Aim/Purpose: The aim of this study is to examine the role of psychological ownership for safety in boosting employee performance and the impact of Perceived Organizational Support for Safety (POSS) on workers’ well-being, considering the psychological aspects associated with workplace safety and exploring the mediating effect of employees’ commitment. Background: It is widely recognized that promoting workplace safety goes beyond purely physical measures and must also consider the psychological aspects associated with safety management. However, while some studies have shown the direct effect of POSS and Safety Ownership on safety outcomes, very few studies have explored the underlying mediating mechanism, as well as their impact on distal outcomes, such as well-being and performance. Methodology: The cross-sectional study was conducted on a convenience sample of a metal mechanic enterprise’s employees through an online self-assessment questionnaire. Contribution: This study contributes to understanding the mechanisms through which psychological ownership for safety, organizational support for safety, and psychological factors related to safety collectively influence organizational outcomes. Findings: Two indirect significant effects are described. The first is between POSS and well-being, and the second significant relation is between psychological ownership for safety and job performance. When employees perceive that their organization cares about safety, they will experience a stronger sense of commitment and, in turn, they will be more satisfied in the work context, and they will improve their job performance. Recommendation for Researchers: Researchers should take a transdisciplinary approach to enable the integration of knowledge and perspectives from different fields that are essential to understanding the full range of implications and applications of safety management. Future Research: It could be interesting to investigate a different point of view on safety (e.g., top management or health and safety officers) and explore concerns about how to successfully communicate and transfer safety climate during remote working activities.

Aim/Purpose: The aim of this paper is to examine Gen Z students located in a representative region of the United States when it comes to technology use, news and information gathering behaviors, civic engagement, and social concerns and whether differences exist based on institutional type. The purpose is to report this information so that academics can better understand the behaviors, priorities, and interests of current American students. Background: This paper investigates the mindset of Generation Z students living in the United States during a period of heightened civic unrest. Through the lens of the Theory of Generations, Uses and Gratifications Theory, and Intersectional Theory, this study aims to examine the Gen Z group and compare findings across populations. Methodology: An electronic survey was administered to students from 2019 through 2022. The survey included a combination of multiple responses, Likert scaled, dichotomous, open-ended, and ordinal questions. It was developed in the Survey Monkey system and reviewed by content and methodological experts to examine bias, vagueness, or potential semantic problems. The survey was pilot-tested in 2018 before implementation in order to explore the efficacy of the research methodology. It was then modified accordingly before widespread distribution to potential participants. The surveys were administered to students enrolled in classes taught by the authors, all of whom are educators. Participation was voluntary, optional, and anonymous. Contribution: This paper provides insight into the mindset of Generation Z students living in the United States, which is helpful to members of academia who should be informed about the current generation of students in higher education. Studying Generation Z helps us understand the future and can provide insight into the shifting needs and expectations of society. Findings: According to the findings, Gen Z are heavy users of digital technologies who use social media as their primary source for gathering news about current events as well as information for schoolwork. The majority of respondents considered themselves to be social activists. When institutional type was considered, there were notable differences with the students at the Historically Black College or University (HBCU), noting the greatest concern with a number of pressing issues, including racial justice/Black Lives Matter, women’s rights, gun violence, immigration reform, and human trafficking. Less significance across groups was found when LGBTQIA+ rights and climate change were considered. Recommendation for Researchers: As social media continues to proliferate in daily life and become a vital means of news and information gathering, additional studies such as the one presented here are needed. In other countries facing similarly turbulent times, measuring student interest, awareness, and engagement is highly informative. Future Research: Future research will explore the role that influencers have in opinion formation and the information-gathering habits of Gen Z.

Aim/Purpose: The paper discusses various factors contributing to disagreements, such as differing experiences, perspectives, and historical narratives, leading to disagreements within families and societies. It explores how beliefs, values, and biases feed into disagreements, with confirmation bias affecting decision-making and the media. Cultural values also play a role, showcasing conflicts between meritocracy and inclusivity in ethical decision-making. Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory highlights differences in value priorities between Western and Eastern societies. The impact of Western values like rationalism, freedom, and tolerance, under threat from Marxist illiberalism on campuses, is dis-cussed. The text also delves into disinformation, emotions in warfare, and the use of fake information and images for propaganda purposes. The need for diligent reporting to avoid spreading disinformation is emphasized, given its potential to create misconceptions and harm diplomatic relations.

