scholarly journals Phylogeny Based Biodiversity Data Queries

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. e25589
Author(s):  
Scott Chamberlain
Keyword(s):  
Research Work ◽  
Sister Group ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Work Flow ◽  
Use Case ◽  
Biodiversity Data ◽  
R Software ◽  
Occurrence Data ◽  
Simple Query ◽  
The Ideal

There is a large amount of publicly available biodiversity data from many different data sources. When doing research, one ideally interacts with biodiversity data programmatically so their work is reproducible. The entry point to biodiversity data records is largely through taxonomic names, or common names in some cases (e.g., birds). However, many researchers have a phylogeny focused project, meaning taxonomic names are not the ideal interface to biodiversity data. Ideally, it would be simple to programmatically go from a phylogeny to biodiversity records through a phylogeny based query. I'll discuss a new project `phylodiv` (https://github.com/ropensci/phylodiv/) that attempts to facilitate phylogeny based biodiversity data collection (see Fig. 1). The project takes the form of an R software package. The idea is to make the user interface take essentially two inputs: a phylogeny and a phylogeny based question. Behind the scenes we'll do many things, including gathering taxonomic names and hierarchies for the taxa in the phylogeny, send queries to GBIF (or other data sources), and map the results. The user will of course have control over the behind the scenes parts, but I imagine the majority use case will be to input a phylogeny and a question and expect an answer back. We already have R tools to do nearly all parts of the work-flow shown above: there's a large number of phylogeny tools, `taxize`/`taxizedb` can handle taxonomic name collection, while `rgbif` can handle interaction with GBIF, and there's many mapping options in R. There are a few areas that need work still however. First, there's not yet a clear way to do a phylogeny based query. Ideally a user will be able to express a simple query like "taxon A vs. its sister group". That's simple to imagine, but to implement that in software is another thing. Second, users ideally would like answers back - in this case a map of occurrences - relatively quickly to be able to iterate on their research work-flow. The most likely solution to this will be to use GBIF's map tile service to visualize binned occurrence data, but we'll need to explore this in detail to make sure it works.

scholarly journals Mapping the Impact of Digitisation for Poorly Documented Countries: Mozambique as a case study

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabel Neves ◽  
Maria da Luz Mathias ◽  
Cristiane Bastos-Silveira
Keyword(s):  
Data Cleaning ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Biodiversity Data ◽  
Species Occurrence ◽  
Terrestrial Mammals ◽  
Management Actions ◽  
Occurrence Data ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Conservation And Management

Despite the rise of the global availability of biodiversity data by digitisation, essential regions of the world remain poorly documented (Peterson et al. 2015). Research-neglected regions that lack quality information, are mainly the species-rich and developing nations (Gaikwad and Chavan 2006). Mozambique is an African country without a wide-ranging knowledge regarding its fauna’s diversity and distribution (Neves et al. 2018). Undeniably, this country's knowledge gaps constitute a significant impediment for the improvement of effective conservation measures. Primary species occurrence data across dispersed data sources can be a cost-effective resource for boosting knowledge about a country’s biodiversity. Aiming to aggregate a comprehensive dataset of Mozambique’s terrestrial mammals, we compiled primary species occurrence data from dispersed data sources. The produced dataset not only gathered digitalised accessible knowledge (DAK) from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and natural history collections, but also retrieved and digitalised species occurrence data enclosed in grey and scientific literature. Particularly for poorly documented countries, filling data gaps are crucial for new and broad insights for biodiversity research and preservation. Thus, quantification of the effects of data digitisation and mobilisation goes beyond the specific goals of organisations, institutions or data-sharing resources. The impact of data digitisation should be disseminated, not only by the number of publications and times data are accessed (Nelson and Ellis 2018), but also by the actual achievements in regions covered by DAK. To highlight the impact of further data digitisation in a poorly documented country, we examine the effective gain of further digitisation and data cleaning on the terrestrial mammals from Mozambique. We demonstrate the increase in the overall knowledge, not merely in terms of number of species, number of records, and country’s coverage, but from the production of outputs with potential value for data-driven conservation research and planning. More than 17000 records were compiled. The digitisation of data in literature as well as data cleaning and quality improvements resulted in a substantial increase in the amount of DAK, which acknowledges Mozambique’s high species diversity (Fig. 1). The digitisation and data mobilisation hereby described allowed for the update of the country’s terrestrial mammals checklist (Neves et al. 2018). The final dataset also expands the knowledge of the most poorly documented provinces, allowing generation of a data-driven proposal of priority areas to survey (in review). Also, an assessment of Mozambique’s conservation network effectiveness for mammal protection was performed, and additional relevant areas were suggested (in prep.). The dataset compiled is an important "stepping stone" towards an enhanced knowledge of Mozambique’s fauna. Biodiversity conservation and management in developing countries rich in natural resources, which often must deal with a lack of internal capacity for applied research and conservation actions, are challenges. Considering that digitisation and mobilisation of biodiversity data are resourceful processes for improving knowledge, collaborative work between institutions of those countries and international data-provider communities could, in the short term, successfully improve the information baseline to support decision-making in future conservation and management actions.

