decomposing TFP in the beef cattle farming sector. It also employs Geodetector and the Spatial Durbin Mod-el to examine in depth the spatiotemporal evolution of TFP and the factors that shape it. These methods make it possible to trace changes over time, capture spatial correlation, and identify the principal drivers of regional differences. The empirical results indicate the following: 1) From 2004 to 2022, TFP in Japan's beef cattle farming kept declining on a sustained basis. Over the same period, regional development became increasingly uneven. The Tokai region was the only region that recorded positive TFP growth. All other regions showed a general downward trend during the study period. Taken together, these facts point to persistent weakness in total factor efficiency across most areas of the country. 2) Overall, TFP displays a positive spatial correla-tion. Regions with higher TFP tend to be adjacent to regions with similarly high levels, and lower TFP regions are often clustered as well. Geodetector analysis further identifies the fol-lowing as the dominant factors that explain spatial differentiation in TFP: the number of agri-cultural technology R&D personnel, the intensity of fiscal support, the degree of industrial ag-glomeration, feed production capacity, and material labor productivity. The observed spatial differentiation is produced by a multi-dimensional, multi-factor mechanism rather than by a single cause. In other words, human capital, public finance, industrial clustering, and resource and productivity conditions act together and reinforce one another to shape the spatial pattern of TFP. 3) Industrial agglomeration, fiscal support intensity, and the number of agricultural tech-nology R&D personnel display significant and positive spatial spillover effects, indicating that coordinated and parallel progress across regions is the necessary choice for promoting the sus-tained and healthy development of the beef cattle farming sector. This study aims to provide theoretical support and empirical evidence for the sustainable development of Japan's beef cattle industry, and to offer policy references that can inform practice aimed at improving the quality of economic growth in the beef cattle industries of both China and Japan.

In the era of the knowledge economy, endogenous technological relatedness has in-creasingly evolved into networked configurations, profoundly reshaping the micro-level trans-mission mechanisms and output pathways of regional innovation. The spatiotemporal complex-ity and growth effects of these networks have attracted growing scholarly attention. Drawing on technological correlation theory, this study examines the spatiotemporal evolution and growth effects of the technological correlation network in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) from 2002 to 2021. Results show that the network has expanded steadily, with deepening technological integ-ration and a marked concentration of globally connected technologies along the Shanghai-Nanjing-Hefei-Hangzhou-Ningbo corridor. Its structural backbone has shifted from single-core dominance to multi-core concurrency, where star-shaped, chain-like, and tree-like patterns coex-ist, and the rise of hub and backbone technologies has become a key driver of urban innovation. The network also demonstrates strong modularity: the number of communities remains stable, yet their scales diverge and compositions diversify, with core technologies rooted both in origin hubs such as Shanghai, Nanjing, and Hangzhou and in application markets including Changzhou, Nantong, and Huzhou. While the knowledge base of individual technological clusters shows increasing diversifica-tion, cities with concentrated innovation resources—such as Nantong, Yancheng, and Jinhua—tend to prioritize specific domains. Patterns of urban network evolution can be categorized as comprehensive innovation, horizontal expansion, vertical specialization, or balanced low-level growth, broadly aligned with economic and administrative hierarchies. Growth effects are heterogeneous: ag-gregation and chain-like structures yield rising marginal benefits, while modular and global fea-tures follow an inverted U-shaped trajectory. These dynamics are further moderated by the scale of universities, enterprises, and individuals, as well as by the broader policy environment. Key words: technological correlation network; technological branch; knowledge foundation; growth effects; technological complexity

Sustainability of human-earth system has become a pivotal focus in global develop-ment research, with risk assessment and governance identified as key components and funda-mental safeguards in the pursuit of sustainable development. This study begins by reviewing the conceptual definitions and classifications of risk, as well as general methods for risk assess-ment, early warning, and governance, to preliminarily explore the connotation of sustainability risk in human-earth system. Drawing on general risk assessment methodologies, this study con-structs an integrated framework for evaluating sustainability risk in human-earth system, which incorporates both internal risks (e.g., stagnation or regression in meeting sustainable develop-ment goals) and external risks (e.g., disruptions from multiple stressors) through multi-method evaluations. Finally, based on the four key processes of traditional risk early warning systems, this study proposes a dynamic, graded technical system for early warning of sustainability risk in human-earth system and discusses a collaborative governance model underpinned by sys-tems thinking. Overall, our study contributes to a deeper understanding of sustainability risk in human-earth system, offering theoretical support for improving governance capacities and pro-moting the co-evolution of regional sustainability and resilience.

