Report on research data management interviews conducted for HMC Hub Energy in 2022

The Energy Hub of the Helmholtz Metadata Collaboration (HMC) conducted interviews with various stakeholders from the Helmholtz Research Field Energy on the topic of research data management (RDM) in 2022. The intentions were to build and serve a metadata community in the energy research field and to extend the Helmholtz-wide survey conducted by HMC in 2021 Arndt et al., 2022). Besides the deeper insight into the current state of RDM and metadata handling at the Helmholtz sites relevant to the Energy Hub the interviews focused on the related needs and difficulties of researchers and their satisfaction with the current state. Furthermore, we tried to discover already existing workflows and software solutions, to establish contacts and to make HMC better known

Effect of Hydrocortisone on Mortality and Organ Support in Patients With Severe COVID-19: The REMAP-CAP COVID-19 Corticosteroid Domain Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Evidence regarding corticosteroid use for severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is limited. Objective: To determine whether hydrocortisone improves outcome for patients with severe COVID-19. Design, Setting, and Participants: An ongoing adaptive platform trial testing multiple interventions within multiple therapeutic domains, for example, antiviral agents, corticosteroids, or immunoglobulin. Between March 9 and June 17, 2020, 614 adult patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 were enrolled and randomized within at least 1 domain following admission to an intensive care unit (ICU) for respiratory or cardiovascular organ support at 121 sites in 8 countries. Of these, 403 were randomized to open-label interventions within the corticosteroid domain. The domain was halted after results from another trial were released. Follow-up ended August 12, 2020. Interventions: The corticosteroid domain randomized participants to a fixed 7-day course of intravenous hydrocortisone (50 mg or 100 mg every 6 hours) (n = 143), a shock-dependent course (50 mg every 6 hours when shock was clinically evident) (n = 152), or no hydrocortisone (n = 108). Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary end point was organ support-free days (days alive and free of ICU-based respiratory or cardiovascular support) within 21 days, where patients who died were assigned -1 day. The primary analysis was a bayesian cumulative logistic model that included all patients enrolled with severe COVID-19, adjusting for age, sex, site, region, time, assignment to interventions within other domains, and domain and intervention eligibility. Superiority was defined as the posterior probability of an odds ratio greater than 1 (threshold for trial conclusion of superiority >99%). Results: After excluding 19 participants who withdrew consent, there were 384 patients (mean age, 60 years; 29% female) randomized to the fixed-dose (n = 137), shock-dependent (n = 146), and no (n = 101) hydrocortisone groups; 379 (99%) completed the study and were included in the analysis. The mean age for the 3 groups ranged between 59.5 and 60.4 years; most patients were male (range, 70.6%-71.5%); mean body mass index ranged between 29.7 and 30.9; and patients receiving mechanical ventilation ranged between 50.0% and 63.5%. For the fixed-dose, shock-dependent, and no hydrocortisone groups, respectively, the median organ support-free days were 0 (IQR, -1 to 15), 0 (IQR, -1 to 13), and 0 (-1 to 11) days (composed of 30%, 26%, and 33% mortality rates and 11.5, 9.5, and 6 median organ support-free days among survivors). The median adjusted odds ratio and bayesian probability of superiority were 1.43 (95% credible interval, 0.91-2.27) and 93% for fixed-dose hydrocortisone, respectively, and were 1.22 (95% credible interval, 0.76-1.94) and 80% for shock-dependent hydrocortisone compared with no hydrocortisone. Serious adverse events were reported in 4 (3%), 5 (3%), and 1 (1%) patients in the fixed-dose, shock-dependent, and no hydrocortisone groups, respectively. Conclusions and Relevance: Among patients with severe COVID-19, treatment with a 7-day fixed-dose course of hydrocortisone or shock-dependent dosing of hydrocortisone, compared with no hydrocortisone, resulted in 93% and 80% probabilities of superiority with regard to the odds of improvement in organ support-free days within 21 days. However, the trial was stopped early and no treatment strategy met prespecified criteria for statistical superiority, precluding definitive conclusions. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02735707

Effect of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor and angiotensin receptor blocker initiation on organ support-free days in patients hospitalized with COVID-19

