scholarly journals Lessons Learned from Managing Millions of Records to Create the World Flora Online

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Ulate
Keyword(s):  
Vascular Plant ◽  
Botanical Garden ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Sufficient Evidence ◽  
Technical Documentation ◽  
Plant Names ◽  
The World ◽  
Single Use ◽  
Actual Change ◽  
Royal Botanic Gardens

In 2013, the World Flora Online (WFO) Consortium Council decided to use version 1.1 of the The Plant List (TPL) to initially populate the WFO taxonomic backbone. TPL is a collaboration between the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Missouri Botanical Garden and other stakeholders to create a comprehensive list of Vascular plant (flowering plants, conifers, ferns and their allies) and of Bryophytes (mosses and liverworts). By combining multiple checklist held by these institutions, TPL 1.1 contained 1,064,035 scientific plant names of species rank, 350,699 of which were accepted species names. TPL provides the Accepted Latin names linked to Synonyms by which that species has been known. It also includes Unresolved names for which the contributing data sources did not contain sufficient evidence to decide whether they were Accepted or Synonyms. Fortunately, TPL keeps track of the provenance of names and links back to the International Plant Names Index (IPNI) repository. This provenance trace has proven crucial when giving proper credit, as well as implementing a reliable curating process in WFO that supports the incorporation of potential new content, updates and further improvements contributed by the source. We will see some examples in WFO where duplication of names is originated from combining different providers and different sources, but also cases where duplication was caused within the same provider and even within a single source. The WFO Council also decided to adopt the software used by eMonocot.org to display and harvest the information of plants. This decision made it possible to take advantage of the efforts previously done by the Monocots group in using already defined standards and existing tools to create and validate the input files harvested. Unfortunately, no technical documentation nor support was available for the eMonocot software and adapting the software code was not an option then. Therefore, a process of reverse engineering was implemented to determine what input was expected, which harvested values were actually stored in the database and what impact, if any, they could have on the Portal function. For example, the eMonocot software always harvests content under a particular hierarchy where an authority, in this case corresponding to a family taxon, holds ownership of the taxa underneath. We will explain how this may become an issue when incorporating new endemic taxa. To ensure a convenient quality control, processes of validation and data curation were implemented. WFO assigns a unique ID to each name in its taxonomic backbone. The guarantee of uniqueness and permanence of such IDs is essential to support a process of cumulative improvement. To obtain this ID, a tool that matches Names was developed, allowing providers to contribute revisions to the taxonomy and descriptive content associated to a taxon. The origin of changes needs to be considered when tracing and correcting errors, implementing modifications or rolling back them later. A report about the result of requested changes in the taxonomy needs to be approved by the provider before any actual change is implemented in the taxonomic backbone. Programmatically, any process that performs quality assessment or makes data modifications must be implemented as parameterized algorithms to allow replication of the process whenever new or updated data is available from the source. Single-use scripts are quick but not very scalable. Finally, having defined a schema to use when providing content doesn’t necessarily imply that the values provided in each field are correct. Even with standardized values, the semantics associated could cause unforeseen behavior in the process implemented by the software. When possible, an additional step was required to convert harvested data from different localized vocabularies for standardized fields. Examples in Portuguese and Turkish will be given.

scholarly journals Challenges, Solutions, and Workflows Developed for the Taxonomic Backbone of the World Flora Online.

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Ulate ◽  
Sunitha Katabathuni ◽  
Alan Elliott
Keyword(s):  
Working Group ◽  
Botanical Garden ◽  
Botanic Gardens ◽  
Missouri Botanical ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Plant Names ◽  
The World ◽  
Name Matching ◽  
Royal Botanic Gardens ◽  
Missouri Botanical Garden

