Effects of Land Crabs on Leaf Litter Distributions and Accumulations in a Mainland Tropical Rain Forest 1

The effect of the fossorial land crab Gecarcinus quadratus (Gecarcinidae) on patterns of accumulation and distribution of leaf litter was studied for two years in the coastal primary forests of Costa Rica's Corcovado National Park. Within this mainland forest, G, quadratus achieve densities up to 6 crabs/m 2 in populations extending along the Park's Pacific coastline and inland for ca 600 m. Crabs selectively forage for fallen leaf litter and relocate what they collect to burrow chambers that extend from 15 to 150 cm deep ( N = 44), averaging (±SE) 48.9 ± 3.0 cm. Preference trials suggested that leaf choice by crabs may be species-specific. Excavated crab burrows revealed maximum leaf collections of 11.75 g dry mass– 2.5 times more leaf litter than collected by square-meter leaf fall traps over several seven-day sampling periods. Additionally, experimental crab exclosures (25 m 2 ) were established using a repeated measures randomized block design to test for changes in leaf litter as a function of reduced crab density. Exclosures accumulated significantly more (5.6 ± 3.9 times) leaf litter than did control treatments during the wet, but not the dry, seasons over this two-year study. Such extensive litter relocation by land crabs may affect profiles of soil organic carbon, rooting, and seedling distributions.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73250/1/j.1744-7429.2003.tb00590.x.pd

Uterine artery ligation at the beginning of total laparoscopic hysterectomy reduces total blood loss and operation duration

WOS: 000369867900014PubMed ID: 25517762The purpose of this study was to compare the feasibility, blood loss, duration of surgery and complications between patients in whom both uterine arteries were ligated by surgical clips and cut using a 5-mm ligature at the beginning of total laparoscopic hysterectomy (TLH) and patients in whom uterine arteries were not ligated at the beginning of TLH. In our prospective study, a total of 60 women underwent TLH. Uterine artery ligation (UAL) was done at the beginning of the procedure. Women were divided into TLH + UAL (n = 30) and TLH (n = 30) groups. In TLH group, TLH was done without ligating the uterine arteries at the beginning of the procedure. In TLH + UAL group, TLH was done with ligation of both uterine arteries at the beginning of the procedure. The mean operating time was longer for the TLH group (99.16 +/- 7.01) than TLH + UAL group (63.27 +/- 7.16). The median total blood loss was higher in TLH group (109.38 +/- 33.03 mL) than TLH + UAL group (47.50 +/- 8.12 mL). UAL at the beginning of TLH is a technically feasible procedure. It reduces the total blood loss and decreases the time taken for the procedure and length of hospital stay

Clinical and demographic characteristics of patients with non-alcoholic steatohepatitis: A multicenter study

38th Annual Meeting of the European-Association-for-the-Study-of-the-Liver -- MAR 29-APR 01, 2003 -- ISTANBUL, TURKEYWOS: 000182174500685European Assoc Study Live

A Visual Analytics Framework for Microblog Data Analysis at Multiple Scales of Aggregation

Real-time microblogs can be utilized to provide situational awareness during emergency and disaster events. However, the utilization of these datasets requires the decision makers to perform their exploration and analysis across a range of data scales from local to global, while maintaining a cohesive thematic context of the transition between the different granularity levels. The exploration of different information dimensions at the varied data and human scales remains to be a non-trivial task. To this end, we present a visual analytics situational awareness environment that supports the real-time exploration of microblog data across multiple scales of analysis. We classify microblogs based on a fine-grained, crisis-related categorization approach, and visualize the spatiotemporal evolution of multiple categories by coupling a spatial lens with a glyph-based visual design. We propose a transparency-based spatial context preserving technique that maintains a smooth transition between different spatial scales. To evaluate our system, we conduct user studies and provide domain expert feedback.clos