Title Participants Abstract "European perceptions of religion and society in 18th-century China & Bengal, and their subverted gaze in local art and encounter" "Wim De Winter" "This essay presents two late 18th century European travelers’ encounters with and perceptions of religion in Chinese and Indian societies. While C.L.J De Guignes made an extensive tour of Chinese pagodas, Balthazar Solvyns was depicting Bengali people in 1794. Both traveler's works reveal a lineage of ideas involving exoticism and early-modern orientalism. While creating images of religion based on superstition and alterity, they did not take into account how the gaze was reversed unto them. While Solvyns created images of ‘the Hindoos’, Bengali artists were depicting the European colonial presence in scroll paintings and temple sculptures. These depictions may be considered as mimetic practices subverting the relational gaze, incorporating the European presence in order to overcome it. Contrasting early ethnographical European descriptions of Asian religions with their original contexts, a subverted gaze shines back upon the self-image of early modern European scholars seeking to make exotic Asian religions ‘known’." "Liang ShumingU+2019s China : the Country of Reason (1967-1970) : revolution, religion, and ethnicity in the reinvention of the Confucian tradition" "Ady Van den Stock" "Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China" "Nicolas Standaert" "Religion in der Volksrepublik China: eine historische Betrachtung" "Bart Dessein" "This article discusses the question of religious freedom in the People's Republic of China against the background of China's Confucian political and legal tradition, and against the background of the country's historical experience of the late 19th and early 20th century." "China in Belgium : from a religious, economic and political interest to the development of an academic discipline" "Mieke Matthyssen, Bart Dessein" "Participation of literary elite in the compilation of Buddhist monastery gazetteers in Ming-Qing China - using as an example the activities of Liu Mingfang in the Jiangnan region in 1740s-1750s" "Mariia Lepneva" "The research topic of this article is the relationship between secular literati and Buddhist monasteries in China, one of the forms of which was the recruitment of literati by the monasteries for the composition of monastery chronicles. This paper focuses on the activities on Liu Mingfang (Liu Nanlu), the author of ""The Chronicle of Mt. Baohua,"" in the Jiangnan region in 1740-1750s. The importance of studying the circumstances of the compilation of this chronicle is justified by the fact that Mt. Baohua was the seat of the patriarchs of the Qianhua school, which claimed dominance within the Vinaya tradition of Chinese Buddhism in the late Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1912) dynasties. The article examines what place the composition of this Buddhist mountain chronicle had in the activities of Liu Mingfang, who was a member of the secular literati. This research relies on several chronicles compiled by Liu Mingfang, as well as the texts of his contemporary associates. The main conclusions of this research are as follows: Liu Mingfang primarily associated himself with poetry and the Daoist culture. Lacking a stable income, Liu Mingfang compiled local chronicles under commission. Accordingly, on the one hand, ""The Chronicle of Mt. Baohua"" is not supposed to reflect any personal Buddhist ideas of Liu Mingfang, but on the other hand, it is very probable that the text of this chronicle reflects the wishes of its commissioner – Wenhai Fuju, the abbot of Mt. Baohua." "Phosphate flame retardants and novel brominated flame retardants in home-produced eggs from an e-waste recycling region in China" "Xiaobo ZHENG, Fuchao Xu, Xiaojun Luo, Bixian Mai, Adrian Covaci" "Phosphate flame retardants (PFRs) and novel brominated flame retardants (NBFRs) (2-ethylhexyl-2,3,4,5-tetrabromo-benzoate (EH-TBB) and bis-(2-ethylhexyl)-3,4,5,6-tetrabromo-phthalate (BEH-TEBP)) were measured in free-range chicken eggs from three e-waste recycling sites and a negative control site located in Guangdong province, Southern China. BEH-TEBP, tris-(chloroethyl)-phosphate (TCEP), tris-(chloropropyl)-phosphate (Sigma TCPP, two isomers) and tris-(1,3-dichloroisopropyl)-phosphate (TDCIPP) were