Fitting Strategy Research Articles

Historical lessons for facilitating organizational recovery from crises

Our study is based on the premise that every crisis has historical precedents and antecedents. First, we analyze past crises, beginning with the experiences of the Dutch tulip bulb crisis. Then, we review major cataclysms, such as World War I, the Spanish flu crisis, the Great Depression of 1929–1933, World War II and the subsequent transition to socialism, the 1973 oil shock, the regime change of 1989, and the 2008–2009 global financial crisis from both general and corporate perspectives. Throughout history, periods of crisis have alternated with phases of development. During times of crisis, people’s behavior changes as they search for solutions and support. This pattern is evident across all levels of economic activity, where governments, organizations, and individuals do their utmost to achieve a quick recovery. Sometimes, they look to external aid, forgetting that lessons from the past may provide guidance for crisis management. Without claiming to be exhaustive, we have identified points worthy of consideration. Our goal is to offer guidance for business organizations, complemented by thoughts addressed to individuals and governments alike. Organizations must pay attention to the first signs of crises and either proceed according to a pre-developed fitting strategy or revise it according to specific circumstances. They cannot avoid the consequences, but they can mitigate the negative effects.

Multiple surrogates in the meta-analytic setting for normally distributed endpoints

The identification of good surrogate endpoints is a challenging endeavour. This may, at least partially, be attributable to the fact that most researchers have focused on the identification of a single surrogate endpoint. It is thus implicitly assumed that the treatment effect on the true endpoint (T) can be accurately predicted based on the treatment effect on one surrogate endpoint (S) only. Given the complex nature of many diseases and the different therapeutic pathways in which a treatment can impact T, this assumption may be too optimistic. For example, in oncology, the effect of a treatment often depends on both the treatment’s efficacy and its toxicity. In the present paper, the meta-analytic framework of Buyse et al. (2000) is extended to the setting where multiple S are considered. To cope with potential model convergence issues that often arise in a meta-analytic framework, several simplified model fitting strategies are proposed. Further, simulation studies are conducted to evaluate the properties of the estimated surrogacy metrics, and the new methodology is applied on a case study in schizophrenia. An online Appendix that details how the analyses can be conducted in practice (using the R package Surrogate) is also provided.

The vestibular implant: effects of stimulation parameters on the electrically-evoked vestibulo-ocular reflex.

The vestibular implant is a neuroprosthesis which offers a potential treatment approach for patients suffering from vestibulopathy. Investigating the influence of electrical stimulation parameters is essential to improve the vestibular implant response. Optimization of the response focuses on the electrically evoked vestibulo-ocular reflex. It aims to facilitate high peak eye velocities and adequate alignment of the eye movement responses. In this study, the basic stimulation parameters of the vestibular implant were tested for their effect on the electrically evoked vestibulo-ocular reflex. Four stimulation parameters, including the stimulation amplitude, phase duration, stimulus rate and speed of change of stimulation, were systematically tested in a cohort of nine subjects with a vestibulo-cochlear implant. These parameters were tested to evaluate their effect on fitting settings (i.e., threshold of activation, upper comfortable limit and dynamic range) as well as on the electrically evoked vestibulo-ocular reflex (peak eye velocity and alignment). It was confirmed that, in addition to current amplitude, the peak eye velocity of the response can be increased by increasing the phase duration and pulse rate. Both parameters have little effect on the alignment of the eye response. However, a longer phase duration decreased the range between the threshold of activation and the upper comfortable limit of the electrical stimulation (i.e., dynamic range). Furthermore, these results show that next to the amplitude of the stimulation, the speed of change in stimulation has a determinative positive effect on the peak eye velocity. The observations in this study imply that the vestibular implant response, in terms of peak eye velocity, can be optimized with a higher pulse rate and longer phase duration. However, this comes at a trade-off between the dynamic range and power consumption. This study provides essential insights for fitting strategies in future vestibular implant care.

