GROWTH RESPONSES OF SCOTS PINE (PINACEAE) TO ARTIFICIAL AND SAWFLY (HYMENOPTERA: DIPRIONIDAE) DEFOLIATION

1999 ◽  
Vol 131 (4) ◽  
pp. 455-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Päivi Lyytikäinen-Saarenmaa

AbstractThe influence of defoliation type (artificial versus natural), timing (early versus late), and intensity (25%, 50%, and 75% of needle mass removed) on leader growth of Scots pine, Pinus sylvestris (Linnaeus), was assessed for 2 years after treatment on an even-aged stand located in southeastern Finland. Trees were defoliated simultaneously, either artificially with a pair of scissors or naturally with larvae of Neodiprion sertifer (Geoffroy) and Diprion pini (Linnaeus) for the early- and late-season treatments, respectively. After 1 year, early-season artificial defoliation generally caused greater growth reduction than natural defoliation. Late-season defoliation yielded opposite results. Trees defoliated artificially in early-season treatments were significantly shorter than control trees irrespective of defoliation intensity, whereas those defoliated late in the season did not differ from controls, except at the highest intensity. Trees defoliated by sawflies, either early or late in the season, were significantly shorter than control trees only at the highest defoliation intensity. The pattern of growth loss in the second year appeared similar to that in the first year. The impact of defoliation was either prolonged neutral or negative, as no compensatory responses on height growth in Scots pine were observed. Timing of the treatment in relation to completion of leader growth, differences in defoliation types, alteration of the photosynthetic capacity due to biomass loss, and the functional role of plant parts defoliated may explain the results observed.

Trees ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Rocha ◽  
Steffen Holzkämper

Abstract Key message Extreme drought conditions, in addition to the urban heat island effect, modify the growth response and water storage dynamics of urban Scots pine trees in the Stockholm region. Abstract Changes in surface properties of the urban environments significantly impact the local microclimate. While urban trees are known for providing important thermal regulation, the impact of urban climate on tree growth remains relatively unexplored. The present study focuses on the climate response and growth dynamics of urban Scots pine trees (P. sylvestris) in comparison to their rural counterparts. High-resolution monitoring of stem-radius variations using automatic point dendrometers was performed during the growing seasons (April–October) of 2017 and 2018 in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2018, the region experienced a severe and long-lasting summer drought. In May and July, temperatures were up to 5 °C higher relative to the reference period (1981–2010), and precipitation sums were below the reference period for the entire growing season. Our results show that the urban climate primarily impacts the daily water storage dynamics by decreasing the radius change amplitudes and delaying the time of maximum stem-water replenishment and depletion. Under standard climatic conditions, the warmer climate (1.3 °C) at the urban sites had a positive impact on radial growth increment. Drought periods significantly impact the climate–growth relationships. Stem shrinkage intensifies during the day, and lower growth rates were registered, resulting in reduced annual growth. The high-resolution monitoring provided valuable insights into daily and seasonal patterns of Scots pine stem-radius variations, showing that growth responses to increasing temperature are mainly controlled by moisture availability and site-specific conditions.


2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 194-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Freda-Marie Hartung ◽  
Britta Renner

Humans are social animals; consequently, a lack of social ties affects individuals’ health negatively. However, the desire to belong differs between individuals, raising the question of whether individual differences in the need to belong moderate the impact of perceived social isolation on health. In the present study, 77 first-year university students rated their loneliness and health every 6 weeks for 18 weeks. Individual differences in the need to belong were found to moderate the relationship between loneliness and current health state. Specifically, lonely students with a high need to belong reported more days of illness than those with a low need to belong. In contrast, the strength of the need to belong had no effect on students who did not feel lonely. Thus, people who have a strong need to belong appear to suffer from loneliness and become ill more often, whereas people with a weak need to belong appear to stand loneliness better and are comparatively healthy. The study implies that social isolation does not impact all individuals identically; instead, the fit between the social situation and an individual’s need appears to be crucial for an individual’s functioning.


