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Although the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) advocate, through SDG 4 and SDG 10, equitable quality education and the reduction of inequalities within and between countries, respectively, few studies have examined how inequalities in regional sustainability influence higher education. Therefore, this study aims to examine the relationship between regional sustainability and higher education in China using fixed-effects panel modelling. A systematic force framework showing how regional sustainability drives higher education was constructed from economic, social, and environmental perspectives, and the endogeneity in the process of how regional sustainability affects higher education was explored by introducing one-year lagged values as instrumental variables. Our results show that regional sustainability has a significant impact on higher educational attainment in China, with differing effects in the eastern, central, and western regions, respectively. In central China, economic sustainability plays a significant positive role in higher educational attainment; in the western region, economic and social sustainability have stronger positive effects, while environmental sustainability has significantly negative effects. In terms of policy implications, our findings can be used to support regional development policies to promote regional higher education.

COVID-19, caused by a member of the coronavirus family of viruses, has spread to most countries around the world since it was first recorded in humans in China in late 2019. Closing universities and cancelling all face-to-face activities have become a COVID-19 inevitable reality in many parts of the world. Its impact on university programs, particularly to maintain academic standards and quality assurance procedures, has become significantly more challenging and complex. New ways of working digitally, to minimize disruption to daily operations, have also led to enormous anxiety and uncertainty within the student population, and meeting students’ expectations has also become significantly more difficult. This paper reviews actions taken by universities to safeguard high academic standards and quality assurance procedures during this time and appraise the challenges and impacts on students’ academic performance.

Recently, robots have been widely adopted in the hospitality and tourism industry. Efficient robots can help hoteliers and tourism suppliers with their repetitive or manual labor. Due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, there is an increasing number of publications on robotic applications in hospitality and tourism. However, a comprehensive literature review of this realm remains lacking. Therefore, to provide a holistic view of the existing literature on robotic applications in hospitality and tourism, this study reviewed 86 extant robotic application-related articles by conducting descriptive analysis and content analysis. The findings of this study showed that most of the existing relevant studies were conducted from the perspective of consumers in the hospitality context. Potential future research directions for academics are identified herein. Practical implications on robotic adoption are also provided for industry practitioners.

Sufficient production, consistent food supply, and environmental protection in urban +settings are major global concerns for future sustainable cities. Currently, sustainable food supply is under intense pressure due to exponential population growth, expanding urban dwellings, climate change, and limited natural resources. The recent novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic crisis has impacted sustainable fresh food supply, and has disrupted the food supply chain and prices significantly. Under these circumstances, urban horticulture and crop cultivation have emerged as potential ways to expand to new locations through urban green infrastructure. Therefore, the objective of this study is to review the salient features of contemporary urban horticulture, in addition to illustrating traditional and innovative developments occurring in urban environments. Current urban cropping systems, such as home gardening, community gardens, edible landscape, and indoor planting systems, can be enhanced with new techniques, such as vertical gardening, hydroponics, aeroponics, aquaponics, and rooftop gardening. These modern techniques are ecofriendly, energy- saving, and promise food security through steady supplies of fresh fruits and vegetables to urban neighborhoods. There is a need, in this modern era, to integrate information technology tools in urban horticulture, which could help in maintaining consistent food supply during (and after) a pandemic, as well as make agriculture more sustainable.

Pakistan is an energy deficient country with depleting energy reserves and increasing energy demand. Due to excessive population growth, the domestic and commercial energy sectors are experiencing rising demand. To meet the requisite demand, renewables are favored rather than conventional counterparts. In this study, we model hybrid power systems using solar, wind and biomass resources for electrifying remote areas. The four locations are chosen for the study around a developing country, Pakistan, where each site is designed according to an isolated microgrid with maximum indigenous resources potential as per the requisite demands. A survey is conducted for the load demand and biomass availability. Optimization is conducted across objectives of minimum levelized cost of the generated energy, least the net present cost and lesser payback period. The optimal results were achieved in-terms of required objectives across southern sites as compared to northern counterparts. The cost of generated energy is comparable to grid electricity and ensures 24 h power supply without cut off and load shedding to the un-electrified rural area. The hybrid power system has a low carbon footprint across emissions due to the use of renewable resources. All the estimated load of rural communities is met with the available resources and mid-career impact has also been conducted across 10 years of the project life to fulfill the increasing load demand of the communities after installation. The results are validated via comparative analysis and show the effectiveness of the proposed study.

