Dimensions of space in business network research

Available online 23 June 2016Abstract not availableJan-Åke Törnroos, Aino Halinen, Christopher J. Medli

Beacon v2 and Beacon networks: A "lingua franca" for federated data discovery in biomedical genomics, and beyond

Beacon is a basic data discovery protocol issued by the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH). The main goal addressed by version 1 of the Beacon protocol was to test the feasibility of broadly sharing human genomic data, through providing simple "yes" or "no" responses to queries about the presence of a given variant in datasets hosted by Beacon providers. The popularity of this concept has fostered the design of a version 2, that better serves real-world requirements and addresses the needs of clinical genomics research and healthcare, as assessed by several contributing projects and organizations. Particularly, rare disease genetics and cancer research will benefit from new case level and genomic variant level requests and the enabling of richer phenotype and clinical queries as well as support for fuzzy searches. Beacon is designed as a "lingua franca" to bridge data collections hosted in software solutions with different and rich interfaces. Beacon version 2 works alongside popular standards like Phenopackets, OMOP, or FHIR, allowing implementing consortia to return matches in beacon responses and provide a handover to their preferred data exchange format. The protocol is being explored by other research domains and is being tested in several international projects

Retention of radiation damage in zircon xenocrysts from kimberlites, Northern Yakutia

We have studied zircon xenocrysts from Mesozoic kimberlites from the Kuoika and Ary–Mastakh fields in Northern Yakutia. Zircon xenocrysts are assumed to originate from crustal rocks. Our SHRIMP (Sensitive High mass Resolution Ion MicroProbe) analyses yielded predominantly concordant U–Th–Pb ages (up to ~ 3570 Ma; Paleoarchean) that clearly predate kimberlite formation. The general U–Th–Pb concordance observed excludes notable disturbance of the zircon xenocrysts U–Th–Pb isotope system during kimberlite ascent and emplacement. In addition, zircon xenocrysts were found to be significantly more radiation-damaged than would correspond to damage accumulation only since the time of kimberlite formation. This observation first indicates that zircon crystals were sampled by the kimberlite magma at comparably shallow depths not exceeding 10–12 km. If, in contrast, zircon crystals originated from deeper levels of the Earth's crust, they would have been exposed to temperatures of 250–300 °C or more. This in turn would have caused long-term thermal annealing of the radiation damage, which was however not observed in our study. Second, our observation contradicts the hypothesis that high temperatures experienced by zircon xenocrysts during kimberlite ascent will cause notable structural reconstitution by short-term thermal annealing. Consequently, zircon crystals cannot have spent more than a few hours at temperatures exceeding ca. 700–800 °C, or more than a few days at temperatures exceeding ca. 500–600 °C. This in turn suggests that (i) temperatures of the ascending kimberlite magmas were rather moderate, and (ii) kimberlite ascent is a comparably short process followed by rapid cooling

GA4GH: International policies and standards for data sharing across genomic research and healthcare.

The Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) aims to accelerate biomedical advances by enabling the responsible sharing of clinical and genomic data through both harmonized data aggregation and federated approaches. The decreasing cost of genomic sequencing (along with other genome-wide molecular assays) and increasing evidence of its clinical utility will soon drive the generation of sequence data from tens of millions of humans, with increasing levels of diversity. In this perspective, we present the GA4GH strategies for addressing the major challenges of this data revolution. We describe the GA4GH organization, which is fueled by the development efforts of eight Work Streams and informed by the needs of 24 Driver Projects and other key stakeholders. We present the GA4GH suite of secure, interoperable technical standards and policy frameworks and review the current status of standards, their relevance to key domains of research and clinical care, and future plans of GA4GH. Broad international participation in building, adopting, and deploying GA4GH standards and frameworks will catalyze an unprecedented effort in data sharing that will be critical to advancing genomic medicine and ensuring that all populations can access its benefits

Food webs under changing biodiversity - Top-down control

Report on effects of changing predation pressure on benthic and pelagic specie

Environmental context and trophic trait plasticity in a key species, the tellinid clam Macoma balthica L.

Highlights • Experimental stable isotope study on trophic plasticity in adult Macoma balthica. • Contrasts in isotope signatures attributed to hydrographical and biotic settings. • Changing signatures in transplanted clams show switch in feeding in new environment. Abstract Species show varying levels of plasticity regarding morphology, physiology and behaviour in relation to their immediate environment, and several trait characteristics are habitat-dependent. Determining when and how the environmental context changes trait expression is of key importance for understanding the role of individual species for ecosystem functioning. The tellinid clam Macoma balthica can vary its feeding behaviour, shifting between deposit- and suspension-feeding. In order to study the context-dependency of this trophic plasticity in adult clams, we conducted an experiment assessing food uptake by using stable isotope signatures (δ13C and δ15N). We transplanted individuals between and within two shallow bays differing in exposure (exposed–sheltered) and sediment characteristics. Our results show that isotope signatures of clams differed between the two habitats and that clams in the exposed site showed stable isotope values linked to a diet of suspended particulate organic material, while values of individuals in the sheltered site corresponded to an uptake of sediment-bound organic material. Clams transplanted between these two environmental settings were gradually showing differing isotopic signatures from clams at their original habitat, over time mirroring the changes in clams in the site to which they were transferred. The shift in carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes of the clams provides insights into the context-dependent intraspecific feeding plasticity of this zoobenthic key species. The causes for this shift were coupled to contrasts in the hydrodynamic and biotic setting, implying that feeding plasticity may explain adaptation of organisms to changes in their surroundings

The First Imidazolium-Substituted Metal Alkylidene

A ruthenium complex coordinated by a bidentate aryloxy-NHC ligand has offered the first example of an imidazolium-substituted metal alkylidene, an analogue of existing phosphonium alkylidenes and metal-substituted ketenes. Investigation of the molecular structure and the quantum chemically obtained electronic structure sheds light on the nature of this new compound and the bonds central to its formation