A mesocosm experiment investigating the effects of substratum quality and wave exposure on the survival of fish eggs

In a mesocosm experiment, the attachment of bream (Abramis brama) eggs to spawning substrata with and without periphytic biofilm coverage and their subsequent survival with and without low-intensity wave exposure were investigated. Egg attachment was reduced by 73% on spawning substrata with a natural periphytic biofilm, compared to clean substrata. Overall, this initial difference in egg numbers persisted until hatching. The difference in egg numbers was even increased in the wave treatment, while it was reduced in the no-wave control treatment. Exposure to a low-intensity wave regime affected egg development between the two biofilm treatments differently. Waves enhanced egg survival on substrata without a biofilm but reduced the survival of eggs on substrata with biofilm coverage. In the treatment combining biofilm-covered substrata and waves, no attached eggs survived until hatching. In all treatments, more than 75% of the eggs became detached from the spawning substrata during the egg incubation period, an

Learning Multiple Defaults for Machine Learning Algorithms

The performance of modern machine learning methods highly depends on their hyperparameter configurations. One simple way of selecting a configuration is to use default settings, often proposed along with the publication and implementation of a new algorithm. Those default values are usually chosen in an ad-hoc manner to work good enough on a wide variety of datasets. To address this problem, different automatic hyperparameter configuration algorithms have been proposed, which select an optimal configuration per dataset. This principled approach usually improves performance, but adds additional algorithmic complexity and computational costs to the training procedure. As an alternative to this, we propose learning a set of complementary default values from a large database of prior empirical results. Selecting an appropriate configuration on a new dataset then requires only a simple, efficient and embarrassingly parallel search over this set. We demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the approach we propose in comparison to random search and Bayesian Optimization

Bedeutung der Gesetzgebung zur Luftreinhaltung in der Prävention umweltbedingter Erkrankungen

Air pollution, for example from particulate matter, nitrogen oxides or ozone, is harmful to health. Short-term increases in air pollution can lead to exacerbation of existing lung diseases. Long-term air pollution contributes to the development of cardiorespiratory diseases. According to the European Environment Agency, 53,000 people prematurely died in Germany in 2019 due to particulate matter pollution. Air pollution control is a political task with great public health potential. In recent years, it has significantly contributed to improving air quality and thus health. In view of the new more stringent World Health Organization (WHO) air quality guidelines, the authorities and policy makers worldwide are now confronted with the question of adjusting air quality targets and setting standards. In Europe, the EU Directive on air quality standards is passed by the EU Parliament and the Council of the EU and is binding for air quality targets of member states. Member states can be brought to court for failure to achieve the targets. Therefore, there is a risk that achievable and less ambitious air pollution targets will be set. Even now, the EU guideline values are significantly higher than those in the USA or Switzerland. While "only" 11% of the EU population were exposed to levels above the current EU limit for PM10 in 2020, 71% of the population were exposed to hazardous levels of PM10 following the new recommendation by the WHO. Among the most important and successful air pollution control measures is the reduction of air pollutants at the source: emission control. Despite the energy crisis goals regarding air pollution control and climate protection must not be ignored. Importantly, health protection cannot be left to individuals. Health professionals have an important clinical role in advising sensitive patients on how to deal with short-term elevated levels of air pollutants but beyond that their advisory role in policy is very significant

Harvesting Entities from the Web Using Unique Identifiers -- IBEX

In this paper we study the prevalence of unique entity identifiers on the Web. These are, e.g., ISBNs (for books), GTINs (for commercial products), DOIs (for documents), email addresses, and others. We show how these identifiers can be harvested systematically from Web pages, and how they can be associated with human-readable names for the entities at large scale. Starting with a simple extraction of identifiers and names from Web pages, we show how we can use the properties of unique identifiers to filter out noise and clean up the extraction result on the entire corpus. The end result is a database of millions of uniquely identified entities of different types, with an accuracy of 73--96% and a very high coverage compared to existing knowledge bases. We use this database to compute novel statistics on the presence of products, people, and other entities on the Web.Comment: 30 pages, 5 figures, 9 tables. Complete technical report for A. Talaika, J. A. Biega, A. Amarilli, and F. M. Suchanek. IBEX: Harvesting Entities from the Web Using Unique Identifiers. WebDB workshop, 201

Spatio-temporal modelling of changes in air pollution exposure associated to the COVID-19 lockdown measures across Europe

