210 research outputs found
Structure determination of new algal toxins using NMR methods
Shellfish are considered a delicacy by many consumers. In NZ, as in many overseas countries, there is a now thriv¬ing shellfish industry servicing both domestic and inter-national markets. Periodically shellfish accumulate harm¬ful levels of a variety of algal toxins, including domoic acid, yessotoxins, pectenotoxins and brevetoxins. When this occurs, regulatory authorities may impose harvesting closures which have a consequential economic impact on both farmers and staff employed to harvest and market shellfish products
Adventures in Semantic Publishing: Exemplar Semantic Enhancements of a Research Article
Scientific innovation depends on finding, integrating, and re-using the products of
previous research. Here we explore how recent developments in Web technology,
particularly those related to the publication of data and metadata, might assist that
process by providing semantic enhancements to journal articles within the mainstream
process of scholarly journal publishing. We exemplify this by describing semantic
enhancements we have made to a recent biomedical research article taken from
PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, providing enrichment to its
content and increased access to datasets within it. These semantic enhancements
include provision of live DOIs and hyperlinks; semantic markup of textual terms, with
links to relevant third-party information resources; interactive figures; a
re-orderable reference list; a document summary containing a study summary, a tag
cloud, and a citation analysis; and two novel types of semantic enrichment: the
first, a Supporting Claims Tooltip to permit “Citations in
Context”, and the second, Tag Trees that bring together semantically
related terms. In addition, we have published downloadable spreadsheets containing
data from within tables and figures, have enriched these with provenance information,
and have demonstrated various types of data fusion (mashups) with results from other
research articles and with Google Maps. We have also published machine-readable RDF
metadata both about the article and about the references it cites, for which we
developed a Citation Typing Ontology, CiTO (http://purl.org/net/cito/). The
enhanced article, which is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0000228.x001, presents a
compelling existence proof of the possibilities of semantic publication. We hope the
showcase of examples and ideas it contains, described in this paper, will excite the
imaginations of researchers and publishers, stimulating them to explore the
possibilities of semantic publishing for their own research articles, and thereby
break down present barriers to the discovery and re-use of information within
traditional modes of scholarly communication
A framework for experience management in public organisations
El proyecto Pellucid desarrolló una plataforma adaptable y personalizable para habilitar
gestión de la experiencia en las organizaciones públicas. Un marco para la gestión de la experiencia
se ha desarrollado en base a la generación de ‘pistas activas’ que se presentan al usuario
según el contexto de trabajo. El contexto de trabajo abarca tanto la posición en el proceso de trabajo
y características específicas del dominio. El documento presenta este marco y describe la
proceso de ingeniería que se llevó a cabo siguiendo la metodología CommonKADS.The Pellucid project developed an adaptable and customisable platform for enabling
experience management in public organisations. A framework for experience management
has been developed based on the generation of ‘active hints’ that are presented to the user
according to working context. Working context encompasses both position in the work process
and domain-specific characteristics. The paper presents this framework and describes the
engineering process that was undertaken following the CommonKADS methodology
A framework for experience management in public organisations
The Pellucid project developed an adaptable and customisable platform for enabling experience management in public organisations. A framework for experience management has been developed based on the generation of ‘active hints’ that are presented to the user according to working context. Working context encompasses both position in the work process and domain-specific characteristics. The paper presents this framework and describes the engineering process that was undertaken following the CommonKADS methodology.Keywords: Knowledge Management, Experience Management, E-Government, Workflow Management Systems, CommonKADS
LCSH, SKOS and Linked Data
A technique for converting Library of Congress Subject Headings MARCXML to
Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) RDF is described. Strengths of the
SKOS vocabulary are highlighted, as well as possible points for extension, and
the integration of other semantic web vocabularies such as Dublin Core. An
application for making the vocabulary available as linked-data on the Web is
also described.Comment: Submission for the Dublin Core 2008 conference in Berli
Novel genotyping approaches to easily detect genomic admixture between the major Afrotropical malaria vector species, Anopheles coluzzii and An. gambiae
The two most efficient and most recently radiated Afrotropical vectors of human malaria - Anopheles coluzzii and An.gambiae - are identified by single-locus diagnostic PCR assays based on species-specific markers in a 4Mb region on chromosome-X centromere. Inherently, these diagnostic assays cannot detect interspecific autosomal admixture shown to be extensive at the westernmost and easternmost extremes of the species range. The main aim of this study was to develop novel, easy-to-implement tools for genotyping An.coluzzii and An.gambiae-specific ancestral informative markers (AIMs) identified from the Anopheles gambiae 1000 genomes (Ag1000G) project. First, we took advantage of this large set of data in order to develop a multilocus approach to genotype 26 AIMs on all chromosome arms valid across the species range. Second, we tested the multilocus assay on samples from Guinea Bissau, The Gambia and Senegal, three countries spanning the westernmost hybridization zone, where conventional species diagnostic is problematic due to the putative presence of a novel "hybrid form". The multilocus assay was able to capture patterns of admixture reflecting those revealed by the whole set of AIMs and provided new original data on interspecific admixture in the region. Third, we developed an easy-to-use, cost-effective PCR approach for genotyping two AIMs on chromosome-3 among those included in the multilocus approach, opening the possibility for advanced identification of species and of admixed specimens during routine large scale entomological surveys, particularly, but not exclusively, at the extremes of the range, where WGS data highlighted unexpected autosomal admixture
Enhanced interlaminar excitation or reduced superficial layer inhibition in neocortex generates different spike-and-wave-like electrographic events in vitro.
