WorldWideScience

Sample records for annotation assessment project

  1. nGASP - the nematode genome annotation assessment project

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Coghlan, A; Fiedler, T J; McKay, S J; Flicek, P; Harris, T W; Blasiar, D; Allen, J; Stein, L D

    2008-12-19

    While the C. elegans genome is extensively annotated, relatively little information is available for other Caenorhabditis species. The nematode genome annotation assessment project (nGASP) was launched to objectively assess the accuracy of protein-coding gene prediction software in C. elegans, and to apply this knowledge to the annotation of the genomes of four additional Caenorhabditis species and other nematodes. Seventeen groups worldwide participated in nGASP, and submitted 47 prediction sets for 10 Mb of the C. elegans genome. Predictions were compared to reference gene sets consisting of confirmed or manually curated gene models from WormBase. The most accurate gene-finders were 'combiner' algorithms, which made use of transcript- and protein-alignments and multi-genome alignments, as well as gene predictions from other gene-finders. Gene-finders that used alignments of ESTs, mRNAs and proteins came in second place. There was a tie for third place between gene-finders that used multi-genome alignments and ab initio gene-finders. The median gene level sensitivity of combiners was 78% and their specificity was 42%, which is nearly the same accuracy as reported for combiners in the human genome. C. elegans genes with exons of unusual hexamer content, as well as those with many exons, short exons, long introns, a weak translation start signal, weak splice sites, or poorly conserved orthologs were the most challenging for gene-finders. While the C. elegans genome is extensively annotated, relatively little information is available for other Caenorhabditis species. The nematode genome annotation assessment project (nGASP) was launched to objectively assess the accuracy of protein-coding gene prediction software in C. elegans, and to apply this knowledge to the annotation of the genomes of four additional Caenorhabditis species and other nematodes. Seventeen groups worldwide participated in nGASP, and submitted 47 prediction sets for 10 Mb of the C

  2. The caBIG annotation and image Markup project.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Channin, David S; Mongkolwat, Pattanasak; Kleper, Vladimir; Sepukar, Kastubh; Rubin, Daniel L

    2010-04-01

    Image annotation and markup are at the core of medical interpretation in both the clinical and the research setting. Digital medical images are managed with the DICOM standard format. While DICOM contains a large amount of meta-data about whom, where, and how the image was acquired, DICOM says little about the content or meaning of the pixel data. An image annotation is the explanatory or descriptive information about the pixel data of an image that is generated by a human or machine observer. An image markup is the graphical symbols placed over the image to depict an annotation. While DICOM is the standard for medical image acquisition, manipulation, transmission, storage, and display, there are no standards for image annotation and markup. Many systems expect annotation to be reported verbally, while markups are stored in graphical overlays or proprietary formats. This makes it difficult to extract and compute with both of them. The goal of the Annotation and Image Markup (AIM) project is to develop a mechanism, for modeling, capturing, and serializing image annotation and markup data that can be adopted as a standard by the medical imaging community. The AIM project produces both human- and machine-readable artifacts. This paper describes the AIM information model, schemas, software libraries, and tools so as to prepare researchers and developers for their use of AIM.

  3. MAKER2: an annotation pipeline and genome-database management tool for second-generation genome projects.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Holt, Carson; Yandell, Mark

    2011-12-22

    Second-generation sequencing technologies are precipitating major shifts with regards to what kinds of genomes are being sequenced and how they are annotated. While the first generation of genome projects focused on well-studied model organisms, many of today's projects involve exotic organisms whose genomes are largely terra incognita. This complicates their annotation, because unlike first-generation projects, there are no pre-existing 'gold-standard' gene-models with which to train gene-finders. Improvements in genome assembly and the wide availability of mRNA-seq data are also creating opportunities to update and re-annotate previously published genome annotations. Today's genome projects are thus in need of new genome annotation tools that can meet the challenges and opportunities presented by second-generation sequencing technologies. We present MAKER2, a genome annotation and data management tool designed for second-generation genome projects. MAKER2 is a multi-threaded, parallelized application that can process second-generation datasets of virtually any size. We show that MAKER2 can produce accurate annotations for novel genomes where training-data are limited, of low quality or even non-existent. MAKER2 also provides an easy means to use mRNA-seq data to improve annotation quality; and it can use these data to update legacy annotations, significantly improving their quality. We also show that MAKER2 can evaluate the quality of genome annotations, and identify and prioritize problematic annotations for manual review. MAKER2 is the first annotation engine specifically designed for second-generation genome projects. MAKER2 scales to datasets of any size, requires little in the way of training data, and can use mRNA-seq data to improve annotation quality. It can also update and manage legacy genome annotation datasets.

  4. Harnessing Collaborative Annotations on Online Formative Assessments

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lin, Jian-Wei; Lai, Yuan-Cheng

    2013-01-01

    This paper harnesses collaborative annotations by students as learning feedback on online formative assessments to improve the learning achievements of students. Through the developed Web platform, students can conduct formative assessments, collaboratively annotate, and review historical records in a convenient way, while teachers can generate…

  5. GI-POP: a combinational annotation and genomic island prediction pipeline for ongoing microbial genome projects.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Chi-Ching; Chen, Yi-Ping Phoebe; Yao, Tzu-Jung; Ma, Cheng-Yu; Lo, Wei-Cheng; Lyu, Ping-Chiang; Tang, Chuan Yi

    2013-04-10

    Sequencing of microbial genomes is important because of microbial-carrying antibiotic and pathogenetic activities. However, even with the help of new assembling software, finishing a whole genome is a time-consuming task. In most bacteria, pathogenetic or antibiotic genes are carried in genomic islands. Therefore, a quick genomic island (GI) prediction method is useful for ongoing sequencing genomes. In this work, we built a Web server called GI-POP (http://gipop.life.nthu.edu.tw) which integrates a sequence assembling tool, a functional annotation pipeline, and a high-performance GI predicting module, in a support vector machine (SVM)-based method called genomic island genomic profile scanning (GI-GPS). The draft genomes of the ongoing genome projects in contigs or scaffolds can be submitted to our Web server, and it provides the functional annotation and highly probable GI-predicting results. GI-POP is a comprehensive annotation Web server designed for ongoing genome project analysis. Researchers can perform annotation and obtain pre-analytic information include possible GIs, coding/non-coding sequences and functional analysis from their draft genomes. This pre-analytic system can provide useful information for finishing a genome sequencing project. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  6. Community annotation and bioinformatics workforce development in concert--Little Skate Genome Annotation Workshops and Jamborees.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Qinghua; Arighi, Cecilia N; King, Benjamin L; Polson, Shawn W; Vincent, James; Chen, Chuming; Huang, Hongzhan; Kingham, Brewster F; Page, Shallee T; Rendino, Marc Farnum; Thomas, William Kelley; Udwary, Daniel W; Wu, Cathy H

    2012-01-01

    Recent advances in high-throughput DNA sequencing technologies have equipped biologists with a powerful new set of tools for advancing research goals. The resulting flood of sequence data has made it critically important to train the next generation of scientists to handle the inherent bioinformatic challenges. The North East Bioinformatics Collaborative (NEBC) is undertaking the genome sequencing and annotation of the little skate (Leucoraja erinacea) to promote advancement of bioinformatics infrastructure in our region, with an emphasis on practical education to create a critical mass of informatically savvy life scientists. In support of the Little Skate Genome Project, the NEBC members have developed several annotation workshops and jamborees to provide training in genome sequencing, annotation and analysis. Acting as a nexus for both curation activities and dissemination of project data, a project web portal, SkateBase (http://skatebase.org) has been developed. As a case study to illustrate effective coupling of community annotation with workforce development, we report the results of the Mitochondrial Genome Annotation Jamborees organized to annotate the first completely assembled element of the Little Skate Genome Project, as a culminating experience for participants from our three prior annotation workshops. We are applying the physical/virtual infrastructure and lessons learned from these activities to enhance and streamline the genome annotation workflow, as we look toward our continuing efforts for larger-scale functional and structural community annotation of the L. erinacea genome.

  7. Community annotation and bioinformatics workforce development in concert—Little Skate Genome Annotation Workshops and Jamborees

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Qinghua; Arighi, Cecilia N.; King, Benjamin L.; Polson, Shawn W.; Vincent, James; Chen, Chuming; Huang, Hongzhan; Kingham, Brewster F.; Page, Shallee T.; Farnum Rendino, Marc; Thomas, William Kelley; Udwary, Daniel W.; Wu, Cathy H.

    2012-01-01

    Recent advances in high-throughput DNA sequencing technologies have equipped biologists with a powerful new set of tools for advancing research goals. The resulting flood of sequence data has made it critically important to train the next generation of scientists to handle the inherent bioinformatic challenges. The North East Bioinformatics Collaborative (NEBC) is undertaking the genome sequencing and annotation of the little skate (Leucoraja erinacea) to promote advancement of bioinformatics infrastructure in our region, with an emphasis on practical education to create a critical mass of informatically savvy life scientists. In support of the Little Skate Genome Project, the NEBC members have developed several annotation workshops and jamborees to provide training in genome sequencing, annotation and analysis. Acting as a nexus for both curation activities and dissemination of project data, a project web portal, SkateBase (http://skatebase.org) has been developed. As a case study to illustrate effective coupling of community annotation with workforce development, we report the results of the Mitochondrial Genome Annotation Jamborees organized to annotate the first completely assembled element of the Little Skate Genome Project, as a culminating experience for participants from our three prior annotation workshops. We are applying the physical/virtual infrastructure and lessons learned from these activities to enhance and streamline the genome annotation workflow, as we look toward our continuing efforts for larger-scale functional and structural community annotation of the L. erinacea genome. PMID:22434832

  8. annot8r: GO, EC and KEGG annotation of EST datasets

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Schmid Ralf

    2008-04-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background The expressed sequence tag (EST methodology is an attractive option for the generation of sequence data for species for which no completely sequenced genome is available. The annotation and comparative analysis of such datasets poses a formidable challenge for research groups that do not have the bioinformatics infrastructure of major genome sequencing centres. Therefore, there is a need for user-friendly tools to facilitate the annotation of non-model species EST datasets with well-defined ontologies that enable meaningful cross-species comparisons. To address this, we have developed annot8r, a platform for the rapid annotation of EST datasets with GO-terms, EC-numbers and KEGG-pathways. Results annot8r automatically downloads all files relevant for the annotation process and generates a reference database that stores UniProt entries, their associated Gene Ontology (GO, Enzyme Commission (EC and Kyoto Encyclopaedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG annotation and additional relevant data. For each of GO, EC and KEGG, annot8r extracts a specific sequence subset from the UniProt dataset based on the information stored in the reference database. These three subsets are then formatted for BLAST searches. The user provides the protein or nucleotide sequences to be annotated and annot8r runs BLAST searches against these three subsets. The BLAST results are parsed and the corresponding annotations retrieved from the reference database. The annotations are saved both as flat files and also in a relational postgreSQL results database to facilitate more advanced searches within the results. annot8r is integrated with the PartiGene suite of EST analysis tools. Conclusion annot8r is a tool that assigns GO, EC and KEGG annotations for data sets resulting from EST sequencing projects both rapidly and efficiently. The benefits of an underlying relational database, flexibility and the ease of use of the program make it ideally suited for non

  9. Annotating abstract pronominal anaphora in the DAD project

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Navarretta, Costanza; Olsen, Sussi Anni

    2008-01-01

    n this paper we present an extension of the MATE/GNOME annotation scheme for anaphora (Poesio 2004) which accounts for abstract anaphora in Danish and Italian. By abstract anaphora it is here meant pronouns whose linguistic antecedents are verbal phrases, clauses and discourse segments. The exten......n this paper we present an extension of the MATE/GNOME annotation scheme for anaphora (Poesio 2004) which accounts for abstract anaphora in Danish and Italian. By abstract anaphora it is here meant pronouns whose linguistic antecedents are verbal phrases, clauses and discourse segments....... The extended scheme, which we call the DAD annotation scheme, allows to annotate information about abstract anaphora which is important to investigate their use, see Webber (1988), Gundel et al. (2003), Navarretta (2004) and which can influence their automatic treatment. Intercoder agreement scores obtained...... by applying the DAD annotation scheme on texts and dialogues in the two languages are given and show that th information proposed in the scheme can be recognised in a reliable way....

  10. Women, Islam, and Pakistan: A Selected Annotated Bibliography. Fulbright-Hays Summer Seminar Abroad Project.

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    Phillips, Brenda

    This bibliography features selected books, book chapters, research projects, and journal articles, published between 1953 and 1994, about the social, legal, economic, educational political, and professional position of Muslim Pakistani women. Sixteen of the references are annotated. An additional 41 bibliographic references to other materials, not…

  11. Report on the 2011 Critical Assessment of Function Annotation (CAFA) meeting

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    Friedberg, Iddo [Miami Univ., Oxford, OH (United States)

    2015-01-21

    The Critical Assessment of Function Annotation meeting was held July 14-15, 2011 at the Austria Conference Center in Vienna, Austria. There were 73 registered delegates at the meeting. We thank the DOE for this award. It helped us organize and support a scientific meeting AFP 2011 as a special interest group (SIG) meeting associated with the ISMB 2011 conference. The conference was held in Vienna, Austria, in July 2011. The AFP SIG was held on July 15-16, 2011 (immediately preceding the conference). The meeting consisted of two components, the first being a series of talks (invited and contributed) and discussion sections dedicated to protein function research, with an emphasis on the theory and practice of computational methods utilized in functional annotation. The second component provided a large-scale assessment of computational methods through participation in the Critical Assessment of Functional Annotation (CAFA). The meeting was exciting and, based on feedback, quite successful. There were 73 registered participants. The schedule was only slightly different from the one proposed, due to two cancellations. Dr. Olga Troyanskaya has canceled and we invited Dr. David Jones instead. Similarly, instead of Dr. Richard Roberts, Dr. Simon Kasif gave a closing keynote. The remaining invited speakers were Janet Thornton (EBI) and Amos Bairoch (University of Geneva).

  12. Citrus sinensis annotation project (CAP): a comprehensive database for sweet orange genome.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Jia; Chen, Dijun; Lei, Yang; Chang, Ji-Wei; Hao, Bao-Hai; Xing, Feng; Li, Sen; Xu, Qiang; Deng, Xiu-Xin; Chen, Ling-Ling

    2014-01-01

    Citrus is one of the most important and widely grown fruit crop with global production ranking firstly among all the fruit crops in the world. Sweet orange accounts for more than half of the Citrus production both in fresh fruit and processed juice. We have sequenced the draft genome of a double-haploid sweet orange (C. sinensis cv. Valencia), and constructed the Citrus sinensis annotation project (CAP) to store and visualize the sequenced genomic and transcriptome data. CAP provides GBrowse-based organization of sweet orange genomic data, which integrates ab initio gene prediction, EST, RNA-seq and RNA-paired end tag (RNA-PET) evidence-based gene annotation. Furthermore, we provide a user-friendly web interface to show the predicted protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and metabolic pathways in sweet orange. CAP provides comprehensive information beneficial to the researchers of sweet orange and other woody plants, which is freely available at http://citrus.hzau.edu.cn/.

  13. Coreference annotation and resolution in the Colorado Richly Annotated Full Text (CRAFT) corpus of biomedical journal articles.

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    Cohen, K Bretonnel; Lanfranchi, Arrick; Choi, Miji Joo-Young; Bada, Michael; Baumgartner, William A; Panteleyeva, Natalya; Verspoor, Karin; Palmer, Martha; Hunter, Lawrence E

    2017-08-17

    Coreference resolution is the task of finding strings in text that have the same referent as other strings. Failures of coreference resolution are a common cause of false negatives in information extraction from the scientific literature. In order to better understand the nature of the phenomenon of coreference in biomedical publications and to increase performance on the task, we annotated the Colorado Richly Annotated Full Text (CRAFT) corpus with coreference relations. The corpus was manually annotated with coreference relations, including identity and appositives for all coreferring base noun phrases. The OntoNotes annotation guidelines, with minor adaptations, were used. Interannotator agreement ranges from 0.480 (entity-based CEAF) to 0.858 (Class-B3), depending on the metric that is used to assess it. The resulting corpus adds nearly 30,000 annotations to the previous release of the CRAFT corpus. Differences from related projects include a much broader definition of markables, connection to extensive annotation of several domain-relevant semantic classes, and connection to complete syntactic annotation. Tool performance was benchmarked on the data. A publicly available out-of-the-box, general-domain coreference resolution system achieved an F-measure of 0.14 (B3), while a simple domain-adapted rule-based system achieved an F-measure of 0.42. An ensemble of the two reached F of 0.46. Following the IDENTITY chains in the data would add 106,263 additional named entities in the full 97-paper corpus, for an increase of 76% percent in the semantic classes of the eight ontologies that have been annotated in earlier versions of the CRAFT corpus. The project produced a large data set for further investigation of coreference and coreference resolution in the scientific literature. The work raised issues in the phenomenon of reference in this domain and genre, and the paper proposes that many mentions that would be considered generic in the general domain are not

  14. Workflow and web application for annotating NCBI BioProject transcriptome data.

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    Vera Alvarez, Roberto; Medeiros Vidal, Newton; Garzón-Martínez, Gina A; Barrero, Luz S; Landsman, David; Mariño-Ramírez, Leonardo

    2017-01-01

    The volume of transcriptome data is growing exponentially due to rapid improvement of experimental technologies. In response, large central resources such as those of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) are continually adapting their computational infrastructure to accommodate this large influx of data. New and specialized databases, such as Transcriptome Shotgun Assembly Sequence Database (TSA) and Sequence Read Archive (SRA), have been created to aid the development and expansion of centralized repositories. Although the central resource databases are under continual development, they do not include automatic pipelines to increase annotation of newly deposited data. Therefore, third-party applications are required to achieve that aim. Here, we present an automatic workflow and web application for the annotation of transcriptome data. The workflow creates secondary data such as sequencing reads and BLAST alignments, which are available through the web application. They are based on freely available bioinformatics tools and scripts developed in-house. The interactive web application provides a search engine and several browser utilities. Graphical views of transcript alignments are available through SeqViewer, an embedded tool developed by NCBI for viewing biological sequence data. The web application is tightly integrated with other NCBI web applications and tools to extend the functionality of data processing and interconnectivity. We present a case study for the species Physalis peruviana with data generated from BioProject ID 67621. URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/physalis/. Published by Oxford University Press 2017. This work is written by US Government employees and is in the public domain in the US.

  15. Sensor Control And Film Annotation For Long Range, Standoff Reconnaissance

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    Schmidt, Thomas G.; Peters, Owen L.; Post, Lawrence H.

    1984-12-01

    This paper describes a Reconnaissance Data Annotation System that incorporates off-the-shelf technology and system designs providing a high degree of adaptability and interoperability to satisfy future reconnaissance data requirements. The history of data annotation for reconnaissance is reviewed in order to provide the base from which future developments can be assessed and technical risks minimized. The system described will accommodate new developments in recording head assemblies and the incorporation of advanced cameras of both the film and electro-optical type. Use of microprocessor control and digital bus inter-face form the central design philosophy. For long range, high altitude, standoff missions, the Data Annotation System computes the projected latitude and longitude of central target position from aircraft position and attitude. This complements the use of longer ranges and high altitudes for reconnaissance missions.

  16. A Pilot Study on Developing a Standardized and Sensitive School Violence Risk Assessment with Manual Annotation.

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    Barzman, Drew H; Ni, Yizhao; Griffey, Marcus; Patel, Bianca; Warren, Ashaki; Latessa, Edward; Sorter, Michael

    2017-09-01

    School violence has increased over the past decade and innovative, sensitive, and standardized approaches to assess school violence risk are needed. In our current feasibility study, we initialized a standardized, sensitive, and rapid school violence risk approach with manual annotation. Manual annotation is the process of analyzing a student's transcribed interview to extract relevant information (e.g., key words) to school violence risk levels that are associated with students' behaviors, attitudes, feelings, use of technology (social media and video games), and other activities. In this feasibility study, we first implemented school violence risk assessments to evaluate risk levels by interviewing the student and parent separately at the school or the hospital to complete our novel school safety scales. We completed 25 risk assessments, resulting in 25 transcribed interviews of 12-18 year olds from 15 schools in Ohio and Kentucky. We then analyzed structured professional judgments, language, and patterns associated with school violence risk levels by using manual annotation and statistical methodology. To analyze the student interviews, we initiated the development of an annotation guideline to extract key information that is associated with students' behaviors, attitudes, feelings, use of technology and other activities. Statistical analysis was applied to associate the significant categories with students' risk levels to identify key factors which will help with developing action steps to reduce risk. In a future study, we plan to recruit more subjects in order to fully develop the manual annotation which will result in a more standardized and sensitive approach to school violence assessments.

  17. Annotating temporal information in clinical narratives.

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    Sun, Weiyi; Rumshisky, Anna; Uzuner, Ozlem

    2013-12-01

    Temporal information in clinical narratives plays an important role in patients' diagnosis, treatment and prognosis. In order to represent narrative information accurately, medical natural language processing (MLP) systems need to correctly identify and interpret temporal information. To promote research in this area, the Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside (i2b2) project developed a temporally annotated corpus of clinical narratives. This corpus contains 310 de-identified discharge summaries, with annotations of clinical events, temporal expressions and temporal relations. This paper describes the process followed for the development of this corpus and discusses annotation guideline development, annotation methodology, and corpus quality. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  18. The use of semantic similarity measures for optimally integrating heterogeneous Gene Ontology data from large scale annotation pipelines

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gaston K Mazandu

    2014-08-01

    Full Text Available With the advancement of new high throughput sequencing technologies, there has been an increase in the number of genome sequencing projects worldwide, which has yielded complete genome sequences of human, animals and plants. Subsequently, several labs have focused on genome annotation, consisting of assigning functions to gene products, mostly using Gene Ontology (GO terms. As a consequence, there is an increased heterogeneity in annotations across genomes due to different approaches used by different pipelines to infer these annotations and also due to the nature of the GO structure itself. This makes a curator's task difficult, even if they adhere to the established guidelines for assessing these protein annotations. Here we develop a genome-scale approach for integrating GO annotations from different pipelines using semantic similarity measures. We used this approach to identify inconsistencies and similarities in functional annotations between orthologs of human and Drosophila melanogaster, to assess the quality of GO annotations derived from InterPro2GO mappings compared to manually annotated GO annotations for the Drosophila melanogaster proteome from a FlyBase dataset and human, and to filter GO annotation data for these proteomes. Results obtained indicate that an efficient integration of GO annotations eliminates redundancy up to 27.08 and 22.32% in the Drosophila melanogaster and human GO annotation datasets, respectively. Furthermore, we identified lack of and missing annotations for some orthologs, and annotation mismatches between InterPro2GO and manual pipelines in these two proteomes, thus requiring further curation. This simplifies and facilitates tasks of curators in assessing protein annotations, reduces redundancy and eliminates inconsistencies in large annotation datasets for ease of comparative functional genomics.

