Background
Legacy‐oriented interventions have the potential to offer pediatric oncology patients and families comfort at end of life and during bereavement. Certified child life specialists often ...provide these services, and presently little is known about whether disparities exist in the provision of legacy‐oriented interventions.
Methods
In this retrospective decedent cohort study, we examined demographic and clinical characteristics from a sample of 678 pediatric oncology patients who died between 2015 and 2019. Bivariate analysis assessed differences between patients who received any versus no legacy‐oriented intervention. Uni‐ and multivariable logistic regression models assessed associations of baseline characteristics and likelihood of receiving legacy‐oriented intervention. Further multivariable analysis explored joint effects of significant variables identified in the univariable analysis.
Results
Fifty‐two percent of patients received a legacy‐oriented intervention. Older adolescents (≥13 years) were less likely (odds ratio OR: 1.73, p = .007) to receive legacy‐oriented interventions than younger ones. Patients with home/hospice deaths were also less likely (OR: 19.98, p < .001) to receive interventions compared to patients who passed away at SJCRH locations. Hispanic patients (OR: 1.53, p = .038) and those in palliative care (OR: 10.51, p < .001) were more likely to receive interventions. No significant race association was noted.
Conclusion
All children and adolescents with cancer deserve quality care at end of life, including access to legacy‐oriented interventions, yet nearly half of patients in this cohort did not receive these services. By identifying demographic and clinical characteristics associated with decreased odds of receiving legacy‐oriented interventions, healthcare professionals can modify end‐of‐life care processes to improve access. Introducing legacy‐oriented interventions early and increasing exposure in community spaces may enhance access to legacy‐oriented interventions for pediatric oncology patients.
Forest fires pose a significant threat worldwide, with Algeria being no exception. In 2020 alone, Algeria witnessed devastating forest fires, affecting over 16,000 hectares of land, a phenomenon ...largely attributed to the impacts of climate change. Understanding the severity of these fires is crucial for effective management and mitigation efforts. This study focuses on the Akfadou forest and its surrounding areas in Algeria, aiming to develop a robust method for mapping fire severity. We employed a comprehensive approach that integrates satellite imagery analysis, machine learning techniques, and geographic information systems (GIS) to assess fire severity. By evaluating various remote sensing attributes from the Sentinel-2 and Planetscope satellites, we compared different methodologies for fire severity classification. Specifically, we examined the effectiveness of reflectance indices-based metrics such as Relative Burn Ratio (RBR) and Difference Burned Area Index for Sentinel-2 (dBIAS2), alongside machine learning algorithms including Support Vector Machines (SVM) and Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), implemented in ArcGIS Pro 3.1.0. Our analysis revealed promising results, particularly in identifying high-severity fire areas. By comparing the output of our methods with ground truth data, we demonstrated the robust performance of our approach, with both SVM and CNN achieving accuracy scores exceeding 0.84. An innovative aspect of our study involved semi-automating the process of training sample labeling using spectral indices rasters and masks. This approach optimizes raster selection for distinct fire severity classes, ensuring accuracy and efficiency in classification. This research contributes to the broader understanding of forest fire dynamics and provides valuable insights for fire management and environmental monitoring efforts in Algeria and similar regions. By accurately mapping fire severity, we can better assess the impacts of climate change and land use changes, facilitating proactive measures to mitigate future fire incidents.
Estimating species relative abundances from museum records Gotelli, Nicholas J.; Booher, Douglas B.; Urban, Mark C. ...
Methods in ecology and evolution,
February 2023, 2023-02-00, 20230201, 2023-02-01, Volume:
14, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Dated, geo‐referenced museum specimens are a rich data source for reconstructing species' distribution and abundance patterns. However, museum records are potentially biased towards ...over‐representation of rare species, and it is unclear whether museum records can be used to estimate relative abundance in the field.
We assembled 17 coupled field and museum datasets to quantitatively compare relative abundance estimates with the Dirichlet distribution. Collectively, these datasets comprise 73,039 museum records and 1,405,316 field observations of 2,240 species.
Although museum records of rare species overestimated relative abundance by 1‐fold to over 100‐fold (median study = 9.0), the relative abundance of species estimated from museum occurrence records was strongly correlated with relative abundance estimated from standardized field surveys (r2 range of 0.10–0.91, median study = 0.43).
These analyses provide a justification for estimating species relative abundance with carefully curated museum occurrence records, which may allow for the detection of temporal or spatial shifts in the rank ordering of common and rare species.
