Quantifiable urine glyphosate levels detected in 99% of the French population, with higher values in men, in younger people, and in farmers

France is the first pesticide-consuming country in Europe. Glyphosate is the most used pesticide worldwide and glyphosate is detected in the general population of industrialized countries, with higher levels found in farmers and children. Little data was available concerning exposure in France. Our objective was to determine glyphosate levels in the French general population and to search for an association with seasons, biological features, lifestyle status, dietary habits, and occupational exposure. This study includes 6848 participants recruited between 2018 and 2020. Associated data include age, gender, location, employment status, and dietary information. Glyphosate was quantified by a single laboratory in first-void urine samples using ELISA. Our results support a general contamination of the French population, with glyphosate quantifiable in 99.8% of urine samples with a mean of 1.19 ng/ml + / − 0.84 after adjustment to body mass index (BMI). We confirm higher glyphosate levels in men and children. Our results support glyphosate contamination through food and water intake, as lower glyphosate levels are associated with dominant organic food intake and filtered water. Higher occupational exposure is confirmed in farmers and farmers working in wine-growing environment. Thus, our present results show a general contamination of the French population with glyphosate, and further contribute to the description of a widespread contamination in industrialized countries.

Integrating tea and tourism: a potential sustainable livelihood approach for Indonesia tea producer central area

The social changes within society with regard to tea are widespread in Indonesia and today are experienced as tourism, where a part of many tourist activities, whereby local tea traditions, cultures, services and attractions are experienced. Indonesia as both tea-producing and tea-consuming country has high potential to integrate with tourism to increase the sustainability of community livelihood. This study used a sustainable livelihood approach in a systematic framework to examine the relationships between tea and tourism, as well as enriched the interviews of tourist actors and 203 tourists with experiences of visiting the tea tourism destinations. This study finding that there has been an increase of diversity of livelihoods of the people around the tea plantations where have been developed into tourism. Corporate social responsibility provides a further opportunity in sustainable tea tourism development. Increasing services satisfaction of the tea tourists is one of the most important ways to increase the revisit intention. Creating a mutual partnership synergy can cover the lack of resources and competencies in tea and tourism integration development. For practical implications in the future are the important to enlarge integration between tea and tourism, build partnership, stimulate more local participation, and increase local benefits as their ways of life.

Energy Investment Risk Assessment for Nations Via Seq2seq Model

China’s “Belt & Road Initiative” has been proposed for several years, which has stimulated the economic and financial development of the countries alongside the “Belt & Road”. For a world’s leading energy consuming country, China tries to secure the energy supply from the resource-rich countries via oversea energy investment. In this paper, we propose a sequence to sequence (seq2seq) model to evaluate the energy investment risk of 50 countries alongside the “Belt & Road Initiative”. Specifically, we first build an indicator system mainly containing six factors. Then we adopt Bi-long-short term memory (Bi-LSTM) as encoder to process the historical statistics. Afterward, we use self-attention mechanism to assign the weights on the six factors of the indicator system. Finally we use a hierarchical convolution neural network decoder to generate the assessment results. Our findings indicate that resource potential and Chinese factor are the most important indicators. And through our thorough investigation, we find that Russia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Indonesia are the most recommended target countries for China’s oversea energy investment.

Exploring the Factors Affecting the Behavioral Intention of Visitors in Wine Festival: The Case of China Dalian International Wine and Dine Festival

Wine-related festivals and events have emerged as a unique tourism product bringing not only economic value but also enhancing the brand image of a destination. China being the third largest wine-consuming country in the world has been organizing wine and food focused festivals which are participated by the residents as well as international visitors. Considering the size and scope of these events in China, this study explores the motivation behind participation in the wine festivals and investigates the influence of motivation factors on the perception of festivalscape, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions. The constructs of the study were framed after a thorough review of the literature. The findings of the study revealed that while primary and secondary motivations have a positive effect on the perception of food and wine, generic features, and fun; only primary motivation has a positive effect on satisfaction, whereas secondary motivation has a negative effect on satisfaction. It was also found that the perception of wine & food and fun has a positive impact on satisfaction, while the perception of generic features has no effect on satisfaction. The behavioral intentions were also found to be positively affected by satisfaction.

A vegetarian educator in a meat obsessed country

PurposeFood consumption is a result of a choice that is influenced by economic status, society, culture, psychosomatic elements (Bisogni et al., 2002) and religious factors (Dewan, 2017) creating an identity based on one's beliefs (Mennell et al., 1992). Although many versions exist, this diet is often established on an ideology to abstain from using animals for dietary needs (Smart, 2004). There has been much research to explore vegetarian motivation and impacts of this diet on health; however, first-hand accounts are few.Design/methodology/approachAutoethnography was undertaken to understand my experience as a vegetarian living within a primarily meat consuming country. The theoretical framework driving the research uses social cognitive theory (SCT), the transtheoretical model (TTM) and ethical theory to address the vegetarian experience and emotions generated through such encounters.FindingsData collected, including conversations, headnotes and teaching material, were transcribed and categorised into four emerging themes including vegetarian experience, culture, identity as an educator; and impacts of beliefs. The author also discusses the motives for converting to vegetarianism and the experiences that came with behavioural change. Obstacles and opportunities presented by living in a dominant meat society are explored and the author’s influence on others as an educator, as a citizen in society and as a member of a family.Research limitations/implicationsBeing new to autoethnography proved to be a limitation in the study.Practical implicationsThis research may prove useful for researchers to gain an insider's view of a vegetarian's experience, and how the lifestyles impact students and others in a social context from the author's perspective.Social implicationsAutoethnography regarding vegetarianism from an educator's perspective is lacking and hence may give an insight to help fill the literature gap and change perspectives towards the vegetarian community.Originality/valueAutoethnography regarding vegetarianism from an educators perspective is lacking; hence, this would be a valuable insight to add to the literature gap.

