614 Results Found

(1) Background: Mongolian oak secondary forest is widely distributed in the northeast of China, and most of these forests are formed after the overcutting of broad-leaved Pinus koraiensis mixed forest. Most of the forest productivity is low and the e...

Quercus mongolica secondary forest is widely distributed in the northeast of China, but it usually has low productivity, unstable structure, poor health, and low biodiversity. Diameter is a tree variable that is commonly used for forest growth measur...

As a core content of forest management, the height to crown base (HCB) model can provide a theoretical basis for the study of forest growth and yield. In this study, 8364 trees of Larix olgensis within 118 sample plots from 11 sites were measured to...

As more land area than ever is covered with impermeable surfaces causing problems in the environment, urban trees are effective not only in mitigating environmental problems in the built environment and reducing buildings’ energy use, but also...

Height-diameter (H-D) models are important tools for forest management practice. Sandy Mongolian pine plantations (Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica) are a major component of the Three-North Afforestation Shelterbelt in Northern China. However, few H-D...

Background: Ensemble tree-based models such as Xgboost are highly prognostic in cardiovascular medicine, as measured by the Clinical Effectiveness Metric (CEM). However, their ability to handle correlated data, such as hospital-level effects, is limi...

Agroforestry has large potential for carbon (C) sequestration while providing many economical, social, and ecological benefits via its diversified products. Airborne lidar is considered as the most accurate technology for mapping aboveground biomass...

Forest carbon sinks are vital in mitigating climate change, making it crucial to have highly accurate estimates of forest carbon stocks. A method that accounts for the spatial characteristics of inventory samples is necessary for the long-term estima...

Taking 1735 Pinus koraiensis knots in Mengjiagang Forest Farm plantations in Jiamusi City, Heilongjiang Province as the research object, a dynamic tree height, effective crown height, and crown base height growth model was developed using 349 screene...

Height to crown base (HCB) is an important variable used as a predictor of forest growth and yield. This study developed a nonlinear, mixed-effects HCB model through inclusion of plot-level random effects using data from 29 sample plots distributed a...

The level of clustering and the adjustment by cluster-robust standard errors have yet to be widely considered and reported in cross-sectional studies of tuberculosis (TB) in prisons. In two cross-sectional studies of people deprived of liberty (PDL)...

Individual tree growth and yield models precisely describe tree growth irrespective of stand complexity and are capable of simulating various silvicultural alternatives in the stands with diverse structure, species composition, and management history...

Crown size estimations are of vital importance in forest management practice. This paper presents nonlinear models that were developed for crown width prediction of Black pine (Pinus nigra Arn.) natural, pure, even-aged stands in Olympus Mountain, ce...

Background: Orientation discrimination tasks provide a core measure of visual sensitivity and are widely used to study how perceptual performance varies with stimulus uncertainty and visual field location. Here, we examined how external noise, retina...

Background and Objectives: Analgesia and sedation are a major challenge in pediatric intensive care. The COMFORT-B scale and the Bispectral Index (BIS) are commonly used to assess the degree of sedation. The aim of this study was to investigate the c...

A widely used method for estimating fine scale long-term spatial variation in air pollution, especially for epidemiology studies, is land use regression (LUR) modeling using fixed off-road monitors. More recently, LUR models have been developed using...

Parental concerns about the education of children usually reflect deep-seated anxieties. This study identifies the most influential factors shaping these global concerns based on World Values Survey (WVS) data spanning several decades. Using advanced...

Near-natural transformation can convert artificial monoculture forests into mixed forests with diverse ages, multi-layered structures, and enhanced ecological functions. This transformation optimizes stand structure, improves soil physical and chemic...

Background and Objectives: Asymmetries in body composition and movement patterns are common in professional basketball due to the sport’s repetitive and unilateral demands. While both structural and functional asymmetries have been independentl...

This study focused on 16,101 Cunninghamia lanceolata trees across 133 plots in seven cities of Guangdong Province, China, to develop a comprehensive full growth cycle crown width (CW) model. We systematically analyzed the dynamic characteristics of C...

This study proposes a new approach to determine phenomenological or physical relations between microstructure features and the mechanical behavior of metals bridging advanced statistics and materials science in a study of the effect of hard precipita...

A variable-exponent taper equation was developed for Chinese fir (Cunninghamia lanceolate (Lamb.) Hook.) trees grown in southern China. Thirty taper equations from different groups of models (single, segmented, or variable-exponent taper equation) we...

This study examines how territorial peripherality and regional entrepreneurial ecosystem quality shape the growth trajectories of Italian university spin-offs, with a specific focus on internal areas. Combining firm-level data from NETVAL and AIDA wi...

The objective of this study was to assess the relationship between public protests and county-level, novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) hospitalization rates across California. Publicly available data were included in the analysis from 55 of 58 Cal...

This paper focuses on variable selection and parameter estimation for mixed-effects Poisson count regression models. To simultaneously select important variables in both fixed effects and random effects, we propose a double-penalized Poisson count re...

