The Rise in House Prices in China: Bubbles or Fundamentals?

The dramatic rise of house prices in many cities of China has brought huge attention from both the governmental and academic circles. There is a huge debate on whether the increasing house prices are driven by market fundamentals or just by speculation. Like Levin and Wright (1997a, 1997b), we decompose house prices in China into fundamental and non-fundamental components. We also consider potential nonlinear feedback from the historical growth rate of house prices on the current house prices and propose a semiparametric approach to estimate the speculative components in the model. We demonstrate that the non-fundamental part contributes a relatively small proportion of the rise of house prices in China.

PAGE: Equilibrate Personalization and Generalization in Federated Learning

Federated learning (FL) is becoming a major driving force behind machine learning as a service, where customers (clients) collaboratively benefit from shared local updates under the orchestration of the service provider (server). Representing clients' current demands and the server's future demand, local model personalization and global model generalization are separately investigated, as the ill-effects of data heterogeneity enforce the community to focus on one over the other. However, these two seemingly competing goals are of equal importance rather than black and white issues, and should be achieved simultaneously. In this paper, we propose the first algorithm to balance personalization and generalization on top of game theory, dubbed PAGE, which reshapes FL as a co-opetition game between clients and the server. To explore the equilibrium, PAGE further formulates the game as Markov decision processes, and leverages the reinforcement learning algorithm, which simplifies the solving complexity. Extensive experiments on four widespread datasets show that PAGE outperforms state-of-the-art FL baselines in terms of global and local prediction accuracy simultaneously, and the accuracy can be improved by up to 35.20% and 39.91%, respectively. In addition, biased variants of PAGE imply promising adaptiveness to demand shifts in practice

The rise in house prices in China: Bubbles or fundamentals?

The dramatic rise of house prices in many cities of China has brought huge attention from both the governmental and academic circles. There is a huge debate on whether the increasing house prices are driven by market fundamentals or just by speculation. Like Levin and Wright (1997a, 1997b), we decompose house prices in China into fundamental and non−fundamental components. We also consider potential nonlinear feedback from the historical growth rate of house prices on the current house prices and propose a semiparametric approach to estimate the speculative components in the model. We demonstrate that the non−fundamental part contributes a relatively small proportion of the rise of house prices in China

The effects of cognitive behavioural therapy on depression and quality of life in patients with maintenance haemodialysis: a systematic review

Depression is highly prevalent among Haemodialysis (HD) patients and is known to results in a series of adverse outcomes and poor quality of life (QoL). Although cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) has been shown to improve depressive symptoms and QoL in other chronic illness, there is uncertainty in terms of the effectiveness of CBT in HD patients with depression or depressive symptoms. All randomised controlled trials relevant to the topic were retrieved from the following databases: CINHAL, MEDLINE, PubMed, PsycINFO and CENTRAL. The grey literature, specific journals, reference lists of included studies and trials registers website were also searched. Data was extracted or calculated from included studies that had measured depression and quality of life using valid and reliable tools -this included mean differences or standardised mean differences and 95% confidence intervals. The Cochrane risk of bias tool was used to identify the methodological quality of the included studies. Six RCTs were included with varying methodological quality. Meta-analysis was undertaken for 3 studies that employed the CBT versus usual care. All studies showed that the depressive symptoms significantly improved after the CBT. Furthermore, CBT was more effective than usual care (MD = - 5.28, 95%CI - 7.9 to - 2.65, P = 0.37) and counselling (MD = - 2.39, 95%CI - 3.49 to - 1.29), while less effective than sertraline (MD = 2.2, 95%CI 0.43 to 3.97) in alleviating depressive symptoms. Additionally, the CBT seems to have a beneficial effect in improving QoL when compared with usual care, while no significant difference was found in QoL score when compared CBT with sertraline. CBT may improve depressive symptoms and QoL in HD patients with comorbid depressive symptoms. However, more rigorous studies are needed in this field due to the small quantity and varied methodological quality in the identified studies

Analysis and Evaluation of Fruit Quality and Volatile Composition of F1 Hybrids between ‘Yuluxiang’ and ‘Shinseiki’ Pear