The impact of low-carbon emission reduction policies on economic growth

As the development of a green and low-carbon economy has received great attention from governments around the world, carbon peaking and carbon neutrality have become important issues raised by China. As a major energy consuming country, government has actively formulated and implemented various carbon emission reduction policies in order to curb carbon emissions. Whether these policies achieve economic growth in the process of energy conservation and emission reduction, and promote China’s green and low-carbon development transition is the focus of this paper. This paper selects data from 30 provinces in China from 2010 to 2019, establishes a model, and empirically analysis the impact of carbon emission reduction policy tools on economic growth. The results show that there is a significant negative correlation between mandatory carbon emission reduction policies and economic growth, while market-based carbon emission reduction policies enhance the economic strength of the region. In addition, this paper empirically tests that after the establishment of the carbon market in 2013, market-based carbon emission reduction policies have significantly promoted economic growth, and the impact of carbon emission reduction policies on economic growth have regional heterogeneity.

The Dynamic Effects of Renewable Energy on Economic Growth : The Case of China

This paper estimates the possible effects of renewable energy consumption on the economic growth of the major renewable energy- consuming country in the world. The country has taken the lead in renewable energy in the past decade, so the paper chooses the top renewable energy-consuming country China to explain the growth process between 1990 and 2019. Using time-series analysis techniques, this study Estimation and testing result from the different cointegration methods in the context of China. The results confirm the evidence of long-run dynamics between economic growth, and traditional and energy-related inputs. Findings from long-run output elasticities indicate that renewable energy consumption has a significant positive impact on economic output. The findings suggest that governments, energy planners, international cooperation agencies and associated bodies must act together in increasing renewable energy investment for low carbon growth in most of these economies.

Use of Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS) in China: Evidence from Citywide Representative Surveys from Five Chinese Cities in 2018

China is the largest cigarette consuming country in the world. The emergence of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) in China may have important implications for the Chinese tobacco market. Unfortunately, research on ENDS in China, while growing, is still limited. This study was designed to examine the awareness and use of ENDS among adult urban residents in China. Data from five citywide representative surveys conducted in 2017–2018 were used. Percentages of residents who had ever heard of, ever used, or used ENDS in the past 30 days among all residents and smokers were estimated, in total and by demographic characteristics. Multiple logistic regression models were used to estimate the adjusted associations between awareness and use of ENDS and individual-level demographic characteristics and socioeconomic status (SES). Overall, 51.3% had ever heard, 4.8% ever used, and 0.9% used ENDS in the past 30 days. Men, young adults, those with high levels of education, and current smokers were more likely to be aware of and use ENDS. Among smokers, 67.8% had ever heard, 17.1% ever used, and 3.9% used ENDS in the past 30 days, respectively. Young adult smokers and smokers with high levels of education were more likely to be aware of and use ENDS. Our study results on ENDS awareness and use patterns and associated factors in China provide important evidence to inform research and policies related to ENDS manufacture, marketing, and sales in China.

FEATURES OF THE IRAQI ECONOMY: COMPARTIVE STUDY TO SOME ECONOMIC ELEMENTS FOR THE YEARS (1990-1995-2000-2005-2010-2015-2019)

Iraq is considered as a rich country with multiple natural resources, but wars and financial and political crises led to the destruction of the country's infrastructure and prevented the investment and distribution of those recourses in a fair and just ways, as Iraq is still suffering from unemployment, poverty and lack of essential services which have stopped the wheel of industry and agricultural lands receded significantly, so the country transformed into a consuming country depends only on neighboring countries and industrialized countries to secure its agricultural and industrial needs. The results of the study were shocking as the Iraqi government depends mainly on exporting of oil to cover its operational and investment expenses in more than (85%), and neglected the rest of the economic sectors. As for poverty, the percentage of those who fall below the poverty line (23%) as well as the unemployment rate that exceeded (23%). The country's debt has recently reached ($133) billion, and the latest reports by Transparency International organization considered Iraq as one of the worst (20) countries in terms of administrative and financial corruption. Keywords: Iraqi economy, unemployment, poverty, investment, industry, oil exporting.

Trends in Export and Import of Beer of Barley in Nigeria: 1961-2014

The importance of Beer of Barley is due to Nigeria being Africa’s largest beer consuming country, hence; require increasing output to meet up with domestic beer production since importation of bottled beer is banned. At present, Beer of Barley is exported and imported, this study aimed to measure growth rate between import and export over a 54 year period divided into three policy periods centred on Structural Adjustment policies (SAP) namely: Pre-SAP (1961-1985), SAP (1986-1998) and Post-SAP (1999-2014) with the sole purpose of identifying period associated with rising exports and falling imports. Log-linear and log-quadratic models are used to determine growth rates and patterns of growth respectively. Findings show that while the Post-SAP period experienced rising exports and falling imports, the period was also associated with a stagnated growth pattern. Therefore, institutions that support Post-SAP policy measures, in particular import ban on bottled/canned beer should be vigorously sustained and strengthened in order to accelerate growth.