Use of Technology in the Management and Treatment of Prediabetes, A New Era: A Case Report Series

Introduction: The escalating prevalence of prediabetes has positioned it as a silent precursor to a looming public health crisis, particularly as it paves the way for type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). This case series report explores the transformative role of technology, specifically the Sugar Fit’s Diabetes Reversal and Management Program (SDRMP), in the treatment and management of prediabetic patients. Methods: The case series follows the progress of two patients aged 31-44 with prediabetes utilizing the SDRMP to prevent the progression to diabetes. The interventions for both patients involved continuous glucose monitoring, personalized nutrition plans, fitness strategies, and behavioral modifications. The patients also engaged in regular communication with their life coaches through the Sugar Fit application, ensuring ongoing support and adherence to the program. Results: The results revealed significant improvements in glycemic control, lipid profiles, and overall well-being. The first patient, a 44-year-old male, demonstrated a successful return to normal glycemic control in 177 days through a comprehensive approach involving dietary changes, exercise, and lifestyle modifications. The second patient, a 31-year-old male, achieved normal glycemic control in a comparable timeframe, showcasing the effectiveness of the SDRMP. Discussion and Conclusion: These cases demonstrate that patients were able to adhere to the goals of care, preventing the progression of prediabetes to diabetes and improving insulin resistance. The study also underscores the potential impact of technology on public health outcomes, bridging the gap between traditional interventions and the evolving needs of a tech-savvy population. The synergy between healthcare expertise and technological innovation not only arrests the progression of prediabetes but also contributes to a broader societal shift towards metabolic well-being, paving the way for a healthier future. Future monitoring is essential to ensure the maintenance of lifestyle modifications and continued success in preventing diabetes.

Orthokeratology for high myopia

Purpose. With an increasing proportion of children with myopia especially in Asia, efforts have been made to reduce chances of preventable sight loss related to high myopia in the future. Orthokeratology lens has been used as one of the modalities not just to correct myopia, but also to slow down myopic progression and axial elongation. This case report reviews a patient with clinically significantly high myopia, whose refractive errors was partially corrected with orthokeratology lens and spectacle lenses. Material and Methods. A now 14-year-old patient with a history of fast progressing myopia, was prescribed and commended orthokeratology to manage myopia, while regularly monitoring her refractive errors, axial length, binocular vision status, corneal topography, and anterior eye health was monitored regularly at the author’s practice. Results. Over a two year follow up period, a partial correction of high myopia with orthokeratology lenses and residual refractive errors with additional spectacle lenses was effective in managing this patient’s myopia, as well as slowing of axial elongation. An updated pair of orthokeratology lens with a steeper back optic zone radii were prescribed to reduce superficial corneal staining and to maintain corneal health. Conclusion. Patient commitment and adherence to close monitoring of eyes in terms refractive errors, axial length, and anterior eye health, are vital in achieving a successful orthokeratology lens wear for high myopia. A dual fitting strategy consisting of orthokeratology lens and spectacle wear can be a safe management strategy that is acceptable for patients with high myopia. It would be helpful for practitioners to be able to rely on robust evidence-based guidance when determining whether lens wear can be ceased, i.e. when further axial elongation and myopic progression are no longer likely.

An integrative predictive model for orthokeratology lens decentration based on diverse metrics.

To develop a predictive model for orthokeratology (Ortho-K) lens decentration 1 month after wear. This study included myopic children who were fitted with Ortho-K lenses at Fujian Provincial Hospital between December 2022 and May 2024. Corneal topography parameters and other relevant metrics were collected pre- and post-treatment. Feature selection was conducted using univariate logistic regression and Lasso regression analysis. A machine learning approach was used to develop multiple predictive models, including Decision Tree, Logistic Regression, Multilayer Perceptron, Random Forest, and Support Vector Machine. Model performance was evaluated using accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, ROC curves, DCA curves, and calibration curves. SHAP values were employed to interpret the models. The Logistic Regression model demonstrated the best predictive performance, with an AUC of 0.82 (95% CI: 0.69-0.95), accuracy of 77.59%, sensitivity of 85%, and specificity of 61.11%. The most significant predictors identified were age, 8 mm sag height difference, 5 mm Kx1, and 7 mm Kx2. SHAP analysis confirmed the importance of these features, particularly the 8 mm sag height difference. The Logistic Regression model successfully predicted the risk of Ortho-K lens decentration using key corneal morphological metrics and age. This model provides valuable support for clinicians in optimizing Ortho-K lens fitting strategies, potentially reducing the risk of adverse outcomes and improving the quality of vision for patients. Further validation in clinical settings is recommended.