Aim/Purpose: In this paper we propose a framework identifying many of the unintended consequences of information technology and posit that the increased complexity brought about by IT is a proximate cause for these negative effects. Background: Builds upon the three-world model that has been evolving within the informing science transdiscipline. Methodology: We separate complexity into three categories: experienced complexity, intrinsic complexity, and extrinsic complexity. With the complexity cycle in mind, we consider how increasing complexity of all three forms can lead to unintended consequences at the individual, task and system levels. Examples of these consequences are discussed at the individual level (e.g., deskilling, barriers to advancement), the task level (e.g., perpetuation of past practices), as well as broader consequences that may result from the need to function in an environment that is more extrinsically complex (e.g., erosion of predictable causality, shortened time horizons, inequality, tribalism). We conclude by reflecting on the implications of attempting to manage or limit increases of complexity. Contribution: Shows how many unintended consequences of IT could be attributed to growing complexity. Findings: We find that these three forms of complexity feed into one another resulting in a positive feedback loop that we term the Complexity Cycle. As examples, we analyze ChatGPT, blockchain and quantum computing, through the lens of the complexity cycle, speculating how experienced complexity can lead to greater intrinsic complexity in task performance through the incorporation of IT which, in turn, increases the extrinsic complexity of the economic/technological environment. Recommendations for Practitioners: Consider treating increasing task complexity as an externality that should be considered as new systems are developed and deployed. Recommendation for Researchers: Provides opportunities for empirical investigation of the proposed model. Impact on Society: Systemic risks of complexity are proposed along with some proposals regarding how they might be addressed. Future Research: Empirical investigation of the proposed model and the degree to which cognitive changes created by the proposed complexity cycle are necessarily problematic.

Shuoyan LIU,Chao LI,Yuxin LIU,Yanqiu WANG, Vol.E107-D, No.11, pp.1468-1471
Escalators are an indispensable facility in public places. While they can provide convenience to people, abnormal accidents can lead to serious consequences. Yolo is a function that detects human behavior in real time. However, the model exhibits low accuracy and a high miss rate for small targets. To this end, this paper proposes the Small Target High Performance YOLO (SH-YOLO) model to detect abnormal behavior in escalators. The SH-YOLO model first enhances the backbone network through attention mechanisms. Subsequently, a small target detection layer is incorporated in order to enhance detection of key points for small objects. Finally, the conv and the SPPF are replaced with a Region Dynamic Perception Depth Separable Conv (DR-DP-Conv) and Atrous Spatial Pyramid Pooling (ASPP), respectively. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model is capable of accurately and robustly detecting anomalies in the real-world escalator scene.
Publication Date: 2024/11/01

Ph.D. Dissertation Defense Modeling and Extracting Information about Cybersecurity Events from Text Taneeya Satyapanich 9:30-11:30 Monday, 18 November, 2019, ITE346? People now rely on the Internet to carry out much of their daily activities such as banking, ordering food, and socializing with their family and friends. The technology facilitates our lives, but also comes with […]

The post Defense: Taneeya Satyapanich, Modeling and Extracting Information about Cybersecurity Events from Text appeared first on UMBC ebiquity.

Do firms learn from their failed innovation attempts? Answering this question is important because failure is an integral part of exploratory learning. In this study, we explore whether and under what circumstances firms learn from their small failures in experimentation. Building on organizational learning literature, we examine the conditions under which prior failures influence firms' R&D output amount and quality. An empirical analysis of voluntary patent expirations (i.e., patents that firms give up by not paying renewal fees) in 97 pharmaceutical firms between 1980 and 2002 shows that the number, importance, and timing of small failures are associated with a decrease in R&D output (patent count) but an increase in the quality of the R&D output (forward citations to patents). Exploratory interviews suggest that the results are driven by a multi-level learning process from failures in pharmaceutical R&D. The findings contribute to the organizational learning literature by providing a nuanced view of learning from failures in experimentation.