The World Flora Online (WFO) is the collaborative, international initiative to achieve Target 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC): "An online flora of all known plants." WFO provides an open-access, web-based compendium of the world’s plant species, which builds upon existing knowledge and published floras, checklists and revisions but will also require the collection and generation of new information on poorly known groups and unexplored regions (Borsch et al. 2020). The construction of the WFO Taxonomic Backbone is central to the entire WFO as it determines the accessibility of additional content data and at the same time, represents a taxonomic opinion on the circumscription of those taxa. The Plant List v.1.1 (TPL 2013) was the starting point for the backbone, as this was the most comprehensive resource covering all plants available. We have since curated the higher taxonomy of the backbone, based on the following published community-derived classifications: the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG IV 2016), the Pteridophyte Phylogeny Group (PPG I 2016), Bryophytes (Buck et al. 2008), and Hornworts & Liverworts (Söderström et al. 2016). The WFO presents a community-supported consensus classification with the aim of being the authoritative global source of information on the world's plant diversity. The backbone is actively curated by our Taxonomic Expert Networks (TEN), consisting of specialists of taxonomic groups, ideally at the Family or Order level. There are currently 37 approved TENs, involving more than 280 specialists, working with the WFO. There are small TENs like the Begonia Resource Center and the Meconopsis Group (with five specialists), medium TENs like Ericaceae and Zingiberaceae Resource Centers or SolanaceaSource.org (around 15 experts), and larger TENs like Caryophyllales.org and the Legume Phylogeny Working Group, with more than 80 specialists involved. When we do not have taxonomic oversight, the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP 2019) has been used to update those families from the TPL 2013 classification. Full credit and acknowledgement given to the original sources is a key requirement of this collaborative project, allowing users to refer to the primary data. For example, an association with the original content is kept through the local identifiers used by the taxonomic content providers as a link to their own resources. A key requirement for the WFO Taxonomic Backbone is that every name should have a globally unique identifier that is maintained, ideally forever. After considering several options, the WFO Technology Working Group recommended that the WFO Council establish a WFO Identifier (WFO-ID), a 10-digit number with a “wfo-” prefix, aimed at establishing a resolvable identifier for all existing plant names, which will not only be used in the context of WFO but can be universally used to reference plant names. Management of the WFO Taxonomic Backbone has been a challenge as TPL v1.1 was derived from multiple taxonomic datasets, which led to duplication of records. For that reason, names can be excluded from the public portal by the WFO Taxonomic Working Group or the TENs, but not deleted. A WFO-ID is not deleted nor reused after it has been excluded from the WFO Taxonomic Backbone. Keeping these allows for better matching when assigning WFO-IDs to data derived from content providers. Nevertheless, this implies certain considerations for new names and duplications. New names are added to the WFO Taxonomic Backbone via nomenclators like the International Plants Name Index (IPNI, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew et al. 2021) for Angiosperms, and Tropicos (Missouri Botanical Garden 2021) for Bryophytes, as well as harvesting endemic and infraspecific names from Flora providers when providing descriptive content. New names are passed to the TEN to make a judgement on their taxonomic status. When TENs provide a new authoritative taxonomic list for their group, we first produce a Name Matching report to ensure no names are missed. Several issues come from managing and maintaining taxonomic lists, but the process of curating an ever-growing integrated resource leads to an increase in the challenges we face with homonyms, non-standard author abbreviations, orthographic variants and duplicate names when Name Matching. The eMonocot database application, provided by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, (Santarsiero et al. 2013) and subsequently adapted by the Missouri Botanical Garden to provide the underlying functionality for WFO's current toolset, has also proven itself to be a challenging component to update. In this presentation, we will share our hands-on experience, technical solutions and workflows creating and maintaining the WFO Taxonomic Backbone.

THE LAPBOOK AS A DIDACTIC TOOL TO IMPLEMENT INTEGRATED TRAINING IN NATURAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP AT PRIMARY SCHOOL LEVEL

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 959-963 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yordanka Peycheva ◽  
Snezhana Lazarova
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
School Level ◽  
Integrative Approach ◽  
Educational Goals ◽  
Knowledge And Skills ◽  
Global Issues ◽  
Highly Active ◽  
The World