Author(s):  
А. М. Grebennikov ◽  
А. S. Frid ◽  
V. P. Belobrov ◽  
V. А. Isaev ◽  
V. М. Garmashоv ◽  
...  

The article assesses the relationships between the morphological properties of agrochernozems and yield of peas on the plots, experience with different methods of basic treatment (moldboard plowing at the depth of 20 - 22, 25 - 27 and 14 - 16 cm, moldboard plowing to a depth of 14 - 16 cm, combined midwater moldboard, mid-water subsurface, surface to a depth of 6 - 8 cm and zero tillage) is inherent in V.V. Dokuchaev Research Institute of Agriculture of the Central Black Earth strip, in the fall of 2014. The research was conducted in 2015 - 2016, with the application of mineral fertilizers (N60Р60К60) and unfertilized background. The highest pea yields in the fertilized as the background, and without the use of fertilizers was observed in dumping plowing and especially in the variant with deep moldboard plowing, which creates in comparison with other ways of handling the best conditions for the growth and development of peas. The lowest yield of pea was obtained with zero processing. Apparently legalistic migrational-mizelial agrochernozems the Central Chernozem zone of minimum tillage in the cultivation of peas are not effective, what is evident already in the first year after the laying of experience with different basic treatments. As shown by the results of applying multifactor analysis of variance studied the mapping properties of the soil can have the same significant impact on the yield of agricultural crops, as options for the field experiments aimed at assessing the impact of various treatments on yield.


Forests ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 943
Author(s):  
Katri Nissinen ◽  
Virpi Virjamo ◽  
Antti Kilpeläinen ◽  
Veli-Pekka Ikonen ◽  
Laura Pikkarainen ◽  
...  

We studied the growth responses of boreal Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.), Norway spruce (Picea abies L. Karst.) and silver birch (Betula pendula Roth) seedlings to simulated climate warming of an average of 1.3 °C over the growing season in a controlled field experiment in central Finland. We had six replicate plots for elevated and ambient temperature for each tree species. The warming treatment lasted for the conifers for three growing seasons and for the birch two growing seasons. We measured the height and diameter growth of all the seedlings weekly during the growing season. The shoot and root biomass and their ratios were measured annually in one-third of seedlings harvested from each plot in autumn. After two growing seasons, the height, diameter and shoot biomass were 45%, 19% and 41% larger in silver birch seedlings under the warming treatment, but the root biomass was clearly less affected. After three growing seasons, the height, diameter, shoot and root biomass were under a warming treatment 39, 47, 189 and 113% greater in Scots pine, but the root:shoot ratio 29% lower, respectively. The corresponding responses of Norway spruce to warming were clearly smaller (e.g., shoot biomass 46% higher under a warming treatment). As a comparison, the relative response of height growth in silver birch was after two growing seasons equal to that measured in Scots pine after three growing seasons. Based on our findings, especially silver birch seedlings, but also Scots pine seedlings benefitted from warming, which should be taken into account in forest regeneration in the future.


