Search Results (9)

Artificial afforestation plays a critical role in ecological restoration, but its implementation involves multiple strategies—such as new afforestation, densification, and replacement afforestation. Long-term spatial and temporal identification of these tree planting program scenarios (TPPSs) is key to evaluating ecological restoration policies, yet existing pixel-based time series change detection methods still face challenges in discriminating these patterns on a large scale. To address these challenges, we propose CFDC, the first framework that synergistically integrates Continuous Change Detection (CCD) for temporal spectral trajectories and Focal Context (FC) analysis for spatial neighborhood context. A Spatiotemporal Coupling Index (STCI) is proposed to abstractly summarize the two modules, and a rule-based model classifies TPPSs by their unique temporal–spatial signatures. Implemented on Google Earth Engine (GEE) for Bayi District, Tibet, CFDC delivered overall accuracies of 76.0–82.5% from 2007 to 2022, with user’s accuracies for all TPPS types exceeding 75% in most years. Detected TPPS timelines coincide with documented ecological restoration projects within a ±1-year tolerance. Overall, CFDC offers a novel mechanism that fuses spatiotemporal features to effectively distinguish new afforestation, densification, and replacement afforestation scenarios, addressing the limitations of previous methods and enabling more accurate and scalable TPPS monitoring, thereby supporting scalable artificial forest management and ecological restoration planning. Full article

Multidrug-resistant (MDR) Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections represent a major public health concern and require comprehensive understanding of their genetic makeup. This study investigated the first occurrence of imipenemase (IMP)-carrying P. aeruginosa strains from Bulgaria. Whole genome sequencing identified a novel plasmid-mediated IMP-100 allele located in a a novel In4886 integron embedded in a putative Tn7700 transposon. Two other closely related chromosomal IMP variants, IMP-13 and IMP-84, were also detected. The IMP-producers were resistant to last-line drugs including cefiderocol (CFDC) (two out of three) and susceptible to colistin. The IMP-13/84 cassettes were situated in a In320 integron inserted in a Tn5051-like transposon as previously reported. Lastly, the p4782-IMP plasmid rendered the PA01 transformant resistant to CFDC, suggesting a transferable CFDC resistance. A variety of virulence factors associated with adhesion, antiphagocytosis, iron uptake, and quorum sensing, as well as secretion systems, toxins, and proteases, were confirmed, suggesting significant pathogenic potential consistent with the observed strong biofilm formation. The emergence of IMP-producing MDR P. aeruginosa is alarming as it remains unsusceptible even to last-generation drugs like CFDC. Newly detected IMP-100 was even located in a CFDC-resistant XDR strain. Full article

The mortality rates of patients infected with Acinetobacter baumannii who were treated with cefiderocol (CFDC) were not as favorable as those receiving the best available treatment for pulmonary and bloodstream infections. Previous studies showed that the presence of human serum albumin (HSA) or HSA-containing fluids, such as human serum (HS) or human pleural fluid (HPF), in the growth medium is correlated with a decrease in the expression of genes associated with high-affinity siderophore-mediated iron uptake systems. These observations may explain the complexities of the observed clinical performance of CFDC in pulmonary and bloodstream infections, because ferric siderophore transporters enhance the penetration of CFDC into the bacterial cell. The removal of HSA from HS or HPF resulted in a reduction in the minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) of CFDC. Concomitant with these results, an enhancement in the expression of TonB-dependent transporters known to play a crucial role in transporting iron was observed. In addition to inducing modifications in iron-uptake gene expression, the removal of HSA also decreased the expression of β-lactamases genes. Taken together, these observations suggest that environmental HSA has a role in the expression levels of select A. baumannii genes. Furthermore, the removal of iron from HSA had the same effect as the removal of HSA upon the expression of genes associated with iron uptake systems, also suggesting that at least one of the mechanisms by which HSA regulates the expression of certain genes is through acting as an iron source. Full article

