Recreational, Cultural and Aesthetic Services from Estuarine and Coastal Ecosystems

The role of economic analysis in guiding the sustainable development of estuarine and coastal ecosystems is investigated based on a comprehensive review of the literature on the valuation of the recreation, cultural and aesthetic services. The implications of the findings for the sustainable management of coral reefs, Marine Protected Areas, and Small Island Developing States are discussed. Finally, the potential of meta-analytical benefit transfer and scaling up of values at various aggregation levels is demonstrated in the context of coastal tourism and recreation in Europe. The results of the study support the conclusion that the non-material values provided by coastal and estuarine ecosystems in terms of recreational, cultural and aesthetic services represent a substantial component of human well-being.Aesthetic Values, Coastal Recreation, Coral Reefs, Cultural Values, Ecosystem Services Valuation, Ecosystem Services, Estuarine Ecosystems, Marine Protected Areas, Non-market Valuation, Non-use Values, Passive Values, Recreational Fishing, Small Island Developing States, Spiritual and Religious Values.

Research and Creative Activity, July 1, 2019-June 30, 2020: Major Sponsored Programs and Faculty Accomplishments in Research and Creative Activity, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Foreword by Bob Wilhelm, Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development: This booklet highlights successes in research, scholarship and creative activity by University of Nebraska–Lincoln faculty during the fiscal year running July 1, 2019, to June 30, 2020. It lists investigators, project titles and funding sources on major grants and sponsored awards received during the year; fellowships and other recognitions and honors bestowed on our faculty; books published by faculty; performances, exhibitions and other creative activity; and patents and licensing agreements issued. Based on your feedback, the Office of Research and Economic Development expanded this publication to include peer-reviewed journal articles and conference presentations and recognize students and faculty mentors participating in the Undergraduate Creative Activities and Research Experience Program (UCARE) and the First-Year Research Experiences program (FYRE). While metrics cannot convey the full story of our work, they are tangible measures of impact. Nebraska achieved a record $317 million in total research expenditures in FY 2019, a 26$450 million in research expenditures by 2025. Husker researchers are stimulating economic growth through university-sponsored industry activity. Nebraska Innovation Campus created 1,657 jobs statewide and had a total economic impact of $324.1 million in FY 2019. NUtech Ventures brought in$6.6 million in licensing income in FY 2020. The University of Nebraska system now ranks 65th among the top 100 academic institutions receiving U.S. patents, jumping 14 spots from 2019. I am proud of the Nebraska Research community for facing the challenges of 2020 with grit and determination. Our researchers quickly adapted to develop solutions for an evolving pandemic — all while working apart and keeping themselves and their families safe. As an institution, we made a commitment to embrace an anti-racism journey and work toward racial equity. Advancing conversations and developing lasting solutions is among the most important work we can do as scholars. Against the backdrop of the pandemic, rising racial and social tensions, and natural disasters, Nebraska researchers worked diligently to address other pressing issues, such as obesity and related diseases, nanomaterials, agricultural resilience and the state’s STEM workforce. Let’s continue looking forward to what we can accomplish together. Thank you for participating in the grand challenges process and helping identify the wicked problems that Nebraska has unique expertise to solve. Soon, ORED will unveil a Research Roadmap that outlines how our campus will develop research expertise; enrich creative activity; bolster commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion; enhance economic development; and much more. Amidst the uncertainty of 2020, I remain confident in our faculty’s talent and commitment. I am pleased to present this record of accomplishments. Contents Awards of $5 Million or More Awards of$1 Million to $4,999,999 Awards of$250,000 to $999,999 Early Career Awards Arts and Humanities Awards of$250,000 or More Arts and Humanities Awards of $50,000 to$249,999 Arts and Humanities Awards of $5,000 to$49,999 Patents License Agreements Creative Activity Books Recognitions and Honors Journal Articles Conference Presentations UCARE and FYRE Projects Glossar

Information handling: Concepts which emerged in practical situations and are analysed cybernetically

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University

Approaches for the clustering of geographic metadata and the automatic detection of quasi-spatial dataset series

The discrete representation of resources in geospatial catalogues affects their information retrieval performance. The performance could be improved by using automatically generated clusters of related resources, which we name quasi-spatial dataset series. This work evaluates whether a clustering process can create quasi-spatial dataset series using only textual information from metadata elements. We assess the combination of different kinds of text cleaning approaches, word and sentence-embeddings representations (Word2Vec, GloVe, FastText, ELMo, Sentence BERT, and Universal Sentence Encoder), and clustering techniques (K-Means, DBSCAN, OPTICS, and agglomerative clustering) for the task. The results demonstrate that combining word-embeddings representations with an agglomerative-based clustering creates better quasi-spatial dataset series than the other approaches. In addition, we have found that the ELMo representation with agglomerative clustering produces good results without any preprocessing step for text cleaning

Emerging Priorities for Microbiome Research

Microbiome research has increased dramatically in recent years, driven by advances in technology and significant reductions in the cost of analysis. Such research has unlocked a wealth of data, which has yielded tremendous insight into the nature of the microbial communities, including their interactions and effects, both within a host and in an external environment as part of an ecological community. Understanding the role of microbiota, including their dynamic interactions with their hosts and other microbes, can enable the engineering of new diagnostic techniques and interventional strategies that can be used in a diverse spectrum of fields, spanning from ecology and agriculture to medicine and from forensics to exobiology. From June 19–23 in 2017, the NIH and NSF jointly held an Innovation Lab on Quantitative Approaches to Biomedical Data Science Challenges in our Understanding of the Microbiome. This review is inspired by some of the topics that arose as priority areas from this unique, interactive workshop. The goal of this review is to summarize the Innovation Lab’s findings by introducing the reader to emerging challenges, exciting potential, and current directions in microbiome research. The review is broken into five key topic areas: (1) interactions between microbes and the human body, (2) evolution and ecology of microbes, including the role played by the environment and microbe-microbe interactions, (3) analytical and mathematical methods currently used in microbiome research, (4) leveraging knowledge of microbial composition and interactions to develop engineering solutions, and (5) interventional approaches and engineered microbiota that may be enabled by selectively altering microbial composition. As such, this review seeks to arm the reader with a broad understanding of the priorities and challenges in microbiome research today and provide inspiration for future investigation and multi-disciplinary collaboration