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The purpose of the study is to analyse the occurrence and distribution of different tree species in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, as a baseline for further inventories, and estimate the biomass per species and plot. Furthermore, it aims to measure forest biodiversity using established formulae for tree species diversity index, richness, evenness and accumulative curve.

Field data were collected, including stratification of forest sample plots. Statistical analysis of the data was carried out, and locally appropriate allometric equations were applied for biomass estimation.

Representative circular 556 forest sample plots of 1,000 m² contained 13,135 trees belonging to nine tree species with a total aboveground biomass of 12,887 tonnes. Sixty-eight per cent of the trees were found between 2,600 and 3,400 masl; approximately 63 per cent had a diameter at breast height equal to 30 cm, and 45 per cent were less than 12 m in height. The Shannon diversity index was 1.82, and Simpson’s index of diversity was 0.813.

Rough terrain, long distances, harsh weather conditions and location of forest in steep narrow valleys presented challenges for the field crews, and meant that fieldwork took longer than planned.

Estimating biomass in Gilgit-Baltistan’s forests using locally developed allometric equations will provide transparency in estimates of forest reference levels, National Forest Monitoring System in Pakistan and devising Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation national strategies and for effective implementation.

This paper presents the first detailed forest inventory carried out for the dry temperate and semi-arid cold region of Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan.

This paper aims to examine the factors affecting the implementation of affordable housing policies in two Chinese municipal governments. Since 2010, the Chinese government has enforced an ambitious plan to adopt affordable housing provisions accompanying a series of urbanization programs. Furthermore, the policy implementation at the local level has led to various outcomes but has been scarcely investigated. The views of policy implementation from local officials are crucial in the context of intergovernmental relations. Therefore, it is important to examine the views of local public officials on the development status and challenges in the context of Chinese intergovernmental relations.

This paper verifies which factors exert significant impacts on the willingness of local officials to adapt affordable housing policies by using the logistic regression model and marginal effect estimation. With original data from the fieldwork surveys of city administrators, the measures incorporated local characteristics as well as the intergovernmental support from the central government in two selected megacities, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

There are significant differences in local investment between the selected cities. Intergovernmental support from the central government, city development strategies, implementation perceptions of local governments and land supply, all significantly impact the selection of an affordable housing program and its overall implementation.

To the best of the authors’ understanding, this study would be one of the first to empirically explore the view of municipal public officials on affordable housing policy in China. This paper provides an empirical analysis from municipal public officials on the local implementation of affordable housing policies in China. As the outcome of housing policies actually depends on the implementation willingness of public officials and the overall performance of local governments, this explorative study would benefit the future development of China’s affordable housing policy.

To optimize the shape of a cascade where velocity (or pressure) distribution is optimally given.

The semi‐inverse method suggested by Ji‐Huan He is applied to establishment of a variational theory for the discussed inverse problem. The boundary conditions on unknown shape are converted into the natural boundary conditions of the obtained variational functional.

Ji‐Huan He's semi‐inverse method is a powerful tool to the search for the variational formulation for the discussed problem. The derivation procedure is very simple and convenient; the finite element method based on the variational theory with moving boundary provides a very effective and robust numerical approach to the inverse problem.

The design method is limited to frictionless flow.

The numerical method based on variational principle with moving boundary can be readily extended to other cases with moving surfaces or free boundaries.

The suggested numerical method can satisfy the demand of various cascade designs, where the velocity (or pressure) distribution can be optimally given from different aspects of engineering requirement: aerodynamics, strength, manufacture, etc.

The air‐breathing hypersonic vehicle (AHV) includes intricate inherent coupling between the propulsion system and the airframe dynamics, which results in an intractable nonlinear system for the controller design. The purpose of this paper is to propose an H∞ control method for AHV based on the online simultaneous policy update algorithm (SPUA).

Initially, the H∞ state feedback control problem of the AHV is converted to the problem of solving the Hamilton‐Jacobi‐Isaacs (HJI) equation, which is notoriously difficult to solve both numerically and analytically. To overcome this difficulty, the online SPUA is introduced to solve the HJI equation without requiring the accurate knowledge of the internal system dynamics. Subsequently, the online SPUA is implemented on the basis of an actor‐critic structure, in which neural network (NN) is employed for approximating the cost function and a least‐square method is used to calculate the NN weight parameters.

Simulation study on the AHV demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed H∞ control method.

The paper presents an interesting method for the H∞ state feedback control design problem of the AHV based on online SPUA.

The purpose of this study was to examine youth service librarians’ use of collaborative collection development (CCD) behaviors and interlibrary loan (ILL) to collaborate with school librarians.

A quantitative design was implemented with a self-administered survey that was placed online.

Public youth services librarians in the USA believe it is important to collaborate with school librarians. However, they are not frequently using collaborative resource sharing strategies. Public youth services librarians that have more experience, understand trends and issues in school libraries and feel they have knowledge of collaborative strategies are more likely to engage in collaborative resource sharing.

The study was limited to 265 public librarians serving youth in the USA. This study does not present the perspectives of school libraries.

CCD and ILL between public and school libraries are overlooked practices for building relationships between public and school librarians that should be explored. Presenting the benefits of these strategies during training programs may increase the resources that youth can access, thus having an overall impact on the quality of life in communities. Collaborating will also help communities understand the value of libraries as institutions for promoting lifelong learning.

The results provide evidence that public youth service librarians in the USA believe in the importance of collaborative relationships with school librarians. However, they do not frequently use ILL or engage in CCD behaviors with school librarians. Using ILL and CCD are two strategies that may be used to build stronger relationships.