Few studies on population-specific health effects of extreme temperature on cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) deaths have been conducted in the subtropical and tropical climates of China. We examined the association between extreme temperature and CVD across four cities in China. We performed a two-stage analysis; we generated city-specific estimates using a distributed lag non-linear model (DLNM) and estimated the overall effects by conducting a meta-analysis. Heat thresholds of 29 °C, 29 °C, 29 °C, and 30 °C and cold thresholds of 6 °C, 10 °C, 14 °C, and 15 °C were observed in Hefei, Changsha, Nanning, and Haikou, respectively. The lag periods for heat-related CVD mortality were observed only for 0–2 days, while those of cold-related CVD mortality were observed for 10–15 days. The meta-analysis showed that a 1 °C increase above the city-specific heat threshold was associated with average overall CVD mortality increases of 4.6% (3.0%–6.2%), 6.4% (3.4%–9.4%), and 0.2% (−4.8%–5.2%) for all ages, ≥65 years, and <65 years over a lag period of 0–2 days, respectively. Similarly, a 1 °C decrease below the city-specific cold threshold was associated with average overall CVD mortality increases of 4.2% (3.0%–5.4%), 4.9% (3.5%–6.3%), and 3.1% (1.7%–4.5%), for all ages, ≥65 years, and <65 years over a lag period of 0–15 days, respectively. This work will help to take appropriate measures to reduce temperature-mortality risk in different populations in the subtropical and tropical climates of China.

Analyzing the efficiency of the water, energy, and food (WEF) nexus is critical for effective governance strategies. Therefore, three-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used to measure the efficiency level of WEF in the 36 districts of Punjab, Pakistan, for the period from 2015 to 2021. Furthermore, the stochastic frontier was used to analyze the effect of external environmental factors on these efficiency scores of the WEF nexus. The results of the DEA showed that the number of frontier efficiency districts decreased, and most districts experienced rank change over time. Overall, the performance of 50% of the districts declined over time. The relative decline in efficiency was found to be higher in districts Bahwalnaghar and Rahim Yar Khan. The performance of districts Multan and Sheikhupura increased over time, while districts Vehari and Sargodha were the most complete and efficient in actual performance. According to the SFA’s findings, the WEF nexus efficiency of South Punjab districts was negatively impacted by external environmental factors (urbanization rate, manufactured industry output, population), leading to severe stress across WEF sectors. Districts in central and southern Punjab, however, were more likely to have lower rankings because of the positive impact of external environmental factors on the efficiency of the WEF nexus. The substantial rise of external environmental variables focused on scale expansion rather than quality improvement, which created a wide gap in WEF inputs and, hence, reduced the efficiency of the WEF nexus in the districts. The findings of this study provide valuable insights for developing governance strategies based on external environmental factors and WEF resource endowment, and they complement the efficiency calculation of WEF nexus research. Future research should focus on the Baluchistan region, the most deprived area in terms of water, energy, and food.

Water resource management in the UK is multifaceted, with a complexity of issues arising from acute and chronic stressors. Below average rainfall in spring 2020 coincided with large-scale changes to domestic water consumption patterns, arising from the first UK-wide COVID-19 lockdown, resulting in increased pressure on nationwide resources. A sector wide survey, semi-structured interviews with sector executives, meteorological data, water resource management plans and market information were used to evaluate the impact of acute and chronic threats on water demand in the UK, and how resilience to both can be increased. The COVID-19 pandemic was a particularly acute threat: water demand increased across the country, it was unpredictable and hard to forecast, and compounding this, below average rainfall resulted in some areas having to tanker in water to ‘top up’ the network. This occurred in regions of the UK that are ‘water stressed’ as well as those that are not. We therefore propose a need to look beyond ‘design droughts’ and ‘dry weather average demand’ to characterise the management and resilience of future water resources. As a sector, we can learn from this acute threat and administer a more integrated approach, combining action on the social value of water, the implementation of water trading and the development of nationwide multi-sectoral resilience plans to better respond to short and long-term disruptors.