The formation of comprehensive and in-depth notions of objects and phenomena in the world can be achieved when the mastery of knowledge and skills is carried out in a system realized in the context of integration of different scientific directions. One of the main issues in modern education is related to the contradiction - on one hand between the need to form the skills necessary for the orientation and adaptation of the personality in the dynamics of the globalizing world and on the other - the education which is largely based on unilateral acquiring of knowledge and skills within the different subject areas. This influences the development of a worldview and the formation of an adequate attitude towards the problems under consideration and the world as a whole. The knowledge and skills acquired today are often “locked” in the respective direction. The cross-curricular unity in the curriculum is of a recommended nature, but even if it is realized, it does not fully meet the need for a comprehensive and multifaceted consideration of global issues, as a result of which the student not only understands, reflects, but also applies the lessons learned in the process of creating a product - ideal or material. Combining the intellectual nature of the cognitive process with the practice activity are conditions in which the students are highly active and achieve better learning outcomes. Therefore, it is expedient for the different directions to correspond more closely to each other and to carry out effective cross-curricular integration. The concept of applying an integrative approach in the current paper is based on the idea of creating pedagogical conditions for reconciling the goals and expected outcomes of technology and entrepreneurship and natural sciences studied at the initial stage of the primary education. Integration can take place on two levels - knowledge and skills. We believe that the lapbook as an innovative didactic tool contains the necessary potential for effective realization of the educational goals in both directions in terms of achieving the expected results. In the course of its elaboration, new information is acquired in the field of engineering and technology, specific skills underlying the curricula of technology and entrepreneurship programs are developed. At the same time, a number of subjects from the learning content, which are considered from the natural science point of view, are enriched and perceived in a technological way, after which they find place in an attractive book - a lapbook, made by the students themselves. Its utilitarian value is multiplied by the personal contribution to its creation - not only as an object but also as content. The main topics that are of interest to the students are exploring and preserving nature, jobs, modern technical achievements, holidays and customs. As a result of the adequate integration of competences, tailored to curricula, a number of skills are formed, such as: skills for searching on their own, systematization and presentation of information, and application of the lessons learned in a new situation.

How India Fights with COVID-19 with Learning from Highly Affected Countries

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pooja Sharma ◽  
Karan Veer
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Gene Sequencing ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
World Health ◽  
Global Risk ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Risk Assessment ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Very High ◽  
Breathing Problem

: It was 11 March 2020 when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the name COVID-19 for coronavirus disease and also described it as a pandemic. Till that day 118,000 cases were confirmed of pneumonia with breathing problem throughout the world. At the start of New Year when COVID-19 came into knowledge a few days later, the gene sequencing of the virus was revealed. Today the number of confirmed cases is scary, i.e. 9,472,473 in the whole world and 484,236 deaths have been recorded by WHO till 26 June 2020. WHO's global risk assessment is very high [1]. The report is enlightening the lessons learned by India from the highly affected countries.

scholarly journals Waste Plastic, the Challenge Facing Developing Countries—Ban It, Change It, Collect It?

Recycling ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Godfrey
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Consumption Patterns ◽  
Waste Collection ◽  
Waste Plastic ◽  
The World ◽  
Single Solution ◽  
Single Use ◽  
Taking Action

With changing consumption patterns, growing populations and increased urbanisation, developing countries face significant challenges with regards to waste management. Waste plastic is a particularly problematic one, with single-use plastic leaking into the environment, including the marine environment, at an unprecedented rate. Around the world, countries are taking action to minimise these impacts, including banning single-use plastics; changing petroleum-based plastics to alternative bio-benign products such as paper, glass or biodegradable plastics; and improving waste collection systems to ensure that all waste is appropriately collected and reprocessed or safely disposed. However, these “solutions” are often met with resistance, from business, government or civil society, due to the intended and unintended consequences, leaving many questioning the most appropriate solution to reducing the leakage. This paper argues that there is no one single solution to addressing the leakage of plastic into the environment, but that the solution is likely to be a combination of the three approaches, based on local considerations.

scholarly journals A public health perspective on mental health: lessons for population health in the 21st century

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
James V. Lucey
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Mental Health ◽  
Population Health ◽  
Royal College ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Healthcare Systems ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Public Health Perspective ◽  
The World ◽  
Shared Commitment

In December 2019, clinicians and academics from the disciplines of public health and psychiatry met in Dublin at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), to restate their shared commitment to population health. The purpose of this review is to bring our discussion to a wider audience. The meeting could not have been more timely. Six weeks later, the COVID-19 emergency emerged in China and within 12 months it had swept the world. This paper, the contents of which were presented at that meeting in December recommended that future healthcare would be guided more by public health perspectives and informed by an understanding of health economics, population health and the lessons learned by psychiatry in the 20th century. Ultimately two issues are at stake in 21st century healthcare: the sustainability of our healthcare systems and the maintenance of public support for population health. We must plan for the next generation of healthcare. We need to do this now since it is clear that COVID-19 marks the beginning of 21st century medicine.