  19. LeARN: a platform for detecting, clustering and annotating non-coding RNAs

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Schiex Thomas

    2008-01-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background In the last decade, sequencing projects have led to the development of a number of annotation systems dedicated to the structural and functional annotation of protein-coding genes. These annotation systems manage the annotation of the non-protein coding genes (ncRNAs in a very crude way, allowing neither the edition of the secondary structures nor the clustering of ncRNA genes into families which are crucial for appropriate annotation of these molecules. Results LeARN is a flexible software package which handles the complete process of ncRNA annotation by integrating the layers of automatic detection and human curation. Conclusion This software provides the infrastructure to deal properly with ncRNAs in the framework of any annotation project. It fills the gap between existing prediction software, that detect independent ncRNA occurrences, and public ncRNA repositories, that do not offer the flexibility and interactivity required for annotation projects. The software is freely available from the download section of the website http://bioinfo.genopole-toulouse.prd.fr/LeARN

  20. Displaying Annotations for Digitised Globes

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    Gede, Mátyás; Farbinger, Anna

    2018-05-01

    Thanks to the efforts of the various globe digitising projects, nowadays there are plenty of old globes that can be examined as 3D models on the computer screen. These globes usually contain a lot of interesting details that an average observer would not entirely discover for the first time. The authors developed a website that can display annotations for such digitised globes. These annotations help observers of the globe to discover all the important, interesting details. Annotations consist of a plain text title, a HTML formatted descriptive text and a corresponding polygon and are stored in KML format. The website is powered by the Cesium virtual globe engine.

  1. Annotated bibliography

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    1997-08-01

    Under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science and Technology, Waste Policy Institute (WPI) is conducting a five-year research project to develop a research-based approach for integrating communication products in stakeholder involvement related to innovative technology. As part of the research, WPI developed this annotated bibliography which contains almost 100 citations of articles/books/resources involving topics related to communication and public involvement aspects of deploying innovative cleanup technology. To compile the bibliography, WPI performed on-line literature searches (e.g., Dialog, International Association of Business Communicators Public Relations Society of America, Chemical Manufacturers Association, etc.), consulted past years proceedings of major environmental waste cleanup conferences (e.g., Waste Management), networked with professional colleagues and DOE sites to gather reports or case studies, and received input during the August 1996 Research Design Team meeting held to discuss the project's research methodology. Articles were selected for annotation based upon their perceived usefulness to the broad range of public involvement and communication practitioners

  2. Coordinated international action to accelerate genome-to-phenome with FAANG, the Functional Annotation of Animal Genomes project : open letter

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Archibald, A.L.; Bottema, C.D.; Brauning, R.; Burgess, S.C.; Burt, D.W.; Casas, E.; Cheng, H.H.; Clarke, L.; Couldrey, C.; Dalrymple, B.P.; Elsik, C.G.; Foissac, S.; Giuffra, E.; Groenen, M.A.M.; Hayes, B.J.; Huang, L.S.; Khatib, H.; Kijas, J.W.; Kim, H.; Lunney, J.K.; McCarthy, F.M.; McEwan, J.; Moore, S.; Nanduri, B.; Notredame, C.; Palti, Y.; Plastow, G.S.; Reecy, J.M.; Rohrer, G.; Sarropoulou, E.; Schmidt, C.J.; Silverstein, J.; Tellam, R.L.; Tixier-Boichard, M.; Tosser-klopp, G.; Tuggle, C.K.; Vilkki, J.; White, S.N.; Zhao, S.; Zhou, H.

    2015-01-01

    We describe the organization of a nascent international effort, the Functional Annotation of Animal Genomes (FAANG) project, whose aim is to produce comprehensive maps of functional elements in the genomes of domesticated animal species.

  3. Assessment of disease named entity recognition on a corpus of annotated sentences.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jimeno, Antonio; Jimenez-Ruiz, Ernesto; Lee, Vivian; Gaudan, Sylvain; Berlanga, Rafael; Rebholz-Schuhmann, Dietrich

    2008-04-11

    In recent years, the recognition of semantic types from the biomedical scientific literature has been focused on named entities like protein and gene names (PGNs) and gene ontology terms (GO terms). Other semantic types like diseases have not received the same level of attention. Different solutions have been proposed to identify disease named entities in the scientific literature. While matching the terminology with language patterns suffers from low recall (e.g., Whatizit) other solutions make use of morpho-syntactic features to better cover the full scope of terminological variability (e.g., MetaMap). Currently, MetaMap that is provided from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) is the state of the art solution for the annotation of concepts from UMLS (Unified Medical Language System) in the literature. Nonetheless, its performance has not yet been assessed on an annotated corpus. In addition, little effort has been invested so far to generate an annotated dataset that links disease entities in text to disease entries in a database, thesaurus or ontology and that could serve as a gold standard to benchmark text mining solutions. As part of our research work, we have taken a corpus that has been delivered in the past for the identification of associations of genes to diseases based on the UMLS Metathesaurus and we have reprocessed and re-annotated the corpus. We have gathered annotations for disease entities from two curators, analyzed their disagreement (0.51 in the kappa-statistic) and composed a single annotated corpus for public use. Thereafter, three solutions for disease named entity recognition including MetaMap have been applied to the corpus to automatically annotate it with UMLS Metathesaurus concepts. The resulting annotations have been benchmarked to compare their performance. The annotated corpus is publicly available at ftp://ftp.ebi.ac.uk/pub/software/textmining/corpora/diseases and can serve as a benchmark to other systems. In addition, we found

  4. Snpdat: Easy and rapid annotation of results from de novo snp discovery projects for model and non-model organisms

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Doran Anthony G

    2013-02-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs are the most abundant genetic variant found in vertebrates and invertebrates. SNP discovery has become a highly automated, robust and relatively inexpensive process allowing the identification of many thousands of mutations for model and non-model organisms. Annotating large numbers of SNPs can be a difficult and complex process. Many tools available are optimised for use with organisms densely sampled for SNPs, such as humans. There are currently few tools available that are species non-specific or support non-model organism data. Results Here we present SNPdat, a high throughput analysis tool that can provide a comprehensive annotation of both novel and known SNPs for any organism with a draft sequence and annotation. Using a dataset of 4,566 SNPs identified in cattle using high-throughput DNA sequencing we demonstrate the annotations performed and the statistics that can be generated by SNPdat. Conclusions SNPdat provides users with a simple tool for annotation of genomes that are either not supported by other tools or have a small number of annotated SNPs available. SNPdat can also be used to analyse datasets from organisms which are densely sampled for SNPs. As a command line tool it can easily be incorporated into existing SNP discovery pipelines and fills a niche for analyses involving non-model organisms that are not supported by many available SNP annotation tools. SNPdat will be of great interest to scientists involved in SNP discovery and analysis projects, particularly those with limited bioinformatics experience.

  5. GSV Annotated Bibliography

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Roberts, Randy S. [Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States); Pope, Paul A. [Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Jiang, Ming [Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States); Trucano, Timothy G. [Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States); Aragon, Cecilia R. [Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Ni, Kevin [Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States); Wei, Thomas [Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States); Chilton, Lawrence K. [Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Bakel, Alan [Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)

    2010-09-14

    The following annotated bibliography was developed as part of the geospatial algorithm verification and validation (GSV) project for the Simulation, Algorithms and Modeling program of NA-22. Verification and Validation of geospatial image analysis algorithms covers a wide range of technologies. Papers in the bibliography are thus organized into the following five topic areas: Image processing and analysis, usability and validation of geospatial image analysis algorithms, image distance measures, scene modeling and image rendering, and transportation simulation models. Many other papers were studied during the course of the investigation including. The annotations for these articles can be found in the paper "On the verification and validation of geospatial image analysis algorithms".

  6. WormBase: Annotating many nematode genomes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Howe, Kevin; Davis, Paul; Paulini, Michael; Tuli, Mary Ann; Williams, Gary; Yook, Karen; Durbin, Richard; Kersey, Paul; Sternberg, Paul W

    2012-01-01

    WormBase (www.wormbase.org) has been serving the scientific community for over 11 years as the central repository for genomic and genetic information for the soil nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. The resource has evolved from its beginnings as a database housing the genomic sequence and genetic and physical maps of a single species, and now represents the breadth and diversity of nematode research, currently serving genome sequence and annotation for around 20 nematodes. In this article, we focus on WormBase's role of genome sequence annotation, describing how we annotate and integrate data from a growing collection of nematode species and strains. We also review our approaches to sequence curation, and discuss the impact on annotation quality of large functional genomics projects such as modENCODE.

  7. Solar Tutorial and Annotation Resource (STAR)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Showalter, C.; Rex, R.; Hurlburt, N. E.; Zita, E. J.

    2009-12-01

    We have written a software suite designed to facilitate solar data analysis by scientists, students, and the public, anticipating enormous datasets from future instruments. Our “STAR" suite includes an interactive learning section explaining 15 classes of solar events. Users learn software tools that exploit humans’ superior ability (over computers) to identify many events. Annotation tools include time slice generation to quantify loop oscillations, the interpolation of event shapes using natural cubic splines (for loops, sigmoids, and filaments) and closed cubic splines (for coronal holes). Learning these tools in an environment where examples are provided prepares new users to comfortably utilize annotation software with new data. Upon completion of our tutorial, users are presented with media of various solar events and asked to identify and annotate the images, to test their mastery of the system. Goals of the project include public input into the data analysis of very large datasets from future solar satellites, and increased public interest and knowledge about the Sun. In 2010, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) will be launched into orbit. SDO’s advancements in solar telescope technology will generate a terabyte per day of high-quality data, requiring innovation in data management. While major projects develop automated feature recognition software, so that computers can complete much of the initial event tagging and analysis, still, that software cannot annotate features such as sigmoids, coronal magnetic loops, coronal dimming, etc., due to large amounts of data concentrated in relatively small areas. Previously, solar physicists manually annotated these features, but with the imminent influx of data it is unrealistic to expect specialized researchers to examine every image that computers cannot fully process. A new approach is needed to efficiently process these data. Providing analysis tools and data access to students and the public have proven

  8. Annotating individual human genomes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Torkamani, Ali; Scott-Van Zeeland, Ashley A; Topol, Eric J; Schork, Nicholas J

    2011-10-01

    Advances in DNA sequencing technologies have made it possible to rapidly, accurately and affordably sequence entire individual human genomes. As impressive as this ability seems, however, it will not likely amount to much if one cannot extract meaningful information from individual sequence data. Annotating variations within individual genomes and providing information about their biological or phenotypic impact will thus be crucially important in moving individual sequencing projects forward, especially in the context of the clinical use of sequence information. In this paper we consider the various ways in which one might annotate individual sequence variations and point out limitations in the available methods for doing so. It is arguable that, in the foreseeable future, DNA sequencing of individual genomes will become routine for clinical, research, forensic, and personal purposes. We therefore also consider directions and areas for further research in annotating genomic variants. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  9. ANNOTATING INDIVIDUAL HUMAN GENOMES*

    Science.gov (United States)

    Torkamani, Ali; Scott-Van Zeeland, Ashley A.; Topol, Eric J.; Schork, Nicholas J.

    2014-01-01

    Advances in DNA sequencing technologies have made it possible to rapidly, accurately and affordably sequence entire individual human genomes. As impressive as this ability seems, however, it will not likely to amount to much if one cannot extract meaningful information from individual sequence data. Annotating variations within individual genomes and providing information about their biological or phenotypic impact will thus be crucially important in moving individual sequencing projects forward, especially in the context of the clinical use of sequence information. In this paper we consider the various ways in which one might annotate individual sequence variations and point out limitations in the available methods for doing so. It is arguable that, in the foreseeable future, DNA sequencing of individual genomes will become routine for clinical, research, forensic, and personal purposes. We therefore also consider directions and areas for further research in annotating genomic variants. PMID:21839162

  10. Annotated Bibliography for the DEWPOINT project

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Oehmen, Christopher S.

    2009-04-21

    This bibliography covers aspects of the Detection and Early Warning of Proliferation from Online INdicators of Threat (DEWPOINT) project including 1) data management and querying, 2) baseline and advanced methods for classifying free text, and 3) algorithms to achieve the ultimate goal of inferring intent from free text sources. Metrics for assessing the quality and correctness of classification are addressed in the second group. Data management and querying include methods for efficiently storing, indexing, searching, and organizing the data we expect to operate on within the DEWPOINT project.

  11. Individualization and Modularization of Vocational Education Instructional Materials. An Annotated Bibliography of Publications and Projects. Bibliography Series No. 32.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Magisos, Joel H., Comp.; Stakelon, Anne E., Comp.

    This annotated bibliography is designed to assist applicants for research grants under part C (section 131a) of the amendments to the Vocational Education Act of 1963 by providing access to documents, journal articles, and current projects related to the individualization and modularization of vocational education instructional materials. The…

  12. Evaluation of three automated genome annotations for Halorhabdus utahensis.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Peter Bakke

    2009-07-01

    Full Text Available Genome annotations are accumulating rapidly and depend heavily on automated annotation systems. Many genome centers offer annotation systems but no one has compared their output in a systematic way to determine accuracy and inherent errors. Errors in the annotations are routinely deposited in databases such as NCBI and used to validate subsequent annotation errors. We submitted the genome sequence of halophilic archaeon Halorhabdus utahensis to be analyzed by three genome annotation services. We have examined the output from each service in a variety of ways in order to compare the methodology and effectiveness of the annotations, as well as to explore the genes, pathways, and physiology of the previously unannotated genome. The annotation services differ considerably in gene calls, features, and ease of use. We had to manually identify the origin of replication and the species-specific consensus ribosome-binding site. Additionally, we conducted laboratory experiments to test H. utahensis growth and enzyme activity. Current annotation practices need to improve in order to more accurately reflect a genome's biological potential. We make specific recommendations that could improve the quality of microbial annotation projects.

  13. Assessment of community-submitted ontology annotations from a novel database-journal partnership.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Berardini, Tanya Z; Li, Donghui; Muller, Robert; Chetty, Raymond; Ploetz, Larry; Singh, Shanker; Wensel, April; Huala, Eva

    2012-01-01

    As the scientific literature grows, leading to an increasing volume of published experimental data, so does the need to access and analyze this data using computational tools. The most commonly used method to convert published experimental data on gene function into controlled vocabulary annotations relies on a professional curator, employed by a model organism database or a more general resource such as UniProt, to read published articles and compose annotation statements based on the articles' contents. A more cost-effective and scalable approach capable of capturing gene function data across the whole range of biological research organisms in computable form is urgently needed. We have analyzed a set of ontology annotations generated through collaborations between the Arabidopsis Information Resource and several plant science journals. Analysis of the submissions entered using the online submission tool shows that most community annotations were well supported and the ontology terms chosen were at an appropriate level of specificity. Of the 503 individual annotations that were submitted, 97% were approved and community submissions captured 72% of all possible annotations. This new method for capturing experimental results in a computable form provides a cost-effective way to greatly increase the available body of annotations without sacrificing annotation quality. Database URL: www.arabidopsis.org.

  14. Assessment and management of animal damage in Pacific Northwest forests: an annotated bibliography.

    Science.gov (United States)

    D.M. Loucks; H.C. Black; M.L. Roush; S.R. Radosevich

    1990-01-01

    This annotated bibliography of published literature provides a comprehensive source of information on animal damage assessment and management for forest land managers and others in the Pacific Northwest. Citations and abstracts from more than 900 papers are indexed by subject and author. The publication complements and supplements A Silvicultural Approach to...

  15. Protein sequence annotation in the genome era: the annotation concept of SWISS-PROT+TREMBL.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Apweiler, R; Gateau, A; Contrino, S; Martin, M J; Junker, V; O'Donovan, C; Lang, F; Mitaritonna, N; Kappus, S; Bairoch, A

    1997-01-01

    SWISS-PROT is a curated protein sequence database which strives to provide a high level of annotation, a minimal level of redundancy and high level of integration with other databases. Ongoing genome sequencing projects have dramatically increased the number of protein sequences to be incorporated into SWISS-PROT. Since we do not want to dilute the quality standards of SWISS-PROT by incorporating sequences without proper sequence analysis and annotation, we cannot speed up the incorporation of new incoming data indefinitely. However, as we also want to make the sequences available as fast as possible, we introduced TREMBL (TRanslation of EMBL nucleotide sequence database), a supplement to SWISS-PROT. TREMBL consists of computer-annotated entries in SWISS-PROT format derived from the translation of all coding sequences (CDS) in the EMBL nucleotide sequence database, except for CDS already included in SWISS-PROT. While TREMBL is already of immense value, its computer-generated annotation does not match the quality of SWISS-PROTs. The main difference is in the protein functional information attached to sequences. With this in mind, we are dedicating substantial effort to develop and apply computer methods to enhance the functional information attached to TREMBL entries.

  16. Genome3D: a UK collaborative project to annotate genomic sequences with predicted 3D structures based on SCOP and CATH domains.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lewis, Tony E; Sillitoe, Ian; Andreeva, Antonina; Blundell, Tom L; Buchan, Daniel W A; Chothia, Cyrus; Cuff, Alison; Dana, Jose M; Filippis, Ioannis; Gough, Julian; Hunter, Sarah; Jones, David T; Kelley, Lawrence A; Kleywegt, Gerard J; Minneci, Federico; Mitchell, Alex; Murzin, Alexey G; Ochoa-Montaño, Bernardo; Rackham, Owen J L; Smith, James; Sternberg, Michael J E; Velankar, Sameer; Yeats, Corin; Orengo, Christine

    2013-01-01

    Genome3D, available at http://www.genome3d.eu, is a new collaborative project that integrates UK-based structural resources to provide a unique perspective on sequence-structure-function relationships. Leading structure prediction resources (DomSerf, FUGUE, Gene3D, pDomTHREADER, Phyre and SUPERFAMILY) provide annotations for UniProt sequences to indicate the locations of structural domains (structural annotations) and their 3D structures (structural models). Structural annotations and 3D model predictions are currently available for three model genomes (Homo sapiens, E. coli and baker's yeast), and the project will extend to other genomes in the near future. As these resources exploit different strategies for predicting structures, the main aim of Genome3D is to enable comparisons between all the resources so that biologists can see where predictions agree and are therefore more trusted. Furthermore, as these methods differ in whether they build their predictions using CATH or SCOP, Genome3D also contains the first official mapping between these two databases. This has identified pairs of similar superfamilies from the two resources at various degrees of consensus (532 bronze pairs, 527 silver pairs and 370 gold pairs).

  17. The GATO gene annotation tool for research laboratories

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    A. Fujita

    2005-11-01

    Full Text Available Large-scale genome projects have generated a rapidly increasing number of DNA sequences. Therefore, development of computational methods to rapidly analyze these sequences is essential for progress in genomic research. Here we present an automatic annotation system for preliminary analysis of DNA sequences. The gene annotation tool (GATO is a Bioinformatics pipeline designed to facilitate routine functional annotation and easy access to annotated genes. It was designed in view of the frequent need of genomic researchers to access data pertaining to a common set of genes. In the GATO system, annotation is generated by querying some of the Web-accessible resources and the information is stored in a local database, which keeps a record of all previous annotation results. GATO may be accessed from everywhere through the internet or may be run locally if a large number of sequences are going to be annotated. It is implemented in PHP and Perl and may be run on any suitable Web server. Usually, installation and application of annotation systems require experience and are time consuming, but GATO is simple and practical, allowing anyone with basic skills in informatics to access it without any special training. GATO can be downloaded at [http://mariwork.iq.usp.br/gato/]. Minimum computer free space required is 2 MB.

  18. Roadmap for annotating transposable elements in eukaryote genomes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Permal, Emmanuelle; Flutre, Timothée; Quesneville, Hadi

    2012-01-01

    Current high-throughput techniques have made it feasible to sequence even the genomes of non-model organisms. However, the annotation process now represents a bottleneck to genome analysis, especially when dealing with transposable elements (TE). Combined approaches, using both de novo and knowledge-based methods to detect TEs, are likely to produce reasonably comprehensive and sensitive results. This chapter provides a roadmap for researchers involved in genome projects to address this issue. At each step of the TE annotation process, from the identification of TE families to the annotation of TE copies, we outline the tools and good practices to be used.

  19. Book Reviews, Annotation, and Web Technology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schulze, Patricia

    From reading texts to annotating web pages, grade 6-8 students rely on group cooperation and individual reading and writing skills in this research project that spans six 50-minute lessons. Student objectives for this project are that they will: read, discuss, and keep a journal on a book in literature circles; understand the elements of and…

  20. Designing a Lexical Database for a Combined Use of Corpus Annotation and Dictionary Editing

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Kristoffersen, Jette Hedegaard; Troelsgård, Thomas; Langer, Gabriele

    2016-01-01

    In a combined corpus-dictionary project, you would need one lexical database that could serve as a shared “backbone” for both corpus annotation and dictionary editing, but it is not that easy to define a database structure that applies satisfactorily to both these purposes. In this paper, we...... will exemplify the problem and present ideas on how to model structures in a lexical database that facilitate corpus annotation as well as dictionary editing. The paper is a joint work between the DGS Corpus Project and the DTS Dictionary Project. The two projects come from opposite sides of the spectrum (one...... adjusting a lexical database grown from dictionary making for corpus annotating, one building a lexical database in parallel with corpus annotation and editing a corpus-based dictionary), and we will consider requirements and feasible structures for a database that can serve both corpus and dictionary....

  1. Annotation of the Evaluative Language in a Dependency Treebank

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Šindlerová Jana

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available In the paper, we present our efforts to annotate evaluative language in the Prague Dependency Treebank 2.0. The project is a follow-up of the series of annotations of small plaintext corpora. It uses automatic identification of potentially evaluative nodes through mapping a Czech subjectivity lexicon to syntactically annotated data. These nodes are then manually checked by an annotator and either dismissed as standing in a non-evaluative context, or confirmed as evaluative. In the latter case, information about the polarity orientation, the source and target of evaluation is added by the annotator. The annotations unveiled several advantages and disadvantages of the chosen framework. The advantages involve more structured and easy-to-handle environment for the annotator, visibility of syntactic patterning of the evaluative state, effective solving of discontinuous structures or a new perspective on the influence of good/bad news. The disadvantages include little capability of treating cases with evaluation spread among more syntactically connected nodes at once, little capability of treating metaphorical expressions, or disregarding the effects of negation and intensification in the current scheme.