Awareness of infection care terms among outpatients and carers in a public health facility: a cross-sectional survey.

As healthcare recipients and individuals affected by antimicrobial resistance (AMR), patients and their carers can be engaged in infection prevention and control (IPC) and antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) initiatives to manage AMR. To effectively participate in these initiatives, patients and carers need to understand general terms used in infection care. We explored awareness of commonly used infection-related terms among patients and carers in the surgical out-patient of a tertiary academic hospital. Self-administered paper survey distributed among out-patients from August to September 2022. Categorical variables were analysed using Chi squared test. Significance was set as p-value of < 0.05. Content analysis identified terms commonly used by patients when talking about infections. Overall, 896 out of 1,269 respondents (response rate 70.6%), with a 1:3 male to female ratio were included. Most respondents were patients (75%), with a minimum of high school education (91.2%) and a surgical history (60.3%). Surgical wound infection was the most familiar term to participants. While many respondents had not heard of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus ( MRSA) (92.3%, n=754) or antimicrobial resistance (92.8%, n=755), significantly more were aware of the descriptions provided for these terms (13.7% and 33.0%, respectively; p<0.001). Participants considered antibiotic resistance to be a condition in which the body rejects, resists, or does not respond to antibiotics. Findings show dissonance between patients' awareness of and healthcare workers' use of infection-care terms, highlighting the need for relatable and accessible terms in infection-care engagement initiatives. More than half of respondents acknowledged that patient engagement responsibility is everyone's, underscoring the need for contextually fit and relevant communication strategies to advance patient engagement and infection awareness.

Otoacoustic Estimate of Astronauts' Intracranial Pressure Changes During Spaceflight.

To investigate the potential correlation between prolonged exposure to microgravity on the International Space Station and increased intracranial fluid pressure, which is considered a risk factor for the astronauts' vision, and to explore the feasibility of using distortion product otoacoustic emissions as a non-invasive in-flight monitor for intracranial pressure changes. Distortion product otoacoustic emission phase measurements were taken from both ears of five astronauts pre-flight, in-flight, and post-flight. These measurements served as indirect indicators of intracranial pressure changes, given their high sensitivity to middle ear transmission alterations. The baseline pre-flight ground measurements were taken in the seated upright position. In-flight measurements revealed a significant systematic increase in otoacoustic phase, indicating elevated intracranial pressure during spaceflight compared to seated upright pre-flight ground baseline. Noteworthy, in two astronauts, strong agreement was also observed between the time course of the phase changes measured in the two ears during and after the mission. Reproducibility and stability of the probe placement in the ear canal were recognized as a critical issue. The study suggests that distortion product otoacoustic emissions hold promise as a non-invasive tool for monitoring intracranial pressure changes in astronauts during space missions. Pre-flight measurements in different body postures and probe fitting strategies based on the individual ear morphology are needed to validate and refine this approach.

