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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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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The prevention and diagnosis of frailty syndrome (FS) in cardiac patients requires innovative systems to support medical personnel, patient adherence, and self-care behavior. To do so, modern medicine uses a supervised machine learning approach (ML) to study the psychosocial domains of frailty in cardiac patients with heart failure (HF). This study aimed to determine the absolute and relative diagnostic importance of the individual components of the Tilburg Frailty Indicator (TFI) questionnaire in patients with HF. An exploratory analysis was performed using machine learning algorithms and the permutation method to determine the absolute importance of frailty components in HF. Based on the TFI data, which contain physical and psychosocial components, machine learning models were built based on three algorithms: a decision tree, a random decision forest, and the AdaBoost Models classifier. The absolute weights were used to make pairwise comparisons between the variables and obtain relative diagnostic importance. The analysis of HF patients’ responses showed that the psychological variable TFI20 diagnosing low mood was more diagnostically important than the variables from the physical domain: lack of strength in the hands and physical fatigue. The psychological variable TFI21 linked with agitation and irritability was diagnostically more important than all three physical variables considered: walking difficulties, lack of hand strength, and physical fatigue. In the case of the two remaining variables from the psychological domain (TFI19, TFI22), and for all variables from the social domain, the results do not allow for the rejection of the null hypothesis. From a long-term perspective, the ML based frailty approach can support healthcare professionals, including psychologists and social workers, in drawing their attention to the nonphysical origins of HF.
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This article will discuss the role of environmentalism in environmental education (EE) and education for sustainable development (ESD) in the context of ecopedagogy. Ecopedagogy calls for the remaking of capitalist practices and seeks to re-engage democracy to include multispecies interests in the face of our current global ecological crisis. In this article, the written reports by international business students on the documentary film If a Tree Falls about a radical environmental movement will be discussed. The aim of this article is to reflect upon the question of whether confrontational questions posed by radical environmentalism can move students to re-examine certain central assumptions within their own society and education. The analysis of students’ individual writing assignments after viewing the film is placed in the context of the discussion about the aims of education in relation to environmental advocacy. This case study seeks to provide an example of how environmental advocacy and the objective of pluralistic education can be combined as mutually supportive means of achieving both democratic learning and learning for environmental sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1177/0973408215569119 https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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Environmental advocacy has a difficult position within environmental education (EE) and education for sustainable development (ESD). Proponents of pluralistic approaches to education see advocacy as a form of indoctrination. However, pluralistic education itself can be seen as a form of indoctrination. Its normative assumptions are based on the neo-liberal capitalist values that tend to view environmentalism as a threat to the established norms. In this paper I will argue that environmental advocacy is in fact essential for educating critical citizens capable of addressing sustainability challenges. This argument will be supported by the written reports on the documentary film about the radical environmental movement presented to the students of International Business Management Studies (IBMS) of The Hague University of Applied Science (HHS). This case study will provide an example of how environmental advocacy and the objective of pluralistic education can be reconciled and explore the advantages of combining business education with education for deep ecology. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJISD.2014.066621 https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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Biodiversity preservation is often viewed in utilitarian terms that render non-human species as ecosystem services or natural resources. The economic capture approach may be inadequate in addressing biodiversity loss because extinction of some species could conceivably come to pass without jeopardizing the survival of the humans. People might be materially sustained by a technological biora made to yield services and products required for human life. The failure to address biodiversity loss calls for an exploration of alternative paradigms. It is proposed that the failure to address biodiversity loss stems from the fact that ecocentric value holders are politically marginalized and underrepresented in the most powerful strata of society. While anthropocentric concerns with environment and private expressions of biophilia are acceptable in the wider society, the more pronounced publicly expressed deep ecology position is discouraged. “Radical environmentalists” are among the least understood of all contemporary opposition movements, not only in tactical terms, but also ethically. The article argues in favor of the inclusion of deep ecology perspective as an alternative to the current anthropocentric paradigm. https://doi.org/10.1080/1943815X.2012.742914 https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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Within Human Activity Recognition (HAR), there is an insurmountable gap between the range of activities performed in life and those that can be captured in an annotated sensor dataset used in training. Failure to properly handle unseen activities seriously undermines any HAR classifier's reliability. Additionally within HAR, not all classes are equally dissimilar, some significantly overlap or encompass other sub-activities. Based on these observations, we arrange activity classes into a structured hierarchy. From there, we propose Hi-OSCAR: a Hierarchical Open-set Classifier for Activity Recognition, that can identify known activities at state-of-the-art accuracy while simultaneously rejecting unknown activities. This not only enables open-set classification, but also allows for unknown classes to be localized to the nearest internal node, providing insight beyond a binary “known/unknown” classification. To facilitate this and future open-set HAR research, we collected a new dataset: NFI_FARED. NFI_FARED contains data from multiple subjects performing nineteen activities from a range of contexts, including daily living, commuting, and rapid movements, which is fully public and available for download.
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Dit onderzoek heeft de beleving van ziekenhuisverpleegkundigen over betekenis en toepassing van leiderschapscompetenties in verpleegkundig handelen in kaart gebracht. Daarnaast was het onderzoek gericht op bewustwording van de ontwikkeling van verpleegkundig leiderschap. METHODE: Het betreft een mixed-methods onderzoeksdesign met kwalitatieve data van 75 diepte-interviews en 24 focusgroepen over een periode van 2 jaar en kwantitatieve data van 430 verpleegkundigen. RESULTATEN: Verpleegkundig leiderschap blijkt vooral gerelateerd aan opkomen voor patiënten vanuit expertise waarvan concrete voorbeelden werden gevonden. Tegelijk blijkt dat verpleegkundigen zich niet volledig bekwaam achten op bachelor niveau; op competenties zoals evidence based practice (EBP), zelfmanagement bevorderen en gezamenlijke besluitvorming is sprake van kennistekorten. Factoren die de ontwikkeling van leiderschap bevorderen zijn werkcultuur-gebonden. DISCUSSIE EN CONCLUSIE: Inzetten op vergroten van bewustwording van zowel onbewuste bekwaamheid als onbekwaamheid naast een veilige teamsfeer zijn belangrijke stappen in de ontwikkeling van klinisch leiderschap. Hierin zijn reflectie en uitwisseling van goede voorbeeldsituaties ondersteunend. Het onderzoek levert een model voor verpleegkundig leiderschap op dat laat zien hoe persoonlijke leiderschapscompetenties door alle verpleegkundigen, ongeacht het functieniveau, worden ingezet in combinatie met expertise die aan het functie en opleidingsniveau is gekoppeld en waarbij gedeeld leiderschap als een gezamenlijke opdracht in teamverband wordt beoefend.
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In December of 2004 the Directorate General for Research and Technological Development (DG RTD) of the European Commission (EC) set up a High-Level Expert Group to propose a series of measures to stimulate the reporting of Intellectual Capital in research intensive Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs). The Expert Group has focused on enterprises that either perform Research and Development (R&D), or use the results of R&D to innovate and has also considered the implications for the specialist R&D units of larger enterprises, dedicated Research & Technology Organizations and Universities. In this report the Expert Group presents its findings, leading to six recommendations to stimulate the reporting of Intellectual Capital in SMEs by raising awareness, improving reporting competencies, promoting the use of IC Reporting and facilitating standardization.
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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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