  2. Managing and Querying Image Annotation and Markup in XML.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Fusheng; Pan, Tony; Sharma, Ashish; Saltz, Joel

    2010-01-01

    Proprietary approaches for representing annotations and image markup are serious barriers for researchers to share image data and knowledge. The Annotation and Image Markup (AIM) project is developing a standard based information model for image annotation and markup in health care and clinical trial environments. The complex hierarchical structures of AIM data model pose new challenges for managing such data in terms of performance and support of complex queries. In this paper, we present our work on managing AIM data through a native XML approach, and supporting complex image and annotation queries through native extension of XQuery language. Through integration with xService, AIM databases can now be conveniently shared through caGrid.

  3. Managing and Querying Image Annotation and Markup in XML

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Fusheng; Pan, Tony; Sharma, Ashish; Saltz, Joel

    2010-01-01

    Proprietary approaches for representing annotations and image markup are serious barriers for researchers to share image data and knowledge. The Annotation and Image Markup (AIM) project is developing a standard based information model for image annotation and markup in health care and clinical trial environments. The complex hierarchical structures of AIM data model pose new challenges for managing such data in terms of performance and support of complex queries. In this paper, we present our work on managing AIM data through a native XML approach, and supporting complex image and annotation queries through native extension of XQuery language. Through integration with xService, AIM databases can now be conveniently shared through caGrid. PMID:21218167

  4. Current trend of annotating single nucleotide variation in humans--A case study on SNVrap.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Mulin Jun; Wang, Junwen

    2015-06-01

    As high throughput methods, such as whole genome genotyping arrays, whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS), have detected huge amounts of genetic variants associated with human diseases, function annotation of these variants is an indispensable step in understanding disease etiology. Large-scale functional genomics projects, such as The ENCODE Project and Roadmap Epigenomics Project, provide genome-wide profiling of functional elements across different human cell types and tissues. With the urgent demands for identification of disease-causal variants, comprehensive and easy-to-use annotation tool is highly in demand. Here we review and discuss current progress and trend of the variant annotation field. Furthermore, we introduce a comprehensive web portal for annotating human genetic variants. We use gene-based features and the latest functional genomics datasets to annotate single nucleotide variation (SNVs) in human, at whole genome scale. We further apply several function prediction algorithms to annotate SNVs that might affect different biological processes, including transcriptional gene regulation, alternative splicing, post-transcriptional regulation, translation and post-translational modifications. The SNVrap web portal is freely available at http://jjwanglab.org/snvrap. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  5. A Novel Approach to Semantic and Coreference Annotation at LLNL

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Firpo, M

    2005-02-04

    A case is made for the importance of high quality semantic and coreference annotation. The challenges of providing such annotation are described. Asperger's Syndrome is introduced, and the connections are drawn between the needs of text annotation and the abilities of persons with Asperger's Syndrome to meet those needs. Finally, a pilot program is recommended wherein semantic annotation is performed by people with Asperger's Syndrome. The primary points embodied in this paper are as follows: (1) Document annotation is essential to the Natural Language Processing (NLP) projects at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL); (2) LLNL does not currently have a system in place to meet its need for text annotation; (3) Text annotation is challenging for a variety of reasons, many related to its very rote nature; (4) Persons with Asperger's Syndrome are particularly skilled at rote verbal tasks, and behavioral experts agree that they would excel at text annotation; and (6) A pilot study is recommend in which two to three people with Asperger's Syndrome annotate documents and then the quality and throughput of their work is evaluated relative to that of their neuro-typical peers.

  6. Estimating the annotation error rate of curated GO database sequence annotations

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Brown Alfred L

    2007-05-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Annotations that describe the function of sequences are enormously important to researchers during laboratory investigations and when making computational inferences. However, there has been little investigation into the data quality of sequence function annotations. Here we have developed a new method of estimating the error rate of curated sequence annotations, and applied this to the Gene Ontology (GO sequence database (GOSeqLite. This method involved artificially adding errors to sequence annotations at known rates, and used regression to model the impact on the precision of annotations based on BLAST matched sequences. Results We estimated the error rate of curated GO sequence annotations in the GOSeqLite database (March 2006 at between 28% and 30%. Annotations made without use of sequence similarity based methods (non-ISS had an estimated error rate of between 13% and 18%. Annotations made with the use of sequence similarity methodology (ISS had an estimated error rate of 49%. Conclusion While the overall error rate is reasonably low, it would be prudent to treat all ISS annotations with caution. Electronic annotators that use ISS annotations as the basis of predictions are likely to have higher false prediction rates, and for this reason designers of these systems should consider avoiding ISS annotations where possible. Electronic annotators that use ISS annotations to make predictions should be viewed sceptically. We recommend that curators thoroughly review ISS annotations before accepting them as valid. Overall, users of curated sequence annotations from the GO database should feel assured that they are using a comparatively high quality source of information.

  7. Integrating UIMA annotators in a web-based text processing framework.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Xiang; Arnold, Corey W

    2013-01-01

    The Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA) [1] framework is a growing platform for natural language processing (NLP) applications. However, such applications may be difficult for non-technical users deploy. This project presents a web-based framework that wraps UIMA-based annotator systems into a graphical user interface for researchers and clinicians, and a web service for developers. An annotator that extracts data elements from lung cancer radiology reports is presented to illustrate the use of the system. Annotation results from the web system can be exported to multiple formats for users to utilize in other aspects of their research and workflow. This project demonstrates the benefits of a lay-user interface for complex NLP applications. Efforts such as this can lead to increased interest and support for NLP work in the clinical domain.

  8. Ten steps to get started in Genome Assembly and Annotation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dominguez Del Angel, Victoria; Hjerde, Erik; Sterck, Lieven; Capella-Gutierrez, Salvadors; Notredame, Cederic; Vinnere Pettersson, Olga; Amselem, Joelle; Bouri, Laurent; Bocs, Stephanie; Klopp, Christophe; Gibrat, Jean-Francois; Vlasova, Anna; Leskosek, Brane L.; Soler, Lucile; Binzer-Panchal, Mahesh; Lantz, Henrik

    2018-01-01

    As a part of the ELIXIR-EXCELERATE efforts in capacity building, we present here 10 steps to facilitate researchers getting started in genome assembly and genome annotation. The guidelines given are broadly applicable, intended to be stable over time, and cover all aspects from start to finish of a general assembly and annotation project. Intrinsic properties of genomes are discussed, as is the importance of using high quality DNA. Different sequencing technologies and generally applicable workflows for genome assembly are also detailed. We cover structural and functional annotation and encourage readers to also annotate transposable elements, something that is often omitted from annotation workflows. The importance of data management is stressed, and we give advice on where to submit data and how to make your results Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR). PMID:29568489

  9. Sharing Map Annotations in Small Groups: X Marks the Spot

    Science.gov (United States)

    Congleton, Ben; Cerretani, Jacqueline; Newman, Mark W.; Ackerman, Mark S.

    Advances in location-sensing technology, coupled with an increasingly pervasive wireless Internet, have made it possible (and increasingly easy) to access and share information with context of one’s geospatial location. We conducted a four-phase study, with 27 students, to explore the practices surrounding the creation, interpretation and sharing of map annotations in specific social contexts. We found that annotation authors consider multiple factors when deciding how to annotate maps, including the perceived utility to the audience and how their contributions will reflect on the image they project to others. Consumers of annotations value the novelty of information, but must be convinced of the author’s credibility. In this paper we describe our study, present the results, and discuss implications for the design of software for sharing map annotations.

  10. The integration of a metadata generation framework in a music annotation workflow

    OpenAIRE

    Corthaut, Nik; Lippens, Stefaan; Govaerts, Sten; Duval, Erik; Martens, Jean-Pierre

    2009-01-01

    In the MuziK project we try to automate the typically hard task of annotating music files manually. This annotation is used for music recommendation and for automated playlist creation. The music experts of Aristo Music (http://www.aristomusic.com) defined the data fields. High quality annotations are required since the results, playlists, are used in commercial live settings and the cost of a wrong selection is high [1].

  11. Gene coexpression network analysis as a source of functional annotation for rice genes.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kevin L Childs

    Full Text Available With the existence of large publicly available plant gene expression data sets, many groups have undertaken data analyses to construct gene coexpression networks and functionally annotate genes. Often, a large compendium of unrelated or condition-independent expression data is used to construct gene networks. Condition-dependent expression experiments consisting of well-defined conditions/treatments have also been used to create coexpression networks to help examine particular biological processes. Gene networks derived from either condition-dependent or condition-independent data can be difficult to interpret if a large number of genes and connections are present. However, algorithms exist to identify modules of highly connected and biologically relevant genes within coexpression networks. In this study, we have used publicly available rice (Oryza sativa gene expression data to create gene coexpression networks using both condition-dependent and condition-independent data and have identified gene modules within these networks using the Weighted Gene Coexpression Network Analysis method. We compared the number of genes assigned to modules and the biological interpretability of gene coexpression modules to assess the utility of condition-dependent and condition-independent gene coexpression networks. For the purpose of providing functional annotation to rice genes, we found that gene modules identified by coexpression analysis of condition-dependent gene expression experiments to be more useful than gene modules identified by analysis of a condition-independent data set. We have incorporated our results into the MSU Rice Genome Annotation Project database as additional expression-based annotation for 13,537 genes, 2,980 of which lack a functional annotation description. These results provide two new types of functional annotation for our database. Genes in modules are now associated with groups of genes that constitute a collective functional

  12. Single Amplified Genomes as Source for Novel Extremozymes: Annotation, Expression and Functional Assessment

    KAUST Repository

    Grötzinger, Stefan

    2017-12-01

    substantially increased cell amounts and protein yields. The resulting gene expression products were assessed for function in vivo and/or in vitro. Our functional evaluation of the tested genes confirmed our annotation algorithm. Our developed strategy offers a general guide for using SAGs as a source of scientific and industrial investigations into “microbial dark matter” and may help to develop new catalysts, applicable for novel reactions in green chemistry.

  13. Quality assessment of digital annotated ECG data from clinical trials by the FDA ECG Warehouse.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sarapa, Nenad

    2007-09-01

    The FDA mandates that digital electrocardiograms (ECGs) from 'thorough' QTc trials be submitted into the ECG Warehouse in Health Level 7 extended markup language format with annotated onset and offset points of waveforms. The FDA did not disclose the exact Warehouse metrics and minimal acceptable quality standards. The author describes the Warehouse scoring algorithms and metrics used by FDA, points out ways to improve FDA review and suggests Warehouse benefits for pharmaceutical sponsors. The Warehouse ranks individual ECGs according to their score for each quality metric and produces histogram distributions with Warehouse-specific thresholds that identify ECGs of questionable quality. Automatic Warehouse algorithms assess the quality of QT annotation and duration of manual QT measurement by the central ECG laboratory.

  14. GSV Annotated Bibliography

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Roberts, Randy S. [Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States); Pope, Paul A. [Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Jiang, Ming [Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States); Trucano, Timothy G. [Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States); Aragon, Cecilia R. [Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Ni, Kevin [Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States); Wei, Thomas [Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States); Chilton, Lawrence K. [Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Bakel, Alan [Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)

    2011-06-14

    The following annotated bibliography was developed as part of the Geospatial Algorithm Veri cation and Validation (GSV) project for the Simulation, Algorithms and Modeling program of NA-22. Veri cation and Validation of geospatial image analysis algorithms covers a wide range of technologies. Papers in the bibliography are thus organized into the following ve topic areas: Image processing and analysis, usability and validation of geospatial image analysis algorithms, image distance measures, scene modeling and image rendering, and transportation simulation models.

  15. MIPS: analysis and annotation of genome information in 2007.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mewes, H W; Dietmann, S; Frishman, D; Gregory, R; Mannhaupt, G; Mayer, K F X; Münsterkötter, M; Ruepp, A; Spannagl, M; Stümpflen, V; Rattei, T

    2008-01-01

    The Munich Information Center for Protein Sequences (MIPS-GSF, Neuherberg, Germany) combines automatic processing of large amounts of sequences with manual annotation of selected model genomes. Due to the massive growth of the available data, the depth of annotation varies widely between independent databases. Also, the criteria for the transfer of information from known to orthologous sequences are diverse. To cope with the task of global in-depth genome annotation has become unfeasible. Therefore, our efforts are dedicated to three levels of annotation: (i) the curation of selected genomes, in particular from fungal and plant taxa (e.g. CYGD, MNCDB, MatDB), (ii) the comprehensive, consistent, automatic annotation employing exhaustive methods for the computation of sequence similarities and sequence-related attributes as well as the classification of individual sequences (SIMAP, PEDANT and FunCat) and (iii) the compilation of manually curated databases for protein interactions based on scrutinized information from the literature to serve as an accepted set of reliable annotated interaction data (MPACT, MPPI, CORUM). All databases and tools described as well as the detailed descriptions of our projects can be accessed through the MIPS web server (http://mips.gsf.de).

  16. The effectiveness of annotated (vs. non-annotated) digital pathology slides as a teaching tool during dermatology and pathology residencies.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Marsch, Amanda F; Espiritu, Baltazar; Groth, John; Hutchens, Kelli A

    2014-06-01

    With today's technology, paraffin-embedded, hematoxylin & eosin-stained pathology slides can be scanned to generate high quality virtual slides. Using proprietary software, digital images can also be annotated with arrows, circles and boxes to highlight certain diagnostic features. Previous studies assessing digital microscopy as a teaching tool did not involve the annotation of digital images. The objective of this study was to compare the effectiveness of annotated digital pathology slides versus non-annotated digital pathology slides as a teaching tool during dermatology and pathology residencies. A study group composed of 31 dermatology and pathology residents was asked to complete an online pre-quiz consisting of 20 multiple choice style questions, each associated with a static digital pathology image. After completion, participants were given access to an online tutorial composed of digitally annotated pathology slides and subsequently asked to complete a post-quiz. A control group of 12 residents completed a non-annotated version of the tutorial. Nearly all participants in the study group improved their quiz score, with an average improvement of 17%, versus only 3% (P = 0.005) in the control group. These results support the notion that annotated digital pathology slides are superior to non-annotated slides for the purpose of resident education. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  17. A Set of Annotation Interfaces for Alignment of Parallel Corpora

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Singh Anil Kumar

    2014-09-01

    Full Text Available Annotation interfaces for parallel corpora which fit in well with other tools can be very useful. We describe a set of annotation interfaces which fulfill this criterion. This set includes a sentence alignment interface, two different word or word group alignment interfaces and an initial version of a parallel syntactic annotation alignment interface. These tools can be used for manual alignment, or they can be used to correct automatic alignments. Manual alignment can be performed in combination with certain kinds of linguistic annotation. Most of these interfaces use a representation called the Shakti Standard Format that has been found to be very robust and has been used for large and successful projects. It ties together the different interfaces, so that the data created by them is portable across all tools which support this representation. The existence of a query language for data stored in this representation makes it possible to build tools that allow easy search and modification of annotated parallel data.

  18. Ubiquitous Annotation Systems

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hansen, Frank Allan

    2006-01-01

    Ubiquitous annotation systems allow users to annotate physical places, objects, and persons with digital information. Especially in the field of location based information systems much work has been done to implement adaptive and context-aware systems, but few efforts have focused on the general...... requirements for linking information to objects in both physical and digital space. This paper surveys annotation techniques from open hypermedia systems, Web based annotation systems, and mobile and augmented reality systems to illustrate different approaches to four central challenges ubiquitous annotation...... systems have to deal with: anchoring, structuring, presentation, and authoring. Through a number of examples each challenge is discussed and HyCon, a context-aware hypermedia framework developed at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, is used to illustrate an integrated approach to ubiquitous annotations...

  19. DOE Hydropower Program biennial report 1990--1991 (with updated annotated bibliography)

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Chappell, J.R.; Rinehart, B.N.; Sommers, G.L. (Idaho National Engineering Lab., Idaho Falls, ID (United States)); Sale, M.J. (Oak Ridge National Lab., TN (United States))

    1991-07-01

    This report summarizes the activities of the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Hydropower Program for fiscal years 1990 and 1991, and provides an annotated bibliography of research, engineering, operations, regulations, and costs of projects pertinent to hydropower development. The Hydropower Program is organized as follows: background (including Technology Development and Engineering Research and Development); Resource Assessment; National Energy Strategy; Technology Transfer; Environmental Research; and, the bibliography discusses reports written by both private and non-Federal Government sectors. Most reports are available from the National Technical Information Service. 5 figs., 2 tabs.

  20. Sequence- and Structure-Based Functional Annotation and Assessment of Metabolic Transporters in Aspergillus oryzae: A Representative Case Study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nachon Raethong

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Aspergillus oryzae is widely used for the industrial production of enzymes. In A. oryzae metabolism, transporters appear to play crucial roles in controlling the flux of molecules for energy generation, nutrients delivery, and waste elimination in the cell. While the A. oryzae genome sequence is available, transporter annotation remains limited and thus the connectivity of metabolic networks is incomplete. In this study, we developed a metabolic annotation strategy to understand the relationship between the sequence, structure, and function for annotation of A. oryzae metabolic transporters. Sequence-based analysis with manual curation showed that 58 genes of 12,096 total genes in the A. oryzae genome encoded metabolic transporters. Under consensus integrative databases, 55 unambiguous metabolic transporter genes were distributed into channels and pores (7 genes, electrochemical potential-driven transporters (33 genes, and primary active transporters (15 genes. To reveal the transporter functional role, a combination of homology modeling and molecular dynamics simulation was implemented to assess the relationship between sequence to structure and structure to function. As in the energy metabolism of A. oryzae, the H+-ATPase encoded by the AO090005000842 gene was selected as a representative case study of multilevel linkage annotation. Our developed strategy can be used for enhancing metabolic network reconstruction.

  1. Sequence- and Structure-Based Functional Annotation and Assessment of Metabolic Transporters in Aspergillus oryzae: A Representative Case Study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Raethong, Nachon; Wong-Ekkabut, Jirasak; Laoteng, Kobkul; Vongsangnak, Wanwipa

    2016-01-01

    Aspergillus oryzae is widely used for the industrial production of enzymes. In A. oryzae metabolism, transporters appear to play crucial roles in controlling the flux of molecules for energy generation, nutrients delivery, and waste elimination in the cell. While the A. oryzae genome sequence is available, transporter annotation remains limited and thus the connectivity of metabolic networks is incomplete. In this study, we developed a metabolic annotation strategy to understand the relationship between the sequence, structure, and function for annotation of A. oryzae metabolic transporters. Sequence-based analysis with manual curation showed that 58 genes of 12,096 total genes in the A. oryzae genome encoded metabolic transporters. Under consensus integrative databases, 55 unambiguous metabolic transporter genes were distributed into channels and pores (7 genes), electrochemical potential-driven transporters (33 genes), and primary active transporters (15 genes). To reveal the transporter functional role, a combination of homology modeling and molecular dynamics simulation was implemented to assess the relationship between sequence to structure and structure to function. As in the energy metabolism of A. oryzae, the H(+)-ATPase encoded by the AO090005000842 gene was selected as a representative case study of multilevel linkage annotation. Our developed strategy can be used for enhancing metabolic network reconstruction.

  2. AutoFACT: An Automatic Functional Annotation and Classification Tool

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lang B Franz

    2005-06-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Assignment of function to new molecular sequence data is an essential step in genomics projects. The usual process involves similarity searches of a given sequence against one or more databases, an arduous process for large datasets. Results We present AutoFACT, a fully automated and customizable annotation tool that assigns biologically informative functions to a sequence. Key features of this tool are that it (1 analyzes nucleotide and protein sequence data; (2 determines the most informative functional description by combining multiple BLAST reports from several user-selected databases; (3 assigns putative metabolic pathways, functional classes, enzyme classes, GeneOntology terms and locus names; and (4 generates output in HTML, text and GFF formats for the user's convenience. We have compared AutoFACT to four well-established annotation pipelines. The error rate of functional annotation is estimated to be only between 1–2%. Comparison of AutoFACT to the traditional top-BLAST-hit annotation method shows that our procedure increases the number of functionally informative annotations by approximately 50%. Conclusion AutoFACT will serve as a useful annotation tool for smaller sequencing groups lacking dedicated bioinformatics staff. It is implemented in PERL and runs on LINUX/UNIX platforms. AutoFACT is available at http://megasun.bch.umontreal.ca/Software/AutoFACT.htm.

  3. MEETING: Chlamydomonas Annotation Jamboree - October 2003

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Grossman, Arthur R

    2007-04-13

    Shotgun sequencing of the nuclear genome of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (Chlamydomonas throughout) was performed at an approximate 10X coverage by JGI. Roughly half of the genome is now contained on 26 scaffolds, all of which are at least 1.6 Mb, and the coverage of the genome is ~95%. There are now over 200,000 cDNA sequence reads that we have generated as part of the Chlamydomonas genome project (Grossman, 2003; Shrager et al., 2003; Grossman et al. 2007; Merchant et al., 2007); other sequences have also been generated by the Kasuza sequence group (Asamizu et al., 1999; Asamizu et al., 2000) or individual laboratories that have focused on specific genes. Shrager et al. (2003) placed the reads into distinct contigs (an assemblage of reads with overlapping nucleotide sequences), and contigs that group together as part of the same genes have been designated ACEs (assembly of contigs generated from EST information). All of the reads have also been mapped to the Chlamydomonas nuclear genome and the cDNAs and their corresponding genomic sequences have been reassembled, and the resulting assemblage is called an ACEG (an Assembly of contiguous EST sequences supported by genomic sequence) (Jain et al., 2007). Most of the unique genes or ACEGs are also represented by gene models that have been generated by the Joint Genome Institute (JGI, Walnut Creek, CA). These gene models have been placed onto the DNA scaffolds and are presented as a track on the Chlamydomonas genome browser associated with the genome portal (http://genome.jgi-psf.org/Chlre3/Chlre3.home.html). Ultimately, the meeting grant awarded by DOE has helped enormously in the development of an annotation pipeline (a set of guidelines used in the annotation of genes) and resulted in high quality annotation of over 4,000 genes; the annotators were from both Europe and the USA. Some of the people who led the annotation initiative were Arthur Grossman, Olivier Vallon, and Sabeeha Merchant (with many individual

  4. AGORA : Organellar genome annotation from the amino acid and nucleotide references.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jung, Jaehee; Kim, Jong Im; Jeong, Young-Sik; Yi, Gangman

    2018-03-29

    Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have led to the accumulation of highthroughput sequence data from various organisms in biology. To apply gene annotation of organellar genomes for various organisms, more optimized tools for functional gene annotation are required. Almost all gene annotation tools are mainly focused on the chloroplast genome of land plants or the mitochondrial genome of animals.We have developed a web application AGORA for the fast, user-friendly, and improved annotations of organellar genomes. AGORA annotates genes based on a BLAST-based homology search and clustering with selected reference sequences from the NCBI database or user-defined uploaded data. AGORA can annotate the functional genes in almost all mitochondrion and plastid genomes of eukaryotes. The gene annotation of a genome with an exon-intron structure within a gene or inverted repeat region is also available. It provides information of start and end positions of each gene, BLAST results compared with the reference sequence, and visualization of gene map by OGDRAW. Users can freely use the software, and the accessible URL is https://bigdata.dongguk.edu/gene_project/AGORA/.The main module of the tool is implemented by the python and php, and the web page is built by the HTML and CSS to support all browsers. gangman@dongguk.edu.

