ALBERT

Description: Concern regarding the potential for developmental health risks associated with certain chemicals (e.g., phthalates, antibacterials) used in personal care products is well documented; however, current exposure data for pregnant women are limited. The objective of this study was to describe the pattern of personal care product use in pregnancy and the post-partum period. Usage patterns of personal care products were collected at six different time points during pregnancy and once in the postpartum period for a cohort of 80 pregnant women in Ottawa, Canada. The pattern of use was then described and groups of personal care product groups commonly used together were identified using hierarchical cluster analysis. The results showed that product use varied by income and country of birth. General hygiene products were the most commonly used products and were consistently used over time while cosmetic product use declined with advancing pregnancy and post-delivery. Hand soaps and baby products were reported as used more frequently after birth. This study is the first to track personal care product use across pregnancy and into the postpartum period, and suggests that pregnant populations may be a unique group of personal care product users. This information will be useful for exposure assessments.

Description: Urbanization poses important environmental, social, and ecological pressures, representing a major threat to biodiversity. However, urban areas are highly heterogeneous, with some greenspaces (e.g., urban forests, parks, private gardens) providing resources and a refuge for wildlife communities. In this study we surveyed 10 taxonomic groups to assess their species richness and composition in six greenspaces that differ in size, location, management, and human activities. Species richness differed among taxonomic groups, but not all differed statistically among the studied greenspaces (i.e., sac fungi, bats). Plants, basidiomycetous and sac fungi, and birds showed intermediate assemblage composition similarity (〈54%). The composition of assemblages of copro-necrophagous beetles, grasshoppers, amphibians, and bats was related to the specific traits of greenspaces, mainly size and location. The species richness contribution of each greenspace considering all studied taxonomic groups was highest in the largest greenspace that is located at the southeastern border of the city, while the lowest contribution was recorded in the smallest ones, all of them closer to the city’s center. Our results shed some light on the way in which different taxonomic groups respond to an array of neotropical urban greenspaces, providing an important basis for future studies.

Description: Urbanization poses severe threats to biodiversity; thus, there is an urge to understand urban areas and their biological, physical, and social components if we aim to integrate sustainable practices as part of their processes. Among urban wildlife groups, butterflies have been used as biological indicators due to their high sensitivity to environmental changes. In this study, we estimated the number of butterflies that live within a neotropical medium-sized city (Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico) using a robust interpolation procedure (ordinary kriging). Our calculations added an average of 1,077,537 (± SE 172) butterfly individuals that dwelt in Xalapa in the surveyed space and time. The interpolation procedures showed to be robust and reliable, and up to some extent conservative. Thus, our results suggest that there are at least 1.8 butterfly individuals per capita in Xalapa. Notably, higher butterfly abundances tended to be recorded near highly vegetated areas and along city borders. Besides providing the basis for further ecological studies, our results will contribute to the crucial need of scientific data that is lacking, but critically important, for adequate urban management and planning, as well as environmental education.

Description: We study the asymptotic law of a network of interacting neurons when the number of neurons becomes infinite. Given a completely connected network of neurons in which the synaptic weights are Gaussian correlated random variables, we describe the asymptotic law of the network when the number of neurons goes to infinity. We introduce the process-level empirical measure of the trajectories of the solutions to the equations of the finite network of neurons and the averaged law (with respect to the synaptic weights) of the trajectories of the solutions to the equations of the network of neurons. The main result of this article is that the image law through the empirical measure satisfies a large deviation principle with a good rate function which is shown to have a unique global minimum. Our analysis of the rate function allows us also to characterize the limit measure as the image of a stationary Gaussian measure defined on a transformed set of trajectories.

Description: Instream channel restoration is a common practice in river engineering that presents a challenge for research. One research gap is the development of monitoring techniques that allow for testable predictions of sediment transport and supply. Here we use Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) transponders to compare the short-term (1-year) sediment transport response to flood events in a restored and a control reach. The field site is Wilket Creek, an enlarged creek in a fully urbanized catchment without stormwater management control in Toronto, Ontario. The responses to three flooding periods, each of which are at or above the design bankfull discharge, are described. Key results are that (i) particle mobility is lower in the restored reach for all three periods; (ii) full mobility occurs in the control reach during the first two floods while partial mobility occurs in the restored reach; and (iii) the constructed morphology exerted a controlling influence on particle entrainment, with higher mobility in the pools. Log-transformed travel distances exhibit normal distributions when grouped by particle size class, which allows a statistical comparison with power law and other predictive travel-distance relations. Results show that three bedload transport conditions can occur, with partial mobility associated with a mild relation between particle size and travel distance and full mobility associated with either a flat or steep relation depending on the degree of integration of particles in the bed. Recommendations on seeding strategy and sample sizes are made to improve the precision of the results by minimizing confidence intervals for mobility and travel distances. Even in a short term study, the RFID sediment tracking technique allows a process-based assessment of stream restoration outcomes that can be used to justify the instream intervention and plan future attempts to stabilize and enhance the system.

