Multiple Services Research Articles

Motor-manual release changes carbon distribution in soil and tree biomass pools in the short term

Despite offering multiple ecosystem services, such as their ability to sequester carbon (C), regenerating mixedwood boreal forests are often only managed to increase their coniferous part by controlling their competition, impacting the ecosystem C stocks. The aim of this study was to compare the short-term effect of motor-manual release treatments of variable intensities: broadcast brushing (brushing), release-from-below (RFB) and crop-tree release (CTR) on carbon stocks in soil (SOC) and live biomass (aboveground and root C stocks). The stands treated by brushing had twice as much SOC stocks than in the other stands, at the 5- to 10 cm depth. RFB treatment kept the largest aspen stems in the stands and retained enough total live biomass to compensate for the initial loss. Despite being similar in intensity, stands treated with RFB had more than twice the amount of live biomass than stands treated by brushing. Overall, total C stocks (SOC and live biomass) did not change between the stands but the distribution among the different C pools did, with the live biomass being the most impacted by the treatments. The design of the RFB treatment seemed promising to mitigate C loss during early forest operations while still controlling fast-growing competitors.

Evaluating Spherical Trees in the Urban Environment in Budapest (Hungary)

The world’s big cities, including Budapest, are becoming more crowded, with more and more people living in smaller and smaller spaces. There is an increasing demand for more green space and trees, with less vertical and less horizontal space. In addition, deteriorating environmental conditions are making it even more difficult for trees to grow and survive. Tree species in urban areas have multiple functions and high ecosystem services when in good health. Among taxa with diverse habits, sizes, crown shapes, growth vigor, longevity, urban tolerance, and canopy habit, our research aims to evaluate urban specimens of spherical species with smaller space requirements and sizes but have regular geometric crown shapes in public plantations in Budapest. In the restricted urban habitats, the city’s cadastral records include 4676 specimens with spherical crowns. Among the species examined, eight species with globular crowns (Acer platanoides ‘Globosum’, Catalpa bignonioides ‘Nana’, Celtis occidentalis ‘Globosa’, Fraxinus excelsior ‘Nana’, Fraxinus ornus ‘Mecsek’, Platanus × hispanica ‘Alphen’s Globe’, Prunus × eminens ‘Umbraculifera’ and Robinia pseudoacacia ‘Umbraculifera’) were evaluated in relation to age, health, wood type, crown size, and shade projection in order to show which species are or will be suitable in the future.

Township-Level Ecological Management for Enhanced Ecosystem Services in the Qinling Mountains

The Qinling Mountains, known for high forest cover and multiple ecosystem services (ES), present significant potential for advancing ecological management (EM) paradigms. However, existing studies on matching long-term ES sequences with governance units remain limited. By quantifying the assemblage and clustering patterns of ecosystems in the Qinling Mountains over forty years, this study was innovative in analyzing changes in long-term ecosystem interactions and the impact of spatialization drivers, enhancing the significance of administrative-scale adaptations for sustained conservation and EM strategies. The results showed an increasing trend in the multiple ES Landscape Index (MESLI) since 2000. Spatialized trend analysis showed that the MESLI increased by 58.8% in the east. Moreover, the potential of ES bundles (ESB) in matching ecological management scales was demonstrated. Three ESBs were identified at different administrative levels and townships were more responsive to ESB changes. The composite ESB 1 dominated at 50.2%, and ESB 2 exhibited an upward trend. Additionally, spatial analysis of long-term drivers revealed the underlying causes of local ES degradation. Climate change had region-wide impacts, while natural and anthropogenic factors contributed to localized degradation. These findings emphasize the critical role of spatiotemporal analysis in shaping township-level EM strategies in multi-ES regions, providing feasible guidance for accurately enhancing localized management.

Scaling Lattice Sieves across Multiple Machines

Lattice sieves are algorithms for finding short vectors in lattices. We present an implementation of two such sieves – known as "BGJ1" and "BDGL" in the literature - that scales across multiple servers (with varying success). This class of algorithms requires exponential memory which had put into question their ability to scale across sieving nodes. We discuss our architecture and optimisations and report experimental evidence of the efficiency of our approach.

