Pollen Counts in Four Canadian Cities: Geographical Variation between 2008 and 2012
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Pollen grains from anemophilous plants represent an important class of aeroallergens in ambient air. High concentrations of aeroallergens, including tree and grass pollen are associated with increased asthma-related emergency department visits and hospitalizations across Canada.The geographical distribution of species of plants is dependent on multiple factors, including precipitation, soil composition and moisture and average high and low temperatures. Five “floristic zones” that support the growth of different aeroallergen-producing plants have been defined across Canada. Here we examine the differences among four Canadian cities (Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Toronto) situated in four of the Canadian floristic zones. We describe pollen counts with respect to: start and end dates of the pollen seasons; season length; and annual pollen counts between 2008 and 2012. These cities and years were chosen to cover the antenatal and perinatal windows of sensitization for the participants in the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) birth cohort. Pollen season was defined considering the dates when the 5% and 95% of the annual total was recorded for each pollen.The following table presents the 5-year average for pollen count and season duration for trees and grasses. With these data and estimates of traffic-related-air-pollution exposure we will present the combined effects in the development of early-life asthma.Trees GrassesCity Average pollen (grains/m3) Average season duration (days) Average pollen Average season duration ParticipantsVancouver/42926.2/92.6/1497.8/74.6/992Edmonton/7368.4/71.2/1522.3/54.4/774Winnipeg/16904.1/50.8/1564.3/70.6/738Toronto/16915.5/71.2/991.8/107/770The geographical differences may suggest the particular needs of atopy prone and sensitized individuals in each city, and the potential need to account for local contexts when designing public health initiatives related to aeroallergen information and to green space.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".