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Priorities to advance monitoring of ecosystem services using earth observation.
No full textManaging ecosystem services in the context of global sustainability policies requires reliable monitoring mechanisms. While satellite Earth observation offers great promise to support this need, significant challenges remain in quantifying connections between ecosystem functions, ecosystem services, and human well-being benefits. Here, we provide a framework showing how Earth observation together with socioeconomic information and model-based analysis can support assessments of ecosystem service supply, demand, and benefit, and illustrate this for three services. We argue that the full potential of Earth observation is not yet realized in ecosystem service studies. To provide guidance for priority setting and to spur research in this area, we propose five priorities to advance the capabilities of Earth observation-based monitoring of ecosystem services
Q2Stress: A database for multiple cues to stress assignment in Italian.
No full textIn languages where the position of lexical stress within a word is not predictable from print, readers rely on distributional information extracted from the lexicon in order to assign stress. Lexical databases are thus especially important for researchers willing to address stress assignment in those languages. Here we present Q2Stress, a new database aimed to fill the lack of such a resource for Italian. Q2Stress includes multiple cues readers may use in assigning stress, such as type and token frequency of stress patterns as well as their distribution with respect to number of syllables, grammatical category, word beginnings, word endings, and consonant-vowel structures. Furthermore, for the first time, data for both adults and children are available. Q2Stress may help researchers to answer empirical as well as theoretical questions about stress assignment and stress related issues, and more in general, to explore the orthography-to-phonology relation in reading. Q2Stress is designed as a user-friendly resource, as it comes with scripts allowing researchers to explore and select their own stimuli according to several criteria as well as summary tables for overall data analysis
Sensorimotor coarticulation in the execution and recognition of intentional actions
No full textHumans excel at recognizing (or inferring) another\u27s distal intentions, and recent experiments suggest that this may be possible using only subtle kinematic cues elicited during early phases of movement. Still, the cognitive and computational mechanisms underlying the recognition of intentional (sequential) actions are incompletely known and it is unclear whether kinematic cues alone are sufficient for this task, or if it instead requires additional mechanisms (e.g., prior information) that may be more difficult to fully characterize in empirical studies. Here we present a computationally-guided analysis of the execution and recognition of intentional actions that is rooted in theories of motor control and the coarticulation of sequential actions. In our simulations, when a performer agent coarticulates two successive actions in an action sequence (e.g., "reach-to-grasp" a bottle and "grasp-to-pour"), he automatically produces kinematic cues that an observer agent can reliably use to recognize the performer\u27s intention early on, during the execution of the first part of the sequence. This analysis lends computational-level support for the idea that kinematic cues may be sufficiently informative for early intention recognition. Furthermore, it suggests that the social benefits of coarticulation may be a byproduct of a fundamental imperative to optimize sequential actions. Finally, we discuss possible ways a performer agent may combine automatic (coarticulation) and strategic (signaling) ways to facilitate, or hinder, an observer\u27s action recognition processes
Consensus Paper: Towards a Systems-Level View of Cerebellar Function: the Interplay Between Cerebellum, Basal Ganglia, and Cortex
No full textDespite increasing evidence suggesting the cerebellum works in concert with the cortex and basal ganglia, the nature of the reciprocal interactions between these three brain regions remains unclear. This consensus paper gathers diverse recent views on a variety of important roles played by the cerebellum within the cerebello-basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical system across a range of motor and cognitive functions. The paper includes theoretical and empirical contributions, which cover the following topics: recent evidence supporting the dynamical interplay between cerebellum, basal ganglia, and cortical areas in humans and other animals; theoretical neuroscience perspectives and empirical evidence on the reciprocal influences between cerebellum, basal ganglia, and cortex in learning and control processes; and data suggesting possible roles of the cerebellum in basal ganglia movement disorders. Although starting from different backgrounds and dealing with different topics, all the contributors agree that viewing the cerebellum, basal ganglia, and cortex as an integrated system enables us to understand the function of these areas in radically different ways. In addition, there is unanimous consensus between the authors that future experimental and computational work is needed to understand the function of cerebellar-basal ganglia circuitry in both motor and non-motor functions. The paper reports the most advanced perspectives on the role of the cerebellum within the cerebello-basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical system and illustrates other elements of consensus as well as disagreements and open questions in the field
