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Benchmarking tree instance segmentation of terrestrial laser scanning point clouds
No full textTerrestrial laser scanning (TLS) has revolutionized forest measurement techniques by providing detailed three-dimensional (3D) point cloud data that captures the structure of forests and individual trees. Instance segmentation of point clouds, i.e. separating the forest into individual tree point clouds, remains a key challenge in automated processing due to complex, diverse tree structure and interactions. Furthermore, comparing segmentation performance is difficult, as new methods are often tested on new data with varying evaluation practices. Establishing a standardized benchmark and evaluation pipeline is key to consistent comparison and development of new algorithms and models. To this end, we manually segmented point clouds of four different forest types into almost 3000 individual trees spanning over 2.7 ha. We then evaluated five open-source segmentation methods, three theory-driven and two deep learning-based, using an evaluation pipeline with both plot and tree-scale metrics, independent of downstream application. Our results showed that a graph-based approach currently outperforms data-driven models for metrics such as plot-level F1-score and tree-level mean F1 score. Segmentation performance varied greatly across forest types, underscoring that instance segmentation remains difficult to automate and highlighting the need for diverse training and evaluation data. The benchmark dataset and evaluation code are publicly available to facilitate development and evaluation of generalized automated segmentation methods
Assessing epistemic trust in common mental health disorders: The clinical validation of ETMCQ, measurement invariance and control group comparison
No full textEpistemic trust is the capacity of an individual to assimilate new information and engage with their surroundings. This study focused on the Epistemic Trust, Mistrust, and Credulity Questionnaire (ETMCQ) among individuals seeking treatment for common mental health issues (N = 378) compared to a non-clinical group (N = 357). The study aimed to validate the ETMCQ clinically, assess its consistency across clinical groups and community controls, and explore the relationship between epistemic attitudes (trust, mistrust, and credulity), mentalizing, and mental health problems by comparing the two groups. The ETMCQ’s three-factor structure showed acceptable reliability and validity in the clinical setting. The measurement invariance analyses showed complete metric consistency but only partial scalar and strict consistency, with certain items not aligning across groups (Items 1, 3, 4 for scalar consistency; 2, 12, 14 for strict consistency). The results indicated that difficulties in mentalizing and increased levels of epistemic trust, mistrust, and credulity were linked to a greater likelihood of experiencing clinical distress. These outcomes underline the effectiveness of the ETMCQ in distinguishing between clinical and non-clinical individuals. However, researchers should use caution with the epistemic trust component of the questionnaire which appears to reflect a paradoxical epistemic attitude
Good News Is Not a Sufficient Condition for Motivated Reasoning
No full textPeople often receive good news that makes them feel better about the world around them,
or bad news that makes them feel worse about it. This paper studies how the valence of news
affects belief updating, absent functional and ego-relevant factors. Using experiments with over
1,900 participants and 6,000 observations, I test whether people engage in motivated reasoning
to overly trust good news versus bad news on valence-relevant issues like cancer survival rates,
others’ happiness, and infant mortality. There is a precisely-estimated null effect for motivated
reasoning towards good news. Modest effects, of one-third the effect of motivated reasoning in
politics and performance, can be ruled out. Complementary survey evidence shows that most
people expect good news to increase happiness, but do not expect it to systematically lead to
motivated reasoning. These results suggest that belief-based utility is not sufficient in leading
people to distort belief updating in order to favor those beliefs
Care as urban policy domain: framing Bogota's District Care System
No full textSince the COVID-19 pandemic, debates around care have gained unprecedented visibility in both scholarship and policy. This article argues that care is an emergent and contested urban policy domain—through which cities negotiate responsibilities, reshape spatial governance, and reconfigure institutional arrangements. Latin America has long been a site of feminist theorisation and urban policy innovation, yet the incorporation of care into urban governance remains under-theorised in spatial and institutional terms. We address this gap by analysing Bogotá's District Care System (SIDICU), a pioneering initiative launched during the pandemic that embeds care into the city's planning and service infrastructure. We locate Bogotá's experience within Colombia's decentralised planning model and its trajectory of urban policy experimentation, examining how SIDICU emerged from the convergence of feminist mobilisation, mayoral political will, and the policy opportunity created by the pandemic. Drawing on document analysis, interviews, and field observation conducted between 2022 and 2024, we propose an analytical framework linking relational contexts, institutional design, and spatial strategy to theorise care as a spatialised and politically generative urban policy domain. We argue that SIDICU enacts a territorial politics of care that transforms state presence, reframes infrastructure as reproductive, and inserts care into the urban planning apparatus. At the same time, it reveals tensions between the emancipatory aspirations of feminist actors and the rationalities of state-led policy delivery, as well as the fragility of care initiatives in changing political contexts. The article contributes to debates on feminist urbanism, policy mobility, and the transformation of urban governance in Latin America and beyond
CBRFormer: rendering technology-based transformer for refinement segmentation of bridge crack images