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE: EAST AND WEST STUDIES

2021 ◽  
Vol 02 (09) ◽  
pp. 8-14
Author(s):  
Aziza Komilovna Akhmedova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Professional Ethics ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Aesthetic Ideal ◽  
The Ideal

The article analyzes the results of the research on the representation of the aesthetic ideal through the image of the ideal hero in two national literatures. For research purposes, attention was paid to highlighting the category of the ideal hero as an expression of the author's aesthetic views. In Sinclair Lewis’s “Arrowsmith” and Pirimkul Kodirov's “The Three Roots”, the protagonists artistically reflect the authors' views on truth, virtue, and beauty. In these novels, professional ethics is described as a high noble value. The scientific novelty of the research work includes the following: in the evolution of western and eastern poetic thought, in the context of the novel genre, the skill, common and distinctive aspects of the creation of an ideal hero were revealed by synthesis of effective methods in world science with literary criteria in the history of eastern and western literary studies, in the example of Sinclair Lewis and Pirimkul Kodirov.

scholarly journals The Literary «Ekphrasis» of Castel Nuovo: A Contribution to Value the Cultural Identity of the Ideal City Government, Promoted by Aristocratic Courts and Civil Administrations in the XIV Century

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 483-488
Author(s):  
Sara Cipolla
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Italian Literature ◽  
City Government ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ripe Fruit ◽  
Surface Projection ◽  
Medieval Italian Literature ◽  
The Ideal

The research work concerns the development in the Italian literature of the French theme of Neuf Preux, and Particularly Took into account a crown of sonnets of nine famous men linked to an alleged cycle of paintings attributed to Giotto's in the palace of Castel Nuovo in Naples. The survey highlighted how in medieval Italian literature, beyond the more or less explicit recovery of the French literary tradition, occupies a prominent place the function that these poems take in the view of the literature of the time. The survey actually shows the two faces of the series of famous heroes, which on one hand is the mouthpiece of the political ideals and civil inspired by the courteous and Roman antiquities, on the other hand appears to be ripe fruit of a didactic poem in which the adherence to the motto of "ut pictura poesis" become as a kind of surface projection of images.

scholarly journals Big Data Usage Patterns in the Health Care Domain: A Use Case Driven Approach Applied to the Assessment of Vaccination Benefits and Risks

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (01) ◽  
pp. 27-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. de Lusignan ◽  
S-T. Liaw ◽  
C. Kuziemsky ◽  
F. Mold ◽  
P. Krause ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Data Processing ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Predictive Analytics ◽  
Regulatory Compliance ◽  
Use Cases ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Use Case ◽  
Crowd Sourcing ◽  
Big Data Processing

Summary Background: Generally benefits and risks of vaccines can be determined from studies carried out as part of regulatory compliance, followed by surveillance of routine data; however there are some rarer and more long term events that require new methods. Big data generated by increasingly affordable personalised computing, and from pervasive computing devices is rapidly growing and low cost, high volume, cloud computing makes the processing of these data inexpensive. Objective: To describe how big data and related analytical methods might be applied to assess the benefits and risks of vaccines. Method: We reviewed the literature on the use of big data to improve health, applied to generic vaccine use cases, that illustrate benefits and risks of vaccination. We defined a use case as the interaction between a user and an information system to achieve a goal. We used flu vaccination and pre-school childhood immunisation as exemplars. Results: We reviewed three big data use cases relevant to assessing vaccine benefits and risks: (i) Big data processing using crowd-sourcing, distributed big data processing, and predictive analytics, (ii) Data integration from heterogeneous big data sources, e.g. the increasing range of devices in the “internet of things”, and (iii) Real-time monitoring for the direct monitoring of epidemics as well as vaccine effects via social media and other data sources. Conclusions: Big data raises new ethical dilemmas, though its analysis methods can bring complementary real-time capabilities for monitoring epidemics and assessing vaccine benefit-risk balance.