The lockdown and related measures implemented by many European countries to stop the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID-19) pandemic have altered the economic activities and road transport in many cities. To rigorously evaluate how these measures have affected air quality in Europe, we developed Bayesian spatio-temporal (BST) models that assess changes in the surface nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentration across the continent. We fitted BST models to measurements of the two pollutants in 2020 using a lockdown indicator covariate, while accounting for the spatial and temporal correlation present in the data. Since other factors, such as weather conditions, local combustion sources and/or land surface characteristics may contribute to the variation of pollutant concentrations, we proposed two model formulations that allowed the differentiation between the variations in pollutant concentrations due to seasonality from the variations associated to the lockdown policies. The first model compares the changes in 2020, with the ones during the same period in the previous five years, by introducing an offset term, which controls for the long-term average concentrations of each pollutant during 2014-2019. The second approach models only the 2020 data, but adjusts for confounding factors. The results indicated that the latter can better capture the lockdown effect. The measures taken to tackle the virus in Europe reduced the average surface concentrations of NO2 and PM2.5 by 29.5% (95% Bayesian credible interval: 28.1%, 30.9%) and 25.9% (23.6%, 28.1%), respectively. To our knowledge, this research is the first to account for the spatio-temporal correlation present in the monitoring data during the pandemic and to assess how it affects estimation of the lockdown effect while accounting for confounding. The proposed methodology improves our understanding of the effect of COVID-19 lockdown policies on the air pollution burden across the continent

Hearing loss and fluctuating hearing levels in X-linked hypophosphataemic osteomalacia

Abstract Background and objective: X-linked hypophosphataemic osteomalacia is the most common of the genetically determined forms of osteomalacia. The occurrence of hearing loss in X-linked hypophosphataemic osteomalacia has been known since 1984. However, observations on the progression of such hearing loss, and suggestions regarding possible therapy, have not previously been published. Methods: Case report of a patient with X-linked hypophosphataemic osteomalacia and hearing loss, with three years' audiological follow up, description of empirical therapy and literature review. Results: The patient presented with fluctuating hearing. An audiogram showed mild to severe sensorineural hearing loss mainly in the low and high frequencies. A temporary improvement of 20-40dB after steroid therapy was observed. Four weeks later, hearing had deteriorated again, mainly in the low frequencies. After one year of fluctuating hearing levels, stabilisation occurred. Conclusions: In X-linked hypophosphataemic osteomalacia, hearing loss occurs predominantly in the low and high frequencies. The hearing loss type and progression pattern point to an endolymphatic hydrops as the pathogenetic mechanism. Steroid therapy may be of some benefi

Change in nutritional status of urban slum children before and after the first COVID-19 wave in Bangladesh: a repeated cross-sectional assessment

The onset of COVID-19 severely disrupted economies and increased acute household food insecurity in developing countries. Consequently, a global rise in childhood undernutrition was predicted, especially among vulnerable populations, but primary evidence on actual changes in nutritional status remained scarce. In this paper, we assessed shifts in nutritional status of urban slum children in Bangladesh pre- and post- the country's first wave of COVID-19 and nationwide lockdown. We used two rounds of cross-sectional data collected before and after the pandemic's first year in two large slum settlements (Korail and Tongi) of Dhaka and Gazipur, Bangladesh (n = 1119). Regression models estimated pre-post changes in: 1) predictors of childhood undernutrition (household income, jobs, food security, dietary diversity, healthcare utilization, and hand hygiene); and 2) under-five children's nutritional status (average height-for-age z-score (HAZ) and weight-for-height z-score (WHZ), stunting, and wasting). Subgroup analysis was done by household migration status and slum area. Over the sample period, average monthly household income dropped 23% from BDT 20,740 to BDT 15,960 (beta = -4.77; 95% CI:-6.40, -3.15), and currently employed fathers slightly declined from 99% to 95% (beta = -0.04; 95% CI:-0.05, -0.02). Average HAZ among the slum children improved 0.13 SD (95% CI: 0.003, 0.26). Among non-migrant children in Tongi, the odds of stunting increased (OR = 2.01, 95% CI: 1.16, 3.48) and average WHZ reduced -0.40 SD (95% CI: -0.74, -0.06). Despite great economic hardship, and differential patterns of representativeness by household geography and migration status, slum children in Bangladesh generally demonstrated resilience to nutritional decline over the first year of the pandemic. While underlying threats to nutritional deterioration persisted, considerable job and income recovery in the post-lockdown period appeared to have cushioned the overall decline. However, as the pandemic continues, monitoring and appropriate actions are needed to avert lasting setbacks to Bangladesh nutritional progress