  5. The standard operating procedure of the DOE-JGI Microbial Genome Annotation Pipeline (MGAP v.4).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huntemann, Marcel; Ivanova, Natalia N; Mavromatis, Konstantinos; Tripp, H James; Paez-Espino, David; Palaniappan, Krishnaveni; Szeto, Ernest; Pillay, Manoj; Chen, I-Min A; Pati, Amrita; Nielsen, Torben; Markowitz, Victor M; Kyrpides, Nikos C

    2015-01-01

    The DOE-JGI Microbial Genome Annotation Pipeline performs structural and functional annotation of microbial genomes that are further included into the Integrated Microbial Genome comparative analysis system. MGAP is applied to assembled nucleotide sequence datasets that are provided via the IMG submission site. Dataset submission for annotation first requires project and associated metadata description in GOLD. The MGAP sequence data processing consists of feature prediction including identification of protein-coding genes, non-coding RNAs and regulatory RNA features, as well as CRISPR elements. Structural annotation is followed by assignment of protein product names and functions.

  6. Improving Microbial Genome Annotations in an Integrated Database Context

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, I-Min A.; Markowitz, Victor M.; Chu, Ken; Anderson, Iain; Mavromatis, Konstantinos; Kyrpides, Nikos C.; Ivanova, Natalia N.

    2013-01-01

    Effective comparative analysis of microbial genomes requires a consistent and complete view of biological data. Consistency regards the biological coherence of annotations, while completeness regards the extent and coverage of functional characterization for genomes. We have developed tools that allow scientists to assess and improve the consistency and completeness of microbial genome annotations in the context of the Integrated Microbial Genomes (IMG) family of systems. All publicly available microbial genomes are characterized in IMG using different functional annotation and pathway resources, thus providing a comprehensive framework for identifying and resolving annotation discrepancies. A rule based system for predicting phenotypes in IMG provides a powerful mechanism for validating functional annotations, whereby the phenotypic traits of an organism are inferred based on the presence of certain metabolic reactions and pathways and compared to experimentally observed phenotypes. The IMG family of systems are available at http://img.jgi.doe.gov/. PMID:23424620

  7. Improving microbial genome annotations in an integrated database context.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    I-Min A Chen

    Full Text Available Effective comparative analysis of microbial genomes requires a consistent and complete view of biological data. Consistency regards the biological coherence of annotations, while completeness regards the extent and coverage of functional characterization for genomes. We have developed tools that allow scientists to assess and improve the consistency and completeness of microbial genome annotations in the context of the Integrated Microbial Genomes (IMG family of systems. All publicly available microbial genomes are characterized in IMG using different functional annotation and pathway resources, thus providing a comprehensive framework for identifying and resolving annotation discrepancies. A rule based system for predicting phenotypes in IMG provides a powerful mechanism for validating functional annotations, whereby the phenotypic traits of an organism are inferred based on the presence of certain metabolic reactions and pathways and compared to experimentally observed phenotypes. The IMG family of systems are available at http://img.jgi.doe.gov/.

  8. Towards Viral Genome Annotation Standards, Report from the 2010 NCBI Annotation Workshop.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brister, James Rodney; Bao, Yiming; Kuiken, Carla; Lefkowitz, Elliot J; Le Mercier, Philippe; Leplae, Raphael; Madupu, Ramana; Scheuermann, Richard H; Schobel, Seth; Seto, Donald; Shrivastava, Susmita; Sterk, Peter; Zeng, Qiandong; Klimke, William; Tatusova, Tatiana

    2010-10-01

    Improvements in DNA sequencing technologies portend a new era in virology and could possibly lead to a giant leap in our understanding of viral evolution and ecology. Yet, as viral genome sequences begin to fill the world's biological databases, it is critically important to recognize that the scientific promise of this era is dependent on consistent and comprehensive genome annotation. With this in mind, the NCBI Genome Annotation Workshop recently hosted a study group tasked with developing sequence, function, and metadata annotation standards for viral genomes. This report describes the issues involved in viral genome annotation and reviews policy recommendations presented at the NCBI Annotation Workshop.

  9. Towards Viral Genome Annotation Standards, Report from the 2010 NCBI Annotation Workshop

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Qiandong Zeng

    2010-10-01

    Full Text Available Improvements in DNA sequencing technologies portend a new era in virology and could possibly lead to a giant leap in our understanding of viral evolution and ecology. Yet, as viral genome sequences begin to fill the world’s biological databases, it is critically important to recognize that the scientific promise of this era is dependent on consistent and comprehensive genome annotation. With this in mind, the NCBI Genome Annotation Workshop recently hosted a study group tasked with developing sequence, function, and metadata annotation standards for viral genomes. This report describes the issues involved in viral genome annotation and reviews policy recommendations presented at the NCBI Annotation Workshop.

  10. Extending eScience Provenance with User-Submitted Semantic Annotations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Michaelis, J.; Zednik, S.; West, P.; Fox, P. A.; McGuinness, D. L.

    2010-12-01

    eScience based systems generate provenance of their data products, related to such things as: data processing, data collection conditions, expert evaluation, and data product quality. Recent advances in web-based technology offer users the possibility of making annotations to both data products and steps in accompanying provenance traces, thereby expanding the utility of such provenance for others. These contributing users may have varying backgrounds, ranging from system experts to outside domain experts to citizen scientists. Furthermore, such users may wish to make varying types of annotations - ranging from documenting the purpose of a provenance step to raising concerns about the quality of data dependencies. Semantic Web technologies allow for such kinds of rich annotations to be made to provenance through the use of ontology vocabularies for (i) organizing provenance, and (ii) organizing user/annotation classifications. Furthermore, through Linked Data practices, Semantic linkages may be made from provenance steps to external data of interest. A desire for Semantically-annotated provenance has been motivated by data management issues in the Mauna Loa Solar Observatory’s (MLSO) Advanced Coronal Observing System (ACOS). In ACOS, photomoeter-based readings are taken of solar activity and subsequently processed into final data products consumable by end users. At intermediate stages of ACOS processing, factors such as evaluations by human experts and weather conditions are logged, which could impact data product quality. If such factors are linked via user-submitted annotations to provenance, it could be significantly beneficial for other users. Likewise, the background of a user could impact the credibility of their annotations. For example, an annotation made by a citizen scientist describing the purpose of a provenance step may not be as reliable as a similar annotation made by an ACOS project member. For this work, we have developed a software package that

  11. Jannovar: a java library for exome annotation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jäger, Marten; Wang, Kai; Bauer, Sebastian; Smedley, Damian; Krawitz, Peter; Robinson, Peter N

    2014-05-01

    Transcript-based annotation and pedigree analysis are two basic steps in the computational analysis of whole-exome sequencing experiments in genetic diagnostics and disease-gene discovery projects. Here, we present Jannovar, a stand-alone Java application as well as a Java library designed to be used in larger software frameworks for exome and genome analysis. Jannovar uses an interval tree to identify all transcripts affected by a given variant, and provides Human Genome Variation Society-compliant annotations both for variants affecting coding sequences and splice junctions as well as untranslated regions and noncoding RNA transcripts. Jannovar can also perform family-based pedigree analysis with Variant Call Format (VCF) files with data from members of a family segregating a Mendelian disorder. Using a desktop computer, Jannovar requires a few seconds to annotate a typical VCF file with exome data. Jannovar is freely available under the BSD2 license. Source code as well as the Java application and library file can be downloaded from http://compbio.charite.de (with tutorial) and https://github.com/charite/jannovar. © 2014 WILEY PERIODICALS, INC.

  12. A topic modeling approach for web service annotation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Leandro Ordóñez-Ante

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available The actual implementation of semantic-based mechanisms for service retrieval has been restricted, given the resource-intensive procedure involved in the formal specification of services, which generally comprises associating semantic annotations to their documentation sources. Typically, developer performs such a procedure by hand, requiring specialized knowledge on models for semantic description of services (e.g. OWL-S, WSMO, SAWSDL, as well as formal specifications of knowledge. Thus, this semantic-based service description procedure turns out to be a cumbersome and error-prone task. This paper introduces a proposal for service annotation, based on processing web service documentation for extracting information regarding its offered capabilities. By uncovering the hidden semantic structure of such information through statistical analysis techniques, we are able to associate meaningful annotations to the services operations/resources, while grouping those operations into non-exclusive semantic related categories. This research paper belongs to the TelComp 2.0 project, which Colciencas and University of Cauca founded in cooperation.

  13. Semi-Semantic Annotation: A guideline for the URDU.KON-TB treebank POS annotation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Qaiser ABBAS

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available This work elaborates the semi-semantic part of speech annotation guidelines for the URDU.KON-TB treebank: an annotated corpus. A hierarchical annotation scheme was designed to label the part of speech and then applied on the corpus. This raw corpus was collected from the Urdu Wikipedia and the Jang newspaper and then annotated with the proposed semi-semantic part of speech labels. The corpus contains text of local & international news, social stories, sports, culture, finance, religion, traveling, etc. This exercise finally contributed a part of speech annotation to the URDU.KON-TB treebank. Twenty-two main part of speech categories are divided into subcategories, which conclude the morphological, and semantical information encoded in it. This article reports the annotation guidelines in major; however, it also briefs the development of the URDU.KON-TB treebank, which includes the raw corpus collection, designing & employment of annotation scheme and finally, its statistical evaluation and results. The guidelines presented as follows, will be useful for linguistic community to annotate the sentences not only for the national language Urdu but for the other indigenous languages like Punjab, Sindhi, Pashto, etc., as well.

  14. Algal Functional Annotation Tool: a web-based analysis suite to functionally interpret large gene lists using integrated annotation and expression data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Merchant Sabeeha S

    2011-07-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Progress in genome sequencing is proceeding at an exponential pace, and several new algal genomes are becoming available every year. One of the challenges facing the community is the association of protein sequences encoded in the genomes with biological function. While most genome assembly projects generate annotations for predicted protein sequences, they are usually limited and integrate functional terms from a limited number of databases. Another challenge is the use of annotations to interpret large lists of 'interesting' genes generated by genome-scale datasets. Previously, these gene lists had to be analyzed across several independent biological databases, often on a gene-by-gene basis. In contrast, several annotation databases, such as DAVID, integrate data from multiple functional databases and reveal underlying biological themes of large gene lists. While several such databases have been constructed for animals, none is currently available for the study of algae. Due to renewed interest in algae as potential sources of biofuels and the emergence of multiple algal genome sequences, a significant need has arisen for such a database to process the growing compendiums of algal genomic data. Description The Algal Functional Annotation Tool is a web-based comprehensive analysis suite integrating annotation data from several pathway, ontology, and protein family databases. The current version provides annotation for the model alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, and in the future will include additional genomes. The site allows users to interpret large gene lists by identifying associated functional terms, and their enrichment. Additionally, expression data for several experimental conditions were compiled and analyzed to provide an expression-based enrichment search. A tool to search for functionally-related genes based on gene expression across these conditions is also provided. Other features include dynamic visualization of

  15. BioAnnote: a software platform for annotating biomedical documents with application in medical learning environments.

    Science.gov (United States)

    López-Fernández, H; Reboiro-Jato, M; Glez-Peña, D; Aparicio, F; Gachet, D; Buenaga, M; Fdez-Riverola, F

    2013-07-01

    Automatic term annotation from biomedical documents and external information linking are becoming a necessary prerequisite in modern computer-aided medical learning systems. In this context, this paper presents BioAnnote, a flexible and extensible open-source platform for automatically annotating biomedical resources. Apart from other valuable features, the software platform includes (i) a rich client enabling users to annotate multiple documents in a user friendly environment, (ii) an extensible and embeddable annotation meta-server allowing for the annotation of documents with local or remote vocabularies and (iii) a simple client/server protocol which facilitates the use of our meta-server from any other third-party application. In addition, BioAnnote implements a powerful scripting engine able to perform advanced batch annotations. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  16. Chado controller: advanced annotation management with a community annotation system.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guignon, Valentin; Droc, Gaëtan; Alaux, Michael; Baurens, Franc-Christophe; Garsmeur, Olivier; Poiron, Claire; Carver, Tim; Rouard, Mathieu; Bocs, Stéphanie

    2012-04-01

    We developed a controller that is compliant with the Chado database schema, GBrowse and genome annotation-editing tools such as Artemis and Apollo. It enables the management of public and private data, monitors manual annotation (with controlled vocabularies, structural and functional annotation controls) and stores versions of annotation for all modified features. The Chado controller uses PostgreSQL and Perl. The Chado Controller package is available for download at http://www.gnpannot.org/content/chado-controller and runs on any Unix-like operating system, and documentation is available at http://www.gnpannot.org/content/chado-controller-doc The system can be tested using the GNPAnnot Sandbox at http://www.gnpannot.org/content/gnpannot-sandbox-form valentin.guignon@cirad.fr; stephanie.sidibe-bocs@cirad.fr Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

  17. Automatically annotating topics in transcripts of patient-provider interactions via machine learning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wallace, Byron C; Laws, M Barton; Small, Kevin; Wilson, Ira B; Trikalinos, Thomas A

    2014-05-01

    Annotated patient-provider encounters can provide important insights into clinical communication, ultimately suggesting how it might be improved to effect better health outcomes. But annotating outpatient transcripts with Roter or General Medical Interaction Analysis System (GMIAS) codes is expensive, limiting the scope of such analyses. We propose automatically annotating transcripts of patient-provider interactions with topic codes via machine learning. We use a conditional random field (CRF) to model utterance topic probabilities. The model accounts for the sequential structure of conversations and the words comprising utterances. We assess predictive performance via 10-fold cross-validation over GMIAS-annotated transcripts of 360 outpatient visits (>230,000 utterances). We then use automated in place of manual annotations to reproduce an analysis of 116 additional visits from a randomized trial that used GMIAS to assess the efficacy of an intervention aimed at improving communication around antiretroviral (ARV) adherence. With respect to 6 topic codes, the CRF achieved a mean pairwise kappa compared with human annotators of 0.49 (range: 0.47-0.53) and a mean overall accuracy of 0.64 (range: 0.62-0.66). With respect to the RCT reanalysis, results using automated annotations agreed with those obtained using manual ones. According to the manual annotations, the median number of ARV-related utterances without and with the intervention was 49.5 versus 76, respectively (paired sign test P = 0.07). When automated annotations were used, the respective numbers were 39 versus 55 (P = 0.04). While moderately accurate, the predicted annotations are far from perfect. Conversational topics are intermediate outcomes, and their utility is still being researched. This foray into automated topic inference suggests that machine learning methods can classify utterances comprising patient-provider interactions into clinically relevant topics with reasonable accuracy.

  18. MicroScope: a platform for microbial genome annotation and comparative genomics.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vallenet, D; Engelen, S; Mornico, D; Cruveiller, S; Fleury, L; Lajus, A; Rouy, Z; Roche, D; Salvignol, G; Scarpelli, C; Médigue, C

    2009-01-01

    The initial outcome of genome sequencing is the creation of long text strings written in a four letter alphabet. The role of in silico sequence analysis is to assist biologists in the act of associating biological knowledge with these sequences, allowing investigators to make inferences and predictions that can be tested experimentally. A wide variety of software is available to the scientific community, and can be used to identify genomic objects, before predicting their biological functions. However, only a limited number of biologically interesting features can be revealed from an isolated sequence. Comparative genomics tools, on the other hand, by bringing together the information contained in numerous genomes simultaneously, allow annotators to make inferences based on the idea that evolution and natural selection are central to the definition of all biological processes. We have developed the MicroScope platform in order to offer a web-based framework for the systematic and efficient revision of microbial genome annotation and comparative analysis (http://www.genoscope.cns.fr/agc/microscope). Starting with the description of the flow chart of the annotation processes implemented in the MicroScope pipeline, and the development of traditional and novel microbial annotation and comparative analysis tools, this article emphasizes the essential role of expert annotation as a complement of automatic annotation. Several examples illustrate the use of implemented tools for the review and curation of annotations of both new and publicly available microbial genomes within MicroScope's rich integrated genome framework. The platform is used as a viewer in order to browse updated annotation information of available microbial genomes (more than 440 organisms to date), and in the context of new annotation projects (117 bacterial genomes). The human expertise gathered in the MicroScope database (about 280,000 independent annotations) contributes to improve the quality of

  19. Assessment of Students Projects

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Kofoed, Lise B.; Stachowicz, Marian S.

    2012-01-01

    The evaluation and assessment of engineering programmes is a big issue, and there exist many concepts and methods. This paper deals with the assessment methods which can be used when assessing the knowledge, skills and competences developed in projects using PBL (problem based and project organized...... learning) pedagogical approaches. The experience of assessing first year projects from the Medialogy education at Aalborg University and third year projects from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at University of Minnesota, Duluth are presented, and the different methods discussed....... The conclusion is that process as well as product has to be assessed in a way which evaluates all aspects of students’ learning outcomes....

  20. Ten steps to get started in Genome Assembly and Annotation [version 1; referees: 2 approved

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Victoria Dominguez Del Angel

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available As a part of the ELIXIR-EXCELERATE efforts in capacity building, we present here 10 steps to facilitate researchers getting started in genome assembly and genome annotation. The guidelines given are broadly applicable, intended to be stable over time, and cover all aspects from start to finish of a general assembly and annotation project. Intrinsic properties of genomes are discussed, as is the importance of using high quality DNA. Different sequencing technologies and generally applicable workflows for genome assembly are also detailed. We cover structural and functional annotation and encourage readers to also annotate transposable elements, something that is often omitted from annotation workflows. The importance of data management is stressed, and we give advice on where to submit data and how to make your results Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR.

  1. WORKSHOPS FOR THE HANDICAPPED, AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY--NO. 3.

    Science.gov (United States)

    PERKINS, DOROTHY C.; AND OTHERS

    THESE 126 ANNOTATIONS ARE THE THIRD VOLUME OF A CONTINUING SERIES OF BIBLIOGRAPHIES LISTING ARTICLES APPEARING IN JOURNALS AND CONFERENCE, RESEARCH, AND PROJECT REPORTS. LISTINGS INCLUDE TESTS, TEST RESULTS, STAFF TRAINING PROGRAMS, GUIDES FOR COUNSELORS AND TEACHERS, AND ARCHITECTURAL PLANNING, AND RELATE TO THE MENTALLY RETARDED, EMOTIONALLY…

  2. Biochemical Space: A Framework for Systemic Annotation of Biological Models

    Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

    Klement, M.; Děd, T.; Šafránek, D.; Červený, Jan; Müller, Stefan; Steuer, Ralf

    2014-01-01

    Roč. 306, JUL (2014), s. 31-44 ISSN 1571-0661 R&D Projects: GA MŠk(CZ) EE2.3.20.0256 Institutional support: RVO:67179843 Keywords : biological models * model annotation * systems biology * cyanobacteria Subject RIV: EH - Ecology, Behaviour

  3. The Effects of Multimedia Annotations on Iranian EFL Learners’ L2 Vocabulary Learning

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Saeideh Ahangari

    2010-05-01

    Full Text Available In our modern technological world, Computer-Assisted Language learning (CALL is a new realm towards learning a language in general, and learning L2 vocabulary in particular. It is assumed that the use of multimedia annotations promotes language learners’ vocabulary acquisition. Therefore, this study set out to investigate the effects of different multimedia annotations (still picture annotations, dynamic picture annotations, and written annotations on L2 vocabulary learning. To fulfill this objective, the researchers selected sixty four EFL learners as the participants of this study. The participants were randomly assigned to one of the four groups: a control group that received no annotations and three experimental groups that received:  still picture annotations, dynamic picture annotations, and written annotations. Each participant was required to take a pre-test. A vocabulary post- test was also designed and administered to the participants in order to assess the efficacy of each annotation. First for each group a paired t-test was conducted between their pre and post test scores in order to observe their improvement; then through an ANCOVA test the performance of four groups was compared. The results showed that using multimedia annotations resulted in a significant difference in the participants’ vocabulary learning. Based on the results of the present study, multimedia annotations are suggested as a vocabulary teaching strategy.

  4. MixtureTree annotator: a program for automatic colorization and visual annotation of MixtureTree.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Shu-Chuan Chen

    Full Text Available The MixtureTree Annotator, written in JAVA, allows the user to automatically color any phylogenetic tree in Newick format generated from any phylogeny reconstruction program and output the Nexus file. By providing the ability to automatically color the tree by sequence name, the MixtureTree Annotator provides a unique advantage over any other programs which perform a similar function. In addition, the MixtureTree Annotator is the only package that can efficiently annotate the output produced by MixtureTree with mutation information and coalescent time information. In order to visualize the resulting output file, a modified version of FigTree is used. Certain popular methods, which lack good built-in visualization tools, for example, MEGA, Mesquite, PHY-FI, TreeView, treeGraph and Geneious, may give results with human errors due to either manually adding colors to each node or with other limitations, for example only using color based on a number, such as branch length, or by taxonomy. In addition to allowing the user to automatically color any given Newick tree by sequence name, the MixtureTree Annotator is the only method that allows the user to automatically annotate the resulting tree created by the MixtureTree program. The MixtureTree Annotator is fast and easy-to-use, while still allowing the user full control over the coloring and annotating process.

  5. Kinder Lernen Deutsch. Materials Project Part I. Revised.

    Science.gov (United States)

    American Association of Teachers of German.

