Reviewing the use of resilience concepts in forest sciences

Purpose of the review Resilience is a key concept to deal with an uncertain future in forestry. In recent years, it has received increasing attention from both research and practice. However, a common understanding of what resilience means in a forestry context, and how to operationalise it is lacking. Here, we conducted a systematic review of the recent forest science literature on resilience in the forestry context, synthesising how resilience is defined and assessed. Recent findings Based on a detailed review of 255 studies, we analysed how the concepts of engineering resilience, ecological resilience, and social-ecological resilience are used in forest sciences. A clear majority of the studies applied the concept of engineering resilience, quantifying resilience as the recovery time after a disturbance. The two most used indicators for engineering resilience were basal area increment and vegetation cover, whereas ecological resilience studies frequently focus on vegetation cover and tree density. In contrast, important social-ecological resilience indicators used in the literature are socio-economic diversity and stock of natural resources. In the context of global change, we expected an increase in studies adopting the more holistic social-ecological resilience concept, but this was not the observed trend. Summary Our analysis points to the nestedness of these three resilience concepts, suggesting that they are complementary rather than contradictory. It also means that the variety of resilience approaches does not need to be an obstacle for operationalisation of the concept. We provide guidance for choosing the most suitable resilience concept and indicators based on the management, disturbance and application context

Repeated vertebral augmentation for new vertebral compression fractures of postvertebral augmentation patients: a nationwide cohort study – how useful is the current clinical gold standard for fracture risk?

Hannah CP Wilson,1 Paul D Abel,2 S Imran A Shah2 1Department of Post-graduate Students, Imperial College London, Charing Cross Hospital, 2Department of surgery and cancer, Imperial College London, Hammersmith Hospital, London, UKFurther to the recent publication on the “Repeated vertebral augmentation for new vertebral compression fractures of postvertebral augmentation patients: a nationwide cohort study”,1 current data highlight the limitations of dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry scans. In this context, at best, dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry scans (which measure bone mineral density) can account for no greater than 50% of overall bone strength (defined as the ability to resist fracture). This is because the resulting images are two-dimensional and therefore unable to capture skeletal micro-architecture, which also contributes to bone strength.2 View original article by Liang et al&nbsp

Human Connectome Project informatics: Quality control, database services, and data visualization

The Human Connectome Project (HCP) has developed protocols, standard operating and quality control procedures, and a suite of informatics tools to enable high throughput data collection, data sharing, automated data processing and analysis, and data mining and visualization. Quality control procedures include methods to maintain data collection consistency over time, to measure head motion, and to establish quantitative modality-specific overall quality assessments. Database services developed as customizations of the XNAT imaging informatics platform support both internal daily operations and open access data sharing. The Connectome Workbench visualization environment enables user interaction with HCP data and is increasingly integrated with the HCP's database services. Here we describe the current state of these procedures and tools and their application in the ongoing HCP study. © 2013 Elsevier Inc