No full textHigh-resolution (HR) imaging devices are crucial for ensuring the safety and efficiency of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) during bridge crack detection tasks. However, due to the limitations of executing sampling discretely in traditional deep learning (DL) architectures and the constraints of GPU computing resources, it is challenging to perform fine-grained segmentation for HR crack images. To effectively address the challenge, the authors drew inspiration from the fine-grained rendering technology in the field of computer graphics (CG) and proposed the Crack Boundary Refinement Transformer (CBRFormer). Through three customized improvements, this architecture fully leverages the advantages of the rendering head in the refined representation of HR crack images. Firstly, a lightweight Transformer-based encoding architecture is designed, enabling the network to accurately capture crack backbone features from complex backgrounds. Subsequently, a boundary-guided branch based on super-resolution reconstruction technology is introduced to assist the network in capturing deep semantic information about crack boundary details. Additionally, two types of refined rendering point sampling methods are tailored for hard example areas during training and inference stages, ensuring that the prediction head used for refined rendering effectively focuses on ambiguous crack boundaries and tiny crack regions. Finally, the effectiveness of each component in the CBRFormer and the network's practicality are demonstrated through ablation and the field experiment. Compared to the current advanced HR segmentation architectures like CascadePSP and Segfix, the CBRFormer achieved average performance improvements of 2.16% in mean Intersection over Union (IoU), 7.80% in mean Edge Accuracy (mEA), and 2.46% in Dice coefficient, respectively. The utilization of the CBRFormer enables precise segmentation of HR crack images, providing inspectors with more comprehensive and accurate structural crack information, thereby offering technical support for structural safety assessment and maintenance decision-making
Validated self-administered screening tools to identify depression among young adults (18 to 25-years-old) in East Asia and the Pacific Region low-and-middle income countries (LMICs): A systematic review
Full text linkThis systematic review evaluates the validity, reliability, and diagnostic accuracy of self-administered screening tools for symptoms of depression among young adults (18 to 25 years old) in East Asia and the Pacific. A total of 22 studies with 24,069 participants were included, covering both clinical and non-clinical populations. Nine self-administered screening tools were identified, with Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), Patient Health Questionnaire-2 PHQ-2, and Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression (CES-D) being the most frequently studied. PHQ-9 demonstrated moderate to excellent internal consistency reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha ranging from 0.67 to 0.92, and a pooled AUC of 0.86, indicating strong screening accuracy. PHQ-2, showed an Area Under the Curve (AUC) of 0.85, high sensitivity (0.96), and moderate specificity (0.80). CES-D exhibited an AUC of 0.87, good sensitivity (0.81), and specificity (0.78), with high heterogeneity (I² = 74.70 %–86.69 %). The meta-analysis revealed substantial variability in sensitivity and specificity across settings, with differences in study methodologies, cutoff scores, and reference standards contributing to high heterogeneity. Additionally, 95.5 % of studies had a moderate risk of bias in patient selection, affecting generalizability. Despite these limitations, PHQ-9, PHQ-2, and CES-D remain valuable tools for identifying symptoms of depression among young adults. The accessibility, ease of administration, and strong psychometric properties of these tests support their continued use in resource-limited settings, though standardization of methodologies and expanded regional validation are needed to improve screening accuracy and applicability
Controllable deformation: A 4D-printing simulation framework for porosity-driven hygromorphic bilayer structure
No full textAnalysing the effects of perceived travel options and attitudes on multimodality
No full textPeople have different types of multimodal travel patterns. However, most studies exploring people's multimodal travel patterns generally do not distinguish between trip purposes. In addition, limited studies have explored how people's travel options (i.e. travel constraints and opportunities) influence their multimodal travel choices. Only a few have investigated how attitudes and perceived travel options shape multimodality travel patterns. Therefore, this study aims to explore the impacts of people's perceived travel options and attitudes on multimodality across mandatory and discretionary trips using Changsha as a case study. Factor analysis and binary logistic regression are employed to explore the association with different multimodal groups. The results show that high-level multimodality groups tend to have limited options, using multimodal trips to overcome travel constraints and meet their travel demands. Higher income levels are not an indicator of higher multimodality; instead, people are affected more by other personal characteristics and contextual factors. Positive attitudes towards multimodality can promote multimodal travel even in the absence of sufficient transport supply and convenient accessibility. Therefore, improving access to public transport, transfer connections and ticketing policies can offer ways of helping those with various travel captivities. Our study provides recommendations for policymakers to develop transport policies that target specific population groups and enhance their multimodal mobility
Revisiting (neo)liberalism in land policy: Trends in property rights regimes across Europe
Full text linkProperty rights regimes play an important role in shaping land policy and planning policy. This paper presents the findings of comparative research on property rights regimes across Europe. Based on the survey responses of experts from 24 countries, the analysis offers a deeper understanding of various property rights regimes, and their evolution during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The paper analyses property rights regimes in various socio-economic, political and historical contexts and explores the foundational philosophical understanding of property rights in a range of countries. It highlights the diversity of approaches employed in the protection and regulation of property rights and unveils the libertarian character of the changes which occurred in liberal Western European regimes from the 1980s onward, as well as the libertarian foundations of the post-communist regimes put in place in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989. The paper therefore highlights how so-called ‘neoliberal’ approaches to land policy and planning policy, reflect a turn towards a libertarian understanding of property rights. The hope is that this understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of property rights regimes across Europe could facilitate a more informed debate around contemporary land policy and planning policy