scholarly journals Reaching an Established but Growing Network: Use-case from Canadensys

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carole Sinou ◽  
Anne Bruneau ◽  
Deborah L Paul ◽  
Mary Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Use Case ◽  
Biodiversity Data ◽  
Canadian Universities ◽  
Capacity Enhancement ◽  
Data Usage ◽  
New Methods ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Important Challenge ◽  
Growing Network ◽  
New Framework

Canadensys is an associate GBIF node in Canada, officially established as a node in 2014, but publishing data on GBIF since 2011. Since then, Canadensys has grown from nine institutions to a network of nearly 25 institutions that publish biodiversity data and we have migrated from an in-house explorer, to a Living Atlases (LA) framework. Canadensys publishes data curated or collected by Canadian universities, museums, as well as municipalities and non govermental organizations (NGOs). Establishing a new network can be challenging, but several resources and programs exist to help node managers and node participants initiate the publication process. Keeping an established network alive while continuing to grow and to develop new methods and technologies is also an important challenge, especially in a context where institutions are geographically separated across large distances, and where funds are scarce or mostly oriented towards highly innovative projects. With the aim to reach both established and new participants across Canada and from adjacent regions in the USA, and in order to help them to familiarize themselves with the new framework based on LA, we organized three workshops on data publication and data usage. Partially funded through a GBIF CESP project, this series of workshops was developed in partnership with international, regional and national partners such as iDigBio, OBIS Canada and GBIF Spain. The workshops helped new participants prepare and publish data, and allowed established publishers to enrich and update their resources on Canadensys and GBIF. The project also highlighted some of the challenges our network is facing, such as funding, infrastructure, human resources, and communication. Feedback from participants shows that the workshops were successfull in terms of capacity enhancement, giving knowledge and tools to data manager in order to prepare and publish standardize data, as well as to transfer that knowledge in their respective institutions. All materials and documentation developed during this project will be made available on Canadensys, allowing everyone interested to follow the curriculum. Sharing our experience will be useful for other nodes wanting to introduce the LA framework to their users and to enhance capacities in the network.

Secondary Data

2018 ◽  
pp. 306-320
Author(s):  
Aaike De Wever ◽  
Astrid Schmidt-Kloiber ◽  
Vanessa Bremerich ◽  
Joerg Freyhof
Keyword(s):  
Biodiversity Conservation ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Freshwater Ecology ◽  
Biodiversity Data ◽  
Biodiversity Change ◽  
Freshwater Management ◽  
Management And Conservation

Understanding biodiversity change and addressing questions in freshwater management and conservation requires access to biodiversity data and information. Unfortunately, large, comprehensive data sources on freshwater ecology and biodiversity are largely lacking. In this chapter, we explain how to take advantage of secondary data and improve data availability for supporting freshwater ecology research and biodiversity conservation. We emphasise the importance of secondary data, give an overview of existing databases (e.g., taxonomy, molecular or occurrence databases), discuss problems in understanding and caveats when using such data, and explain the need to make primary data publicly available.

scholarly journals Precise Positioning of Autonomous Vehicles Combining UWB Ranging Estimations with On-Board Sensors

Electronics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 1238
Author(s):  
Javier San Martín ◽  
Ainhoa Cortés ◽  
Leticia Zamora-Cadenas ◽  
Bo Joel Svensson
Keyword(s):  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Ultra Wideband ◽  
Line Of Sight ◽  
Use Case ◽  
Positioning System ◽  
Precise Positioning ◽  
Research Institutes ◽  
Simulated Environment ◽  
Non Line Of Sight

