Search results for "Data Management"
showing 10 items of 117 documents
Fauna Europaea: Coleoptera 2 (excl. series Elateriformia, Scarabaeiformia, Staphyliniformia and superfamily Curculionoidea)
2015
Fauna Europaea provides a public web-service with an index of scientific names (including synonyms) of all living European land and freshwater animals, their geographical distribution at country level (up to the Urals, excluding the Caucasus region), and some additional information. The Fauna Europaea project covers about 230,000 taxonomic names, including 130,000 accepted species and 14,000 accepted subspecies, which is much more than the originally projected number of 100,000 species. This represents a huge effort by more than 400 contributing specialists throughout Europe and is a unique (standard) reference suitable for many users in science, government, industry, nature conservation an…
Fundamental questions and applications of sclerochronology: Community-defined research priorities
2020
WOS:000582677500029; International audience; Horizon scanning is an increasingly common strategy to identify key research needs and frame future agendas in science. Here, we present the results of the first such exercise for the field of sclerochronology, thereby providing an overview of persistent and emergent research questions that should be addressed by future studies. Through online correspondence following the 5th International Sclerochronology Conference in 2019, participants submitted and rated questions that addressed either knowledge gaps or promising applications of sclerochronology. An initial list of 130 questions was compiled based on contributions of conference attendees and …
Improving the conservation of Mediterranean Chondrichthyans : the ELASMOMED DNA barcode reference library
2017
Cartilaginous fish are particularly vulnerable to anthropogenic stressors and environmental change because of their K-selected reproductive strategy. Accurate data from scientific surveys and landings are essential to assess conservation status and to develop robust protection and management plans. Currently available data are often incomplete or incorrect as a result of inaccurate species identifications, due to a high level of morphological stasis, especially among closely related taxa. Moreover, several diagnostic characters clearly visible in adult specimens are less evident in juveniles. Here we present results generated by the ELASMOMED Consortium, a regional network aiming to sample …
Tackling invasive alien species in Europe II: threats and opportunities until 2020
2017
2nd Freshwater Invasives - Networking for Strategy II (FINS-II) Conference -- JUL 11-14, 2016 -- Zagreb, CROATIA Skora, Michal Edward/0000-0002-9121-1318; Groom, Quentin/0000-0002-0596-5376; Lukas, Juliane/0000-0003-3336-847X; Skora, Michal/0000-0002-9121-1318; Piria, Marina/0000-0001-6324-9282; Smith, Emily/0000-0003-2767-9933; Simonovic, Predrag/0000-0002-4819-4962; Pastorino, Paolo/0000-0002-0585-1168; Koutsikos, Nicholas/0000-0003-0680-4504; Vilizzi, Lorenzo/0000-0001-8103-885X; Dobrzycka-Krahel, Aldona/0000-0002-4252-895X; Tarkan, Ali Serhan/0000-0001-8628-0514 WOS: 000412582000002 Invasive alien species (IAS) are a significant and growing problem worldwide. In Europe, some aspects of …
Reactome graph database: Efficient access to complex pathway data
2018
Reactome is a free, open-source, open-data, curated and peer-reviewed knowledgebase of biomolecular pathways. One of its main priorities is to provide easy and efficient access to its high quality curated data. At present, biological pathway databases typically store their contents in relational databases. This limits access efficiency because there are performance issues associated with queries traversing highly interconnected data. The same data in a graph database can be queried more efficiently. Here we present the rationale behind the adoption of a graph database (Neo4j) as well as the new ContentService (REST API) that provides access to these data. The Neo4j graph database and its qu…
Inferring causation from time series in earth system sciences
2019
The heart of the scientific enterprise is a rational effort to understand the causes behind the phenomena we observe. In large-scale complex dynamical systems such as the Earth system, real experiments are rarely feasible. However, a rapidly increasing amount of observational and simulated data opens up the use of novel data-driven causal methods beyond the commonly adopted correlation techniques. Here, we give an overview of causal inference frameworks and identify promising generic application cases common in Earth system sciences and beyond. We discuss challenges and initiate the benchmark platform causeme.net to close the gap between method users and developers.
Case-based surveillance of measles in Sicily during 2012-2017: The changing molecular epidemiology and implications for vaccine strategies.
2018
Following the indication of the World Health Organization, a national plan for the elimination of measles was approved in Italy and this included the improvement of the molecular surveil- lance of measles viruses and the interruption of indigenous transmission of the disease. Nevertheless, large outbreaks continue to occur in almost all regions of the country, includ- ing Sicily. Here we describe the epidemiology and molecular dynamics of measles viruses as a result of the measles surveillance activity carried out by the “Reference Laboratory for Measles and Rubella” in Sicily over a 5-year period. Biological samples of 259 suspected measles cases were tested for viral RNA detection and a t…
From mammals back to birds: Host-switch of the acanthocephalan Corynosoma australe from pinnipeds to the Magellanic penguin Spheniscus magellanicus.
2017
Trophically-transmitted parasites are regularly exposed to potential new hosts through food web interactions. Successful colonization, or switching, to novel hosts, occur readily when ?donor? and ?target? hosts are phylogenetically related, whereas switching between distantly related hosts is rare and may result from stochastic factors (i.e. rare favourable mutations). This study investigates a host-switching event between a marine acanthocephalan specific to pinnipeds that is apparently able to reproduce in Magellanic penguins Spheniscus magellanicus from Brazil. Detailed analysis of morphological and morphometrical data from acanthocephalans from penguins indicates that they belong to Cor…
Association of metformin administration with gut microbiome dysbiosis in healthy volunteers
2018
Background Metformin is a widely used first-line drug for treatment of type 2 diabetes. Despite its advantages, metformin has variable therapeutic effects, contraindications, and side effects. Here, for the very first time, we investigate the short-term effect of metformin on the composition of healthy human gut microbiota. Methods We used an exploratory longitudinal study design in which the first sample from an individual was the control for further samples. Eighteen healthy individuals were treated with metformin (2 × 850 mg) for 7 days. Stool samples were collected at three time points: prior to administration, 24 hours and 7 days after metformin administration. Taxonomic composition of…
Permeating disciplines: Overcoming barriers between molecular simulations and classical structure-function approaches in biological ion transport
2017
Ion translocation across biological barriers is a fundamental requirement for life. In many cases, controlling this process-for example with neuroactive drugs-demands an understanding of rapid and reversible structural changes in membrane-embedded proteins, including ion channels and transporters. Classical approaches to electrophysiology and structural biology have provided valuable insights into several such proteins over macroscopic, often discontinuous scales of space and time. Integrating these observations into meaningful mechanistic models now relies increasingly on computational methods, particularly molecular dynamics simulations, while surfacing important challenges in data manage…