Recently, resistance to the pyrethroid bifenthrin was detected and confirmed in field populations of western corn rootworm, Diabrotica virgifera virgifera LeConte from southwestern areas of Nebraska ...and Kansas. As a first step to understand potential mechanisms of resistance, the objectives of this study were i) to assess adult mortality at diagnostic concentration-LC99 to the pyrethroids bifenthrin and tefluthrin as well as DDT, ii) estimate adult and larval susceptibility to the same compounds as well as the organophosphate methyl-parathion, and iii) perform synergism experiments with piperonyl butoxide (PBO) (P450 inhibitor) and S,S,S-tributyl-phosphorotrithioate (DEF) (esterase inhibitor) in field populations. Most of the adult field populations exhibiting some level of bifenthrin resistance exhibited significantly lower mortality to both pyrethroids and DDT than susceptible control populations at the estimated LC99 of susceptible populations. Results of adult dose-mortality bioassays also revealed elevated LC50 values for bifenthrin resistant populations compared to the susceptible control population with resistance ratios ranging from 2.5 to 5.5-fold for bifenthrin, 28 to 54.8-fold for tefluthrin, and 16.3 to 33.0 for DDT. These bioassay results collectively suggest some level of cross-resistance between the pyrethroids and DDT. In addition, both PBO and DEF reduced the resistance ratios for resistant populations although there was a higher reduction in susceptibility of adults exposed to PBO versus DEF. Susceptibility in larvae varied among insecticides and did not correlate with adult susceptibility to tefluthrin and DDT, as most resistance ratios were < 5-fold when compared to the susceptible population. These results suggest that both detoxifying enzymes and target site insensitivity might be involved as resistance mechanisms.
To determine which multicenter randomized controlled trials in critically ill patients have shown that the study intervention was associated with a statistically significant reduction in mortality. ...Our analysis provides an update to a report published 10 years ago.
MEDLINE database and PubMed interface from inception until April 30, 2019.
All adult multicenter randomized controlled trials that evaluated the effects of any intervention or monitoring system in critically ill patients and reported mortality as a primary or secondary outcome were included.
Numbers of centers and patients, type of intervention, reported mortality outcome, and rate and level of significance were extracted into predefined tables. Included randomized controlled trials were classified as reporting reduced, increased, or no effect of the intervention on mortality. Methodologic quality of trials was evaluated using the updated Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials statement.
A total of 212 trials met the inclusion criteria: 27 (13%) reported a significant reduction in mortality, 16 (7%) an increase in mortality, and 170 (80%) no difference in mortality (one study was reported in 2 groups). Of the 27 trials reporting reduced mortality, six had assessed interventions likely to decrease ventilator-induced lung injury, including low tidal volume, prone position, and neuromuscular blockers, demonstrating the negative effects of mechanical ventilation strategies or improved process of care rather than positive effects of new therapies. Seven of the 27 trials reported beneficial effects of noninvasive ventilation. Results from some positive randomized controlled trials, for example, studies of recombinant activated protein C, talactoferrin, interleukin-1 receptor antagonist in sepsis, and muscle relaxants in severe acute respiratory distress syndrome were not replicated in subsequent randomized controlled trials. Other interventions, for example, gastric tonometry, have been abandoned.
A systematic literature search provided no conclusive evidence of any pharmacologic intervention that has consistently reduced mortality in critically ill patients. Strategies associated with improved or noninvasive mechanical ventilation were associated with reduced mortality.
Recommender Systems (RSs) have assumed a crucial role in several digital companies by directly affecting their key performance indicators. Nowadays, in this era of big data, the information available ...about users and items has been continually updated and the application of traditional batch learning paradigms has become more restricted. In this sense, the current efforts in the recommendation field have concerned about this online environment and modeled their systems as a Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem. Nevertheless, there is not a consensus about the best practices to design, perform, and evaluate the MAB implementations in the recommendation field. Thus, this work performs a systematic literature review (SLR) to shed light on this new topic. By inspecting 1327 articles published from the last twenty years (2000–2020), this work: (1) consolidates an updated picture of the main research conducted in this area so far; (2) highlights the most used concepts and methods, their core characteristics, and main limitations; and (3) evaluates the applicability of MAB-based recommendation approaches in some traditional RSs’ challenges, such as data sparsity, scalability, cold-start, and explainability. These discussions and analyzes also allow us to identify several gaps in the current literature, providing a strong guideline for future research.
•A literature review of studies about MAB in recommender systems from 2000 to 2020.•A discussion about MAB algorithms, datasets, and evaluation metrics.•An updated panorama about the current practices and models applied in MAB researches.•Discussion on the applicability of MAB models in the main recommendation challenges.•Future directions to be explored by using MAB in the recommendation field.
Purpose
The recently introduced concept of ‘landscape services’—ecosystem services influenced by landscape patterns—may be particularly useful in landscape planning by potentially increasing ...stakeholder participation and financial funding. However, integrating this concept remains challenging. In order to bypass this barrier, we must gain a greater understanding of how landscape composition and configuration influence the services provided.
