BEXIS 2 Module: Graphical Research Area Management: Towards web mapping integration

BEXIS 2 is a free and open source software platform which aims to support researchers in managing their data in the whole data life cycle. Beside such data management functionalities additional features could enhance the collaborationn between scientists and support research projects overall. We have developed a module for BEXIS 2 to manage physical research areas (field sites, research plots) to support field work coordination. With our poster we show the current stage of our development and an outlook towards web mapping integtration

Towards FAIR data and repository within the Biodiversity Exploratories

The Biodiversity Exploratories Information System (BExIS) acts as centralized data management platform for the Biodiversity Exploratories project. It stores all project-related datasets and provides features to support scientist throughout the whole data lifecycle. The FAIR data principles [1] are a set of guiding principles in order to make data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. Currently these principles are highly recognized in the data driven community and gained at a lot of support from funding agencies, publishers, data repositories, and researchers alike. It has been widely agreed that the realization of these principles changes the way of thinking about sharing data and should boost the use and reuse of data. We have worked lately on our public data and the repository itself to meet the principles or at least to step up in inherent requirements. On our poster, you can find the results of a self-assessment we have done to check the FAIRness and to indicate open activities which needs to be undertaken. [1] https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.1

How FAIR is your data?: Self Assessment of Biodiversity Exploratories Data + Repository

In our poster we present the ‘FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship’ as published in Scientific Data [1]. The authors intended to provide guidelines to improve reusability of data by defining principles regarding the findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reuse of digital data. We have checked our data (namely the public data of the Biodiversity Exploratories project) against these principles. On our poster, you can find the results of our self-assessment – and start thinking about how FAIR your data is. [1] https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.1

Intuitive Kartenanwendungen für die Suche nach räumlicher Information

An Geoinformation interessierten Anwender*innen stehen heute vielfältige digitale Datenquellen zur Verfügung. Häufig werden Geodaten in Form interaktiver Karten oder innerhalb von Geoportalen bereitgestellt. Praktische Probleme bereitet hierbei allerdings oft das Auffinden einer gesuchten Information. Es stellt sich die Frage, welche Anforderungen sich für Anwendungen mit vielen thematischen Informationsebenen mit Blick auf die Informationssuche ergeben und welche konkreten Funktionen sich bereitstellen lassen, um die Suche zu erleichtern. Dieser Online-Workshop gibt den Teilnehmer*innen die Möglichkeit zum Ideenaustausch.This work has been partly funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) through the project NFDI4Earth (DFG project no. 460036893, https://www.nfdi4earth.de/) within the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI, https://www.nfdi.de/)

Just pain, no gain?: Data management systems and biodiversity data

Scientists often see research data management as a burden. At first glance, it appears as yet another task with lots of effort and no apparent benefits. In fact, proper research data management provides many benefits and is important for biodiversity research projects. It is a key factor for their success and for the long-term impact of the research. Data management systems provide established informatics standards such as online access, versioning, and backup. Other features support scientists to organize, document, and verify their data according to accuracy and validity. Such system offers functionalities for data search, access control and traceability. This allows a collaborative, all-time available and trustable teamwork. Beside it, more and more funding agencies and publishers ask for accessible and reproducible data with a guarantee of long-term availability. In addition, stakeholders and the community request data access. Data management system curated data is ready to be published and cited. We believe that, in order to truly support researchers and ensure that they can reap the benefits of their efforts, data management platforms are needed that deal with the entire data lifecycle. We have developed the data management system “Biodiversity Exploratories Information System”. It acts as a platform to support researchers of the Priority Program “Biodiversity Exploratories” of the German Science Foundation (DFG). It guaranties data curation and enables data interchange and reuse since nearly 10 years. The system is also the foundation of the BEXIS2 data management platform. With our poster, we show the role of a data management system as a service to researchers and projects. We illustrate the benefits of such a system inside the whole life cycle of data seen from researcher and project perspective

Osteoblastic Response in Patients with Non-small Cell Lung Cancer with Activating EGFR Mutations and Bone Metastases during Treatment with EGFR Kinase Inhibitors

© 2010International Association for the Study of Lung Cance

Linking institutional context to the community and career embeddedness of skilled migrants: the role of destination- and origin-country identifications

Migration is one of the most pressing global issues of our time. However, relatively little is known about the factors and mechanisms that govern the post-migration experiences of skilled migrants. We adopt an acculturation- and social identity-based approach to examine how differences between institutional characteristics in the destination and origin country, as well as migrants’ experiences with formal and informal institutions shape their identification with the destination and origin country and contribute to their community and career embeddedness. Our study of 1709 highly skilled migrants from 48 origin countries in 12 destination countries reveals that the institutional environment migrants encounter provides both sources of opportunity (potential for human development and value-congruent societal practices) and sources of disadvantage (experienced ethnocentrism and downgrading). These contrasting dynamics affect migrants’ destination-country identification, their origin-country identification and, ultimately, their embeddedness in the destination country. Our results have important implications for multinational enterprises and policy makers that can contribute to enhancing skilled migrants’ community and career embeddedness. For example, these actors may nurture a work environment and provide supportive policies that buffer against the institutional sources of disadvantage we identified in this study, while helping migrants to leverage the opportunities available in the destination country

Benchmarking of Mutation Diagnostics in Clinical Lung Cancer Specimens

Treatment of EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer patients with the tyrosine kinase inhibitors erlotinib or gefitinib results in high response rates and prolonged progression-free survival. Despite the development of sensitive mutation detection approaches, a thorough validation of these in a clinical setting has so far been lacking. We performed, in a clinical setting, a systematic validation of dideoxy ‘Sanger’ sequencing and pyrosequencing against massively parallel sequencing as one of the most sensitive mutation detection technologies available. Mutational annotation of clinical lung tumor samples revealed that of all patients with a confirmed response to EGFR inhibition, only massively parallel sequencing detected all relevant mutations. By contrast, dideoxy sequencing missed four responders and pyrosequencing missed two responders, indicating a dramatic lack of sensitivity of dideoxy sequencing, which is widely applied for this purpose. Furthermore, precise quantification of mutant alleles revealed a low correlation (r2 = 0.27) of histopathological estimates of tumor content and frequency of mutant alleles, thereby questioning the use of histopathology for stratification of specimens for individual analytical procedures. Our results suggest that enhanced analytical sensitivity is critically required to correctly identify patients responding to EGFR inhibition. More broadly, our results emphasize the need for thorough evaluation of all mutation detection approaches against massively parallel sequencing as a prerequisite for any clinical implementation