Habitat suitability index (HSI) models are commonly used to predict habitat quality and species distributions and are used to develop biological surveys, assess reserve and management priorities, and anticipate possible change under different management or climate change scenarios. Important management decisions may be based on model results, often without a clear understanding of the level of ...

Impervious surface area (ISA) is an important parameter for many studies such as urban climate, urban environmental change, and air pollution; however, mapping ISA at the regional or global scale is still challenging due to the complexity of impervious surface features. The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program’s Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS) data have been used for ISA mapping, but...

CONTEXT Hepatic steatosis, defined as increased hepatocellular lipid content (HCL), associates with visceral obesity and glucose intolerance. As exact HCL quantification by 1H-magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) is not generally available, various clinical indices are increasingly used to predict steatosis. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to test the accuracy of NAFLD liver fat s...

BACKGROUND/AIMS Recent studies have demonstrated the utility of the FibroScan® device in diagnosing liver steatosis, but its usefulness has not been thoroughly appraised. We investigated the usefulness of the controlled attenuation parameter (CAP) in detecting and quantifying liver steatosis. METHODS A prospective analysis was applied to 79 chronic liver disease patients who underwent a liver...

The problem of finding patterns in financial time series has been tackled by systematic observations of trends, statistical analysis or the use of artificial intelligence techniques in trend analysis. These techniques are more for the discovering of patterns in data rather than the understanding of association relationships between the discovered patterns. As time series patterns often overlap ...

The Funil Reservoir receives a large amount of xenobiotics from the Paraíba do Sul River (PSR) from large number of industries and municipalities in the watershed. This study aimed to assess environmental quality along the longitudinal profile of the Paraíba do Sul River-Funil Reservoir system, by using biomarkers and bioindicators in a selected fish species. The raised hypothesis is that Funil...

OBJECTIVES To introduce a health-related quality of life measure for home care and institutional long-term care settings based on the Minimum Data Set (MDS) and the Health Utilities Index Mark 2 (HUI2). METHODS Health attributes of Health Related Quality of Life (HRQOL) were identified, and suitable constructs were determined. Items from the MDS were mapped to the HUI2. Scores for the Minimum...

Aims To examine the ability of different commonmeasures of cigarette dependence to predict smoking cessation during pregnancy. Design Secondary analysis of data from a parallel-group randomized controlled trial of physical activity for smoking cessation. The outcomes were biochemically validated smoking abstinence at 4weeks post-quit and end-ofpregnancy. Setting Women identified as smokers in a...

This paper evaluates the usefulness of the hyperspectral imager (HSI) onboard Chinese HJ-1-A small satellite in vegetation mapping. Fractional vegetation cover (FVC) is an important surface microclimate parameter for characterizing land surface vegetation cover as well as the most effective indicator for assessing desertification and crop growth condition. The HJ-1/HSI data were used to calcula...