Forest fire size distribution (FSD) is one of the suite of indicators of forest fire regimes. It is applied in forest fire management, particularly for planning and evaluating suppression efforts. It is also used in forest management in the context of emulating natural fire disturbances. Given the recent growth in research and applied interest in this topic, we review and synthesise the state of knowledge on FSD, and identify sources of knowledge uncertainties and future research directions. Based on literature, it is common for forest fires to follow the power law probability distribution, particularly the truncated subtype, under a variety of forest types and forest and fire management practices. Other types of FSD are also observed, but under specific circumstances. Although there is evidence that observed FSDs vary both over space and time, the knowledge is too fragmented to generalise the cause-effect relationships for such variation. As well, it is not clear how the various methods of studying FSD and their spatio-temporal scales influence derivations of FSDs. We suggest that a hypothetico-deductive research approach, combining empirical studies with process-based simulations is an effective means to advance the knowledge of FSD. We suggest caution in the use of FSD in forest management because applying different distributions or even different parameters for the same distribution may result in great fire size class differences and thus different implications for forest management.

Endothelial cells are thought to play a key role in sepsis pathogenesis: vascular endothelial damage occurs in severe sepsis and multiple organ dysfunction. Soluble vascular endothelial cadherin (VE-cadherin) levels were investigated in a prospective study involving 28 consecutive critically ill patients with or without severe sepsis who were admitted to surgical intensive care; 13 healthy age-matched volunteers were included as controls. Soluble VE-cadherin levels increased significantly in patients with severe sepsis compared with ill patients without severe sepsis and healthy controls. There was a significant linear correlation between soluble VE-cadherin levels and illness severity scores. Soluble VE-cadherin levels were significantly higher in patients who died compared with survivors. In vitro cell culture showed that serum from patients with severe sepsis greatly decreased VE-cadherin staining at intercellular junctions and total VE-cadherin expression in human umbilical cord vein endothelial cells. These findings suggest that endothelial cells play an important role in the poor outcome of patients with severe sepsis.

In the forensic field, ancestry‐informative markers (AIMs) showing remarkable allele frequency discrepancies can be useful in deducing the likely ancestral origin of a person or estimating the ancestry component proportions of an admixed population or individual. Diallelic single nucleotide polymorphisms are genetic markers commonly used for ancestry inference, but the genotyping methods of single nucleotide polymorphisms fail to fulfil the demands of cost‐effectiveness and simplicity of experimental manipulation. To overcome the limitations, a 39 ancestry‐informative insertion/deletion polymorphism multiplex panel was developed in the present study to perform ancestry assignment of individuals from three distinct biogeographic regions (Africa, Europe, East Asia). And in the panel design, we also attempted to incorporate AIM‐insertion/deletion polymorphisms exhibiting allelic frequency differences in Han, Uyghur, and Tibetan populations into the multiplex assay, further expecting to provide valuable information for refining ancestry inference within Chinese populations. Statistical analyses were performed to estimate efficiency of this panel in clustering individuals from three continents mentioned above into their corresponding populations, which indicated the potential of the panel in ancestry inference. Besides, we also estimated the ancestral component proportions of Uyghur group and STRUCTURE analysis revealed that Uyghurs from Urumchi city of northern Xinjiang exhibited a distinctly admixed pattern of East Asian and European ancestry components with a ratio of 49:44, reflecting the relatively higher East Asian ancestry component contribution in the gene pool of the Uyghur group.

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Insertion/deletion polymorphism is a promising genetic marker in the forensic genetic fields, especially in the forensic application of degraded sample at crime scene. In this research, a novel five-dye multiplex amplification panel containing 43 highly polymorphic Insertion/deletion (InDel) loci and one Amelogenin gene locus is designed and constructed in-house for the individual identification in East Asian populations. The amplicon sizes of 43 InDel loci are less than 200 bp, which help to ensure that full allele profiles can be obtained from degraded DNA sample. A series of optimizations and developmental validations including optimization of PCR conditions, detection efficiency of the degraded and casework samples, sensitivity, reproducibility, precision, tolerance for inhibitors, species specificity and DNA mixtures are performed according to the Scientific Working Group on DNA Analysis Methods (SWGDAM) guideline. The results of the internal validation demonstrated that this novel InDel panel was a reliable, sensitive and accurate system with good tolerances to different inhibitors, and performed the considerable detection efficiency for the degraded or mixed samples, which could be used in the forensic applications.

Insertion/deletion (InDel) polymorphisms have been widely used in the fields of population genetics, genetic map constructions, and forensic investigations owing to the advantages of their low mutation rates, widespread distributions in the human genome, and small amplicon sizes. In order to provide more InDels with high discrimination power in Chinese populations, we selected and constructed one novel multiplex PCR‐InDel panel for forensic individual identification. Genetic distributions of these 35 InDels in five reference populations from East Asia showed low genetic differentiations among these populations. Forensic efficiency evaluations of these InDels revealed that these loci could perform well for forensic individual identifications in these reference populations. In the meantime, genetic diversities and forensic parameters of these InDels were further investigated in the studied Kazak group. Mean value of polymorphism information content for 35 InDels was 0.3611. Cumulative power of discrimination of 35 InDels was 0.99999999999999603 in Kazak group. Given these results, the panel is suitable for individual identifications in the studied Kazak and these reference populations.

Forest management planners usually treat potential fire loss estimates as exogenous parameters in their timber production planning processes. When they do so, they do not account for the fact that forest access road construction, timber harvesting, and silvicultural activities can alter a landscape’s vegetation or fuel composition, and they ignore the possibility that such activities may influence future fire losses. We develop an integrated fire and forest management planning methodology that accounts for and exploits such interactions. Our methodology is based on fire occurrence, suppression, and spread models, a fire protection value model that identifies crucial stands, the harvesting of which can have a significant influence on the spread of fires across the landscape, and a spatially explicit timber harvest scheduling model. We illustrate its use by applying it to a forest management unit in the boreal forest region of the province of Alberta in western Canada. We found that for our study area, integrated fire – forest management planning based on our methodology could result in an 8.1% increase in net present value when compared with traditional planning in which fire loss is treated as an exogenous factor.

The harvesting of forest stands can reduce landscape flammability by fragmenting fuel continuity in ways that make it difficult for fires to spread and by providing firefighters with fuel discontinuities they can use as anchor points for suppression operations. We describe a methodology for assessing the impact of harvesting designated forest stands on landscape flammability and expected losses. We combine assessments of the probability that fires will be ignited at any point on the landscape with probabilistic predictions concerning how long escaped fires will burn and how they will spread. Shortest path methods are used to identify critical paths that link potential ignition points with values at risk. We then rank stands with respect to their ability to disrupt those critical paths and thereby reduce landscape flammability and fire losses. We describe how we applied our methodology to a 12 964-ha forested area of boreal forest in the province of Alberta, Canada. Our results indicate that the crucial stands in our study area, those that have the most significant impact on landscape flammability and fire loss, tend to be those that are flammable and located on or close to critical paths that link areas where fires are most likely to occur with values at risk.