Series Of Days Research Articles

An Image Classification Approach to Pre-Determine Extent of Development of Post-Operative Necrosis in Skin Flaps.

Purpose - Clinicians and care workers currently cannot determine the final extent of necrosis once it begins. If the area is relatively small, it may heal like a normal wound, whereas re-operation may be the only option if it spreads. This paper represents work toward a predictive algorithm using full-thickness random rat skin flap photographs to determine whether the tissue will develop irretrievable necrosis.Methods - Using post-surgery images taken over a series of days of ischemic flaps, features were extracted, selected, and input into a classification algorithm to see if it could provide information on the future condition of the flaps. We split our data into two groups: flaps that underwent normal healing and slow healing. When consulting with a specialist, it was observed that the resulting dermal damage was not severe when a flap had ≤ 40% necrosis over its length on the final day. Three classifiers were implemented: K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), Random Forest, and Support Vector Machine (SVM).Results - The trained KNN was able to correctly determine whether a flap developed a necrotic area larger or less than 40% of its length with an accuracy of 91% using only images one day post-surgery. Under leave-one-out cross-validation, the Random Forest and SVM achieved accuracies of 82% and 79.5%, respectively, using images spanning ten days post-surgery.Conclusion - We have shown that a classifier can accurately determine whether ischemic skin flaps will develop severe necrotic tissue.Clinical Relevance- An algorithm that assesses early timepoint images and predicts necrosis spread is not only a vital tool for patients and clinicians but is also an extremely important tool to accelerate research into necrosis reduction strategies that ultimately may find application for more life-threatening necrosis-related conditions.

RWD34 Estimating Quality of Life Trajectories from Intermittent at-Home Pulse Surveys

Understanding Quality of Life (QoL) between clinical visits is challenging. One reason is that collecting QoL data in the home is often seen as a burden to patients. Digital technologies exist that can administer pulse surveys, but patient response rates are typically low. This research aims to explore whether a combination of brief pulse surveys administered over a series of days can provide valid time-varying QoL estimates with high response rates.

A Neuro-Integrative Assessment of Perceptual-Motor Performance and Wellness in ROTC Cadets.

Resting heart rate variability (HRV) may be a useful index of both brain-based executive function and general health. Our purpose in this study was to quantify relationships among HRV, perceptual-motor performance metrics, and wellness survey responses. A cohort of 32 male Reserve Officer Training Corp (ROTC) cadets completed a dual-task upper extremity reaction time (UERT) test, two tests of whole-body reactive agility, and a 10-item wellness survey that produced a 0-100 Overall Wellness Index (OWI). We averaged participants' resting HRV measurements twice per week over 10 weeks to derive an intra-individual grand mean (HRV-IIGM) and over a series of days we calculated an intra-individual coefficient of variation (HRV-IICV). We used median values for the two HRV metrics (HRV-IIGM and HRV-IICV) to separate the cadets into equal-sized high and low HRV groups to form the dependent variable for logistic regression analyses. We found a significant inverse relationship between HRV-IIGM and HRV-IICV (r = -0.723, p < .001). Differences in UERT in the left versus right visual hemifields (L-R Diff) and OWI scores were strongly related to both HRV-IIGM ≤ 4.49 and HRV-IICV ≥ 6.95%. Logistic regression models that included L-R Diff and OWI showed 71% classification accuracy for HRV-IIGM (Model χ2 [2] = 12.47, p = .002, Nagelkerke R2 = 0.430) and 81% classification accuracy for HRV-IICV (Model χ2 [2] = 14.88, p = .001, Nagelkerke R2 = 0.496). These findings suggest that resting HRV, perceptual-motor efficiency, and overall wellness are highly interrelated, supporting a multi-factor biopsychosocial assessment to guide the design and implementation of interventions to maximize operational effectiveness for ROTC cadets and other military personnel.

