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Assessing the state and trend of biodiversity in the face of anthropogenic threats requires large‐scale and long‐time monitoring, for which new recording methods offer interesting possibilities. Reduced costs and a huge increase in storage capacity of acoustic recorders have resulted in an exponential use of passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) on a wide range of animal groups in recent years. PAM has led to a rapid growth in the quantity of acoustic data, making manual identification increasingly time‐consuming. Therefore, software detecting sound events, extracting numerous features and automatically identifying species have been developed. However, automated identification generates identification errors, which could influence analyses which look at the ecological response of species. Taking the case of bats for which PAM constitutes an efficient tool, we propose a cautious method to account for errors in acoustic identifications of any taxa without excessive manual checking of recordings. We propose to check a representative sample of the outputs of a software commonly used in acoustic surveys (Tadarida), to model the identification success probability of 10 species and two species groups as a function of the confidence score provided for each automated identification. Using this relationship, we then investigated the effect of setting different false positive tolerances (FPTs), from a 50% to 10% false positive rate, above which data are discarded, by repeating a large‐scale analysis of bat response to environmental variables and checking for consistency in the results. Considering estimates, standard errors and significance of species response to environmental variables, the main changes occurred between the naive (i.e. raw data) and robust analyses (i.e. using FPTs). Responses were highly stable between FPTs. We conclude it was essential to, at least, remove data above 50% FPT to minimize false positives. We recommend systematically checking the consistency of responses for at least two contrasting FPTs (e.g. 50% and 10%), in order to ensure robustness, and only going on to conclusive interpretation when these are consistent. This study provides a huge saving of time for manual checking, which will facilitate the improvement in large‐scale monitoring, and ultimately our understanding of ecological responses.

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BackgroundTo determine the rate of publication in a peer-reviewed journal for all oral presentations made at the Canadian Society for Otolaryngology- Head and Neck Surgery’s Annual Meetings from 2006–2010.MethodsAll abstracts were searched by keywords and authors’ names in Medline via PubMed and Google Scholar. Authors of presented abstracts not found to be published were contacted directly for further information.Results50.5% of presented abstracts (n = 198) were subsequently published with an average time to publication of 21 months. For those abstracts found not to be published 74.6% (n = 167) of authors responded with further information about their research, 66% (n = 89) of abstracts with author response that were not published were never submitted for publication. Authors’ main reasons for not publishing were that the research was still in process (34%, n = 21) or that a resident or fellow working on the project “had moved on” (26%, n = 16).ConclusionThe publication rate for the Canadian Society for Otolaryngology- Head and Neck Surgery’s Annual Meetings from 2006–2010 is within the range reported by other conferences and specifically other Canadian conferences in different specialties; however, roughly half of presentations went on to be published. The main barrier to publication was bringing projects to the submission stage and not rejection by journals. Resources such as more time for research or personnel to coordinate projects may result in a greater rate of project completion.

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For behavioral recording of infant and caregiver behaviors, mothers generally expressed more approval for e-diaries than paper diaries, but neither was considered onerous. E-diaries consistently report more frequent but similar durations of behaviors. If recording when convenient, daily diary entries trend toward 2 to 3 entries a day. The e-diary results provide convergent evidence that paper diary recordings of common infant and caregiver behavior durations provide good estimates of durations, but that behavioral frequencies may be underestimated.

Ninety-eight mothers of healthy firstborn infants 0 to 6 months old were randomly assigned to listen to 10-min of infant crying or infant cooing while continuously rating subjective feelings of frustration. Participants completed pre-test measures of depressed mood, empathy, and trait anger and post-test measures of infant-related harm thoughts, negative and positive emotions, and urge to comfort and to flee. Twenty-three (23.5 %) participants endorsed unwanted thoughts of active harm (e.g., throwing, yelling at, shaking the infant). Women in the cry condition were more likely than women in the coo condition to report thoughts of harm. Women in the cry condition who endorsed thoughts of harm reported higher frustration levels over the 10 min of crying, higher levels of post-test negative emotions, and stronger urges to flee the infant but not stronger urges to comfort the infant. Trait anger and personal distress empathy predicted the occurrence of unwanted thoughts of infant harm, whereas negative mood did not. Unwanted, intrusive, infant-related thoughts of harm may be triggered by prolonged infant crying, are predicted by personal distress empathy and a tendency to experience anger, and are associated with higher frustration, negative emotions, and the urge to escape the infant.