Multiscale Analyses of Mammal Species Composition – Environment Relationship in the Contiguous USA

Relationships between species composition and its environmental determinants are a basic objective of ecology. Such relationships are scale dependent, and predictors of species composition typically include variables such as climate, topographic, historical legacies, land uses, human population levels, and random processes. Our objective was to quantify the effect of environmental determinants on U.S. mammal composition at various spatial scales. We found that climate was the predominant factor affecting species composition, and its relative impact increased in correlation with the increase of the spatial scale. Another factor affecting species composition is land-use–land-cover. Our findings showed that its impact decreased as the spatial scale increased. We provide quantitative indication of highly significant effect of climate and land-use–land-cover variables on mammal composition at multiple scales

Conversion-Based Dynamic-Creative-Optimization in Native Advertising

Yahoo Gemini native advertising marketplace serves billions of impressions daily, to hundreds millions of unique users, and reaches a yearly revenue of many hundreds of millions USDs. Powering Gemini native models for predicting advertise (ad) event probabilities, such as conversions and clicks, is OFFSET - a feature enhanced collaborative-filtering (CF) based event prediction algorithm. The predicted probabilities are then used in Gemini native auctions to determine which ads to present for every serving event (impression). Dynamic creative optimization (DCO) is a recent Gemini native product that was launched two years ago and is increasingly gaining more attention from advertisers. The DCO product enables advertisers to issue several assets per each native ad attribute, creating multiple combinations for each DCO ad. Since different combinations may appeal to different crowds, it may be beneficial to present certain combinations more frequently than others to maximize revenue while keeping advertisers and users satisfied. The initial DCO offer was to optimize click-through rates (CTR), however as the marketplace shifts more towards conversion based campaigns, advertisers also ask for a {conversion based solution. To accommodate this request, we present a post-auction solution, where DCO ads combinations are favored according to their predicted conversion rate (CVR). The predictions are provided by an auxiliary OFFSET based combination CVR prediction model, and used to generate the combination distributions for DCO ad rendering during serving time. An online evaluation of this explore-exploit solution, via online bucket A/B testing, serving Gemini native DCO traffic, showed a 53.5% CVR lift, when compared to a control bucket serving all combinations uniformly at random.Comment: Accepted to IEEE Big Data 2022 conferenc

Safety and short term outcomes of a new truly minimally-invasive mesh-less and dissection-less anchoring system for pelvic organ prolapse apical repair

Objective To evaluate the safety and short term outcomes of a new, truly minimally-invasive, mesh-less and dissection-less anchoring system for pelvic floor apical repair. Methods A prospective study was conducted using the NeuGuide™ device system for pelvic floor apical repair. The primary effectiveness outcome was centro-apical pelvic floor prolapse by POP-Q after six months. The primary safety outcome was intra-operative, immediate (first 48 h) post-operative complications and adverse effects after six months. A standardized questionnaire (UDI-6) to assess quality of life at entry and during follow-up visits was used. Patients’ six months-follow-up and evaluation are reported. Results The mean age of the study population (n=10) was 63.8±12.0 years. All patients had a previous prolapse surgery. Five had a previous hysterectomy and two had stress urinary incontinence symptoms. During surgery six patients had a concurrent colporrhaphy. There was no injury to the bladder, rectum, pudendal nerves, or major pelvic vessels and no febrile morbidity was recorded. At six months, no cases of centro-apical recurrence were noted. Patients were satisfied with the procedure and had favorable quality of life scores. Using the UDI-6 questionnaire an improvement, in all domains was seen. Moreover, although the sample size was small, the improvement in urge and overflow incontinence related domains were demonstrated to be statistically significant. Conclusions This new NeuGuide™ device allows rapid and safe introduction of a suspending suture through the sacrospinous ligament and makes sacrospinous ligament fixation easy to perform, while avoiding dissection and mesh complications

5. Forest Conservation

Expert assessors Rhett Harrison, Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, Zambia Keith Kirby, University of Oxford, UK Gillian Petrokofsky, Biodiversity Institute Oxford, UK Rebecca K. Smith, University of Cambridge, UK William J. Sutherland, University of Cambridge, UK Tom Swinfield, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, UK Scope of assessment: for the conservation of forest habitat (not specific species within forests), including tropical forests, temperate forests, w..