FlyBase: a guided tour of highlighted features.

Revisiting HeLa: A Family’s Quest for Informed Consent

Trait-based research spans from evolutionary studies of individual-level properties to global patterns of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. An increasing number of trait data is available for many different organism groups, being published as open access data on a variety of file hosting services. Thus, standardization between datasets is generally lacking due to heterogeneous data formats and types. The compilation of these published data into centralised databases remains a difficult and time-consuming task.
\nWe reviewed existing trait databases and online services, as well as initiatives for trait data standardization. Together with data providers and users we identified a need for a minimal trait-data terminology that is flexible enough to include traits from all types of organisms but simple enough to be adopted by different research communities.
\nIn order to facilitate reproducibility of analyses, the reuse of data and the combination of datasets from multiple sources, we propose a standardized vocabulary for trait data that is compatible with existing ontologies. We tested the vocabulary using trait datasets from several research groups working on different taxa and questions in a large project (the Biodiversity Exploratories, www.biodiversity-exploratories.de). By relying on unambiguous identifiers, the proposed minimal vocabulary for trait data captures the different degrees of resolution and measurement detail for multiple use cases of trait-based research. It further encourages the use of global Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) for taxa and trait definitions, methods and units, thereby following the standards for a semantic web of scientific data.
\nIn addition, we developed an R-based tool to convert any trait dataset into the proposed standard format. The R-package facilitates the upload of own data to hosting services but also simplifies the access to published trait data. It also offers direct access to trait datasets that have been published in the public domain or under creative commons licenses. All these products are available through the Github platform (https://github.com/EcologicalTraitData) with the aim of a continuous collaboration and improvement with the research community.
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\nKEYWORDS: traits, standardization, ontology, semantic web, tools, distributed data, R package, Biodiversity Exploratories

The Genetics of Taste (GOT) Lab is an active research lab that studies human genetics at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. In addition to the scientific research it conducts, the now-10-year-old lab is designed to accommodate two forms of public participation: community (citizen) science and crowdsourcing participants (human subjects). These crowdsourced participants provide a diverse sample for collecting taste and genetics data, and typically spend about 30 minutes in the Lab during enrollments. Alternatively, the community scientists invest a much more significant amount of time; they volunteer five hours weekly to train and then to assist in all aspects of the Lab’s research, including data collection, DNA extraction, and manuscript preparation. This case study featuring the GOT Lab’s pilot project, the Bitter Study, highlights three key topics: the ability to replicate established findings in the taste field using a community science model; the learning experiences of participants; and best practices and recommendations for other institutions that might wish to develop and implement a similar bi-level community-science model. Here we present data to illustrate that both the scientific and educational goals of community science and crowdsourcing are attainable within the same working space.

The field of imaging spectroscopy has reached in terms of knowhow and technology a high level of maturity, which makes its observations accessible and useful for a larger research and user community. The Hyper-Swiss-Net will develop a range of Earth observation (EO) applications drawing from the scientific expertise of the project consortium as well as considering the requirements of the respective user community. The implementation of the different EO products will be based on dedicated flight experiments with the airborne imaging spectrometer APEX and will directly build on the operational capabilities of the APEX processing and archiving facility(PAF).

<p>The European Commission (EC) is currently formulating their vision for future research infrastructures (RIs) and how they should deliver improved transnational access (TNA) for the broad scientific and industrial community. There is a major emphasis on ensuring RIs are self-governing and sustainable. Many of the larger, often government supported, RIs will operate as European Research Infrastructure Consortia (ERICs). ERICs are generally established around large national research facilities. The Europlanet Society has instead chosen to be a AISBL (International Non-Profit Organization) based in Belgium ensuring control by the scientific community. Upon granting of the AISBL status, expected later in 2022, the Europlanet Society will be in position to lead or co-operate in any future RI initiatives.</p> <p>Based on a series of briefings by the EC, it is predicted that existing established RIs such as Europlanet will be expected to collaborate within and across disciplines to offer a wider range of transnational access. For Europlanet this will mean collaboration within the Astronomy-AstroChemistry communities Opticon, RadioNet, ChETEC, etc. In addition, future TNA programmes will be expected to involve:</p> <ul> <li>more diverse facilities;</li> <li>greater interaction with participation by industry;</li> </ul> <ul> <li>greater globalisation with an emphasis on Africa and Asia;</li> <li>more active participation from the under-represented European states.</li> <li>reduced environmental impact;</li> </ul> <p>We believe that Europlanet is in a strong position to achieve many of these requirements. The next call for modified RIs that provide transnational access is expected to be launched in astronomy-space realm at the end of 2022, for calls in 2023 and 2024. It is therefore necessary to start to formulate ideas for a future TNA programme. The presentation at EPSC will give a brief review of the current status of the Europlanet 2024 RI, and is designed to initiate and stimulate discussion within the planetary community as to their wishes for future TNA facilities, specifically in light of ESA goals to return to the Moon and an increased focus on Exoplanetary science.</p>

