Risk assessments on trees in urban areas and roadside plantings have become common practice and a large body of information exists on qualitative aspects on the risks of tree failure. Quantitative analysis of financial damage due to tree failure is generally lacking. The objective of this paper is to determine the amount of tree failure related property damage and to derive possible trends in the number of cases and monetary claims and compensations. This paper presents the analysis of 1610 observations on urban tree failure in the Netherlands. The data originate from two different sources, i.e. jurisprudence (4% of the data) and 21 municipalities (96%). The data covers property damage in urban areas between the early sixties and 2010. Within municipalities, paid compensations due to tree failure are found to range from €0 to € 49,296 with an average of €2,244 per paid compensation. Results demonstrate a significant annual increase in tree failure as well as in paid compensations.
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Recent research has indicated an increase in the likelihood and impact of tree failure. The potential for trees to fail relates to various biomechanical and physical factors. Strikingly, there seems to be an absence of tree risk assessment methods supported by observations, despite an increasing availability of variables and parameters measured by scientists, arborists and practitioners. Current urban tree risk assessments vary due to differences in experience, training, and personal opinions of assessors. This stresses the need for a more objective method to assess the hazardousness of urban trees. The aim of this study is to provide an overview of factors that influence tree failure including stem failure, root failure and branch failure. A systematic literature review according to the PRISMA guidelines has been performed in databases, supported by backward referencing: 161 articles were reviewed revealing 142 different factors which influenced tree failure. A meta-analysis of effect sizes and p-values was executed on those factors which were associated directly with any type of tree failure. Bayes Factor was calculated to assess the likelihood that the selected factors appear in case of tree failure. Publication bias was analysed visually by funnel plots and results by regression tests. The results provide evidence that the factors Height and Stem weight positively relate to stem failure, followed by Age, DBH, DBH squared times H, and Cubed DBH (DBH3) and Tree weight. Stem weight and Tree weight were found to relate positively to root failure. For branch failure no relating factors were found. We recommend that arborists collect further data on these factors. From this review it can further be concluded that there is no commonly shared understanding, model or function available that considers all factors which can explain the different types of tree failure. This complicates risk estimations that include the failure potential of urban trees.
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Within recent years, Financial Credit Risk Assessment (FCRA) has become an increasingly important issue within the financial industry. Therefore, the search for features that can predict the credit risk of an organization has increased. Using multiple statistical techniques, a variance of features has been proposed. Applying a structured literature review, 258 papers have been selected. From the selected papers, 835 features have been identified. The features have been analyzed with respect to the type of feature, the information sources needed and the type of organization that applies the features. Based on the results of the analysis, the features have been plotted in the FCRA Model. The results show that most features focus on hard information from a transactional source, based on official information with a high latency. In this paper, we readdress and -present our earlier work [1]. We extended the previous research with more detailed descriptions of the related literature, findings, and results, which provides a grounded basis from which further research on FCRA can be conducted.
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The objective of this thesis is to make a first step towards prevention of the progression of chronic venous disease and the development of a first venous leg ulcer in chronic venous disease patients. The aim is to identify chronic venous disease patients at risk of developing more severe clinical stages, provide insight in the lifestyle related risk factors, and provide an overview of current chronic venous disease care in the Netherlands.
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To study the ways in which compounds can induce adverse effects, toxicologists have been constructing Adverse Outcome Pathways (AOPs). An AOP can be considered as a pragmatic tool to capture and visualize mechanisms underlying different types of toxicity inflicted by any kind of stressor, and describes the interactions between key entities that lead to the adverse outcome on multiple biological levels of organization. The construction or optimization of an AOP is a labor intensive process, which currently depends on the manual search, collection, reviewing and synthesis of available scientific literature. This process could however be largely facilitated using Natural Language Processing (NLP) to extract information contained in scientific literature in a systematic, objective, and rapid manner that would lead to greater accuracy and reproducibility. This would support researchers to invest their expertise in the substantive assessment of the AOPs by replacing the time spent on evidence gathering by a critical review of the data extracted by NLP. As case examples, we selected two frequent adversities observed in the liver: namely, cholestasis and steatosis denoting accumulation of bile and lipid, respectively. We used deep learning language models to recognize entities of interest in text and establish causal relationships between them. We demonstrate how an NLP pipeline combining Named Entity Recognition and a simple rules-based relationship extraction model helps screen compounds related to liver adversities in the literature, but also extract mechanistic information for how such adversities develop, from the molecular to the organismal level. Finally, we provide some perspectives opened by the recent progress in Large Language Models and how these could be used in the future. We propose this work brings two main contributions: 1) a proof-of-concept that NLP can support the extraction of information from text for modern toxicology and 2) a template open-source model for recognition of toxicological entities and extraction of their relationships. All resources are openly accessible via GitHub (https://github.com/ontox-project/en-tox).
