Voluntary Associations and Their Involvement in Collaborative Forest Management

Voluntary associations representing numerous types of recreation users and environmental issues have flourished across the landscape in America. However, the literature has not sufficiently studied these associations and their role in collaborative natural resource management. A lack of understanding of voluntary associations has not only limited managers’ ability to accommodate changing values of the American public, but also resulted in tremendous costs for land management agencies. This dissertation was aimed at gaining a better understanding of outdoor recreation and environmental voluntary associations and their involvement in collaborative forest management. Five objectives guided this study: (1) assessing the organizational characteristics of voluntary associations; (2) exploring organizational concerns about forest management issues; (3) examining organizational leaders’ experiences in collaborating with the Forest Service; (4) evaluating the perceived effectiveness of collaboration efforts with the Forest Service, and (5) developing and testing a social psychological model to predict members’ participation in organizational activities. To achieve our research goals, a case-study approach utilizing a mixed-methods research framework was employed. The Sam Houston National Forest (SHNF) located in New Waverly, Texas served as the geographic focus of this research. Semi-structured interviews and a web-based survey were conducted with members in selected voluntary associations that are currently involved in collaborative forest management at SHNF. The findings identified stakeholder attributes and interests, validated assumptions held regarding voluntary groups and assessed collaboration effectiveness, and helped to uncover alternative explanations for members’ differential participation in voluntary associations. The study offers a conceptual bridge linking several areas of study including inter-organizational collaboration, environmental communication, outdoor recreation studies, and volunteerism

Assessing the Quality of Reports about Randomized Controlled Trials of Acupuncture Treatment on Mild Cognitive Impairment

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the reports' qualities which are about randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of acupuncture treatment on Mild Cognitive Impairment (MIC). METHODS: Nine databases including the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL,2010), PUBMED (1984-5/2010), EMbase (1984-5/2010), MEDLINE (1984-5/2010), CINAL (1984-5/2010), China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI, 1980-5/2010), China Biomedicine Database disc (CBMdisc, 1980-5/2010), VIP (a full text issues database of China, 1989-5/2010) were searched systematically. Hand search for further references was conducted. Language was limited to Chinese and English. We identified 14 RCTs that used acupuncture as an intervention and assessed the quality of these reports against the Consolidated Standards for Reporting of Trials (CONSORT) statement and Standards for Reporting Interventions in Controlled Trials of Acupuncture (STRICTA). RESULTS: In regard to the items in the CONSORT statement, 13(92.86%) RCTs described baseline demographic and clinical characteristics in each group. 7 (50.0%) mentioned the method of generating the random sequence, only 2 (14.3%) RCTs had adequate allocation concealment. No RCTs used blinding. RCTs reported the sample size calculation. In regard to the items in STRICTA, 10 (71.43%) mentioned the depths of insertion, 6 (42.86%) reported acupuncture response, 11 (78.57%) mentioned the technique of acupuncture, 12 (85.71%) recorded the time, and only 3 (21.43%) RCTs reported the numbers of needles inserted. No RCTs reported the background of the acupuncture practitioners and professional title of practitioners. CONCLUSION: The reporting quality of RCTs of acupuncture for mild cognitive impairment was moderate to low. The CONSORT statement and STRICTA should be used to standardize the reporting of RCTs of acupuncture in future

A Study on the Practice of Folk Dance Culture in Kindergarten

China is characterized by a long history of development and a rich and colorful national culture. Folk dance culture shines in the field of excellent traditional culture. However, the progress of social development has led to the gradual extinction of folk dance. Preschool education, as the beginning stage of education in a person’s life, is a favorable time to embrace folk dance culture. By integrating folk dance into the stage of preschool education, it is conducive to carry forward the traditional culture of the nation and fostering national self-confidence and national pride in children while passing on the excellent traditional culture. Therefore, it is urgent to explore the path of combining folk dance culture with early childhood education

Evaluation and Mitigation of Agnosia in Multimodal Large Language Models

While Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) are widely used for a variety of vision-language tasks, one observation is that they sometimes misinterpret visual inputs or fail to follow textual instructions even in straightforward cases, leading to irrelevant responses, mistakes, and ungrounded claims. This observation is analogous to a phenomenon in neuropsychology known as Agnosia, an inability to correctly process sensory modalities and recognize things (e.g., objects, colors, relations). In our study, we adapt this similar concept to define "agnosia in MLLMs", and our goal is to comprehensively evaluate and mitigate such agnosia in MLLMs. Inspired by the diagnosis and treatment process in neuropsychology, we propose a novel framework EMMA (Evaluation and Mitigation of Multimodal Agnosia). In EMMA, we develop an evaluation module that automatically creates fine-grained and diverse visual question answering examples to assess the extent of agnosia in MLLMs comprehensively. We also develop a mitigation module to reduce agnosia in MLLMs through multimodal instruction tuning on fine-grained conversations. To verify the effectiveness of our framework, we evaluate and analyze agnosia in seven state-of-the-art MLLMs using 9K test samples. The results reveal that most of them exhibit agnosia across various aspects and degrees. We further develop a fine-grained instruction set and tune MLLMs to mitigate agnosia, which led to notable improvement in accuracy

Effect of combined vitamin D and microwave ablation of parathyroid glands on blood pressure and cardiac function in maintenance-hemodialysis patients with uremic secondary hyperparathyroidism