Endocrine-related resources from the National Institutes of Health.

Looking beyond Brexit: union without Union

In the last decade, the participation of patients and populations in large collections of human biological samples and genetic data ("bio-banks") played a more and more important role. The results of researches have led to a lot of new scientific findings: Regarding the high degree of ethnic diversity between and within European countries themselves and also in the Indian Union in this context, the arising question is how the consequences of this diversity are recognised and have been taken into account to provide better healthcare services. There is also a social, cultural and religous sensitivity which need to be considered in the planning and delivery of these services. At the same time, it is also necessary to recognise the danger of making a priori assumptions based on the cultural traditions of the respective researchers. In this context, the last few years also the possible benefit of pharmacogenetis has been discussed within the scientific community, though less in public. It seems questionable in which way public awareness, education and understanding of genetics and genetics related concepts and technologies were increasing and have been taken into account. Open communication and debate about real and perceived benefits as well as risks, paired with evidence of appropriate handling of data and samples, will be essential to establish a reasonable level of trust within the communities. This will be the basis which allows the scientific and medical community to conduct reasearch, and it is also capable of improving health care issues. The following presentation will discuss the ethic and legal framework in Europe and India and do a comparison in light of the questions raised above.

With a wealth of biodiversity, a long tradition of agriculture-based industries, and an established medical and biotechnological research and development community, Thailand has become an attractive location for life sciences investment. The large amount of data generated in many areas of life sciences requires visualization, management, and analysis, principally through bioinformatics. To become successful, Thailand's research community should emphasize establishing core technologies, such as genomics and bioinformatics, to boost development of agriculture, food processing, and biomedical research. The Thai government realized the importance of this field and created a national policy to greatly increase Thailand's participation in bioinformatics and genomics, budgeting for specific development goals in research infrastructure, education, and sustainable human resources. Thailand has not lagged behind in bioinformatics research activity and recognizes the importance of bioinformatics through increased policy awareness, human resources development, and increased research activity involving genomic-scale data generation and computational analyses. Many applications of genomics and bioinformatics to biomedical research and development in Thailand have progressed substantially during the past few years, leading to successful applications in some specific local areas. However, the applications to other important areas, such as agriculture, are hampered by the limited availability of genomic sequence data and the lack of necessary biochemical/physiological information. With the advent of more and more genomic information in public databases, Thailand's research community is striving to adopt comparative genomics to obtain information of direct relevance to the country's health and industrial needs. This article highlights Thailand's contribution to genomics and bioinformatics in the following areas: (1) policy support from the Thai government, (2) capacity building through infrastructure/education/human resources, and (3) research and development in genomics and computational biology. (See Box 1 for Authors' Biographies). Box 1. Authors' Biographies Wannipha Tongsima, M.S., obtained her master's degree in Industrial Microbiology from Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. She was involved in founding the Bioinformatics research program in BIOTEC. To reinforce the research activity in this area, she also helped organize the first International Conference on Computational Biology (InCoB), held in Bangkok in 2002. Later, she was appointed to manage one of the first BIOTEC ethnic-specific human genetic variation programs, named the Thailand SNP Discovery Project. She works as a Genomic Medicine program coordinator for the Cluster and Program Management Office (CPMO) of the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA), which is an umbrella organization of four other national research centers in Thailand, including BIOTEC. Sissades Tongsima, Ph.D., received his doctoral degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, United States. He has worked for the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center on High Performance Computing (HPC) and Computational Grid. During 2002–2004, he cochaired the Asia-Pacific Advanced Network (APAN) Grid Working Group. In 2003, he shifted his research direction from HPC architecture to bioinformatics research, when he started working for BIOTEC, and constructed the ThaiSNP database. His main research interest is in developing algorithms and databases for analyzing various research projects on human genetic variation. He currently heads the Genome Institute biostatistics and informatics laboratory at BIOTEC. Prasit Palittapongarnpim, M.D., earned his medical degree from Mahidol University, Thailand, and his B.S. in Mathematics from Ramkumhang University, Thailand. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Pediatricians of Thailand and also an Associate Professor in Microbiology at Mahidol University, where he has conducted research focusing on tuberculosis. While holding a Deputy Director position, he initiated the Bioinformatics research program at BIOTEC in 2002 and led the organization of the first InCoB conference in 2002. He is currently a Vice President of NSTDA.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-eyed Man Is King

