Background: Septoplasty is one of the frequently applied nasal surgical procedures. There is still no gold standart objective method to evaluate the patients whom suffers from nasal blockage. To ...evaluate the septoplasty candidate with a Paranasal Computerised Tomography (PNCT) is one of the most discussed topic in the otorhinolaryngology surgical philosophy. Objectives: In this study, we aim to interpret the value of nasal valve areas measured by PNCT for both septoplasty candidates and the control population. We believe that this information could be useful for the evaluation of patients before undergoing a septoplasty procedure. Material and Methods: 600 coronal and axial tomography sections performed between May 2014 and February 2018 at the University Of Gaziantep Radiology Dept. were assessed. These tomography sections were divided into two groups called the septoplasty and the control. The septoplasty group was made up of three hundred paranasal sinus tomography images scanned before patients' septoplasty operations. The control group was created by screening 300 maxillofacial tomography's which were taken due to the suspicion of trauma at the University Of Gaziantep Emergency Clinic between May 2014 and January 2018. Results: There were 192 (64%) patients with left nasal septal deviation and 108 (36%) patients with right nasal septal deviation. The Independent Sample T-Test revealed that the mean internal nasal valve angle in the left septoplasty group was significantly lower than that of the control group (P < 0.005). A comparison of the right side nasal values revealed a significant statistical change according to the Independent Sample T-Test between the value of the right septoplasty and the control groups (P < 0.005). Conclusion: The sectional areas of nasal tomography images may show different values. However, it is still difficult to say that the clinical application of tomography images could be used as one of the indication criteria for the septoplasty procedure.
Records the distribution and community composition of lichens epiphytic in mangrove forests of the species Avicennia marina subsp. australasica in the upper North Island. Compares these assemblages ...with environmental and site factors in order to develop an understanding of variables that may influence their distribution. Source: National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, licensed by the Department of Internal Affairs for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
ABSTRACT
We report the results of new transit observations for the three hot Jupiter-like planets, HATP-36b, HATP-56b, and WASP-52b, respectively. Transit timing variations (TTVs) are presented for ...these systems based on observations that span the period 2016–2020. The data were collected with the 0.6-m telescope at Adiyaman University (ADYU60, Turkey) and the 1.0 m telescope at TÜBİTAK National Observatory (TUG, Turkey). Global fits were performed to the combined light curves for each system along with the corresponding radial velocity (RV) data taken from the literature. The extracted parameters (for all three systems) are found to be consistent with the values from previous studies. Through fits to the combined mid-transit times data from our observations and the data available in the literature, an updated linear ephemeris is obtained for each system. Although a number of potential outliers are noted in the respective O-C diagrams, the majority of the data are consistent within the 3σ confidence level implying a lack of convincing evidence for the existence of additional objects in the systems studied.
Social Impact Statement
The importance of urban horticulture, a practice of growing plants in an urban environment, is increasingly recognized. It is widely acknowledged that such initiatives ...contribute towards liveable, sustainable, and resilient cities. Based on Singapore as a case example, this study highlights how urban horticulture programs, informed by research and implemented at a national level, bring about important benefits to urban dwellers including health and well‐being, and social cohesion through people and plant interactions. They support Singapore's vision to be a City in Nature, in addition to promoting food security. The experience in Singapore holds useful lessons for other cities.
Summary
Over the past few decades, there has been widespread recognition of the importance of urban vegetation to support cities' goals to be liveable, sustainable, and resilient to disturbances brought about by climate change. In this opinion article, we further highlight the importance of urban horticulture and its role in fostering the vision of Singapore to be a green city. Through the discussion of four national level programs, we illustrate how urban horticulture initiatives contributed to the social imperative to cultivate community ownership of green estates, community ties, and interest in horticulture. Community gardens offer distinct platforms for people to get together. Allotment gardens in parklands enable individuals to engage with nature through the various gardening activities and reap produce. The Gardening with Edibles program encourages home gardening through provision of resources. Lastly, specially designed therapeutic horticulture programs engage target groups to receive benefits from the facilitated nature‐based activities. The involvement of relevant governmental agencies, driven by taking an expanded view of urban horticulture targeted at delivering social objectives and achieving the environmental and ecological objectives of city greening, has contributed to the growth and expansion of the initiatives.