IMPORTANCE Overactivation of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) may contribute to poor clinical outcomes in patients with COVID-19. Objective To determine whether angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor or angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) initiation improves outcomes in patients hospitalized for COVID-19. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS In an ongoing, adaptive platform randomized clinical trial, 721 critically ill and 58 non–critically ill hospitalized adults were randomized to receive an RAS inhibitor or control between March 16, 2021, and February 25, 2022, at 69 sites in 7 countries (final follow-up on June 1, 2022). INTERVENTIONS Patients were randomized to receive open-label initiation of an ACE inhibitor (n = 257), ARB (n = 248), ARB in combination with DMX-200 (a chemokine receptor-2 inhibitor; n = 10), or no RAS inhibitor (control; n = 264) for up to 10 days. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES The primary outcome was organ support–free days, a composite of hospital survival and days alive without cardiovascular or respiratory organ support through 21 days. The primary analysis was a bayesian cumulative logistic model. Odds ratios (ORs) greater than 1 represent improved outcomes. RESULTS On February 25, 2022, enrollment was discontinued due to safety concerns. Among 679 critically ill patients with available primary outcome data, the median age was 56 years and 239 participants (35.2%) were women. Median (IQR) organ support–free days among critically ill patients was 10 (–1 to 16) in the ACE inhibitor group (n = 231), 8 (–1 to 17) in the ARB group (n = 217), and 12 (0 to 17) in the control group (n = 231) (median adjusted odds ratios of 0.77 [95% bayesian credible interval, 0.58-1.06] for improvement for ACE inhibitor and 0.76 [95% credible interval, 0.56-1.05] for ARB compared with control). The posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitors and ARBs worsened organ support–free days compared with control were 94.9% and 95.4%, respectively. Hospital survival occurred in 166 of 231 critically ill participants (71.9%) in the ACE inhibitor group, 152 of 217 (70.0%) in the ARB group, and 182 of 231 (78.8%) in the control group (posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitor and ARB worsened hospital survival compared with control were 95.3% and 98.1%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In this trial, among critically ill adults with COVID-19, initiation of an ACE inhibitor or ARB did not improve, and likely worsened, clinical outcomes. TRIAL REGISTRATION ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT0273570

Implementation of a Photovoltaic System Model Using FAIR Digital Objects

The energy transition is an urgent and challenging subject in research and for society. For this, transitioning to renewable energies is one key element of the energy transition, but renewable energies have drawbacks with regard to their reliability of power supply. The weather as well as day and night periods induce a very high volatility, that requires multiscale coordination of power supply and demand. Therefore, the power grid will undergo a drastic change from a puely demand-driven towards a supply and demand-driven network. The operation of these highly coordinated future smart grids will create huge data volume which needs to be managed appropriately. In the scientific domain as well as in operations FAIR Digital Objects (FDOs) are envisaged to be a key technology for this task. FDOs provide access to metadata allowing applications to automatically retrieve the referenced data, interpret it semantically and support energy researchers and operational staff to handle it in a more sustainable way.In Schweikert et al. (2022) a concept is proposed which allows to describe different aspects of an object. Arbitrary schemas and ontologies can be utilized and a coherent object graph is provided by using FDOs. As an conceptual example the authors employed a photovoltaic system (PV system). The data of this system is divided into two kinds: static data and dynamic data. Static data is further divided into structural composition metadata, which describes the entities of the PV system and their relations to each other, and master data which are used to describe the properties of the different entities (comparable to a technical information data sheet). Dynamic data is the measurement data which is acquired at several locations within the PV system. The structural composition metadata is described by using an in-house developed ontology called PV Ontology based on the Web Ontology Language*1. The master data is described using the standards IEC 61850*2, GeoJSON*3 and SensorML*4 (for the master data of the sensors). The dynamic data - the structure of the measurement data and its geo-position - is also described with SensorML.By describing every entity in the PV system using the mentioned schemas, a lot of description objects (instances of the schemas) are created. For instance, a PV module is comprised of three description objects, one written in IEC 61850 (technical data sheet), another in GeoJSON (geo-position and dimensions), and the third is the ontology instance where the PV module is represented as a node in the ontology instance graph. How can these three objects be linked with each other to make clear that the containing information is about this PV module? Schweikert et al. (2022) uses FDOs to create these associations. The profile used in the FDOs is the Helmholtz Kernel Information Profile (KIP) (Pfeil et al. 2022) which is an extension of the Research Data Alliance (RDA)*5 KIP (Weigel et al. 2018). It introduces several new properties, inter alia, the property hasMetadata. This property allows to reference further FDOs providing metadata to the current one. Using the Helmholtz KIP Schweikert et al. (2022) constructs the description of the PV system as follows: An FDO is created for the ontology instance (hereinafter referred to as ONT-FDO). For every entity of the system with description objects an FDO (Bridge-FDO) is created. The digitalObjectLocation of these FDOs is referencing the ONT-FDO plus adding the ID of the corresponding entity in the ontology instance as fragment identifier. This bridges the border between the ontology and the FDOs and allows unambiguous referencing of ontology graph nodes. An application using the PV ontology and a given Bridge-FDO can infer the position of the entity in the PV system. For every description object an FDO is created and linked to its entity by using the hasMetadata property on the Bridge-FDO. Alternatively, if one wants to reduce the number of FDOs, a collection (e.g, using RDA's Collection Recommendations (Weigel et al. 2017)) containing all description objects can be created and referenced through the Bridge-FDO by creating an FDO for the collection. Lastly, a final Bridge-FDO can be created pointing with its digitalObjectLoaction to the PV system root node and referencing all other Bridge-FDOs with its hasMetadata property.Schweikert et al. (2022) did not implement the discussed concept. In the present work we introduce for the first time an implementation of the concept, in which we develop an application that allows users to browse and visualize all the data (structural design, technical information of the components and measurement data) of a PV system. A user provides a persistent identifier (PID) to the application and the application starts to resolve all the data associated with the PID. Three possible cases of a given PID can occur: First, the PID of the entire PV system is entered, the application retrieves the data for all components of the system and presents them to the user. Second, the PID of one component is entered, the application retrieves all the data of this component and presents them to the user, and an option to browse the complete system is offered. In these two cases it is assumed that the entered PID belongs to a Bridge-FDO. In the last case a PID of a description object is entered, then the application behaves as in the second case. The implementation verifies the concept in which any information about the PV system can be obtained by any starting node in the object graph spanned by the FDOs. It also provides insight into the applicability in a real-world use case uncovering possible problems and pitfalls. It also gives energy researchers and operational staff a useful tool to browse and visualize information about a PV system.This work is an essential contribution to use FDOs for accessing, visualizing and studying similarly modeled systems