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The purpose of this study was to describe the care needs of adult traumatized refugees and asylum seekers. DESIGN AND METHODS. A mixed-methods design was used. A survey was conducted using the Camberwell Assessment of Need (CAN) among 30 patients. Semistructured in-depth interviews were subsequently conducted with eight of these patients. FINDINGS. Key themes among refugees are loneliness and grief. Refugees are in severe psychological distress. They also encounter all kinds of practical problems that influence their quality of life. Furthermore, many of them suffer from serious psychiatric and trauma-related problems. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS. The results of this explorative study can contribute to the quality of care for traumatized refugees.
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During times of high activity by predators and competitors, herbivores may be forced to forage in patches of low‐quality food. However, the relative importance in determining where and what herbivores forage still remains unclear, especially for small‐ and intermediate‐sized herbivores. Our objective was to test the relative importance of predator and competitor activity, and forage quality and quantity on the proportion of time spent in a vegetation type and the proportion of time spent foraging by the intermediate‐sized herbivore European hare (Lepus europaeus). We studied red fox (Vulpes vulpes) as a predator species and European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) as a competitor. We investigated the time spent at a location and foraging time of hare using GPS with accelerometers. Forage quality and quantity were analyzed based on hand‐plucked samples of a selection of the locally most important plant species in the diet of hare. Predator activity and competitor activity were investigated using a network of camera traps. Hares spent a higher proportion of time in vegetation types that contained a higher percentage of fibers (i.e., NDF). Besides, hares spent a higher proportion of time in vegetation types that contained relatively low food quantity and quality of forage (i.e., high percentage of fibers) during days that foxes (Vulpes vulpes) were more active. Also during days that rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) were more active, hares spent a higher proportion of time foraging in vegetation types that contained a relatively low quality of forage. Although predation risk affected space use and foraging behavior, and competition affected foraging behavior, our study shows that food quality and quantity more strongly affected space use and foraging behavior than predation risk or competition. It seems that we need to reconsider the relative importance of the landscape of food in a world of fear and competition.
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The adaptation of urbanised areas to climate change is currently one of the key challenges in the domain of urban policy. The diversity of environmental determinants requires the formulation of individual plans dedicated to the most significant local issues. This article serves as a methodic proposition for the stage of retrieving data (with the PESTEL and the Delphi method), systemic diagnosis (evaluation of risk and susceptibility), prognosis (goal trees, goal intensity map) and the formulation of urban adaptation plans. The suggested solution complies with the Polish guidelines for establishing adaptation plans. The proposed methodological approach guarantees the participation of various groups of stakeholders in the process of working on urban adaptation plans, which is in accordance with the current tendencies to strengthen the role of public participation in spatial management. https://doi.org/10.12911/22998993/81658
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Dissertatie met als onderwerp het ontwerp en evaluatie van de Hogere Beroepsopleidding Orthopedische Technologie in Nederland. In deze dissertatie wordt naast het ontwerp van de opleiding ingegaan op een vergelijking die is gemaakt met andere opleidingen op het gebied van hoger orthopedisch technologisch onderwijs in de wereld.
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From the publisher: "Background: The introduction of whole new foods in a population may lead to sensitization and food allergy. This constitutes a potential public health problem and a challenge to risk assessors and managers as the existing understanding of the pathophysiological processes and the currently available biological tools for prediction of the risk for food allergy development and the severity of the reaction are not sufficient. There is a substantial body of in vivo and in vitro data describing molecular and cellular events potentially involved in food sensitization. However, these events have not been organized in a sequence of related events that is plausible to result in sensitization, and useful to challenge current hypotheses. The aim of this manuscript was to collect and structure the current mechanistic understanding of sensitization induction to food proteins by applying the concept of adverse outcome pathway (AOP). Main body: The proposed AOP for food sensitization is based on information on molecular and cellular mechanisms and pathways evidenced to be involved in sensitization by food and food proteins and uses the AOPs for chemical skin sensitization and respiratory sensitization induction as templates. Available mechanistic data on protein respiratory sensitization were included to fill out gaps in the understanding of how proteins may affect cells, cell-cell interactions and tissue homeostasis. Analysis revealed several key events (KE) and biomarkers that may have potential use in testing and assessment of proteins for their sensitizing potential. Conclusion: The application of the AOP concept to structure mechanistic in vivo and in vitro knowledge has made it possible to identify a number of methods, each addressing a specific KE, that provide information about the food allergenic potential of new proteins. When applied in the context of an integrated strategy these methods may reduce, if not replace, current animal testing approaches. The proposed AOP will be shared at the www.aopwiki.org platform to expand the mechanistic data, improve the confidence in each of the proposed KE and key event relations (KERs), and allow for the identification of new, or refinement of established KE and KERs." Authors: Jolanda H. M. van BilsenEmail author, Edyta Sienkiewicz-Szłapka, Daniel Lozano-Ojalvo, Linette E. M. Willemsen, Celia M. Antunes, Elena Molina, Joost J. Smit, Barbara Wróblewska, Harry J. Wichers, Edward F. Knol, Gregory S. Ladics, Raymond H. H. Pieters, Sandra Denery-Papini, Yvonne M. Vissers, Simona L. Bavaro, Colette Larré, Kitty C. M. Verhoeckx and Erwin L. Roggen
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