Day-to-Day Stability of Wrist EMG for Wearable-Based Hand Gesture Recognition

Wrist electromyography (EMG) signals have been explored for incorporation into subtle wrist-worn wearable devices for decoding hand gestures. Previous studies have now shown that wrist EMG can even outperform the more commonly used forearm EMG, depending on the application. However, the performance and robustness of wrist EMG-based pattern recognition systems in the presence of confounding factors remain relatively unexplored. In this paper, we investigate the day-to-day stability of wrist EMG signals to ascertain their reliability across days. The test-retest reliability of concurrently collected wrist EMG and forearm EMG signals elicited during a variety of finger and wrist gestures was evaluated over a series of days. Several classification approaches, including a novel Maximum independence domain adaptation (MIDA), were investigated to explore and mitigate the effects of natural EMG variations across days. Results showed that wrist EMG signals were reliable and relatively resilient to the negative effects of EMG variations across days. Specifically, wrist EMG-based classifiers consistently outperformed forearm EMG-based classifiers with statistically significant differences ( <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">p</i> < 0.05) and had average classification accuracies between 93.8% - 95.7% compared to 91.3% - 92.6% for the forearm EMG-based classifiers using a novel Inter-Day Feature Set (IDFS) and a novel adaptive-MIDA linear discriminant analysis (LDA) classification technique requiring minimal training. This study builds further evidence for the viability of commercial wrist-worn EMG wearables with minimal training burden for general consumers.

Word learning and verbal working memory in children with developmental language disorder.

Previous research into word learning in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) indicates that the learning of word forms and meanings, rather than form-referent links, is problematic. This difficulty appears to arise with impaired encoding, while retention of word knowledge remains intact. Evidence also suggests that word learning skills may be related to verbal working memory. We aimed to substantiate these findings in the current study by exploring word learning over a series of days. Fifty children with DLD (mean age 6; 11, 72% male) and 54 age-matched typically developing (TD) children (mean age 6; 10, 56% male) were taught eight novel words across a four-day word learning protocol. Day 1 measured encoding, Days 2 and 3 measured re-encoding, and Day 4 assessed retention. At each day, word learning success was evaluated using Naming, Recognition, Description, and Identification tasks. Children with DLD showed comparable performance to the TD group on the Identification task, indicating an intact ability to learn the form-referent links. In contrast, children with DLD performed significantly worse for Naming and Recognition (signifying an impaired ability to learn novel word forms), and for Description, indicating problems establishing new word meanings. These deficits for the DLD group were apparent at Days 1, 2, and 3 of testing, indicating impairments with initial encoding and re-encoding; however, the DLD and TD groups demonstrated a similar rate of learning. All children found the retention assessments at Day 4 difficult, and there were no significant group differences. Finally, verbal working memory emerged as a significant moderator of performance on the Naming and Recognition tasks, such that children with DLD and poor verbal working memory had the lowest levels of accuracy. This study demonstrates that children with DLD struggle with learning novel word forms and meanings, but are unimpaired in their ability to establish new form-referent links. The findings suggest that the word learning deficit may be attributed to problems with encoding, rather than with retention, of new word knowledge; however, further exploration is required given the poor performance of both groups for retention testing. Furthermore, we found evidence that an impaired ability to learn word forms may only be apparent in children who have DLD and low levels of verbal working memory. When working with children with DLD, speech-language pathologists should assess word learning using tasks that evaluate the ability to learn word forms, meanings, and form-referent links to develop a profile of individual word learning strengths and weaknesses. Clinicians should also assess verbal working memory to identify children at particular risk of word learning deficits. Future research should explore the notion of optimal intervention intensity for facilitating word learning in children with poor language and verbal working memory.

Testing the conceptual and operational underpinnings of field herbivory assays: Does variation in predictability of resources, assay design, and deployment method affect outcomes?

Herbivory assays are a valuable tool used by field ecologists to understand many of the patterns and processes affecting herbivory, a widely recognized driving force in marine communities. However, methods vary substantially among studies in both design and operation, and the effect of these differences has yet to be evaluated. We assessed the effects of several key components of assay design on estimates of herbivory on a tropical reef, a system characterized by strong herbivory pressure by highly mobile grazers. Based on our results, we offer four recommendations. First, we found assays out-planted on sequential days in both predictable and random locations within a 60m2 site experienced temporal increases in herbivory by an increasingly diverse assemblage of fishes. Thus, we strongly advise against placing herbivory assays in the same site over a series of days. Second, we found while the amount of biomass consumed in assays was density-dependent, but the percent loss was not. Thus, it is our opinion that researchers should report percent consumption because this metric is robust to differences in biomass offered and will facilitate comparisons across studies. Third, we found associational effects, where proximity of species of differing palatabilities impacted estimates of herbivory rate on one or both species, but these impacts were not consistent across species or sites. Thus, we recommend the effect of association be directly tested for multi-species herbivory assays. Fourth, we found no effect of attachment method on estimates of herbivory rate and recommend researchers continue to use the attachment method in which they are most confident. We hope our experimental results prove useful in the future when designing, conducting, and interpreting herbivory assays.