Psychological empowerment has been studied extensively over the past few decades in a variety of contexts and appears to be especially salient within dynamic and complex environments such as healthcare. However, a recent meta-analysis found that psychological empowerment relationships vary significantly across studies, and there is still a rather limited understanding of how empowerment operates across levels. Accordingly, we advance and test a multi-level model of empowerment which seeks to better understand the unique and synergistic effects between unit and individual empowerment in hospital units. Analysis of data involving 544 individuals in 78 units, collected from multiple sources over three different time periods, revealed that unit empowerment evidenced a synergistic interaction with individual-level psychological empowerment as related to individuals' job performance, as well as an indirect effect on performance via individual empowerment, while controlling for previous performance levels. Notably, these effects were significant at relatively high, but not at relatively low levels of unit empowerment. Furthermore, we found that unit voice climate increased unit empowerment and thereby enhanced individual psychological empowerment. These findings suggest that, in complex and dynamic environments, empowering work units is an important means by which leaders can enhance individuals' performance.

We develop and test a theoretical model that explores how individuals appraise different types of stressful job demands and how these cognitive appraisals impact job performance. The model also explores how charismatic leaders influence such appraisal and reaction processes, and by virtue of these effects, how leaders can influence the impact of stressful demands on their followers' job performance. In Study 1 (n = 74 U.S. Marines), our model was largely supported in hierarchical linear modeling analyses. Marines whose leaders were judged by superiors to exhibit charismatic leader behaviors appraised challenge stressors as being more challenging, and were more likely to respond to this appraisal with higher performance. Although charismatic leader behaviors did not influence how hindrance stressors were appraised, they negated the strong negative effect of hindrance appraisals on job performance. In Study 2 (n = 270 U.S. Marines) charismatic leader behaviors were measured through the eyes of the focal Marines, and the interactions found in Study 1 were replicated. Results from multilevel structural equation modeling analyses also indicate that charismatic leader behaviors moderate both the mediating role of challenge appraisals in transmitting the effect of challenge stressors to job performance, and the mediating role of hindrance appraisals in transmitting the effect of hindrance stressors to job performance. Implications of our results to theory and practice are discussed. Keywords: stress, leadership, job performance, multilevel modeling

Previous academic and popular literature has raised important debates concerning the contradictory incentives of international firms to reduce their environmental impacts and offer transparent environmental information about their operations. As an exhaustive review of this literature reveals mixed and partial evidence, we compared the individual corporate environmental performance and disclosure of the 100 most international non-financial firms in the world to those of 16,023 firms in their industries and a group of matched pairs of firms for three different years. Our results show that although the top international firms have a much better record of environmental disclosure than the firms within their industries and the matched pairs, the top international firms also show worse environmental performance than their peers. The results suggest that the top international firms seek legitimation for their environmental activities by means of voluntary disclosure.

We extend the knowledge-based perspective to consider the impact of spin-out founders on knowledge transfer to new ventures. We argue that existing theory largely ignores the founder's role as team catalyst who mobilizes a team and transmits the team's knowledge to a new venture. We address this gap by building theory on the role of a spin-out founder as a facilitator of co-mobility, and whose impact on firm outcomes is mediated by the size and organizational experience of the recruited team. The support for our hypotheses, through use of linked employee-employer US Census data from the legal services industry, has theoretical and practical implications for the knowledge-based view and human resource strategies for both existing and entrepreneurial firms.

Using data from 607 subjects organized in 161 teams (84 laboratory teams and 77 organizational field teams), we examined how leader humility influences team interaction patterns, emergent states, and team performance. We developed and tested a theoretical model arguing that when leaders behave humbly, followers emulate their humble behaviors, creating a shared interpersonal team process (collective humility). This collective humility in turn creates a team emergent state focused on progressively striving toward achieving the team's highest potential (collective promotion focus), which ultimately enhances team performance. We tested our model across three studies wherein we manipulated leader humility to test the social contagion hypothesis (Study 1), examined the impact of humility on team processes and performance in a longitudinal team simulation (Study 2), and tested the full model in a multistage field study in a health services context (Study 3). The findings from these lab and field studies collectively supported our theoretical model, demonstrating that leader behavior can spread via social contagion to followers, producing an emergent state that ultimately affects team performance. Our findings contribute to the leadership literature by suggesting the need for leaders to lead by example, and showing precisely how a specific set of leader behaviors influence team performance, which may provide a useful template for future leadership research on a wide variety of leader behaviors.

