scholarly journals Fungal ethnoecology: observed habitat preferences and the perception of changes in fungal abundance by mushroom collectors in Poland

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcin Andrzej Kotowski ◽  
Zsolt Molnár ◽  
Łukasz Łuczaj
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Habitat Preferences ◽  
Steady Increase ◽  
Fungal Ecology ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Scientific Publications ◽  
Large Scale Analysis ◽  
Fungal Abundance ◽  
Abundance And Distribution ◽  
Scientific Questions

Abstract Background Scientists frequently raise the topic of data deficiency related to the abundance and distribution of macrofungi in the context of climate change. Our study is the first detailed documentation on locals’ perception of fungal ecology which covers a large mycophilous region of Europe (Mazovia, Poland). Methods A total of 695 semi-structured interviews were carried out among local informants in 38 localities proportionally distributed throughout the study area (one locality approximately every 30 km). Interview questions concerned fungi species collected, their perceived habitats, and whether any changes had been noted in their abundance. As many as 556 respondents provided information concerning fungal ecology. In these descriptions, 35 taxa were mentioned by at least 5 respondents. Results The data collected during interviews allowed us to create collective folk descriptions of habitat preferences and a list of 98 different macro-, meso-, and microhabitats of macrofungi described by the respondents. This list of recurring habitats assigned to particular macrofungal taxa coincides with, and sometimes exceeds, data available in scientific publications. Some habitat preferences observed by the informants have not yet been researched or tested by science. Out of 695 respondents, 366 (53%) noticed a steady decrease in local macrofungi abundance, and only one person claimed to have observed a steady increase. Imleria badia was the only species with increased abundance, as noted by fifteen independent respondents. The main listed reason for abundance decrease was drought (f = 186). Conclusions Collected information on the ecology of fungi shows that local knowledge does not generally diverge from scientific knowledge. The acquired information related to macrofungal abundance and ecology may also be used as a tool for the formulation of new scientific questions and theories. The analysis of local fungi observations might contribute to broadening knowledge about local changes in fungi and enable new estimations related to large-scale analysis of macrofungal abundance.

scholarly journals Evidence of Open Access of scientific publications in Google Scholar: a large-scale analysis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Martín-Martín ◽  
Rodrigo Costas ◽  
Thed van Leeuwen ◽  
Emilio Delgado López-Cózar
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Web Of Science ◽  
Google Scholar ◽  
Scale Analysis ◽  
Scientific Publications ◽  
Large Scale Analysis ◽  
Citation Indexes ◽  
Legal Forms ◽  
The Web

This article uses Google Scholar (GS) as a source of data to analyse Open Access (OA) levels across all countries and fields of research. All articles and reviews with a DOI and published in 2009 or 2014 and covered by the three main citation indexes in the Web of Science (2,269,022 documents) were selected for study. The links to freely available versions of these documents displayed in GS were collected. To differentiate between more reliable (sustainable and legal) forms of access and less reliable ones, the data extracted from GS was combined with information available in DOAJ, CrossRef, OpenDOAR, and ROAR. This allowed us to distinguish the percentage of documents in our sample that are made OA by the publisher (23.1%, including Gold, Hybrid, Delayed, and Bronze OA) from those available as Green OA (17.6%), and those available from other sources (40.6%, mainly due to ResearchGate). The data shows an overall free availability of 54.6%, with important differences at the country and subject category levels. The data extracted from GS yielded very similar results to those found by other studies that analysed similar samples of documents, but employed different methods to find evidence of OA, thus suggesting a relative consistency among methods.

scholarly journals Evidence of open access of scientific publications in Google Scholar: A large-scale analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 819-841 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Martín-Martín ◽  
Rodrigo Costas ◽  
Thed van Leeuwen ◽  
Emilio Delgado López-Cózar
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Google Scholar ◽  
Scale Analysis ◽  
Scientific Publications ◽  
Large Scale Analysis

A large-scale analysis of HTTPS deployments: Challenges, solutions, and recommendations

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Qinwen Hu ◽  
Muhammad Rizwan Asghar ◽  
Nevil Brownlee
Keyword(s):  
Secure Communication ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Transport Layer ◽  
Security Level ◽  
Secure Socket Layer ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Large Scale Analysis ◽  
Government Websites ◽  
Encrypted Communication ◽  
Specific Implementation

HTTPS refers to an application-specific implementation that runs HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) on top of Secure Socket Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS). HTTPS is used to provide encrypted communication and secure identification of web servers and clients, for different purposes such as online banking and e-commerce. However, many HTTPS vulnerabilities have been disclosed in recent years. Although many studies have pointed out that these vulnerabilities can lead to serious consequences, domain administrators seem to ignore them. In this study, we evaluate the HTTPS security level of Alexa’s top 1 million domains from two perspectives. First, we explore which popular sites are still affected by those well-known security issues. Our results show that less than 0.1% of HTTPS-enabled servers in the measured domains are still vulnerable to known attacks including Rivest Cipher 4 (RC4), Compression Ratio Info-Leak Mass Exploitation (CRIME), Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption (POODLE), Factoring RSA Export Keys (FREAK), Logjam, and Decrypting Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA) using Obsolete and Weakened eNcryption (DROWN). Second, we assess the security level of the digital certificates used by each measured HTTPS domain. Our results highlight that less than 0.52% domains use the expired certificate, 0.42% HTTPS certificates contain different hostnames, and 2.59% HTTPS domains use a self-signed certificate. The domains we investigate in our study cover 5 regions (including ARIN, RIPE NCC, APNIC, LACNIC, and AFRINIC) and 61 different categories such as online shopping websites, banking websites, educational websites, and government websites. Although our results show that the problem still exists, we find that changes have been taking place when HTTPS vulnerabilities were discovered. Through this three-year study, we found that more attention has been paid to the use and configuration of HTTPS. For example, more and more domains begin to enable the HTTPS protocol to ensure a secure communication channel between users and websites. From the first measurement, we observed that many domains are still using TLS 1.0 and 1.1, SSL 2.0, and SSL 3.0 protocols to support user clients that use outdated systems. As the previous studies revealed security risks of using these protocols, in the subsequent studies, we found that the majority of domains updated their TLS protocol on time. Our 2020 results suggest that most HTTPS domains use the TLS 1.2 protocol and show that some HTTPS domains are still vulnerable to the existing known attacks. As academics and industry professionals continue to disclose attacks against HTTPS and recommend the secure configuration of HTTPS, we found that the number of vulnerable domain is gradually decreasing every year.

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