Modeling and solving a bi-objective airport slot scheduling problem

The strategic airport slot allocation problem concerns the scheduling of airlines’ requests for landings and take-offs at congested airports for a series of days within a given scheduling season. Relevant scheduling models dealing with the strategic airport slot allocation problem have employed various combinations of the total schedule displacement criterion with several variations of acceptability metrics. However, most variations of schedule displacement pursued in existing literature do not thoroughly capture the real-world scheduling practice, and, most importantly, do not guarantee the allocation of acceptable/tolerable or viable displacement among competing airlines’ slot requests. In this paper, we propose the formulation of the strategic airport slot allocation problem as a bi-objective resource constrained project scheduling problem with partially renewable resources and non-regular objective functions. We employ two non-regular performance criteria: (i) the total earliness-tardiness and (ii) a dispersion measure aiming to alleviate over-displaced requests. Α novel hybrid heuristic algorithm integrating the Objective Feasibility Pump (FP) algorithm with the Large Neighborhood Search technique (LNS) is proposed. We generate a set of new problem instances originating from the patterns of a data set of actual slot requests for a Greek Regional Airport (GRA) to assess the performance of the algorithm. The computational results indicate that the proposed algorithm is reasonably accurate, and it has the capability to approximate the entire efficient frontier of the problem.

A 142-Year Climatology of Northern California Landslides and Atmospheric Rivers

AbstractWe compare a novel dataset of San Francisco Bay Area landslides from 1871 to 2012 to corresponding atmospheric conditions commonly associated with Pacific winter storms and landfalling atmospheric rivers (ARs). Landslides in the San Francisco Bay Area occur primarily during winter months, coinciding with enhanced integrated water vapor transport (IVT) magnitudes ≥250 kg m–1s–1at the coast 76% of the time and with landfalling ARs over the near-offshore northeast Pacific 82% of the time. Results illustrate that days, or the first in a series of days, with a landslide (i.e., landslide onset days) typically occur in association with NOAA Twentieth Century Reanalysis–derived IVT magnitudes ≥250 kg m–1s–1that persist for ∼20 h and temporal maxima in precipitation rates. Composite analyses of sea level pressure, integrated water vapor, and IVT during 3-month periods during September–May on landslide onset days further illustrate that these events coincide with regions of low pressure to the northwest of California and high pressure to the south, synoptic-scale flow conditions associated with strong onshore flow, and water vapor transports in the form of landfalling ARs.

SPEI and Hurst Analysis of Precipitation in the Amazonian Area of Brazil

Abstract Amazon rainforest controls, to some extent, the global hydrological cycle. The objectives of the present work were (i) to investigate hydrologicalpatterns in a larger regionof the Brazilian rainforestthrough 9-month SPEI series and (ii) to search for long or short-term correlation within the number of days with precipitation by monthand accumulated monthly rainfall. Data sets were collected from 15 meteorological stations spanning a large area of the Amazonian rainforest in Brazil. We computed SPEI values from monthly precipitation and monthly meantemperature time series and determined Hurst exponents from detrendedtime series of days with precipitationand accumulated monthly rainfall. In the first case SPEI was determined on a 9-month timescale while Hurst exponents were calculated from rescaled range analysis. Percentage of SPEI values in the near normal class (-1 ≤SPEI ≤ 1) ranged from 59.8% (Peixe, TO) to 69.7% (Tarauaca, AC). The Hurst exponent varied from 0.382 (Diamantino, MT) to 0.636 (Tefé, AM) and correlated positively with the monthly meanrainfall. This indicates a persistenttrend of wet patterns in the futurein some areas. Hurst analysis of days with precipitation and monthly rainfallcould be an additional tool for interpreting rainfall data.