Resistance to pirimiphos-methyl in West African Anopheles is spreading via duplication and introgression of the Ace1 locus
Vector population control using insecticides is a key element of current strategies to prevent malaria transmission in Africa. The introduction of effective insecticides, such as the organophosphate pirimiphos-methyl, is essential to overcome the recurrent emergence of resistance driven by the highly diverse Anopheles genomes. Here, we use a population genomic approach to investigate the basis of pirimiphos-methyl resistance in the major malaria vectors Anopheles gambiae and A. coluzzii. A combination of copy number variation and a single non-synonymous substitution in the acetylcholinesterase gene, Ace1, provides the key resistance diagnostic in an A. coluzzii population from Côte d’Ivoire that we used for sequence-based association mapping, with replication in other West African populations. The Ace1 substitution and duplications occur on a unique resistance haplotype that evolved in A. gambiae and introgressed into A. coluzzii, and is now common in West Africa primarily due to selection imposed by other organophosphate or carbamate insecticides. Our findings highlight the predictive value of this complex resistance haplotype for phenotypic resistance and clarify its evolutionary history, providing tools to for molecular surveillance of the current and future effectiveness of pirimiphos-methyl based interventions
Ensuring that COVID-19 research is inclusive: guidance from the NIHR INCLUDE project
Objective: To provide guidance to researchers, funders, regulators and study delivery teams to ensure that research on COVID-19 is inclusive, particularly of groups disproportionately affected by COVID-19 and who may have been historically under-served by research. Summary of key points: Groups who are disproportionately affected by COVID-19 include (but are not limited to) older people, people with multiple long-term conditions, people with disabilities, people from Black, Asian and Ethnic minority groups, people living with obesity, people who are socioeconomically deprived and people living in care homes. All these groups are under-served by clinical research, and there is an urgent need to rectify this if COVID-19 research is to deliver relevant evidence for these groups who are most in need. We provide a framework and checklists for addressing key issues when designing and delivering inclusive COVID-19 research, based on the National Institute for Health Research INnovations in CLinical trial design and delivery for the UnDEr-served project roadmap. Strong community engagement, codevelopment and prioritisation of research questions and interventions are essential. Under-served groups should be represented on funding panels and ethics committees, who should insist on the removal of barriers to participation. Exclusion criteria should be kept to a minimum; intervention delivery and outcome measurement should be simple, flexible and tailored to the needs of different groups, and local advice on the best way to reach and engage with under-served communities should be taken by study delivery teams. Data on characteristics that allow identification of under-served groups must be collected, analyses should include these data to enable subgroup comparisons and results should be shared with under-served groups at an early stage. Conclusion: Inclusive COVID-19 research is a necessity, not a luxury, if research is to benefit all the communities it seeks to serve. It requires close engagement with under-served groups and attention to aspects of study topic, design, delivery, analysis and dissemination across the research life cycle
One-Year Safety and Efficacy Study of Arformoterol Tartrate in Patients With Moderate to Severe COPD
BACKGROUND:Arformoterol tartrate (arformoterol, 15 μg bid) is a nebulized long-acting β2-agonist approved for maintenance treatment of COPD.METHODS:This was a multicenter, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study. Patients (aged ≥ 40 years with baseline FEV1 ≤ 65% predicted, FEV1 > 0.50 L, FEV1/FVC ≤ 70%, and ≥ 15 pack-year smoking history) received arformoterol (n = 420) or placebo (n = 421) for 1 year. The primary assessment was time from randomization to respiratory death or first COPD exacerbation-related hospitalization.RESULTS:Among 841 patients randomized, 103 had ≥ 1 primary event (9.5% vs 15.0%, for arformoterol vs placebo, respectively). Patients who discontinued treatment for any reason (39.3% vs 49.9%, for arformoterol vs placebo, respectively) were followed for up to 1 year postrandomization to assess for primary events. Fewer patients receiving arformoterol than placebo experienced COPD exacerbation-related hospitalizations (9.0% vs 14.3%, respectively). Twelve patients (2.9%) receiving arformoterol and 10 patients (2.4%) receiving placebo died during the study. Risk for first respiratory serious adverse event was 50% lower with arformoterol than placebo (P = .003). Numerically more patients on arformoterol (13; 3.1%) than placebo (10; 2.4%) experienced cardiac serious adverse events; however, time-to-first cardiac serious adverse event was not significantly different. Improvements in trough FEV1 and FVC were greater with arformoterol (least-squares mean change from baseline vs placebo: 0.051 L, P = .030 and 0.075 L, P = .018, respectively). Significant improvements in quality of life (overall St. George’s Hospital Respiratory Questionnaire and Clinical COPD Questionnaire) were observed with arformoterol vs placebo (P < .05).CONCLUSIONS:Arformoterol demonstrated an approximately 40% lower risk of respiratory death or COPD exacerbation-related hospitalization over 1 year vs placebo. Arformoterol was well-tolerated and improved lung function vs placebo.TRIAL REGISTRY:ClinicalTrials.gov; No.: NCT00909779; URL: www.clinicaltrials.go
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