detected in more than 50% of eggs samples with low concentrations. The median values of BEH-TEBP and total PFRs were 0.17-0.46 ng/g ww (wet weight) and 1.62-2.59 ng/g ww in eggs from the e-waste sites, respectively. The results indicate that EH-TBB, BEH-TEBP and PFRs are less persistent and bioaccumulative than polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in chicken eggs, and possibly also in other bio-matrices. Triphenyl phosphate (TPHP) were identified in albumen with higher frequencies, but at similar concentrations compared to yolk, while BEH-TEBP was mainly detected in yolk. The estimated daily intake (EDI) of BEH-TEBP and total PFRs from consumption of chicken eggs ranged from 0.03 to 0.09 and 0.32-0.52 ng/kg bw/day for adults, and 0.20-0.54 and 1.89-3.02 ng/kg bw/day for children in e-waste sites, respectively. Indoor dust ingestion seems to be a more important pathway for the intake of these FRs, while egg consumption is probably a more important exposure pathway for PBDEs. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved." "Dynamics of ammonia-oxidizing archaea and bacteria in relation to nitrification along simulated dissolved oxygen gradient in sediment-water interface of the Jiulong river estuarine wetland, China" "Zhuanxi Luo, Zhaozheng Qiu, Qunshan Wei, Gijs Du Laing, Yanling Zhao, Changzhou Yan" "Aboveground forest biomass based on OLSR and an ANN model integrating LiDAR and optical data in a mountainous region of China" "Lixin Dong, Shihao Tang, Min Min, Jie Cheng" "Aboveground forest biomass (B-agf) and height of forest canopy (H-fc) are of great significance for the determination of carbon sources and sinks, carbon cycling and global change research. In this paper, B-agf of coniferous and broadleaf forest in the Chinese Three Gorges region is estimated by integrating light detection and ranging (LiDAR) and Landsat derived data. For a better B-agf estimation, a synergetic extrapolation method for regional H-fc is explored based on a specific relationship between LiDAR footprint H-fc and optical data such as vegetation index (VI), leaf area index (LAI) and forest vegetation cover (FVC). Then, an ordinary least squares regression (OLSR) and a back propagation neural network (BP-NN) model for regional B-agf estimation from synergetic LiDAR and optical data are developed and compared. Validation results show that the OLSR can achieve higher accuracy of H-fc estimation for all forest types (R-2 = 0.751, Root mean square error (RMSE) = 5.74 m). The OLSR estimated B-agf shows a good agreement with field measurements. The accuracy of regional B-agf estimated by the BP-NN model (RMSE = 12.23 t ha(-1)) is superior to that estimated by the OLSR method (RMSE = 17.77 t ha(-1)) especially in areas with complex topography." "The spatiotemporal response of soil moisture to precipitation and temperature changes in an arid region, China" "Yunqian Wang, Jing Yang, Yaning Chen, Anqian Wang, Philippe De Maeyer" "Soil moisture plays a crucial role in the hydrological cycle and climate system. The reliable estimation of soil moisture in space and time is important to monitor and even predict hydrological and meteorological disasters. Here we studied the spatiotemporal variations of soil moisture and explored the effects of precipitation and temperature on soil moisture in different land cover types within the Tarim River Basin from 2001 to 2015, based on high-spatial-resolution soil moisture data downscaled from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Climate Change Initiative (CCI) soil moisture data. The results show that the spatial average soil moisture increased slightly from 2001 to 2015, and the soil moisture variation in summer contributed most to regional soil moisture change. For the land cover, the highest soil moisture occurred in the forest and the lowest value was found in bare land, and soil moisture showed significant increasing trends in grassland and bare land during 2001 similar to 2015. Both partial correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis demonstrate that in the study area precipitation had positive effects on soil moisture, while temperature had negative effects, and precipitation made greater contributions to soil moisture variations than temperature. The results of this study can be used for decision making for water management and allocation."