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The purpose of this paper is to investigate online problem‐based learning (PBL) as a route to achieving sustainability education using sponsored projects.

The Royal Academy of Engineering sponsored project at Manchester; to foster education in sustainability through inter‐disciplinary problem‐based approaches, has since been extended to other groups and to a broader array of issues. One of the limiting factors is the ease with which this approach can be taken in the case of large numbers of students and a commensurate requirement for large numbers of facilitators. The University of Keele, together with partners from the universities of Manchester and Staffordshire, was awarded National Teaching Fellowship Scheme funding to explore further the use of blended or online approaches, in order to overcome these limitations. The pilot unit already has a certain amount of support using the BlackBoard virtual learning environment (VLE) but this scenario is supposed to rely entirely on online working. At the time of writing, the evaluation of the pilot has not been completed but an online questionnaire was devised to monitor students’ reactions to the online working and to ascertain whether they did in fact work entirely online or whether they chose to meet informally face‐to‐face. Difficulties encountered were both organizational (mostly relating to enrolment) and technical (this was a new version of BlackBoard and had a few teething troubles).

This pilot project has demonstrated that a blended approach to PBL is feasible. There are some forms of resistance from students. The assessment was outcomes‐driven rather than process‐driven. This meant that it was not necessary for the academic staff to have access to all the discussions, thus acting as facilitators. There is a general theme that while learners found it possible to work effectively as a group online, they also found it more difficult. It is possible that the students were having to dedicate more time and effort to the use of the online system, which had an impact on their creativity and productivity.

In the case of the University of Manchester, the developments are being applied to a Masters‐level course unit in Managing Humanitarian Aid Projects. This unit proceeds on the basis of five scenarios that students try to resolve in small groups and in the first pilot year one of these scenarios is being delivered on‐line.

The results of this pilot could be fed in to different stages of programme deployment to examine impact and explore possibilities with distance learning modules.

This paper has looked at the effectiveness of nationally run, problem‐based learning projects that are aimed at improving understanding, engagement and deployment on diverse learning environments to include VLEs.

Cooperation in agriculture and agricultural products trade is a new driving force for Sino-Russian cooperation in economy and trade in recent years. Driven by the interests and needs of both countries, a Free Trade Zone (FTZ) on the Chinese territory facing Russia, the Heilongjiang FTZ, has been established, and agricultural cooperation has attracted much attention within the FTZ framework. This chapter aims to analyze and explain the prospects of Sino-Russian agricultural cooperation under the framework of the Heilongjiang FTZ based on the current situations of cooperation. The author concludes that the Heihe and Suifenhe Areas in Heilongjiang FTZ are developed with a focus on Sino-Russian agricultural cooperation. This chapter is innovative because it combined the traditional research perspective on Sino-Russian agricultural cooperation with that under the FTZ framework. The author thinks that to facilitate the cooperation between the two countries in agriculture under the FTZ, the two governments must cooperate more extensively. Besides, they need to discuss the establishment of infrastructures like a joint agricultural product R&D centre and a digital development centre for agriculture. Meanwhile, the schemes of dispute settlement and risk-sharing should be addressed as well.

Tourists and visitors currently tend to consider environment and the purity of nature, educational tourism, culture and history, large‐ and small‐scale events, and entertainment and fun as crucial issues. For certain specific target groups, these wishes and needs may be satisfied by a new form of tourism called “geotourism”, which is an multi‐interest kind of tourism exploiting natural sites and landscapes containing interesting earth‐science features in a didactic and entertaining way. Relative to demand, a form of tourism based on imagination and emotion, favouring experience and sensations, and explaining the natural environment by playing with its temporal and spatial dimensions may provide opportunities of economic development. Different target groups (e.g. seniors, families, schools) potentially interested in cultural and natural landscapes seem to constitute specific markets to consider. In this sense, on‐site interpretation needs to be more adapted to the visitors' expectations and a more original and striking way of communication has to be used. From a promotional point of view, “geomarketing”, a kind of image communication that explores the temporal and spatial dimensions of the rocks (e.g. minerals, fossils) and forms (e.g. glaciers, caves) of the Earth's surface, may be developed. This will not only generate inquisitiveness among the target groups selected, but also give a clear position to a destination, in order to distinguish itself from similar territories. Of course, product communication must complete this marketing strategy with the creation, promotion and sale of specific and original products, especially for the summer period (from spring to autumn). For instance, a mix of walking, wellness, “agro‐tourism” and “geotourism” may be profitable for regional economic development. Thus, this paper is a conceptual contribution based on a theoretical work and a literature review.

