Multi-List Recommendations for Personalizing Streaming Content

The decision behind choosing a recommender system that yields accurate recommendations yet allows users to explore more content has been a topic of research in the last decades. This work attempts to find a recommender system for TV 2 Play, a movie streaming platform, that would perform well on implicit feedback data and provide multi-lists as recommenda- tions. Several approaches are examined for suitability, and Collaborative Filtering and Multi- Armed Bandits are decided upon. The models for each approach are built using the pipeline utilized by TV 2 Play. The models are then compared in performance on several evaluation metrics in the first stage of offline testing, yielding Alternating Least Squares and Bayesian Personalized Ranking as the best-performing models. The second stage of offline testing includes testing the two models and their variants with the BM25 weighting scheme applied against each other. The unweighted Bayesian Personalized Ranking model has shown the highest user-centric metrics while maintaining relatively high recommendation-centric met- rics, which led to that model being tested in online settings against the algorithm currently used by TV 2 Play team. The online testing has revealed that our model underperforms compared to the TV 2 Play model when used on the kids’ page but produces equally good results on the movies page. The results can be attributed to the differences in behavioral content consumption patterns between users.Master's Thesis in InformaticsINF399MAMN-PROGMAMN-IN

Оцінка декоративності дендросозоекзотів ex situ Степу України

The modern methodologies for assessing decorativeness of woody plants were analyzed. On this basis the original integrated scale of decorativeness assessment of rare arboreal exotic plant species by the main morphological features was constructed. This scale was optimized for leaf-losing and evergreen coniferous, as well as deciduous trees and shrubs. The resulting rating scale comprises four blocks: assessment of the general decorativeness of plants, evaluation of decorativeness of bark, assessment of decorativeness of leaves or needles, as well as the generative organs of the plant. This method was tested on 30 species of rare arboreal plants, which are protected ex situ on the territories of Nature Reserve Fund of the Steppe of Ukraine. According to the evaluation, three species of rare arboreal plants were categorized as most decorative (Malus niedzwetzkyana Dieck ex Koehne, Cercis chinensis Bunge and Liquidambar styraciflua L.), 23 species – as highly decorative species and four – as species of middling decorativeness. The results of decorativeness evaluation of rare arboreal plants ex situ of Nature Reserve Fund of the Steppe of Ukraine are support the view of the necessity of their widespread use in landscape gardening.У статті проаналізовано сучасні методики оцінки декоративності деревних рослин, на основі чого розроблено оригінальну шкалу комплексної оцінки, яку апробовано на 30 видах дендросозоекзотів ex situ, що охороняються на територіях природно-заповідного фонду Степу України

Репрезентативність культивування дендросозоекзотів ex situ у штучних заповідних парках степу України

Наведено результати оцінки сучасного стану культивування дендросозоекзотів ex situ Степу України в аспекті видової, категоріальної, локалітетної та регіональної репрезентативності. Більшість дендросозоекзотів степової зони України культивуються на територіях ботанічних садів та дендропарків. Найрепрезентативнішими за кількістю локалітетів є Armeniaca vulgaris Mill., Juglans regia L., Juniperus virginiana L. та Thuja occidentalis L. На територіях ботанічних садів охороняється 165 (94,8 %) видів дендросозоекзотів. У межах Степу України найбільше видів представлено у штучних заповідних парках Донецької та Одеської адміністративних областей

The fungal literature-based occurrence database in southern West Siberia (Russia)

