A quantitative assessment of geodiversity in UNESCO Global Geoparks

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Polman ◽  
W. Daniel Kissling ◽  
Harry Seijmonsbergen
Keyword(s):  
Grid Cell ◽  
Soil Types ◽  
Mountainous Areas ◽  
Soil Diversity ◽  
Global Context ◽  
High Soil ◽  
Global Coverage ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Geomorphological Features ◽  
Very High

<p>UNESCO Global Geoparks aim to protect globally significant geoheritage and geodiversity. However, the representativeness of geodiversity in these geoparks has never been quantified in a global context. Here, we quantify geodiversity in 147 UNESCO Global Geoparks and compare the outcome to global, Asian and European geodiversity using a geodiversity index with a global coverage, based on openly available geological, soil, hydrological and topographical input data. The global geodiversity index has five categories (from very low to very high) based on the total scores of the individual geodiversity components per 10 x 10 km grid cell.  In addition, we assessed the occurrence of soil types and lithology types in geoparks using global lithology and soil datasets. Our results show that total geodiversity, lithological diversity and topographical diversity were significantly higher in UNESCO Global Geoparks compared to random locations of parks, reflecting that many geoparks are located in mountainous areas where lithological and topographic diversity is high. Soil diversity and hydrological diversity were not significantly higher in geoparks compared to random areas, and 22% and 65% of all globally occurring soil types and lithology types were not represented in any geopark. This indicates that soil and hydrology features are not sufficiently represented in the criteria used to establish geoparks (which emphasize geological and geomorphological features), and that current geoparks are unevenly distributed across the world, with most of them being located in Asia and in Europe. Our results highlight important gaps in geodiversity conservation and can help to identify which areas of high soil and hydrological diversity are currently underrepresented and which soil and lithology types should be included in future efforts to improve the representativeness of UNESCO Global Geoparks.</p>

Differentiation of endemic areas by incidence rates of tick-borne infectious diseases as the basis for choosing prevention strategy and tactics

2019 ◽  
pp. 56-61
Author(s):  
N.V. Rudakov ◽  
N.A. Penyevskaya ◽  
D.A. Saveliev ◽  
S.A. Rudakova ◽  
C.V. Shtrek ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Risk ◽  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Population Based ◽  
Preventive Therapy ◽  
Incidence Rates ◽  
Prevention Strategy ◽  
Individual Risk ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Integral Assessment ◽  
Very High

Research objective. Differentiation of natural focal areas of Western Siberia by integral incidence rates of tick-borne infectious diseases for determination of the strategy and tactics of their comprehensive prevention. Materials and methods. A retrospective analysis of official statistics for the period 2002-2018 for eight sub-federal units in the context of administrative territories was carried out. The criteria of differentiation were determined by means of three evaluation scales, including long-term mean rates of tick-borne encephalitis, tick-borne borreliosis, and Siberian tick-borne typhus. As a scale gradation tool, we used the number of sample elements between the confidence boundaries of the median. The integral assessment was carried out by the sum of points corresponding to the incidence rates for each of the analyzed infections. Results. The areas of low, medium, above average, high and very high risk of tick-borne infectious diseases were determined. Recommendations on the choice of prevention strategy and tactics were given. In areas of very high and high incidence rates, a combination of population-based and individual prevention strategies is preferable while in other areas a combination of high-risk and individual strategies is recommended. Discussion. Epidemiologic zoning should be the basis of a risk-based approach to determining optimal volumes and directions of preventive measures against natural focal infections. It is necessary to improve the means and methods of determining the individual risk of getting infected and developing tick-borne infectious diseases in case of bites, in view of mixed infection of vectors, as well as methods of post-exposure disease prevention (preventive therapy).

