20 Native Trees to Plant, January 25, 2010

If you have ever flown in an airplane over Iowa, you would see that our woodlands are scattered along the rivers and streams and areas too steep to farm. You would also see a green carpet of trees within out cities and towns. Did you know the 90% of the over 2.7 million acres of forest in Iowa is owned by over 138,000 different private owners? Or that 30% of the land cover in a typical Iowa community if covered by trees? Trees are vital for the protection of our drinking water supply, critical for wildlife habitat, and help sustain employment of over 7,000 Iowans in the wood products industry. This booklet "20 Native trees to Plant" will help you gain a greater knowledge about Iowa's trees and forests. Learn about and enjoy Iowa's trees. Consider ways that you can improve our environment by planting and caring for Iowa's trees and forests.

Plant Trees with help from CRP, February 4, 2010

It's a fact. Landowners like the five couples featured in the publication have helped replant Iowa. In fact, Iowa's forests and dwindled from an original 7 million acres to only 1.4 million acres in 1974. The state now has 2.8 million acres, surpassing the acreage of woodlands more than a century ago.

Ensemble methods for environmental data modelling with support vector regression

This paper investigates the use of ensemble of predictors in order to improve the performance of spatial prediction methods. Support vector regression (SVR), a popular method from the field of statistical machine learning, is used. Several instances of SVR are combined using different data sampling schemes (bagging and boosting). Bagging shows good performance, and proves to be more computationally efficient than training a single SVR model while reducing error. Boosting, however, does not improve results on this specific problem.

Nutrient distribution in Picea likiangensis trees growing in a plantation in West Sichuan, Southwest China

Abstract

Sweet orange trees grafted on selected rootstocks fertilized with nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium

The majority of citrus trees in Brazil are grafted on 'Rangpur lime' (Citrus limonia Osb.) rootstock. Despite its good horticultural performance, search for disease tolerant rootstock varieties to improve yield and longevity of citrus groves has increased. The objective of this work was to evaluate yield efficiency of sweet oranges on different rootstocks fertilized with N, P, and potassium. Tree growth was affected by rootstock varieties; trees on 'Swingle' citrumelo [Poncirus trifoliata (L.) Raf. × C. paradisi Macf.] presented the smallest canopy (13.3 m³ in the fifth year after tree planting) compared to those on 'Rangpur lime' and 'Cleopatra' mandarin [C. reshni (Hayata) hort. ex Tanaka] grown on the same grove. Although it was observed an overall positive relationship between canopy volume and fruit yield (R² = 0.95**), yield efficiency (kg m-3) was affected by rootstocks, which demonstrated 'Rangpur lime' superiority in relation to Cleopatra. Growth of citrus trees younger than 5-yr-old might be improved by K fertilization rates greater than currently recommended in Brazil, in soils with low K and subjected to nutrient leaching losses.

Evaluation of a multicomponent worksite health promotion program for cardiovascular risk factors-correcting for the regression towards the mean effect.

BACKGROUND: We assessed the impact of a multicomponent worksite health promotion program for0 reducing cardiovascular risk factors (CVRF) with short intervention, adjusting for regression towards the mean (RTM) affecting such nonexperimental study without control group. METHODS: A cohort of 4,198 workers (aged 42 +/- 10 years, range 16-76 years, 27% women) were analyzed at 3.7-year interval and stratified by each CVRF risk category (low/medium/high blood pressure [BP], total cholesterol [TC], body mass index [BMI], and smoking) with RTM and secular trend adjustments. Intervention consisted of 15 min CVRF screening and individualized counseling by health professionals to medium- and high-risk individuals, with eventual physician referral. RESULTS: High-risk groups participants improved diastolic BP (-3.4 mm Hg [95%CI: -5.1, -1.7]) in 190 hypertensive patients, TC (-0.58 mmol/l [-0.71, -0.44]) in 693 hypercholesterolemic patients, and smoking (-3.1 cig/day [-3.9, -2.3]) in 808 smokers, while systolic BP changes reflected RTM. Low-risk individuals without counseling deteriorated TC and BMI. Body weight increased uniformly in all risk groups (+0.35 kg/year). CONCLUSIONS: In real-world conditions, short intervention program participants in high-risk groups for diastolic BP, TC, and smoking improved their CVRF, whereas low-risk TC and BMI groups deteriorated. Future programs may include specific advises to low-risk groups to maintain a favorable CVRF profile.

Stem straightness and compression wood in a 22-year-old stand of container-grown Scots pine trees

Abstract

Occurrence of Quesada gigas on Schizolobium amazonicum trees in Maranhão and Pará States, Brazil

An infestation of Quesada gigas Olivier (Hemiptera: Cicadidae) on "paricá" Schizolobium amazonicum (Huber) Ducken (Fabales: Fabaceae) was reported in the Municipalities of Itinga, Maranhão State and Paragominas, Pará State. Nymphs of this insect on roots and adults and exuvias on trunks of the plant were observed. Exit holes of nymphs in the soil were also observed. The occurrence of Q. gigas on S. amazonicum shows the damage potential of this species and the necessity of developing integrated management programs for species of this group, specially in reforested areas with "paricá".

Preventing construction damage to trees, 1990

This pamphlet will help you decide which trees to save during construction. It shows simple, reliable methods that will keep trees safe during construction work.

