Search results for "Computer science"

Citizen Science in the Natural Sciences

2021

AbstractThe natural sciences include the life and physical sciences and study nature through observing and understanding phenomena, testing hypotheses, and performing experiments. Key principles such as reliability, validity, objectivity, and predictability are achieved through transparent assumptions, methods, data, and interpretations as well as multidisciplinarity.In this chapter we present insights into the genesis of citizen science in the natural sciences and reflect on the intellectual history of the natural sciences in relation to citizen science today. Further, we consider the current scientific approaches and achievements of natural science projects, which are applying citizen sci…

Do environmental diversity approaches lead to improved site selection? A comparison with the multi-species approach

2008

This paper suggests a new approach to select conservation areas cost-effectively according to the concept of complementarity and representation of focal natural features. The suggested environmental diversity (ED) site selection model maximizes ecological diversity, measured via ordination of the chosen taxa communities. Given their fundamental role in ecosystem functioning, vascular plants are chosen as the indicator taxa. We test the ED indicator model by contrasting it to the conventional site selection indicator (MS model), which maximizes the representation of species number in the indicator taxa. We demonstrate that the ED model is more cost-effective than the MS model. More important…

Using long-term ecosystem service and biodiversity data to study the impacts and adaptation options in response to climate change: insights from the …

2013

The International Long Term Ecological Research (ILTER) network can coordinate ecological research to provide observations of the ecosystem changes, and their socio-economic impacts on human societies at different scales. In this paper we demonstrate the importance of the ILTER network in the study and monitoring of environmental changes at a global level. We give examples of how biodiversity and ecosystem service data can be used to study impacts and adaptation options in response to climate change. Analysis of the 107 recent publications from LTER networks representing 21 countries show that LTER studies are often local and heterogeneous. There are some ecosystem types, such as agricultur…

Interaction Capabilities of a Robotic Receptionist

2017

A system aimed at facilitating the interaction between a human user and an humanoid robot is presented. The system is suited to answer questions about laboratories activities, people involved, projects, research themes and collaborations among employees. The task is accomplished by the HermiT reasoner invoked by a speech recognition module. The system is capable of navigating a specific ontology making inference on it. The presented system is part of a broader social robot framework whose goal is to give the user a fulfilling social interaction experience, driven by the perception of the robot internal state and involving intuitive and computational creativity capabilities.

Comment on “A simple way to incorporate uncertainty and risk into forest harvest scheduling”

2017

In a recent research article, Robinson et al. (2016) described a method of estimating uncertainty of harvesting outcomes by analyzing the historical yield to the associated prediction for a large number of harvest operations. We agree with this analysis, and consider it a useful tool to integrate estimates of uncertainty into the optimization process. The authors attempt to manage the risk using two different methods, based on deterministic integer linear programming. The first method focused on maximizing the 10th quantile of the distribution of predicted volume subject to area constraint, while the second method focused on minimizing the variation of total quantity of volume harvested sub…

Towards European Dimensions of City Resilience

2016

International audience; Disaster resilience is becoming more important and raises the highest concerns worldwide, including in Europe. Cities have a vital role for resilience because a majority of the population resides in the cities. Despite the recognition of the importance of city resilience, there is no strong consensus what city resilience is and its dimensions, and how the resilience concept should be transferred into management practice in the cities. In this paper, we conduct a survey of EU sectorial approaches in terms of EU-funded projects related to climate change and critical infrastructure, where urban or city resilience are in focus. The goal is to obtain an overview of how th…

Resemblance of a model species and its mimic: Response to Bury and Cichoń

2018

Characterization of the Copper Transporters from Lotus spp. and Their Involvement under Flooding Conditions

2019

Forage legumes are an important livestock nutritional resource, which includes essential metals, such as copper. Particularly, the high prevalence of hypocuprosis causes important economic losses to Argentinian cattle agrosystems. Copper deficiency in cattle is partially due to its low content in forage produced by natural grassland, and is exacerbated by flooding conditions. Previous results indicated that incorporation of Lotus spp. into natural grassland increases forage nutritional quality, including higher copper levels. However, the biological processes and molecular mechanisms involved in copper uptake by Lotus spp. remain poorly understood. Here, we identify four genes that encode p…

Loop Mediated Isothermal Amplification: Principles and Applications in Plant Virology

2020

In the last decades, the evolution of molecular diagnosis methods has generated different advanced tools, like loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP). Currently, it is a well-established technique, applied in different fields, such as the medicine, agriculture, and food industries, owing to its simplicity, specificity, rapidity, and low-cost efforts. LAMP is a nucleic acid amplification under isothermal conditions, which is highly compatible with point-of-care (POC) analysis and has the potential to improve the diagnosis in plant protection. The great advantages of LAMP have led to several upgrades in order to implement the technique. In this review, the authors provide an overview r…

Climate Change Genomics Calls for Standardized Data Reporting

2020

The advent of new and affordable high-throughput sequencing techniques allows for the investigation of the genetic basis of environmental adaptation throughout the plant and animal kingdom. The framework of genotype-environment associations (GEA) provides a powerful link by correlating the geographic distribution of genotype patterns of individuals or populations with environmental factors on a spatial scale. We coarsely review the short history of GEA studies, summarizing available studies, organisms, data type, and data availability for these studies. GEA is a powerful tool in climate change research and we therefore focus on climate variables as environmental factors. While our initial a…