To examine the joint effect of multiple loci on disease risk, many case-control association studies used ‘‘gene-dose analyses.’’ However, some researchers defined high-risk genotypes (or alleles) as those that have higher genotypic (allelic) frequencies in the case group compared with the control group in the study. This will lead to the total number of the ‘‘high-risk’’ genotypes (alleles) ten...

Fluctuating asymmetry is hypothesized to predict developmental instability (DI) and fitness outcomes. While published studies largely support this prediction, publication bias remains an issue. Biologists have increasingly turned to meta-analysis to estimate true support for an effect. Van Dongen and Gangestad (VD&G) performed a meta-analysis on studies of fluctuating asymmetry (FA) and fitness...

Fishing with bottom towed gear is widely considered an invasive form of fishing in terms of its impacts upon seabed habitats and fauna. Fishery closures or marine protected areas provide baseline conditions against which to assess the response to the removal of fishing disturbance and thus shed light on their use as fisheries management tools. We conducted repeat underwater camera surveys insid...

The proper management of oily sludge from petroleum products storage tanks is necessary because inappropriate methods for dredging of tanks may result in high costs and increased environmental pollution. The purpose of the current study is to rank the strategies outlined by strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis using data envelopment analysis model, which provides enriched i...

• Environmental adaptation of bacterioplankton decreased after dredging. Stochastic processes community increased Sediment total phosphorus mediated balance between stochasticity and determinism. Disentangling ecological mechanisms behind dredging is meaningful to implement environmental policy for improving water quality. However, assembly in response disturbance are poorly understood. Based o...

Dredging is a basic construction for waterway improvement, harbor basin maintenance, land reclamation, environmental protection dredging, and deep-sea mining. The dredging process of cutter suction dredgers so complex that the operational data show strong characteristics dynamic, nonlinearity, time delay, which make it difficult to predict productivity accurately via principles models. In this ...