Methods
We conducted meta-analyses that considered published studies evaluating the effects of several landscape metrics on the following services: pollination, pest control, water quality, disease control, and aesthetic value. We report the cumulative mean effect size (E
++
), where the signal of the values is related to positive or negative influences.
Results
Landscape complexity differentially influenced the provision of services. Particularly, the percentage of natural areas had an effect on natural enemies (E
++
= 0.35), pollination (E
++
= 0.41), and disease control (E
++
= 0.20), while the percentage of no-crop areas had an effect on water quality (E
++
= 0.42) and pest response (E
++
= 0.33). Furthermore, heterogeneity had an effect on aesthetic value (E
++
= 0.5) and water quality (E
++
= − 0.40). Moreover, landscape aggregation was important to explaining pollination (E
++
= 0.29) and water quality (E
++
= 0.35).
Conclusions
The meta-analyses reinforce the importance of considering landscape structure in assessing ecosystem services for management purposes and decision-making. The magnitude of landscape effect varies according to the service being studied. Therefore, land managers must account for landscape composition and configuration in order to ensure the maintenance of services and adapt their approach to suit the focal service.
Pyrethroid insecticides have been used to control larvae or adults of the western corn rootworm (WCR), Diabrotica virgifera virgifera LeConte, a key pest of field corn in the United States. In ...response to reports of reduced efficacy of pyrethroids in WCR management programs in southwestern areas of Nebraska and Kansas the present research was designed to establish a baseline of susceptibility to the pyrethroid insecticide, bifenthrin, using susceptible laboratory populations and to compare this baseline with susceptibility of field populations. Concentration-response bioassays were performed to estimate the baseline susceptibility. From the baseline data, a diagnostic concentration (LC99) was determined and used to test adults of both laboratory and field populations. Larval susceptibility was also tested using both laboratory and field populations. Significant differences were recorded in adult and larval susceptibility among WCR field and laboratory populations. The highest LC50 for WCR adults was observed in populations from Keith 2 and Chase Counties, NE, with LC50s of 2.2 and 1.38 μg/vial, respectively, and Finney County 1, KS, with 1.43 μg/vial, as compared to a laboratory non-diapause population (0.24 μg/vial). For larvae, significant differences between WCR field and laboratory populations were also recorded. Significant differences in mortalities at the diagnostic bifenthrin concentration (LC99) were observed among WCR adult populations with western Corn Belt populations exhibiting lower susceptibility to bifenthrin, especially in southwestern Nebraska and southwestern Kansas. This study provides evidence that resistance to bifenthrin is evolving in field populations that have been exposed for multiple years to pyrethroid insecticides. Implications to sustainable rootworm management are discussed.
•The DisCovER, a method able to improve diversity and accuracy of POI recommendation.•An adaptation of DisCovER able to personalize the diversity of POIs recomendation.•A deep experimental evaluation ...comparing DisCovER to the state-of-the-art algorithms.•An adaptation of the Multi-Attribute Utility (MAUT) for the Recommendation field.
Nowadays, recommender systems play an important role in several Location-Based Social Networks (LBSNs). The current advances have considered the trade-off between accuracy and diversity to help users to discover and explore new points-of-interest (POI). However, differently from traditional recommendation scenarios, other equally relevant dimensions (e.g., social and geographical user information) have to be considered to understand how the characteristics of services offered by each POI fit the user needs. Specifically, this work sheds light upon naive failures introduced by traditional recommendation methods while they handle this trade-off between diversity and accuracy in POI recommendations. We hypothesize that some efforts on POI recommendations somehow are deviating from basic learnings from the area. In this context, this work addresses four characteristics inherent to the POI domain that previous efforts have failed to recognize: (1) POI categories and locations are complementary dimensions of diversification that should be simultaneously addressed; (2) Diversity is a complex concept that should be modeled by distinct and non-orthogonal models; (3) Distinct users have different biases and willingness to move to fulfill their needs; (4) POI recommendation is a multi-objective task. In order to demonstrate the gains of properly addressing these aspects, we also propose DisCovER, a straightforward re-ordering method that linearly combines geographical and categorical diversification. DisCovER results demonstrate that even simple strategies to exploit simultaneously these complementary dimensions can increase diversification while keeping accuracy high. Differently from state-of-the-art diversification methods, DisCovER does not penalize any quality dimension in favor of others. It allows us to discuss future directions towards more robust user modeling and preference elicitation in POI domains.
The capacity to rapidly generate and apply a great amount of force seems to play a key role in sprint running. However, it has recently been shown that, for sprinters, the technical ability to ...effectively orient the force onto the ground is more important than its total amount. The force-vector theory has been proposed to guide coaches in selecting the most adequate exercises to comprehensively develop the neuromechanical qualities related to the distinct phases of sprinting. This study aimed to compare the relationships between vertically-directed (loaded and unloaded vertical jumps, and half-squat) and horizontally-directed (hip-thrust) exercises and the sprint performance of top-level track and field athletes. Sixteen sprinters and jumpers (including three Olympic athletes) executed vertical jumps, loaded jump squats and hip-thrusts, and sprinting speed tests at 10-, 20-, 40-, 60-, 100-, and 150-m. Results indicated that the hip-thrust is more associated with the maximum acceleration phase (i.e., from zero to 10-m; r = 0.93), whereas the loaded and unloaded vertical jumps seem to be more related to top-speed phases (i.e., distances superior to 40-m; r varying from 0.88 to 0.96). These findings reinforce the mechanical concepts supporting the force-vector theory, and provide coaches and sport scientists with valuable information about the potential use and benefits of using vertically- or horizontally-based training exercises.