In this paper, we analyze the performance of a positioning system based on the fusion of Ultra-Wideband (UWB) ranging estimates together with odometry and inertial data from the vehicle. For carrying out this data fusion, an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) has been used. Furthermore, a post-processing algorithm has been designed to remove the Non Line-Of-Sight (NLOS) UWB ranging estimates to further improve the accuracy of the proposed solution. This solution has been tested using both a simulated environment and a real environment. This research work is in the scope of the PRoPART European Project. The different real tests have been performed on the AstaZero proving ground using a Radio Control car (RC car) developed by RISE (Research Institutes of Sweden) as testing platform. Thus, a real time positioning solution has been achieved complying with the accuracy requirements for the PRoPART use case.

scholarly journals An inventory of biodiversity data sources for conservation monitoring

PLoS ONE ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (12) ◽  
pp. e0242923
Author(s):  
P. J. Stephenson ◽  
Carrie Stengel
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Biodiversity Loss ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Biodiversity Data ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The People ◽  
Science Community ◽  
Global Data

Many conservation managers, policy makers, businesses and local communities cannot access the biodiversity data they need for informed decision-making on natural resource management. A handful of databases are used to monitor indicators against global biodiversity goals but there is no openly available consolidated list of global data sets to help managers, especially those in high-biodiversity countries. We therefore conducted an inventory of global databases of potential use in monitoring biodiversity states, pressures and conservation responses at multiple levels. We uncovered 145 global data sources, as well as a selection of global data reports, links to which we will make available on an open-access website. We describe trends in data availability and actions needed to improve data sharing. If the conservation and science community made a greater effort to publicise data sources, and make the data openly and freely available for the people who most need it, we might be able to mainstream biodiversity data into decision-making and help stop biodiversity loss.

scholarly journals Closing Gaps But Increasing Bias In North American Butterfly Inventory Completeness

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vaughn Shirey ◽  
Michael W. Belitz ◽  
Vijay Barve ◽  
Robert Guralnick
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Museum Specimens ◽  
Biodiversity Data ◽  
Human Footprint ◽  
Natural History Collections ◽  
Global Change Research ◽  
Under Sampling ◽  
Community Science

AbstractAggregate biodiversity data from museum specimens and community observations have promise for macroscale ecological analyses. Despite this, many groups are under-sampled, and sampling is not homogeneous across space. Here we used butterflies, the best documented group of insects, to examine inventory completeness across North America. We separated digitally accessible butterfly records into those from natural history collections and burgeoning community science observations to determine if these data sources have differential spatio-taxonomic biases. When we combined all data, we found startling under-sampling in regions with the most dramatic trajectories of climate change and across biomes. We also found support for the hypothesis that community science observations are filling more gaps in sampling but are more biased towards areas with the highest human footprint. Finally, we found that both types of occurrences have familial-level taxonomic completeness biases, in contrast to the hypothesis of less taxonomic bias in natural history collections data. These results suggest that higher inventory completeness, driven by rapid growth of community science observations, is partially offset by higher spatio-taxonomic biases. We use the findings here to provide recommendations on how to alleviate some of these gaps in the context of prioritizing global change research.

scholarly journals Copernicus Data and CAP Subsidies Control

2021 ◽  
pp. 265-290
Author(s):  
Olimpia Copăcenaru ◽  
Adrian Stoica ◽  
Antonella Catucci ◽  
Laura De Vendictis ◽  
Alessia Tricomi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Satellite Tracking ◽  
Earth Observation ◽  
Classical Field ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Use Case ◽  
Control Methods ◽  
Horizon 2020 ◽  
Food Market ◽  
Verification Process

AbstractThis chapter integrates the results of three pilots developed within the framework of the Horizon 2020 DataBio project. It aims to provide a broad picture of how products based on Earth Observation techniques can support the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy requirements, whose fulfillments are supervised by National and Local Paying Agencies operating in Romania, Italy and Greece. The concept involves the use of the same data sources, mainly multitemporal series of Copernicus Sentinel-2 imagery, but through three different Big Data processing chains, tailored to each paying agency’s needs in terms of farm compliance assessment. Particularities of each workflow are presented together with examples of the results and their accuracy, calculated by validation against independent sources. Business value aspects for each use case are also discussed, emphasizing the way in which the automation of the CAP requests verification process through satellite technologies has increased the efficiency and reduced cost and time resources for the subsidy process. We end the chapter by highlighting the benefits of continuous satellite tracking as a substitute, but also complementary to the classical field control methods, and also the enormous potential of Earth Observation-based products for the agri-food market.

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