    The Kinder Lernen Deutsch (LKD) materials evaluation project identifies materials appropriate for the elementary school German classrooms in grades K-8. This guide consists of an annotated bibliography, with ratings, of these materials. The guiding principles by which the materials were assessed were: use of the communicative approach; integration…

  6. VAT: a computational framework to functionally annotate variants in personal genomes within a cloud-computing environment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Habegger, Lukas; Balasubramanian, Suganthi; Chen, David Z; Khurana, Ekta; Sboner, Andrea; Harmanci, Arif; Rozowsky, Joel; Clarke, Declan; Snyder, Michael; Gerstein, Mark

    2012-09-01

    The functional annotation of variants obtained through sequencing projects is generally assumed to be a simple intersection of genomic coordinates with genomic features. However, complexities arise for several reasons, including the differential effects of a variant on alternatively spliced transcripts, as well as the difficulty in assessing the impact of small insertions/deletions and large structural variants. Taking these factors into consideration, we developed the Variant Annotation Tool (VAT) to functionally annotate variants from multiple personal genomes at the transcript level as well as obtain summary statistics across genes and individuals. VAT also allows visualization of the effects of different variants, integrates allele frequencies and genotype data from the underlying individuals and facilitates comparative analysis between different groups of individuals. VAT can either be run through a command-line interface or as a web application. Finally, in order to enable on-demand access and to minimize unnecessary transfers of large data files, VAT can be run as a virtual machine in a cloud-computing environment. VAT is implemented in C and PHP. The VAT web service, Amazon Machine Image, source code and detailed documentation are available at vat.gersteinlab.org.

  7. Genome Annotation in a Community College Cell Biology Lab

    Science.gov (United States)

    Beagley, C. Timothy

    2013-01-01

    The Biology Department at Salt Lake Community College has used the IMG-ACT toolbox to introduce a genome mapping and annotation exercise into the laboratory portion of its Cell Biology course. This project provides students with an authentic inquiry-based learning experience while introducing them to computational biology and contemporary learning…

  8. Annotation an effective device for student feedback: a critical review of the literature.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ball, Elaine C

    2010-05-01

    The paper examines hand-written annotation, its many features, difficulties and strengths as a feedback tool. It extends and clarifies what modest evidence is in the public domain and offers an evaluation of how to use annotation effectively in the support of student feedback [Marshall, C.M., 1998a. The Future of Annotation in a Digital (paper) World. Presented at the 35th Annual GLSLIS Clinic: Successes and Failures of Digital Libraries, June 20-24, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, March 24, pp. 1-20; Marshall, C.M., 1998b. Toward an ecology of hypertext annotation. Hypertext. In: Proceedings of the Ninth ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, June 20-24, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, US, pp. 40-49; Wolfe, J.L., Nuewirth, C.M., 2001. From the margins to the centre: the future of annotation. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 15(3), 333-371; Diyanni, R., 2002. One Hundred Great Essays. Addison-Wesley, New York; Wolfe, J.L., 2002. Marginal pedagogy: how annotated texts affect writing-from-source texts. Written Communication, 19(2), 297-333; Liu, K., 2006. Annotation as an index to critical writing. Urban Education, 41, 192-207; Feito, A., Donahue, P., 2008. Minding the gap annotation as preparation for discussion. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 7(3), 295-307; Ball, E., 2009. A participatory action research study on handwritten annotation feedback and its impact on staff and students. Systemic Practice and Action Research, 22(2), 111-124; Ball, E., Franks, H., McGrath, M., Leigh, J., 2009. Annotation is a valuable tool to enhance learning and assessment in student essays. Nurse Education Today, 29(3), 284-291]. Although a significant number of studies examine annotation, this is largely related to on-line tools and computer mediated communication and not hand-written annotation as comment, phrase or sign written on the student essay to provide critique. Little systematic research has been conducted to consider how this latter form

  9. DFAST and DAGA: web-based integrated genome annotation tools and resources.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tanizawa, Yasuhiro; Fujisawa, Takatomo; Kaminuma, Eli; Nakamura, Yasukazu; Arita, Masanori

    2016-01-01

    Quality assurance and correct taxonomic affiliation of data submitted to public sequence databases have been an everlasting problem. The DDBJ Fast Annotation and Submission Tool (DFAST) is a newly developed genome annotation pipeline with quality and taxonomy assessment tools. To enable annotation of ready-to-submit quality, we also constructed curated reference protein databases tailored for lactic acid bacteria. DFAST was developed so that all the procedures required for DDBJ submission could be done seamlessly online. The online workspace would be especially useful for users not familiar with bioinformatics skills. In addition, we have developed a genome repository, DFAST Archive of Genome Annotation (DAGA), which currently includes 1,421 genomes covering 179 species and 18 subspecies of two genera, Lactobacillus and Pediococcus , obtained from both DDBJ/ENA/GenBank and Sequence Read Archive (SRA). All the genomes deposited in DAGA were annotated consistently and assessed using DFAST. To assess the taxonomic position based on genomic sequence information, we used the average nucleotide identity (ANI), which showed high discriminative power to determine whether two given genomes belong to the same species. We corrected mislabeled or misidentified genomes in the public database and deposited the curated information in DAGA. The repository will improve the accessibility and reusability of genome resources for lactic acid bacteria. By exploiting the data deposited in DAGA, we found intraspecific subgroups in Lactobacillus gasseri and Lactobacillus jensenii , whose variation between subgroups is larger than the well-accepted ANI threshold of 95% to differentiate species. DFAST and DAGA are freely accessible at https://dfast.nig.ac.jp.

  10. Evaluating Hierarchical Structure in Music Annotations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McFee, Brian; Nieto, Oriol; Farbood, Morwaread M; Bello, Juan Pablo

    2017-01-01

    Music exhibits structure at multiple scales, ranging from motifs to large-scale functional components. When inferring the structure of a piece, different listeners may attend to different temporal scales, which can result in disagreements when they describe the same piece. In the field of music informatics research (MIR), it is common to use corpora annotated with structural boundaries at different levels. By quantifying disagreements between multiple annotators, previous research has yielded several insights relevant to the study of music cognition. First, annotators tend to agree when structural boundaries are ambiguous. Second, this ambiguity seems to depend on musical features, time scale, and genre. Furthermore, it is possible to tune current annotation evaluation metrics to better align with these perceptual differences. However, previous work has not directly analyzed the effects of hierarchical structure because the existing methods for comparing structural annotations are designed for "flat" descriptions, and do not readily generalize to hierarchical annotations. In this paper, we extend and generalize previous work on the evaluation of hierarchical descriptions of musical structure. We derive an evaluation metric which can compare hierarchical annotations holistically across multiple levels. sing this metric, we investigate inter-annotator agreement on the multilevel annotations of two different music corpora, investigate the influence of acoustic properties on hierarchical annotations, and evaluate existing hierarchical segmentation algorithms against the distribution of inter-annotator agreement.

  11. Evaluating Hierarchical Structure in Music Annotations

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Brian McFee

    2017-08-01

    Full Text Available Music exhibits structure at multiple scales, ranging from motifs to large-scale functional components. When inferring the structure of a piece, different listeners may attend to different temporal scales, which can result in disagreements when they describe the same piece. In the field of music informatics research (MIR, it is common to use corpora annotated with structural boundaries at different levels. By quantifying disagreements between multiple annotators, previous research has yielded several insights relevant to the study of music cognition. First, annotators tend to agree when structural boundaries are ambiguous. Second, this ambiguity seems to depend on musical features, time scale, and genre. Furthermore, it is possible to tune current annotation evaluation metrics to better align with these perceptual differences. However, previous work has not directly analyzed the effects of hierarchical structure because the existing methods for comparing structural annotations are designed for “flat” descriptions, and do not readily generalize to hierarchical annotations. In this paper, we extend and generalize previous work on the evaluation of hierarchical descriptions of musical structure. We derive an evaluation metric which can compare hierarchical annotations holistically across multiple levels. sing this metric, we investigate inter-annotator agreement on the multilevel annotations of two different music corpora, investigate the influence of acoustic properties on hierarchical annotations, and evaluate existing hierarchical segmentation algorithms against the distribution of inter-annotator agreement.

  12. ONEMercury: Towards Automatic Annotation of Earth Science Metadata

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tuarob, S.; Pouchard, L. C.; Noy, N.; Horsburgh, J. S.; Palanisamy, G.

    2012-12-01

    Earth sciences have become more data-intensive, requiring access to heterogeneous data collected from multiple places, times, and thematic scales. For example, research on climate change may involve exploring and analyzing observational data such as the migration of animals and temperature shifts across the earth, as well as various model-observation inter-comparison studies. Recently, DataONE, a federated data network built to facilitate access to and preservation of environmental and ecological data, has come to exist. ONEMercury has recently been implemented as part of the DataONE project to serve as a portal for discovering and accessing environmental and observational data across the globe. ONEMercury harvests metadata from the data hosted by multiple data repositories and makes it searchable via a common search interface built upon cutting edge search engine technology, allowing users to interact with the system, intelligently filter the search results on the fly, and fetch the data from distributed data sources. Linking data from heterogeneous sources always has a cost. A problem that ONEMercury faces is the different levels of annotation in the harvested metadata records. Poorly annotated records tend to be missed during the search process as they lack meaningful keywords. Furthermore, such records would not be compatible with the advanced search functionality offered by ONEMercury as the interface requires a metadata record be semantically annotated. The explosion of the number of metadata records harvested from an increasing number of data repositories makes it impossible to annotate the harvested records manually, urging the need for a tool capable of automatically annotating poorly curated metadata records. In this paper, we propose a topic-model (TM) based approach for automatic metadata annotation. Our approach mines topics in the set of well annotated records and suggests keywords for poorly annotated records based on topic similarity. We utilize the

  13. Pipeline to upgrade the genome annotations

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lijin K. Gopi

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available Current era of functional genomics is enriched with good quality draft genomes and annotations for many thousands of species and varieties with the support of the advancements in the next generation sequencing technologies (NGS. Around 25,250 genomes, of the organisms from various kingdoms, are submitted in the NCBI genome resource till date. Each of these genomes was annotated using various tools and knowledge-bases that were available during the period of the annotation. It is obvious that these annotations will be improved if the same genome is annotated using improved tools and knowledge-bases. Here we present a new genome annotation pipeline, strengthened with various tools and knowledge-bases that are capable of producing better quality annotations from the consensus of the predictions from different tools. This resource also perform various additional annotations, apart from the usual gene predictions and functional annotations, which involve SSRs, novel repeats, paralogs, proteins with transmembrane helices, signal peptides etc. This new annotation resource is trained to evaluate and integrate all the predictions together to resolve the overlaps and ambiguities of the boundaries. One of the important highlights of this resource is the capability of predicting the phylogenetic relations of the repeats using the evolutionary trace analysis and orthologous gene clusters. We also present a case study, of the pipeline, in which we upgrade the genome annotation of Nelumbo nucifera (sacred lotus. It is demonstrated that this resource is capable of producing an improved annotation for a better understanding of the biology of various organisms.

  14. Microtask crowdsourcing for disease mention annotation in PubMed abstracts.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Good, Benjamin M; Nanis, Max; Wu, Chunlei; Su, Andrew I

    2015-01-01

    Identifying concepts and relationships in biomedical text enables knowledge to be applied in computational analyses. Many biological natural language processing (BioNLP) projects attempt to address this challenge, but the state of the art still leaves much room for improvement. Progress in BioNLP research depends on large, annotated corpora for evaluating information extraction systems and training machine learning models. Traditionally, such corpora are created by small numbers of expert annotators often working over extended periods of time. Recent studies have shown that workers on microtask crowdsourcing platforms such as Amazon's Mechanical Turk (AMT) can, in aggregate, generate high-quality annotations of biomedical text. Here, we investigated the use of the AMT in capturing disease mentions in PubMed abstracts. We used the NCBI Disease corpus as a gold standard for refining and benchmarking our crowdsourcing protocol. After several iterations, we arrived at a protocol that reproduced the annotations of the 593 documents in the 'training set' of this gold standard with an overall F measure of 0.872 (precision 0.862, recall 0.883). The output can also be tuned to optimize for precision (max = 0.984 when recall = 0.269) or recall (max = 0.980 when precision = 0.436). Each document was completed by 15 workers, and their annotations were merged based on a simple voting method. In total 145 workers combined to complete all 593 documents in the span of 9 days at a cost of $.066 per abstract per worker. The quality of the annotations, as judged with the F measure, increases with the number of workers assigned to each task; however minimal performance gains were observed beyond 8 workers per task. These results add further evidence that microtask crowdsourcing can be a valuable tool for generating well-annotated corpora in BioNLP. Data produced for this analysis are available at http://figshare.com/articles/Disease_Mention_Annotation_with_Mechanical_Turk/1126402.

  15. Reasoning with Annotations of Texts

    OpenAIRE

    Ma , Yue; Lévy , François; Ghimire , Sudeep

    2011-01-01

    International audience; Linguistic and semantic annotations are important features for text-based applications. However, achieving and maintaining a good quality of a set of annotations is known to be a complex task. Many ad hoc approaches have been developed to produce various types of annotations, while comparing those annotations to improve their quality is still rare. In this paper, we propose a framework in which both linguistic and domain information can cooperate to reason with annotat...

  16. Hawaii Geothermal Project annotated bibliography: Biological resources of the geothermal subzones, the transmission corridors and the Puna District, Island of Hawaii

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Miller, S.E.; Burgett, J.M. [Fish and Wildlife Service, Honolulu, HI (United States). Pacific Islands Office

    1993-10-01

    Task 1 of the Hawaii Geothermal Project Interagency Agreement between the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Energy-Oak Ridge National Laboratory (DOE) includes an annotated bibliography of published and unpublished documents that cover biological issues related to the lowland rain forest in Puna, adjacent areas, transmission corridors, and in the proposed Hawaii Geothermal Project (HGP). The 51 documents reviewed in this report cover the main body of biological information for these projects. The full table of contents and bibliography for each document is included along with two copies (as requested in the Interagency Agreement) of the biological sections of each document. The documents are reviewed in five main categories: (1) geothermal subzones (29 documents); (2) transmission cable routes (8 documents); (3) commercial satellite launching facility (Spaceport; 1 document); (4) manganese nodule processing facility (2 documents); (5) water resource development (1 document); and (6) ecosystem stability and introduced species (11 documents).

  17. Semantic annotation of consumer health questions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kilicoglu, Halil; Ben Abacha, Asma; Mrabet, Yassine; Shooshan, Sonya E; Rodriguez, Laritza; Masterton, Kate; Demner-Fushman, Dina

    2018-02-06

    Consumers increasingly use online resources for their health information needs. While current search engines can address these needs to some extent, they generally do not take into account that most health information needs are complex and can only fully be expressed in natural language. Consumer health question answering (QA) systems aim to fill this gap. A major challenge in developing consumer health QA systems is extracting relevant semantic content from the natural language questions (question understanding). To develop effective question understanding tools, question corpora semantically annotated for relevant question elements are needed. In this paper, we present a two-part consumer health question corpus annotated with several semantic categories: named entities, question triggers/types, question frames, and question topic. The first part (CHQA-email) consists of relatively long email requests received by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) customer service, while the second part (CHQA-web) consists of shorter questions posed to MedlinePlus search engine as queries. Each question has been annotated by two annotators. The annotation methodology is largely the same between the two parts of the corpus; however, we also explain and justify the differences between them. Additionally, we provide information about corpus characteristics, inter-annotator agreement, and our attempts to measure annotation confidence in the absence of adjudication of annotations. The resulting corpus consists of 2614 questions (CHQA-email: 1740, CHQA-web: 874). Problems are the most frequent named entities, while treatment and general information questions are the most common question types. Inter-annotator agreement was generally modest: question types and topics yielded highest agreement, while the agreement for more complex frame annotations was lower. Agreement in CHQA-web was consistently higher than that in CHQA-email. Pairwise inter-annotator agreement proved most

  18. Predicting word sense annotation agreement

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Martinez Alonso, Hector; Johannsen, Anders Trærup; Lopez de Lacalle, Oier

    2015-01-01

    High agreement is a common objective when annotating data for word senses. However, a number of factors make perfect agreement impossible, e.g. the limitations of the sense inventories, the difficulty of the examples or the interpretation preferences of the annotations. Estimating potential...... agreement is thus a relevant task to supplement the evaluation of sense annotations. In this article we propose two methods to predict agreement on word-annotation instances. We experiment with a continuous representation and a three-way discretization of observed agreement. In spite of the difficulty...

  19. Alignment-Annotator web server: rendering and annotating sequence alignments.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gille, Christoph; Fähling, Michael; Weyand, Birgit; Wieland, Thomas; Gille, Andreas

    2014-07-01

    Alignment-Annotator is a novel web service designed to generate interactive views of annotated nucleotide and amino acid sequence alignments (i) de novo and (ii) embedded in other software. All computations are performed at server side. Interactivity is implemented in HTML5, a language native to web browsers. The alignment is initially displayed using default settings and can be modified with the graphical user interfaces. For example, individual sequences can be reordered or deleted using drag and drop, amino acid color code schemes can be applied and annotations can be added. Annotations can be made manually or imported (BioDAS servers, the UniProt, the Catalytic Site Atlas and the PDB). Some edits take immediate effect while others require server interaction and may take a few seconds to execute. The final alignment document can be downloaded as a zip-archive containing the HTML files. Because of the use of HTML the resulting interactive alignment can be viewed on any platform including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android and iOS in any standard web browser. Importantly, no plugins nor Java are required and therefore Alignment-Anotator represents the first interactive browser-based alignment visualization. http://www.bioinformatics.org/strap/aa/ and http://strap.charite.de/aa/. © The Author(s) 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.

  20. Social assessment of energy projects. How?

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Munksgaard, J.; Larsen, A.

    1997-08-01

    This is the final report of the project: Social assessment of Energy Projects. The aim of the project is to improve the basis of working out social assessments of energy projects in practice. The report raises the question: How should social assessments of energy projects be made? A social assessment is using a national perspective, i.e. it accounts the effects of the project for individuals and institutions in Denmark. The assessment is based on economics which means that effects generated by the project are valuated in DKK - as far as possible. The aim of the social assessment is to support a more effective use of the resources in Denmark. A social assessment should include an analysis of the distributional effects. The analysis can be made as an account including a social cash flow analysis. The distribution analysis will illustrate the gains and losses for the different groups of individuals affected carrying out the project. In that way the analysis will show who potentially will support the project and who will be against the project. (EG) EFP-92. 37 refs

  1. Objective-guided image annotation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mao, Qi; Tsang, Ivor Wai-Hung; Gao, Shenghua

    2013-04-01

    Automatic image annotation, which is usually formulated as a multi-label classification problem, is one of the major tools used to enhance the semantic understanding of web images. Many multimedia applications (e.g., tag-based image retrieval) can greatly benefit from image annotation. However, the insufficient performance of image annotation methods prevents these applications from being practical. On the other hand, specific measures are usually designed to evaluate how well one annotation method performs for a specific objective or application, but most image annotation methods do not consider optimization of these measures, so that they are inevitably trapped into suboptimal performance of these objective-specific measures. To address this issue, we first summarize a variety of objective-guided performance measures under a unified representation. Our analysis reveals that macro-averaging measures are very sensitive to infrequent keywords, and hamming measure is easily affected by skewed distributions. We then propose a unified multi-label learning framework, which directly optimizes a variety of objective-specific measures of multi-label learning tasks. Specifically, we first present a multilayer hierarchical structure of learning hypotheses for multi-label problems based on which a variety of loss functions with respect to objective-guided measures are defined. And then, we formulate these loss functions as relaxed surrogate functions and optimize them by structural SVMs. According to the analysis of various measures and the high time complexity of optimizing micro-averaging measures, in this paper, we focus on example-based measures that are tailor-made for image annotation tasks but are seldom explored in the literature. Experiments show consistency with the formal analysis on two widely used multi-label datasets, and demonstrate the superior performance of our proposed method over state-of-the-art baseline methods in terms of example-based measures on four

  2. Overcoming function annotation errors in the Gram-positive pathogen Streptococcus suis by a proteomics-driven approach

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bárcena José A

    2008-12-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Annotation of protein-coding genes is a key step in sequencing projects. Protein functions are mainly assigned on the basis of the amino acid sequence alone by searching of homologous proteins. However, fully automated annotation processes often lead to wrong prediction of protein functions, and therefore time-intensive manual curation is often essential. Here we describe a fast and reliable way to correct function annotation in sequencing projects, focusing on surface proteomes. We use a proteomics approach, previously proven to be very powerful for identifying new vaccine candidates against Gram-positive pathogens. It consists of shaving the surface of intact cells with two proteases, the specific cleavage-site trypsin and the unspecific proteinase K, followed by LC/MS/MS analysis of the resulting peptides. The identified proteins are contrasted by computational analysis and their sequences are inspected to correct possible errors in function prediction. Results When applied to the zoonotic pathogen Streptococcus suis, of which two strains have been recently sequenced and annotated, we identified a set of surface proteins without cytoplasmic contamination: all the proteins identified had exporting or retention signals towards the outside and/or the cell surface, and viability of protease-treated cells was not affected. The combination of both experimental evidences and computational methods allowed us to determine that two of these proteins are putative extracellular new adhesins that had been previously attributed a wrong cytoplasmic function. One of them is a putative component of the pilus of this bacterium. Conclusion We illustrate the complementary nature of laboratory-based and computational methods to examine in concert the localization of a set of proteins in the cell, and demonstrate the utility of this proteomics-based strategy to experimentally correct function annotation errors in sequencing projects. This

  3. A post-assembly genome-improvement toolkit (PAGIT) to obtain annotated genomes from contigs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Swain, Martin T; Tsai, Isheng J; Assefa, Samual A; Newbold, Chris; Berriman, Matthew; Otto, Thomas D

    2012-06-07

    Genome projects now produce draft assemblies within weeks owing to advanced high-throughput sequencing technologies. For milestone projects such as Escherichia coli or Homo sapiens, teams of scientists were employed to manually curate and finish these genomes to a high standard. Nowadays, this is not feasible for most projects, and the quality of genomes is generally of a much lower standard. This protocol describes software (PAGIT) that is used to improve the quality of draft genomes. It offers flexible functionality to close gaps in scaffolds, correct base errors in the consensus sequence and exploit reference genomes (if available) in order to improve scaffolding and generating annotations. The protocol is most accessible for bacterial and small eukaryotic genomes (up to 300 Mb), such as pathogenic bacteria, malaria and parasitic worms. Applying PAGIT to an E. coli assembly takes ∼24 h: it doubles the average contig size and annotates over 4,300 gene models.

  4. Simulator fidelity and training effectiveness: a comprehensive bibliography with selected annotations

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Rankin, W.L.; Bolton, P.A.; Shikiar, R.; Saari, L.M.