Description: How does aging impact relations between emotion, memory, and attention? To address this question, young and older adults named the font colors of taboo and neutral words, some of which recurred in the same font color or screen location throughout two color-naming experiments. The results indicated longer color-naming response times (RTs) for taboo than neutral base-words (taboo Stroop interference); better incidental recognition of colors and locations consistently associated with taboo versus neutral words (taboo context-memory enhancement); and greater speed-up in color-naming RTs with repetition of color-consistent than color-inconsistent taboo words, but no analogous speed-up with repetition of location-consistent or location-inconsistent taboo words (the consistency type by repetition interaction for taboo words). All three phenomena remained constant with aging, consistent with the transmission deficit hypothesis and binding theory, where familiar emotional words trigger age-invariant reactions for prioritizing the binding of contextual features to the source of emotion. Binding theory also accurately predicted the interaction between consistency type and repetition for taboo words. However, one or more aspects of these phenomena failed to support the inhibition deficit hypothesis, resource capacity theory, or socio-emotional selectivity theory. We conclude that binding theory warrants further test in a range of paradigms, and that relations between aging and emotion, memory, and attention may depend on whether the task and stimuli trigger fast-reaction, involuntary binding processes, as in the taboo Stroop paradigm.

Description: Remotely sensed images are important sources of information for a range of spatial problems. Air photo interpretation emerged as a discipline in response to the need to develop a systematic method for analysis of reconnaissance photographs during World War I. Remote sensing research has focused on the development of automated methods of image analysis, shifting focus away from human interpretation processes. However, automated methods are far from perfect and human interpretation remains an important component of image analysis. One important source of information concerning human image interpretation process is textual guides written within the discipline. These early texts put more emphasis than more recent texts, on the details of the interpretation process, the role of the human in the process, and the cognitive skills involved. In the research reported here, we use content analysis to evaluate the discussion of air photo interpretation in historical texts published between 1922 and 1960. Results indicate that texts from this period emphasized the documentation of relationships between perceptual cues and images features of common interest while reasoning skill and knowledge were discussed less so. The results of this analysis provide a framework of expert image skills needed to perform image interpretation tasks. The framework is useful for informing the design of semi-automated tools for performing analysis.

Description: Tree planting is widely advocated and applied in urban areas, with large-scale projects underway in cities globally. Numerous potential benefits are used to justify these planting campaigns. However, reports of poor tree survival raise questions about the ability of such projects to deliver on their promises over the long-term. Each potential benefit requires different supporting conditions—relating not only to the type and placement of the tree, but also to the broader urban system within which it is embedded. This set of supporting conditions may not always be mutually compatible and may not persist for the lifetime of the tree. Here, we demonstrate a systems-based approach that makes these dependencies, synergies, and tensions more explicit, allowing them to be used to test the decadal-scale resilience of urban street trees. Our analysis highlights social, environmental, and economic assumptions that are implicit within planting projects; notably that high levels of maintenance and public support for urban street trees will persist throughout their natural lifespan, and that the surrounding built form will remain largely unchanged. Whilst the vulnerability of each benefit may be highly context specific, we identify approaches that address some typical weaknesses, making a functional, resilient, urban forest more attainable.

Description: In this paper, we address the topic of user-centered design (UCD) for cartography, GIScience, and visual analytics. Interactive maps are ubiquitous in modern society, yet they often fail to “work” as they could or should. UCD describes the process of ensuring interface success—map-based or otherwise—by gathering input and feedback from target users throughout the design and development of the interface. We contribute to the expanding literature on UCD for interactive maps in two ways. First, we synthesize core concepts on UCD from cartography and related fields, as well as offer new ideas, in order to organize existing frameworks and recommendations regarding the UCD of interactive maps. Second, we report on a case study UCD process for GeoVISTA CrimeViz, an interactive and web-based mapping application supporting visual analytics of criminal activity in space and time. The GeoVISTA CrimeViz concept and interface were improved iteratively by working through a series of user→utility→usability loops in which target users provided input and feedback on needs and designs (user), prompting revisions to the conceptualization and functional requirements of the interface (utility), and ultimately leading to new mockups and prototypes of the interface (usability) for additional evaluation by target users (user… and so on). Together, the background review and case study offer guidance for applying UCD to interactive mapping projects, and demonstrate the benefit of including target users throughout design and development.

Description: The spread of an alien invasive grass (gamba grass—Andropogon gayanus) in the tropical savannas of Northern Australia is a major threat to habitat quality and biodiversity in the region, primarily through its influence on fire intensity. Effective control and eradication of this invader requires better insight into its spatial distribution and rate of spread to inform management actions. We used full-waveform airborne LiDAR to map areas of known A. gayanus invasion in the Batchelor region of the Northern Territory, Australia. Our stratified sampling campaign included wooded savanna areas with differing degrees of A. gayanus invasion and adjacent areas of native grass and woody tree mixtures. We used height and spatial contiguity based metrics to classify returns from A. gayanus and developed spatial representations of A. gayanus occurrence (1 m resolution) and canopy cover (10 m resolution). The cover classification proved robust against two independent field-based investigations at 500 m2 (R2 = 0.87, RMSE = 12.53) and 100 m2 (R2 = 0.79, RMSE = 14.13) scale. Our mapping results provide a solid benchmark for evaluating the rate and pattern of A. gayanus spread from future LiDAR campaigns. In addition, this high-resolution mapping can be used to inform satellite image analysis for the evaluation of A. gayanus invasion over broader regional scales. Our research highlights the huge potential that airborne LiDAR holds for facilitating the monitoring and management of savanna habitat condition.