A web-based handbook for Canadian students entering American optometry schools

A web-based handbook for Canadian students entering American optometry school

Palaeoenvironmental evidence for woodland conservation in Northern Iceland from settlement to the twentieth century

Narratives of Norse arrival in Iceland highlight the onset of land degradation and loss of woodland cover as major and long-term environmental consequences of settlement. However, deliberate and sustained land resource management in Iceland is increasingly being recognised, and in this paper we assess whether woodland areas were deliberately managed as fuel resources. Our study location is the high status farm site at Hofstaðir in northern Iceland. A palynological record was obtained from a small basin located just inside the farm boundary wall and the geoarchaeological record of fuel use obtained from waste midden deposits associated with the farm. Both environmental records are temporally constrained by tephrochronology and archaeological records. When viewed within the broader landscape setting, our findings suggest that there was near continuous use of birch wood from early settlement to the present day, that it was actively conserved throughout the occupation of the site and that there were clear distinctions in fuel resource utilisation for domestic and more industrial purposes. Our analyses open discussion on the role of local woodlands and their management in the Norse farm economy

Certifying provenance of scientific datasets with self-sovereign identity and verifiable credentials

In order to increase the value of scientific datasets and improve research outcomes, it is important that only trustworthy data is used. This paper introduces mechanisms by which scientists and the organisations they represent can certify the authenticity of characteristics and provenance of published datasets so that secondary users can inspect and gain confidence in the qualities of data sources. By drawing on data models and protocols emerging to provide self-sovereign ownership of identity and personal data to individuals, we conclude that providing self-sovereignty to digital assets offers a promising approach for institutions to certify qualities of their datasets in a cryptographically secure manner, and enables secondary data users to efficiently perform verification of the authenticity of such certifications. By building upon emerging standards for decentralized identification and cryptographically verifiable credentials, we envisage an infrastructure of interoperable tools being developed to foster improvements in the quality of infor- mation provided in support of shared data assets