No abstract

BackgroundOlder adults are at increased risk both of falling and of experiencing accidental domestic fire. In addition to advanced age, these adverse events share the risk factors of balance or mobility problems, cognitive impairment and socioeconomic deprivation. For both events, the consequences include significant injury and death, and considerable socioeconomic costs for the individual and informal carers, as well as for emergency services, health and social care agencies.Secondary prevention services for older people who have fallen or who are identifiable as being at high risk of falling include NHS Falls clinics, where a multidisciplinary team offers an individualised multifactorial targeted intervention including strength and balance exercise programmes, medication changes and home hazard modification. A similar preventative approach is employed by most Fire and Rescue Services who conduct Home Fire Safety Visits to assess and, if necessary, remedy domestic fire risk, fit free smoke alarms with instruction for use and maintenance, and plan an escape route. We propose that the similarity of population at risk, location, specific risk factors and the commonality of preventative approaches employed could offer net gains in terms of feasibility, effectiveness and acceptability if activities within these two preventative approaches were to be combined.Methods/DesignThis prospective proof of concept study, currently being conducted in two London boroughs, (Southwark and Lambeth) aims to reduce the incidence of both fires and falls in community-dwelling older adults. It comprises two concurrent 12-month interventions: the integration of 1) fall risk assessments into the Brigade's Home Fire Safety Visit and 2) fire risk assessments into Falls services by inviting older clinic attendees to book a Visit. Our primary objective is to examine the feasibility and effectiveness of these interventions. Furthermore, we are evaluating their acceptability and value to key stakeholders and services users.DiscussionIf our approach proves feasible and the risk assessment is both effective and acceptable, we envisage advocating a partnership model of working more broadly to fire and rescue services and health services in Britain, such that effective integration of preventative services for older people becomes routine for an ageing population.

Discovery of financial fraud has profound social consequences. Loss of stockholder value, bankruptcy, and loss of confidence in the professional audit firms have resulted from failure to detect financial fraud. Previous studies that have attempted to discover fraud patterns from publicly available information have achieved only moderate levels of success. This study explores the capabilities of recently developed statistical learning and data mining methods in an attempt to advance fraud discovery performance to levels that have potential for proactive discovery or mitigation of financial fraud. The partially adaptive methods we test have achieved success in a number of complex problem domains and are easily interpretable. Ensemble methods, which combine predictions from multiple models via boosting, bagging, or related approaches, have emerged as among the most powerful data mining and machine learning methods. Our study includes random forests, stochastic gradient boosting, and rule ensembles. The results for ensemble models show marked improvement over past efforts, with accuracy approaching levels of practical potential. In particular, rule ensembles do so while maintaining a degree of interpretability absent in the other ensemble methods.

No abstract

We evaluated chukar (Alectoris chukar) watering patterns as well as habitat variables influencing water site selection in western Utah. Motion-sensing cameras and chukar dropping counts were primary techniques to evaluate watering patterns. We took vegetative and other habitat measurements at each water source (n 5 43) to discriminate use from nonuse sites using logistic regression. Chukars watered during daylight hours with a modal hour from 1200 hours to 1300 hours daylight savings time. Annual patterns suggest limited use of water sources from November to May with first observed visits occurring in June and last observed visits in October. Shrub canopy cover was the only variable to discriminate between site types (P , 0.01). Cross validation showed a predictive success rate of 84%. Significant differences were found between use and nonuse sites in terms of security cover (P , 0.01), but not total cover (P. 0.05). Chukars seem to have a loose shrub canopy threshold near 11% that is likely due to predation risk. Water sources meeting this threshold received use, whereas those not meeting this threshold did not. Increasing shrub canopy cover above 11% did not translate into increased water source use. Managers might want to consider annual patterns when setting hunt season timing and structure as well as judging sites for new water developments based on shrub canopy cover. More generally, these results suggest a behavioral constraint on the use of water sources as a function of predation risk-we should expect other species to demonstrate similar behavioral constraints. These constraints must be considered in any effort to determine benefits or impacts of water developments. Resumen Evaluamos los patrones de toma de agua del ''Chukar'' (Alectoris chukar), así como variables del hábitat que influencian en la selección del aguaje en el oeste de Utah. Las te´cnicas principales para evaluar los patrones de toma de agua fueron cámaras con sensor de movimiento y conteos deposiciones de ''Chukar.'' Tomamos mediciones de la vegetación y del hábitat en cada aguaje (n 5 43) para discriminar los sitios de uso y no uso mediante regresión logística. Los ''Chukars'' se abastecen de agua durante las horas con luz y la moda fue de las 1200 a las 1300 horas. Los patrones anuales sugieren el uso limitado de los aguajes de noviembre a mayo, las primeras vistas observadas ocurrieron en junio y las últimas en octubre. La cobertura de copa de los arbustos fue la única variable para discriminar entre tipos de sitio (P , 0.01). La validación cruzada mostró una tasa éxito de predicción de 84%. Se encontraron diferencias significativas entre los sitios de uso y no uso en términos de cobertura de seguridad (P , 0.01), pero no para la cobertura total (P. 0.05). Los ''Chukars'' parecen tener un umbral de la copa de arbustos cercana al 11%, debido probablemente al riesgo de predación. Los aguajes que cumplen con este umbral recibieron uso, mientras que aquellos que no reunieron esta condición no se utilizaron. Aumentar la cobertura de copa de...