Cultural empowerment has emerged as a critical strategic pathway to promote rural revitalization and modernization. This paper constructs a logical framework of cultural em-powerment for rural revitalization, and analyzes the multi-dimensional value coupling mechan-isms and cultural IP construction pathways. The results show that: 1) Cultural empowerment for rural revitalization follows the logic of “value identification and coupling-resource capitaliza-tion and IP reconstruction-spatial restructuring and industrial operation”. The essence is to achieve innovative transformation with characteristic IPs through exploration and integration of cultural resources and value coupling, thereby promoting spatial restructuring and industrial op-eration to empower rural revitalization. 2) The multi-dimensional value attributes of cultural empowerment interact and transform with each other, and each value dimension forms a two-way coupling with the goal of rural revitalization. By fully activating the economic, spiritual, governance, ecological, and life well-being values of rural cultural resources, it promotes the construction of rural civilization, industrial integration, governance innovation, ecological liv-ability, and prosperous life in a coordinated manner. 3) Cultural IP construction constitutes a key path for cultural empowerment of rural revitalization. Through resource exploration and IP design, IP spatial structure and scene construction, as well as IP brand promotion and industrial integration, the industrialization of cultural resources and the comprehensive rural revitaliza-tion can be achieved, forming the logic of “value coupling- value embedding-value transforma-tion”. In the future, cultural empowered for rural revitalization should focus on the research of basic theories, spatial structures, path models and guarantee mechanisms for cultural resource industrialization, cultural IP construction, regional public brand cultivation, county-town-vil-lage cultural IP system construction, and gradually establishs a research system of cultural em-powerment to support comprehensive rural revitalization and urban-rural integrated develop-ment.

As the “bridge” and “medium” of urban-rural factor flow, rural innovation and en-trepreneurship breaks through the boundaries of rural physical space and gradually becomes an emerging driving force to promote the transformation of agricultural modernization in China in the new period. Rural innovation and entrepreneurship has led to the integration of primary, secondary and tertiary industries, but its productive projects are still centered on modern agri-culture. The mechanism of rural innovation and entrepreneurship's impact on agricultural mod-ernization has not been fully explored in the research field. This study uses county panel data of Zhejiang Province from 2014 to 2021 to identify the spatial and temporal evolution characterist-ics of rural innovation and entrepreneurship, and constructs a mechanism framework and empir-ical model based on the background of urban-rural integration and the dialectical relationship between innovation and entrepreneurship, to explore the effects and the mechanisms of rural in-novation and entrepreneurship on the Agricultural Modernization. The results show that: 1) Rural innovation and entrepreneurship in Zhejiang Province is characterized by obvious spatio-temporal heterogeneity. In terms of temporal characteristics, the level of rural innovation and entrepreneurship is on an upward trend. The level of rural innovation also shows an upward trend, but the level of rural entrepreneurship is more stable. Regarding spatial characteristics, there are concentrated and continuous high-value areas of rural innovation and entrepreneur-ship in northeast Zhejiang. Southwest Zhejiang is developing rapidly in rural entrepreneurship. 2) Rural innovation and entrepreneurship effectively drive the development of agricultural mod-ernization, and the narrowing of the urban-rural income gap strengthens the driving effect of rural innovation and entrepreneurship on agricultural modernization. 3) Rural innovation and rural entrepreneurship are closely related, but essential differences exist. Rural innovation can promote the development of agricultural productive services to accelerate the process of agri-cultural modernization. Rural entrepreneurship can promote the growth of regional consump-tion level on the demand side to drive the development of agricultural modernization. 4) On the geospatial scale, rural innovation and entrepreneurship in northeast Zhejiang have a more signi-ficant effect on agricultural modernization than that in southwest Zhejiang. On the administrat-ive scale, the driving effect of rural innovation and entrepreneurship on agricultural moderniza-tion at the county level is more significant than that of county-level cities. In the future, the rur-al innovation and entrepreneurship system should be improved according to local conditions, giving full play to the role of rural innovation and entrepreneurship as a medium in integrating urban and rural factors, and guiding the coordinated development of rural innovation and entre-preneurship.

