Activity Recommendation Model Using Rank Correlation for Chronic Stress Management

Korean people are exposed to stress due to the constant competitive structure caused by rapid industrialization. As a result, there is a need for ways that can effectively manage stress and help improve quality of life. Therefore, this study proposes an activity recommendation model using rank correlation for chronic stress management. Using Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient, the proposed model finds the correlations between users’ Positive Activity for Stress Management (PASM), Negative Activity for Stress Management (NASM), and Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient improves the accuracy of recommendations by putting a basic rank value in a missing value to solve the sparsity problem and cold-start problem. For the performance evaluation of the proposed model, F-measure is applied using the average precision and recall after five times of recommendations for 20 users. As a result, the proposed method has better performance than other models, since it recommends activities with the use of the correlation between PASM and NASM. The proposed activity recommendation model for stress management makes it possible to manage user’s stress effectively by lowering the user’s PSS using correlation.

Typology of territorial units of vegetation for the purposes of large-scale mapping (the Kolguev Island as an example)

A typological scheme of territorial units of vegetation (TUV) developed on the basis of the large-scale map of theKolguev Island is presented. Four basic rank typological units (division, class, group and type) define TUV positions in the hierarchical system of vegetation cover. The concepts of diagnostic syntaxon and combination of diagnostic syntaxa that occur exclusively or primarily within these typological units are introduced. Prodromus of the Kolguev Island vegetation consists of 42 syntaxa (association / subassociation / type of community). 38 types of TUV from 22 groups (8 homogeneous and 14 heterogeneous – serial and ecological ranks, complexes and combinations), assigned to 15 classes and 3 divisions are allocated on the vegetation map in 1 : 50 000 scale. The categories of different rank can be used as dynamic elements of the map legend. This approach gives us a possibility to combine the syntaxonomic diversity of plant communities and typology of TUV.

Host Plant Preferences of Populations of Helicoverpa-Armigera (Hubner) (Lepidoptera, Noctuidae) From Different Geographic Locations

Helicoverpa armigera in Australia is found in many different geographic locations and has been recorded on a large number of host plants. We partly investigated the nature of this polyphagy by offering moths from six different sources the same set of host plants in oviposition trials. Laboratory H. armigera ranked the plants offered into the following categories: most preferred-tobacco, maize, sunflower; least preferred-cabbage, pigweed and linseed; intermediate-soybean, cotton and lucerne. Moths reared from field collected larvae showed a similar basic rank order, although there were a number of differences between populations. Further work will be needed to clarify if these small differences represent real geographic variation or simply reflect differences between batches of test plants. Tobacco and sunflower were consistently ranked highly by virtually all populations and, cotton, on which H. armigera is a major pest, was ranked very low. The possibility of exploiting the non- attractiveness of cotton in pest management is discussed.