The COVID-19 pandemic threatens global food security and has created an urgent need for food conservation. This article presents a review of clean plate campaigns around the world. It aims to fight food waste and reveal the factors that may influence food waste. The Clean Plate Club in the US developed during wartime and relied heavily on political power for compliance, whereas the Clean Plate movement in South Korea was based on religion. China’s Clean Your Plate Campaign (CYPC) has gone through two stages: CYPC I and CYPC II. The latter occurred during the unstable period of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was large-scale and more strongly enforced than CYPC I. In China, CYPC has relied more on personal virtue than on politics or religion. Culture, policy, COVID-19, and behavior are all important social factors that influence food waste. Specifically, two cultural values are drivers of food waste in China: hospitality and face-saving (mianzi). In terms of policy, China’s food waste law mainly relies on persuasion; it lacks any power of enforcement. Laws in France and Italy, by contrast, focus on re-using food and involve both coercion and incentives. COVID-19 may have led to panic purchasing and stockpiling, but, in general, it has resulted in a reduction in food waste.

The adverse effects of deepfakes are becoming apparent; however, less is known about what affects individuals’ credibility judgments concerning deepfakes. This article conducted two randomized controlled 2 × 2 × 2 experiments ( N = 518) to explore the influence of heuristic cues (including the number of followers, popularity, and description as variables) generated by the system and video characteristics (including definition, duration, and editing as variables). The results suggest that the number of the source’s followers and the video’s popularity are positively associated with perceived credibility. Moreover, high-definition deepfakes are more efficient at deceiving viewers. Interestingly, an interaction effect indicates that it is not easy for users to detect editing traces in relatively long videos (greater than 30 s). Our study is an initial step to better understand how individuals assess video credibility and lay the grounds for approaches to combat the negative effects of deepfakes.

Gene editing contributes to enhancing food security through the creation of novel foods. However, public perception of gene-edited (GE) foods is crucial to their acceptance and adoption. This study expanded the knowledge–attitude–practice model and constructed an integrated framework comprising four dimensions: demographic factors, scientific literacy and beliefs, social trust, and perceptions of gene technology, aimed at explaining the public’s attitudes toward GE foods. A questionnaire survey was conducted (N = 649), revealing a positive attitude toward GE foods, with over 80% expressing a certain willingness to pay (WTP) for them. Factors such as income level, subjective knowledge, scientific beliefs, trust in scientists, trust in government, and trust in national technological capabilities and perceived benefits positively correlated with WTP. Conversely, objective knowledge, perceived risks, and perceived ethical concerns were negatively correlated with WTP. The impact of objective knowledge on attitudes toward GE foods demonstrated a significant, nonlinear relationship. Additionally, it is noteworthy that the Chinese public currently exhibits relatively low trust in national technological capabilities, necessitating vigilance against the emergence of conspiracy theories akin to those surrounding genetically modified foods. This research contributes theoretical insights into the public communication of GE foods.

The use of empty space (ES) is ubiquitous in Asian art. The authors use a computational method to quantitatively assess the amount of ES in Chinese landscape painting (CLP). The data show that 56.8% of ancient CLPs contain mostly ES, while only 9.4% from modern times do. ES reached its peak during the Yuan dynasty (1271–-1368) and its lowest point in the 1960s. Chan culture, literati ink play, the “exhibition hall effect,” and Maoist politics, as well as other social factors, may have had an impact on this shift. This empirical study indicates that art keeps abreast of current developments: The philosophy, culture, politics and general education of a specific era influence artists’ perception, aesthetics and creative output.

Our statistical analysis of research publications in the prestigious scientific journals Nature, Science and Cell reveals that papers represented by an image on the journal’s cover gain many more citations in the academic literature than those papers in the same journals that are not represented on the cover. Meanwhile, the number of images used by high-prestige journals is much higher than that used by journals in general, which indicates both the emergence of a new aesthetic of prestige scientific publication, and also that this aesthetic is relevant to journals’ impact. Furthermore, there are significant differences in the use of images in different countries and in different disciplines.