In order to explore the genetic variation between hybrid fruits and their parents and conduct comprehensive evaluation of hybrid fruits, seven promising F1 hybrids (7-93, 8-44, 8-176, 9-188, 9-193, 10-101 and 10-173) between ‘Yuluxiang’ and ‘Shinseiki’ pears, the female parent ‘Yuluxiang’ and the popular cultivar ‘Akizuki’ were evaluated for quality indicators such as single fruit mass, fruit shape index, hardness, soluble solid content, soluble sugar content, titratable acid content, sugar/acid ratio, vitamin C content, and aroma composition. Meanwhile, the differences in aroma among different cultivars were evaluated using orthogonal partial least squares-discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA). The results showed that there was a significant difference in fruit quality among the seven F1 hybrids, with 8-44 having a fruit shape index equal to 1 and the highest soluble solids and sugar content. Altogether, 83 volatile components were detected from the nine cultivars, of which 10-173 and 8-44 had the highest total amount of volatile components, and 10-173 and 10-101 contained the highest number of volatile compounds. The major aroma components in pears were alcohols, esters, and aldehydes. The OPLS-DA results showed that the aroma components of 10-101 and 10-173 were significantly different from those of the other strains. Fruit quality traits of 10-101 had a significantly positive correlation with ethyl acetate and hexyl acetate; fruit quality traits of 10-173 had a significantly positive correlation with ethyl octanoate and α-farnesene and trans-2-hexenal, and their contents were significantly higher than those in the other strains, making the flavor more prominent. According to variable importance in the projection (VIP) results, we predicted 42 aroma markers that differed among varieties, and through odor activity value (OAV) analysis, we identified key volatile compounds that contributed to the characteristic odor of each strain. Through correlation analysis, we identified the association between pear quality traits and characteristic aromas. Principal component analysis (PCA) showed that the comprehensive scores of 8-44, 10-173 and 10-101 had the highest ranking, indicating that they had better fruit quality than the other strains. In summary, 8-44, 10-101, and 10-173 can be regarded as potential pear strains. This study can provide a reference for the breeding and promotion of new pear varieties

Transcript Profiling Identifies Dynamic Gene Expression Patterns and an Important Role for Nrf2/Keap1 Pathway in the Developing Mouse Esophagus

Morphological changes during human and mouse esophageal development have been well characterized. However, changes at the molecular level in the course of esophageal morphogenesis remain unclear. This study aims to globally profile critical genes and signaling pathways during the development of mouse esophagus. By using microarray analysis this study also aims to determine how the Nrf2/Keap1 pathway regulates the morphogenesis of the esophageal epithelium.Gene expression microarrays were used to survey gene expression in the esophagus at three critical phases: specification, metaplasia and maturation. The esophagi were isolated from wild-type, Nrf2(-/-), Keap1(-/-), or Nrf2(-/-)Keap1(-/-) embryos or young adult mice. Array data were statistically analyzed for differentially expressed genes and pathways. Histochemical and immunohistochemical staining were used to verify potential involvement of the Wnt pathway, Pparβ/δ and the PI3K/Akt pathway in the development of esophageal epithelium.Dynamic gene expression patterns accompanied the morphological changes of the developing esophagus at critical phases. Particularly, the Nrf2/Keap1 pathway had a baseline activity in the metaplasia phase and was further activated in the maturation phase. The Wnt pathway was active early and became inactive later in the metaplasia phase. In addition, Keap1(-/-) mice showed increased expression of Nrf2 downstream targets and genes involved in keratinization. Microarray and immunostaining data also suggested that esophageal hyperkeratosis in the Keap1(-/-) mice was due to activation of Pparβ/δ and the PI3K/Akt pathway.Morphological changes of the esophageal epithelium are associated with dynamic changes in gene expression. Nrf2/Keap1 pathway activity is required for maturation of mouse esophageal epithelium

Seasonal variation of particle-induced oxidative potential of airborne particulate matter in Beijing

An in vitro plasmid scission assay (PSA), the cell apoptosis assay, and ICP-MS were employed to study the oxidative potentials and trace element compositions of the airborne particulate matter (PM) in Beijing during a one year-long field campaign from June 2010 to June 2011. The cell damages induced by PM reveled by the cell apoptosis assay showed a similar variation pattern to the DNA damages obtained by PSA, verifying the feasibility of the PSA in analyzing the oxidative capacity of PM samples. The PSA experiments showed that the particle-induced DNA damage was highest in summer, followed by spring, winter and autumn in descending order. The percentages of the oxidative damages to plasmid DNA induced by the water-soluble fractions of PM under the particle doses from 10 to 250 μg/ml were generally lower than 45%, with some values peaking at above 50%. The peak values were frequently present in late spring (i.e. April and May) and early summer (i.e. June) but they were scarcely observed in other seasons. These peak values were mostly associated with haze days or the days with low wind speed (less than 4 m/s), indicating that the PM samples during haze had higher oxidative potential than those during non-haze periods. The oxidative potential induced by the water-soluble fraction of the PM displayed a significant positive correlation with the concentrations of the water-soluble elements Cd, Cs, Pb, Rb, Zn, Be and Bi, demonstrating that the particle-induced oxidative potentials were mainly sourced from these elements. The exposure risk represented by the mass concentration of these elements in unit volume of atmosphere was higher in summer and winter, and lower in autumn and spring. The haze day PM samples not only had higher level of oxidative potentials but also had higher concentrations of water-soluble elements