Author(s):  
Diarmaid Lane ◽  
Sheryl Sorby

AbstractIn recent years, there has been a surge in research in spatial thinking across the international community. We now know that spatial skills are malleable and that they are linked to success across multiple disciplines, most notably Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). While spatial skills have been examined by cognitive scientists in laboratory environments for decades, current research is examining how these skills can be developed in field-based environments. In this paper, we present findings from a study within a Technology Teacher preparation programme where we examined first-year students’ spatial skills on entry to university. We explain why it was necessary to embed a spatial skills intervention into Year 1 of the programme and we describe the impact that this had on students’ spatial scores and on academic performance. The findings from our study highlight a consistent gender gap in spatial scores at the start of the first-year with female students entering the Technology Teacher preparation programme at a lower base level than male students. We describe how we integrated spatial development activities into an existing course and how an improvement in spatial scores and overall course performance was observed. The paper concludes by discussing the long-term sustainability of integrating spatial interventions within teacher preparation programmes while also highlighting the importance of future research to examine spatial skills as a fundamental component of technological capability.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard Müller ◽  
Manuela Bombana ◽  
Monika Heinzel-Gutenbrenner ◽  
Nikolaus Kleindienst ◽  
Martin Bohus ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Mental disorders are related to high individual suffering and significant socio-economic burdens. However, it remains unclear to what extent self-reported mental distress is related to individuals’ days of incapacity to work and their medical costs. This study aims to investigate the impact of self-reported mental distress for specific and non-specific days of incapacity to work and specific and non-specific medical costs over a two-year span. Method Within a longitudinal research design, 2287 study participants’ mental distress was assessed using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). HADS scores were included as predictors in generalized linear models with a Tweedie distribution with log link function to predict participants’ days of incapacity to work and medical costs retrieved from their health insurance routine data during the following two-year period. Results Current mental distress was found to be significantly related to the number of specific days absent from work and medical costs. Compared to participants classified as no cases by the HADS (2.6 days), severe case participants showed 27.3-times as many specific days of incapacity to work in the first year (72 days) and 10.3-times as many days in the second year (44 days), and resulted in 11.4-times more medical costs in the first year (2272 EUR) and 6.2-times more in the second year (1319 EUR). The relationship of mental distress to non-specific days of incapacity to work and non-specific medical costs was also significant, but mainly driven from specific absent days and specific medical costs. Our results also indicate that the prevalence of presenteeism is considerably high: 42% of individuals continued to go to work despite severe mental distress. Conclusions Our results show that self-reported mental distress, assessed by the HADS, is highly related to the days of incapacity to work and medical costs in the two-year period. Reducing mental distress by improving preventive structures for at-risk populations and increasing access to evidence-based treatments for individuals with mental disorders might, therefore, pay for itself and could help to reduce public costs.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 296
Author(s):  
Imke Matthys ◽  
Justine Defreyne ◽  
Els Elaut ◽  
Alessandra Daphne Fisher ◽  
Baudewijntje P. C. Kreukels ◽  
...  

Improving transgender people’s quality of life (QoL) is the most important goal of gender-affirming care. Prospective changes in affect can influence QoL. We aim to assess the impact of initiating gender-affirming hormonal treatment (HT) on affect. In the European Network for the Investigation of Gender Incongruence (ENIGI) study, we prospectively collected data of 873 participants (451 transwomen (TW) and 422 transmen (TM)). At baseline, psychological questionnaires including the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) were administered. The PANAS, levels of sex steroids and physical changes were registered at each follow-up visit during a 3-year follow-up period, starting at the initiation of hormonal therapy. Data were analyzed cross-sectionally and prospectively. Over the first three months, we observed a decline in positive affect (PA) in both TM and TW. Thereafter, PA reached a steady state in TW, whereas in TM there was also a second decline at 18 months. In both TM and TW there was no persisting difference comparing baseline to the 36-months results. Concerning negative affect (NA), we observed a decline during the first year in TM, which sustained during the second year and was not different anymore at 36 months compared to baseline. In TW though, we did not find any change of NA during the entire follow-up. Even if some of these results show significant differences, they should be considered with caution, since there was no control group and the absolute differences are small. No association between affect and the level of sex steroids was observed. Baseline QoL and psychological burden are related to affect independently from gender but are not necessarily good predictors of the evolution of one’s affect during the gender-affirming process. Further research is necessary to investigate these preliminary results.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S551-S551
Author(s):  
Sneha Thatipelli ◽  
Chad Achenbach ◽  
Shannon Galvin

