G-language genome analysis environment with REST and SOAP web service interfaces

G-language genome analysis environment (G-language GAE) contains more than 100 programs that focus on the analysis of bacterial genomes, including programs for the identification of binding sites by means of information theory, analysis of nucleotide composition bias and the distribution of particular oligonucleotides, calculation of codon bias and prediction of expression levels, and visualization of genomic information. We have provided a collection of web services for these programs by utilizing REST and SOAP technologies. The REST interface, available at http://rest.g-language.org/, provides access to all 145 functions of the G-language GAE. These functions can be accessed from other online resources. All analysis functions are represented by unique universal resource identifiers. Users can access the functions directly via the corresponding universe resource locators (URLs), and biological web sites can readily embed the functions by simply linking to these URLs. The SOAP services, available at http://www.g-language.org/wiki/soap/, provide language-independent programmatic access to 77 analysis programs. The SOAP service Web Services Definition Language file can be readily loaded into graphical clients such as the Taverna workbench to integrate the programs with other services and workflows

Development of spatial density maps based on geoprocessing web services: application to tuberculosis incidence in Barcelona, Spain

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Health professionals and authorities strive to cope with heterogeneous data, services, and statistical models to support decision making on public health. Sophisticated analysis and distributed processing capabilities over geocoded epidemiological data are seen as driving factors to speed up control and decision making in these health risk situations. In this context, recent Web technologies and standards-based web services deployed on geospatial information infrastructures have rapidly become an efficient way to access, share, process, and visualize geocoded health-related information.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Data used on this study is based on Tuberculosis (TB) cases registered in Barcelona city during 2009. Residential addresses are geocoded and loaded into a spatial database that acts as a backend database. The web-based application architecture and geoprocessing web services are designed according to the Representational State Transfer (REST) principles. These web processing services produce spatial density maps against the backend database.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The results are focused on the use of the proposed web-based application to the analysis of TB cases in Barcelona. The application produces spatial density maps to ease the monitoring and decision making process by health professionals. We also include a discussion of how spatial density maps may be useful for health practitioners in such contexts.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>In this paper, we developed web-based client application and a set of geoprocessing web services to support specific health-spatial requirements. Spatial density maps of TB incidence were generated to help health professionals in analysis and decision-making tasks. The combined use of geographic information tools, map viewers, and geoprocessing services leads to interesting possibilities in handling health data in a spatial manner. In particular, the use of spatial density maps has been effective to identify the most affected areas and its spatial impact. This study is an attempt to demonstrate how web processing services together with web-based mapping capabilities suit the needs of health practitioners in epidemiological analysis scenarios.</p

Framework para Gestão de Dispositivos Móveis: módulo inventário

Dissertação de Mestrado em Engenharia InformáticaO número e diversidade de dispositivos móveis utilizados em contexto pessoal e contexto empresarial é um fenómeno em franco crescimento. Este fenómeno conhecido como Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) é um dos desafios que as empresas têm de enfrentar. Se por um lado o BYOD promove a satisfação pessoal e a produtividade, por outro, a gestão de dispositivos móveis e a segurança dos dados tornam-se mais complexas. Existem várias soluções no mercado, apontadas como partes vitais da infraestrutura empresarial, no processo de gestão de dispositivos móveis (Mobile Device Management – MDM). Uma vez que tendem a agregar inúmeras funcionalidades, são conhecidos alguns problemas associados a estas soluções, como por exemplo a invasão da privacidade nos dispositivos pessoais e a possibilidade de disrupção com outras soluções em uso nas empresas, para além de outros. Para evitar esta situação propomos a criação de uma framework modular para a gestão de dispositivos móveis, com uma abordagem focada na segurança dos dados organizacionais e na separação do contexto user vs enterprise. A framework será baseada em Web Services, e o objetivo é o de permitir que uma empresa adote ou integre apenas os serviços necessários, reduzindo o número de aplicações em uso e o custo de propriedade. O primeiro módulo a implementar é o de inventariação de dispositivos móveis.The number of personal mobile devices used inside company’s network continues to grow. This phenomenon known as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is one of the challenges the companies have to face sooner or later. In one hand, BYOD improve staff satisfaction and productivity, in the other, the mobile devices management and data security get more complex. There are several solutions in the market pointed as vital part of enterprises infrastructure for mobile devices management (MDM), however, some issues arise with these solutions. Privacy invasion in personal devices, and disruption with legacy systems due to several functionalities aggregation is some of them. To avoid this problem, we propose a modular framework for mobile devices management, with an approach focused in organizations data security and users versus enterprises context separation. This will be a Web Service based framework, and the goal is to allow that companies can use or adopt only the necessary services, cutting unnecessary applications and reducing costs of ownership. The first module to develop is an inventory system for mobile devices

