Scale effects on the supply–demand mismatches of ecosystem services in Hubei Province, China

Understanding the patterns, relationships, and driving forces between ecosystem services (ESs) supply–demand at multiple spatial scales can facilitate sustainable hierarchical management. However, the scale effects of ESs supply–demand mismatches were typically ignored, resulting in inadequate targeted ecosystem promotion policies. This study identified the supply–demand mismatches of the key ESs (grain production, water yield, carbon sequestration, and soil conservation) using the ecological supply–demand ratio and bivariate Moran's I at three grid and county scales from 2000 to 2020 in Hubei Province, China. Then the spatial regression models were applied to explore the driving forces of these mismatches. The major results revealed that (1) Hubei Province and counties located away from urban areas were self-sufficient in the ESs supply–demand, but the numbers of these counties declined over the twenty years. The characteristics of ESs mismatches in some patches may be obscured at coarser scales. (2) The directions of socioecological drivers were robust, but their intensities changed significantly at the four scales. The normalized difference vegetation index was the primary positive driver at the fine scale, while population, economy, and proportion of construction land became dominant drivers at coarser scales. Factors influencing mismatches were more diverse at the fine scale compared to the coarse scale. (3) Efficient strategies were scale-dependent and place-based. Different management units should clarify their responsibilities and strengthen linkages between upper and lower levels to achieve sustainable ESs development. At the provincial level, strengthening interregional cooperation and allocating surplus grain and water resources from the southwest to urban regions contributes to balancing regional ESs. At the county level, adopting region-specific strategies based on delineating ESs management zones is crucial. At finer management levels, incorporating micro-scale mismatch locations and natural background information can provide valuable guidance for localized ecological protection and restoration projects. The findings underscore the strengths of conducting assessments of ESs supply–demand at multiple scales, enabling different government levels to enhance effective ecosystem management and prevent misinformation

Incentive-compatibility, limited liability and costly liquidation in financial contracting

This paper studies a financial contracting problem where a firm privately observes its cash flow and faces a limited liability constraint. The firm's collateral is piecemeal divisible and can only be liquidated continuously by resorting to the service of a costly third party, typically associated with bankruptcy. In this situation, multi-class collateralized debt is optimal, in which the firm makes several debt-like promises with a seniority structure. The decision over continuous and piecemeal liquidation depends on both the cost of introducing the third party and the firm's funding need. Allowing the firm to refinance ex-post through surreptitious liquidation may reduce the firm's ex-ante payoff, consistent with covenants in debt contracts prohibiting the sale of assets

Three-Level Distributed Real-Time Monitoring of Construction near Underground Infrastructure Using a Combined Intelligent Method

With the rapid development of underground infrastructure and the uncertainty of its location, the possibility of damage due to nearby construction has increased. Thus, for the early warning of dangerous construction behaviors around underground facilities, this paper proposes a novel real-time distributed monitoring method with three levels, comprised of the terminal node, relay node, and server. Corresponding to these three monitoring levels, a vibration-based intelligent solution for recognizing the construction source is presented and compared with the traditional method. First, the blind source separation method was used to separate collected signals into a limited number of monitoring object sources; this helped to minimize the number of required classification categories and reduce the recognition uncertainty caused by signal mixing. Then, the mutual information (MI) method was used to select suitable vibration features, which were used as the input matrix for the resulting intelligent recognition. Finally, the construction behaviors were identified at the server based on returned features. Guided by this method, a sample dataset including pile-driving, train-operation, and environment-vibration signals was constructed and combined with a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) and a long short-term memory (LSTM) network. The effects of blind source separation and the MI method are discussed in depth in this paper

Incentive-compatibility, limited liability and costly liquidation in financial contracting

We provide several generalizations of Mailath's (1987) result that in games of asymmetric information with a continuum of types incentive compatibility plus separation implies differentiability of the informed agent's strategy. The new results extend the theory to classic models in finance such as Leland and Pyle (1977), Glosten (1989), and DeMarzo and Duffie (1999), that were not previously covered

Incentive-compatibility, limited liability and costly liquidation in financial contracting

We provide several generalizations of Mailath's (1987) result that in games of asymmetric information with a continuum of types incentive compatibility plus separation implies differentiability of the informed agent's strategy. The new results extend the theory to classic models in finance such as Leland and Pyle (1977), Glosten (1989), and DeMarzo and Duffie (1999), that were not previously covered

Incentive-compatibility, limited liability and costly liquidation in financial contracting

