Sets of presence records used to model species’ distributions typically consist of observations collected opportunistically rather than systematically. As a result, sampling probability is ...geographically uneven, which may confound the model's characterization of the species’ distribution. Modelers frequently address sampling bias by manipulating training data: either subsampling presence data or creating a similar spatial bias in non‐presence background data. We tested a new method, which we call ‘background thickening’, in the latter category. Background thickening entails concentrating background locations around presence locations in proportion to presence location density. We compared background thickening to two established sampling bias correction methods – target group background selection and presence thinning – using simulated data and data from a case study. In the case study, background thickening and presence thinning performed similarly well, both producing better model discrimination than target group background selection, and better model calibration than models without correction. In the simulation, background thickening performed better than presence thinning when the number of simulated presence locations was low, and vice versa. We discuss drawbacks to target group background selection, why background thickening and presence thinning are conservative but robust sampling bias correction methods, and why background thickening is better than presence thinning for small sample sizes. Particularly, background thickening is advantageous for treating sampling bias when data are scarce because it avoids discarding presence records.
To improve the quality of care, guidance methodologies can be very helpful for supervisors, practitioners and other stakeholders. A counseling methodology provides an employee with a shared view and ...concrete tools to act more systematically. This enhances acting skills and helps to better respond to specific needs and wishes of clients. This makes working according to methods one of the ways for professionalization. But what exactly is a counseling methodology? Which ones exist in the Netherlands? And for which target groups have they been developed? On the basis of ten criteria, 28 counseling methods were found and summarized. De Grote Methodiekengids, the result of two years of research by Alliade's Department of Applied Scientific Research (PWO), helps to make a choice for each target group on the basis of practical applicability and scientific foundation, among other things. This independent guide is indispensable for supervisors, policy makers, administrators, managers, researchers, remedial educationalists and psychologists in intellectual disability care. De Grote Methodiekengids compiles the available information from public sources and prevents each care facility from having to do comparative methodology research all over again.
Current transport policy objectives aiming to increase active mobility can solely be achieved by changing people's mobility behavior. To arouse interest and influence the decision process of the ...people, adequate information sources and services as well as appropriate incentives and motivation have to be used, but they have to be target-group specific to reach people more effectively. Influencing factors such as mobility habits, attitudes towards transport modes, shared social norms and values must be considered. Since people resemble in some characteristics, methods from social sciences are applied to identify homogeneous groups of shared mobility-related information needs and to extract appropriate group-related arguments to promote active mobility (e.g. health, environment, costs, image, or adventure). The paper describes the methodological approach and the results in form of six comprehensively defined homogeneous target groups derived from 12 qualitative focus groups. Moreover, a survey among a representative sample of 1000 persons in Austria is presented. Based on the outcomes, customized concepts for each specific target group (arguments, information needs, and preferred information channels) have been developed. The concept provides a solid basis for implementing measures to promote active mobility as prerequisite for reaching transport policy objectives.
Based on cognitive–emotional neuroscience, the effectiveness of advertisement is measured in terms of individuals’ unconscious emotional responses. Using AFFDEX to record and analyze facial ...expressions, a combination of indicators that track both basic emotions and individual involvement is used to quantitatively determine if a spot causes high levels of ad liking in terms of attention, engagement, valence, and joy. We use as a test case a real campaign, in which a spot composed of 31 scenes (images, text, and the brand logo) is shown to subjects divided into five groups in terms of age and gender. The target group of mature women shows statistically more positive emotions and involvement than the rest of the groups, demonstrating the emotional effectiveness of the spot. Each other experimental groups show specific negative emotions as a function of their age and for certain blocks of scenes.
To derive healthy and sustainable food-based dietary guidelines (FBDG) for different target groups in the Netherlands and describe the process.
Optimised dietary patterns for children, adolescents, ...adults and the elderly were calculated using an optimisation model. Foods high in saturated and trans-fatty acids, salt and sugar, and low in dietary fibre, were excluded. The dietary patterns resembled the current food consumption as closely as possible, while simultaneously meeting recommendations for food groups, nutrients, maximum limits for foods with a high environmental impact, and within 85 % of the energy requirement. Recommended daily amounts of food groups were based on the optimised dietary patterns and expert judgement.
The Netherlands.
FBDG were derived for Dutch people with different ages, genders, activity levels and food preferences.
For most target groups the optimisation model provided dietary patterns that complied with all requirements. For some food groups, the optimised amounts varied largely between target groups. For consistent messages to consumers, the optimised dietary patterns were adjusted to uniform recommendations per target group. Recommendations were visualised in the Wheel of Five. The advice is to eat the recommended amounts of foods according to the Wheel of Five and limit consumption of other foods.
Based on an optimisation model, scientific evidence, information on dietary patterns and expert knowledge, we derived FBDG for different target groups. The Wheel of Five is a key food-counselling model that can help Dutch consumers to make their diets healthier and more environmentally sustainable.
Influenza vaccination is recommended especially for persons at risk of complications. In 2003, the World Health Assembly urged Member States (MS) to increase vaccination coverage to 75% among older ...persons by 2010.
To assess progress towards the 2010 vaccination goal and describe seasonal influenza vaccination recommendations in the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region.
Data on seasonal influenza vaccine recommendations, dose distribution, and target group coverage were obtained from two sources: European Union and European Economic Area MS data were extracted from influenza vaccination surveys covering seven seasons (2008/2009–2014/2015) published by the Vaccine European New Integrated Collaboration Effort and European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. For the remaining WHO European MS, a separate survey on policies and uptake for all seasons (2008/2009–2014/2015) was distributed to national immunization programmes in 2015.