Automating Antimicrobial Usage Reporting

ObjectiveTo leverage existing healthcare transaction messages to automate the aggregation of antimicrobial usage statistics in a method compatible with submission to the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) Antimicrobial Usage module.IntroductionAntimicrobial stewardship is crucial to the ongoing viability of existing therapies. To facilitate this stewardship, NHSN allows hospitals to submit data on their antimicrobial usage and receive feedback on how their usage compares to other facilities.1 This feedback can be used by hospital personnel to assess whether their antimicrobial policies are consistent with current best practices.Participation in this program has so far been limited. There are several barriers to participating, including the challenge of mapping local medication information to the NHSN list of antimicrobials, the burden of tabulating the necessary statistics, and the technical requirements of generating appropriate CDA documents for submission. An automated solution that obtained the necessary data from existing HL7 interfaces and generated CDA documents in the correct format could significantly lower some of the barriers to submitting antimicrobial usage information to NHSN.MethodsA continuous feed of HL7 ADT and RAS messages was established between a multi-hospital health system and the EpiCenter syndromic surveillance system. Medication administration data elements included time of administration, patient location, and a facility-specific medication identifier. Patient data included time of admissions, transfers and discharges and all relevant patient locations.Facility medication codes were reconciled to NHSN antimicrobial identifiers via a multi-step, semi-automated process. A medication formulary was provided by the health system mapping their codes to National Drug Code (NDC) identifiers. The RxNorm API2 was queried to map NDC identifiers to RxNorm identifiers. A second round of RxNorm API queries linked the formulation-specific RxNorm identifiers to related parent RxNorm identifiers for antimicrobials provided by NHSN. The final mapping from facility medication codes to NHSN antimicrobial identifiers was manually reviewed and edited to remove duplicates and to add links by name that were not found automatically.NHSN requires reporting by administration route, which was provided in most cases by the formulary. In rare cases, that route was not sufficiently specific and had to be refined by looking at the site of administration for individual doses.Therapy days were calculated as the total number of unique patient identifiers receiving at least one dose of a given antimicrobial; these were totaled per day, per route, and per inpatient location. Days present were calculated as the total number of unique patient identifiers associated with a given inpatient location at any time during each day. Facility-wide inpatient admissions were calculated as the total number of unique patient identifiers associated with an admission to any inpatient location during each day.ResultsThe RxNorm API yielded mapping between 15,472 NDC identifiers and 847 RxNorm codes, covering 86 (96%) NHSN antimicrobials. An initial merge using the NDC identifiers from the provided formulary yielded 252 matches to NHSN antimicrobials. Manual reconciliation eliminated duplicates to leave 239 unique antimicrobials from the formulary. Since not all NDC identifiers in the formulary could be associated with an RxNorm code, there was the potential for additional antimicrobials to be present but not matched to an NHSN code. The names of the NHSN antimicrobials were used to search the generic and brand names of medications in the formulary, yielding 6 additional antimicrobials with appropriate routes. After these steps of automated and manual reconciliation and excluding formulations administered via nonreportable routes, a total of 216 antimicrobial formulations were identified that can be reported to NHSN. These covered 67 (74%) NHSN antimicrobials.For July 2018, 206,921 medication administration messages were received, including 11,637 administrations of 48 NHSN antimicrobials at 14 NHSN inpatient locations were observed across all four NHSN routes. These represented 7% of completed administrations. They accounted for 6,909 days of therapy with all antimicrobials via all routes at all locations. Figure 1 shows the time series of days of therapy by NHSN route of administration. A total of 950 (0.6%) administrations had medication code 99999 and could not be identified.An additional 189,717 ADT messages for 5,420 distinct visits were received. These yielded 13,885 facility-wide days present and a 14,797 location-specific days present summed across all inpatient locations and facilities, from 4,054 facility-wide admissions. Figure 2 shows the time series of facility-wide days present and summed location-specific days present for each facility.ConclusionsReconciling local facility formularies with a national standardized list of antimicrobials can be a complicated task requiring some amount of human intervention. Once completed, however, HL7 messages from existing interface engines can supply sufficient information for calculating the necessary antimicrobial usage statistics to report to NHSN.