Energy poverty is a serious challenge facing mankind globally in 21 century and an important problem faced by both developed and developing countries. How to eliminate energy poverty has been included in the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. Energy poverty research has long been dominated by natural sciences, engineering sciences, and eco-nomic statistics, but energy poverty is not only an engineering and economic issue but also a political, cultural, social, and regional issue with distinct geospatial attributes. Geography, with its unique spatial perspective and the advantages of comprehensive, regional, and cross-discip-linary thinking, is not only able to draw a multi-scale spatiotemporal map of energy poverty but also to explore the influencing factors of energy poverty and the political-spatial practices of multiple subjects in a specific space and time. This paper utilizes bibliometric methods to re-view and compare research progress on energy poverty from a geographical perspective both domestically and internationally and systematically categorize the main research topics of en-ergy poverty from 4 aspects, namely, generative logic, identification and measurement, influen-cing mechanisms, and local effects. The results show that 1) the explanatory framework of en-ergy poverty is mainly explained by energy intersectionality, the energy cultural framework, en-ergy vulnerability, and energy justice theory, which together constitute the framework of gener-ative logic in energy poverty. The intersectionality approach reveals mechanisms of multiple discrimination occurring at the intersection of inequality axes. The energy culture framework conceptualizes energy poverty through the interplay among technological factors, social norms, and household behaviors at the individual, local, and global scales from small to large. Energy vulnerability adds a temporal dimension to the energy culture framework by incorporating past, present, and future exposure to risk in considerations of energy poverty. Justice theory is the most widely used approach to understanding energy poverty today and is also a key research fo-cus, including distributive justice, recognition justice, and procedural justice. 2) Energy poverty identification and measurement face challenges related to regional differences, data acquisition, and indicator setting. Research methods include objective methods, subjective methods, and composite indicators or multidimensional measurements. 3) There is a complex two-way feed-back relationship between policy, power, and the mechanisms of energy poverty. Political power plays a role in the entire process of energy poverty production, alleviation, and reproduc-tion at multiple levels and scales, involving various stakeholders, and energy poverty interacts with political power. 4) Energy poverty has a local effect of deconstruction and reconstruction on the material landscape, local identities, and social emotions. Energy poverty promotes the re-configuration of local material landscapes in the negotiated operation of multiple social agents, influences the strengthening and reshaping of group self-identity through processes such as electrification, regional infrastructure segregation, urban renewal, and middle-class formation, involves gender norms and social divisions of labor, and generates social impacts and house-hold quality of life impacts through indoor air temperatures, indoor air pollution, and a lack of infrastructural services, which reduces self-identity and well-being. This paper explores the value of addressing energy poverty in realizing China's dual-carbon targets, energy transition, and common prosperity, with a view to providing a reference for the construction of the field of energy geography and related policy formulation.

As an important spatial carrier for regulating social health, urban green space plays a crucial role in promoting resident's physical and mental well-being and enhancing social cohe-sion. However, the academic community has not yet reached a consensus on which characterist-ics of green space are most closely related to resident's individual social health levels. Based on the survey data on green spaces and health collected in Guangzhou in 2021, this study first clas-sifies resident's individual social health using the latent profile analysis (LPA) method. Sub-sequently, it estimates the association between the characteristics of nearby green spaces in the residential areas and resident's individual social health through unordered multinomial Logistic regression. The results reveal that socio-demographic attributes such as age, work status, per capita monthly household income, and whether the household with a car can explain the differ-ences in individual social health among residents. Relevant planning and policy formulation should consider the diverse needs of groups with different socio-demographic characteristics for urban green spaces to fully leverage their social health benefits. In addition to resident's socio-demographic attributes, nearby green spaces in the residential areas have a significant impact on their individual social health. Specifically, there is a significant positive correlation between resident's subjective perception of green space accessibility and their individual social health. Quality characteristics of green spaces, including cleanliness, the number of recreational ser-vice facilities, safety, and aesthetics, are key factors influencing resident's individual social health. Therefore, constructing a complete and continuous urban green space system and im-proving the walking environment and walkability in neighborhoods and surrounding areas to enhance resident's subjective perception of green space accessibility are effective ways to pro-mote individual social health. Meanwhile, enhancing green space cleanliness, aesthetics, and safety can be achieved through regular cleaning and maintenance, strengthening green space management, and organizing volunteer activities. On the basis of balancing community needs and resource investment, appropriately increasing and diversifying recreational facilities in green spaces can further encourage residents to engage in physical activities and strengthen so-cial interactions. The conclusions can provide a scientific basis for improving the spatial qual-ity of urban green spaces, enhancing the interactive connection between residents and neighbor-hood green spaces, and fully leveraging the health effects of green spaces.

Overseas R&D is a crucial means for enterprises to access foreign innovation re-sources and enhance their innovative capabilities. This paper utilizes Chinese enterprises' pat-ent application data from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and em-ploys GIS spatial analysis to characterize the spatial distribution of their overseas R&D activit-ies. Furthermore, it applies a panel negative binomial regression model to investigate the de-terminants of Chinese enterprises' overseas R&D from a host country perspective, conducting a categorical analysis. The main findings are as follows: 1) Chinese enterprises' overseas R&D activities exhibit an inverted U-shaped trend. Between 2012 and 2017, the number of overseas inventors associated with Chinese enterprises increased, while after 2018, due to technology re-strictions imposed by Western countries such as the United States, this number began to de-cline. 2) Chinese enterprises' overseas R&D activities are primarily driven by technology ac-quisition motives, concentrating and increasingly agglomerating in developed countries in North America and Europe. 3) The analysis of influencing factors reveals that institutional dis-tance and information technology factors significantly impact Chinese enterprises' overseas R&D activities. A separate analysis distinguishing between the developed and developing host countries shows that overseas R&D in developed countries is more influenced by formal institu-tional distance, while overseas R&D in developing countries is more significantly affected by informal institutional distance and geographic proximity. This study contributes to the empiric-al research on overseas R&D by developing countries and provides decision-making support for Chinese enterprises in selecting locations for their overseas R&D activities.