Dissemination and visualisation of biological data

With the recent advent of various waves of technological advances, the amount of biological data being generated has exploded. As a consequence of this data deluge, new challenges have emerged in the field of biological data management. In order to maximize the knowledge extracted from the huge amount of biological data produced it is of great importance for the research community that data dissemination and visualisation challenges are tackled. Opening and sharing our data and working collaboratively will benefit the scientific community as a whole and to move towards that end, new developements, tools and techniques are needed. Nowadays, many small research groups are capable of producing important and interesting datasets. The release of those datasets can greatly increase their scientific value. In addition, the development of new data analysis algorithms greatly benefits from the availability of a big corpus of annotated datasets for training and testing purposes, giving new and better algorithms to biomedical sciences in return. None of these would be feasible without large amounts of biological data made freely and publicly available. Dissemination The Distributed Annotation System (DAS) is a protocol designed to publish and integrate annotations on biological entities in a distributed way. DAS is structured as a client-server system where the client retrieves data from one or more servers and to further process and visualise. Nowadays, setting up a DAS server imposes some requirements not met by many research groups. With the aim of removing the hassle of setting up a DAS server, a new software platform has been developed: easyDAS. easyDAS is a hosted platform to automatically create DAS servers. Using a simple web interface the user can upload a data file, describe its contents and a new DAS server will be automatically created and data will be publicly available to DAS clients. Visualisation One of the most broadly used visualization paradigms for genomic data are genomic browsers. A genomic browser is capable of displaying different sets of features positioned relative to a sequence. It is possible to explore the sequence and the features by moving around and zooming in and out. When this project was started, in 2007, all major genome browsers offered quite an static experience. It was possible to browse and explore data, but is was done through a set of buttons to the genome a certain amount of bases to left or right or zooming in and out. From an architectural point of view, all web-based genome browsers were very similar: they all had a relatively thin clien-side part in charge of showing images and big backend servers taking care of everything else. Every change in the display parameters made by the user triggered a request to the server, impacting the perceived responsiveness. We created a new prototype genome browser called GenExp, an interactive web-based browser with canvas based client side data rendering. It offers fluid direct interaction with the genome representation and it's possible to use the mouse drag it and use the mouse wheel to change the zoom level. GenExp offers also some quite unique features, such as its multi-window capabilities that allow a user to create an arbitrary number of independent or linked genome windows and its ability to save and share browsing sessions. GenExp is a DAS client and all data is retrieved from DAS sources. It is possible to add any available DAS data source including all data in Ensembl, UCSC and even the custom ones created with easyDAS. In addition, we developed a javascript DAS client library, jsDAS. jsDAS is a complete DAS client library that will take care of everything DAS related in a javascript application. jsDAS is javascript library agnostic and can be used to add DAS capabilities to any web application. All software developed in this thesis is freely available under an open source license.Les recents millores tecnològiques han portat a una explosió en la quantitat de dades biològiques que es generen i a l'aparició de nous reptes en el camp de la gestió de les dades biològiques. Per a maximitzar el coneixement que podem extreure d'aquestes ingents quantitats de dades cal que solucionem el problemes associats al seu anàlisis, i en particular a la seva disseminació i visualització. La compartició d'aquestes dades de manera lliure i gratuïta pot beneficiar en gran mesura a la comunitat científica i a la societat en general, però per a fer-ho calen noves eines i tècniques. Actualment, molts grups són capaços de generar grans conjunts de dades i la seva publicació en pot incrementar molt el valor científic. A més, la disponibilitat de grans conjunts de dades és necessària per al desenvolupament de nous algorismes d'anàlisis. És important, doncs, que les dades biològiques que es generen siguin accessibles de manera senzilla, estandaritzada i lliure. Disseminació El Sistema d'Anotació Distribuïda (DAS) és un protocol dissenyat per a la publicació i integració d'anotacions sobre entitats biològiques de manera distribuïda. DAS segueix una esquema de client-servidor, on el client obté dades d'un o més servidors per a combinar-les, processar-les o visualitzar-les. Avui dia, però, crear un servidor DAS necessita uns coneixements i infraestructures que van més enllà dels recursos de molts grups de recerca. Per això, hem creat easyDAS, una plataforma per a la creació automàtica de servidors DAS. Amb easyDAS un usuari pot crear un servidor DAS a través d'una senzilla interfície web i amb només alguns clics. Visualització Els navegadors genomics són un dels paradigmes de de visualització de dades genòmiques més usats i permet veure conjunts de dades posicionades al llarg d'una seqüència. Movent-se al llarg d'aquesta seqüència és possibles explorar aquestes dades. Quan aquest projecte va començar, l'any 2007, tots els grans navegadors genomics oferien una interactivitat limitada basada en l'ús de botons. Des d'un punt de vista d'arquitectura tots els navegadors basats en web eren molt semblants: un client senzill encarregat d'ensenyar les imatges i un servidor complex encarregat d'obtenir les dades, processar-les i generar les imatges. Així, cada canvi en els paràmetres de visualització requeria una nova petició al servidor, impactant molt negativament en la velocitat de resposta percebuda. Vam crear un prototip de navegador genòmic anomenat GenExp. És un navegador interactiu basat en web que fa servir canvas per a dibuixar en client i que ofereix la possibilitatd e manipulació directa de la respresentació del genoma. GenExp té a més algunes característiques úniques com la possibilitat de crear multiples finestres de visualització o la possibilitat de guardar i compartir sessions de navegació. A més, com que és un client DAS pot integrar les dades de qualsevol servidor DAS com els d'Ensembl, UCSC o fins i tot aquells creats amb easyDAS. A més, hem desenvolupat jsDAS, la primera llibreria de client DAS completa escrita en javascript. jsDAS es pot integrar en qualsevol aplicació DAS per a dotar-la de la possibilitat d'accedir a dades de servidors DAS. Tot el programari desenvolupat en el marc d'aquesta tesis està lliurement disponible i sota una llicència de codi lliure