The International Consortium for Quality Research on Dietary Sodium/Salt (TRUE) position statement on the use of 24-hour, spot, and short duration (

The International Consortium for Quality Research on Dietary Sodium/Salt (TRUE) is a coalition of intentional and national health and scientific organizations formed because of concerns low-quality research methods were creating controversy regarding dietary salt reduction. One of the main sources of controversy is believed related to errors in estimating sodium intake with urine studies. The recommendations and positions in this manuscript were generated following a series of systematic reviews and analyses by experts in hypertension, nutrition, statistics, and dietary sodium. To assess the population's current 24-hour dietary sodium ingestion, single complete 24-hour urine samples, collected over a series of days from a representative population sample, were recommended. To accurately estimate usual dietary sodium at the individual level, at least 3 non-consecutive complete 24-hour urine collections obtained over a series of days that reflect the usual short-term variations in dietary pattern were recommended. Multiple 24-hour urine collections over several years were recommended to estimate an individual's usual long-term sodium intake. The role of single spot or short duration timed urine collections in assessing population average sodium intake requires more research. Single or multiple spot or short duration timed urine collections are not recommended for assessing an individual's sodium intake especially in relationship to health outcomes. The recommendations should be applied by scientific review committees, granting agencies, editors and journal reviewers, investigators, policymakers, and those developing and creating dietary sodium recommendations. Low-quality research on dietary sodium/salt should not be funded, conducted, or published.

The Differential Impact of Violence on Ebola Virus Disease Transmission: A Mathematical Modeling Study of the 2018-2019 Outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Background: Violence can impact Ebola virus disease (EVD) transmission in the current outbreak in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). We hypothesized that violent events targeted against the Ebola response will be associated with more EVD transmission than untargeted events. Methods: We used a dynamic cohort of individuals who lived in Ebola-affected and unaffected health zones in DRC from April 2018 to August 2019. The time-varying exposure was the number of violent events, as defined by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Project (ACLED) database, that occurred in each health zone over a series of days. These violent events were categorized into vs. Ebola-untargeted, and further sub-categorized by civilians, military or politics, or protests. The outcome variable was the estimated daily reproduction number (Rest) by health zone, which was estimated from daily EVD case counts (from DRC Ministry of Health) by the Wallinga-Teunis method. We fit a linear time-series regression to model the relationship of violent events and R comparing EVD-affected and unaffected health zones. Findings: The average Rest was 1.06 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.02-1.11). We found an overall change in R of 0.035 (95% CI: 0.020-0.050) among Ebola-affected compared to unaffected health zones. Violent events targeting the Ebola response were associated with an increase in Rest of 0.098 (95% CI: 0.064-0.132) while untargeted, violent events had a smaller effect (0.022, 95% CI: 0.005-0.038). Additional analyses showed the increase in Rest was primarily driven by Ebola-targeted civilian events and, to a lesser extent, by Ebola-untargeted military, political, or protest events. Interpretation: These findings suggest that civilian acts of violence directly targeted against the Ebola response efforts had the largest impact on EVD transmission. To a lesser extent, untargeted military, political, or protest events also had an impact. Funding Statement: This work was supported by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (K08 grant number AI139361 to ETR; K23 grant number AI135037 to JDK) and National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R01 grant number GM130900 to TCP, JDK, and ETR). Declaration of Interests: The authors stated: None to declare. Ethics Approval Statement: The authors stated: Data were publicly available and de-identified, so ethics committee approval was not needed.

Predicting short-term interruptions of antiretroviral therapy from summary adherence data: Development and test of a probability model.

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) for HIV is vulnerable to unplanned treatment interruptions–consecutively missed doses over a series of days–which can result in virologic rebound. Yet clinicians lack a simple, valid method for estimating the risk of interruptions. If the likelihood of ART interruption could be derived from a convenient-to-gather summary measure of medication adherence, it might be a valuable tool for both clinical decision-making and research. We constructed an a priori probability model of ART interruption based on average adherence and tested its predictions using data collected on 185 HIV-infected, treatment-naïve individuals over the first 90 days of ART in a prospective cohort study in Mbarara, Uganda. The outcome of interest was the presence or absence of a treatment gap, defined as >72 hours without a dose. Using the pre-determined value of 0.50 probability as the cut point for predicting an interruption, the classification accuracy of the model was 73% (95% CI = 66%– 79%), the specificity was 87% (95% CI = 79%– 93%), and the sensitivity was 59% (95% CI = 48%– 69%). Overall model performance was satisfactory, with an area under the receiver operator characteristic curve (AUROC) of 0.85 (95% CI = 0.80–0.91) and Brier score of 0.20. The study serves as proof-of-concept that the probability model can accurately differentiate patients on the continuum of risk for short-term ART interruptions using a summary measure of adherence. The model may also aid in the design of targeted interventions.