Quality-of-Life Measurement in Advanced Cancer: Assessing the Individual

1999 ◽  
Vol 17 (11) ◽  
pp. 3603-3611 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dympna Waldron ◽  
Ciaran A. O'Boyle ◽  
Michael Kearney ◽  
Michael Moriarty ◽  
Desmond Carney
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Advanced Cancer ◽  
Internal Validity ◽  
Semistructured Interview ◽  
Incurable Cancer ◽  
Life Measurement ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Very High

PURPOSE: Despite the increasing importance of assessing quality of life (QoL) in patients with advanced cancer, relatively little is known about individual patient's perceptions of the issues contributing to their QoL. The Schedule for the Evaluation of Individual Quality of Life (SEIQoL) and the shorter SEIQoL–Direct Weighting (SEIQoL-DW) assess individualized QoL using a semistructured interview technique. Here we report findings from the first administration of the SEIQoL and SEIQoL-DW to patients with advanced incurable cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS: QoL was assessed on a single occasion using the SEIQoL and SEIQoL-DW in 80 patients with advanced incurable cancer. RESULTS: All patients were able to complete the SEIQoL-DW, and 78% completed the SEIQoL. Of a possible score of 100, the median QoL global score was as follows: SEIQoL, 61 (range, 24 to 94); SEIQoL-DW, 60.5 (range, 6 to 95). Psychometric data for SEIQoL indicated very high levels of internal consistency (median r = .90) and internal validity (median R2 = 0.88). Patients' judgments of their QoL were unique to the individual. Family concerns were almost universally rated as more important than health, the difference being significant when measured using the SEIQoL-DW (P = .002). CONCLUSION: Patients with advanced incurable cancer were very good judges of their QoL, and many patients rated their QoL as good. Judgments were highly individual, with very high levels of consistency and validity. The primacy given to health in many QoL questionnaires may be questioned in this population. The implications of these findings are discussed with regard to clinical assessment and advance directives.

scholarly journals A branch & bound algorithm to determine optimal bivariate splits for oblique decision tree induction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ferdinand Bollwein ◽  
Stephan Westphal
Keyword(s):  
Decision Tree ◽  
Feature Space ◽  
Classification Problems ◽  
Decision Tree Induction ◽  
Single Attribute ◽  
Global Optimal ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Tree Building ◽  
Very High ◽  
Multiclass Classification Problems

AbstractUnivariate decision tree induction methods for multiclass classification problems such as CART, C4.5 and ID3 continue to be very popular in the context of machine learning due to their major benefit of being easy to interpret. However, as these trees only consider a single attribute per node, they often get quite large which lowers their explanatory value. Oblique decision tree building algorithms, which divide the feature space by multidimensional hyperplanes, often produce much smaller trees but the individual splits are hard to interpret. Moreover, the effort of finding optimal oblique splits is very high such that heuristics have to be applied to determine local optimal solutions. In this work, we introduce an effective branch and bound procedure to determine global optimal bivariate oblique splits for concave impurity measures. Decision trees based on these bivariate oblique splits remain fairly interpretable due to the restriction to two attributes per split. The resulting trees are significantly smaller and more accurate than their univariate counterparts due to their ability of adapting better to the underlying data and capturing interactions of attribute pairs. Moreover, our evaluation shows that our algorithm even outperforms algorithms based on heuristically obtained multivariate oblique splits despite the fact that we are focusing on two attributes only.

scholarly journals Assessing threats to shallow groundwater quality from soil pollutants in Glasgow, UK: development of a new screening tool

2017 ◽  
Vol 108 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 173-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. M. Fordyce ◽  
B. É. Ó Dochartaigh ◽  
H. C. Bonsor ◽  
E. L. Ander ◽  
M. T. Graham ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Groundwater Quality ◽  
Soil Sample ◽  
Screening Tool ◽  
Shallow Groundwater ◽  
Groundwater Chemistry ◽  
Potential Threat ◽  
Quaternary Deposit ◽  
Metal Concentrations ◽  
High Soil ◽  
Very High

