Chemistry in bioinformatics.

Chemical information is now seen as critical for most areas of life sciences. But unlike Bioinformatics, where data is openly available and freely re-usable, most chemical information is closed and cannot be re-distributed without permission. This has led to a failure to adopt modern informatics and software techniques and therefore paucity of chemistry in bioinformatics. New technology, however, offers the hope of making chemical data (compounds and properties) free during the authoring process. We argue that the technology is already available; we require a collective agreement to enhance publication protocols.Rights : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central license at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution License'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

Open source bioimage informatics for cell biology

Significant technical advances in imaging, molecular biology and genomics have fueled a revolution in cell biology, in that the molecular and structural processes of the cell are now visualized and measured routinely. Driving much of this recent development has been the advent of computational tools for the acquisition, visualization, analysis and dissemination of these datasets. These tools collectively make up a new subfield of computational biology called bioimage informatics, which is facilitated by open source approaches. We discuss why open source tools for image informatics in cell biology are needed, some of the key general attributes of what make an open source imaging application successful, and point to opportunities for further operability that should greatly accelerate future cell biology discovery

A manifesto for a socio-technical approach to NHS and social care IT-enabled business change - to deliver effective high quality health and social care for all

80% of IT projects are known to fail. Adopting a socio-technical approach will help them to succeed in the future. The socio-technical proposition is simply that any work system comprises both a social system (including the staff, their working practices, job roles, culture and goals) and a technical system (the tools and technologies that support and enable work processes). These elements together form a single system comprising interacting parts. The technical and the social elements need to be jointly designed (or redesigned) so that they are congruent and support one another in delivering a better service. Focusing on one aspect alone is likely to be sub-optimal and wastes money (Clegg, 2008). Thus projects that just focus on the IT will almost always fail to deliver the full benefits

Quantifying the effect of machine translation in a high-quality human translation production process

This paper studies the impact of machine translation (MT) on the translation workflow at the Directorate-General for Translation (DGT), focusing on two language pairs and two MT paradigms: English-into-French with statistical MT and English-into-Finnish with neural MT. We collected data from 20 professional translators at DGT while they carried out real translation tasks in normal working conditions. The participants enabled/disabled MT for half of the segments in each document. They filled in a survey at the end of the logging period. We measured the productivity gains (or losses) resulting from the use of MT and examined the relationship between technical effort and temporal effort. The results show that while the usage of MT leads to productivity gains on average, this is not the case for all translators. Moreover, the two technical effort indicators used in this study show weak correlations with post-editing time. The translators' perception of their speed gains was more or less in line with the actual results. Reduction of typing effort is the most frequently mentioned reason why participants preferred working with MT, but also the psychological benefits of not having to start from scratch were often mentioned

The nature of information in the 21st century : conundrums for the informatics community?

Purpose - With the proliferation of electronic information via the web a further distension of the unique characteristics of information has been witnessed. With seismic developments occurring in such a short period of time, it seems prudent to consider the very nature of information and to assess whether this accelerated growth has implications for the work of the informatics community and the information society. Design/methodology/approach - The paper begins by revisiting and refreshing the unique characteristics of information via a reappraisal of the relevant literature. These characteristics are then contextualised within the new economy and traditional economic theory. Once these unique characteristics have been examined, the author discusses how the nature of information in the twenty-first century presents the informatics community with new and difficult challenges. Findings - The challenges posed by the unique nature of information demand a definite response on the part of the informatics community, including the creation of innovative new models to accommodate information's inherent characteristics. Additionally, as the nature of information evolves yet further and ICT innovations accelerate, ever more adaptable skills will be required by the end user in order that value be derived from information. Practical implications - Outcomes and conclusions addressed in the paper may inform the informatics community generally, but will specifically inform the practice of information managers and librarians, and offer ways of assisting them in arriving at holistic decisions with respect to service provision. Originality/value - The paper is a contribution to the debate on the precise nature of information and offers new perspectives on how the informatics community should view information in the twenty-first century

Outlook Magazine, Summer 2018

https://digitalcommons.wustl.edu/outlook/1204/thumbnail.jp