Abstract Background Integrase strand transfer inhibitors (InSTIs) as ART for HIV has been associated with clinically significant weight gain, in addition to the “return to health phenomenon”. Methods We conducted a cohort study on adults over 18 with HIV, who had baseline weights and an additional weight at least 6 months later. Individuals with malignancies, thyroid disorders, and disseminated tuberculosis or mycobacterium avium complex were excluded. To understand the impact of InSTIs on chronic vs. recently infected persons, we divided the cohort into four groups: (1) well-controlled on non-InSTI ART [WN] (2) well-controlled on InSTI ART [WI] (3) uncontrolled on non-InSTI ART [UN], and (4) uncontrolled on InSTI ART [UI]. Well-controlled persons (viral load < 2000) were proxies for chronic infection on long-term ART and uncontrolled for recently infected and initiated on ART. New diagnoses of diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and hypertension were determined by ICD10 codes. Participants with a weight change more than 10 kg in 6 months were excluded. Results 612 of the initial 910 participants in the cohort met the inclusion criteria. Comparing those who remained on the designated regimen throughout the study led to 86 WN, 153 WI, 166 UN, and 145 UI. Mean weight change at 6 months for WN was +0.22 kg (95% CI [-0.86, 1.3]), at 1 year was -0.86 kg (95% CI [-2.94, 1.22]), and at 2 years was +0.026 kg (95% CI [-2.347, 2.399]). For WI, mean weight change at 6 months was +0.21 kg (95% CI [-0.79, 1.21]), at 1 year was -0.50 kg (95% CI [-2.02, 1.04]), and at 2 years was +0.43 kg (95% CI [-1.35, 2.21]). UN gained weight until the first year (+1.74 kg at 6 mo (95% CI [0.24, 3.24]) and +3.84 kg at 1 year (95% CI [1.57, 6.11])), but plateaued at 2 years (+2.42 kg (95% CI [-0.44, 5.28])). At 6 months mean weight gain for UI was +0.78 kg (95% CI [-0.15, 1.71]), at 1 year was +2.33 kg (95% CI [1.02, 3.64]), and at 2 years was +3.04 kg (95% CI [1.2, 4.85]). WI had a higher incidence of diabetes (37% vs. 32%, p=0.40), hyperlipidemia (32% vs. 29%, p=0.66), and hypertension (34% vs. 26%, p=0.19) compared to WN. Conclusion InSTIs may confer a larger and more sustained weight gain among individuals in the first two years after ART initiation. Well controlled individuals did not have statistically significant weight change, but those on Insti-based ART had more metabolic diseases. Disclosures All Authors: No reported disclosures


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yayoi Shikama ◽  
Yasuko Chiba ◽  
Megumi Yasuda ◽  
Maham Stanyon ◽  
Koji Otani

Abstract Background Professional identity formation is nurtured through socialization, driven by interaction with role models, and supported through early clinical exposure (ECE) programmes. Non-healthcare professionals form part of the hospital community but are external to the culture of medicine, with their potential as role models unexplored. We employed text mining of student reflective assignments to explore the impact of socialization with non-healthcare professionals during ECE. Methods Assignments from 259 first-year medical students at Fukushima Medical University, Japan, underwent hierarchical cluster analysis. Interrelationships between the most-frequently-occurring words were analysed to create coding rules, which were applied to elucidate underlying themes. Results A shift in terms describing professional characteristics was detected, from “knowledge/skill” towards “pride [in one’s work]” and “responsibility”. Seven themes emerged: contribution of non-healthcare professionals, diversity of occupation, pride, responsibility, teamwork, patient care and gratitude. Students mentioning ‘contribution of non-healthcare professionals’ spoke of altruistic dedication and strong sense of purpose. These students expressed gratitude towards non-healthcare professionals for supporting clinical work, from a doctor’s perspective. Conclusion Socialization with non-healthcare professionals provides important insights into the hospital working environment and cultural working norms. Through role modelling altruism and responsibility, non-healthcare professionals positively influenced student professional identity formation, promoting self-conceptualisation as a doctor.


1994 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 200-204
Author(s):  
Walter G. Spunde
Keyword(s):  

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