Connecting closed world research information systems through the linked open data web

Research Information Systems (RIS) play a critical role in the sharing of scientific information and provide researchers, professionals and decision makers with the required data for their activities. Existing RIS standards have proposed data models to represent the main entities for storage and exchange. These account for the needs of multiple stakeholders through a high flexibility based on a formal syntax and declared semantics, but for techno-historical reasons they assume the completeness of information within system boundaries. The distributed nature of research information across systems calls for a mechanism to link the local entities from the closed world of concrete RISs with other possibly underspecified entities exposed through other means, as for example, the Linked Open Data Web. By transformation of a relational model into an open graph model, differences between the two system paradigms are revealed. The main principles and techniques for exposing CERIF-driven relational data as linked data will be provided as a first step demonstrating effective RISs interconnection through the linked open data (LOD) Web

Connecting closed world research information systems through the linked open data web

Research Information Systems (RIS) play a critical role in the sharing of scientific information and provide researchers, professionals and decision makers with the required data for their activities. Existing RIS standards have proposed data models to represent the main entities for storage and exchange. These account for the needs of multiple stakeholders through a high flexibility based on a formal syntax and declared semantics, but for techno-historical reasons they assume the completeness of information within system boundaries. The distributed nature of research information across systems calls for a mechanism to link the local entities from the closed world of concrete RISs with other possibly underspecified entities exposed through other means, as for example, the Linked Open Data Web. By transformation of a relational model into an open graph model, differences between the two system paradigms are revealed. The main principles and techniques for exposing CERIF-driven relational data as linked data will be provided as a first step demonstrating effective RISs interconnection through the linked open data (LOD) Web

The ageing haematopoietic stem cell compartment

<p>Stem cell ageing underlies the ageing of tissues, especially those with a high cellular turnover. There is growing evidence that the ageing of the immune system is initiated at the very top of the haematopoietic hierarchy and that the ageing of haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) directly contributes to changes in the immune system, referred to as immunosenescence. In this Review, we summarize the phenotypes of ageing HSCs and discuss how the cell-intrinsic and cell-extrinsic mechanisms of HSC ageing might promote immunosenescence. Stem cell ageing has long been considered to be irreversible. However, recent findings indicate that several molecular pathways could be targeted to rejuvenate HSCs and thus to reverse some aspects of immunosenescence.</p>