Identification of habitat requirements of farmland birds based on a hierarchical structured monitoring scheme

Agricultural landscapes are essential for the conservation of biodiversity. Nevertheless, a negative trend continues to be observed in many rural areas for the most prominent indicator species group, the farmland birds. However, clear cause-effect relationships are rarely reported and sometimes difficult to deduce, especially from monitoring data which are based only on the detection of species and counts of the numbers of individuals. Because the identification of habitat preferences is a precondition for farmland bird biodiversity conservation efforts, a monitoring scheme for the simultaneous collection and analysis of bird and land use data was developed and tested. In order to assign the occurrence of bird species to land characteristics at various spatial scales and different land use and crop types, we applied a hierarchical structured sampling design. The spatial scales were ‘agricultural landscape', ‘agricultural landscape types', ‘field crops and other habitats' and ‘vegetation structures'. These scales were integrated with a novel concept, the ‘habitat matrix'(HM). This method was applied to farmland breeding bird abundances on 29 plots, each 1 km2 in size, by the use of the territory mapping method. The same plots were enlarged by a 100 m buffer and the sizes and location of habitats documented. Vegetation height, coverage and density were also recorded for all crop fields in the study area. We propose that this monitoring method facilitates the identification of scale dependent relationships between farmland bird habitat characteristics and bird abundance. This is demonstrated by the farmland bird species Corn Bunting(Emberiza calandra), Skylark(Alauda arvensis), and Whinchat(Saxicola rubetra). The breeding territories of these species reveal large differences within the various spatial scales ‘agricultural landscape', ‘agricultural landscape types' and ‘field crops'. Throughout the breeding season the abundances varied, dependent on the field crop and the development of vegetation structures(height, coverage, and density). HM-analysis led to the identification of specific habitat configurations preferred by individual bird species within the agricultural landscape. These findings indicate that the methodology has the potential to design monitoring schemes for the identification of cause-and-effects of landscape configuration, land use and land use changes on the habitat suitability and abundance of farmland birds.

Multiple Mobile Sinks Data Dissemination Mechanism for Large Scale Wireless Sensor Network

WSN has been developing from traditional environment monitoring applications to the ubiquitous information services such as the Congestion-oriented Intelligent Transportation System （ColTS）. However, the mobility of nodes makes data dissemination a hard nut to crack. In this paper, we propose MSDD, a multiple mobile sinks data dissemination mechanism for solving the dissemination problem. The main ideas of MSDD are constructing a two-tier grid structure by a designated sink, exploiting a hierarchical monitoring mechanism, and employing a global agent to track the sink locations in order to make the emergencies reported to the sinks immediately, In addition, MSDD supports the query-driven data dissemination. Being compared with TTDD, MSDD is theoretically proved to have less communication overhead. We also validate MSDD outperforms TTDD in reliability and the emergency delivery latency bv simulations.

Standardization of critical care management of non-critically ill patients with COVID-19

The large global outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19)has seriously endangered the health care system in China and globally.The sudden surge of patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection has revealed the shortage of critical care medicine resources and intensivists.Currently,the management of non-critically ill patients with COVID-19 is performed mostly by non-intensive care unit(ICU)physicians,who lack the required professional knowledge,training,and practice in critical care medicine,especially in terms of continuous monitoring of the respiratory function,intervention,and feedback on treatment effects.This clinical problem needs an urgent solution.Therefore,here,we propose a series of clinical strategies for non-ICU physicians aimed at the standardization of the management of non-critically ill patients with COVID-19 from the perspective of critical care medicine.Isolation management is performed to facilitate the implementation of hierarchical monitoring and intervention to ensure the reasonable distribution of scarce critical care medical resources and intensivists,highlight the key patients,timely detection of disease progression,and early and appropriate intervention and organ function support,and thus improve the prognosis.Different management objectives are also set based on the high-risk factors and the severity of patients with COVID-19.The approaches suggested herein will facilitate the timely detection of disease progression,and thus ensure the provision of early and appropriate intervention and organ function support,which will eventually improve the prognosis.