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The main objective of this study is to detect the early changes in resting-state Papez circuit functional connectivity using the hippocampus as the seed, and to determine the associations between altered functional connectivity (FC) and the episodic memory performance in cognitively intact middle-aged APOE4 carriers who are at risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Forty-six cognitively intact, middle-aged participants, including 20 APOE4 carriers and 26 age-, sex-, and education-matched noncarriers were studied. The resting-state FC of the hippocampus (HFC) was compared between APOE4 carriers and noncarriers. APOE4 carriers showed significantly decreased FC in brain areas that involve learning and memory functions, including the frontal, cingulate, thalamus and basal ganglia regions. Multiple linear regression analysis showed significant correlations between HFC and the episodic memory performance. Conjunction analysis between neural correlates of memory and altered HFC showed the overlapping regions, especially the subcortical regions such as thalamus, caudate nucleus, and cingulate cortices involved in the Papez circuit. Thus, changes in connectivity in the Papez circuit may be used as an early risk detection for AD.

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China's government is now promoting the Nomad Sedentarization Project (NSP) in large areas of grassland as a solution for ecological restoration and poverty alleviation. To examine the effects of this policy, we conducted in-depth interviews at two of the project's sites and examined the social and ecological systems at village, county, and catchment scales in Jinghe County of Xinjiang. We found that (1) the NSP in one village greatly improved the household standard of living and changed their resource utilization modes; (2) the success in this village can be attributed to resources imported from the social and ecological systems at larger scales, and could not be repeated in a second nearby village with different constraints; and (3) the NSP is poorly adapted to local ecosystem characteristics, and may therefore have negative impacts at larger scales. To avoid these problems, holistic assessments are necessary to judge the NSP's impacts on social and ecological systems at multiple scales, and the program must be implemented cautiously to account for the potential risks in ecologically vulnerable areas.

Concerns about transportation energy consumption and emissions force urban planners and policy makers to pay more attention to the effects of car ownership and use on the environment in China. However, few studies have investigated the relationship between the built environment and car ownership and use in China, especially in mid-sized and small cities. This study uses Changchun, China as a case study and examines the potential impacts of the built environment and socio-demographics on car ownership and use for commuting simultaneously using Bayesian multilevel binary logistic models. Furthermore, the spatial autocorrelation of car ownership and use is recognized across traffic analysis zones (TAZs), which are specifically represented by the conditional autoregressive (CAR) model. The estimated results indicate that socio-demographic characteristics have significant effects on car ownership and use. Moreover, the built environment measured at the TAZ level still shows a significant association with other factors controlled. Specifically, it suggests that denser residential density, compact land use, better transit services and street connectivity can reduce car dependency more effectively. This study provides new insights into how the built environment influences the car ownership and use, which can be useful for urban planners and policy makers to develop strategies for reducing car dependency.

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The degradation of the steppe ecosystem in Xilingol League in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China could only be reversed if the intensity of use were reduced, but there have been no studies of how this might be achieved. An investigation of the relationship between Xilingol Biosphere Reserve (XBR) and Xilinhot City explored how greater urbanization might aid restoration of degraded steppe. Experimental data indicate that 72% of the lands have been degraded since 1947, and the relationship between Xilinhot City and the XBR has been reciprocal. The XBR can provide materials such as food, water and a healthy environment for Xilinhot City and Baiyinxile Town, and the high pasture pressure can be reduced by urbanization. The cities could host a substantially greater population in a smaller area than at present, which would in turn reduce pressure on the land. Thus, conservation of the XBR, particularly the core zones, could be ensured through an urban model, which could also provide development opportunities for people moving into conurbations.

Abstract. This paper illustrates a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) application integration framework, which utilizes GIS Grid services (GGS) to enable large-scale resource sharing and better reusing of legacy systems. Considering the fundamental requirements of GGS, a design with sophisticated interfaces which enables explicit state semantics is proposed as a major contribution of this study. In addition, a prototype system of GGS based on legacy systems and web services is developed. Furthermore, the implementations are evaluated in a grid service selector environment proposed in another paper of this project.