Basic density and pulp yield relationship with some chemical parameters in eucalyptus trees

The objective of this work was to evaluate the use of basic density and pulp yield correlations with some chemical parameters, in order to differentiate an homogeneous eucalyptus tree population, in terms of its potential for pulp production or some other technological applications. Basic density and kraft pulp yield were determined for 120 Eucalyptus globulus trees, and the values were plotted as frequency distributions. Homogenized samples from the first and fourth density quartiles and first and fourth yield quartiles were submitted to total phenols, total sugars and methoxyl group analysis. Syringyl/guaiacyl (S/G) and syringaldehyde/vanillin (S/V) ratios were determined on the kraft lignins from wood of the same quartiles. The results show the similarity between samples from high density and low yield quartiles, both with lower S/G (3.88-4.12) and S/V (3.99-4.09) ratios and higher total phenols (13.3-14.3 g gallic acid kg-1 ). Woods from the high yield quartile are statistically distinguished from all the others because of their higher S/G (5.15) and S/V (4.98) ratios and lower total phenols (8.7 g gallic acid kg-1 ). Methoxyl group and total sugars parameters are more adequate to distinguish wood samples with lower density.

Latex production with depolymerizing compounds of actin cytoskeleton in rubber trees

The objective of this work was to assess stimulated latex flow from rubber trees (Hevea brasiliensis) with saturated macrolide (latrunculin A), 1, 5, and 10% potassium iodide in 2% methylcellulose compared with 0.3% ethylene in 2% methylcellulose (check) and 2% methylcellulose (blank). Latex output and contents of pure rubber, total solid, sucrose, inorganic phosphorus, thiol, and Mg2+ were measured. The treatments containing 1% KI or saturated macrolide increased latex yields compared to the blank with 2% methylcellulose alone. The 1% KI or saturated macrolide treatments were equal to that of 0.3% ethylene check treatment. However, 5 and 10% KI were harmful to bark of rubber trees, even caused prolonged tapping panel dryness.

Childhood epilepsy with neuropsychological regression and continuous spike waves during sleep: epilepsy surgery in a young adult.

We describe the case of a man with a history of complex partial seizures and severe language, cognitive and behavioural regression during early childhood (3.5 years), who underwent epilepsy surgery at the age of 25 years. His early epilepsy had clinical and electroencephalogram features of the syndromes of epilepsy with continuous spike waves during sleep and acquired epileptic aphasia (Landau-Kleffner syndrome), which we considered initially to be of idiopathic origin. Seizures recurred at 19 years and presurgical investigations at 25 years showed a lateral frontal epileptic focus with spread to Broca's area and the frontal orbital regions. Histopathology revealed a focal cortical dysplasia, not visible on magnetic resonance imaging. The prolonged but reversible early regression and the residual neuropsychological disorders during adulthood were probably the result of an active left frontal epilepsy, which interfered with language and behaviour during development. Our findings raise the question of the role of focal cortical dysplasia as an aetiology in the syndromes of epilepsy with continuous spike waves during sleep and acquired epileptic aphasia.

On the preservation of combinatorial types for maps on trees

We study the preservation of the periodic orbits of an A-monotone tree map f:T→T in the class of all tree maps g:S→S having a cycle with the same pattern as A. We prove that there is a period-preserving injective map from the set of (almost all) periodic orbits of ƒ into the set of periodic orbits of each map in the class. Moreover, the relative positions of the corresponding orbits in the trees T and S (which need not be homeomorphic) are essentially preserved

Robust Nonlinear Mapping of Soil Contamination Using Support Regression

Spatial data analysis mapping and visualization is of great importance in various fields: environment, pollution, natural hazards and risks, epidemiology, spatial econometrics, etc. A basic task of spatial mapping is to make predictions based on some empirical data (measurements). A number of state-of-the-art methods can be used for the task: deterministic interpolations, methods of geostatistics: the family of kriging estimators (Deutsch and Journel, 1997), machine learning algorithms such as artificial neural networks (ANN) of different architectures, hybrid ANN-geostatistics models (Kanevski and Maignan, 2004; Kanevski et al., 1996), etc. All the methods mentioned above can be used for solving the problem of spatial data mapping. Environmental empirical data are always contaminated/corrupted by noise, and often with noise of unknown nature. That's one of the reasons why deterministic models can be inconsistent, since they treat the measurements as values of some unknown function that should be interpolated. Kriging estimators treat the measurements as the realization of some spatial randomn process. To obtain the estimation with kriging one has to model the spatial structure of the data: spatial correlation function or (semi-)variogram. This task can be complicated if there is not sufficient number of measurements and variogram is sensitive to outliers and extremes. ANN is a powerful tool, but it also suffers from the number of reasons. of a special type ? multiplayer perceptrons ? are often used as a detrending tool in hybrid (ANN+geostatistics) models (Kanevski and Maignank, 2004). Therefore, development and adaptation of the method that would be nonlinear and robust to noise in measurements, would deal with the small empirical datasets and which has solid mathematical background is of great importance. The present paper deals with such model, based on Statistical Learning Theory (SLT) - Support Vector Regression. SLT is a general mathematical framework devoted to the problem of estimation of the dependencies from empirical data (Hastie et al, 2004; Vapnik, 1998). SLT models for classification - Support Vector Machines - have shown good results on different machine learning tasks. The results of SVM classification of spatial data are also promising (Kanevski et al, 2002). The properties of SVM for regression - Support Vector Regression (SVR) are less studied. First results of the application of SVR for spatial mapping of physical quantities were obtained by the authorsin for mapping of medium porosity (Kanevski et al, 1999), and for mapping of radioactively contaminated territories (Kanevski and Canu, 2000). The present paper is devoted to further understanding of the properties of SVR model for spatial data analysis and mapping. Detailed description of the SVR theory can be found in (Cristianini and Shawe-Taylor, 2000; Smola, 1996) and basic equations for the nonlinear modeling are given in section 2. Section 3 discusses the application of SVR for spatial data mapping on the real case study - soil pollution by Cs137 radionuclide. Section 4 discusses the properties of the modelapplied to noised data or data with outliers.