    1984-05-01

    This document contains a comprehensive bibliography on the topic of simulator fidelity and training effectiveness, prepared during the preliminary phases of work on an NRC-sponsored project on the Role of Nuclear Power Plant Simulators in Operator Licensing and Training. Section A of the document is an annotated bibliography consisting of articles and reports with relevance to the psychological aspects of simulator fidelity and the effectiveness of training simulators in a variety of settings, including military. The annotated items are drawn from a more comprehensive bibliography, presented in Section B, listing documents treating the role of simulators in operator training both in the nuclear industry and elsewhere

  5. Graph-based sequence annotation using a data integration approach

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pesch Robert

    2008-06-01

    Full Text Available The automated annotation of data from high throughput sequencing and genomics experiments is a significant challenge for bioinformatics. Most current approaches rely on sequential pipelines of gene finding and gene function prediction methods that annotate a gene with information from different reference data sources. Each function prediction method contributes evidence supporting a functional assignment. Such approaches generally ignore the links between the information in the reference datasets. These links, however, are valuable for assessing the plausibility of a function assignment and can be used to evaluate the confidence in a prediction. We are working towards a novel annotation system that uses the network of information supporting the function assignment to enrich the annotation process for use by expert curators and predicting the function of previously unannotated genes. In this paper we describe our success in the first stages of this development. We present the data integration steps that are needed to create the core database of integrated reference databases (UniProt, PFAM, PDB, GO and the pathway database Ara- Cyc which has been established in the ONDEX data integration system. We also present a comparison between different methods for integration of GO terms as part of the function assignment pipeline and discuss the consequences of this analysis for improving the accuracy of gene function annotation.

  6. An Annotated Checklist of the Mammals of Kuwait

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Peter J. Cowan

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available An annotated checklist of the mammals of Kuwait is presented, based on the literature, personal communications, a Kuwait website and a blog and the author’s observations. Twenty five species occur, a further four are uncommon or rare visitors, six used to occur whilst another two are of doubtful provenance. This list should assist those planning desert rehabilitation, animal reintroduction and protected area projects in Kuwait.

  7. Assessment of Metabolome Annotation Quality: A Method for Evaluating the False Discovery Rate of Elemental Composition Searches

    Science.gov (United States)

    Matsuda, Fumio; Shinbo, Yoko; Oikawa, Akira; Hirai, Masami Yokota; Fiehn, Oliver; Kanaya, Shigehiko; Saito, Kazuki

    2009-01-01

    Background In metabolomics researches using mass spectrometry (MS), systematic searching of high-resolution mass data against compound databases is often the first step of metabolite annotation to determine elemental compositions possessing similar theoretical mass numbers. However, incorrect hits derived from errors in mass analyses will be included in the results of elemental composition searches. To assess the quality of peak annotation information, a novel methodology for false discovery rates (FDR) evaluation is presented in this study. Based on the FDR analyses, several aspects of an elemental composition search, including setting a threshold, estimating FDR, and the types of elemental composition databases most reliable for searching are discussed. Methodology/Principal Findings The FDR can be determined from one measured value (i.e., the hit rate for search queries) and four parameters determined by Monte Carlo simulation. The results indicate that relatively high FDR values (30–50%) were obtained when searching time-of-flight (TOF)/MS data using the KNApSAcK and KEGG databases. In addition, searches against large all-in-one databases (e.g., PubChem) always produced unacceptable results (FDR >70%). The estimated FDRs suggest that the quality of search results can be improved not only by performing more accurate mass analysis but also by modifying the properties of the compound database. A theoretical analysis indicates that FDR could be improved by using compound database with smaller but higher completeness entries. Conclusions/Significance High accuracy mass analysis, such as Fourier transform (FT)-MS, is needed for reliable annotation (FDR metabolome data. PMID:19847304

  8. Concept annotation in the CRAFT corpus.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bada, Michael; Eckert, Miriam; Evans, Donald; Garcia, Kristin; Shipley, Krista; Sitnikov, Dmitry; Baumgartner, William A; Cohen, K Bretonnel; Verspoor, Karin; Blake, Judith A; Hunter, Lawrence E

    2012-07-09

    Manually annotated corpora are critical for the training and evaluation of automated methods to identify concepts in biomedical text. This paper presents the concept annotations of the Colorado Richly Annotated Full-Text (CRAFT) Corpus, a collection of 97 full-length, open-access biomedical journal articles that have been annotated both semantically and syntactically to serve as a research resource for the biomedical natural-language-processing (NLP) community. CRAFT identifies all mentions of nearly all concepts from nine prominent biomedical ontologies and terminologies: the Cell Type Ontology, the Chemical Entities of Biological Interest ontology, the NCBI Taxonomy, the Protein Ontology, the Sequence Ontology, the entries of the Entrez Gene database, and the three subontologies of the Gene Ontology. The first public release includes the annotations for 67 of the 97 articles, reserving two sets of 15 articles for future text-mining competitions (after which these too will be released). Concept annotations were created based on a single set of guidelines, which has enabled us to achieve consistently high interannotator agreement. As the initial 67-article release contains more than 560,000 tokens (and the full set more than 790,000 tokens), our corpus is among the largest gold-standard annotated biomedical corpora. Unlike most others, the journal articles that comprise the corpus are drawn from diverse biomedical disciplines and are marked up in their entirety. Additionally, with a concept-annotation count of nearly 100,000 in the 67-article subset (and more than 140,000 in the full collection), the scale of conceptual markup is also among the largest of comparable corpora. The concept annotations of the CRAFT Corpus have the potential to significantly advance biomedical text mining by providing a high-quality gold standard for NLP systems. The corpus, annotation guidelines, and other associated resources are freely available at http://bionlp-corpora.sourceforge.net/CRAFT/index.shtml.

  9. Essential Requirements for Digital Annotation Systems

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    ADRIANO, C. M.

    2012-06-01

    Full Text Available Digital annotation systems are usually based on partial scenarios and arbitrary requirements. Accidental and essential characteristics are usually mixed in non explicit models. Documents and annotations are linked together accidentally according to the current technology, allowing for the development of disposable prototypes, but not to the support of non-functional requirements such as extensibility, robustness and interactivity. In this paper we perform a careful analysis on the concept of annotation, studying the scenarios supported by digital annotation tools. We also derived essential requirements based on a classification of annotation systems applied to existing tools. The analysis performed and the proposed classification can be applied and extended to other type of collaborative systems.

  10. A methodology to annotate systems biology markup language models with the synthetic biology open language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Roehner, Nicholas; Myers, Chris J

    2014-02-21

    Recently, we have begun to witness the potential of synthetic biology, noted here in the form of bacteria and yeast that have been genetically engineered to produce biofuels, manufacture drug precursors, and even invade tumor cells. The success of these projects, however, has often failed in translation and application to new projects, a problem exacerbated by a lack of engineering standards that combine descriptions of the structure and function of DNA. To address this need, this paper describes a methodology to connect the systems biology markup language (SBML) to the synthetic biology open language (SBOL), existing standards that describe biochemical models and DNA components, respectively. Our methodology involves first annotating SBML model elements such as species and reactions with SBOL DNA components. A graph is then constructed from the model, with vertices corresponding to elements within the model and edges corresponding to the cause-and-effect relationships between these elements. Lastly, the graph is traversed to assemble the annotating DNA components into a composite DNA component, which is used to annotate the model itself and can be referenced by other composite models and DNA components. In this way, our methodology can be used to build up a hierarchical library of models annotated with DNA components. Such a library is a useful input to any future genetic technology mapping algorithm that would automate the process of composing DNA components to satisfy a behavioral specification. Our methodology for SBML-to-SBOL annotation is implemented in the latest version of our genetic design automation (GDA) software tool, iBioSim.

  11. Making web annotations persistent over time

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Sanderson, Robert [Los Alamos National Laboratory; Van De Sompel, Herbert [Los Alamos National Laboratory

    2010-01-01

    As Digital Libraries (DL) become more aligned with the web architecture, their functional components need to be fundamentally rethought in terms of URIs and HTTP. Annotation, a core scholarly activity enabled by many DL solutions, exhibits a clearly unacceptable characteristic when existing models are applied to the web: due to the representations of web resources changing over time, an annotation made about a web resource today may no longer be relevant to the representation that is served from that same resource tomorrow. We assume the existence of archived versions of resources, and combine the temporal features of the emerging Open Annotation data model with the capability offered by the Memento framework that allows seamless navigation from the URI of a resource to archived versions of that resource, and arrive at a solution that provides guarantees regarding the persistence of web annotations over time. More specifically, we provide theoretical solutions and proof-of-concept experimental evaluations for two problems: reconstructing an existing annotation so that the correct archived version is displayed for all resources involved in the annotation, and retrieving all annotations that involve a given archived version of a web resource.

  12. Semantic annotation in biomedicine: the current landscape.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jovanović, Jelena; Bagheri, Ebrahim

    2017-09-22

    The abundance and unstructured nature of biomedical texts, be it clinical or research content, impose significant challenges for the effective and efficient use of information and knowledge stored in such texts. Annotation of biomedical documents with machine intelligible semantics facilitates advanced, semantics-based text management, curation, indexing, and search. This paper focuses on annotation of biomedical entity mentions with concepts from relevant biomedical knowledge bases such as UMLS. As a result, the meaning of those mentions is unambiguously and explicitly defined, and thus made readily available for automated processing. This process is widely known as semantic annotation, and the tools that perform it are known as semantic annotators.Over the last dozen years, the biomedical research community has invested significant efforts in the development of biomedical semantic annotation technology. Aiming to establish grounds for further developments in this area, we review a selected set of state of the art biomedical semantic annotators, focusing particularly on general purpose annotators, that is, semantic annotation tools that can be customized to work with texts from any area of biomedicine. We also examine potential directions for further improvements of today's annotators which could make them even more capable of meeting the needs of real-world applications. To motivate and encourage further developments in this area, along the suggested and/or related directions, we review existing and potential practical applications and benefits of semantic annotators.

  13. A Comparison of Fuzzy and Annotated Logic Programming

    Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

    Krajči, S.; Lencses, R.; Vojtáš, Peter

    2004-01-01

    Roč. 144, - (2004), s. 173-192 ISSN 0165-0114 R&D Projects: GA ČR GA201/00/1489 Grant - others:VEGA(SK) 1/7557/20; VEGA(SK) 1/7555/20; VEGA(SK) 1/0385/03 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z1030915 Keywords : fuzzy logic programming * generalized annotated programs * declarative and procedural semantics * continuous semantics and computable fixpoint * soundness and completeness Subject RIV: BA - General Mathematics Impact factor: 0.734, year: 2004

  14. Graph-based sequence annotation using a data integration approach.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pesch, Robert; Lysenko, Artem; Hindle, Matthew; Hassani-Pak, Keywan; Thiele, Ralf; Rawlings, Christopher; Köhler, Jacob; Taubert, Jan

    2008-08-25

    The automated annotation of data from high throughput sequencing and genomics experiments is a significant challenge for bioinformatics. Most current approaches rely on sequential pipelines of gene finding and gene function prediction methods that annotate a gene with information from different reference data sources. Each function prediction method contributes evidence supporting a functional assignment. Such approaches generally ignore the links between the information in the reference datasets. These links, however, are valuable for assessing the plausibility of a function assignment and can be used to evaluate the confidence in a prediction. We are working towards a novel annotation system that uses the network of information supporting the function assignment to enrich the annotation process for use by expert curators and predicting the function of previously unannotated genes. In this paper we describe our success in the first stages of this development. We present the data integration steps that are needed to create the core database of integrated reference databases (UniProt, PFAM, PDB, GO and the pathway database Ara-Cyc) which has been established in the ONDEX data integration system. We also present a comparison between different methods for integration of GO terms as part of the function assignment pipeline and discuss the consequences of this analysis for improving the accuracy of gene function annotation. The methods and algorithms presented in this publication are an integral part of the ONDEX system which is freely available from http://ondex.sf.net/.

  15. Assessment of features for automatic CTG analysis based on expert annotation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chudácek, Vacláv; Spilka, Jirí; Lhotská, Lenka; Janku, Petr; Koucký, Michal; Huptych, Michal; Bursa, Miroslav

    2011-01-01

    Cardiotocography (CTG) is the monitoring of fetal heart rate (FHR) and uterine contractions (TOCO) since 1960's used routinely by obstetricians to detect fetal hypoxia. The evaluation of the FHR in clinical settings is based on an evaluation of macroscopic morphological features and so far has managed to avoid adopting any achievements from the HRV research field. In this work, most of the ever-used features utilized for FHR characterization, including FIGO, HRV, nonlinear, wavelet, and time and frequency domain features, are investigated and the features are assessed based on their statistical significance in the task of distinguishing the FHR into three FIGO classes. Annotation derived from the panel of experts instead of the commonly utilized pH values was used for evaluation of the features on a large data set (552 records). We conclude the paper by presenting the best uncorrelated features and their individual rank of importance according to the meta-analysis of three different ranking methods. Number of acceleration and deceleration, interval index, as well as Lempel-Ziv complexity and Higuchi's fractal dimension are among the top five features.

  16. Contributions to In Silico Genome Annotation

    KAUST Repository

    Kalkatawi, Manal M.

    2017-11-30

    Genome annotation is an important topic since it provides information for the foundation of downstream genomic and biological research. It is considered as a way of summarizing part of existing knowledge about the genomic characteristics of an organism. Annotating different regions of a genome sequence is known as structural annotation, while identifying functions of these regions is considered as a functional annotation. In silico approaches can facilitate both tasks that otherwise would be difficult and timeconsuming. This study contributes to genome annotation by introducing several novel bioinformatics methods, some based on machine learning (ML) approaches. First, we present Dragon PolyA Spotter (DPS), a method for accurate identification of the polyadenylation signals (PAS) within human genomic DNA sequences. For this, we derived a novel feature-set able to characterize properties of the genomic region surrounding the PAS, enabling development of high accuracy optimized ML predictive models. DPS considerably outperformed the state-of-the-art results. The second contribution concerns developing generic models for structural annotation, i.e., the recognition of different genomic signals and regions (GSR) within eukaryotic DNA. We developed DeepGSR, a systematic framework that facilitates generating ML models to predict GSR with high accuracy. To the best of our knowledge, no available generic and automated method exists for such task that could facilitate the studies of newly sequenced organisms. The prediction module of DeepGSR uses deep learning algorithms to derive highly abstract features that depend mainly on proper data representation and hyperparameters calibration. DeepGSR, which was evaluated on recognition of PAS and translation initiation sites (TIS) in different organisms, yields a simpler and more precise representation of the problem under study, compared to some other hand-tailored models, while producing high accuracy prediction results. Finally

  17. Active learning reduces annotation time for clinical concept extraction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kholghi, Mahnoosh; Sitbon, Laurianne; Zuccon, Guido; Nguyen, Anthony

    2017-10-01

    To investigate: (1) the annotation time savings by various active learning query strategies compared to supervised learning and a random sampling baseline, and (2) the benefits of active learning-assisted pre-annotations in accelerating the manual annotation process compared to de novo annotation. There are 73 and 120 discharge summary reports provided by Beth Israel institute in the train and test sets of the concept extraction task in the i2b2/VA 2010 challenge, respectively. The 73 reports were used in user study experiments for manual annotation. First, all sequences within the 73 reports were manually annotated from scratch. Next, active learning models were built to generate pre-annotations for the sequences selected by a query strategy. The annotation/reviewing time per sequence was recorded. The 120 test reports were used to measure the effectiveness of the active learning models. When annotating from scratch, active learning reduced the annotation time up to 35% and 28% compared to a fully supervised approach and a random sampling baseline, respectively. Reviewing active learning-assisted pre-annotations resulted in 20% further reduction of the annotation time when compared to de novo annotation. The number of concepts that require manual annotation is a good indicator of the annotation time for various active learning approaches as demonstrated by high correlation between time rate and concept annotation rate. Active learning has a key role in reducing the time required to manually annotate domain concepts from clinical free text, either when annotating from scratch or reviewing active learning-assisted pre-annotations. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  18. A statistical framework to predict functional non-coding regions in the human genome through integrated analysis of annotation data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lu, Qiongshi; Hu, Yiming; Sun, Jiehuan; Cheng, Yuwei; Cheung, Kei-Hoi; Zhao, Hongyu

    2015-05-27

    Identifying functional regions in the human genome is a major goal in human genetics. Great efforts have been made to functionally annotate the human genome either through computational predictions, such as genomic conservation, or high-throughput experiments, such as the ENCODE project. These efforts have resulted in a rich collection of functional annotation data of diverse types that need to be jointly analyzed for integrated interpretation and annotation. Here we present GenoCanyon, a whole-genome annotation method that performs unsupervised statistical learning using 22 computational and experimental annotations thereby inferring the functional potential of each position in the human genome. With GenoCanyon, we are able to predict many of the known functional regions. The ability of predicting functional regions as well as its generalizable statistical framework makes GenoCanyon a unique and powerful tool for whole-genome annotation. The GenoCanyon web server is available at http://genocanyon.med.yale.edu.

  19. EST Express: PHP/MySQL based automated annotation of ESTs from expression libraries.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Smith, Robin P; Buchser, William J; Lemmon, Marcus B; Pardinas, Jose R; Bixby, John L; Lemmon, Vance P

    2008-04-10

    Several biological techniques result in the acquisition of functional sets of cDNAs that must be sequenced and analyzed. The emergence of redundant databases such as UniGene and centralized annotation engines such as Entrez Gene has allowed the development of software that can analyze a great number of sequences in a matter of seconds. We have developed "EST Express", a suite of analytical tools that identify and annotate ESTs originating from specific mRNA populations. The software consists of a user-friendly GUI powered by PHP and MySQL that allows for online collaboration between researchers and continuity with UniGene, Entrez Gene and RefSeq. Two key features of the software include a novel, simplified Entrez Gene parser and tools to manage cDNA library sequencing projects. We have tested the software on a large data set (2,016 samples) produced by subtractive hybridization. EST Express is an open-source, cross-platform web server application that imports sequences from cDNA libraries, such as those generated through subtractive hybridization or yeast two-hybrid screens. It then provides several layers of annotation based on Entrez Gene and RefSeq to allow the user to highlight useful genes and manage cDNA library projects.

  20. EST Express: PHP/MySQL based automated annotation of ESTs from expression libraries

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pardinas Jose R

    2008-04-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Several biological techniques result in the acquisition of functional sets of cDNAs that must be sequenced and analyzed. The emergence of redundant databases such as UniGene and centralized annotation engines such as Entrez Gene has allowed the development of software that can analyze a great number of sequences in a matter of seconds. Results We have developed "EST Express", a suite of analytical tools that identify and annotate ESTs originating from specific mRNA populations. The software consists of a user-friendly GUI powered by PHP and MySQL that allows for online collaboration between researchers and continuity with UniGene, Entrez Gene and RefSeq. Two key features of the software include a novel, simplified Entrez Gene parser and tools to manage cDNA library sequencing projects. We have tested the software on a large data set (2,016 samples produced by subtractive hybridization. Conclusion EST Express is an open-source, cross-platform web server application that imports sequences from cDNA libraries, such as those generated through subtractive hybridization or yeast two-hybrid screens. It then provides several layers of annotation based on Entrez Gene and RefSeq to allow the user to highlight useful genes and manage cDNA library projects.

  1. SNP mining porcine ESTs with MAVIANT, a novel tool for SNP evaluation and annotation

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Panitz, Frank; Stengaard, Henrik; Hornshoj, Henrik

    2007-01-01

    MOTIVATION: Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) analysis is an important means to study genetic variation. A fast and cost-efficient approach to identify large numbers of novel candidates is the SNP mining of large scale sequencing projects. The increasing availability of sequence trace data...... manual annotation, which is immediately accessible and can be easily shared with external collaborators. RESULTS: Large-scale SNP mining of polymorphisms bases on porcine EST sequences yielded more than 7900 candidate SNPs in coding regions (cSNPs), which were annotated relative to the human genome. Non...

  2. Generation of silver standard concept annotations from biomedical texts with special relevance to phenotypes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Oellrich, Anika; Collier, Nigel; Smedley, Damian; Groza, Tudor

    2015-01-01

    Electronic health records and scientific articles possess differing linguistic characteristics that may impact the performance of natural language processing tools developed for one or the other. In this paper, we investigate the performance of four extant concept recognition tools: the clinical Text Analysis and Knowledge Extraction System (cTAKES), the National Center for Biomedical Ontology (NCBO) Annotator, the Biomedical Concept Annotation System (BeCAS) and MetaMap. Each of the four concept recognition systems is applied to four different corpora: the i2b2 corpus of clinical documents, a PubMed corpus of Medline abstracts, a clinical trails corpus and the ShARe/CLEF corpus. In addition, we assess the individual system performances with respect to one gold standard annotation set, available for the ShARe/CLEF corpus. Furthermore, we built a silver standard annotation set from the individual systems' output and assess the quality as well as the contribution of individual systems to the quality of the silver standard. Our results demonstrate that mainly the NCBO annotator and cTAKES contribute to the silver standard corpora (F1-measures in the range of 21% to 74%) and their quality (best F1-measure of 33%), independent from the type of text investigated. While BeCAS and MetaMap can contribute to the precision of silver standard annotations (precision of up to 42%), the F1-measure drops when combined with NCBO Annotator and cTAKES due to a low recall. In conclusion, the performances of individual systems need to be improved independently from the text types, and the leveraging strategies to best take advantage of individual systems' annotations need to be revised. The textual content of the PubMed corpus, accession numbers for the clinical trials corpus, and assigned annotations of the four concept recognition systems as well as the generated silver standard annotation sets are available from http://purl.org/phenotype/resources. The textual content of the Sh

  3. Generation of silver standard concept annotations from biomedical texts with special relevance to phenotypes.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anika Oellrich

    Full Text Available Electronic health records and scientific articles possess differing linguistic characteristics that may impact the performance of natural language processing tools developed for one or the other. In this paper, we investigate the performance of four extant concept recognition tools: the clinical Text Analysis and Knowledge Extraction System (cTAKES, the National Center for Biomedical Ontology (NCBO Annotator, the Biomedical Concept Annotation System (BeCAS and MetaMap. Each of the four concept recognition systems is applied to four different corpora: the i2b2 corpus of clinical documents, a PubMed corpus of Medline abstracts, a clinical trails corpus and the ShARe/CLEF corpus. In addition, we assess the individual system performances with respect to one gold standard annotation set, available for the ShARe/CLEF corpus. Furthermore, we built a silver standard annotation set from the individual systems' output and assess the quality as well as the contribution of individual systems to the quality of the silver standard. Our results demonstrate that mainly the NCBO annotator and cTAKES contribute to the silver standard corpora (F1-measures in the range of 21% to 74% and their quality (best F1-measure of 33%, independent from the type of text investigated. While BeCAS and MetaMap can contribute to the precision of silver standard annotations (precision of up to 42%, the F1-measure drops when combined with NCBO Annotator and cTAKES due to a low recall. In conclusion, the performances of individual systems need to be improved independently from the text types, and the leveraging strategies to best take advantage of individual systems' annotations need to be revised. The textual content of the PubMed corpus, accession numbers for the clinical trials corpus, and assigned annotations of the four concept recognition systems as well as the generated silver standard annotation sets are available from http://purl.org/phenotype/resources. The textual content

  4. The 2008 update of the Aspergillus nidulans genome annotation: A community effort

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Wortman, Jennifer Russo; Gilsenan, Jane Mabey; Joardar, Vinita

    2009-01-01

    The identification and annotation of protein-coding genes is one of the primary goals of whole-genome sequencing projects, and the accuracy of predicting the primary protein products of gene expression is vital to the interpretation of the available data and the design of downstream functional ap...