Drawing on theories of behavioral decision making and situational strength, we developed and tested a multilevel model that explains how the performance outcomes of personal initiative tendency depend on the extent of alignment between organizational control mechanisms and proactive individuals' risk propensities. Results from a sample of 383 middle managers operating in 34 business units of a large multinational corporation indicated that risk propensity weakens the positive relationship between personal initiative tendency and job performance. This negative moderating effect was further amplified when middle managers receive high job autonomy but was attenuated in business units with a strong performance management context. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on proactivity, risk taking, and organizational control.

Studies suggest that category-spanning organizations receive lower evaluation and perform worse than organizations focused on a single category. We propose that (1) these effects are contingent on clients' theory of value and that as clients expect more sophisticated services, they tend to value category spanners more positively and (2) the evaluation of producers mediates the relationship between category spanning and performance. We test our hypotheses using original data on corporate legal services in three markets (London, New York City, and Paris) over the decade 2000-2010. We find that (1) category spanners receive a better evaluation, and more so when their categorical combination is more inclusive and (2) evaluation mediates significantly the relationship between category spanning and performance. This study enriches our understanding of how audiences apprehend a whole market category system and why organizations span categories.

Female corporate leadership has drawn increasing attention from academia and practitioners. We contribute to the literature by examining the impact of CEO succession with gender change—i.e., a male CEO succeeded by a female or vice versa. We propose that due to gender differences in executive leadership positions, CEO succession with gender change may amplify the disruption of the CEO succession process and thus adversely affect post-succession firm performance and increase the likelihood of successor early departure. Using data from 3,320 CEO successions in companies listed in China's Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 1997 to 2010, we find evidence to support this argument. We also find that the negative (positive) impact of male-to-female succession on firm performance (the likelihood of successor early departure) may be weakened by positive organizational attitudes toward female leadership as indicated by the presence of other female leaders on the firm's board of directors and/or top management team, and the successor's inside origin.

This rather difficult read introduces the programming language FSM and the programming platform DrRacket. The author asserts that it is a convenient platform to design and prove an automata-based software

KOTA BHARU: Police have confirmed that the whistleblower who sent an open letter to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong regarding allegations of corruption in Sabah has received death threats.

Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Razarudin Husain said the case is being investigated by the Bukit Aman Classified Crime Investigation Unit under Section 507 of the Penal Code, which addresses criminal intimidation through anonymous communication.

The 36-year-old male informant received a threatening call via WhatsApp from an unknown number.

“During the call, the suspect, believed to be a local man, threatened the informant in Mandarin, claiming to be from a hitman group and demanding the informant stay silent.

“The suspect warned that if the informant did not comply, he would be killed within 24 hours and called it a final warning,” Razarudin told Bernama today.

Razarudin said the suspect also sent two images, one of a pistol with ammunition and another showing a person shot in the street.

The informant expressed deep fear for his own safety and that of his family, he said.

“After receiving the WhatsApp message, the informant reported the incident and blocked the number. Since then, no further threats have been made,” Razarudin said, adding that the informant initially suspected that the phone number might belong to a scammer or was dialed incorrectly.

He said further checks revealed that the phone number was no longer in service and had no registered owner.

Razarudin added no other reports had been filed regarding this number, and the investigation returned no relevant records.

Please note: a regularly updated version of this posting is now on the main website at http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/brexit.htm  Those of us living and working in the UK are constantly bombarded with news and information of varying quality on Brexit. I regularly run workshops on sources of business information and,  inevitably, these now include a section on … Continue reading Brexit – sources of information →

Edited highlights from my recent workshop on search tools for research information are now available. Please note that not all of the services, search tools, examples or issues covered in the workshop are included in this version. Slides can be viewed on Slideshare  or authorSTREAM. 

Fines of up to 5% of global revenue could be imposed on tech companies for failing to curb spread of misinformation.

As Techdirt stories attest, Wikipedia has been attacked in the past for publishing true information that somebody doesn’t like. As well as wanting articles to be censored, those behind such attacks often also demand the names of those who worked on the article. Something similar is now happening in India, where the Indian news agency […]

Constant bombardment of ‘bad news’ can easily make individuals desensitised and disillusioned

While technology is key for digital transformation in healthcare, the human element is equally, if not more, important

By eschewing this emblem of entitlement, the PM is articulating a compelling narrative about modesty, egalitarianism.

