Project description:In deceased donor kidney transplantation, acute kidney injury (AKI) prioir to surgery is a major determinant of delayed graft function (DGF), but AKI is histologically silent and difficult to assess. We hypothesized that a molecular measurement of AKI would add power to conventional risk assessments to predict the early poor allograft function at first week post transplantation.
Project description:Mangrove forest plays a very important role for both ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation. In Vietnam, mangrove is mainly distributed in the Mekong delta. Recently, mangrove areas in this region decreased rapidly in both quality and quantity. The forest became bare, divided and scattered into many small patches, which was a major driver of ecosystem degradation. Without a quantitative method for effectively assessing mangrove health in the regional scale, the sustainably conserving mangrove is the challenge for the local governments. Remote sensing data has been widely used for monitoring mangrove distributions, while the characterization of spatial metrics is important to understand the underlying processes of mangrove change. The objectives of this study were to develop an approach to monitor mangrove health in Mui Ca Mau, Ca Mau province of Vietnam by utilizing satellite image textures to assess the mangrove patterns. The research result showed that mangrove areas increased double by 2015, but the forest had become more fragmented. We can be seen those changes in land use mainly come from land conversion from forest to shrimp farms, settlements areas and public constructions. The conserving existing mangrove forest in Mui Ca Mau should consider the relations between mangrove health and influencing factors indicated in the manuscript.
Project description:Research productivity and impact are often considered in professional evaluations of academics, and performance metrics based on publications and citations increasingly are used in such evaluations. To promote evidence-based and informed use of these metrics, we collected publication and citation data for 437 tenure-track faculty members at 33 research-extensive universities in the United States belonging to the National Association of University Fisheries and Wildlife Programs. For each faculty member, we computed 8 commonly used performance metrics based on numbers of publications and citations, and recorded covariates including academic age (time since Ph.D.), sex, percentage of appointment devoted to research, and the sub-disciplinary research focus. Standardized deviance residuals from regression models were used to compare faculty after accounting for variation in performance due to these covariates. We also aggregated residuals to enable comparison across universities. Finally, we tested for temporal trends in citation practices to assess whether the "law of constant ratios", used to enable comparison of performance metrics between disciplines that differ in citation and publication practices, applied to fisheries and wildlife sub-disciplines when mapped to Web of Science Journal Citation Report categories. Our regression models reduced deviance by ¼ to ½. Standardized residuals for each faculty member, when combined across metrics as a simple average or weighted via factor analysis, produced similar results in terms of performance based on percentile rankings. Significant variation was observed in scholarly performance across universities, after accounting for the influence of covariates. In contrast to findings for other disciplines, normalized citation ratios for fisheries and wildlife sub-disciplines increased across years. Increases were comparable for all sub-disciplines except ecology. We discuss the advantages and limitations of our methods, illustrate their use when applied to new data, and suggest future improvements. Our benchmarking approach may provide a useful tool to augment detailed, qualitative assessment of performance.
Project description:In the EU, the transport sector is the only sector with increasing GHG emissions compared to 1990. While harmful emissions have decreased due to successful regulation, transport performance, fossil fuel consumption and thus CO2 emissions have continued to increase, despite powertrain efficiency improvements. Meaningful regulation, which can be market-based (MBI) and non-market-based (NMBI) by nature, is needed to meet climate targets. To understand the mechanisms, effects and limitations of MBI and NMBI, this study investigates and evaluates selected regulations in the German road transportation sector until 2020. Therefore, this study identifies, describes, and categorizes environmental policy instrument types. Based on this step, selected instruments in the road transportation sector are identified by their type and implemented policies are described and assessed. Furthermore, an assessment methodology is developed to evaluate and score target achievement, cost-efficiency and practical feasibility by linking the outcomes of instruments to its goals. Based on the findings of this assessment, conclusions and recommendations are developed and discussed. Finally, results and general properties of policies and their type of instruments are extrapolated, and general statements about market and non-market-based instruments in a broader context for future regulation and market designs are projected. The study discovers that fuel producers and distributors, vehicle manufacturers and sellers are directly regulated by non-marked-based instruments, despite the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). On the customer side, primarily market-based implemented except for low-emission zones, which are direct regulations. The study finds that holistic representation and realistic internalization of external effects in a market is complex and will never be complete. Still, sufficient representation can be enough to drive transformation in the transport sector. The CO2 price itself is not sufficiently representing the consequential costs of climate change induced by road transport, but it helps to make low-carbon alternatives economically viable. Overall, the study finds that most implemented regulations in the German road transport sector were successful in relation to their goals.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12302-022-00663-7.