The abstract presents the initiative to develop the Fungal Literature-based Occurrence Database for Southern West Siberia (FuSWS), which mobilizes occurrences of fungi from published literature (literature-based occurrences, Darwin Core MaterialCitation). The FuSWS database includes 28 fields describing species name, publication source, herbarium number (if exists), date of sampling or observation, locality information, vegetation, substrate, and others. The initiative on digitization of literature-based occurrence data started in the northern part of Western Siberia two years ago (Filippova et al. 2021a). The present project extends the initiative to the south and includes eight administrative regions (Sverdlovsk, Omsk, Kurgan, Tomsk, Novosibirsk, Kemerovo, Altay, and Gorny Altay). The area occupies the central to southern part of the West Siberian Plain. It extends for about 1.5 thousand km from the west to the east from the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains to Yenisey River, and from north to south—about 1.3 thousand km. The total area equals about 1.2 million km2.Currently, the project is actively growing in spatial, collaboration and data accumulation terms. The working group of about 30 mycologists from 16 organizations dedicated to the digitization initiative was created as part of the Siberian Mycological Society (informal organization since 2019). They have created the most complete bibliographic list of mycology-related papers for the Southern West Siberia, including over 800 publications for the last two centuries (the earliest dated 1800). At abstract submission, the database had been populated with a total of about 10K records from about 100 sources. The dataset is uploaded to GBIF, where it is available for online search of species occurrences and/or download (Filippova et al. 2021b) Fig. 1. The project's page with the introduction, templates, bibliography list, video-presentations and written instructions is available at the website of the Siberian Mycological Society (https://sibmyco.org/literaturedatabase).The following protocol describes the digitization workflow in detail:The bibliography of related publications is compiled using Zotero bibliographic manager. Only published works (peer-reviewed papers, conference proceedings, PhD theses, monographs or book chapters) are selected. If possible, the sources are digitized and added to the library as PDF files. The template of the FuSWS database is made with Google Sheets, which allows simultaneous use by several specialists, in a common data format provided. The simple Microsoft Excel template is also available for the offline databasing. The Darwin Core standard is applied to the database field structure to accommodate the relevant information extracted from the publications.From the available bibliography of publications related to the region, only works with species occurrences are selected for the databasing purpose. The main source of occurrences is annotated species lists with exact localities of the records. However, different sorts of other species citations are also extracted, provided that they had the connection to any geography. All occurrences are georeferenced, either from the coordinates provided in the paper, or from the verbatim description of the field work locality. The georeferencing of the verbatim descriptions is made using Yandex or Google map services. Depending on the quality of georeference provided in publications, the uncertainty is estimated as follows: 1) the coordinate of a fruiting structure or a plot provided in the publication gives the uncertainty about 3-30 meters; 2) the coordinate of the field work locality provided in publication gives the uncertainty about 500 m to 5 km; 3) the report of the species presence in a particular region gives the centroid of the area with the uncertainty radius to include its borders.The locality names reported in Russian are translated to English and written in the «locality» field. Russian descriptions are reserved in the field «verbatimLocality» for accuracy.When possible, the «eventDate» is extracted from the annotation data. Whenever this information is absent, the date of the publication is used instead with the remarks in the «verbatimEventDate» field.The ecological features, habitat and substrate preferences are written in the «habitat» field and reserved in Russian.The original scientific names reported in publications are filled in the «originalNameUsage» field. Correction of spelling errors is made using the GBIF Species Matching tool. This tool is also used to create the additional fields of taxonomic hierarchy from species to kingdom, to fill in the «taxonRank» field and to synonymize according to the GBIF Backbone Taxonomy.To track the digitization process, a worksheet is maintained. Each bibliographic record has a series of fields to describe the digitization process and its results: the total number of extracted occurrence records, general description of the occurrence quality, presence of the observation date, details of georeferencing and the name of a person responsible for the digitization

The fungal literature-based occurrence database for southern West Siberia (Russia)

The paper presents the initiative on literature-based occurrence data mobilisation of fungi and fungi-related organisms (literature-based occurrences, Darwin Core MaterialCitation) to develop the Fungal literature-based occurrence database for the southern West Siberia (FuSWS). The initiative on mobilisation of literature-based occurrence data started in the northern part of West Siberia in 2016. The present project extends the initiative to the southern regions and includes ten administrative territories (Tyumen Region, Sverdlovsk Region, Chelyabinsk Region, Omsk Region, Kurgan Region, Tomsk Region, Novosibirsk Region, Kemerovo Region, Altai Territory and Republic of Altai). The area occupies the central to southern part of the West Siberian Plain and extends for about 1.5 K km from the west to the east from the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains to Yenisey River and from north to south—about 1.3 K km. The total area equals about 1.4 million km . The initiative is actively growing in spatial, collaboration and data accumulation terms. The working group of about 30 mycologists from eight organisations dedicated to the data mobilisation was created as part of the Siberian Mycological Society (informal organisation since 2019). They have compiled the almost complete bibliographic list of mycology-related papers for the southern West Siberia, including over 900 publications for the last two centuries (the earliest dated 1800). All literature sources were digitised and an online library was created to integrate bibliography metadata and digitised papers using Zotero bibliography manager. The analysis of published sources showed that about two-thirds of works contain occurrences of fungi for the scope of mobilisation. At the time of the paper submission, the database had been populated with a total of about 8 K records from 93 sources. The dataset is uploaded to GBIF, where it is available for online search of species occurrences and/or download. The project's page with the introduction, templates, bibliography list, video-presentations and written instructions is available (in Russian) at the web site of the Siberian Mycological Society. The initiative will be continued in the following years to extract the records from all published sources. New information The paper presents the first project with the aim of literature-based occurrence data mobilisation of fungi and fungi-related organisms in the southern West Siberia. The full bibliography and a digital library of all regional mycological publications created for the first time includes about 900 published works. By the time of paper submission, nearly 8 K occurrence records were extracted from about 90 literature sources and integrated into the FuSWS database published in GBIF

Crowdsourcing Fungal Biodiversity : Revision of Inaturalist Observations in Northwestern Siberia