When our analog parents searched for information, that activity took place in libraries, and that was one of the most safeguarded privacies of all. When our digital children search for information, their innermost thoughts are instead harvested wholesale for marketing. How did this happen?

If you’re looking at one particular profession of the analog world that was absolutely obsessed with the privacy of its patrons, it was the librarians. Libraries were where people could search for their darkest secrets, were it literature, science, shopping, or something else. The secrecy of libraries were downright legendary.

As bomb recipes started appearing on the proto-Internet in the 1980s — on so-called BBSes — and some politicians tried to play on moral panics, many of common sense were quick to point out, that these “text files with bomb recipes” were no different than what you would find in the chemistry section of a mediocre-or-better library — and libraries were sacred. There was no moral panic to play on as soon as you pointed out that this was already available in every public library, for the public to access anonymously

So private were libraries, in fact, that librarians were in collective outrage when the FBI started asking libraries for records of who had borrowed what book – and that’s how the infamous warrant canaries were invented. Yup, by a librarian, protecting the patrons of the library. Librarians have always been the profession defending privacy rights the hardest – in the analog as well as the digital.

In the analog world of our parents, their Freedom of Information was sacramount: their innermost thirst for learning, knowledge, and understanding. In the digital world of our children, their corresponding innermost thoughts are instead harvested wholesale and sold off to market trinkets into their faces.

It’s not just what our digital children successfully studied that’s up for grabs. In the terms of our analog parents, it’s what they ever went to the library for. It’s what they ever considered going to the library for. In the world of our digital children, everything they searched for is recorded — and everything they thought of searching for but didn’t.

Think about that for a moment: something that was so sacred for our analog parents that entire classes of professions would go on strike to preserve it, is now casually used for wholesale marketing in the world of our digital children.

Combine this with the previous article about everything you do, say, and think being recorded for later use against you, and we’re going to need a major change in thinking on this very soon.

There is no reason our children should have less Freedom of Information just because they happen to live in a digital environment, as compared to the analog environment of our parents. There is no reason our digital children shouldn’t enjoy Analog Equivalent Privacy Rights.

Of course, it can be argued that the Internet search engines are private services who are free to offer whatever services they like on whatever terms they like. But there were private libraries in the analog world of our parents, too. We’ll be returning to this “it’s private so you don’t have a say” concept a little later in this series.

Privacy remains your own responsibility.

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China and Russia have joined forces in an aggressive disinformation campaign involving both covert and overt operations designed to discredit a key Pentagon agency.

The news about the International Symposium "Nature and Governance – Biodiversity Data, Science, and the Policy Interface" and the official EU BON Kickoff Meeting has been reflected in the January newsletter of the The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).

GBIF only features high end biodiversity news and major projects. EU BON project summary is placed in the collaborations section of the newsletter and the two events are included in the Upcoming Events, pointed out to the readers' attention.

To view the GBIF newsletter for January, please go to: http://www.gbif.org/communications/resources/newsletters/, or see the newsletter PDF attached below.

A new "LinkOut" feature introduced by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) NCBI’s allows the easy linking to content on PubMed and GenBank.  Dryad has already introduced the feature benefitting from easy and fast linking of associated content to the two resources.

PubMed and GenBank, from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), are hugely popular resources for searching and retrieving article abstracts and nucleotide sequence data, respectively.  PubMed indexes the vast majority of the biomedical literature, and deposition of nucleotide sequences in GenBank or one of the other INSDC databases is a near universal requirement for publication in a scientific journal. LinkOut allows the data from an article to be distributed among repositories without compromising its discoverability.

Dryad, intends to expand on this feature in a couple of ways. First, it is planned to make Dryad content searchable via the PubMed and GenBank identifiers, which because of their wide use will provide a convenient gateway for other biomedical databases to link out to Dryad.  Second, open web standards will be used to expose relationships between content in Dryad and other repositories, not just NCBI.

Original source: Dryad news and views

A new article "A decadal view of biodiversity informatics: challenges and priorities"  published by BMC Ecology focuses on the challenges and perspectives for biodiversity informatics after a decade of development. The authors Alex Hardisty and Dave Roberts alongside 77 contributions from the biodiversity informatics community share experience and set future directions of biodiversity informatics as a tool for addressing conservation and ecological issues.

