Updated high-resolution grids of monthly climatic observations - the CRU TS3.10 Dataset

This paper describes the construction of an updated gridded climate dataset (referred to as CRU TS3.10) from monthly observations at meteorological stations across the world's land areas. Station anomalies (from 1961 to 1990 means) were interpolated into 0.5° latitude/longitude grid cells covering the global land surface (excluding Antarctica), and combined with an existing climatology to obtain absolute monthly values. The dataset includes six mostly independent climate variables (mean temperature, diurnal temperature range, precipitation, wet-day frequency, vapour pressure and cloud cover). Maximum and minimum temperatures have been arithmetically derived from these. Secondary variables (frost day frequency and potential evapotranspiration) have been estimated from the six primary variables using well-known formulae. Time series for hemispheric averages and 20 large sub-continental scale regions were calculated (for mean, maximum and minimum temperature and precipitation totals) and compared to a number of similar gridded products. The new dataset compares very favourably, with the major deviations mostly in regions and/or time periods with sparser observational data. CRU TS3.10 includes diagnostics associated with each interpolated value that indicates the number of stations used in the interpolation, allowing determination of the reliability of values in an objective way. This gridded product will be publicly available, including the input station series (http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/ and http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/data/cru/)

A Call to Arms: Revisiting Database Design

Good database design is crucial to obtain a sound, consistent database, and - in turn - good database design methodologies are the best way to achieve the right design. These methodologies are taught to most Computer Science undergraduates, as part of any Introduction to Database class. They can be considered part of the "canon", and indeed, the overall approach to database design has been unchanged for years. Moreover, none of the major database research assessments identify database design as a strategic research direction. Should we conclude that database design is a solved problem? Our thesis is that database design remains a critical unsolved problem. Hence, it should be the subject of more research. Our starting point is the observation that traditional database design is not used in practice - and if it were used it would result in designs that are not well adapted to current environments. In short, database design has failed to keep up with the times. In this paper, we put forth arguments to support our viewpoint, analyze the root causes of this situation and suggest some avenues of research.Comment: Removed spurious column break. Nothing else was change

The State of Organic Seed in Europe

This booklet will present the information collected through research of the LIVESEED project in order to shed light on the actual situation of organic seed use in Europe. In particular, it will focus on the following questions: 1. How does the farmer know what varieties are available as organic seed? How do organic seed databases work in different EU countries and how could they be improved? 2. How much non-organic seed or planting material is used in EU organic farming? How many derogations are granted in different EU Member States and Switzerland? 3. Which are the factors encouraging or discouraging farmers to use organic seed? Which farm and farmer characteristics influence adoption of organic seed? How can organic plant breeding contribute to 100% organic seed use? 4. How has the organic seed market developed in the last years? According to seed suppliers` perspective, what factors hamper the further development of the organic seed sector? To answer these questions, researchers in the LIVESEED project applied integrated research tools and methodologies: a comparative review of the different databases on organic seed in 28 EU countries; an integrated analysis of national derogation reports to measure the current use of nonorganic seed in Europe; a survey among farmers, to understand their perspective on the use of organic seed; and finally a survey among seed suppliers to evaluate trends in the offer of organic seed on the market. A quantitative model was used to estimate the potential demand for organic seed in Europe on the basis of the data collected

Analysis of Global Research on Malaria and Plasmodium vivax

Background: Malaria is one of the infectious diseases of greatest interest to the scientific community and of greatest concern to international health authorities. Traditionally, the focus has been on Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes the most severe form of the disease in Africa. However, in the last twenty years, the Plasmodium vivax parasite, responsible for a large number of cases in Latin America, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, the Horn of Africa, and Oceania, has also generated enormous interest due, among other things, to the published evidence that it can cause severe malaria. Methods: In this paper, the international scientific publication on malaria and P. vivax has been analyzed using the Scopus database to try to define global trends in this field of study. Results: It has been shown that events such as the emergence of resistance to certain drugs can break a trend. The important role of non-malaria-endemic countries such as the USA or Switzerland in malaria research is also evident. Conclusions: International cooperation will be essential for the eradication of the disease. Moreover, in this sense, the general vision given by the bibliometric analysis of malaria caused by P. vivax is fundamental to paint the picture regarding the current situation and encourage international cooperation and control efforts

XML in Motion from Genome to Drug

Information technology (IT) has emerged as a central to the solution of contemporary genomics and drug discovery problems. Researchers involved in genomics, proteomics, transcriptional profiling, high throughput structure determination, and in other sub-disciplines of bioinformatics have direct impact on this IT revolution. As the full genome sequences of many species, data from structural genomics, micro-arrays, and proteomics became available, integration of these data to a common platform require sophisticated bioinformatics tools. Organizing these data into knowledgeable databases and developing appropriate software tools for analyzing the same are going to be major challenges. XML (eXtensible Markup Language) forms the backbone of biological data representation and exchange over the internet, enabling researchers to aggregate data from various heterogeneous data resources. The present article covers a comprehensive idea of the integration of XML on particular type of biological databases mainly dealing with sequence-structure-function relationship and its application towards drug discovery. This e-medical science approach should be applied to other scientific domains and the latest trend in semantic web applications is also highlighted