Exploring commoning in the anthropocene. Introducing the concept of the election commons as a response to socio-ecological crisis. The case of Skouries, Greece

The Anthropocene epoch challenges our planet’s ecological sustainability and its relationship with democratic processes. The prioritization of economic growth and capital accumulation within most democratic organizations and institutions encourages limitless economic expansion while ignoring or disregarding the earth’s ecological vulnerability in multiple crises (economic, social, ecological). Commoning presents an alternative political strategy to respond to these crises, particularly when it is based on transformative practices of collective care. In this paper, we investigate how an anti-mining community in Skouries, Greece, opposes the imposition of a large-scale mining project by forming a commons initiative. We introduce the concept of election commons, which was designed to allow the anti-mining community to claim institutional power at a local level. This concept is argued to provide valuable insights into how collective care sets the foundations for the renewal of democracy, allowing an alternative relation to the environment and playing a strategic role in connecting different geographical scales of politics. We claim that commoning can enable a more fitting political strategy for the Anthropocene while highlighting the case of decision-making at a national and international level benefiting from local politics.

Karyotypic and phenotypic condensation in allotetraploid wheats accompanied with reproductive strategy transformation: from natural evolution to domestication.

Allotetraploid wheat reflects evolutionary divergence and domestication convergence in the karyotypic and phenotypic evolution, accompanied with the transformation from r- strategy to K- strategy in reproductive fitness. Allotetraploid wheat, the progenitor of hexaploidy bread wheat, has undergone 300,000years of natural evolution and 10,000years of domestication. The variations in karyotype and phenotype as well as fertility fitness have not been systematically linked. Here, by combining fluorescent in situ hybridization with the quantification of phenotypic and reproductive traits, we compared the karyotype, vegetative growth phenotype and reproductive fitness among synthesized, wild and domesticated accessions of allotetraploid wheat. We detected that the wild accessions showed dramatically high frequencies of homologous recombination and copy number variations of simple sequence repeats (SSR) comparing with synthetic and domesticated accessions. The phenotypic traits reflected significant differences among the populations shaped by distinct evolutionary processes. The diversity observed in wild accessions was significantly greater than that in domesticated ones, particularly in traits associated with vegetative growth and spike morphology. We found that the active pollen of domesticated accessions exhibited greater potential of germination, despite a lower rate of active pollen compared with the wild accessions, indicating a transformation in reproductive fitness strategy for pollen development in domesticated accessions compared to the wild accessions, from r-strategy to K-strategy. Our results demonstrate the condensation of karyotype and phenotype from natural wild accessions to domesticated accessions in allotetraploid wheats. Ecological strategy transformation should be seriously considered from evolution to domestication in polyploid plants, especially crops, which may provide a perspective on the adaptive evolution of polyploid plants.

Life history strategy and romantic satisfaction in patients' behavior.

According to evolutionary psychologists, an individual-consciously or not-who allocates resources for somatic effort focuses on homeostasis and the protection of themselves and others. During health crises, patients must choose between mobilizing their remaining resources to either recover or accepting the disease as inevitable. When patients choose to be proactive in terms of protecting their health, are conscientious, and compliant in the recovery process, a high level of patient activation is achieved. Therefore, we examined (N = 252) whether the patients' K fitness strategies are predictors for engagement in patient activation-type behavior. In addition, we tested the mediating effect of pain catastrophizing and the moderating effect of romantic satisfaction. We found that people with a medical diagnosis, who were in a romantic relationship, and had high-K fitness were much more likely to be activated patients. Moreover, pain catastrophizing mediated the relationship between high-K fitness strategy and patient activation, while romantic satisfaction moderated this relationship, amplifying its intensity. The findings highlight the importance of identifying patients' psychological resources (e.g., high-K strategy, romantic satisfaction, or pain perception) to keep them engaged in the health recovery process.

Development and experimental validation of a hydraulic design and control philosophies for 5th generation district heating and cooling networks

Sector coupling and energy sharing are key elements in effectively decarbonising the thermal grid. 5th Generation District Heating and Cooling (5GDHC) provides a system for combining heating and cooling via an ambient temperature network. A main design challenge for 5GDHC is establishing a control regime that allows flow bidirectionality and energy synergies between heating and cooling. This work develops and experimentally validates a 5GDHC system wide hydraulic design and two fitting control strategies on a small scale. One has fixed grid return temperatures (TGridFix) while the other free floating grid temperatures (TGridFloat). Both feature decentralised variable speed pumping and a centralised passive balancing unit aimed at alleviating control instabilities arising from pump hunting. Experiments showed that TGridFix demonstrates slightly higher electrical consumption for the booster heat pump (Seasonal Coefficient of Performance of 3.84 compared to 4.16 for 20 h of operation) due to a mismatch between the evaporator and the grid temperature difference. Overall, TGridFix can lead to low prosumer interaction and better system wide predictability. Further considerations on generalisability of findings and full-scale implementations are highlighted. This works presents a set of detailed and experimentally validated control philosophies for 5GDHC systems, elucidating a key system implementation challenge.