Biodiversity informatics plays a central enabling role in the research community's efforts to address scientific conservation and sustainability issues. This community consultation paper positions the role of biodiversity informatics, for the next decade, presenting the actions needed to link the various biodiversity infrastructures invisibly and to facilitate understanding that can support both business and policy-makers. The community considers the goal in biodiversity informatics to be full integration of the biodiversity research community, including citizens’ science, through a commonly-shared, sustainable e-infrastructure across all sub-disciplines that reliably serves science and society alike.

The full text of the article can be accessed here.

The first Informatics Workshop of the EU-FP7 funded project EU BON was held on 29-31 May 2013 in Trondheim, Norway. The meeting was hosted by the EU BON partner Norwegian Biodiversity Information Centre (NBIC). The aims were to highlight the link to infrastructures and processes like GEOSS or DataONE and to discuss the data standards and informatics architecture that will be followed by the EU BON project.

During the three-days of the workshop, the participants of the meeting discussed the important aspects regarding the informatics architecture and decided on the next steps to develop a new open-access platform for sharing biodiversity data and tools in order to advance the European biodiversity knowledge.  On the first day, the aim was to highlight the link of EU BON with GEOSS, GEO BON and other processes like DataONE to find synergies and to build on work that was conducted in these processes. On the second day, detailed discussion on the specific tasks of the workgroup took place. The afternoon session was split into 3 different tracks where issues like architectural design, review and guidelines for using data standards, the design of monitoring sites and the gap analysis of existing biodiversity data were analyzed and discussed.

It was agreed that a new platform is needed which should be built on existing solutions. Thus, the platform will use the technical solutions of the DataONE network that will be adjusted to the specific needs of the EU BON project. EU BON Partners will implement DataONE Member Nodes to start the process and a DataOne coordinating node may be established towards 2015. Furthermore, it was also decided to join and support the GEO BON Working Group pilot project on automating the data flows for the Essential Biodiversity Variables.

At the Bioinformatics Horizon 2013 Conference (3 - 6 September 2013, Rome) a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between PESI and EU BON. Christoph Häuser, on behalf of EU BON and Yde de Jong on behalf of PESI (see picture below), signed the document to strengthen the cooperation and formalise the integrating efforts of the European species infrastructures.  

PESI is now a new associate partner of EU BON, a consortium with currently 30 partners from 18 countries. One of the common aims of EU BON and PESI will be to establish and sustain standard taxonomies for Europe.  EU BON will support the PESI backbone developments, including its components, with a focus on Fauna Europaea and Euro+Med. Besides analyzing current gaps, new ideas will be developed to trigger expert involvement and enhance the data management systems.

In a side-meeting at BIH 2013, some ideas were discussed with available EU BON and PESI partners. Important steps will be taken to secure the sustainability of databases and expertise networks combined with the development of technical innovations for users and stakeholders and to promote the implementation of PESI as a European (INSPIRE) standard. It will be also important to further integrate the huge expertise networks, outreach to PESI Focal Points and expand the geographical scope. Furthermore, it will be important to integrate additional data types and data-resources.

The 2nd EU BON training on data sharing tools will take place side by side to CETAF/EU BON informatics workshops (see full program and logistic details here). The event will be organised by UEF and Digitarium, EU BON consortium member and work package leader (WP2), in collaboration with CETAF ISTC and other EU BON work packages.

Next topics will be covered:

• Introduction to GEOSS, GEO BON, EU BON (Hannu Saarenmaa)
• Information architecture of EU BON (Antonio Garcia)
• Data standards, Darwin Core and extensions for sample-based quantitative data (Éamonn Ó Tuama)
• Demonstration of GBIF/EU BON IPT for monitoring networks (Larissa Smirnova and Franck Theeten)
• Practical exercise with sample dataset (Larissa Smirnova and Franck Theeten)
• Practical exercise with own data (all trainees)

The workshop will include lectures and hands-on work, so participants are required to bring their own laptops. We will provide information and instructions on software installations. If the participants want to install IPT tool themselves, they can read and learn how to de it here. For the practical exercises it’s recommended to bring  own data (taxonomic, monitoring).

Place and date: Joensuu, Finland, 19 March 2015

Venue: Joensuu Science Park, Digitarium and the Conference Facility "Network Oasis"

To register, please fill in the registration form

Find the event in our calendar here.