Data from: Delimitation of the Thoracosphaeraceae (Dinophyceae), including the calcareous dinoflagellates, based on large amounts of ribosomal RNA sequence data

The phylogenetic relationships of the Dinophyceae (Alveolata) are not sufficiently resolved at present. The Thoracosphaeraceae (Peridiniales) are the only group of the Alveolata that include members with calcareous coccoid stages; this trait is considered apomorphic. Although the coccoid stage apparently is not calcareous, Bysmatrum has been assigned to the Thoracosphaeraceae based on thecal morphology. We tested the monophyly of the Thoracosphaeraceae using large sets of ribosomal RNA sequence data of the Alveolata including the Dinophyceae. Phylogenetic analyses were performed using Maximum Likelihood and Bayesian approaches. The Thoracosphaeraceae were monophyletic, but included also a number of non-calcareous dinophytes (such as Ensiculifera and Pfiesteria) and even parasites (such as Duboscquodinium and Tintinnophagus). Bysmatrum had an isolated and uncertain phylogenetic position outside the Thoracosphaeraceae. The phylogenetic relationships among calcareous dinophytes appear complex, and the assumption of the single origin of the potential to produce calcareous structures is challenged. The application of concatenated ribosomal RNA sequence data may prove promising for phylogenetic reconstructions of the Dinophyceae in future

Delimitation of the Thoracosphaeraceae (Dinophyceae), Including the Calcareous Dinoflagellates, Based on Large Amounts of Ribosomal RNA Sequence Data

The phylogenetic relationships of the Dinophyceae (Alveolata) are not sufficiently resolved at present. The Thoracosphaeraceae (Peridiniales) are the only group of the Alveolata that include members with calcareous coccoid stages; this trait is considered apomorphic. Although the coccoid stage appar- ently is not calcareous, Bysmatrum has been assigned to the Thoracosphaeraceae based on thecal morphology. We tested the monophyly of the Thoracosphaeraceae using large sets of ribosomal RNA sequence data of the Alveolata including the Dinophyceae. Phylogenetic analyses were performed using Maximum Likelihood and Bayesian approaches. The Thoracosphaeraceae were monophyletic, but included also a number of non-calcareous dinophytes (such as Pentapharsodinium and Pfiesteria) and even parasites (such as Duboscquodinium and Tintinnophagus). Bysmatrum had an isolated and uncertain phylogenetic position outside the Thoracosphaeraceae. The phylogenetic relationships among calcareous dinophytes appear complex, and the assumption of the single origin of the potential to produce calcareous structures is challenged. The application of concatenated ribosomal RNA sequence data may prove promising for phylogenetic reconstructions of the Dinophyceae in future