The phenomenon of “internet celebrity city”, a product of the digital economy, il-lustrates how virtual information flow can transform into actual tourist traffic. This paper uses Harbin's emergence as an “internet celebrity city” as a case study, applying time series analys-is, Granger causality tests, and multi-scale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) mod-els to examine the mechanisms by which tourism information flow drives passenger flow. It also examines their interaction's spatiotemporal dynamics and influencing factors. The key findings are: 1) Tourism information flow and passenger flow in the preparation, launch, out-break and sustained four stages of attraction and interaction characteristics of symbiosis, attrac-tion is reflected in the threshold effect and precursor effect, interaction through the feedback to strengthen the formation of a virtuous circle. 2) This interaction displays notable scale effects and spatial heterogeneity, with a significant bidirectional Granger causality observed nation-wide, while complex spatial differentiation emerges at the regional level. 3) Consumer poten-tial, information level, and transportation accessibility positively impact tourism passenger flow, while spatial distance negatively impacts passenger flow. This study enhances the theoret-ical framework of tourism flow dynamics by integrating spatiotemporal scales and spatial het-erogeneity analysis. It proposes three strategies: developing dynamic information ecosystems for crisis management; implementing differentiated marketing strategies that leverage regional responsiveness, including cultural campaigns for remote markets; and fostering transportation-information synergy to enhance accessibility through coordinated high-speed rail promotions with social media trends. These findings offer insights for optimizing digital tourism gov-ernance and improving destination competitiveness in platform economies.

To explore the variations of aeration zone soil specific yield under the condition of deep buried groundwater, The southern edge of Gurbantunggut Desert was taken as the research area by field in-situ observation.The complete specific yield under the condition of zero surface flux, the average releasing specific yield under the condition of evapotranspiration and the average charging specific yield under the condition of lateral leakage recharge were determined, and the effects of groundwater depth, infiltration and evapotranspiration on specific yield were discussed. Results showed that: 1) It is feasible to determine the soil specific yield under the condition of deep buried groundwater by the zone of aeration section water content method. 2) Under the condition of zero surface flux, the complete specific yield μ increases with the increase of groundwater depth H. When the groundwater depth exceeds the maximum rising height of capillary water, the change of complete specific yield is small and can be approximately regarded as a constant. 3) The average groundwater depth of interdune land in the southern edge of Gurbantunggut Desert is 8.80 m. The complete specific yield under the condition of zero surface flux is 0.36, the average releasing specific yield under the condition of deep buried groundwater evaporation is 0.13, and the average charging specific yield under the condition of lateral leakage recharge is 0.17. The results of this study can provide a new idea for the determination of soil specific yield under the condition of deep buried groundwater.

Return migration has become a notable socio-economic trend in the new stage of China's urbanization, and the analysis of its driving mechanism has received extensive academic attention. As a micro behavior, the return of migrants is not only affected by personal and family factors, but also closely related to external environment. However, existing studies have focused on the role of individual factors, but not enough research has been conducted on the relationship between regional contexts and return migration. We introduce a gradient boosting decision tree model in the field of machine learning, based on the data from the 2017 China Migrants Dynamic Survey, with the return intention as the response variable and the regional contexts—Both in the place of origin and destination—As well as migrants' personal and household factors as the explanatory variables, focusing on the non-linear influence of the regional contexts on the return migration intentions and the threshold effect. The results show that: 1) The total contribution of the local contexts of the place of place of the origin and destination to the intentions of the migrants to return is 44.1%, which is an important factor influencing the return intentions, and the contributions of the two places is roughly equal. Among these, medical and health resources and air pollution are extremely important in both places. In addition, economic growth in the place of origin is also important for the return intention of migrants, while the climatic condition in the place of destination is more important; 2) There are both non-linear and linear relationships between local contextual factors and migrants' intention to return. Among them, medical and health resources, basic education resources, air pollution have obvious non-linear effects on the return intention, while economic growth and temperature conditions have mainly linear effects; 3) The influence of individual factors on return intention is mainly nonlinear effect. There is an irregular U-shaped relationship between age, migration duration and return intention, and the non-linear influence of household income is more complex. There is an obvious threshold effect between household housing expenditure and return intention, and a negative correlation between migrant's education level and return intention. This study incorporates the local contexts of the place of origin and destination into the analytical framework for the mechanism of return migration, identifies the relative importance of the local context and individual characteristics of the two places on the return intention of the migrants, and reveals the specificity and complexity of internal return migration in China, which contributes to deepening the research on migration in the new era and provides scientific reference for policy makers.