A recent paper by Duccio Rocchini et al. (2015) has been classified as the fourth hottest article in Ecological Informatics. The paper is part of the EU BON project, and discusses from a conceptual point of view, the potential of remote sensing in estimating biodiversity using various diversity indices, including alpha- and beta-diversity measurements. 

Abstract:

Many geospatial tools have been advocated in spatial ecology to estimate biodiversity and its changes over space and time. Such information is essential in designing effective strategies for biodiversity conservation and management. Remote sensing is one of the most powerful approaches to identify biodiversity hotspots and predict changes in species composition in reduced time and costs. This is because, with respect to field-based methods, it allows to derive complete spatial coverages of the Earth surface under study in a short period of time. Furthermore, remote sensing provides repeated coverages of field sites, thus making studies of temporal changes in biodiversity possible. In this paper we discuss, from a conceptual point of view, the potential of remote sensing in estimating biodiversity using various diversity indices, including alpha- and beta-diversity measurements.

Original source:

Rocchini D, Hernández Stefanoni JL, He, KS (2015) Advancing species diversity estimate by remotely sensed proxies: a conceptual review. Ecological Informatics, 25: 22-28. doi:10.1016/j.ecoinf.2014.10.006

A new article published in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering looks at how Aphia, the core platform that underpins the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS),  can Serve the taxonomic community and the field of biodiversity informatics.

Abstract

The Aphia platform is an infrastructure designed to capture taxonomic and related data and information, and includes an online editing environment. The latter allows easy access to experts so they can update the content of the database in a timely fashion. Aphia is the core platform that underpins the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) and its more than 80 related global, regional and thematic species databases, but it also allows the storage of non-marine data. The content of Aphia can be consulted online, either by individual users or via machine-to-machine interactions. Aphia uses unique and stable identifiers for each available name in the database through the use of Life Science Identifiers (LSIDs). The system not only allows the storage of accepted and unaccepted names, but it also documents the relationships between names. This makes it a very powerful tool for taxonomic quality control, and also allows the linking of different pieces of information through scientific names, both within the Aphia platform and in relation to externally hosted databases. Through these LSIDs, Aphia has become an important player in the field of (marine) biodiversity informatics, allowing interactions between its own taxonomic data and e.g., biogeographic databases. Some applications in the field of biodiversity informatics encompass the coupling of species traits and taxonomy, as well as the creation of diverse, expert validated data products that can be used by policy makers, for example. Aphia also supplies (part of) its content to other data integrators and the infrastructure can be used to host orphan databases in danger of being lost.

Original Source: http://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/3/4/1448/htm

The EU BON workshop "Biodiversity research for and by citizens in Eastern Europe: tools, information services and public engagement" was organized to present the EU BON citizen science gateway, share accomplishments of the project, promote products, raise and discuss challenges of citizen science and facilitate networking between countries, especially eastern and central European countries.

There were 33 participants from Baltic countries and Finland and EU BON partners from Norway, Spain, Israel and Brussels. First day was showcasing the citizen science initiatives in Estonia, following best practice examples from EU BON consortium. During the second day the participants got a chance to learn the tools and methods for citizen science data management by ECSA and EU BON. This was followed by world cafe style discussion about the needs of citizen science initiatives and Pan-European citizen science gateway. One of the important conclusions for Baltic countries is that there is a need for stronger collaboration and supportive infrastructure to make citizen science more effective and also deliver accessible data to research community.

Some workshop participants also took part of Tartu Mini-BioBlitz on 29th June, first BioBlitz in Estonia. BioBlitz participants observed 239 species of animals, plants and fungi .

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Workshop agenda

Read a first hand report form the workshop in the two great blog posts by Egle Marija Ramanauskaite (a workshop participant from Lithuania):

http://seplute.tumblr.com/post/146841955105/citsci-overtakes-the-baltics-citizen-science

http://seplute.tumblr.com/post/146844410470/citizen-science-workshop-in-tartu-recap-of-day-2

Coming to an end, after 4.5 years of hard work and dedicated research, the FP7-funded project EU BON leaves behind a basket of results to support the Group of Earth Observations (GEO) and assist researchers in their future studies.

The EU BON website will continue to exist and host relevant information for at least the next 5 years to ensure project results are easy to access and reuse, not only by EU BON researchers, but for anyone interested in the project or working in the field.