The Role of FinOps in Large-Scale Cloud Cost Optimization

The rapid adoption of cloud computing in large enterprises has led to significant challenges in managing cloud costs, particularly as organizations scale their cloud environments across multiple services and providers. FinOps, or Financial Operations, has emerged as a crucial framework for addressing these challenges by fostering collaboration between finance, technology, and operations teams to optimize cloud expenditures. This discipline is designed to enhance financial accountability and visibility, ensuring that cloud resources are used efficiently and in alignment with business objectives. In large-scale cloud environments, where cloud resources are dynamic and often unpredictable, FinOps provides the necessary tools and processes for effective budgeting, cost allocation, and real-time monitoring. It enables organizations to identify inefficiencies, track spending trends, and implement best practices such as rightsizing, reserved instances, and automation. Furthermore, FinOps promotes a culture of shared responsibility for cloud costs, ensuring that both technical and financial teams work together to drive cost optimization across departments. This approach allows enterprises to reduce waste, improve forecasting accuracy, and scale their cloud usage in a financially sustainable manner. As cloud spending continues to rise, FinOps is positioned to play an increasingly pivotal role in large-scale cloud cost management. By offering a structured framework for financial transparency and cost control, FinOps helps organizations achieve a balance between optimizing cloud costs and maintaining flexibility, performance, and innovation in their cloud environments.

Conceptual service architecture to synchronise research data management services using machine-actionable data management plans

Researchers of all disciplines produce, share, and reuse data as part of everyday research. Most funders require them to manage and document their data using data management plans (DMPs). DMPs are often static documents that researchers create by answering questions in predefined templates at the beginning of the research and, therefore, may become outdated and obsolete as the project progresses. It is essential to keep the DMP up to date at all stages of the research lifecycle since numerous stakeholders and various services participate in data management that depend on information from them. In this paper, we propose a conceptual service architecture that uses machine-actionable data management plans to automate the exchange and synchronization of information between different semi-automated research data management (RDM) services acting on behalf of different stakeholders. To solve the stated problem, we analyze typical use cases in which the DMPs change and formulate requirements based on which we developed the conceptual architecture. We depict the designed architecture through a set of views, namely physical, development, logical, and process, using UML and BPMN representation that describe the processes required to synchronize DMP information among multiple services. We instantiate it by implementing a service that connects a data repository and a DMP tool. Thus, we evaluate to what extent the defined processes help in keeping DMP contents up to date and which criteria must be fulfilled to keep them highly automated. The result of the paper feeds into a larger discussion on streamlining interconnectivity and machine-actionability across planning, tracking, and assessing research phases. It also facilitates consensus building on enhancing the Research Data Alliance’s recommendation for machine-actionable DMPs.

Optimizing Thermal Comfort in Urban Squares of Hot-Humid Regions: A Case Study Considering Tree Growth, Species, and Planting Intervals

The worsening urban thermal environment has become a critical challenge in many cities. Trees, as vital components of urban green spaces, provide multiple ecosystem services, especially in improving the microclimate. However, limited studies address how morphological changes during tree growth influence their cooling benefits. This study combined the tree growth model with ENVI-met to simulate 27 scenarios in a subtropical urban square, considering three planting intervals, three urban tree species, and three growth stages to evaluate their daytime thermal impacts. The key findings include: (1) Tree size and planting intervals are more important than tree quantity in enhancing thermal comfort. (2) Reducing intervals by 2 m enhances cooling effects but minimally affects PET (physiological equivalent temperature). (3) Increasing DBH (diameter at breast height) significantly improves cooling. For every 10 cm increase in DBH, Michelia alba, Mangifera indica, and Ficus microcarpa L. f. reduced solar radiation by 19.54, 18.09, and 34.50 W/m2, and mean radiant temperature by 0.61 °C, 0.68 °C, and 1.35 °C, respectively, while decreasing PET by 0.23 °C, 0.23 °C, and 0.46 °C. These findings provide empirical evidence and practical recommendations for designing comfortable open spaces in subtropical cities.