  5. The 2008 update of the Aspergillus nidulans genome annotation : a community effort

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Wortman, Jennifer Russo; Gilsenan, Jane Mabey; Joardar, Vinita; Deegan, Jennifer; Clutterbuck, John; Andersen, Mikael R; Archer, David; Bencina, Mojca; Braus, Gerhard; Coutinho, Pedro; von Döhren, Hans; Doonan, John; Driessen, Arnold J M; Durek, Pawel; Espeso, Eduardo; Fekete, Erzsébet; Flipphi, Michel; Estrada, Carlos Garcia; Geysens, Steven; Goldman, Gustavo; de Groot, Piet W J; Hansen, Kim; Harris, Steven D; Heinekamp, Thorsten; Helmstaedt, Kerstin; Henrissat, Bernard; Hofmann, Gerald; Homan, Tim; Horio, Tetsuya; Horiuchi, Hiroyuki; James, Steve; Jones, Meriel; Karaffa, Levente; Karányi, Zsolt; Kato, Masashi; Keller, Nancy; Kelly, Diane E; Kiel, Jan A K W; Kim, Jung-Mi; van der Klei, Ida J; Klis, Frans M; Kovalchuk, Andriy; Krasevec, Nada; Kubicek, Christian P; Liu, Bo; Maccabe, Andrew; Meyer, Vera; Mirabito, Pete; Miskei, Márton; Mos, Magdalena; Mullins, Jonathan; Nelson, David R; Nielsen, Jens; Oakley, Berl R; Osmani, Stephen A; Pakula, Tiina; Paszewski, Andrzej; Paulsen, Ian; Pilsyk, Sebastian; Pócsi, István; Punt, Peter J; Ram, Arthur F J; Ren, Qinghu; Robellet, Xavier; Robson, Geoff; Seiboth, Bernhard; van Solingen, Piet; Specht, Thomas; Sun, Jibin; Taheri-Talesh, Naimeh; Takeshita, Norio; Ussery, Dave; vanKuyk, Patricia A; Visser, Hans; van de Vondervoort, Peter J I; de Vries, Ronald P; Walton, Jonathan; Xiang, Xin; Xiong, Yi; Zeng, An Ping; Brandt, Bernd W; Cornell, Michael J; van den Hondel, Cees A M J J; Visser, Jacob; Oliver, Stephen G; Turner, Geoffrey

    The identification and annotation of protein-coding genes is one of the primary goals of whole-genome sequencing projects, and the accuracy of predicting the primary protein products of gene expression is vital to the interpretation of the available data and the design of downstream functional

  6. The 2008 update of the Aspergillus nidulans genome annotation : A community effort

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Wortman, Jennifer Russo; Gilsenan, Jane Mabey; Joardar, Vinita; Deegan, Jennifer; Clutterbuck, John; Andersen, Mikael R.; Archer, David; Bencina, Mojca; Braus, Gerhard; Coutinho, Pedro; von Doehren, Hans; Doonan, John; Driessen, Arnold J. M.; Durek, Pawel; Espeso, Eduardo; Fekete, Erzsebet; Flipphi, Michel; Garcia Estrada, Carlos; Geysens, Steven; Goldman, Gustavo; de Groot, Piet W. J.; Hansen, Kim; Harris, Steven D.; Heinekamp, Thorsten; Helmstaedt, Kerstin; Henrissat, Bernard; Hofmann, Gerald; Homan, Tim; Horio, Tetsuya; Horiuchi, Hiroyuki; James, Steve; Jones, Meriel; Karaffa, Levente; Karanyi, Zsolt; Kato, Masashi; Keller, Nancy; Kelly, Diane E.; Kiel, Jan A. K. W.; Kim, Jung-Mi; van der Klei, Ida J.; Klis, Frans M.; Kovalchuk, Andriy; Krasevec, Nada; Kubicek, Christian P.; Liu, Bo; MacCabe, Andrew; Meyer, Vera; Mirabito, Pete; Miskei, Marton; Mos, Magdalena; Mullins, Jonathan; Nelson, David R.; Nielsen, Jens; Oakley, Berl R.; Osmani, Stephen A.; Pakula, Tiina; Paszewski, Andrzej; Paulsen, Ian; Pilsyk, Sebastian; Pocsi, Istvan; Punt, Peter J.; Ram, Arthur F. J.; Ren, Qinghu; Robellet, Xavier; Robson, Geoff; Seiboth, Bernhard; van Solingen, Piet; Specht, Thomas; Sun, Jibin; Taheri-Talesh, Naimeh; Takeshita, Norio; Ussery, Dave; Vankuyk, Patricia A.; Visser, Hans; de Vondervoort, Peter J. I. van; Walton, Jonathan; Xiang, Xin; Xiong, Yi; Zeng, An Ping; Brandt, Bernd W.; Cornell, Michael J.; van den Hondel, Cees A. M. J. J.; Visser, Jacob; Oliver, Stephen G.; Turner, Geoffrey; Kraševec, Nada; Kuyk, Patricia A. van; Döhren, D.H.; van Seilboth, B; de Vries, R.

    The identification and annotation of protein-coding genes is one of the primary goals of whole-genome sequencing projects, and the accuracy of predicting the primary protein products of gene expression is vital to the interpretation of the available data and the design of downstream functional

  7. Expanded microbial genome coverage and improved protein family annotation in the COG database.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Galperin, Michael Y; Makarova, Kira S; Wolf, Yuri I; Koonin, Eugene V

    2015-01-01

    Microbial genome sequencing projects produce numerous sequences of deduced proteins, only a small fraction of which have been or will ever be studied experimentally. This leaves sequence analysis as the only feasible way to annotate these proteins and assign to them tentative functions. The Clusters of Orthologous Groups of proteins (COGs) database (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/COG/), first created in 1997, has been a popular tool for functional annotation. Its success was largely based on (i) its reliance on complete microbial genomes, which allowed reliable assignment of orthologs and paralogs for most genes; (ii) orthology-based approach, which used the function(s) of the characterized member(s) of the protein family (COG) to assign function(s) to the entire set of carefully identified orthologs and describe the range of potential functions when there were more than one; and (iii) careful manual curation of the annotation of the COGs, aimed at detailed prediction of the biological function(s) for each COG while avoiding annotation errors and overprediction. Here we present an update of the COGs, the first since 2003, and a comprehensive revision of the COG annotations and expansion of the genome coverage to include representative complete genomes from all bacterial and archaeal lineages down to the genus level. This re-analysis of the COGs shows that the original COG assignments had an error rate below 0.5% and allows an assessment of the progress in functional genomics in the past 12 years. During this time, functions of many previously uncharacterized COGs have been elucidated and tentative functional assignments of many COGs have been validated, either by targeted experiments or through the use of high-throughput methods. A particularly important development is the assignment of functions to several widespread, conserved proteins many of which turned out to participate in translation, in particular rRNA maturation and tRNA modification. The new version of the

  8. RASTtk: A modular and extensible implementation of the RAST algorithm for building custom annotation pipelines and annotating batches of genomes

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Brettin, Thomas; Davis, James J.; Disz, Terry; Edwards, Robert A.; Gerdes, Svetlana; Olsen, Gary J.; Olson, Robert; Overbeek, Ross; Parrello, Bruce; Pusch, Gordon D.; Shukla, Maulik; Thomason, James A.; Stevens, Rick; Vonstein, Veronika; Wattam, Alice R.; Xia, Fangfang

    2015-02-10

    The RAST (Rapid Annotation using Subsystem Technology) annotation engine was built in 2008 to annotate bacterial and archaeal genomes. It works by offering a standard software pipeline for identifying genomic features (i.e., protein-encoding genes and RNA) and annotating their functions. Recently, in order to make RAST a more useful research tool and to keep pace with advancements in bioinformatics, it has become desirable to build a version of RAST that is both customizable and extensible. In this paper, we describe the RAST tool kit (RASTtk), a modular version of RAST that enables researchers to build custom annotation pipelines. RASTtk offers a choice of software for identifying and annotating genomic features as well as the ability to add custom features to an annotation job. RASTtk also accommodates the batch submission of genomes and the ability to customize annotation protocols for batch submissions. This is the first major software restructuring of RAST since its inception.

  9. RASTtk: a modular and extensible implementation of the RAST algorithm for building custom annotation pipelines and annotating batches of genomes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brettin, Thomas; Davis, James J; Disz, Terry; Edwards, Robert A; Gerdes, Svetlana; Olsen, Gary J; Olson, Robert; Overbeek, Ross; Parrello, Bruce; Pusch, Gordon D; Shukla, Maulik; Thomason, James A; Stevens, Rick; Vonstein, Veronika; Wattam, Alice R; Xia, Fangfang

    2015-02-10

    The RAST (Rapid Annotation using Subsystem Technology) annotation engine was built in 2008 to annotate bacterial and archaeal genomes. It works by offering a standard software pipeline for identifying genomic features (i.e., protein-encoding genes and RNA) and annotating their functions. Recently, in order to make RAST a more useful research tool and to keep pace with advancements in bioinformatics, it has become desirable to build a version of RAST that is both customizable and extensible. In this paper, we describe the RAST tool kit (RASTtk), a modular version of RAST that enables researchers to build custom annotation pipelines. RASTtk offers a choice of software for identifying and annotating genomic features as well as the ability to add custom features to an annotation job. RASTtk also accommodates the batch submission of genomes and the ability to customize annotation protocols for batch submissions. This is the first major software restructuring of RAST since its inception.

  10. Computer systems for annotation of single molecule fragments

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schwartz, David Charles; Severin, Jessica

    2016-07-19

    There are provided computer systems for visualizing and annotating single molecule images. Annotation systems in accordance with this disclosure allow a user to mark and annotate single molecules of interest and their restriction enzyme cut sites thereby determining the restriction fragments of single nucleic acid molecules. The markings and annotations may be automatically generated by the system in certain embodiments and they may be overlaid translucently onto the single molecule images. An image caching system may be implemented in the computer annotation systems to reduce image processing time. The annotation systems include one or more connectors connecting to one or more databases capable of storing single molecule data as well as other biomedical data. Such diverse array of data can be retrieved and used to validate the markings and annotations. The annotation systems may be implemented and deployed over a computer network. They may be ergonomically optimized to facilitate user interactions.

  11. Image annotation under X Windows

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pothier, Steven

    1991-08-01

    A mechanism for attaching graphic and overlay annotation to multiple bits/pixel imagery while providing levels of performance approaching that of native mode graphics systems is presented. This mechanism isolates programming complexity from the application programmer through software encapsulation under the X Window System. It ensures display accuracy throughout operations on the imagery and annotation including zooms, pans, and modifications of the annotation. Trade-offs that affect speed of display, consumption of memory, and system functionality are explored. The use of resource files to tune the display system is discussed. The mechanism makes use of an abstraction consisting of four parts; a graphics overlay, a dithered overlay, an image overly, and a physical display window. Data structures are maintained that retain the distinction between the four parts so that they can be modified independently, providing system flexibility. A unique technique for associating user color preferences with annotation is introduced. An interface that allows interactive modification of the mapping between image value and color is discussed. A procedure that provides for the colorization of imagery on 8-bit display systems using pixel dithering is explained. Finally, the application of annotation mechanisms to various applications is discussed.

  12. Genome annotation in a community college cell biology lab.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Beagley, C Timothy

    2013-01-01

    The Biology Department at Salt Lake Community College has used the IMG-ACT toolbox to introduce a genome mapping and annotation exercise into the laboratory portion of its Cell Biology course. This project provides students with an authentic inquiry-based learning experience while introducing them to computational biology and contemporary learning skills. Additionally, the project strengthens student understanding of the scientific method and contributes to student learning gains in curricular objectives centered around basic molecular biology, specifically, the Central Dogma. Importantly, inclusion of this project in the laboratory course provides students with a positive learning environment and allows for the use of cooperative learning strategies to increase overall student success. Copyright © 2012 International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.

  13. Impingement: an annotated bibliography

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Uziel, M.S.; Hannon, E.H.

    1979-04-01

    This bibliography of 655 annotated references on impingement of aquatic organisms at intake structures of thermal-power-plant cooling systems was compiled from the published and unpublished literature. The bibliography includes references from 1928 to 1978 on impingement monitoring programs; impingement impact assessment; applicable law; location and design of intake structures, screens, louvers, and other barriers; fish behavior and swim speed as related to impingement susceptibility; and the effects of light, sound, bubbles, currents, and temperature on fish behavior. References are arranged alphabetically by author or corporate author. Indexes are provided for author, keywords, subject category, geographic location, taxon, and title

  14. FIGENIX: Intelligent automation of genomic annotation: expertise integration in a new software platform

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pontarotti Pierre

    2005-08-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Two of the main objectives of the genomic and post-genomic era are to structurally and functionally annotate genomes which consists of detecting genes' position and structure, and inferring their function (as well as of other features of genomes. Structural and functional annotation both require the complex chaining of numerous different software, algorithms and methods under the supervision of a biologist. The automation of these pipelines is necessary to manage huge amounts of data released by sequencing projects. Several pipelines already automate some of these complex chaining but still necessitate an important contribution of biologists for supervising and controlling the results at various steps. Results Here we propose an innovative automated platform, FIGENIX, which includes an expert system capable to substitute to human expertise at several key steps. FIGENIX currently automates complex pipelines of structural and functional annotation under the supervision of the expert system (which allows for example to make key decisions, check intermediate results or refine the dataset. The quality of the results produced by FIGENIX is comparable to those obtained by expert biologists with a drastic gain in terms of time costs and avoidance of errors due to the human manipulation of data. Conclusion The core engine and expert system of the FIGENIX platform currently handle complex annotation processes of broad interest for the genomic community. They could be easily adapted to new, or more specialized pipelines, such as for example the annotation of miRNAs, the classification of complex multigenic families, annotation of regulatory elements and other genomic features of interest.

  15. SplicingTypesAnno: annotating and quantifying alternative splicing events for RNA-Seq data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sun, Xiaoyong; Zuo, Fenghua; Ru, Yuanbin; Guo, Jiqiang; Yan, Xiaoyan; Sablok, Gaurav

    2015-04-01

    Alternative splicing plays a key role in the regulation of the central dogma. Four major types of alternative splicing have been classified as intron retention, exon skipping, alternative 5 splice sites or alternative donor sites, and alternative 3 splice sites or alternative acceptor sites. A few algorithms have been developed to detect splice junctions from RNA-Seq reads. However, there are few tools targeting at the major alternative splicing types at the exon/intron level. This type of analysis may reveal subtle, yet important events of alternative splicing, and thus help gain deeper understanding of the mechanism of alternative splicing. This paper describes a user-friendly R package, extracting, annotating and analyzing alternative splicing types for sequence alignment files from RNA-Seq. SplicingTypesAnno can: (1) provide annotation for major alternative splicing at exon/intron level. By comparing the annotation from GTF/GFF file, it identifies the novel alternative splicing sites; (2) offer a convenient two-level analysis: genome-scale annotation for users with high performance computing environment, and gene-scale annotation for users with personal computers; (3) generate a user-friendly web report and additional BED files for IGV visualization. SplicingTypesAnno is a user-friendly R package for extracting, annotating and analyzing alternative splicing types at exon/intron level for sequence alignment files from RNA-Seq. It is publically available at https://sourceforge.net/projects/splicingtypes/files/ or http://genome.sdau.edu.cn/research/software/SplicingTypesAnno.html. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  16. Annotated bibliography: hazard assessments for the geologic isolation of nuclear wastes. Final report. Center for Resource and Environmental Systems Studies report No. 41

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Suta, B.E.; Mara, S.J.; Radding, S.B.; Weisbecker, L.W.

    1977-11-01

    This report presents an annotated bibliography of risk assessments that are pertinent to constructing, operating, and decommissioning a federal repository for the underground storage of radioactive waste. This might be considered as a first phase in an assessment of the risks associated with radioactive waste storage. Only those documents judged to be the more pertinent are abstracted. The abstracts are grouped under 13 classifications. A subject and author index is provided

  17. Motion lecture annotation system to learn Naginata performances

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kobayashi, Daisuke; Sakamoto, Ryota; Nomura, Yoshihiko

    2013-12-01

    This paper describes a learning assistant system using motion capture data and annotation to teach "Naginata-jutsu" (a skill to practice Japanese halberd) performance. There are some video annotation tools such as YouTube. However these video based tools have only single angle of view. Our approach that uses motion-captured data allows us to view any angle. A lecturer can write annotations related to parts of body. We have made a comparison of effectiveness between the annotation tool of YouTube and the proposed system. The experimental result showed that our system triggered more annotations than the annotation tool of YouTube.

  18. BEACON: automated tool for Bacterial GEnome Annotation ComparisON

    KAUST Repository

    Kalkatawi, Manal M.

    2015-08-18

    Background Genome annotation is one way of summarizing the existing knowledge about genomic characteristics of an organism. There has been an increased interest during the last several decades in computer-based structural and functional genome annotation. Many methods for this purpose have been developed for eukaryotes and prokaryotes. Our study focuses on comparison of functional annotations of prokaryotic genomes. To the best of our knowledge there is no fully automated system for detailed comparison of functional genome annotations generated by different annotation methods (AMs). Results The presence of many AMs and development of new ones introduce needs to: a/ compare different annotations for a single genome, and b/ generate annotation by combining individual ones. To address these issues we developed an Automated Tool for Bacterial GEnome Annotation ComparisON (BEACON) that benefits both AM developers and annotation analysers. BEACON provides detailed comparison of gene function annotations of prokaryotic genomes obtained by different AMs and generates extended annotations through combination of individual ones. For the illustration of BEACON’s utility, we provide a comparison analysis of multiple different annotations generated for four genomes and show on these examples that the extended annotation can increase the number of genes annotated by putative functions up to 27 %, while the number of genes without any function assignment is reduced. Conclusions We developed BEACON, a fast tool for an automated and a systematic comparison of different annotations of single genomes. The extended annotation assigns putative functions to many genes with unknown functions. BEACON is available under GNU General Public License version 3.0 and is accessible at: http://www.cbrc.kaust.edu.sa/BEACON/

  19. BEACON: automated tool for Bacterial GEnome Annotation ComparisON.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kalkatawi, Manal; Alam, Intikhab; Bajic, Vladimir B

    2015-08-18

    Genome annotation is one way of summarizing the existing knowledge about genomic characteristics of an organism. There has been an increased interest during the last several decades in computer-based structural and functional genome annotation. Many methods for this purpose have been developed for eukaryotes and prokaryotes. Our study focuses on comparison of functional annotations of prokaryotic genomes. To the best of our knowledge there is no fully automated system for detailed comparison of functional genome annotations generated by different annotation methods (AMs). The presence of many AMs and development of new ones introduce needs to: a/ compare different annotations for a single genome, and b/ generate annotation by combining individual ones. To address these issues we developed an Automated Tool for Bacterial GEnome Annotation ComparisON (BEACON) that benefits both AM developers and annotation analysers. BEACON provides detailed comparison of gene function annotations of prokaryotic genomes obtained by different AMs and generates extended annotations through combination of individual ones. For the illustration of BEACON's utility, we provide a comparison analysis of multiple different annotations generated for four genomes and show on these examples that the extended annotation can increase the number of genes annotated by putative functions up to 27%, while the number of genes without any function assignment is reduced. We developed BEACON, a fast tool for an automated and a systematic comparison of different annotations of single genomes. The extended annotation assigns putative functions to many genes with unknown functions. BEACON is available under GNU General Public License version 3.0 and is accessible at: http://www.cbrc.kaust.edu.sa/BEACON/ .

  20. JGI Plant Genomics Gene Annotation Pipeline

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Shu, Shengqiang; Rokhsar, Dan; Goodstein, David; Hayes, David; Mitros, Therese

    2014-07-14

    Plant genomes vary in size and are highly complex with a high amount of repeats, genome duplication and tandem duplication. Gene encodes a wealth of information useful in studying organism and it is critical to have high quality and stable gene annotation. Thanks to advancement of sequencing technology, many plant species genomes have been sequenced and transcriptomes are also sequenced. To use these vastly large amounts of sequence data to make gene annotation or re-annotation in a timely fashion, an automatic pipeline is needed. JGI plant genomics gene annotation pipeline, called integrated gene call (IGC), is our effort toward this aim with aid of a RNA-seq transcriptome assembly pipeline. It utilizes several gene predictors based on homolog peptides and transcript ORFs. See Methods for detail. Here we present genome annotation of JGI flagship green plants produced by this pipeline plus Arabidopsis and rice except for chlamy which is done by a third party. The genome annotations of these species and others are used in our gene family build pipeline and accessible via JGI Phytozome portal whose URL and front page snapshot are shown below.

  1. MIPS: analysis and annotation of proteins from whole genomes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mewes, H W; Amid, C; Arnold, R; Frishman, D; Güldener, U; Mannhaupt, G; Münsterkötter, M; Pagel, P; Strack, N; Stümpflen, V; Warfsmann, J; Ruepp, A

    2004-01-01

    The Munich Information Center for Protein Sequences (MIPS-GSF), Neuherberg, Germany, provides protein sequence-related information based on whole-genome analysis. The main focus of the work is directed toward the systematic organization of sequence-related attributes as gathered by a variety of algorithms, primary information from experimental data together with information compiled from the scientific literature. MIPS maintains automatically generated and manually annotated genome-specific databases, develops systematic classification schemes for the functional annotation of protein sequences and provides tools for the comprehensive analysis of protein sequences. This report updates the information on the yeast genome (CYGD), the Neurospora crassa genome (MNCDB), the database of complete cDNAs (German Human Genome Project, NGFN), the database of mammalian protein-protein interactions (MPPI), the database of FASTA homologies (SIMAP), and the interface for the fast retrieval of protein-associated information (QUIPOS). The Arabidopsis thaliana database, the rice database, the plant EST databases (MATDB, MOsDB, SPUTNIK), as well as the databases for the comprehensive set of genomes (PEDANT genomes) are described elsewhere in the 2003 and 2004 NAR database issues, respectively. All databases described, and the detailed descriptions of our projects can be accessed through the MIPS web server (http://mips.gsf.de).