Evaluation of the Spatial Pattern of Fitness and Leisure Venues at the City Scale

Reasonable layout of fitness and leisure places is an important part of the implementation of the national fitness strategy. The analysis of the spatial pattern and influence mechanism of fitness and leisure places from the perspective of city has certain guiding significance for optimizing urban planning and construction and rationally allocating sports resources. This paper uses kernel density, buffer zone, inverse distance interpolation, Kriging interpolation, geographical detector and other geographical spatial analysis methods to analyze the spatial distribution pattern and distribution causes of five types of fitness and leisure places in counties (cities, districts) under the jurisdiction of Jinhua City. It is found that the overall spatial distribution characteristics of fitness and leisure places in Jinhua City are ' core-periphery ', and different forms of fitness and leisure places show different distribution characteristics. The spatial pattern of fitness and leisure places in Jinhua City has the characteristics of relying on traffic arteries and high-density population areas, and has a positive correlation with the spatial layout of housing prices. Jinhua fitness and leisure places generally have good traffic accessibility.

Investigating the role of social inhibition in enduring involvement in online synchronous exercise classes: A use and gratification perspective

With the advancement of communication technology, online synchronous exercise courses become more common in recent years due to their ability to transcend time and space. Based on uses and gratifications theory (U&G), this study proposes a conceptual model for online synchronized exercise classes and examines the relationships among social inhibition, motivation, satisfaction, and continued involvement. After 322 valid questionnaires were collected and analyzed by partial least squares (PLS), this study confirmed the significant positive effects of hedonic, identified, and integrative motivation on online synchronous exercise satisfaction and the significant negative effect of social inhibition on online synchronous exercise satisfaction. Moreover, online synchronous exercise satisfaction has a positive effect on enduring involvement. This study not only contributes by extending the application of U&G theory to dynamic online synchronized exercise and addressing the interaction and pressure of online users in cyberspace but also provides novel marketing strategies for fitness and sports organizations.

Improved quantitative parameter estimation for prostate T2 relaxometry using convolutional neural networks.

Quantitative parameter mapping conventionally relies on curve fitting techniques to estimate parameters from magnetic resonance image series. This study compares conventional curve fitting techniques to methods using neural networks (NN) for measuring T2 in the prostate. Large physics-based synthetic datasets simulating T2 mapping acquisitions were generated for training NNs and for quantitative performance comparisons. Four combinations of different NN architectures and training corpora were implemented and compared with four different curve fitting strategies. All methods were compared quantitatively using synthetic data with known ground truth, and further compared on in vivo test data, with and without noise augmentation, to evaluate feasibility and noise robustness. In the evaluation on synthetic data, a convolutional neural network (CNN), trained in a supervised fashion using synthetic data generated from naturalistic images, showed the highest overall accuracy and precision amongst the methods. On in vivo data, this best performing method produced low-noise T2 maps and showed the least deterioration with increasing input noise levels. This study showed that a CNN, trained with synthetic data in a supervised manner, may provide superior T2 estimation performance compared to conventional curve fitting, especially in low signal-to-noise regions.