Cefiderocol (CFDC) is a novel, broad-spectrum siderophore cephalosporin with potential activity against multi-drug (MDR) and extensively drug-resistant (XDR) Enterobacterales, including carbapenem-resistant strains. We assessed the in vitro susceptibility to CFDC of MDR, and XDR E. coli isolates derived from clinical samples of hospitalized patients. Disk diffusion (DD) and MIC (minimum inhibitory concentration) test strip (MTS) methods were used. The results were interpreted based on EUCAST (version 12.0 2022) recommendations. Among all E. coli isolates, 98 (94.2%) and 99 (95.2%) were susceptible to CFDC when the DD and MTS methods were used, respectively (MIC range: <0.016–4 µg/mL, MIC₅₀: 0.19 µg/mL, MIC₉₀: 0.75 µg/mL). With the DD and MTS methods, all (MIC range: 0.016–2 µg/mL, MIC₅₀: 0.19 µg/mL, MIC₉₀: 0.75 µg/mL) but three (96.6%) ESBL-positive isolates were susceptible to CFDC. Out of all the metallo-beta-lactamase-positive E. coli isolates (MIC range: 0.016–4 µg/mL, MIC₅₀: 0.5 µg/mL, MIC₉₀: 1.5 µg/mL), 16.7% were resistant to CFDC with the DD method, while 11.1% were resistant to CFDC when the MTS method was used. CFDC is a novel therapeutic option against MDR and XDR E. coli isolates and is promising in the treatment of carbapenem-resistant E. coli strains, also for those carrying Verona integron-encoded metallo-beta-lactamases, when new beta-lactam-beta-lactamase inhibitors cannot be used. Full article

Infections with carbapenem-resistant (CR) Gram-negative (GN) pathogens have increased in many countries worldwide, leaving only few therapeutic options. Cefiderocol (CFDC) is approved in Europe for the treatment of aerobic GN infections in adults with limited treatment options. This study evaluated the in vitro activity of cefiderocol and comparators against multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria including meropenem-resistant (MR) or pandrug-resistant (PR) GN clinical isolates from France and Belgium. The minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of CFDC were determined by broth microdilution, using iron-depleted cation-adjusted Mueller–Hinton broth, and were compared to those of 10 last-line antibiotics. The MICs were interpreted according to EUCAST and CLSI breakpoints, and in the absence of species-specific breakpoints, non-species-related pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic breakpoints were used. Among the 476 isolates tested, 322 were carbapenemase producers (CP), 58 non-CP-CRs, 52 intrinsically CR, 41 expanded-spectrum cephalosporin resistant and 5 were multi-susceptible. Susceptibility to CFDC was high using EUCAST breakpoints 81%, 99% and 84%, and was even higher using CLSI breakpoints to 93%, 100% and 88% for Enterobacterales, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Acinetobacter baumannii, respectively. Susceptibility to cefiderocol using non-species-related breakpoints for Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, Achromobacter xylosoxydans and Burkholderia cepacia, was 100%, 100% and 92.3%, respectively. The susceptibility rates were lower with the NDM producers, with values of 48% and 30% using EUCAST breakpoints and 81% and 50% using CLSI breakpoints for Enterobacterales and Acinetobacter spp, respectively. CFDC demonstrated high in vitro susceptibility rates against a wide range of MDR GN pathogens, including MR and PR isolates. Full article

