1. An important means of conserving beneficial insects in resource-limited habitats is to meet their ecological requirements, which may be achieved by providing areas containing flowering plants that bloom throughout the season, but little is known about the importance of wildflower plot size for supporting natural enemies or the biological control they provide. 2. Wildflowers were established ...

OBJECTIVE Publication bias undermines the integrity of published research. The aim of this paper is to present a synopsis of methods for exploring and accounting for publication bias. METHODS We discussed the main features of the following methods to assess publication bias: funnel plot analysis; trim-and-fill methods; regression techniques and selection models. We applied these methods to a we...

Stress-strain behavior of some starch xanthideand carbon black-reinforced styrene-butadiene elastomers was investigated as a function of filler particle size and structure. In starch xanthide systems, low strain behavior is sensitive to particle structure; high strain behavior, to particle size. Electron photomicrographs of the several starch xanthide-reinforced vulcanizates were analyzed with ...

Small-study effects are a common threat in systematic reviews and may indicate publication bias. Their existence is often verified by visual inspection of the funnel plot. Formal tests to assess the presence of funnel plot asymmetry typically estimate the association between the reported effect size and their standard error, the total sample size, or the inverse of the total sample size. In thi...

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