Surface bypass as a means of protecting downstream-migrating fish: lack of standardised evaluation criteria complicates evaluation of efficacy

2018 ◽  
Vol 69 (12) ◽  
pp. 1882 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena-Maria Klopries ◽  
Zhiqun Daniel Deng ◽  
Theresa U. Lachmann ◽  
Holger Schüttrumpf ◽  
Bradly A. Trumbo

Surface bypasses are downstream migration structures that can help reduce hydropower-induced damage to migrating fish. However, no comprehensive design concept that facilitates good surface bypass performance for a wide range of sites and species is available. This is why fish-passage efficiencies at recently built bypass structures vary widely between 0% and up to 97%. We reviewed 50 surface bypass performance studies and existing guidelines for salmonids, eels and potamodromous species to identify crucial design criteria for surface bypasses employed in North America, Europe and Australia. Two-tailed Pearson correlation of bypass efficiency and bypass design criteria shows that bypass entrance area (r=0.3300, P=0.0036) and proportion of inflow to the bypass (r=0.3741, P=0.0032) are the most influential parameters on bypass efficiency. However, other parameters such as guiding structures (P=0.2181, ordinary Student’s t-test) and trash-rack spacing (r=–0.1483, P=0.3951, Spearman correlation), although not statistically significant, have been shown to have an effect on efficiency in some studies. The use of different performance criteria and efficiency definitions for bypass evaluation hampers direct comparison of studies and, therefore, deduction of design criteria. To enable meta-analyses and improve bypass design considerations, we suggest a list of standardised performance parameters for bypasses that should be considered in future bypass-performance studies.

Author(s):  
Novikova ◽  
SP Romanenko ◽  
MA Lobkis

Introduction: In the Russian Federation, much attention is traditionally paid to military education and training. A special place in its structure is occupied by the system of cadet classes and corps. A distinctive feature of the learning mode in such institutions is a combined effect of standard and specific factors of indoor school environment and intensive physical activity owing to sports, applied military and drill training. No evidence-based methods of establishing nutrient requirements of children in modern conditions of cadet corps have been developed so far, which predetermines the potential of transforming nutrition from a health-saving factor into a health risk factor. Our objective was to provide a scientific substantiation of the model of healthy nutrition for students of cadet-type educational establishments. Methods: The statistical significance of the correlation was evaluated using the Student’s t-test. Correlation and regression analyses were used to assess cause-and-effect relationships. The Pearson correlation coefficient (rxy) was used as an indicator of the strength of the relationship between quantitative indicators x and y, both having a normal distribution. Correlation coefficient (rxy) values were interpreted in accordance with the Chaddock scale. For the purpose of statistical modeling, the method of multiple linear regressions was used. Conclusions: We substantiated the innovative model of organizing healthy nutrition for students of cadet-type schools based on the correlation and regression analyses with determination of statistical significance of the studied characteristics. Its efficiency indicators include an increase in average functional capabilities of students by more than 10 % and a reduction in the probability of developmental disorders by more than 25 %.


Author(s):  
Munazza Fatima ◽  
Kara J. O’Keefe ◽  
Wenjia Wei ◽  
Sana Arshad ◽  
Oliver Gruebner

The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, China in late December 2019 became the harbinger of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, geospatial techniques, such as modeling and mapping, have helped in disease pattern detection. Here we provide a synthesis of the techniques and associated findings in relation to COVID-19 and its geographic, environmental, and socio-demographic characteristics, following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) methodology for scoping reviews. We searched PubMed for relevant articles and discussed the results separately for three categories: disease mapping, exposure mapping, and spatial epidemiological modeling. The majority of studies were ecological in nature and primarily carried out in China, Brazil, and the USA. The most common spatial methods used were clustering, hotspot analysis, space-time scan statistic, and regression modeling. Researchers used a wide range of spatial and statistical software to apply spatial analysis for the purpose of disease mapping, exposure mapping, and epidemiological modeling. Factors limiting the use of these spatial techniques were the unavailability and bias of COVID-19 data—along with scarcity of fine-scaled demographic, environmental, and socio-economic data—which restrained most of the researchers from exploring causal relationships of potential influencing factors of COVID-19. Our review identified geospatial analysis in COVID-19 research and highlighted current trends and research gaps. Since most of the studies found centered on Asia and the Americas, there is a need for more comparable spatial studies using geographically fine-scaled data in other areas of the world.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Spyridoula Vazou ◽  
Collin A. Webster ◽  
Gregory Stewart ◽  
Priscila Candal ◽  
Cate A. Egan ◽  
...  