The importance of urban horticulture, a practice of growing plants in an urban environment, is increasingly recognized. It is widely acknowledged that such initiatives contribute towards liveable, sustainable, and resilient cities. Based on Singapore as a case example, this study highlights how urban horticulture programs, informed by research and implemented at a national level, bring about important benefits to urban dwellers including health and well‐being, and social cohesion through people and plant interactions. They support Singapore's vision to be a City in Nature, in addition to promoting food security. The experience in Singapore holds useful lessons for other cities.
In array signal processing, high-resolution direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation algorithms are known to be sensitive to system errors. In practice, the system should be properly calibrated before ...DOA estimation. In this paper, a calibration method of gain and phase errors of linear equispaced arrays (LEAs) is considered. A class of simplified calibration algorithms based on different diagonal lines of the covariance matrix is proposed. The statistical performance analyses of the calibration algorithms due to finite data perturbations are presented. Expressions for average bias (Abias) and square root of average variance (SRAV) of the calibration algorithms are derived using first-order approximation. These statistical and computer simulation results reveal and explain why the more diagonal lines that are used for gain and phase error estimations, the more inferior performance that may be obtained. Based on this conclusion, the simple and optimal gain and phase error calibration algorithms for such model are obtained.
Laurel wilt, caused by the fungus Raffaelea lauricola and transmitted by the exotic ambrosia beetle Xyleborus glabratus, has killed members of the Lauraceae plant family throughout the southeast ...United States. A series of experiments were conducted to examine the effects of inoculum concentration on the development of laurel wilt in swamp bay, Persea palustris, and avocado, Persea americana. In each experiment, host plants were inoculated with aqueous suspensions of 10², 10³, 10⁴or 10⁵conidia of R. lauricola, and plants were rated periodically for external symptom development (wilting and foliar dieback). At the end of experiments, plants were rated for internal symptoms of the disease (discoloration of sapwood) and assayed for R. lauricola on a semi‐selective medium. Symptom severity in swamp bay was significantly lower for the 10²treatment than at higher (10³–10⁵) concentrations, whereas 10²and 10³conidia caused less disease than 10⁴and 10⁵conidia in avocado. At the lowest inoculum concentration, 67% of the swamp bay plants and 20% of the avocados died by the time the respective experiments were terminated. The pathogen was recovered from a high proportion of the symptomatic sapwood of swamp bay (100%) and avocado (94%), and sapwood discoloration and recovery of R. lauricola from inoculated stems of swamp bay were highly correlated with recovery of the pathogen and symptom development in roots. Clearly, swamp bay and avocado are very sensitive to R. lauricola. The ability of only 100 conidia of this pathogen to kill these hosts suggests that few individuals of X. glabratus or other ambrosia beetles that carry low levels of the pathogen would be sufficient to transmit conidia that infect and lead to disease development. The results are also relevant to the development of disease‐tolerant host selections, as they indicate levels of the pathogen appropriate for use in screening plants for disease resistance.
COVID‐19 has heightened the dependence of urban dwellers on cultural ecosystem services provided by urban green spaces (UGS), specifically in regard to the provision of recreational opportunities, ...and psychological and physical health benefits arising from their use.
As different types and levels of cultural ecosystem services are provided by different types of UGS, people may seek out different UGS to satisfy personal needs over various phases of COVID‐19 mobility restrictions imposed by cities. We report on a study that took advantage of the different phases of COVID‐19 mobility restrictions to assess the demand for and perception of different types of UGS in Singapore.
The study utilised four datasets to compare demand for and visitorship patterns of UGS before the pandemic (Pre‐Circuit Breaker), the duration of the strictest mobility restrictions (Circuit Breaker), and after the measures were relaxed (Post‐Circuit Breaker). We used Google Search trends as a proxy for UGS demand, Google mobility data for an overview of population visitorship trends, visitor counts for granular insights on actual visitorship trends, and qualitative data on perception of parks by park visitors after restrictions eased. Parks were categorised as manicured and less manicured UGS for analysis.
Search interest for UGS overall fell by more than 50% from during Circuit Breaker but the post‐Circuit Breaker levels exceeded pre‐Circuit Breaker, with a 70.9% increase for less manicured UGS compared to 20.8% for manicured UGS. This corroborated with Google mobility and visitor counts, which showed a steep decrease in park use followed by a rapid increase in the same periods, and with increased visitorship in the less manicured UGS. The perception study also showed that more than 50% of respondents reported visiting parks that they have never visited before, and there was a greater appreciation and use of UGS after the pandemic and preference for less manicured and more naturalistic landscapes.