Resumen
Los especímenes de museo fechados y georreferenciados son una rica fuente de datos para reconstruir los patrones de distribución y abundancia de las especies. Sin embargo, los registros de los museos están potencialmente sesgados hacia la sobrerrepresentación de especies raras, y no está claro si estos registros pueden utilizarse para estimar la abundancia relativa en el campo.
Se reunieron 17 conjuntos de datos acoplados de campo y de museo para comparar cuantitativamente las estimaciones de abundancia relativa con la distribución de Dirichlet. Colectivamente, estos conjuntos de datos comprenden 73.039 registros de museo y 1.405.316 observaciones de campo para 2.240 especies.
Aunque los registros de museo de especies raras sobreestimaron la abundancia relativa desde 1 hasta más de 100 veces (mediana del estudio = 9,0), la abundancia relativa de las especies que se estimada a partir de los registros de ocurrencia de los museos mostró una fuerte correlación con la abundancia relativa estimada a partir de los estudios de campo estandarizados (rango r2 de 0,10 a 0,91, mediana del estudio = 0,43).
Estos análisis justifican la estimación de la abundancia relativa de las especies a partir de los registros de ocurrencia de los museos, lo que permitiría la detección de cambios temporales o espaciales en el rango de ordenamiento de las especies comunes y raras.
ABSTRACT
Planktonic foraminiferal species identification is central to many paleoceanographic studies, from selecting species for geochemical research to elucidating the biotic dynamics of ...microfossil communities relevant to physical oceanographic processes and interconnected phenomena such as climate change. However, few resources exist to train students in the difficult task of discerning amongst closely related species, resulting in diverging taxonomic schools that differ in species concepts and boundaries. This problem is exacerbated by the limited number of taxonomic experts. Here we document our initial progress toward removing these confounding and/or rate‐limiting factors by generating the first extensive image library of modern planktonic foraminifera, providing digital taxonomic training tools and resources, and automating species‐level taxonomic identification of planktonic foraminifera via machine learning using convolution neural networks. Experts identified 34,640 images of modern (extant) planktonic foraminifera to the species level. These images are served as species exemplars through the online portal Endless Forams (endlessforams.org) and a taxonomic training portal hosted on the citizen science platform Zooniverse (zooniverse.org/projects/ahsiang/endless‐forams/). A supervised machine learning classifier was then trained with ~27,000 images of these identified planktonic foraminifera. The best‐performing model provided the correct species name for an image in the validation set 87.4% of the time and included the correct name in its top three guesses 97.7% of the time. Together, these resources provide a rigorous set of training tools in modern planktonic foraminiferal taxonomy and a means of rapidly generating assemblage data via machine learning in future studies for applications such as paleotemperature reconstruction.
Key Points
We built an extensive image database of modern planktonic foraminifera with high‐quality species labels, available on an online portal
Using this database, we trained a supervised machine learning classifier that automatically identifies foraminifera with high accuracy
Our database and machine classifier represent important resources for facilitating future paleoceanographic research using foraminifera
Many larger museums and archives have begun to implement a centralized approach to digitization of collections by creating Digitization Coordinator positions. This new effort has initiated a singular ...vision for digitization that incorporates priorities, workflows, and resources to greatly improve the efficiency and throughput of digitization in collections. Smaller institutions are now starting to see the benefit of creating a more structured cross-disciplinary approach to digitization, allowing for better awareness and resourcing of digitization needs.
The workshop brought together natural sciences digitization professionals from the USA and EU, highlighting lessons learned and best practices to realize the benefits of a coordinated approach including advocacy for digitization, accelerating digitization efficiency and, ultimately, increasing digital collections access and usability to address societal challenges, such as biodiversity decline. Insights, lessons learned and initial thoughts on best practices are described, and the supporting workshop resources are shared so that others can benefit.
Abstract For over two decades, there has been an increasing interest in finding natural antioxidants, because they can protect the human body from free radicals and retard the progress of many ...chronic diseases. Phenolic compounds were identified and quantified in potato cooking water from freeze–dried slices with peel and from whole potato stored for 20 days. Extracts were obtained with an aqueous solution composed of 50% methanol and 0.5% acetic acid. Fifteen secondary metabolites were monitored using the Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatography system coupled to mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS / MS). A calibration curve (from 0.1 ng to 100 μg) was generated and the data was analyzed using the software “MassHunter Workstation” VB 06.00, the results were expressed as mg/100 g of sliced potato or raw potato. Principal Components Analysis (PCA) was performed using XLSTAT 2015 Software. The potato cooking water contains phytonutrients with potential antioxidant activity to prevent non-transmissible degenerative diseases. The metabolite content in the cooking water of the Huagalina native potato is directly related to the freshness of the product before cooking. Potato cooking water could be considered a neutraceutical food. However, further research is required to identify any other substances that can be harmful to health depending on the amount consumed.