Abstract Background/Objective Movement integration (MI) involves infusing physical activity into normal classroom time. A wide range of MI interventions have succeeded in increasing children’s participation in physical activity. However, no previous research has attempted to unpack the various MI intervention approaches. Therefore, this study aimed to systematically review, qualitatively analyze, and develop a typology of MI interventions conducted in primary/elementary school settings. Subjects/Methods Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines were followed to identify published MI interventions. Irrelevant records were removed first by title, then by abstract, and finally by full texts of articles, resulting in 72 studies being retained for qualitative analysis. A deductive approach, using previous MI research as an a priori analytic framework, alongside inductive techniques were used to analyze the data. Results Four types of MI interventions were identified and labeled based on their design: student-driven, teacher-driven, researcher-teacher collaboration, and researcher-driven. Each type was further refined based on the MI strategies (movement breaks, active lessons, other: opening activity, transitions, reward, awareness), the level of intrapersonal and institutional support (training, resources), and the delivery (dose, intensity, type, fidelity). Nearly half of the interventions were researcher-driven, which may undermine the sustainability of MI as a routine practice by teachers in schools. An imbalance is evident on the MI strategies, with transitions, opening and awareness activities, and rewards being limitedly studied. Delivery should be further examined with a strong focus on reporting fidelity. Conclusions There are distinct approaches that are most often employed to promote the use of MI and these approaches may often lack a minimum standard for reporting MI intervention details. This typology may be useful to effectively translate the evidence into practice in real-life settings to better understand and study MI interventions.


2012 ◽  
Vol 58 (12) ◽  
pp. 1703-1710 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yeo-Min Yun ◽  
Julianne Cook Botelho ◽  
Donald W Chandler ◽  
Alex Katayev ◽  
William L Roberts ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND Testosterone measurements that are accurate, reliable, and comparable across methodologies are crucial to improving public health. Current US Food and Drug Administration–cleared testosterone assays have important limitations. We sought to develop assay performance requirements on the basis of biological variation that allow physiologic changes to be distinguished from assay analytical errors. METHODS From literature review, the technical advisory subcommittee of the Partnership for the Accurate Testing of Hormones compiled a database of articles regarding analytical and biological variability of testosterone. These data, mostly from direct immunoassay-based methodologies, were used to specify analytical performance goals derived from within- and between-person variability of testosterone. RESULTS The allowable limits of desirable imprecision and bias on the basis of currently available biological variation data were 5.3% and 6.4%, respectively. The total error goal was 16.7%. From recent College of American Pathologists proficiency survey data, most currently available testosterone assays missed these analytical performance goals by wide margins. Data from the recently established CDC Hormone Standardization program showed that although the overall mean bias of selected certified assays was within 6.4%, individual sample measurements could show large variability in terms of precision, bias, and total error. CONCLUSIONS Because accurate measurement of testosterone across a wide range of concentrations [approximately 2–2000 ng/dL (0.069–69.4 nmol/L)] is important, we recommend using available data on biological variation to calculate performance criteria across the full range of expected values. Additional studies should be conducted to obtain biological variation data on testosterone from women and children, and revisions should be made to the analytical goals for these patient populations.