As advanced batteries continue to grow in the sectors of electrifications of transportation and energy storage systems, risk management by the stakeholders has also become an emerging topic of concerns. To date, the practical approach in addressing such concerns has not been fully understood and implemented. One of the impediments is the lack of full appreciation of the complexity involved in handling the issues in the research community and need of technical competency in addressing them. The industry does not really have the luxury to learn from the hiccups and disasters of fire and explosion incidents to calm the anxiety from the consumers in the expectation of reliable and safe products in the marketplace, while we continue to learn from the mistakes and manage the risks in the “green energy transformation.” Batteries have some unique aspects that traditionally mechanical and electrical devices need not to pay attention to: performance degradation by aging and its path dependency. This unique aspect makes the battery management of performance, including risks, much more difficult than usual. Not only the initial properties of the battery systems need to be compatible for manufacturing processes without trading off performance, but also the consequences of aging and degradation during operations need to be managed to endure reliability and safety challenges. Worse than that, those system properties are often affected by the environment they operate. Therefore, matured battery designers need to familiarize not only battery systems’ capability but also the nature of the environments and the operating conditions to cater in their designs. To understand such causality in battery design is inherently challenging. This is something needs to be overcome to address battery reliability and safety issues. This is why battery system diagnostics and prognostics are pivotal to addressing the battery reliability and safety issues. Battery diagnostics and prognostics are a vital part of the solutions to deal with this situation. Through proper diagnostic and prognostic analyses, one can extract useful information from the failure analyses (FA), including failure mode and effect analyses (FMEA). However, for these analyses to be feasible in battery research, it requires additional efforts to ensure accurate and precise information being extracted from the analyses in a quantitative manner, which is not commonly practiced in the industrial and the research communities. Here, the issues with quantitative diagnostic and prognostic analyses are discussed and explained; using practical examples in some of the abuse studies to illustrate the critical aspects of such analyses with mechanistic understanding.

Making Sense of the Data Explosion: The Promise of Systems Science

Introduction: Over the last two decades, chemical safety assessment and regulatory toxicology have progressed from empirical science based on direct observation of apical adverse outcomes in whole organisms to a predictive practice that infers outcomes and risks on the basis of accumulated understanding of toxicological mechanisms and modes of action. Objective: To provide general concepts on how Adverse Outcome Pathways (AOPs) are developed and examples related to skin sensitization, endocrine, disruption, and mitochondrial dysfunction. Method: Narrative review based on data of the scientific literature relevant to the theme addressed and on the experience of the authors. Results: An AOP framework provides a systematic approach to organize knowledge about mechanisms of toxicity that may inform analytical domains in regulatory decision-making. AOPs are open structures that may indicate not only data gaps in the understanding of a toxicity process, but also testing procedures that will generate the necessary knowledge to fill those gaps. Every AOP should be continuously refined through the collaborative efforts of the scientific community. Depending on the amount and detail of information that is successively inserted, AOP may progress from the stage of a putative AOP to the stages of qualitative and quantitative AOPs, which are more fit-for-purpose to support regulatory decision-making. Conclusions: Continuous collaboration between AOP developers within the scientific community and the regulatory corps toward the development of this mechanistic structure will support the advancement of toxicological sciences, regardless of its immediate application for regulatory purposes.

The BirdLife Seabird Tracking Database: 20 years of collaboration for marine conservation

Patterns of community science data use in peer-reviewed research on biodiversity