Among the major outcomes of the project, the biodiversity portal is now complete and will be hosted for the next years by CSIC. All EU BON’s tools, products, services and the Citizen Science gateway can be found there.

Additionally, about 15 of our tools will soon be included in the GEO BON’s BON-in-a-Box to ensure sustainability and exploitation of results.

All EU BON related publications are available via the project’s website. Moreover,  important documents are also in a dedicated piloting RIO Open Science collection, demonstrating how next-generation publishing can ensure sustainability of results coming from along the research cycle, including data, guidelines, infographics and more.

EU BON’s success could not be possible without the professional and friendly team of consortium partners and 33 associated partners, who’ve worked hard together and have contributed in various ways and with different efforts.

Credit: Dirk Schmeller

The first EU BON Informatics Workshop will take place in Trondheim, Norway from 29 to 31 May 2013. The event aims at discussing the data standards and informatics architecture that will be followed by the EU BON project. The workshop will also focus on highlighting linkages to GEOSS Common Infrastructure and the GEO BON. Among the agenda on the list are also presentation of the plans and operations of the EU BON Helpdesk as well as the first assembly of the global Informatics Task Force of EU BON. The workshop is by invitation only. The agenda and travel details have been updated on 2 May 2013, see the below attachment.

Biodiversity Informatics Horizons 2013 (BIH2013) is part of a continuing process that helps to structure and organise the biodiversity informatics community at the European level and beyond. BIH2013 will take place over 3 full days, from lunchtime on Tuesday 3rd September to lunchtime Friday 6th. The venue will be in Rome but is still awaiting final confirmation.

To respond to the challenges and priorities of the next decade in biodiversity and ecosystems research, structuring bottom-up and top-down interactions on informatics and cooperating across the community is now an essential activity. Cooperation avoids unnecessary duplication of activity. It helps to maximise and focus effort on building the information resources, tools and infrastructure the scientists and policymakers need. We all know the importance of this as we face environmental, societal and human health challenges on global scale. Science in support of policy to mitigate biodiversity loss due to climate and other man-made changes, to assure food security, and to combat invasive species (to give just a few examples) can only be achieved by full integration of the biodiversity research community through a commonly-shared, sustainable e-infrastructure across all sub-disciplines that reliably serves science and society alike. Hence, the need to coordinate.

Invited speakers will review challenging areas and promising technologies in biodiversity informatics, pathways to sustainable implementation and changing the community culture. A panel discussion with experts from regions of the world beyond Europe will explore opportunities for international cooperation that lead towards a sustainable global infrastructure. Demonstration and training activities, provided by some of the FP7 projects associated with the conference will allow delegates to see first-hand some of the new and exciting infrastructure building blocks that will come together to deliver the LifeWatch vision.

To read more and register for the conference, please click here.

For early registration conference fee, please register before 31 July.

Place and date: Joensuu, Finland, 17-20 March 2015

Purpose of this meeting is to launch several EU BON products, give a related training workshop, work on upcoming deliverables, and gain synergies by working with CETAF. Registration for the workshop is now open, see below!

More nformation is available here: http://digitarium.fi/en/content/eu-bon-and-cetaf-joint-informatics-workshop

The 10th  International Conference on Ecological Informatics 'Facing Global Change by Sharing Data and Models' wil take place on 24‐28 October 2016 in Dubrovnik, Croatia  

By lending access via the Internet to biodiversity data in open data infrastructures, biodiversity informatics worldwide allows anyone, anywhere to access and analyze data about all types of life on Earth. In applying common standards, research not previously possible is enabled, and better decisions to conserve and sustainably use the biological resources of the planet made possible.

In this symposium an overview of present and future opportunities will be given alongside recent research presentations and demonstrations of up-to-date tools for providing and acquiring information, handling data and presenting results.

The symposium is arranged as an Oikos Satellite Symposium but is open to anyone, i.e. also those not attending the Oikos conference can register for the symposium.

This symposium is organised by Swedish LifeWatch, GBIF Sweden and Department of Ecology at SLU and it will take place on February 6 2017, in Ecology Building, Sölvegatan 37, Lund, Sweden.

For more information, please visit the official event's page: http://www.slu.se/biodiversity-informatics