Triple Format Research Articles

Embracing lossy: Sacrificing metadata to gain agility

AbstractEditor's SummaryBorrowed from data encoding and compression, the concept of lossiness captures our ability to extract meaning despite a reduced set of data. Metadata are lossy representations of complete data and may be the solution to information overload, enabling agile response to urgent information needs. But library professionals and data curators, eager to preserve original data, tend to favor their own customized descriptions of content and may be reluctant to compromise by using the minimalist Dublin Core metadata vocabulary. By favoring unique descriptions and resisting adoption of common bibliographic metadata, they lose access to valuable open access data sources. A better approach is to enable access through shared metadata, embracing lossy and making vast stores of rich information resources available. InfoSynth, a prototype system, helps small digital libraries adapt their custom metadata, represent metadata including Dublin Core elements as RDF/XML triples and return trimmed down and normalized metadata‐based descriptions in triple format. The use of a standard format facilitates sharing with other sources for enhanced information access.

Microarray immunoassay for the detection of grapevine and tree fruit viruses

Development and application of DNA microarrays for plant disease diagnosis has to date been limited, and for antibody arrays even more so. In this work, an antibody microarray procedure was developed and its usefulness for the detection of plant viruses demonstrated. Using the conventional monoplex immunoassay ELISA technique as a benchmark, the procedure was used to detect several grapevine and tree fruit viruses. In a direct labelling approach, Arabis mosaic virus (ArMV), and Grapevine fanleaf virus (GFLV) were detected after incubating the antibody array with alkaline phosphatase-conjugated viral extract. Indirect detection using a double or triple antibody sandwich format also resulted in good reaction signals, using either a chromogenic or fluorescence dye. In a multiplex system, four grapevine viruses were detected without compromising sensitivity and specificity. Compared to ELISA, the antibody microarray system is similar with respect to sensitivity and specificity, and a high correlation ( R 2, 0.759) was observed in regression analysis of virus concentration measurements. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis provided evidence of the good performance of the microarray system (AUC > 0.8).

Modelling of personal identifiable information in a resource description framework

This paper introduces a Resource Description Framework (RDF)-based ontology to model Personal Identifiable Information (PII). The triples construct is applied to 'atomic' private statements. RDF is divided into two modes: personal information mode (PIRDF) and non-personal information mode. PIRDF is a restrictive version of RDF where its constructs follow the triple format so that the semantic subject of the atomic private statement coincides with the subject of the RDF triple. Related (compound) pieces of personal information are also made in an RDF-independent collection to preserve their relationship. Literals are not allowed to embed personal information. These restrictions do not introduce any change in the syntax of RDF. Privacy protection mechanisms can be constructed upon PIRDF.