scholarly journals COVID-19 emergencies around the globe: China’s experience in controlling COVID-19 and lessons learned

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hao Jin ◽  
Ligong Lu ◽  
Junwei Liu ◽  
Min Cui
Keyword(s):  
Emergency Response ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Global Community ◽  
Problem Statement ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Emergency Response System ◽  
Response System ◽  
The World ◽  
Entire World ◽  
Doctors And Nurses

Abstract Motivation Nations around the world have been significantly impacted during the COVID-19 pandemic. China’s strategies for controlling COVID-19 offer valuable lessons for the global community. By learning from China’s experience and lessons, other countries could also find appropriate methods to control the pandemic. Problem statement What measures has China taken to control the pandemic? What lessons has China learned through this pandemic? Approach/methods The literature on China’s lessons and experience in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic was searched and reviewed. Related newspapers and magazines were also searched. Results China’s experience can be summed up as establishing temporary hospitals, strict isolation, experts with a knowledge of COVID-19, and measures that increase social distancing. Conclusions By learning from the experience of China, other countries in the world could eventually find the methods to control the COVID-19 pandemic. An emergency response system should be established in each country. Doctors and nurses are not alone in fighting COVID-19, and the entire world is helping them. With cooperation, current difficulties could be overcome.

Man and Bear in Europe

Antiquity ◽  
1942 ◽  
Vol 16 (62) ◽  
pp. 151-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Matheson
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
Sufficient Evidence ◽  
Cave Bear ◽  
Clear Association ◽  
South Wales ◽  
The World

The faunal environment of man, as is well known, has profoundly affected his mental as well as his physical life. The Altamira and other animal-drawings made by Palaeolithic man, whether regarded as disinterested efforts at pure art or as magical symbols intended to ensure success in the chase, are sufficient evidence of the extent to which the cave bear, the bison, the mammoth, and other great beasts figured in the minds of their human contemporaries. Professor Othenio Abel considers that Mousterian man associated certain cult-conceptions with the bears he had killed, and kindred ideas are still found in remote parts of the world. Finds of actual bear remains in more or less clear association with human remains or artifacts are of course numerous. Confining ourselves to Great Britain, bones attributed to Ursus spelaeus were ‘ very common ’ at Paviland cave, Glamorgan, which yielded also artifacts covering the period from Mousterian to the end of Aurignacian times. Cat’s Hole, Long Hole, and Hoyle’s Mouth, all in South Wales ; Kent’s cavern in Devonshire ; King Arthur’s cave in the Wye valley ; Aveline’s Hole, Gough’s cave, and Wookey Hole in the Mendips ; Ffynnon Beuno cave in the vale of Clwyd ; the Victoria cave in Yorkshire ; Creswell Crags and Langwith cave in Derbyshire ; are other sites which have yielded both remains of bear and human artifacts of various periods.

scholarly journals The Hyogo Framework for Action and its implications for disaster management and reduction in Africa

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dejo Olowu
Keyword(s):  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Disaster Management ◽  
Disaster Risk Reduction ◽  
Disaster Risk ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Global Policy ◽  
The World ◽  
Hyogo Framework For Action ◽  
Economic Assets ◽  
Policy And Planning

At the World Conference on Disaster Reduction, Hyogo, Japan, in January 2005, the international community adopted a 10-year plan to make the world safer from disasters. The resultant Hyogo Framework for Action is the global blueprint for disaster risk reduction with the goal of substantially reducing disaster losses in human lives and socio-economic assets. What is the signi!cance of the HFA for the adoption of disaster prevention, management and risk reduction frameworks in African States? Since 2005, what has been the attitude of African States to the promise of the HFA? In terms of policy and planning, how should African States engage the HFA towards securing human lives and properties against natural and human-induced disasters? With the myriad challenges of mass poverty and underdevelopment across Africa, what implications does the HFA hold for disaster risk reduction and management in African States? This article attempts to address this plethora of questions, drawing on lessons learned in Africa and beyond. The article examines the background of the HFA and its progress in shaping the global policy agenda towards disaster management and reduction. While the article acknowledges some of the inherent weaknesses in the promise of the HFA, it nonetheless accentuates its inimitable implications for broad legal and policy strategies towards ameliorating the usual horrific aftermath of disasters in Africa.

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