key issues
Recently Published Documents


TOTAL DOCUMENTS

8131
(FIVE YEARS 2342)

H-INDEX

106
(FIVE YEARS 16)

2022 ◽  

As trees age, they become ecologically richer and more full of life. The process of a tree, wood or forest becoming ‘ancient’, however defined, involves a vast and subtle web of relations – among the trees themselves, with other organisms, with the wider landscape and with human beings. A single tree can provide a vast array of habitats which are an integral part of the complex co-evolutionary relationships evolved over its lifetime and later during its sometimes long afterlife. From ancient times until today, trees and woods have inspired artists, writers and scientists; they have shaped cultures and reverberated through belief systems. Yet worldwide, forest cover has declined dramatically over the last 1,000 years, and what remains has been more or less altered from its original condition. Today, ‘virgin forests’ are only to be found at a few sites unreachable by humans, and even then they are affected by climate change, atmospheric pollution and species extinctions. The aim of this book is to help an understanding of the web of connections relating to ancient trees and woodlands, and to offer techniques to ensure effective conservation and sustainability of this precious resource. This book considers the key issues from a range of different aspects and varied geographical locations, beginning with fundamental concepts and reflecting on the strengths and limitations of the idea of ancient trees. Individual chapters then deal with cultural heritage, the archaeology of trees, landscape history, forest rights, tree management, saproxylic insects, the importance of dead wood, practical conservation and monitoring, biodiversity, and wood pasture among many other themes. Fresh perspectives are put forward from across Europe as far as Turkey, as well as Great Britain. Overall, given the urgent need to discover, understand, conserve and restore ancient woodlands and trees, this publication will raise awareness, foster enthusiasm and inspire wonder.


BJGP Open ◽  
2022 ◽  
pp. BJGPO.2021.0192
Author(s):  
Pradipti Verma ◽  
Robert Kerrison

BackgroundDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries implemented remote consultations in primary care to protect patients and staff from infection.AimThe aim of this review was to synthesise the literature exploring patients’ and physicians’ experiences with remote consultations in primary care, during the pandemic, with the further aim of informing their future delivery.Design & settingRapid literature review.MethodWe searched PubMed and PsychInfo for studies that explored patients’ and physicians’ experiences with remote consultations in primary care. To determine the eligibility of studies, we reviewed their titles and abstracts, prior to the full paper. We then extracted qualitative and quantitative data from those that were eligible, and synthesised the data using thematic and descriptive synthesis.ResultsA total of twenty-four studies were eligible for inclusion in the review. Most were performed in the United States of America (n=7, 29%) or Europe (n=7, 29%). Patient and physician experiences were categorised into perceived ‘advantages’ and ‘issues’. Key advantages experienced by patients and physicians included: ‘Reduced risk of COVID-19’ and ‘Increased convenience’, while key issues included: ‘a lack of confidence in / access to required technology’ and a ‘loss of non-verbal communication’, which exacerbated clinical decision making.ConclusionThis review identified a number of advantages and issues experienced by patients and physicians using remote consultations in primary care. The results suggest that, while remote consultations are more convenient, and protect patients and staff against COVID-19, they result in the loss of valuable non-verbal communication, and are not accessible to all.


2022 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kellie Vella ◽  
Tara Capel ◽  
Ashleigh Gonzalez ◽  
Anthony Truskinger ◽  
Susan Fuller ◽  
...  

Many organizations are attempting to scale ecoacoustic monitoring for conservation but are hampered at the stages of data management and analysis. We reviewed current ecoacoustic hardware, software, and standards, and conducted workshops with 23 participants across 10 organizations in Australia to learn about their current practices, and to identify key trends and challenges in their use of ecoacoustics data. We found no existing metadata schemas that contain enough ecoacoustics terms for current practice, and no standard approaches to annotation. There was a strong need for free acoustics data storage, discoverable learning resources, and interoperability with other ecological modeling tools. In parallel, there were tensions regarding intellectual property management, and siloed approaches to studying species within organizations across different regions and between organizations doing similar work. This research contributes directly to the development of an open ecoacoustics platform to enable the sharing of data, analyses, and tools for environmental conservation.


2022 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cong Chen ◽  
Jiaxin Liu ◽  
Pingfei Xu

AbstractOne of the key issues that affect the optimization effect of the efficient global optimization (EGO) algorithm is to determine the infill sampling criterion. Therefore, this paper compares the common efficient parallel infill sampling criterion. In addition, the pseudo-expected improvement (EI) criterion is introduced to minimizing the predicted (MP) criterion and the probability of improvement (PI) criterion, which helps to improve the problem of MP criterion that is easy to fall into local optimum. An adaptive distance function is proposed, which is used to avoid the concentration problem of update points and also improves the global search ability of the infill sampling criterion. Seven test problems were used to evaluate these criteria to verify the effectiveness of these methods. The results show that the pseudo method is also applicable to PI and MP criteria. The DMP and PEI criteria are the most efficient and robust. The actual engineering optimization problems can more directly show the effects of these methods. So these criteria are applied to the inverse design of RAE2822 airfoil. The results show the criterion including the MP has higher optimization efficiency.