The paracrine interaction between tumor cells and adjacent stroma has been associated with the oncogenic activity of the Hedgehog (Hh) pathway in triple-negative breast tumors. The present study ...developed a model of paracrine Hh signaling and examined the impact of mesenchymal cell sources and culture modalities in the oncogenicity of the Hh pathway in breast tumor cells. Studies consisted of tumor cell monocultures and co-cultures with cancer-associated and normal fibroblasts, tumor cells that undergo epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), or adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells (ADMSCs). Hh ligand and pathway inhibitors, GANT61 and NVP-LDE225 (NVP), were evaluated in both cell cultures and a mouse xenograft model. Results in monocultures show that tumor cell viability and Hh transcriptional activity were not affected by Hh inhibitors. In co-cultures, down-regulation of
,
, and
in the stroma correlated with reduced tumor growth rates in xenografted tumors and cell cultures, confirming a paracrine interaction. Fibroblasts and EMT cells supported Hh transcriptional activity and enhanced tumor cell growth. Mixed and adjacent culture modalities indicate that tumor growth is supported via fibroblast-secreted soluble factors, whereas enriched tumor stemness requires close proximity between tumor and fibroblasts. Overall this study provides a tumor-mesenchymal model of Hh signaling and highlights the therapeutic value of mesenchymal cells in the oncogenic activity of the Hh pathway.
Georeferencing is the process of aligning a text description of a geographic location with a spatial location based on a geographic coordinate system. Training aids are commonly created around the ...georeferencing process to disseminate community standards and ideas, guide accurate georeferencing, inform users about new tools, and help users evaluate existing geospatial data. The
Georeferencing for Research Use
(GRU) workshop was implemented as a training aid that focused on the creation and research use of geospatial coordinates, and included both data researchers and data providers, to facilitate communication between the groups. The workshop included 23 participants with a wide background of expertise ranging from students (undergraduate and graduate), professors, researchers and educators, scientific data managers, natural history collections personnel, and spatial analyst specialists. The conversations and survey results from this workshop demonstrate that it is important to provide opportunities for biocollections data providers to interact directly with the researchers using the data they produce and vice versa.
The majority of the world's billions of biodiversity specimens are tucked away in museum cabinets with only minimal, if any, digital records of the information they contain. Global efforts to ...digitize specimens are underway, yet the scale of the task is daunting. Fortunately, many activities associated with digitization do not require extensive training and could benefit from the involvement of citizen science participants. However, the quality of the data generated in this way is not well understood. With two experiments presented here, we examine the efficacy of citizen science participants in georeferencing specimen collection localities. In the absence of an online citizen science georeferencing platform and community, students served as a proxy for the larger citizen science population. At Tulane University and Florida State University, undergraduate students and experts used the GEOLocate platform to georeference fish and plant specimen localities, respectively. Our results provide a first-approximation of what can be expected from citizen science participants with minimal georeferencing training as a benchmark for future innovations. After outliers were removed, the range between student and expert georeferenced points was <1.0 to ca. 40.0 km for both the fish and the plant experiments, with an overall mean of 8.3 km and 4.4 km, respectively. Engaging students in the process improved results beyond GEOLocate's algorithm alone. Calculation of a median point from replicate points improved results further, as did recognition of good georeferencers (e.g., creation of median points contributed by the best 50% of contributors). We provide recommendations for improving accuracy further. We call for the creation of an online citizen science georeferencing platform.
Dextrocardia, a rare congenital heart condition, can occur in about 1 out of every 12,000 pregnancies. Dextrocardia with situs solitus refers to when the heart is on the right side of the thorax ...while other viscera are found in their normal positions. The condition can go unnoticed in cases of limited prenatal care and newborn evaluation, leading to patients never receiving pertinent cardiac evaluations and condition progression monitoring throughout their lives. This is the first case reported of isolated dextrocardia with situs solitus in a neonate without any additional cardiovascular abnormalities. This case report highlights the importance of prenatal and postnatal evaluation to ensure the identification of neonates with dextrocardia and improve their quality of life and outcomes.
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