Purpose: To investigate the effect of microwave ablation of parathyroid glands in combination with active vitamin D on blood pressure and cardiac function in maintenance-hemodialysis patients with uremic secondary hyperparathyroidism. Methods: One hundred and twenty maintenance-hemodialysis patients with uremic secondary hyperparathyroidism admitted to Meizhou People’s Hospital were assigned to 2 groups (A and B) in the order of their admission. Each group had 60 patients. Both groups were treated with active vitamin D, while patients in group A were, in addition, subjected to microwave ablation of parathyroid glands. Blood pressure, and indices for cardiac function, thyroid function s and anemia were determined. Results: After treatment, the blood pressure of group A was significantly lower than that of group B (p < 0.05). Moreover, after treatment, there were significant improvements in indices of cardiac function, thyroid function and anemia in group A patients, relative to group B patients. Conclusion: Microwave ablation of parathyroid glands, when combined with active vitamin D, improves blood pressure, cardiac function and anemia status. Furthermore, the combined therapy enhances recovery of thyroid function in maintenance-hemodialysis patients with uremic secondary hyperparathyroidism. However, the combined therapy should be subjected to further clinical trials prior to application in clinical practice. Keywords: Microwave ablation; Parathyroid glands; Active vitamin D; Hyperparathyroidis

Architecture engineering of carbonaceous anodes for high‐rate potassium‐ion batteries

The limited lithium resource in earth's crust has stimulated the pursuit of alternative energy storage technologies to lithium‐ion battery. Potassium‐ion batteries (KIBs) are regarded as a kind of promising candidate for large‐scale energy storage owing to the high abundance and low cost of potassium resources. Nevertheless, further development and wide application of KIBs are still challenged by several obstacles, one of which is their fast capacity deterioration at high rates. A considerable amount of effort has recently been devoted to address this problem by developing advanced carbonaceous anode materials with diverse structures and morphologies. This review presents and highlights how the architecture engineering of carbonaceous anode materials gives rise to high‐rate performances for KIBs, and also the beneficial conceptions are consciously extracted from the recent progress. Particularly, basic insights into the recent engineering strategies, structural innovation, and the related advances of carbonaceous anodes for high‐rate KIBs are under specific concerns. Based on the achievements attained so far, a perspective on the foregoing, and proposed possible directions, and avenues for designing high‐rate anodes, are presented finally

Disrupted Structural Brain Connectome Is Related to Cognitive Impairment in Patients With Ischemic Leukoaraiosis

Ischemic leukoaraiosis (ILA) is related to cognitive impairment and vascular dementia in the elderly. One possible mechanism could be the disruption of white matter (WM) tracts and network function that connect distributed brain regions involved in cognition. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between structural connectome and cognitive functions in ILA patients. A total of 89 patients with ILA (Fazekas score ≥ 3) and 90 healthy controls (HCs) underwent comprehensive neuropsychological examinations and diffusion tensor imaging scans. The tract-based spatial statistics approach was employed to investigate the WM integrity. Graph theoretical analysis was further applied to construct the topological architecture of the structural connectome in ILA patients. Partial correlation analysis was used to investigate the relationships between network measures and cognitive performances in the ILA group. Compared with HCs, the ILA patients showed widespread WM integrity disruptions. The ILA group displayed increased characteristic path length (Lp) and decreased global network efficiency at the level of the whole brain relative to HCs, and reduced nodal efficiencies, predominantly in the frontal–subcortical and limbic system regions. Furthermore, these structural connectomic alterations were associated with cognitive impairment in ILA patients. The association between WM changes (i.e., fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity measures) and cognitive function was mediated by the structural connectivity measures (i.e., local network efficiency and Lp). In conclusion, cognitive impairment in ILA patients is related to microstructural disruption of multiple WM fibers and topological disorganization of structural networks, which have implications in understanding the relationship between ILA and the possible attendant cognitive impairment

Associations of [18F]-APN-1607 Tau PET Binding in the Brain of Alzheimer's Disease Patients With Cognition and Glucose Metabolism.

Molecular imaging of tauopathies is complicated by the differing specificities and off-target binding properties of available radioligands for positron emission tomography (PET). [18F]-APN-1607 ([18F]-PM-PBB3) is a newly developed PET tracer with promising properties for tau imaging. We aimed to characterize the cerebral binding of [18F]-APN-1607 in Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients compared to normal control (NC) subjects. Therefore, we obtained static late frame PET recordings with [18F]-APN-1607 and [18F]-FDG in patients with a clinical diagnosis of AD group, along with an age-matched NC group ([18F]-APN-1607 only). Using statistical parametric mapping (SPM) and volume of interest (VOI) analyses of the reference region normalized standardized uptake value ratio maps, we then tested for group differences and relationships between both PET biomarkers, as well as their associations with clinical general cognition. In the AD group, [18F]-APN-1607 binding was elevated in widespread cortical regions (P < 0.001 for VOI analysis, familywise error-corrected P < 0.01 for SPM analysis). The regional uptake in AD patients correlated negatively with Mini-Mental State Examination score (frontal lobe: R = -0.632, P = 0.004; temporal lobe: R = -0.593, P = 0.008; parietal lobe: R = -0.552, P = 0.014; insula: R = -0.650, P = 0.003; cingulum: R = -0.665, P = 0.002) except occipital lobe (R = -0.417, P = 0.076). The hypometabolism to [18F]-FDG PET in AD patients also showed negative correlations with regional [18F]-APN-1607 binding in some signature areas of AD (temporal lobe: R = -0.530, P = 0.020; parietal lobe: R = -0.637, P = 0.003; occipital lobe: R = -0.567, P = 0.011). In conclusion, our results suggested that [18F]-APN-1607 PET sensitively detected tau deposition in AD and that individual tauopathy correlated with impaired cerebral glucose metabolism and cognitive function