Tidal and residual currents in the inner shelf of East China Sea detected from underway ADCP observations

Characterizing the spatial variability of net flow transport in a tide-dominated area like the East China Sea (ECS) is key to understanding the material and heat budget as well as their impacts on local ecosystem. However, the residual circulation in the ECS was much less confirmed by observations as it can only be derived from very sparse mooring data. Here for the first time we obtain the spatial patterns of tidal and residual currents in the inner ECS shelf from ADCP underway measurements conducted in 12 cruises using a spatial least squares (SLS) fitting technique. The SLS method is validated with the traditional harmonic analysis using numerical simulation results and then implemented with the observational data. The tidal current is dominated by two semidiurnal components M2 and S2 in this area, with the major axis of tidal ellipse along northwest-southeast direction. The ADCP-derived tide parameters are in good agreement with those from the mooring data and barotropic tide model. The annual spatial pattern of residual circulation is characterized by a southward coastal current and a northward shelf current, which are identified as the East China Sea Coastal Current (ECSCC) from Changjiang River runoff and the Taiwan Warm Current (TWC) originated from Taiwan Strait and Kuroshio. Their magnitudes are comparable but of one order smaller than tides. The vertical structure of TWC shows a subsurface-intensified feature in line with previous mooring observations. The north limit of TWC is approximately at 31.5°N around the submerged valley, beyond which the northward TWC becomes almost invisible. By a series of virtual cruise experiments, we show that the observation data length is the most crucial factor controlling the SLS fitting accuracy, while the role of other factors like sampling frequency is secondary. With a fixed-length dataset, the degree of polynomial function used for SLS fitting must be properly determined to minimize the under-fitting and over-fitting error, and there is also a trade-off in the fitting accuracy between tidal and residual currents depending on the fitting strategy.

DILA: Dynamic Gaussian Distribution Fitting and Imitation Learning-Based Label Assignment for tiny object detection

With the rapid advancement of deep learning technology, significant achievements have been made in the field of general object detection. However, challenges still remain in the detection of tiny objects. There are two main drawbacks: (1) static prior information makes the localization of tiny objects relatively fixed; (2) Intersection over Union (IoU) is highly sensitive to deviations in tiny objects. To this end, we propose a Dynamic Gaussian Distribution Fitting and Imitation Learning-Based Label Assignment (DILA) strategy for Tiny Object Detection. Specifically, to address the positional deviation of effective receptive fields at different network layers during Gaussian modeling, DILA first designs an Adaptive Dynamic Calculation Strategy (ADCS) to compute estimation factors for the effective receptive field in different feature spaces, dynamically modeling prior information using Gaussian distribution. Then, DILA introduces a new Balance of Gaussian Scaling-aware Metric (BGSM) to measure the similarity between tiny bounding boxes and predefined anchors, instead of using IoU, which is highly sensitive to tiny pixel shifts, for sample assignment, thereby providing a more accurate basis for label assignment. Finally, a Detail Information Imitation Compensation Module (DIM) is presented to improve and compensate for the detailed information of tiny objects that troubles label assignment, achieving balanced learning for tiny objects. The proposed DILA strategy can be seamlessly integrated into various anchor-based detectors. Extensive experiments were conducted on three publicly available datasets for tiny object detection. The results indicate that when DILA is embedded into Faster RCNN, it outperforms other state-of-the-art methods in terms of detection performance for tiny objects, achieving an improvement in average precision of 10.3%, 1.5%, and 4.2% on AI-TOD, SODA-D, and VisDrone2019, respectively. The source codes and results are available at: https://github.com/chnu-cpl/DILA.

A Comparative Analysis of the Conditioning Questionnaire for the Korean Ladies Professional Golf Association and Elite-Amateur Female Golfers