We characterize an optimal financial contract when the firm’s realized cashflow isunobservable to the investor and the firm’s collateral can only be liquidated partiallyby resorting to the services of a costly third party. An optimal contract may exhibita piecewise structure and vary with the liquidation cost and the firm’s actual liquidityshortage. Partial liquidation and wholesale transfers of collateral can coexist in anoptimal contract. In contrast to part of the literature, the incentive-compatibilityconstraint incorporates the firm’s limited liability, and may be slack at the optimum.Allowing the firm to overcome an ex-post liquidity shortage by borrowing surreptitiouslyfrom a third party may reduce the firm’s ex-ante expected utility

Incentive-compatibility, limited liability and costly liquidation in financial contracting

We characterize an optimal financial contract when the firm’s realized cashflow isunobservable to the investor and the firm’s collateral can only be liquidated partiallyby resorting to the services of a costly third party. An optimal contract may exhibita piecewise structure and vary with the liquidation cost and the firm’s actual liquidityshortage. Partial liquidation and wholesale transfers of collateral can coexist in anoptimal contract. In contrast to part of the literature, the incentive-compatibilityconstraint incorporates the firm’s limited liability, and may be slack at the optimum.Allowing the firm to overcome an ex-post liquidity shortage by borrowing surreptitiouslyfrom a third party may reduce the firm’s ex-ante expected utility

Measurement of Ecological Land Use/Cover Change and Its Varying Spatiotemporal Driving Forces by Statistical and Survival Analysis: A Case Study of Yingkou City, China

Detecting the spatial-temporal dynamics mechanisms and driving forces of ecological land change will offer a scientific basis for the sustainable utilization and ecological protection of regions undergoing rapid urbanization. This study examined the variations in ecological land from 2000 to 2015 in Yingkou by spatial statistical analysis with four land use/cover maps (2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015) interpreted by Landsat Thematic Mapper images and Google Earth maps. This study also measured the varying spatiotemporal drivers of typical ecological land use/cover types by survival analysis. The results indicated that ecological land was the main land use/cover type, and that the area decreased over time with a large transformation into agriculture and urban lands with significant temporal dynamics. The driving mechanisms became more complicated over time, and different time-dependent covariates significantly impacted the ecological land, forest land, and wetland losses. However, the distance from the city and different ways were the most important influencing spatiotemporal variables of the loss of ecological land, forest land, and wetlands over time. This study demonstrated the combined influence of a series of factors on ecological land loss. The spatial determinants and their impacts varied over time, especially the accessibility factors

βC1 protein encoded in geminivirus satellite concertedly targets MKK2 and MPK4 to counter host defense.

Plant viruses have evolved multiple strategies to overcome host defense to establish an infection. Here, we identified two components of a host mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascade, MKK2 and MPK4, as bona fide targets of the βC1 protein encoded by the betasatellite of tomato yellow leaf curl China virus (TYLCCNV). βC1 interacts with the kinase domain of MKK2 and inhibits its activity. In vivo, βC1 suppresses flagellin-induced MAPK activation and downstream responses by targeting MKK2. Furthermore, βC1 also interacts with MPK4 and inhibits its kinase activity. TYLCCNV infection induces the activation of the MAPK cascade, mutation in MKK2 or MPK4 renders the plant more susceptible to TYLCCNV, and can complement the lack of βC1. This work shows for the first time that a plant virus both activates and suppresses a MAPK cascade, and the discovery of the ability of βC1 to selectively interfere with the host MAPK activation illustrates a novel virulence function and counter-host defense mechanism of geminiviruses

5-Hydroxymethylome in Circulating Cell-free DNA as A Potential Biomarker for Non-small-cell Lung Cancer

Non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the most common type of lung cancer accounting for 85% of the cases, is often diagnosed at advanced stages owing to the lack of efficient early diagnostic tools. 5-Hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) signatures in circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) that carries the cancer-specific epigenetic patterns may represent the valuable biomarkers for discriminating tumor and healthy individuals, and thus could be potentially useful for NSCLC diagnosis. Here, we employed a sensitive and reliable method to map genome-wide 5hmC in the cfDNA of Chinese NSCLC patients and detected a significant 5hmC gain in both the gene bodies and promoter regions in the blood samples from tumor patients compared with healthy controls. Specifically, we identified six potential biomarkers from 66 patients and 67 healthy controls (mean decrease accuracy >3.2, P < 3.68E−19) using machine-learning-based tumor classifiers with high accuracy. Thus, the unique signature of 5hmC in tumor patient’s cfDNA identified in our study may provide valuable information in facilitating the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic modalities for NSCLC. Keywords: 5-Hydroxymethylcytosine, Lung cancer, Cell-free DNA, Biomarker, 5hmC-Sea