The BioGRID Interaction Database: 2011 update

The Biological General Repository for Interaction Datasets (BioGRID) is a public database that archives and disseminates genetic and protein interaction data from model organisms and humans (http://www.thebiogrid.org). BioGRID currently holds 347 966 interactions (170 162 genetic, 177 804 protein) curated from both high-throughput data sets and individual focused studies, as derived from over 23 000 publications in the primary literature. Complete coverage of the entire literature is maintained for budding yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), fission yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe) and thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana), and efforts to expand curation across multiple metazoan species are underway. The BioGRID houses 48 831 human protein interactions that have been curated from 10 247 publications. Current curation drives are focused on particular areas of biology to enable insights into conserved networks and pathways that are relevant to human health. The BioGRID 3.0 web interface contains new search and display features that enable rapid queries across multiple data types and sources. An automated Interaction Management System (IMS) is used to prioritize, coordinate and track curation across international sites and projects. BioGRID provides interaction data to several model organism databases, resources such as Entrez-Gene and other interaction meta-databases. The entire BioGRID 3.0 data collection may be downloaded in multiple file formats, including PSI MI XML. Source code for BioGRID 3.0 is freely available without any restrictions

Researching on international alliances – the problem of lack of sources

The low level of formality and the diversity of international alliances create an important challenge for researchers. Unlike mergers and acquisitions, alliances include various types of cooperation agreements between organizations and do not require formal registration. Therefore, in this field, secondary data is scarce and the few available international databases present several disadvantages. This manuscript attempts to discuss and assess options available to circumvent difficulties in database choice and usage for primary data collection. Results from an alliance survey show that the use of national databases and informal solutions, such as local knowledge and local networking can be valid options

Databases in the research of international alliances

The low level of formality and the diversity of international alliances create an important challenge for researchers. Unlike mergers and acquisitions, alliances include various types of cooperation agreements between organizations and do not require formal registration. Therefore, in this field, secondary data is scarce and the few available international databases present several disadvantages. This manuscript attempts to discuss and assess options available to circumvent difficulties in database choice and usage for primary data collection. Results from an alliance survey show that the use of national databases and informal solutions, such as local knowledge and local networking can be valid options

Undergraduate Full Text Databases: \u3ci\u3eBell and Howell Medical Complete\u3c/i\u3e and \u3ci\u3eInfoTrac Health Reference Center-Academic\u3c/i\u3e

This study compares and contrasts InfoTrac and ProQuest primarily as full-text resources to supplement retrieval of references contained in the CINAHL database. These databases are analyzed by examining their scope in terms of the number and types of serials covered within specific areas using Ulrich\u27s subject headings. Another important aspect of this study relates to the effectiveness of the two search engines for end-user retrieval and collection development

Watching You: Systematic Federal Surveillance of Ordinary Americans

To combat terrorism, Attorney General John Ashcroft has asked Congress to "enhance" the government's ability to conduct domestic surveillance of citizens. The Justice Department's legislative proposals would give federal law enforcement agents new access to personal information contained in business and school records. Before acting on those legislative proposals, lawmakers should pause to consider the extent to which the lives of ordinary Americans already are monitored by the federal government. Over the years, the federal government has instituted a variety of data collection programs that compel the production, retention, and dissemination of personal information about every American citizen. Linked through an individual's Social Security number, these labor, medical, education and financial databases now empower the federal government to obtain a detailed portrait of any person: the checks he writes, the types of causes he supports, and what he says "privately" to his doctor. Despite widespread public concern about preserving privacy, these data collection systems have been enacted in the name of "reducing fraud" and "promoting efficiency" in various government programs. Having exposed most areas of American life to ongoing government scrutiny and recording, Congress is now poised to expand and universalize federal tracking of citizen life. The inevitable consequence of such constant surveillance, however, is metastasizing government control over society. If that happens, our government will have perverted its most fundamental mission and destroyed the privacy and liberty that it was supposed to protect

Converting relational databases into object relational databases

This paper proposes an approach for migrating existing Relational DataBases (RDBs) into Object-Relational DataBases (ORDBs). The approach is superior to existing proposals as it can generate not only the target schema but also the data instances. The solution takes an existing RDB as input, enriches its metadata representation with required semantics, and generates an enhanced canonical data model, which captures essential characteristics of the target ORDB, and is suitable for migration. A prototype has been developed, which migrates successfully RDBs into ORDBs (Oracle 11g) based on the canonical model. The experimental results were very encouraging, demonstrating that the proposed approach is feasible, efficient and correct

New WHO Violence Prevention Information System, an interactive knowledge platform of scientific findings on violence.

Scientific information on violence can be difficult to compile and understand. It is scattered across websites, databases, technical reports and academic journals, and rarely addresses all types of violence. In response, in October 2017 WHO released the Violence Prevention Information System or Violence Info, an online interactive collection of scientific information about the prevalence, consequences, risk factors and preventability of all forms of interpersonal violence. It covers homicide, child maltreatment, youth violence, intimate partner violence, elder abuse and sexual violence

Combining quantifications for flexible query result ranking

Databases contain data and database systems governing such databases are often intended to allow a user to query these data. On one hand, these data may be subject to imperfections, on the other hand, users may employ imperfect query preference specifications to query such databases. All of these imperfections lead to each query answer being accompanied by a collection of quantifications indicating how well (part of) a group of data complies with (part of) the user's query. A fundamental question is how to present the user with the query answers complying best to his or her query preferences. The work presented in this paper first determines the difficulties to overcome in reaching such presentation. Mainly, a useful presentation needs the ranking of the query answers based on the aforementioned quantifications, but it seems advisable to not combine quantifications with different interpretations. Thus, the work presented in this paper continues to introduce and examine a novel technique to determine a query answer ranking. Finally, a few aspects of this technique, among which its computational efficiency, are discussed