New models to study vascular mural cell embryonic origin: implications in vascular diseases.

A key question in vascular biology is how the diversity of origin of vascular mural cells, namely smooth muscle cells (SMCs) and pericytes influences vessel properties, in particular the regional propensity to vascular diseases. This review therefore first describes the role and regulation of mural cells during vascular formation, with a focus on embryonic origin. We then consider the evidence that connects heterogeneities in SMC and pericyte origins with disease. Since this idea has major implications for understanding and modelling human disease, then there is a pressing need for new model systems to investigate mural cell development and the consequences of heterogeneity. Recent advances arising from in vitro strategies for deriving mural cells from human pluripotent stem cells as well as from the zebrafish model will be discussed and the medical relevance of these discoveries will be highlighted

Exploring the depths of the global earth observation system of systems

Big Earth Data-Cube infrastructures are becoming more and more popular to provide Analysis Ready Data, especially for managing satellite time series. These infrastructures build on the concept of multidimensional data model (data hypercube) and are complex systems engaging different disciplines and expertise. For this reason, their interoperability capacity has become a challenge in the Global Change and Earth System science domains. To address this challenge, there is a pressing need in the community to reach a widely agreed definition of Data-Cube infrastructures and their key features. In this respect, a discussion has started recently about the definition of the possible facets characterizing a Data-Cube in the Earth Observation domain. This manuscript contributes to such debate by introducing a view-based model of Earth Data-Cube systems to design its infrastructural architecture and content schemas, with the final goal of enabling and facilitating interoperability. It introduces six modeling views, each of them is described according to: its main concerns, principal stakeholders, and possible patterns to be used. The manuscript considers the Business Intelligence experience with Data Warehouse and multidimensional "cubes" along with the more recent and analogous development in the Earth Observation domain, and puts forward a set of interoperability recommendations based on the modeling views

D4.2. Observation inventory description and results report

The ConnectinGEO Observation Inventory (OI) is created and populated using the current information in the metadata concentrated in the GEO Discovery and Access Broker (DAB) of the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI) to analyse the observations and measurements currently available in it. WP4 defined a high-level process for the population of the Observation Inventory: (i) retrieve the full metadata content for each record in the GEO DAB, (ii) extract/Infer extra semantics (connecting to external knowledge systems when needed), and (iii) generate enriched metadata and write it to the OI. The OI system architecture was designed and developed. The first version of the OI was created and populated using the current information in the metadata concentrated in the GEO DAB. The first population process was run in December 2015, resulting in a total of more than 1.6M harvested metadata records. The developed OI is accessible online and can be used as a data source by different analysis tools, which create plots, report, or summary statistics useful for the ConnectinGEO gap analysis. A simple Web Client was developed to demonstrate how to interrogate the OI and provide also basic examples of how the developed OI can be used by web-based analysis tools

Integrative Research: The EuroGEOSS Experience

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