Forest management interventions affect the trade-offs of multiple vegetation and soil ecosystem services in walnut forests in the Taihang Mountains, China

Forest management interventions affect the trade-offs of multiple vegetation and soil ecosystem services in walnut forests in the Taihang Mountains, China

Enhanced rock weathering boosts ecosystem multifunctionality via improving microbial networks complexity in a tropical forest plantation

Afforestation is expected to contribute to mitigate global change by promoting carbon stocks and multiple ecosystem services. However, the success of plantations may be limited by the availability of soil nutrients. This is especially critical for plantations in tropical ecosystems which are known to be nutrient poor ecosystems. Enhanced rock weathering (ERW) represents a promising strategy for improving soil health and carbon sequestration in such ecosystems.We added wollastonite skarn, a calcium silicate rock, to soils in a rubber plantation in Yunnan, China, as part of an ERW strategy aimed at promoting soil functioning and biodiversity. Statistical significance was determined using a linear mixed-effects model, with p-values indicating the level of significance.The addition of wollastonite skarn significantly enhanced key ecosystem functions related to carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous, silicon, biodiversity, and pathogen control. However, it did not significantly affect soil enzyme activity. Some of these responses to the addition of wollastonite skarn may be associated with an increase in soil pH.Microbial network complexity played a critical role in explaining the changes in ecosystem multifunctionality in response to ERW, through both direct and indirect pathways. Synthesis and applicationsOur findings suggest that ERW is a viable strategy for improving soil health and ecosystem resilience in tropical plantations, which are limited in nutrients. Thus, ERW has implications for carbon management and climate change mitigation.

Assembly of soil multitrophic community regulates multifunctionality via multifaceted biotic factors in subtropical ecosystems.

Soil biodiversity underpins multiple ecosystem functions and services essential for human well-being. Understanding the determinants of biodiversity-ecosystem function relationships (BEFr) is critical for the conservation and management of soil ecosystems. Community assembly processes determine community diversity and structure. However, there remains limited systematic research on how the assembly processes of multiple organismal groups affect soil ecosystem functions through their influence on biodiversity and species interactions. Here, we analyzed 331 soil samples from different land-use types (cropland, forest, and grassland) in the Qinling-Daba Mountains to investigate the drivers, assembly processes, and network stability of multitrophic organisms. High-throughput sequencing was used to examine archaea, bacteria, fungi, algae, protozoa, and invertebrates, while enzyme activity assays were used to assess ecosystem multifunctionality related to nutrient provisioning. Our results indicated that biotic factors contributed to 62.81-94.97% of α-diversity and 4.19-52.37% of β-diversity in multitrophic organisms, even when considering the influence of abiotic factors. Protozoan α- and β-diversity most significantly explained the α- and β-diversity of bacteria, fungi, algae, and invertebrates in soil ecosystems, serving as important indicators for assessing soil multifunctionality and ecosystem health. Furthermore, the assembly processes in prokaryotes were primarily governed by stochasticity (>50%), whereas those in eukaryotic groups were dominated by deterministic processes (<50%). Diversity and network stability increased with greater stochasticity in bacterial communities where stochastic processes predominated. Conversely, in fungal and protozoan communities dominated by deterministic processes, diversity and network stability decreased as deterministic processes intensified. Importantly, stochastic processes in soil multitrophic assembly enhanced ecosystem multifunctionality by increasing α-diversity, β-diversity, and network stability. These findings provide valuable insights into the regulation of BEFr by multitrophic assembly processes. Future research should further explore the role of these assembly processes in soil ecosystem functioning under land-use change scenarios.

Procedural Services: Modifiers to Report Site and Laterality

This article reviews the use of anatomical and laterality modifiers in conjunction with diagnostic, therapeutic, and surgical services, including the following: Anatomical site and laterality modifiersUse of anatomical and laterality modifiersReporting multiple servicesReporting bilateral services

Gaining agency? Pandemic governance and the Indian city

This article focuses on the place of local governance in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in Indian cities. It situates pandemic governance in the evolving debates around decentralisation and its various strands, such as participative governance, service delivery, institutional capacity and performance, proximity of institutions and representatives, and representative democracy. The pandemic was a crisis that placed multiple governance and service delivery challenges on the state. Local governments had to innovate and deliver on multiple fronts in a highly uncertain and challenging context. To what extent were these innovations linked to the past trajectories of local governance? What happened to these innovations after the pandemic? On the basis of case studies of two highly diverse cities, the article argues that pandemic governance was circumscribed by the past trajectories of local governance. Further, it seeks to ask whether the pandemic contributed to an awareness of the need for democratic decentralisation or whether it intensified ongoing trends towards de-democratisation.