This paper presents Fraud-BNC, a customized Bayesian Network Classifier (BNC) algorithm for a real credit card fraud detection problem. The task of creating Fraud-BNC was automatically performed by a ...Hyper-Heuristic Evolutionary Algorithm (HHEA), which organizes the knowledge about the BNC algorithms into a taxonomy and searches for the best combination of these components for a given dataset. Fraud-BNC was automatically generated using a dataset from PagSeguro, the most popular Brazilian online payment service, and tested together with two strategies for dealing with cost-sensitive classification. Results obtained were compared to seven other algorithms, and analyzed considering the data classification problem and the economic efficiency of the method. Fraud-BNC presented itself as the best algorithm to provide a good trade-off between both perspectives, improving the current company’s economic efficiency in up to 72.64%.
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•We use a hyper-heuristic to create Fraud-BNC, a customized classification algorithm.•Fraud-BNC is generated considering a real credit card fraud detection problem.•Fraud-BNC’s model has the main advantage of being interpretable by decision markers.•Fraud-BNC is evaluated using both classification and economical measures.•The algorithm improved the current company’s economical efficiency in up to 72.64%.
The emergence of Location-based social networks (LBSNs) in recent years has boosted improvements in Recommender Systems for a new and specific task: the recommendation of points-of-interest (POI). ...Despite all the blunt advances recently observed, the area still lacks an updated and consolidated view about the main limitations, common assumptions, and directions we are following as a community. Thus, this paper aims to provide an updated picture of POI recommendation, identifying relevant efforts, results, contributions, and limitations. In this sense, through a systematic mapping, we selected 74 relevant papers published in the last three years (2017, 2018, and 2019) in the main conferences and journals of the area. Most of these studies have focused on the general POI recommendation problem, although we still could identify a significant number of efforts addressing specific problems in the area, such as Time-Aware, Next POI, and In/Out-of-Town Recommendations. Also, we found user contexts, such as social network and geolocation, as recurring data types used to improve preference elicitation when exploring different methods (e.g., collaborative filtering, factorization, probabilistic, link-based, and hybrid methods). As major limitations, first, we identified that these studies prioritize accuracy over other quality dimensions, despite the consensus in the RS community that accuracy alone is not enough to assess the practical effectiveness of Recommender Systems. Further, we found a low intersection of metrics and datasets used to evaluate the proposed solutions, along with a large number of metrics used in a few distinct studies. These observations point out the potential damage to reproducibility and straightforward comparison of results in the area, motivating us to propose an extensible POI recommendation benchmark. Through this benchmark, we showed that when proper evaluations are carried out, by considering different datasets, metrics, and baselines, identifying which algorithm is the best one becomes non-trivial. Finally, we highlight as a promising future work the in-depth exploitation of textual data since just a few evaluated studies marginally use this rich data source.
•A systematic mapping of the POI recommendation area.•An analysis of 74 studies of the main conferences and journals from lat three years.•A discussion of contributions/limitations of recent studies on POI recommendation.•An extensible POI recommendation benchmark.•Directions for future works highlighting the needs of the reproducibility of results.
Conservationists often have difficulty obtaining financial and social support for protected areas that do not demonstrate their benefits for society. Therefore, ecosystem services have gained ...importance in conservation science in the last decade, as these services provide further justification for appropriate management and conservation of natural systems. We used InVEST software and a set of GIS procedures to quantify, spatialize and evaluated the overlap between ecosystem services-carbon stock and sediment retention-and a biodiversity proxy-habitat quality. In addition, we proposed a method that serves as an initial approach of a priority areas selection process. The method considers the synergism between ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation. Our study region is the Iron Quadrangle, an important Brazilian mining province and a conservation priority area located in the interface of two biodiversity hotspots, the Cerrado and Atlantic Forest biomes. The resultant priority area for the maintenance of the highest values of ecosystem services and habitat quality was about 13% of the study area. Among those priority areas, 30% are already within established strictly protected areas, and 12% are in sustainable use protected areas. Following the transparent and highly replicable method we proposed in this study, conservation planners can better determine which areas fulfill multiple goals and can locate the trade-offs in the landscape. We also gave a step towards the improvement of the habitat quality model with a topography parameter. In areas of very rugged topography, we have to consider geomorfometric barriers for anthropogenic impacts and for species movement and we must think beyond the linear distances. Moreover, we used a model that considers the tree mortality caused by edge effects in the estimation of carbon stock. We found low spatial congruence among the modeled services, mostly because of the pattern of sediment retention distribution.
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