Introduction: Rural roads and built environment in China have been developed enormously, but it is not clear whether these roads fulfill the needs of school children as they need to travel long to school every day. Objective: It is crucial to understand the influencing factors of their travel mode choices to better design future country roads and built environment, aiming to promote physical activities of school children in a safe built environment. Method: This study thus attempts to explore the impacts of rural built environment attributes on children's school travel mode preferences. Eight rural built environment attributes are considered: distance from home to school; the number of intersections passed on the way to school; whether there are sidewalks/bicycle lanes; the traffic speed of school access routes; whether there are separation facilities between motor vehicles and non-motor vehicles; whether there are traffic lights and zebra crossings; availability of greenery such as lawns, flower ponds and street trees and whether there are shops on the way to school and at the school gate. Six hundred and thirty eight valid questionnaires were obtained through face-to-face interviews with school-age children in villages. A multinomial logit model was estimated to unravel the preferences and choices of rural school-age children in different models of school travel using the stated choice data. Results: All the eight attributes have significant impacts on rural children's school travel choices on foot, bicycle, electric bicycle or motorbike. And four rural road design attributes have significant effects on rural children's school travel by private cars. A travel path with pavements or bike lanes, few intersections, low traffic speeds, greenery and shops can facilitate children's school travels on foot or by bike. The conclusions can provide reference for the further upgrading planning, designing and construction of rural roads, as well as enriching the theory and practice of child-friendly villages construction.@en

With the rise of global urbanization, the rural built environment has undergone tremendous changes. As such, the rural built environment impacts on residents’ daily travel behavior is getting more researchers’ attention. To date, most of the research focuses on urban areas in developed countries. To understand the state-of-the-art of interplay between the rural built environment and travel behaviors and to identify future research directions, this study adopts a science mapping approach to identify the relevant topics, authors, journals, and countries of the research done. This study proceeds through bibliometric retrieval of articles from 2005, followed by scientometric analysis and qualitative discussion. 37 documents are found to compare urban and rural domains, with 28 on the rural built environment. Research gaps and the research trends are discussed, of which the main themes are multi-dimensional correlation comparison of rural transportation service systems and emerging transportation modes, the influence of rural social and cultural factors on travel behavior, and low-carbon sustainable transportation. This review provides empirical foundation for current state-of-the-art and identifies the future research directions, specifically for rural built environment impact on travel behavior.@en

Under circumstances of pervasive global aging combined with weakened traditional family elder care, an incremental demand for institutional elder care is generated. This has led to a surge in research regarding institutional elder care. Rural residents’ institutional elder care is receiving more attention as a major theme in social sciences and humanities research. Based on 94 articles related to rural institutional elder care, this study identified the most influential articles, journals and countries in rural institutional elder care research since 1995. This was done using science mapping methods through a three-step workflow consisting of bibliometric retrieval, scoping analysis and qualitative discussion. Keywords revealed five research mainstreams in this field: (1) the cognition and mental state of aged populations, (2) the nursing quality and service supply of aged care institutions, (3) the aged care management systems’ establishment and improvements, (4) the risk factors of admission and discharge of aged care institutions, and (5) deathbed matters regarding the aged population. A qualitative discussion is also provided for 39 urban and rural comparative research papers and 55 pure rural research papers, summarizing the current research progress status regarding institutional elder care systems in rural areas. Gaps within existing research are also identified to indicate future research trends (such as the multi-dimensional and in-depth comparative research on institutional elder care, new rural institutional elder care model and technology, and correlative policy planning and development), which provides a multi-disciplinary guide for future research.@en

With the popularization and application of Building Information Modeling (BIM), the demand for BIM technical talents in the construction industry is increasing. Exploring college students’ BIM technical learning behavior is of great practical significance to improve education activities. Based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), this research adds learning attitude variables to construct a theoretical model of influencing factors of college students’ BIM technology learning behavior. Chinese undergraduate students were asked to complete online questionnaires through peer-to-peer contact with sample colleges and universities. Finally, 1090 valid questionnaires were obtained. The students were sampled from research-oriented, applied research-oriented, application-oriented, and private research-oriented universities in seven regions of China: northeast, north, east, south, central, northwest, and southwest. The structural equation model was used to analyze the sampling data. The results indicate that college students’ BIM learning attitude, performance expectations, and social influence positively and directly impact their learning intention, which indirectly impacts their learning behavior. At the same time, promoting factors and learning intention demonstrate a significant positive and direct impact on learning behavior. Therefore, the following suggestions have been put forward to enhance college students’ learning motivation for BIM technology: increase the popularization of BIM technology in colleges and universities and improve the operation level of full-time BIM teachers. The latter enables colleges and universities to continuously and stably export qualified BIM technical talents to society and the market, resulting in a continuous industry development cycle@en

The atomic-level study of point defect evolution in nuclear graphite is essential for a deep understanding of irradiation-induced property changes. The evolution of helium ion irradiation-induced point defects and helium retention in nuclear graphite ETU-10 and ETU-15 were studied by positron annihilation Doppler broadening (PADB) experiments and thermal desorption spectroscopy (TDS) measurements. The graphite samples were implanted with 1015, 1016, and 1017 cm−2 of 200 keV He+ at operation temperatures below 373 K. Frenkel pairs were created during ion irradiation and they annihilated during annealing. Three stages of interstitial-monovacancy annihilation are suggested. At low temperatures, the initial annihilation would be refined only to the recombination of intimate metastable Frenkel pairs. When temperature increases, the annihilation would expand to a larger extent that isolate interstitials and vacancies annihilate with each other. In the case of high doses irradiation, vacancy clusters form at elevated temperatures. The retention and release of helium is tightly related to the evolution of the defects, especially the vacancies. The small over-pressured He-V clusters (HenV) are thought to be the most possible form of helium retention under irradiation.@en