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Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a worldwide public health problem which imposes a significant financial burden not only on patients but also on the healthcare systems, especially under the pressure of the rapid growth of the elderly population in China. The purpose of this paper is to examine the hospitalization costs of patients with CKD between two urban health insurance schemes and investigate the factors that were associated with their inpatient costs in Guangzhou, China.

This was a prevalence-based, observational study using data derived from two insurance claims databases during the period from January 2010 to December 2012 in the largest city, Guangzhou in Southern China. The authors identified 5,803 hospitalizations under two urban health insurance schemes. An extension of generalized linear model – the extended estimating equations approach – was performed to identify the main drivers of total inpatient costs.

Among 5,803 inpatients with CKD, the mean age was 60.6. The average length of stay (LOS) was 14.4 days. The average hospitalization costs per inpatient were CNY15,517.7. The mean inpatient costs for patients with Urban Employee-based Basic Medical Insurance (UEBMI) scheme (CNY15,582.0) were higher than those under Urban Resident-based Basic Medical Insurance (URBMI) scheme (CNY14,917.0). However, the percentage of out-of-pocket expenses for the UEBMI patients (19.8 percent) was only half of that for the URBMI patients (44.5 percent). Insurance type, age, comorbidities, dialysis therapies, severity of disease, LOS and hospital levels were significantly associated with hospitalization costs.

The costs of hospitalization for CKD were high and differed by types of insurance schemes. This was the first study to compare the differences in hospitalization costs of patients with CKD under two different urban insurance schemes in China. The findings of this study could provide economic evidence for understanding the burden of CKD and evaluating different treatment of CKD (dialysis therapy) in China. Such useful information could also be used by policy makers in health insurance program evaluation and health resources allocation.

The purpose of the work is to provide a comprehensive review of the digital image correlation (DIC) technique for those who are interested in performing the DIC technique in the area of manufacturing.

No methodology was used because the paper is a review article.

no fundings.

Herein, the historical development, main strengths and measurement setup of DIC are introduced. Subsequently, the basic principles of the DIC technique are outlined in detail. The analysis of measurement accuracy associated with experimental factors and correlation algorithms is discussed and some useful recommendations for reducing measurement errors are also offered. Then, the utilization of DIC in different manufacturing fields (e.g. cutting, welding, forming and additive manufacturing) is summarized. Finally, the current challenges and prospects of DIC in intelligent manufacturing are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the micro-motion of the cylinder block.

Based on the elasto-hydrodynamic lubrication, a numerical model for the cylinder block/valve plate interface is proposed, with consideration of the elastic deformations, the pressure-viscosity effect and asperity contacts. The influence-function method is applied to calculating the actual deformations of the cylinder block and the valve plate. The asperity contact model simplified from Greenwood assumption is introduced into the numerical model. Furthermore, the relationship between the micro-motion and the operating condition, the sealing belt width is discussed, respectively.

The results show an increase in the discharge pressure causes the tilt state and the vibrating motion getting worse, which can be eased by improving the rotational speed, the sealing belt width and the ratio of external and internal sealing belt width.

The proposed research can provide a theoretical reference for the optimizing design of cylinder block/valve plate pair.

The global economy and air transport business have been negatively affected owing to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. As countries tighten restrictions on international movements, the growing emphasis on air cargo places pressure on airports to maintain and upgrade their cargo policies, facilities and operations. Hence, ensuring the competitiveness of cargo airports is pivotal for their survival under volatile global demand. This study aims to evaluate the importance of competitiveness factors for cargo airports and identify areas for further improvement.

This study applies the Best-Worst Method (BWM) to assess the cargo airports' competitiveness factors.

The results identified “Transport Capacity” as the most significant competitiveness factor, implying that airport connectivity is crucial in promoting cargo transportation at hub airports. This result was followed by “Airport Operations' and Facilities' Capacity” and “Economic Growth.”. Additionally, the results identified Hong Kong International Airport as the best-performing cargo airport, followed by Aéroport de Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Incheon International Airport, respectively. Furthermore, both selected European airports are the most competitive airports in terms of “Financial Performance” and appear to be aware of the significance of their brand value.

This study forms a reference framework for evaluating cargo airports’ competitive positions, which may help identify airports’ relative strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, this framework can also serve as a tool to facilitate the strategic design of airports that can accommodate air cargo demand flexibly under demand uncertainty.

This study aims to map the conceptual structure and evolution of the recent scientific literature published in marketing journals to identify the areas of interest and potential future research directions.

The 100 most influential marketing academic papers published between 2018 and 2022 were identified and scrutinized through a bibliometric analysis.

The findings further upheld the critical role of emerging technologies such as Blockchain in marketing and identified artificial intelligence and live streaming as emerging trends, reinforcing the importance of data-driven marketing in the discipline.

The data collection included only the 100 most cited documents between 2018 and 2022, and data were limited only to Scopus database and restrained to the Scopus-indexed marketing journals. Moreover, documents were selected based on the number of citations. Nevertheless, the data set may still provide significant insight into the marketing field.

Influential authors, papers and journals identified in this study will facilitate future literature searches and scientific dissemination in the field. This study makes an essential contribution to the marketing literature by identifying hot topics and suggesting future research themes. Also, the important role of emerging technologies and the shift of marketing toward a more data-driven approach will have significant practical implications for marketers.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first comprehensive study offering a general overview of the leading trends and researchers in marketing state-of-the-art research.

The intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) is a major outcome of the Paris Agreement on international cooperation to reduce emissions, and is likely to be the future scenario for carbon emissions. This paper aims to obtain the fine spatial pattern of carbon emissions in 2030, identify hot spots and analyze changes of carbon emissions with a spatial grid method.

Based on the integrated quantified INDCs of each economy in 2030, the authors predict the population density pattern in 2030 by using the statistics of current population density, natural growth rates and differences in population growth resulting from urbanization within countries. Then the authors regard population density as a comprehensive socioeconomic indicator for the top-bottom allocation of the INDC data to a 0.1° × 0.1° grid. Then, the grid spatial pattern of carbon emissions in 2030 is compared with that in 2016.

Under the unconditional and conditional scenarios, the global carbon emission grid values in 2030 will be within [0, 59,200.911] ktCO₂ and [0, 51,800.942] ktCO_2, respectively; eastern China, northern India, Western Europe and North America will continue to be the major emitters; grid carbon emissions will increase in most parts of the world compared to 2016, especially in densely populated areas.

While many studies have explored the overall global carbon emissions or warming under the INDC scenario, attention to spatial details is also required to help us make better emissions attributions and policy decisions from the perspective of the grid unit rather than the administrative unit.

Despite the importance of tourism ethnocentrism in emerging tourism destinations, there is limited, but growing, research interest in this area. This study aims to respond to current calls for investigating mechanisms that can promote tourism ethnocentrism in both emerging and developed tourism destinations.

The e-freight program launched by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has gradually become a standard specification for international air freight operations. This study examined critical factors affecting air freight forwarders’ decision to adopt the IATA e-freight using a technology-organization-environment model with air freight forwarders in Taiwan as the base. Our findings show that ‘information technology (IT) competence’, ‘trading partner pressure’, ‘government policy’ and ‘competitive pressure’ all have significant positive effects on air freight forwarders’ decision to adopt the e-freight and the top three factors among these are ‘government funding’, ‘government’s active promotion’ and ‘government’s requirement of electronic air waybill (e-AWB)’. Finally, this study proposes strategies that can encourage air freight forwarders to decide on e-freight adoption for the information of relevant oK regyawniozradtison International Air Transport Association (IATA); IATA e-freight; Technology organization environment model; Air freight forwarder

With the rapid development of the digital economy, an increasing number of digitalized two-sided platforms have deployed the tying strategy to leverage their market power from the core two-sided product to other two-sided products in the competitive market, which transforms the competition among single platforms into that among platform ecological networks. To clarify the mechanism of the formation of the digital platform ecological networks, this paper aims to analyze the expansion and stability of platform ecology by exploring the impacts of network externalities and sellers’ heterogeneity on the tying strategy of two-sided platforms.

This paper develops a game model of two-sided platforms based on Choi and Jeon (2021), which highlights the decisive influence of non-negative price constraints (NPC) on platforms’ tying motivation. Taking the operating systems market as an example, we expand from the perspective of platform service differences to relax the NPC and explore the internal logic of platform ecosystem expansion.

Platforms have an incentive to charge lower prices or even subsidize buyers when the network externalities on the sellers’ side are relatively strong. When the product is highly differentiated and heterogenous, platforms are motivated to tie to capture more buyers with a lower price and grab excess profits from sellers. Eventually, tying is able to consolidate the two-sided platform ecological networks by excluding competitors, capturing user value and deterring entry.

In order to describe the characteristics of platform ecological network more generally, this paper extends the research based on the analyses of Choi and Jeon (2021) by (1) allowing horizontal differences between tied products and (2) relaxing the NPC. Unlike Choi and Jeon (2021), this paper allows platforms to charge users of two-sided platforms at negative prices (or to subsidize them). (3) Setting simultaneous pricing in two-sided platforms. Classical two-sided market theory stresses that the presence of cross-network externalities can give rise to a “chicken and egg” problem.

The development of tourism around Wolong Nature Reserve changes the local communities' ways of life. This study discusses how ecotourism affects the households' use of their capitals, the livelihood strategies as well as illustrates the impact on the habitats in the reserve through Department for International Development’s (DFID) Sustainable Livelihood Framework (SLF) with data collected during fieldwork.

The study focuses on (1) Calculating Livelihood Capital Index. (2) The effects of livelihood capitals on livelihood strategy were calculated by multinomial logistic regression.

The study has yielded the following results: (1) In general, tourism promotes people's livelihood capitals. The growth in different types of households under tourism settings is ranked as full-time tourism operators > part-time tourism operators > traditional living households. (2) Tourism development mainly shifts livelihood strategies in two ways. Firstly, travel operating replaces some traditional practices that make livings; secondly, increased needs for potherbs and herbs from tourists let households enter into the hills to pick the plants more actively, which intensifies the destruction of giant panda's habitats. (3) Nine types of livelihood capitals indicators, namely farmland quality, distance between house and roads, number of laborers, average housing area, average income per person, whether family members being village cadres, and ever having received skills training shape livelihood strategies in different levels.

Three discussions are drawn from the study: (1) Enhancing the exploit for tourism resources to form a diversified competition. (2) Introducing herb growing to fulfill tourists' needs and improve people's livelihood in the meantime. (3) Optimizing the tourism surveillance and management system and improving the rules and regulations.