ABSTRACTA new GIS-based screening tool to assess threats to shallow groundwater quality has been trialled in Glasgow, UK. The GRoundwater And Soil Pollutants (GRASP) tool is based on a British Standard method for assessing the threat from potential leaching of metal pollutants in unsaturated soil/superficial materials to shallow groundwater, using data on soil and Quaternary deposit properties, climate and depth to groundwater. GRASP breaks new ground by also incorporating a new Glasgow-wide soil chemistry dataset. GRASP considers eight metals, including chromium, lead and nickel at 1622 soil sample locations. The final output is a map to aid urban management, which highlights areas where shallow groundwater quality may be at risk from current and future surface pollutants. The tool indicated that 13% of soil sample sites in Glasgow present a very high potential threat to groundwater quality, due largely to shallow groundwater depths and high soil metal concentrations. Initial attempts to validate GRASP revealed partial spatial coincidence between the GRASP threat ranks (low, moderate, high and very high) and groundwater chemistry, with statistical correlation between areas of high soil and groundwater metal concentrations for both Cr and Cu (r2>0.152; P<0.05). Validation was hampered by a lack of, and inconsistency in, existing groundwater chemistry data. To address this, standardised subsurface data collection networks have been trialled recently in Glasgow. It is recommended that, once available, new groundwater depth and chemistry information from these networks is used to validate the GRASP model further.

scholarly journals Identity in the Political Constructions of Modernity: Editorial Introduction

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-524
Author(s):  
Lyubov A. Fadeeva
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Guest Editor ◽  
Scientific School ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Identity Studies ◽  
Identity Processes ◽  
Introductory Article ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Science Association

L.A. Fadeeva is the author of numerous publications and key co-author of fundamental encyclopedias published by the Russian Academy of Sciences (Identity: The Individual, Society and Politics. An Encyclopedia, 2017) and the Russian Political Science Association (Trends and problems of the development of Russian political science in the global context: Tradition, reception and innovation, 2018), representing the leading scientific school for identity studies in Russia (see: Perm School of Political Science: Sources, Development, Content, 2019), who has served multiple times as guest editor for the thematic issues of the best Russian political science journals on this topic (Political science (RU), 2020, No. 4). In this introductory article, our guest editor L.A. Fadeeva presents the materials of the current issue of our journal, interpreting their cross-cutting themes as the politicization of the non-political through the prism of identity processes at the macro-regional, regional and national levels.

scholarly journals Ensovibep, a novel trispecific DARPin candidate that protects against SARS-CoV-2 variants

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Stumpp
Keyword(s):  
Single Agent ◽  
Standard Of Care ◽  
Cooperative Binding ◽  
Wild Type ◽  
Inhibitory Potency ◽  
Alpha Variant ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Very High ◽  
Comprehensive Study

Abstract SARS-CoV-2 has infected millions of people globally and continues to undergo evolution. Emerging variants can be partially resistant to vaccine induced and therapeutic antibodies, emphasizing the urgent need for accessible, broad-spectrum therapeutics. Here, we report a comprehensive study of ensovibep, the first trispecific clinical DARPin candidate, that can simultaneously engage all three units of the spike protein trimer to potently inhibit ACE2 interaction, as revealed by structural analyses. The cooperative binding of the individual modules enables ensovibep to retain inhibitory potency against all frequent SARS-CoV-2 variants, including Omicron, as of December 2021. Moreover, viral passaging experiments show that ensovibep, when used as a single agent, can prevent development of escape mutations comparably to a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies (mAb). Finally, we demonstrate that the very high in vitro antiviral potency also translates into significant therapeutic protection and reduction of pathogenesis in Roborovski dwarf hamsters infected with either the SARS-CoV-2 wild-type or the Alpha variant. In this model, ensovibep prevents fatality and provides substantial protection equivalent to the standard of care mAb cocktail. These results support further clinical evaluation and indicate that ensovibep could be a valuable alternative to mAb cocktails and other treatments for COVID-19.

scholarly journals Soil Water Characteristics of Gleysols in the Bamenda (Cameroon) Wetlands and Implications for Agricultural Management Strategies

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Alice Mufur Magha ◽  
Primus Azinwi Tamfuh ◽  
Lionelle Estelle Mamdem ◽  
Marie Christy Shey Yefon ◽  
Bertrand Kenzong ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
Organic Carbon ◽  
Soil Organic Carbon ◽  
Soil Water ◽  
Total Variance ◽  
Organic Carbon Content ◽  
Available Water ◽  
High Soil ◽  
Local Soil ◽  
Very High