Sleep deprivation is a prevalent and rising health concern, one with known effects on blood glucose (BG) levels, mood, and calorie consumption. However, the mechanisms by which sleep deprivation affects calorie consumption (e.g., measured via self-re...

Rapidly advancing airborne laser scanning technology has become greatly useful to estimate tree- and stand-level variables at a large scale using high spatial resolution data. Compared with that of ground measurements, the accuracy of the inferred in...

Organisational-level interventions are recommended for decreasing sickness absence, but knowledge of the optimal design and implementation of such interventions is scarce. We collected data on working conditions, motivation, health, employee turnover...

Various statistical approaches can be applied to integrate traditional and omics biomarkers, allowing the discovery of prognostic markers to classify subjects into poor and good prognosis groups in terms of responses to nutritional interventions. Her...

Horses presenting with temporomandibular joint (TMJ) dysfunctions are often clinically evaluated for TMJ osteoarthritis (OA). Due to the unique characteristic of TMJ-related pain, the clinical diagnosis of equine TMJ OA is challenging; however, it ma...

Food diaries are used to estimate meat intake at an individual level but it is unclear whether simpler methods would provide similar results. This study assessed the agreement between 7 day food diaries in which composite dishes were disaggregated to...

Crown vertical profiles (CVP) play an essential role in stand biomass and forest fire prediction. Traditionally, due to measurement difficulties, CVP models developed based on a small number of individual trees are not convincing. Terrestrial laser s...

Compromised Sustainable Employability (SE) of medical doctors is a concern for the viability of healthcare and, thus, for society as a whole. This study (preregistration: ISRCTN15232070) will assess the effect of a two-year organizational-level workp...

Arsenic and atrazine are two water contaminants of high public health concern in Iowa. The occurrence of arsenic and atrazine in drinking water from Iowa’s private wells and public water systems was investigated over several decades. In this st...

This study aimed to examine the association of alcohol and tobacco use with severity of depression in older age. Analyses were performed on a pooled data set (n = 3724) from two German old-age cohort studies (LEILA 75+, 6 follow-ups and AgeCoDe/AgeQu...

Background: Natural sounds are reportedly restorative, but most research has used one-off experiments conducted in artificial conditions. Research based on field experiments is still in its infancy. This study aimed to generate hypotheses on the rest...

Even though limited evidence is available, the relationship between morbidity and under-nutrition among children under-five is likely to be a strong two-way association. This study aims to explore this vicious cycle by employing longitudinal data of...

An interrupted time-series study design was implemented to evaluate the impact of antibiotic stewardship interventions on antibiotic prescribing among veterinarians. A total of 41 veterinarians were enrolled in Canada and Israel and their prescribing...

The initial outbreak of COVID-19 during late December 2019 and the subsequent global pandemic markedly changed consumer mobility patterns worldwide, largely in response to government-ordered non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). In this study, we...

The respondent burden refers to the effort required by a respondent to answer a questionnaire. Although this concept was introduced decades ago, few studies have focused on the quantitative detection of such a burden. In this paper, a face-to-face su...

Despite the effectiveness of screenings in reducing colorectal cancer (CRC) mortality, ~25% of US adults do not adhere to screening guidelines. Prior studies associate socioeconomic status (SES) with low screening adherence and suggest that neighborh...

Research Highlights: We present statistical methods for using crown measurement data from multiple destructive sampling studies to model crown profiles in the Tree and Stand Simulator (TASS) and evaluate it using component (branch-level) and aggregat...

Participation is of major importance for individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI). This study evaluates participation over a period of one year among persons with TBI in the chronic phase and explores sociodemographic, psychological, and environ...

In the last ten years, multimorbidity in children under the age of five years has become an emerging health issue in developing countries. The study of multimorbidity of anaemia, malaria, and malnutrition (MAMM) among children in Nigeria has not rece...

Infants born preterm are at risk of neonatal morbidity and mortality. Preterm birth (PTB) can be categorized as either spontaneous (sPTB) or medically indicated (mPTB), resulting from distinct pathophysiologic processes such as preterm labor or preec...

This study aimed to develop a population pharmacokinetic (PK) model for meropenem in healthy adults and explore optimal dosing regimens for patients with normal renal function. PK samples were obtained from 12 healthy participants, which were analyze...

This study investigated how illuminance and spectrum in office lighting affect psychological fatigue, preference, visual comfort, and cognitive performance. Forty adults participated in a repeated-measures experiment under four conditions with two il...

Cognitive abilities play a critical role for migratory birds encountering unfamiliar habitats at stop-over sites. We investigated factors (age, sex, fuel reserves, vertical/horizontal activity, and mercury level) affecting cognitive abilities behavio...

Disparities in healthy food access and consumption are a major public health concern. This study reports the findings from a two-year randomized control trial conducted at 77 farmers’ markets (FMs) in 13 states and the District of Columbia that...

This research evaluates the effects of a South Carolina (SC) policy, which changed the nutrition standards for foods served in early care and education (ECE) settings, on wasted food. A two-group pre-test/post-test evaluation was performed in ECE cen...