The paper presents the first analysis of crowdsourcing data of all observations of fungi (including lichens) and myxomycetes in Northwestern Siberia uploaded to iNaturalist.org to date (24.02.2022). The Introduction presents an analysis of fungal diversity crowdsourcing globally, in Russia, and in the region of interest. Materials and methods describe the protocol of uploading data to iNaturalist.org, the structure of the crowdsourcing community. initiative to revise the accumulated data. procedures of data analysis, and compilation of a dataset of revised crowdsourced data. The Results present the analysis of accumulated data by several parameters: temporal, geographical and taxonomical scope, observation and identification efforts, identifiability of various taxa, species novelty and Red Data Book categories and the protection status of registered observations. The Discussion provides data on usability of crowdsourcing data for biodiversity research and conservation of fungi, including pros and contras. The Electronic Supplements to the paper include an annotated checklist of observations of protected species with information on Red Data Book categories and the protection status, and an annotated checklist of regional records of new taxa. The paper is supplemented with a dataset of about 15 000 revised and annotated records available through Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). The tradition of crowdsourcing is rooted in mycological societies around the world, including Russia. In Northwestern Siberia, a regional mycological club was established in 2018, encouraging its members to contribute observations of fungi on iNaturalist.org. A total of about 15 000 observations of fungi and myxomycetes were uploaded so far, by about 200 observers, from three administrative regions (Yamalo-Nenetsky Autonomous Okrug, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, and Tyumen Region). The geographical coverage of crowdsourcing observations remains low. However. the observation activity has increased in the last four years. The goal of this study consisted of a collaborative effort of professional mycologists invited to help with the identification of these observations and analysis of the accumulated data. As a result, all observations were reviewed by at least one expert. About half of all the observations have been identified reliably to the species level and received Research Grade status. Of those, 90 species (195 records) represented records of taxa new to their respective regions: 876 records of 53 species of protected species provide important data for conservation programmes. The other half of the observations consists of records still under-identified for various reasons: poor quality photographs, complex taxa (impossible to identify without microscopic or molecular study). or lack of experts in a particular taxonomic group. The Discussion section summarises the pros and cons of the use of crowdsourcing for the study and conservation of regional fungal diversity, and summarises the dispute on this subject among mycologists. Further research initiatives involving crowdsourcing data must focus on an increase in the quality of observations and strive to introduce the habit of collecting voucher specimens among the community of amateurs. The timely feedback from experts is also important to provide quality and the increase of personal involvement.Peer reviewe

Antiviral activity of fungi of the Novosibirsk Region: Pleurotus ostreatus and P. pulmonarius (Review)

The article reviews of antiviral properties of two species of fungi from the Novosibirsk Region of the genus Pleurotus. Fruit bodies and cultivated mycelium of Pleurotus ostreatus and P. pulmonarius are a promising source of extracts with polysaccharides, possessing antiviral and anti-cancer properties

Various methods for isolating DNA from fruiting bodies on the example of Pleurotus pulmonarius (higher basidiomycetes) of the Novosibirsk Region for barcoding of edible and medicinal mushrooms

We conducted experiments to increase the concentration of extracted DNA from the fruiting bodies of this species using various lysis buffers and extraction time. In general, DNA isolation according to the protocol using SDS made it possible to obtain higher concentrations thereof, as in the case of increasing the extraction time from 1 to 24 hours and using additional purification with chloroform

Evaluation of Decorativeness of Rare Arboreal plants Ex Situ of the Steppe of Ukraine

У статті проаналізовано сучасні методики оцінки декоративності деревних рослин, на основі чого розроблено оригінальну шкалу комплексної оцінки, яку апробовано на 30 видах дендросозоекзотів ex situ, що охороняються на територіях природно-заповідного фонду Степу України. The modern methodologies for assessing decorativeness of woody plants were analyzed. On this basis the original integrated scale of decorativeness assessment of rare arboreal exotic plant species by the main morphological features was constructed. This scale was optimized for leaf-losing and evergreen coniferous, as well as deciduous trees and shrubs. The resulting rating scale comprises four blocks: assessment of the general decorativeness of plants, evaluation of decorativeness of bark, assessment of decorativeness of leaves or needles, as well as the generative organs of the plant. This method was tested on 30 species of rare arboreal plants, which are protected ex situ on the territories of Nature Reserve Fund of the Steppe of Ukraine. According to the evaluation, three species of rare arboreal plants were categorized as most decorative (Malus niedzwetzkyana Dieck ex Koehne, Cercis chinensis Bunge and Liquidambar styraciflua L.), 23 species – as highly decorative species and four – as species of middling decorativeness. The results of decorativeness evaluation of rare arboreal plants ex situ of Nature Reserve Fund of the Steppe of Ukraine are support the view of the necessity of their widespread use in landscape gardening

The first records of a rare species of Reticularia olivacea (Myxomycetes) and Hypsizygus marmoreus (Fungi) in Inner Asia

A rare species of fungi, Hypsizygus marmoreus, collected in the Republic of Tyva, Russia, and a rare species of myxomycetes, Reticularia olivacea, collected in the Mongolia, were recorded for the first time in Inner Asia. The article provides a photographs of fruiting bodies of these species, distribution in world is provided