The purpose of this paper is to apply what can be learned from the emergence of nature tourism to understand some current and future trends of tourism.

This study adopted the evolutionary paradigm for investigation.

The emergence of nature tourism in early medieval China can be attributed to four major factors, including transformation of value orientations, seeking longevity, interest in suburbs and population migration.

Historical studies help understand the current and future trends. When the contributing factors for nature tourism are linked to the contemporary world, it can be found that these factors are still playing a part in shaping tourism trends or patterns in their original or alternative forms. These trends or patterns are worthy of scholarly investigations.

This paper offers a comprehensive understanding of the origins of nature tourism.

As the number of social media users continues to rise globally, a heated debate emerges on whether social media use improves or harms mental health, as well as the bidirectional relation between social media use and mental health. Motivated by this, the authors’ study adopts the stressor–strain–outcome model and social compensation hypothesis to disentangle the effect mechanism between social media use and psychological well-being. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

To empirically validate the proposed research model, a large-scale two-year longitudinal questionnaire survey on social media use was administered to a valid sample of 6,093 respondents recruited from a university in China. Structural equation modeling was employed for data analysis.

A longitudinal analysis reveals that social media use positively (negatively) impacts psychological well-being through the mediator of nomophobia (perceived social support) in a short period. However, social media use triggers more psychological unease, as well as more life satisfaction from a longitudinal perspective.

This study addresses the bidirectional relation between social media use and psychological unease. The current study also draws both theoretical and practical implications by unmasking the bright–dark duality of social media use on psychological well-being.

The quad‐rotor is an under‐actuation, strong coupled nonlinear system with parameters uncertainty, unmodeled disturbance and drive capability boundedness. The purpose of the paper is to design a flight control system to regulate the aircraft track the desired trajectory and keep the attitude angles stable on account of these issues.

Considering the dynamics of a quad‐rotor, the closed‐loop flight control system is divided into two nested loops: the translational outer‐loop and the attitude inner‐loop. In the outer‐loop, the translational controller, which exports the desired attitude angles to the inner‐loop, is designed based on bounded control technique. In consideration of the influence of uncertain rotational inertia and external disturbance, the backstepping sliding mode approach with adaptive gains is used in the inner‐loop. The switching control strategy based on the sign functions of sliding surface is introduced into the design procedure with respect to the input saturation.

The validity of the proposed flight control system was verified through numerical simulation and prototype flight experiment in this paper. Furthermore, with relation to the flying, the motor speed is kept in the predetermined scope.

This article introduces a new flight control system designed for a quad‐rotor.

The overuse and scarcity of resources emphasize the importance of the circular economy. The technology facilitated by Industry 4.0 stimulates the implementation of the circular economy that aims to reduce resource use and enhance operational efficiency. This study focuses on enhancing delivery efficiency in an online-to-offline (O2O) context from an Industry 4.0 technology-facilitated personal configuration perspective, that is, comparing in-house and crowdsourced delivery efficiency in China's O2O on-demand food delivery context.

The authors collect 128,152 orders from 38 restaurants of an online restaurant chain in China. The authors adopt multiple regression analysis to examine the delivery efficiency gap between in-house and crowdsourced deliverymen and the determinants of this efficiency gap.

The findings of this study reveal that crowdsourced deliverymen exhibit higher delivery efficiency, in terms of a shorter delivery time, than in-house deliverymen. In addition, the authors find that platforms providing monetary incentives or implementing late delivery penalties enlarge this efficiency gap. Furthermore, the authors show that external factors, such as working on weekends and bad weather conditions, contribute to the narrowing of this performance efficiency.

The study's findings suggest that platforms should use advanced technologies facilitated by Industry 4.0 to optimize their personnel configuration to enhance their delivery efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. The effective approaches include using financial incentives and improving working schedules.

The authors' findings contribute to the online fulfillment literature by focusing on delivery efficiency in the O2O context from the Industry 4.0 technology-facilitated personnel configuration perspective. The authors examine how internal and external factors moderate the performance efficiency between these two types of deliverymen.