| 1. |
- Kattge, Jens, et al.
(författare)
-
TRY plant trait database - enhanced coverage and open access
- 2020
-
Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley-Blackwell. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 26:1, s. 119-188
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Plant traits-the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants-determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait-based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits-almost complete coverage for 'plant growth form'. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait-environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives.
|
|
| 2. |
- Marsh, Ian, 1965-
(författare)
-
Quality aspects of internet telephony
- 2009
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Internet telephony has had a tremendous impact on how people communicate.Many now maintain contact using some form of Internet telephony.Therefore the motivation for this work has been to address the quality aspectsof real-world Internet telephony for both fixed and wireless telecommunication.The focus has been on the quality aspects of voice communication,since poor quality leads often to user dissatisfaction. The scope of the workhas been broad in order to address the main factors within IP-based voicecommunication.The first four chapters of this dissertation constitute the backgroundmaterial. The first chapter outlines where Internet telephony is deployedtoday. It also motivates the topics and techniques used in this research.The second chapter provides the background on Internet telephony includingsignalling, speech coding and voice Internetworking. The third chapterfocuses solely on quality measures for packetised voice systems and finallythe fourth chapter is devoted to the history of voice research.The appendix of this dissertation constitutes the research contributions.It includes an examination of the access network, focusing on how calls are multiplexed in wired and wireless systems. Subsequently in the wireless case, we consider how to handover calls from 802.11 networks to the cellularinfrastructure. We then consider the Internet backbone where most of ourwork is devoted to measurements specifically for Internet telephony. The applications of these measurements have been estimating telephony arrival processes, measuring call quality, and quantifying the trend in Internet telephony quality over several years. We also consider the end systems, since they are responsible for reconstructing a voice stream given loss and delay constraints. Finally we estimate voice quality using the ITU proposal PESQ and the packet loss process.The main contribution of this work is a systematic examination of Internet telephony. We describe several methods to enable adaptable solutions for maintaining consistent voice quality. We have also found that relatively small technical changes can lead to substantial user quality improvements.A second contribution of this work is a suite of software tools designed to a certain voice quality in IP networks. Some of these tools are in use within commercial systems today.
|
|