Water budgeting in agriculture requires local soil moisture information as crops depend mainly on moisture available at root level. The present paper aims to evaluate the soil moisture characteristics of Gleysols in the Bamenda (Cameroon) wetlands and to evaluate the link between soil moisture content and selected soil characteristics affecting crop production. The work was conducted in the field and laboratory, and data were analyzed by simple descriptive statistics. The main results showed that the soils had a silty clayey to clayey texture, high bulk density, high soil organic carbon content, and high soil organic carbon stocks. The big difference between moisture contents at wilting point and at field capacity testified to very high plant-available water content. Also, the soils displayed very high contents of readily available water and water storage contents. The soil moisture characteristics give sigmoid curves and enabled noting that the Gleysols attain their full water saturation at a range of 57.68 to 91.70% of dry soil. Clay and SOC contents show a significant positive correlation with most of the soil moisture characteristics, indicating that these soil properties are important for soil water retention. Particle density, coarse fragments, and sand contents correlated negatively with the soil moisture characteristics, suggesting that they decrease soil water-holding capacity. The principal component analysis (PCA) enabled reducing 17 variables described to only three principal components (PCs) explaining 73.73% of the total variance; the first PC alone expressed 45.12% of the total variance, associating clay, SOC, and six soil moisture characteristics, thus portraying a deep correlation between these eight variables. Construction of contoured ditches, deep tillage, and raised ridges management techniques during the rainy season while channeling water from nearby water bodies into the farmland, opportunity cropping, and usage of water cans and other irrigation strategies are used during the dry season to combat water constraints.

Expression of bacterial Rubisco genes in Escherichia coli

1986 ◽  
Vol 313 (1162) ◽  
pp. 433-445 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Escherichia Coli ◽  
Rhodospirillum Rubrum ◽  
Active Form ◽  
Amino Acid Residues ◽  
Structural Genes ◽  
Physico Chemical ◽  
Chemical Studies ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Very High

The structural genes for three forms of Rubisco have been isolated from bacteria and introduced into various plasmids. Apart from details of the sequences which have been obtained from these constructs, they are now being exploited for mutagenesis to determine the identity and specific function of the individual amino acid residues that compose the active site. These methods have been applied to a plasmid that contains the structural gene for the simplest form of Rubisco from Rhodospirillum rubrum to obtain mutant enzymes with altered activity. The construct pRR2119 is also expressed to very high levels in Escherichia coli and enough recombinant protein of both the wild-type and m utant enzymes can be obtained for detailed physico-chemical studies. Other vectors have now been constructed, containing the genes of prokaryotic Rubisco that assemble into an active form I enzyme. The levels of expression are acceptable and the product is similar to the authentic enzyme. These constructs are now being used for mutagenesis in vitro to attempt to alter the relative rates of the oxygenase and carboxylase activities.

scholarly journals Gene dosage effects on transmission ratio distortion and fertility in mice that carry t haplotypes

1989 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 221-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee M. Silver
Keyword(s):  
Gene Dosage ◽  
Transmission Ratio Distortion ◽  
Transmission Ratio ◽  
Double Dose ◽  
Absolute Level ◽  
T Complex ◽  
Gene Dosage Effects ◽  
Ratio Distortion ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Very High

SummaryComplete t haplotypes can be transmitted at distorted ratios from heterozygous +/t male mice as a consequence of t-specific alleles at a series of t complex distorter loci (Tcd-1t through Tcd-4t) and a t complex responder locus. Partial t haplotypes that lack the Tcd-2t allele cannot be transmitted at the very high ratios characteristic of complete t haplotypes. The breeding studies reported here tested the possibility that the absence of Tcd-2t could be compensated for by the presence of double doses of other Tcdt alleles. The results indicate that a double dose of Tcd-4t alone will not work, but that a double dose of both Tcd-1t and Tcd-4t can promote a very high transmission ratio in the absence of Tcd-2t. These results suggest that the extent to which transmission ratios are distorted is dependent upon the absolute level of expression of the individual Tcd genes. Further studies of genotypic effects on transmission ratio distortion, as well as fertility, lead to the suggestion of a fifth t complex distorter (Tcd-5) locus within t haplotypes.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document