Impact of the eco-efficiency of food production on the water-land-food system coordination in China: A discussion of the moderation effect of environmental regulation.

The coordination of the water-land-food ("WLF") system is an essential guarantee for ecologically sustainable food production. Based on the perspective of symbiosis theory, we explore practical strategies for enhancing WLF system coordination in China. First, we applied the entropy TOPSIS method to measure WLF system coordination. Second, we used the global-Malmquist-Luenberger ("GML") index to calculate the eco-efficiency of food production. Third, we used the panel Tobit model to empirically explore the improvement path of WLF system coordination and test the moderating role of environmental regulation. Our research has led to the following five conclusions: (i) From 2003 to 2019, the coordination level of the WLF system in all regions of China showed a decreasing trend followed by an increasing trend, with the highest in the Northeast (0.380). The eco-efficiency of food production showed an upward trend in general, with the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River (2.101) and the northeastern region (1.888) at a higher level nationwide; (ii) The eco-efficiency of food production does effectively promote WLF system coordination, but with a specific time lag; (iii) The regression results of northern China and major grain-producing areas are consistent with the whole sample. However, the eco-efficiency of food production and its lagging term in southern regions and nonmajor grain-producing regions cannot effectively promote WLF system coordination; (iv) According to the quantile regression results, the promotion of eco-efficiency in food production is more pronounced in regions with higher WLF system coordination (at the 50 %-90 % quantile); and (v) Environmental regulation has a positive moderating effect on the ecological efficiency of food production on the coherence of the WLF system. Moreover, the regression results of grouping moderation show that environmental regulations can play a more vital, positive moderating role in the lower regions compared with higher WLF system coordination regions. Our research innovatively explores the influencing factors of WLF System Coordination. Our research also provides a reference for the formulation of food ecological planting strategies and government environmental regulation policies.

Abnormal neural responses to harmonic syntactic structures in congenital amusia.

In music, harmonic syntactic structures are organized hierarchically through local and long-distance dependencies. This study investigated whether congenital amusia, a neurodevelopmental disorder of pitch perception, is associated with impaired processing of harmonic syntactic structures. For stimuli, we used harmonic sequences containing two phrases, where the first phrase ended with a half cadence and the second with an authentic cadence. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the ending chord of the authentic cadence to be either syntactically regular or irregular based on local dependencies. Sixteen amusics and 16 controls judged the expectedness of these chords while their EEG waveforms were recorded. In comparison to the regular endings, irregular endings elicited an ERAN, an N5, and a late positive component in controls but not in amusics, indicating that amusics were impaired in processing local syntactic dependencies. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the half cadence of the harmonic sequences to either adhere to or violate long-distance syntactic dependencies. In response to irregular harmonic sequences, an ERAN-like component and an N5 were elicited in controls but not in amusics, suggesting that amusics were impaired in processing long-distance syntactic dependencies. Furthermore, for controls, the neural processing of local and long-distance syntactic dependencies was correlated at the later integration stage but not at the early detection stage. These findings indicate that amusia is associated with impairment in the detection and integration of local and long-distance syntactic violations. The implications of these findings in terms of hierarchical music-syntactic processing are discussed.