Analysis of temperature, air humidity and wind conditions for the needs of outdoor thermal comfort

On the thermal comfort of a man staying outdoor during the summer affect mostly meteorological factors, physical activity and the type of clothing. The work analyzed external air parameters, such as: temperature, relative humidity and wind speed, occuring in years 1997‒2016. Meteorological data recorded at the RzeszÓw-Jasionka station allowed to determine, among others, the occurrence of maximum daily and hourly temperatures of outdoor, the daytime and hourly air relative humidity, the hourly wind speed, as well as the relationship between these parameters. In recent years, it has been observed the increase of the number of hot and very hot days which indicates a warming of the climate. The duration of series of days with maximum daily temperature above 30°C is also prolonged, which is not comfortable for a person staying outside. During summer, during hot and very hot days, the average relative humidity remained below 70%. The daily course of this factor was characterized by the opposite tendency with respect to temperature. The wind speed in the summer season varies from 0 to 6 m/s. On a daily basis, the increase in wind speed occurred in the afternoon hours which is consistent with the temperature characteristics. The occurrence of wind during the hottest hours causes a pleasant cooling of the organism.

Possibilities of using solar energy in the processes of cooling external zones of people

Meteorological analyzes unambiguously indicate climate warming. An increase in average air temperatures is recorded in both winter and summer. In recent years, an increasing number of hot and very hot days are observed, and the duration of series of days with maximum daily temperature above 30°C is also longer. Occurrence of hot weather adversely affects the person staying outside. The ever-increasing requirements related to thermal comfort, enforce the provision of appropriate conditions not only in the rooms, but also in the external zones of people. Cooling the air in outdoor zones using standard air-conditioning systems can be expensive due to the high demand for electricity. Ensuring cooling through the use of renewable energy, such as solar energy, is a key solution to energy and environmental problems. In this article, the technical potential of solar radiation energy was determined based on data from the Rzeszow- Jasionka meteorological station and the possibilities of using solar energy in air cooling systems in external zones were presented.

A Temporal and Spatial Analysis Approach to Automated Segmentation of Microbubble Signals in Contrast-Enhanced Ultrasound Images: Application to Quantification of Active Vascular Density in Human Lower Limbs

Contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) using microbubble contrast agents has shown great promise in visualising and quantifying active vascular density. Most existing approaches for vascular density quantification using CEUS are calculated based on image intensity and are susceptible to confounding factors and imaging artefact. Poor reproducibility is a key challenge to clinical translation. In this study, a new automated temporal and spatial signal analysis approach is developed for reproducible microbubble segmentation and quantification of contrast enhancement in human lower limbs. The approach is evaluated in vitro on phantoms and in vivo in lower limbs of healthy volunteers before and after physical exercise. In this approach, vascular density is quantified based on the relative areas microbubbles occupy instead of their image intensity. Temporal features of the CEUS image sequences are used to identify pixels that contain microbubble signals. A microbubble track density (MTD) measure, the ratio of the segmented microbubble area to the whole tissue area, is calculated as a surrogate for active capillary density. In vitro results reveal a good correlation (r2 = 0.89) between the calculated MTD measure and the known bubble concentration. For in vivo results, a significant increase (129% in average) in the MTD measure is found in lower limbs of healthy volunteers after exercise, with excellent repeatability over a series of days (intra-class correlation coefficient = 0.96). This compares to the existing state-of-the-art approach of destruction and replenishment analysis on the same patients (intra-class correlation coefficient ≤0.78). The proposed new approach shows great potential as an accurate and highly reproducible clinical tool for quantification of active vascular density.