Diaphorina citri is the mainly transmitting vector of the citrus huanglongbing pathogen, which causes severe losses in in the citrus industry. In this study, we isolated a new entomopathogenic fungus, identified as member of Cordyceps fumosorosea based on morphology and ITS sequence analysis. We named C. fumosorosea SCAU-CFDC01 and evaluated its pathogenicity against D. citri nymphs and adults by immersion under laboratory and greenhouse conditions. Results showed that SCAU-CFDC01 was most pathogenic to young nymphs, followed by old nymphs and adults. The LC₅₀ values of the fungus on nymphs and adults showed a declining trend over a 2–7-day period after inoculation. The LT₅₀ (lethal time for a certain concentration to cause 50% mortality) values also presented a decreasing trend along with increasing conidia concentrations. For the results on greenhouse experiments, when 3rd and 5th instar nymphs were inoculated with 1 × 10⁵ conidia mL⁻¹, the survival rate of nymphs were lower, and the emergence rate of adults and female longevity was significantly reduced compared with the control. However, there were no significant effects on sex ratio of adults and male longevity. Our results showed SCAU-CFDC01 was highly pathogenic to D. citri, and may promote mycoparasite development for biological control of D. citri. Full article

The traditional page-grained buffer manager in database systems has a low hit ratio when only a few tuples within a page are frequently accessed. To handle this issue, this paper proposes a new buffering scheme called the AMG-Buffer (Adaptive Multi-Grained Buffer). AMG-Buffer proposes to use two page buffers and a tuple buffer to organize the whole buffer. In this way, the AMG-Buffer can hold more hot tuples than a single page-grained buffer. Further, we notice that the tuple buffer may cause additional read I/Os when writing dirty tuples into disks. Thus, we introduce a new metric named clustering rate to quantify the hot-tuple rate in a page. The use of the tuple buffer is determined by the clustering rate, allowing the AMG-Buffer to adapt to different workloads. We conduct experiments on various workloads to compare the AMG-Buffer with several existing schemes, including LRU, LIRS, CFLRU, CFDC, and MG-Buffer. The results show that AMG-Buffer can significantly improve the hit ratio and reduce I/Os compared to its competitors. Moreover, the AMG-Buffer achieves the best performance on a dynamic workload as well as on a large data set, suggesting its adaptivity and scalability to changing workloads. Full article

Due to their frontline position to fight the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the professional and personal life of nurses was severely disrupted. To understand and describe their lived experiences and perceptions during the pandemic’s first wave in France, we interviewed 49 nurses, including 16 nursing students, and 48 of their family members from June to July 2020. Using a purposeful sampling, the semi-structured interviews were scripted according to Abric’s method with probing questions. The interview analysis led to the identification of six paradoxical perceptions concerning the pandemic’s consequences: the Silence Paradox, the Hero Paradox, the Workforce Paradox, the Learning Paradox, the Symbolic Exchange Paradox, and the Uncertainty Paradox. However, despite different experiences, the nurses perceived their frontline position both as a burden jeopardizing their safety and well-being and as a spotlight of nurses’ tough working conditions. Indeed, because they were in the frontline position, nurses and nursing students were psychologically vulnerable, even more so when they felt alone and inadequately protected. Besides, their families were vulnerable too, as they were also exposed to the consequences of the nurses’ frontline engagement. Thus, to preserve their safety and well-being, institutions should also provide them with better organizational support and inclusive leadership, without neglecting their families. Full article

This paper presents a freeway driving cycle (FDC) construction method based on traffic information. A float car collected different type of roads in California and we built a velocity fragment database. We selected a real freeway driving cycle (RFDC) and established the corresponding time traffic information tensor model by using the data in California Department of Transportation performance measure system (PeMS). The correlation of road velocity in the time dimension and spatial dimension are analyzed. According to the average velocity of road sections at different times, the kinematic fragments are stochastically selected in the velocity fragment database to construct a real-time FDC of each section. The comparison between construction freeway driving cycle (CFDC) and real freeway driving cycle (RFDC) show that the CFDC well reflects the RFDC characteristic parameters. Compared to its application in plug-in electric hybrid vehicle (PHEV) optimal energy management based on a dynamic programming (DP) algorithm, CFDC and RFDC fuel consumption are similar within approximately 5.09% error, and non-rush hour fuel economy is better than rush hour 3.51 (L/100 km) at non-rush hour, 4.29 (L/km) at rush hour)). Moreover, the fuel consumption ratio can be up to 13.17% in the same CFDC at non-rush hour. Full article