Accounting of value of ecosystem services in the desert: an example of the Kubuqi Desert ecosystem

Ecological products and ecosystem services are essential for human survival and development. Gross Ecosystem Product (GEP) is a method to combine the value of ecosystem services and can reflect the status of ecosystem and ecological conservation and restoration performance. The conservation and restoration of desert ecosystems play an important role in expanding global cultivated land, ensuring food security, and improving human wellbeing. However, ecosystem services and the value of GEP in deserts have been neglected. Taking the Kubuqi Desert ecosystem as an example, this study evaluated the pattens, GEP value, and its change in the Kubuqi Desert ecosystem from 2000 to 2020. Our study found that 1) over the past 20 years, the areas of wetlands, forests, grasslands, and shrubs in the Kubuqi desert ecosystem had increased by 100.65%, 6.05%, 2.24%, and 2.03%, respectively, while that of desert had decreased by 10.62%; 2) the GEP of Kubuqi in 2020 was 55.48 billion CNY, among which its sandstorm prevention value was the highest (39.39%); 3) The value of ecosystem services in the Kubuqi desert ecosystem were all increased over the 20-year period and the largest increase came from sandstorm prevention (increased by 195.09%). This study emphasizes how GEP accounting can promote desert conservation and restoration, quantifies the contribution of desert ecosystems to human wellbeing, and provides future GEP accounting suggestions for desert ecosystems. This study can provide scientific information on the conservation and restoration of global desert ecosystems

The evolution of negotiation and impasse in two-party multi-issue bargaining

Automated negotiation systems are becoming increasingly important and pervasive. Most previous research on automated negotiation has focused on understanding and formalizing “successful” negotiations, i.e., negotiations that do not become contentious to the point of impasse. This paper shifts the emphasis to negotiations that are “difficult” to resolve and can hit an impasse. It analyses a situation where two agents bargain over the division of the surplus of several distinct issues to demonstrate how a procedure to avoid impasses can be utilized in a specific negotiation setting. The procedure is based on the addition of new issues to the agenda during the course of negotiation and the exploration of the differences in the valuation of these issues to capitalize on Pareto optimal agreements. This paper also lays the foundation for performing an experiment to investigate how the evolution of negotiation contributes to the avoidance of impasses, paying particular attention to the expansion of the number of issues to be deliberated and its impact on the frequency of impasse

A Mendelian randomization study of testosterone and cognition in men

Testosterone replacement for older men is increasingly common, with some observations suggesting a protective effect on cognitive function. We examined the association of endogenous testosterone with cognitive function among older men in a Mendelian randomization study using a separate-sample instrumental variable (SSIV) analysis estimator to minimize confounding and reverse causality. A genetic score predicting testosterone was developed in 289 young Chinese men from Hong Kong, based on selected testosterone-related single nucleotide polymorphisms (rs10046, rs1008805 and rs1256031). The association of genetically predicted testosterone with delayed 10-word recall score and Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score was assessed at baseline and follow-up using generalized estimating equation among 4,212 older Chinese men from the Guangzhou Biobank Cohort Study. Predicted testosterone was not associated with delayed 10-word recall score (−0.02 per nmol/L testosterone, 95% confidence interval (CI) −0.06–0.02) or MMSE score (0.06, 95% CI −0.002–0.12). These estimates were similar after additional adjustment for age, education, smoking, use of alcohol, body mass index and the Framingham score. Our findings do not corroborate observed protective effects of testosterone on cognitive function among older men

Moderate Alcohol Use and Cardiovascular Disease from Mendelian Randomization

Background Observational studies show moderate alcohol use negatively associated with ischemic heart disease (IHD) and cardiovascular disease (CVD). However, healthier attributes among moderate users compared to never users may confound the apparent association. A potentially less biased way to examine the association is Mendelian randomization, using alcohol metabolizing genes which influence alcohol use. Methods We used instrumental variable analysis with aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 (ALDH2) genotypes (AA/GA/GG) as instrumental variables for alcohol use to examine the association of alcohol use (10 g ethanol/day) with CVD risk factors (blood pressure, lipids and glucose) and morbidity (self-reported IHD and CVD) among men in the Guangzhou Biobank Cohort Study. Results ALDH2 genotypes were a credible instrument for alcohol use (F-statistic 74.6). Alcohol was positively associated with HDL-cholesterol (0.05 mmol/L per alcohol unit, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.02 to 0.08) and diastolic blood pressure (1.15 mmHg, 95% CI 0.23 to 2.07) but not with systolic blood pressure (1.00 mmHg, 95% CI -0.74 to 2.74), LDL-cholesterol (0.03 mmol/L, 95% CI -0.03 to 0.08), log transformed triglycerides (0.03 mmol/L, 95% CI -0.01 to 0.08) or log transformed fasting glucose (0.01 mmol/L, 95% CI -0.006 to 0.03), self-reported CVD (odds ratio (OR) 0.98, 95% CI 0.76 to 1.27) or selfreported IHD (OR 1.10, 95% CI 0.83 to 1.45). Conclusion Low to moderate alcohol use among men had the expected effects on most CVD risk factors but not fasting glucose. Larger studies are needed to confirm the null associations with IHD, CVD and fasting glucose

The Second Monocular Depth Estimation Challenge

This paper discusses the results for the second edition of the Monocular Depth Estimation Challenge (MDEC). This edition was open to methods using any form of supervision, including fully-supervised, self-supervised, multi-task or proxy depth. The challenge was based around the SYNS-Patches dataset, which features a wide diversity of environments with high-quality dense ground-truth. This includes complex natural environments, e.g. forests or fields, which are greatly underrepresented in current benchmarks. The challenge received eight unique submissions that outperformed the provided SotA baseline on any of the pointcloud- or image-based metrics. The top supervised submission improved relative F-Score by 27.62%, while the top self-supervised improved it by 16.61%. Supervised submissions generally leveraged large collections of datasets to improve data diversity. Self-supervised submissions instead updated the network architecture and pretrained backbones. These results represent a significant progress in the field, while highlighting avenues for future research, such as reducing interpolation artifacts at depth boundaries, improving self-supervised indoor performance and overall natural image accuracy.Comment: Published at CVPRW202

ROI and FOI algorithms for Wavelet-Based Video Compression

Abstract. Many techniques make great contributions to video compression with removal of spatial and temporal redundancy in and between frames. However, compressed video is still rather large for applications such as surveillance system. In order to compress more, in video compression techniques, region-of-interest (ROI) and frames-of-interest (FOI) codings could be addressed to set high priority to ROI or FOI by allocating more bits than others. Normally, locations of related coefficients for the reconstruction of the ROI are calculated according to the filter lenghth. However, it is not efficient. In this paper a novel wavelet-based ROI and FOI scheme is proposed. Simulation results show excellent performance.