Shared-Custodial Wallet for Multi-Party Crypto-Asset Management

Blockchain wallets are essential interfaces for managing digital assets and authorising transactions within blockchain systems. However, typical blockchain wallets often encounter performance, privacy and cost issues when utilising multi-signature schemes and face security vulnerabilities with single-signature methods. Additionally, while granting users complete control, non-custodial wallets introduce technical complexities and security risks. While custodial wallets can mitigate some of these challenges, they are primary targets for attacks due to the pooling of customer funds. To address these limitations, we propose a chain-agnostic Multi-Party Computation Threshold Signature Scheme (MPC-TSS) shared-custodial wallet with securely distributed key management and recovery. We apply this solution to create a wallet design for wealth managers and their clients, consolidating the management and access of multiple cryptocurrency tokens and services into a single application interface.

From local solutions to catchment-wide management: an investigation of upstream-downstream trade-offs when scaling out nature-based flood risk management

ABSTRACT Natural flood management (NFM) is a nature-based solution (NbS) widely recognised as an option to regulate flooding whilst providing multiple ecosystem services (ES) for society and the environment. To address climate change-enhanced flood risk, localised-NFM could be scaled out (expanded geographically to the catchment level). Implementing catchment-scale NFM will not only change landscape appearance but also give rise to potential ES trade-offs between the ‘providers’ of upstream land for flood regulation and the ‘beneficiaries’ of reduced flooding downstream. This paper presents a live case study of four river catchments in the UK, where a multi-agency-funded collaborative project is implementing integrated, catchment-scale NFM to work with downstream urban flood defences. Assessment of the views of upstream-downstream catchment communities is limited. Utilising five focus groups (n = 17 participants) we investigate the potential misalignments or synergies between catchment communities that will provision or benefit from NFM that could either derail or support scaling out initiatives. Results reveal that upstream and downstream participants hold strong affinities to contemporary rural landscape aesthetics, expressing sympathies with tasking farmers with delivering flood regulation ES when their traditional vocation is to deliver provisioning ES. Participants also exhibited resistance to landscape change caused by NFM. Nevertheless, acceptability of scaling out NFM increased when aesthetic preferences were considered, especially in provider regions, while beneficiaries prioritised more effective NFM measures over appearance. Inclusive discussion and knowledge exchange (e.g. personal stories, catchment visualisations) in the focus groups facilitated greater appreciation of whole catchment community values and understanding for scaling out NFM.

Opportunities of the MLS Systems forDeveloping the Real Estate Business (Based on the Example of California Regional Multiple Listing Service)

Opportunities of the MLS Systems forDeveloping the Real Estate Business (Based on the Example of California Regional Multiple Listing Service)

Determinants of the economic burden of ART on the Italian NHS: insights from the Lombardy region

With the rising spread of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART), it becomes imperative to understand the determinants of resource utilization in ART versus spontaneous pregnancies to enhance policies directed to pregnancy care. The focus of our study is to examine the costs associated with ART from the perspective of the Italian NHS and to investigate in depth the contributing social and clinical factors.Using the healthcare informative system of Lombardy, a Region of Northern Italy, we gathered individual-level information for a cohort of women who experienced either spontaneous pregnancies or pregnancies following ART from 2007 until 2020. The information covered multiple healthcare services, and we used a propensity score matching technique to match couples of ART/No ART women based on a comprehensive set of confounders. We then applied statistical tests and regression models to identify the impact of ART on the reported cost differences.Our cohort was composed of 44652 women and results revealed significantly higher costs for ART pregnancies, especially in terms of hospital admissions (additional 1611€, 95% CI 1558-1666) and drug prescriptions (additional 216 €, CI 95% 204-228) occurring before delivery. In-depth analysis showed for ART pregnancies, i) a higher likelihood of incurring expenses related to complications and ii) higher costs associated with two established clinical practices that lack scientific evidence supporting their efficacy.Our study sheds light on the complex interplay of clinical and social factors influencing the ART burden, emphasizing the importance of tailored support and evidence-based practices in optimizing outcomes and resource allocation.