The pandemic has heightened the demand for cultural ecosystem services provided by UGS. Our study showed that this demand is not uniform across different types of UGS, with an increase visitorship and preference for less manicured green spaces.
Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
The feral pigeon (Columba livia) is a globally commensal bird that can cause dis‐amenities such as soiling and is a potential vector of various diseases. Aside to limiting food as a management ...strategy, reducing the availability of roosting and nesting sites can help regulate feral pigeon populations. Despite their prevalence, current knowledge of their roosting and nesting preferences is lacking.
Feral pigeons commonly use railway viaduct expansion gaps in Singapore for roosting and nesting. These gaps provided an ideal experimental platform to examine feral pigeon roost and nest site selection while controlling for differing cavity sizes which can significantly affect their reproductive success and site selection decisions. We also conducted an in‐situ experiment to test the efficacy of nest removal as a management option.
Our nationwide surveys of 80.3 km of railway viaducts and 6048 gaps revealed that feral pigeon day roosting and nesting preferences are influenced by structural height and more importantly, their proximity to human food sources. There was a significantly higher probability of feral pigeon roosting in a gap if it had more pigeon feeding incidences in its vicinity and was higher. The probability of feral pigeon nesting in gap was higher if it was closer to a railway station, lower and further from water bodies.
In our field experiment, we did not find any significant differences in the proportions of the abundances of feral pigeon to other urban commensal bird species at the gaps before and after nests were removed.
Overall, our results suggest that a concerted effort to reduce anthropogenic food availability to feral pigeons is central in limiting their reproductive success and controlling their population.
The Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) is the principal mode of railway transportation in Singapore. Feral pigeons (Columba livia) commonly use the railway viaduct expansion gaps for day roosting and nesting (top figure). Feral pigeons preferred day roosting in expansion gaps where proximate anthropogenic feeding occurrences were higher (bottom left figure) and nesting in gaps closer to MRT stations, another likely source of food (bottom right figure).
Industrial design (ID) is a fairly young and largely unknown profession in Turkey. Although significant developments have taken place in the field of ID in the past 15 years, the scope of scholarly ...attempts to analyze the sociological meaning of
in the Turkish context is extremely limited.
We use
and
as salient concepts for a sociological understanding the ongoing professionalization process of Turkish industrial designers, who are developing professional identities and striving for recognition in the larger culture. This paper relies on 20 semi-structured interviews conducted with key players (i.e., ideologues) of the Turkish ID scene to analyze these boundary-work processes.
We found that the positive collective identity of Turkish industrial designers is built on a formulation of
. These negative others are ideological antagonists that are pushed to the “other” side of the demarcation line. Negative others are especially dominant in the professional ideology of Turkish industrial designers because the perceived threats from these antagonists shape the collective consciousness. However, the construction of these others is an ambivalent process in which they also become ideological “friends.” We also demonstrate that professional ideology plays a pivotal role in producing, reproducing, and legitimizing claims of professionalism.
Citrus black spot (CBS), caused by
Phyllosticta citricarpa
McAlp Van der Aa, was recently detected in southern Florida in the US. In addition to infected plant propagation materials, movement of ...infected citrus fruit poses a concern for potential spread of the disease out of the current quarantine zone, because lesions with pycnidia and conidia could develop after harvest. The conditions conducive for mycelial growth and development of pycnidia and conidia are not well known. Therefore, effects of temperature and relative humidity on growth and conidial production of
P. citricarpa
were determined and used as parameter inputs in CLIMEX to predict potential establishment of CBS in North America. Colony growth and conidial production in vitro were optimal at 27 °C, whereas there was no growth below 4 °C and above 37 °C. On fruit, lesion development and conidial production were observed at 4 °C, though at a low rate, indicating a greater versatility of the fungus on fruit. More full pycnidia were produced on the CBS lesions at 91 % RH compared to 84 %. Input parameters for CBS risk in CLIMEX obtained from literature, which reflected conditions for infection in spring/summer in Florida, predicted potential establishment in Florida but not in California. However, altering the parameter values to account for survival of the pathogen in leaf litter in winter predicted potential establishment in California as well as Florida. Thus,
P. citricarpa
could possibly establish beyond Florida if this organism is transported outside of the current quarantine zone to other citrus production areas.
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