Il valore aggiunto della limnologia comparata: un confronto tra laghi delle Terre Alte per lo studio dei cambiamenti climatici
No full textNot availableAssodato che il cambiamento climatico ? in corso, molte sono ancora le incertezze sulla conseguente risposta da parte degli ecosistemi, in particolare di quelli acquatici. Come emerso sia dall\u27analisi delle serie storiche di dati, sia da indagini paleolimnologiche, questi ambienti, a differenza di quelli terrestri, presentano dei meccanismi di riposta pi? complessi, spesso non lineari, o non riconducibili ad una semplice relazione causa-effetto. Sono qui discussi esempi o casi di studio che evidenziano come le comunit? biologiche che vivono in ambienti acquatici abbiamo strutture peculiari e come queste caratteristiche siano rispondano agli impatti climatici. Per valutare in modo appropriato quale sar? l\u27evoluzione di questi ecosistemi nel prossimo futuro ? necessario aumentare la conoscenza di questi ambienti su scala sia spaziale sia temporale, in modo da poter discriminare il contributo di fattori locali o globali, antropici o naturali. In questo contesto gli ambienti acquatici delle Terra Alte possono dare un contributo significativo alla comprensione degli impatti del clima sugli ecosistemi acquatici
Brillouin-based fiber sensing system employing a modified Brillouin ring laser
No full textIn this work we report on a tunable dual pump-probe optical source aimed at Brillouin optical time-and frequency-domain analysis sensing. The developed dual source exploits Brillouin ring laser technology and is capable of a large tuning range of ~200 MHz without using phase-locked loop or optical sideband generation techniques. With a linewidth narrower than 2.5 MHz and an output power ~0.5 mW, the proposed source has shown to be an efficient solution for Brillouin optical time-domain analysis (BOTDA) systems, allowing to achieve distributed sensing over 10 km single mode fiber in BOTDA experiments with strain and temperature resolutions of ~10 ?? and ~ 0.5?C respectively
Report ETLAT EDA Project: experimental results at Nemi Lake
No full textThis report shows the final experimental results in the frame of the ETLAT EDA Project. The tests have been performed in order to compute the hydrodynamic behaviour of underwater mechanical towed system for surveillance applications
Paradigm Relative Entropy and Discriminative Learning
No full textIn the present contribution, we show that principles of discriminative learning of symbolic time series go a long way in accounting for these effects, thus making an important contribution to our understanding of the human lexical processor and its sensitivity to word distributions both within and across paradigms
Transparency and predictability in Modern Greek conjugation: Implications for models of word processing
No full textWe argue that the Greek evidence calls for a substantial revision of the clear-cut interaction between transparency/predictability and regularity, to make room for a more process-oriented notion of regularity. According to this view, regularity is no longer an epiphenomenon of the design of the human language faculty and the purported dualism between rule-based and memory-based routes, but the graded result of the varying interaction of several structural factors concurrently affecting the human word processor
Response of land surface phenology to variation in tree cover during green-up and senescence periods in the semi-arid savanna of Southern Africa
No full textUnderstanding the spatio-temporal dynamics of land surface phenology is important to understanding changes in landscape ecological processes of semi-arid savannas in Southern Africa. The aim of the study was to determine the influence of variation in tree cover percentage on land surface phenological response in the semi-arid savanna of Southern Africa. Various land surface phenological metrics for the green-up and senescing periods of the vegetation were retrieved from leaf index area (LAI) seasonal time series (2001 to 2015) maps for a study region in South Africa. Tree cover (%) data for 100 randomly selected polygons grouped into three tree cover classes, low (<20%, n = 44), medium (20-40%, n = 22) and high (>40%, n = 34), were used to determine the influence of varying tree cover (%) on the phenological metrics by means of the t-test. The differences in the means between tree cover classes were statistically significant (t-test p < 0.05) for the senescence period metrics but not for the green-up period metrics. The categorical data results were supported by regression results involving tree cover and the various phenological metrics, where tree cover (%) explained 40% of the variance in day of the year at end of growing season compared to 3% for the start of the growing season. An analysis of the impact of rainfall on the land surface phenological metrics showed that rainfall influences the green-up period metrics but not the senescence period metrics. Quantifying the contribution of tree cover to the day of the year at end of growing season could be important in the assessment of the spatial variability of a savanna ecological process such as the risk of fire spread with time