2022 ◽  
Vol 2022 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Jinbo Chao ◽  
Chunhui Zhao ◽  
Fuzhi Zhang

Information security is one of the key issues in e-commerce Internet of Things (IoT) platform research. The collusive spamming groups on e-commerce platforms can write a large number of fake reviews over a period of time for the evaluated products, which seriously affect the purchase decision behaviors of consumers and destroy the fair competition environment among merchants. To address this problem, we propose a network embedding based approach to detect collusive spamming groups. First, we use the idea of a meta-graph to construct a heterogeneous information network based on the user review dataset. Second, we exploit the modified DeepWalk algorithm to learn the low-dimensional vector representations of user nodes in the heterogeneous information network and employ the clustering methods to obtain candidate spamming groups. Finally, we leverage an indicator weighting strategy to calculate the spamming score of each candidate group, and the top-k groups with high spamming scores are considered to be the collusive spamming groups. The experimental results on two real-world review datasets show that the overall detection performance of the proposed approach is much better than that of baseline methods.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fei Huang ◽  
Yu Hui ◽  
Ang Li ◽  
Rishalaiti Tayier ◽  
Dilinaer Yaermaimaiti ◽  
...  

Abstract Endemic arsenism is a major disease concern in China, with arsenic poisoning and induced potential lesions key issues on a global level. The liver is the main target organ where arsenic is metabolized; chronic exposure to arsenic-induced liver fibrosis is also closely related to autophagy, however, the exact mechanisms are remain unclear. In this study, we explored the effects of NaAsO2 on apoptosis and autophagy in human hepatic stellate cells(HSC). We established a fibrosis model in the HSC line, LX-2 which was exposed to NaAsO2 for 24h, 48h, and 72h. Cells were then transfected using an autophagy double-labeled RFP-GFP-LC3 adenoviral plasmid. Laser confocal microscopy indicated significant infection efficiencies and autophagy in LX-2. Flow cytometry was also used to investigate the effects of different NaAsO2 doses on apoptosis. NaAsO2 treatment upregulated the expression of autophagic markers, including microtubule-associated protein light chain A/B(LC3), ubiquitin binding protein(SQSTM-1/P62), autophagy related genes(ATGs), recombinant human autophagy effector protein (Beclin-1), and B cell lymphoma-2(BCL-2), but downregulated mammalian target of rapamycin(mTOR). Also, α-smooth muscle actin(α-SMA) expression was significantly upregulated in all NaAsO2 groups. Furthermore, mTOR silencing via 3-methyladenine(3-MA) altered NaAsO2 induced autophagy, LC3, Beclin-1, and SQSTM-1/P62 expression were all upregulated in both NaAsO2 and 3-MA-iAs groups. Altogether, NaAsO2 induced HSC autophagy via apoptotic pathways. 3-MA inhibited LX-2 activity and reduced NaAsO2-induced autophagy which may inhibit fibrosis progression caused by this toxin.


2022 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen L. D'Onofrio ◽  
Fan-Gang Zeng

The importance of tele-audiology has been heightened by the current COVID-19 pandemic. The present article reviews the current state of tele-audiology practice while presenting its limitations and opportunities. Specifically, this review addresses: (1) barriers to hearing healthcare, (2) tele-audiology services, and (3) tele-audiology key issues, challenges, and future directions. Accumulating evidence suggests that tele-audiology is a viable service delivery model, as remote hearing screening, diagnostic testing, intervention, and rehabilitation can each be completed reliably and effectively. The benefits of tele-audiology include improved access to care, increased follow-up rates, and reduced travel time and costs. Still, significant logistical and technical challenges remain from ensuring a secure and robust internet connection to controlling ambient noise and meeting all state and federal licensure and reimbursement regulations. Future research and development, especially advancements in artificial intelligence, will continue to increase tele-audiology acceptance, expand remote care, and ultimately improve patient satisfaction.


2022 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hong Zhang ◽  
Kasra Darabi ◽  
Narges Yaghoobi Nia ◽  
Anurag Krishna ◽  
Paramvir Ahlawat ◽  
...  

AbstractCost management and toxic waste generation are two key issues that must be addressed before the commercialization of perovskite optoelectronic devices. We report a groundbreaking strategy for eco-friendly and cost-effective fabrication of highly efficient perovskite solar cells. This strategy involves the usage of a high volatility co-solvent, which dilutes perovskite precursors to a lower concentration (<0.5 M) while retaining similar film quality and device performance as a high concentration (>1.4 M) solution. More than 70% of toxic waste and material cost can be reduced. Mechanistic insights reveal ultra-rapid evaporation of the co-solvent together with beneficial alteration of the precursor colloidal chemistry upon dilution with co-solvent, which in-situ studies and theoretical simulations confirm. The co-solvent tuned precursor colloidal properties also contribute to the enhancement of the stability of precursor solution, which extends its processing window thus minimizing the waste. This strategy is universally successful across different perovskite compositions, and scales from small devices to large-scale modules using industrial spin-coating, potentially easing the lab-to-fab translation of perovskite technologies.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document