Synlett ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (04) ◽  
pp. 433-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Denmark ◽  
Dietrich Böse

The development of catalytic, enantioselective halofunctionalizations of unactivated alkenes has made significant progress in recent years. However, the identification of generally applicable catalysts for wide range of substrates has yet to be realized. A detailed understanding of the reaction mechanism is essential to guide the formulation of a truly general catalyst. Herein, we present our investigations on the enantiodetermining step of a Lewis base catalyzed bromocycloetherification that provides important insights and design criteria.


2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daiany Borghetti Valer ◽  
Marinês Aires ◽  
Fernanda Lais Fengler ◽  
Lisiane Manganelli Girardi Paskulin

OBJECTIVE: to adapt and validate the Caregiver Burden Inventory for use with caregivers of older adults in Brazil.METHOD: methodological study involving initial translation, synthesis of translations, back translation, expert committee review, pre-testing, submission of the final version to the original authors, and assessment of the inventory's psychometric properties. The inventory assesses five dimensions of caregiver burden: time-dependence, developmental, physical, social and emotional dimensions.RESULTS: a total of 120 family caregivers took part in the study. All care-receivers were older adults dependent on assistance to perform activities of daily living, and lived in the central region of the city of Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil. Cronbach's alpha value for the inventory was 0.936, and the Pearson correlation coefficient for the relationship between the scores obtained on the Caregiver Burden Inventory and the Burden Interview was 0.814. The intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.941, and the value of Student's T-test comparing test and retest scores was 0.792.CONCLUSION: the instrument presented adequate reliability and the suitability of its items and factors was confirmed in this study.


2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Weiland ◽  
Ina Dehnhard

See video of the presentation.The benefits of making research data permanently accessible through data archives is widely recognized: costs can be reduced by reusing existing data, research results can be compared and validated with results from archived studies, fraud can be more easily detected, and meta-analyses can be conducted. Apart from that, authors may gain recognition and reputation for producing the datasets. Since 2003, the accredited research data center PsychData (part of the Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information in Trier, Germany) documents and archives research data from all areas of psychology and related fields. In the beginning, the main focus was on datasets that provide a high potential for reuse, e.g. longitudinal studies, large-scale cross sectional studies, or studies that were conducted during historically unique conditions. Presently, more and more journal publishers and project funding agencies require researchers to archive their data and make them accessible for the scientific community. Therefore, PsychData also has to serve this need.In this presentation we report on our experiences in operating a discipline-specific research data archive in a domain where data sharing is met with considerable resistance. We will focus on the challenges for data sharing and data reuse in psychology, e.g.large amount of domain-specific knowledge necessary for data curationhigh costs for documenting the data because of a wide range on non-standardized measuressmall teams and little established infrastructures compared with the "big data" disciplinesstudies in psychology not designed for reuse (in contrast to the social sciences)data protectionresistance to sharing dataAt the end of the presentation, we will provide a brief outlook on DataWiz, a new project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). In this project, tools will be developed to support researchers in documenting their data during the research phase.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tie-Ning Zhang ◽  
Qi-Jun Wu ◽  
Ya-Shu Liu ◽  
Jia-Le Lv ◽  
Hui Sun ◽  
...  

Background: The etiology of congenital heart disease (CHD) has been extensively studied in the past decades. Therefore, it is critical to clarify clear hierarchies of evidence between types of environmental factors and CHD.Methods: Electronic searches in PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane database were conducted from inception to April 20, 2020 for meta-analyses investigating the aforementioned topic.Results: Overall, 41 studies including a total of 165 meta-analyses of different environmental factors and CHD were examined, covering a wide range of risk factors. The summary random effects estimates were significant at P < 0.05 in 63 meta-analyses (38%), and 15 associations (9%) were significant at P < 10−6. Of these meta-analyses, eventually one risk factor (severe obesity; relative risk: 1.38, 95% confidence interval: 1.30–1.47) had significant summary associations at P < 10−6, included more than 1,000 cases, had 95% prediction intervals excluding the null value, and were not suggestive of large heterogeneity (I2 < 50%), small-study effects (P-value for Egger's test > 0.10), or excess significance (P > 0.10). Eight associations (5%) (including maternal lithium exposure, maternal obesity, maternal alcohol consumption, and maternal fever) had results that were significant at P < 10−6, included more than 1,000 cases, and had 95% prediction intervals excluding the null value (highly suggestive).Conclusion: This umbrella review shows that many environmental factors have substantial evidence in relation to the risk of developing CHD. More and better-designed studies are needed to establish robust evidence between environmental factors and CHD.Systematic Review Registration: [PROSPERO], identifier [CRD42020193381].


