Research information standards adoption: Development of a visual insight tool at the University of Cambridge

While Research Information continues to mature as an area of expertise, discussions regarding the implementation and adoption of standardisation initiatives, such as CASRAI and CERIF, have intensified. Possessing the capacity to use a standard does not obligate its adoption, so the extent to which standards are employed varies across use cases and institutions, in a way that is difficult to qualify and determine. We are presenting a light-weight visualisation framework for presenting, comparing and improving the adoption of research information standards for research institutions. The framework is implemented for providing insight into identifier adoption at the University of Cambridge. The tool is easy to deploy and implement, and the insights it generates are intended to express clearly the extent to which Research Information standards have been adopted. Furthermore, the framework can be used to make this adoption knowledge available as linked open data held at a local level, reducing the need for costly metastudies and helping the standardisation community to monitor and focus standardisation development

The taxonomic position of Chlamydomyxa labyrinthuloides

Chlamydomyxa labyrinthuloides is a heterokont alga known since the last century. It lives on Sphagnum and other water plants as aplanospores or plasmodia. We have investigated the taxonomic position of Chlamydomyxa labyrinthuloides by combining results from morphological studies, pigment analyses and a molecular phylogenetic analysis of the small subunit (SSU) rRNA gene. Chlamydomyxa labyrinthuloides shares morphological features with xanthophytes and chrysophytes, whereas pigment composition indicates a grouping with the phaeophytes, raphidophytes and chrysophytes. The sequence of the SSU rRNA gene and its phylogenetic reconstruction unambiguously demonstrate that Chlamydomyxa labyrinthuloides is related to the chrysophytes

Redox properties of Arabidopsis cytochrome c6 are independent of the loop extension specific to higher plants

6 pages, 3 figures.-- PMID: 15238268 [PubMed].-- Printed version published Jul 9, 2004.Cytochrome c6 (cytc6) from Arabidopsis differs from the cyanobacterial and algal homologues in several redox properties. It is possible that these differences might be due to the presence of a 12 amino acid residue loop extension common to higher plant cytc6 proteins. However, homology modelling suggests this is not the case. We report experiments to test if differences in biochemical properties could be due to this extension. Analysis of mutant forms of Arabidopsis cytc6 in which the entire extension was lacking, or a pair of cysteine residues in the extension had been exchanged for serine, revealed no significant effect of these changes on either the redox potential of the haem group or the reactivity towards Photosystem I (PSI). We conclude that the differences in properties are due to more subtle unidentified differences in structure, and that the sequence extension in the higher plant proteins has a function yet to be identified.This work was supported by the European Union (Network HPRN-CT1999-00095), the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (MCYT, Grant BMC2003-458) and the BBSRC.Peer reviewe