War Criminals and Other “Ordinary Men”: A Case Report†

ABSTRACTThe authors provide a psychological portrait of Milan Lukić, a convicted war criminal, whose case was convened at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague. Such in‐depth case studies are rare in the study of war criminals and unique to the study of war criminals associated with the Bosnian conflict. The authors relied upon extensive psychological interviews and psychological testing conducted over a series of days with Lukić and a review of extensive background records to create this psychological portrait. The evaluation data indicate that Lukić was found to be essentially “normal” psychologically, consistent with prior studies of war criminals who were also found to be psychologically normal and legally sane. Our findings contribute to the refutation of the so‐called Nazi personality hypothesis that emerged after World War II. There was no evidence from Lukic's developmental history that would be predictive of his war crimes behavior before the outbreak of the Bosnian conflict. The authors hypothesize that Lukic's war crimes behavior was, in part, a by‐product of the breakdown of the social and moral order that occurred in Bosnia. His ruthless and sadistic behaviors that were manifest after he entered the war suggest an emergent atypical pattern of psychopathic behaviors which manifested under conditions of extreme social and moral duress and which were also reinforced by blind obedience to authority. The authors advocate that future studies of war criminals include an examination of personality as embedded within a particularized social and historical context. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

Detection of trends in days with thunderstorms in Iran over the past five decades

Thunderstorms, which usually occur when there are cumulonimbus (Cb) clouds in the sky, can be a natural hazard if they are severe. Most previous studies have focused on the physical and dynamic structure of thunderstorms, with little focus on exploring the trends of thunderstorm occurrence. In this paper, the time series of days with thunderstorms were studied at 30 synoptic stations in Iran during the past five decades (1961 to 2010). The non-parametric Mann–Kendall statistical method was the main approach employed since it is very useful in hydro-meteorological studies. The results of this study showed that the trend of days with thunderstorms in Iran was positive in most parts of the country for all months of the year. The largest area with positive and significant trends occurred in April and May, especially in the northwestern and northern parts of Iran. Based on the annual time series, more than 90% of the country's area had positive (significant or non-significant) trends. In addition, no significant negative trends were observed in days with thunderstorms for any months of the year in the study region. This research supports the hypothesis that climate change can have significant effects on extreme atmospheric phenomena. Additional research is necessary to explore the climatic and physical causes of the trends presented in this study.

What does three years of hunting great cormorants, Phalacrocorax carbo , tell us? Shooting autumn-staging birds as a means of reducing numbers locally

The population of great cormorants, Phalacrocorax carbo, has increased markedly in Europe in the last 30 years, creating conflicts primarily with fisheries' interests. Some advocate that there should be a reduction in bird numbers on anything from local to regional and pan-European levels. The effect of attempts to reduce cormorant numbers by shooting to kill and by shooting to reinforce the scaring of birds in two Danish fjords was studied. A total of 308, 364 and 459 cormorants were shot in the two fjords during each of three annual hunting seasons. When shooting was intensive over a series of days near the birds' main roosting and sleeping place, numbers dropped significantly compared with non-shooting years. No significant scaring effect was detected when shooting was carried out only at random along the shores of the fjords. None of the shooting treatments had an effect on the number of cormorants occurring in subsequent years. These results indicate that large efforts can be invested in shooting to scare and kill cormorants without reaching any desired reduction in numbers, in particular when the shooting is not coordinated in time and space and not undertaken at key roosting sites.

Limited-Information Modeling of Loggerhead Turtle Population Size

We attempt to estimate the size of a population of female loggerhead turtles. In traditional capture-recapture experiments to estimate the size of an animal population, individual animals are tagged and the information about which individuals are captured repeatedly is crucial. For these loggerhead turtle data, information about individual turtles is not available. Rather, we observe only the counts of successful and failed nestings at a location over a series of days (in our case, three). We view the turtles’ nesting behavior as an alternating renewal process, model it using parametric distributions, and then derive probability distributions that describe the behavior of the turtles during the three days via a 3-way contingency table. We adopt a Bayesian approach, formulating our model in terms of parameters about which strong prior information is available. We use a Gibbs sampling algorithm to sample from the posterior distribution of our random quantities, the most crucial of which is the number of turtles remaining offshore during the entire sampling period. We illustrate the method using data sets from loggerhead turtle sites along the South Carolina coast. We provide a simulation study which illustrates the quality and robustness of the method and investigates sensitivity to prior parameter specification.