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Fellows Yates ◽  
Aida Andrades Valtueña ◽  
Ashild J. Vågene ◽  
Becky Cribdon ◽  
Irina M. Velsko ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTAncient DNA and RNA are valuable data sources for a wide range of disciplines. Within the field of ancient metagenomics, the number of published genetic datasets has risen dramatically in recent years, and tracking this data for reuse is particularly important for large-scale ecological and evolutionary studies of individual microbial taxa, microbial communities, and metagenomic assemblages. AncientMetagenomeDir (archived at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3980833) is a collection of indices of published genetic data deriving from ancient microbial samples that provides basic, standardised metadata and accession numbers to allow rapid data retrieval from online repositories. These collections are community-curated and span multiple sub-disciplines in order to ensure adequate breadth and consensus in metadata definitions, as well as longevity of the database. Internal guidelines and automated checks to facilitate compatibility with established sequence-read archives and term-ontologies ensure consistency and interoperability for future meta-analyses. This collection will also assist in standardising metadata reporting for future ancient metagenomic studies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (3(SI)) ◽  
pp. 824-831
Author(s):  
A.K. Ahmad ◽  
◽  
A. Hafizah ◽  
S.O. Sharifah Aisyah ◽  
◽  
...  

Aim: This study aims to determine Chironomidae diversity and distribution in three small rivers at Cameron Highlands in relation to their response to water quality conditions. Methodology: Fifteen sites from three rivers (Palas River, Pauh River and Bertam River) were chosen for water quality measurements and Chironomidae sampling. Water quality was analysed following APHA standard methods and chironomid was identified to genus level. The rivers were classified based on Malaysian’s Water Quality Index (WQI) and macroinvertebrates diversity and distribution was analysed using diversity indices. Comparison between sites and river was undertaken using one-way ANOVA and chironomid appearance in relation to water quality was evaluated using Pearson correlation test. Results: Chironomidae (Order: Diptera) distribution at high altitude rivers in Malaysia is not well documented although this group of insect has a wide range of distribution in tropical region. Based on Malaysian water quality index (WQI), result shows all rivers were in Class I. Although still in Class I, Bertam River has slight lower water quality due to higher ammoniacal nitrogen and total suspended solids. The diversity indices also demonstrate that Bertam Rivers was in stress conditions, and other two were in moderate conditions. Three subfamilies (Chironominae, Orthocladiinae and Tanypodinae) were recorded, which comprises of 1963 individuals. Tvetenia (Subfamily: Orthocladiinae) was the most dominant but only dominated Palas River and Pauh River. Another genus from Orthocladiinae (Crocotopus and Rheocrocotopus) also recorded dominant only in Palas River and Pauh River, but lesser in Bertam River. Only Polypedilum (Subfamily: Chironominae) which was second highest recorded, dominated in all rivers, even highest in Bertam River. Amongst dominant genus, only Polypedilum was found dominant in all rivers, others were only dominating Palas River and Pauh River only. Interpretation: This findings exhibit wide range of adaptations and potential use of Polypedilum as biological indicator. Due to availability of incomplete keys, identification to species level cannot be undertaken. However, this study reveals thirteen different sub-group of Polypedilum based mouthpart organs, which represent different species for tropical ecosystems.


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