PURPOSE This study aimed to investigate conditioning management and perception in Korea Ladies Professional Golf Association golfers and elite amateur female golfers.METHODS Physical characteristics and performance-related factors were investigated through a short version of the conditioning questionnaire consisting of 16 questions on five factors, surveying 129 female professional golfers and 174 elite amateur female golfers. The components of the questionnaire included physical fitness (four questions), injury (four questions), nutrition (three questions), mental (three questions), and performance strategy factors (two questions). Data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics ver. 23.0 (IBM Co., Armonk, NY, USA). An independent t-test was used for comparison between groups.RESULTS Physical fitness-related factors showed significant differences in all four questions between groups (&lt;i&gt;p&lt;/i&gt;&lt;0.001–0.031), injury-related questions showed significant differences between groups in three questions (&lt;i&gt;p&lt;/i&gt;&lt;0.001–0.003), and one nutrition-related question was different between groups (&lt;i&gt;p&lt;/i&gt;&lt;0.001).CONCLUSIONS Differences were seen in conditioning management factors recognized between professional and elite amateur female athletes. Future research on conditioning questions and differences in effects according to actual performance will be needed.

Study on the flow and heat transfer characteristics of hitec salt in solar vacuum collector tube

ABSTRACT With the continuous development of parabolic trough collectors technology, molten salt has gradually become a popular heat transfer fluid used in solar vacuum collector tubes. An experimental platform with Hitec salt (7% NaNO3, 53% KNO3, and 40% NaNO2) circulation loop was established to study the convective heat transfer characteristics of the molten salt side in the solar vacuum collector tube, and the convective heat transfer experiments were carried out under different irradiation intensities. The results show that increased irradiation intensity can effectively enhance the convection heat transfer. The experimental data under 0W/m2 have a significant deviation from the Nusselt number junction calculated by the classical heat transfer equations, and the deviation ranges from −7.9% to + 15.2%. The heat transfer equations under 0W/m2 and 850W/m2 were fitted, and the deviations between the experimental data and the calculated results of the fitted equations were −8% to + 8% and −9.9% to + 9.5%, respectively. A high-precision fitting strategy based on a neural network algorithm was introduced, the maximum deviation was −3.18% to + 3.35% and −3.9% to + 3.8%, which shows better fitting effect. This study can provide fundamental heat transfer data for the flow heat transfer of ternary molten salt in solar vacuum collector tubes, and provide theoretical guidance for the distribution of heat collection field in trough solar photovoltaic power station.

Resource manipulation reveals interactive phenotype-dependent foraging in free-ranging lizards.

Recent evidence suggests that individuals differ in foraging tactics and this variation is often linked to an individual's behavioural type (BT). Yet, while foraging typically comprises a series of search and handling steps, empirical investigations have rarely considered BT-dependent effects across multiple stages of the foraging process, particularly in natural settings. In our long-term sleepy lizard (Tiliqua rugosa) study system, individuals exhibit behavioural consistency in boldness (measured as an individual's willingness to approach a novel food item in the presence of a threat) and aggressiveness (measured as an individual's response to an 'attack' by a conspecific dummy). These BTs are only weakly correlated and have previously been shown to have interactive effects on lizard space use and movement, suggesting that they could also affect lizard foraging performance, particularly in their search behaviour for food. To investigate how lizards' BTs affect their foraging process in the wild, we supplemented food in 123 patches across a 120-ha study site with three food abundance treatments (high, low and no-food controls). Patches were replenished twice a week over the species' entire spring activity season and feeding behaviours were quantified with camera traps at these patches. We tracked lizards using GPS to determine their home range (HR) size and repeatedly assayed their aggressiveness and boldness in designated assays. We hypothesised that bolder lizards would be more efficient foragers while aggressive ones would be less attentive to the quality of foraging patches. We found an interactive BT effect on overall foraging performance. Individuals that were both bold and aggressive ate the highest number of food items from the foraging array. Further dissection of the foraging process showed that aggressive lizards in general ate the fewest food items in part because they visited foraging patches less regularly, and because they discriminated less between high and low-quality patches when revisiting them. Bolder lizards, in contrast, ate more tomatoes because they visited foraging patches more regularly, and ate a higher proportion of the available tomatoes at patches during visits. Our study demonstrates that BTs can interact to affect different search and handling components of the foraging process, leading to within-population variation in foraging success. Given that individual differences in foraging and movement will influence social and ecological interactions, our results highlight the potential role of BT's in shaping individual fitness strategies and population dynamics.