MARINE RESTORATION AND BLUE ECONOMY IN THE EUROPEAN UNION AFTER THE APPROVAL OF THE NATURE RESTORATION REGULATION

Marine ecosystems have a unique value for the life on Earth as they provide multiple services ranging from carbon storage, oxygen generation, excess heat absorption to maintaining biodiversity and directly contributing to human wellbeing. However, these ecosystems are currently in a poor conservation condition with over one-third of mangrove ecosystems being deficient or seriously degraded, the disappearance of over half of all coastal wetlands or with the loss of 13.5% of the global hard coral in a decade. In the face of this situation, the preservation approach is no longer enough, but action is needed to recover these degraded or lost ecosystems. Until now, restoration tended to take place targeting specific interventions but without tracing connections between them. But the biodiversity crisis has evidenced the urgent need to act, and, in the last years, restoration has been integrated in the legislation, both at an international and at a European level. This resulted in the adoption of the supranational legally binding EU Nature Restoration Regulation (NRR) last summer. Nevertheless, the implementation of the NRR depends on the establishment of synergies with other programmes to be materialised. This article argues that for marine restoration, establishing connections with Blue Economy should be mainstreamed. This will be beneficial for the advancement of marine restoration, but most importantly will ultimately be key for achieving the Blue Economy targets: increased economic growth, better livelihoods and ocean health.

MultiOptForest: An interactive multi-objective optimization tool for forest planning and scenario analysis

MultiOptForest is an open-source software designed to simplify building and solving multi-objective optimization problems for forest planning. It aims to find the optimal portfolio of management regimes that balance the objectives regarding multiple forest ecosystem services and biodiversity. The software flexibly imports data, allowing for the use of a variety of forest simulator outputs. The user provides preference information through a user-friendly graphical interface, where the range of possible values for each objective is provided. MultiOptForest solves the optimization problem producing a set of Pareto optimal solutions, i.e., solutions where none of the objectives can be improved without compromising others. MultiOptForest is versatile enough to design a Pareto optimal forest plan for a small holding to assess management and the trade-off between multiple policy objectives impacting the future development of forests across regions and countries.

Carbon Removal Accounting for a Sustainable Future: Distributing CO2 Flows in Multiservice Systems

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) systems are an integral part of sustainable pathways limiting global warming to less than 2.0 °C. When the sole purpose of CDR is capturing and storing atmospheric CO2, carbon registries offer detailed procedures to calculate the carbon removal credits. However, the registries do not address how to distribute CO2 flows when CDR provides additional services. Standardized, transparent rules for distributing CO2 flows among CDR services are required for the formation of efficient private and public carbon markets. The lack of such rules could result in double counting if those reductions are allocated to more than one service, decreasing the trustworthiness of carbon removal credits or deterring the delivery of an additional low-carbon service, thus limiting the economic viability and deployment of CDR. We examine allocation rules in carbon registries and carbon accounting guidelines, including their life cycle assessment (LCA) principles. We evaluate physical (mass-based) and non-physical (economic) allocation methods using a generic CDR system and find both to be unworkable. We then develop a mass balance (MB) approach which can reliably allocate captured and stored carbon (CSC) between carbon removal credits and other services based on the value CO2 removal in those markets. This practical approach to allocation can be used in a transparent way to provide flexibility that would allow CDR services to capture the value of the multiple services they provide and, through this, promote the deployment of these sustainable alternatives.

Community out-of-hours palliative care - 'It's a patchwork of services': A qualitative study exploring care provision.

People in receipt of community palliative care usually receive care from a range of services and require access to care 24/7. However, care outside of normal working hours varies, with little understanding of which models of care are optimal. To identify and characterise current models of out-of-hours community palliative care in the UK and explore healthcare professionals' views on the barriers and facilitators to providing high quality community out-of-hours care. Exploratory qualitative study using semi-structured interviews, analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. We recruited 39 healthcare professionals from 20 geographic areas. Participants were service leads from community palliative care, district/community nursing and primary care providers. Four overarching models of out-of-hours palliative care identified, characterised by levels of integration between services, balance between generalist and specialist providers, availability of care and type of care provided (hands-on clinical care/ advisory care). Analysis of barriers and facilitators generated three themes: (1) 'It's never one service': challenges of coordination of care across multiple services, (2) Need for timely skilled management of distressing symptoms, (3) 'We're just plugging gaps': prioritising patient care within limited resources. Patterns within the themes varied across the four models. This study identifies key characteristics of four common models of out-of-hours palliative care, from the perspectives of professionals. Facilitators of high quality out-of-hours care include: a palliative care specific single point of access for patients; formal structures to integrate generalist/specialist services; and timely/skilled management of symptoms. We provide recommendations for a potential model incorporating these factors.