Data was available from 49 of 53 MS. All but two had a national influenza vaccination policy. High-income countries distributed considerably higher number of vaccines per capita (median; 139.2 per 1000 population) compared to lower-middle-income countries (median; 6.1 per 1000 population). Most countries recommended vaccination for older persons, individuals with chronic disease, healthcare workers, and pregnant women. Children were included in < 50% of national policies. Only one country reached 75% coverage in older persons (2014/2015), while a number of countries reported declining vaccination uptake. Coverage of target groups was overall low, but with large variations between countries. Vaccination coverage was not monitored for several groups.
Despite policy recommendations, influenza vaccination uptake remains suboptimal. Low levels of vaccination is not only a missed opportunity for preventing influenza in vulnerable groups, but could negatively affect pandemic preparedness. Improved understanding of barriers to influenza vaccination is needed to increase uptake and reverse negative trends. Furthermore, implementation of vaccination coverage monitoring is critical for assessing performance and impact of the programmes.
The paper provides an analysis of the categories of distinction seized by programme planners in adult and continuing education and the underlying reasoning arguments to reasoning them. The analysis ...of 14 interviews shows that in their target group orientation, programme planners make use of the categories gender, migration experience, age, educational needs and dis/ability. The categories of distinction are based on their attribution as individual characteristics, as characteristics for grouping individuals, as characteristics of shared expectations and as occupation- and employment-related characteristics. The findings point to a need for encouraging awareness and critical reflection about categories of distinction.
This article presents the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommendations on the use of hepatitis B vaccines excerpted from the Hepatitis B vaccines: WHO position paper, July 2017, published in the ...Weekly Epidemiological Record (Hepatitis B vaccines, 2017) 1. This position paper replaces the May 2009 WHO position paper on hepatitis B vaccines (Hepatitis B vaccines, 2009) 2.
The position paper gives updated information on hepatitis B vaccines and their storage, transport and deployment. The recommendations concern the target groups for vaccination and the appropriate schedules. In particular, the recommendations stress the importance of vaccination of all infants at birth as the most effective intervention for the prevention of hepatitis B virus-associated disease worldwide.
Footnotes to this paper provide a number of core references including references to grading tables that assess the quality of the scientific evidence, and to the evidence-to-recommendation table. In accordance with its mandate to provide guidance to Member States on health policy matters, WHO issues a series of regularly updated position papers on vaccines and combinations of vaccines against diseases that have an international public health impact. These papers are concerned primarily with the use of vaccines in large-scale immunization programmes; they summarize essential background information on diseases and vaccines, and conclude with WHO's current position on the use of vaccines in the global context. Recommendations on the use of hepatitis B vaccines were discussed by SAGE in October 2016; evidence presented at these meetings can be accessed at:
http://www.who.int/immunization/sage/meetings/2016/October/presentations_background_docs/en/.
The lack of public charging infrastructure is often referred to as an important barrier to the diffusion of electric vehicles. As the construction of charging stations is a costly endeavour, the ...question arises as to how maximum benefit for potential users can be achieved with limited resources. Therefore, our analysis deals with the factors that influence the attractiveness of public charging infrastructure from the perspective of potential users. Our analysis is based on the assessments of 1003 German car drivers on possible future charging infrastructure systems with different configurations regarding spatial coverage, charging duration and usage costs. We examined the preferences with regard to these features using a rating-based conjoint analysis. We also looked into the question of whether groups of car drivers can be identified that are characterised by specific preference constellations with regard to these features. Our key finding is that the majority of car drivers are unwilling to pay a basic fee for the possibility of using public charging infrastructure. Nevertheless, there are subgroups that value the public charging infrastructure more than other car drivers. In addition to implications for possible business models, this result indicates that public charging infrastructure could be important for attracting other target groups to electromobility besides classic early adopters of electric vehicles. Furthermore, our analysis shows that the charging duration at charging stations in cities and along the highway has a strong influence on the evaluation of the public charging infrastructure. The spatial coverage with charging stations in cities and along the highway, on the other hand, has a weaker influence. A central conclusion from this is that the existence of fast-charging stations should be prioritized over a close-meshed coverage with charging points when the charging infrastructure is expanded.
•Most car drivers are not willing to pay a basic fee for public charging.•However, there are target groups that value public charging significantly more.•Fast charging stations are more important than a dense network of charging points.
The last two decades have seen a surge in antimalarial drug development with product development partnerships taking a leading role. Resistance of
Plasmodium falciparum
to the artemisinin ...derivatives, piperaquine and mefloquine in Southeast Asia means new antimalarials are needed with some urgency. There are at least 13 agents in clinical development. Most of these are blood schizonticides for the treatment of uncomplicated falciparum malaria, under evaluation either singly or as part of two-drug combinations. Leading candidates progressing through the pipeline are artefenomel–ferroquine and lumefantrine-KAF156, both in Phase 2b. Treatment of severe malaria continues to rely on two parenteral drugs with ancient forebears: artesunate and quinine, with sevuparin being evaluated as an adjuvant therapy. Tafenoquine is under review by stringent regulatory authorities for approval as a single-dose treatment for
Plasmodium vivax
relapse prevention. This represents an advance over standard 14-day primaquine regimens; however, the risk of acute haemolytic anaemia in patients with glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency remains. For disease prevention, several of the newer agents show potential but are unlikely to be recommended for use in the main target groups of pregnant women and young children for some years. Latest predictions are that the malaria burden will continue to be high in the coming decades. This fact, coupled with the repeated loss of antimalarials to resistance, indicates that new antimalarials will be needed for years to come. Failure of the artemisinin-based combinations in Southeast Asia has stimulated a reappraisal of current approaches to combination therapy for malaria with incorporation of three or more drugs in a single treatment under consideration.
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