  2. Cameras for Public Health Surveillance: A Methods Protocol for Crowdsourced Annotation of Point-of-Sale Photographs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ilakkuvan, Vinu; Tacelosky, Michael; Ivey, Keith C; Pearson, Jennifer L; Cantrell, Jennifer; Vallone, Donna M; Abrams, David B; Kirchner, Thomas R

    2014-04-09

    Photographs are an effective way to collect detailed and objective information about the environment, particularly for public health surveillance. However, accurately and reliably annotating (ie, extracting information from) photographs remains difficult, a critical bottleneck inhibiting the use of photographs for systematic surveillance. The advent of distributed human computation (ie, crowdsourcing) platforms represents a veritable breakthrough, making it possible for the first time to accurately, quickly, and repeatedly annotate photos at relatively low cost. This paper describes a methods protocol, using photographs from point-of-sale surveillance studies in the field of tobacco control to demonstrate the development and testing of custom-built tools that can greatly enhance the quality of crowdsourced annotation. Enhancing the quality of crowdsourced photo annotation requires a number of approaches and tools. The crowdsourced photo annotation process is greatly simplified by decomposing the overall process into smaller tasks, which improves accuracy and speed and enables adaptive processing, in which irrelevant data is filtered out and more difficult targets receive increased scrutiny. Additionally, zoom tools enable users to see details within photographs and crop tools highlight where within an image a specific object of interest is found, generating a set of photographs that answer specific questions. Beyond such tools, optimizing the number of raters (ie, crowd size) for accuracy and reliability is an important facet of crowdsourced photo annotation. This can be determined in a systematic manner based on the difficulty of the task and the desired level of accuracy, using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses. Usability tests of the zoom and crop tool suggest that these tools significantly improve annotation accuracy. The tests asked raters to extract data from photographs, not for the purposes of assessing the quality of that data, but rather to

  3. A method for increasing the accuracy of image annotating in crowd-sourcing

    OpenAIRE

    Nurmukhametov, O.R.; Baklanov, A.

    2016-01-01

    Crowdsourcing is a new approach to solve tasks when a group of volunteers replaces experts. Recent results show that crowdsourcing is an efficient tool for annotating large datasets. Geo-Wiki is an example of successful citizen science projects. The goal of Geo-Wiki project is to improve a global land cover map by applying crowdsourcing for image recognition. In our research, we investigate methods for increasing reliability of data collected during The Cropland Capture Game (Geo-Wiki). In th...

  4. Facilitating functional annotation of chicken microarray data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gresham Cathy R

    2009-10-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Modeling results from chicken microarray studies is challenging for researchers due to little functional annotation associated with these arrays. The Affymetrix GenChip chicken genome array, one of the biggest arrays that serve as a key research tool for the study of chicken functional genomics, is among the few arrays that link gene products to Gene Ontology (GO. However the GO annotation data presented by Affymetrix is incomplete, for example, they do not show references linked to manually annotated functions. In addition, there is no tool that facilitates microarray researchers to directly retrieve functional annotations for their datasets from the annotated arrays. This costs researchers amount of time in searching multiple GO databases for functional information. Results We have improved the breadth of functional annotations of the gene products associated with probesets on the Affymetrix chicken genome array by 45% and the quality of annotation by 14%. We have also identified the most significant diseases and disorders, different types of genes, and known drug targets represented on Affymetrix chicken genome array. To facilitate functional annotation of other arrays and microarray experimental datasets we developed an Array GO Mapper (AGOM tool to help researchers to quickly retrieve corresponding functional information for their dataset. Conclusion Results from this study will directly facilitate annotation of other chicken arrays and microarray experimental datasets. Researchers will be able to quickly model their microarray dataset into more reliable biological functional information by using AGOM tool. The disease, disorders, gene types and drug targets revealed in the study will allow researchers to learn more about how genes function in complex biological systems and may lead to new drug discovery and development of therapies. The GO annotation data generated will be available for public use via AgBase website and

  5. Dictionary-driven protein annotation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rigoutsos, Isidore; Huynh, Tien; Floratos, Aris; Parida, Laxmi; Platt, Daniel

    2002-09-01

    Computational methods seeking to automatically determine the properties (functional, structural, physicochemical, etc.) of a protein directly from the sequence have long been the focus of numerous research groups. With the advent of advanced sequencing methods and systems, the number of amino acid sequences that are being deposited in the public databases has been increasing steadily. This has in turn generated a renewed demand for automated approaches that can annotate individual sequences and complete genomes quickly, exhaustively and objectively. In this paper, we present one such approach that is centered around and exploits the Bio-Dictionary, a collection of amino acid patterns that completely covers the natural sequence space and can capture functional and structural signals that have been reused during evolution, within and across protein families. Our annotation approach also makes use of a weighted, position-specific scoring scheme that is unaffected by the over-representation of well-conserved proteins and protein fragments in the databases used. For a given query sequence, the method permits one to determine, in a single pass, the following: local and global similarities between the query and any protein already present in a public database; the likeness of the query to all available archaeal/ bacterial/eukaryotic/viral sequences in the database as a function of amino acid position within the query; the character of secondary structure of the query as a function of amino acid position within the query; the cytoplasmic, transmembrane or extracellular behavior of the query; the nature and position of binding domains, active sites, post-translationally modified sites, signal peptides, etc. In terms of performance, the proposed method is exhaustive, objective and allows for the rapid annotation of individual sequences and full genomes. Annotation examples are presented and discussed in Results, including individual queries and complete genomes that were

  6. Automatic annotation of head velocity and acceleration in Anvil

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Jongejan, Bart

    2012-01-01

    We describe an automatic face tracker plugin for the ANVIL annotation tool. The face tracker produces data for velocity and for acceleration in two dimensions. We compare the annotations generated by the face tracking algorithm with independently made manual annotations for head movements....... The annotations are a useful supplement to manual annotations and may help human annotators to quickly and reliably determine onset of head movements and to suggest which kind of head movement is taking place....

  7. Mesotext. Framing and exploring annotations

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Boot, P.; Boot, P.; Stronks, E.

    2007-01-01

    From the introduction: Annotation is an important item on the wish list for digital scholarly tools. It is one of John Unsworth’s primitives of scholarship (Unsworth 2000). Especially in linguistics,a number of tools have been developed that facilitate the creation of annotations to source material

  8. Annotating images by mining image search results

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Wang, X.J.; Zhang, L.; Li, X.; Ma, W.Y.

    2008-01-01

    Although it has been studied for years by the computer vision and machine learning communities, image annotation is still far from practical. In this paper, we propose a novel attempt at model-free image annotation, which is a data-driven approach that annotates images by mining their search

  9. Teaching and Learning Communities through Online Annotation

    Science.gov (United States)

    van der Pluijm, B.

    2016-12-01

    What do colleagues do with your assigned textbook? What they say or think about the material? Want students to be more engaged in their learning experience? If so, online materials that complement standard lecture format provide new opportunity through managed, online group annotation that leverages the ubiquity of internet access, while personalizing learning. The concept is illustrated with the new online textbook "Processes in Structural Geology and Tectonics", by Ben van der Pluijm and Stephen Marshak, which offers a platform for sharing of experiences, supplementary materials and approaches, including readings, mathematical applications, exercises, challenge questions, quizzes, alternative explanations, and more. The annotation framework used is Hypothes.is, which offers a free, open platform markup environment for annotation of websites and PDF postings. The annotations can be public, grouped or individualized, as desired, including export access and download of annotations. A teacher group, hosted by a moderator/owner, limits access to members of a user group of teachers, so that its members can use, copy or transcribe annotations for their own lesson material. Likewise, an instructor can host a student group that encourages sharing of observations, questions and answers among students and instructor. Also, the instructor can create one or more closed groups that offers study help and hints to students. Options galore, all of which aim to engage students and to promote greater responsibility for their learning experience. Beyond new capacity, the ability to analyze student annotation supports individual learners and their needs. For example, student notes can be analyzed for key phrases and concepts, and identify misunderstandings, omissions and problems. Also, example annotations can be shared to enhance notetaking skills and to help with studying. Lastly, online annotation allows active application to lecture posted slides, supporting real-time notetaking

  10. Project Assessment Framework through Design (PAFTD) - A Project Assessment Framework in Support of Strategic Decision Making

    Science.gov (United States)

    Depenbrock, Brett T.; Balint, Tibor S.; Sheehy, Jeffrey A.

    2014-01-01

    Research and development organizations that push the innovation edge of technology frequently encounter challenges when attempting to identify an investment strategy and to accurately forecast the cost and schedule performance of selected projects. Fast moving and complex environments require managers to quickly analyze and diagnose the value of returns on investment versus allocated resources. Our Project Assessment Framework through Design (PAFTD) tool facilitates decision making for NASA senior leadership to enable more strategic and consistent technology development investment analysis, beginning at implementation and continuing through the project life cycle. The framework takes an integrated approach by leveraging design principles of useability, feasibility, and viability and aligns them with methods employed by NASA's Independent Program Assessment Office for project performance assessment. The need exists to periodically revisit the justification and prioritization of technology development investments as changes occur over project life cycles. The framework informs management rapidly and comprehensively about diagnosed internal and external root causes of project performance.

  11. Social impact assessment in energy projects

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Koivujaervi, S.; Kantola, I.; Maekinen, P.

    1998-01-01

    The research report is based on literature and interviews on the social impact assessment (SIA) in energy projects in Finland, both before and after the EIA Act has been in force in Finland. The concept and content of SIA, the requirements set by the legislation, its relation with other environmental impacts, the assessment process and the used methods have been studied on the basis of the literature analysis. A total of 26 persons representing the coordination authorities, persons issuing statements, researchers, civil servants, consultants and project developers were interviewed for the research. The interviews were made by the University of Turku in the form of theme interviews, investigating the present status, practices and expectations of the SIA. The unestablished status was seen to be the problem in the SIA, which was reflected in the interviewers' varying views about the content of the SIA. Among the operators, the general character of the SIA criticism in the statements concerning the assessment programmes or reports was seen as a problem as well; the assessment of social impact has been considered to be insufficient, however, without any identification of the effects or how the effects should have been assessed. For the time preceding the EIA Act, the assessment of the social impact of hydraulic work, power plant and transmission line projects and the project of the fifth nuclear power plant have been studied. As to the power plant and transmission line projects after the validity of the EIA Act, all the 20 projects were gone through which had progressed during the spring 1998 at least to the assessment report stage. Of these projects, the assessment of the social impact of one transmission line and one power plant project was studied in detail. The report also studies the assessment of the social impact of the repository for nuclear waste on the basis of the experience gained in Finland and in other countries. On the basis of the literature study

  12. An Annotated List of New Social Studies Projects.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Knight, Merle M., Comp.

    The curriculum materials developed by 34 projects are described in this directory. The discussions are organized by discipline: Anthropology, Economics, Geography, History, Political Science, Social Psychology, Sociology, and General and Interdisciplinary. Each individual project note includes: project name, director, address, and a summary of the…

  13. THE DIMENSIONS OF COMPOSITION ANNOTATION.

    Science.gov (United States)

    MCCOLLY, WILLIAM

    ENGLISH TEACHER ANNOTATIONS WERE STUDIED TO DETERMINE THE DIMENSIONS AND PROPERTIES OF THE ENTIRE SYSTEM FOR WRITING CORRECTIONS AND CRITICISMS ON COMPOSITIONS. FOUR SETS OF COMPOSITIONS WERE WRITTEN BY STUDENTS IN GRADES 9 THROUGH 13. TYPESCRIPTS OF THE COMPOSITIONS WERE ANNOTATED BY CLASSROOM ENGLISH TEACHERS. THEN, 32 ENGLISH TEACHERS JUDGED…

  14. MimoSA: a system for minimotif annotation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kundeti Vamsi

    2010-06-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Minimotifs are short peptide sequences within one protein, which are recognized by other proteins or molecules. While there are now several minimotif databases, they are incomplete. There are reports of many minimotifs in the primary literature, which have yet to be annotated, while entirely novel minimotifs continue to be published on a weekly basis. Our recently proposed function and sequence syntax for minimotifs enables us to build a general tool that will facilitate structured annotation and management of minimotif data from the biomedical literature. Results We have built the MimoSA application for minimotif annotation. The application supports management of the Minimotif Miner database, literature tracking, and annotation of new minimotifs. MimoSA enables the visualization, organization, selection and editing functions of minimotifs and their attributes in the MnM database. For the literature components, Mimosa provides paper status tracking and scoring of papers for annotation through a freely available machine learning approach, which is based on word correlation. The paper scoring algorithm is also available as a separate program, TextMine. Form-driven annotation of minimotif attributes enables entry of new minimotifs into the MnM database. Several supporting features increase the efficiency of annotation. The layered architecture of MimoSA allows for extensibility by separating the functions of paper scoring, minimotif visualization, and database management. MimoSA is readily adaptable to other annotation efforts that manually curate literature into a MySQL database. Conclusions MimoSA is an extensible application that facilitates minimotif annotation and integrates with the Minimotif Miner database. We have built MimoSA as an application that integrates dynamic abstract scoring with a high performance relational model of minimotif syntax. MimoSA's TextMine, an efficient paper-scoring algorithm, can be used to

  15. Annotate-it: a Swiss-knife approach to annotation, analysis and interpretation of single nucleotide variation in human disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sifrim, Alejandro; Van Houdt, Jeroen Kj; Tranchevent, Leon-Charles; Nowakowska, Beata; Sakai, Ryo; Pavlopoulos, Georgios A; Devriendt, Koen; Vermeesch, Joris R; Moreau, Yves; Aerts, Jan

    2012-01-01

    The increasing size and complexity of exome/genome sequencing data requires new tools for clinical geneticists to discover disease-causing variants. Bottlenecks in identifying the causative variation include poor cross-sample querying, constantly changing functional annotation and not considering existing knowledge concerning the phenotype. We describe a methodology that facilitates exploration of patient sequencing data towards identification of causal variants under different genetic hypotheses. Annotate-it facilitates handling, analysis and interpretation of high-throughput single nucleotide variant data. We demonstrate our strategy using three case studies. Annotate-it is freely available and test data are accessible to all users at http://www.annotate-it.org.

  16. Annotated chemical patent corpus: a gold standard for text mining.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Saber A Akhondi

    Full Text Available Exploring the chemical and biological space covered by patent applications is crucial in early-stage medicinal chemistry activities. Patent analysis can provide understanding of compound prior art, novelty checking, validation of biological assays, and identification of new starting points for chemical exploration. Extracting chemical and biological entities from patents through manual extraction by expert curators can take substantial amount of time and resources. Text mining methods can help to ease this process. To validate the performance of such methods, a manually annotated patent corpus is essential. In this study we have produced a large gold standard chemical patent corpus. We developed annotation guidelines and selected 200 full patents from the World Intellectual Property Organization, United States Patent and Trademark Office, and European Patent Office. The patents were pre-annotated automatically and made available to four independent annotator groups each consisting of two to ten annotators. The annotators marked chemicals in different subclasses, diseases, targets, and modes of action. Spelling mistakes and spurious line break due to optical character recognition errors were also annotated. A subset of 47 patents was annotated by at least three annotator groups, from which harmonized annotations and inter-annotator agreement scores were derived. One group annotated the full set. The patent corpus includes 400,125 annotations for the full set and 36,537 annotations for the harmonized set. All patents and annotated entities are publicly available at www.biosemantics.org.

  17. Reduce manual curation by combining gene predictions from multiple annotation engines, a case study of start codon prediction.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Thomas H A Ederveen

    Full Text Available Nowadays, prokaryotic genomes are sequenced faster than the capacity to manually curate gene annotations. Automated genome annotation engines provide users a straight-forward and complete solution for predicting ORF coordinates and function. For many labs, the use of AGEs is therefore essential to decrease the time necessary for annotating a given prokaryotic genome. However, it is not uncommon for AGEs to provide different and sometimes conflicting predictions. Combining multiple AGEs might allow for more accurate predictions. Here we analyzed the ab initio open reading frame (ORF calling performance of different AGEs based on curated genome annotations of eight strains from different bacterial species with GC% ranging from 35-52%. We present a case study which demonstrates a novel way of comparative genome annotation, using combinations of AGEs in a pre-defined order (or path to predict ORF start codons. The order of AGE combinations is from high to low specificity, where the specificity is based on the eight genome annotations. For each AGE combination we are able to derive a so-called projected confidence value, which is the average specificity of ORF start codon prediction based on the eight genomes. The projected confidence enables estimating likeliness of a correct prediction for a particular ORF start codon by a particular AGE combination, pinpointing ORFs notoriously difficult to predict start codons. We correctly predict start codons for 90.5±4.8% of the genes in a genome (based on the eight genomes with an accuracy of 81.1±7.6%. Our consensus-path methodology allows a marked improvement over majority voting (9.7±4.4% and with an optimal path ORF start prediction sensitivity is gained while maintaining a high specificity.

  18. A Novel Quality Measure and Correction Procedure for the Annotation of Microbial Translation Initiation Sites.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lex Overmars

    Full Text Available The identification of translation initiation sites (TISs constitutes an important aspect of sequence-based genome analysis. An erroneous TIS annotation can impair the identification of regulatory elements and N-terminal signal peptides, and also may flaw the determination of descent, for any particular gene. We have formulated a reference-free method to score the TIS annotation quality. The method is based on a comparison of the observed and expected distribution of all TISs in a particular genome given prior gene-calling. We have assessed the TIS annotations for all available NCBI RefSeq microbial genomes and found that approximately 87% is of appropriate quality, whereas 13% needs substantial improvement. We have analyzed a number of factors that could affect TIS annotation quality such as GC-content, taxonomy, the fraction of genes with a Shine-Dalgarno sequence and the year of publication. The analysis showed that only the first factor has a clear effect. We have then formulated a straightforward Principle Component Analysis-based TIS identification strategy to self-organize and score potential TISs. The strategy is independent of reference data and a priori calculations. A representative set of 277 genomes was subjected to the analysis and we found a clear increase in TIS annotation quality for the genomes with a low quality score. The PCA-based annotation was also compared with annotation with the current tool of reference, Prodigal. The comparison for the model genome of Escherichia coli K12 showed that both methods supplement each other and that prediction agreement can be used as an indicator of a correct TIS annotation. Importantly, the data suggest that the addition of a PCA-based strategy to a Prodigal prediction can be used to 'flag' TIS annotations for re-evaluation and in addition can be used to evaluate a given annotation in case a Prodigal annotation is lacking.

  19. On the Use of Gene Ontology Annotations to Assess Functional Similarity among Orthologs and Paralogs: A Short Report.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Paul D Thomas

    Full Text Available A recent paper (Nehrt et al., PLoS Comput. Biol. 7:e1002073, 2011 has proposed a metric for the "functional similarity" between two genes that uses only the Gene Ontology (GO annotations directly derived from published experimental results. Applying this metric, the authors concluded that paralogous genes within the mouse genome or the human genome are more functionally similar on average than orthologous genes between these genomes, an unexpected result with broad implications if true. We suggest, based on both theoretical and empirical considerations, that this proposed metric should not be interpreted as a functional similarity, and therefore cannot be used to support any conclusions about the "ortholog conjecture" (or, more properly, the "ortholog functional conservation hypothesis". First, we reexamine the case studies presented by Nehrt et al. as examples of orthologs with divergent functions, and come to a very different conclusion: they actually exemplify how GO annotations for orthologous genes provide complementary information about conserved biological functions. We then show that there is a global ascertainment bias in the experiment-based GO annotations for human and mouse genes: particular types of experiments tend to be performed in different model organisms. We conclude that the reported statistical differences in annotations between pairs of orthologous genes do not reflect differences in biological function, but rather complementarity in experimental approaches. Our results underscore two general considerations for researchers proposing novel types of analysis based on the GO: 1 that GO annotations are often incomplete, potentially in a biased manner, and subject to an "open world assumption" (absence of an annotation does not imply absence of a function, and 2 that conclusions drawn from a novel, large-scale GO analysis should whenever possible be supported by careful, in-depth examination of examples, to help ensure the

  20. Diverse Image Annotation

    KAUST Repository

    Wu, Baoyuan

    2017-11-09

    In this work we study the task of image annotation, of which the goal is to describe an image using a few tags. Instead of predicting the full list of tags, here we target for providing a short list of tags under a limited number (e.g., 3), to cover as much information as possible of the image. The tags in such a short list should be representative and diverse. It means they are required to be not only corresponding to the contents of the image, but also be different to each other. To this end, we treat the image annotation as a subset selection problem based on the conditional determinantal point process (DPP) model, which formulates the representation and diversity jointly. We further explore the semantic hierarchy and synonyms among the candidate tags, and require that two tags in a semantic hierarchy or in a pair of synonyms should not be selected simultaneously. This requirement is then embedded into the sampling algorithm according to the learned conditional DPP model. Besides, we find that traditional metrics for image annotation (e.g., precision, recall and F1 score) only consider the representation, but ignore the diversity. Thus we propose new metrics to evaluate the quality of the selected subset (i.e., the tag list), based on the semantic hierarchy and synonyms. Human study through Amazon Mechanical Turk verifies that the proposed metrics are more close to the humans judgment than traditional metrics. Experiments on two benchmark datasets show that the proposed method can produce more representative and diverse tags, compared with existing image annotation methods.

  1. Diverse Image Annotation

    KAUST Repository

    Wu, Baoyuan; Jia, Fan; Liu, Wei; Ghanem, Bernard

    2017-01-01

    In this work we study the task of image annotation, of which the goal is to describe an image using a few tags. Instead of predicting the full list of tags, here we target for providing a short list of tags under a limited number (e.g., 3), to cover as much information as possible of the image. The tags in such a short list should be representative and diverse. It means they are required to be not only corresponding to the contents of the image, but also be different to each other. To this end, we treat the image annotation as a subset selection problem based on the conditional determinantal point process (DPP) model, which formulates the representation and diversity jointly. We further explore the semantic hierarchy and synonyms among the candidate tags, and require that two tags in a semantic hierarchy or in a pair of synonyms should not be selected simultaneously. This requirement is then embedded into the sampling algorithm according to the learned conditional DPP model. Besides, we find that traditional metrics for image annotation (e.g., precision, recall and F1 score) only consider the representation, but ignore the diversity. Thus we propose new metrics to evaluate the quality of the selected subset (i.e., the tag list), based on the semantic hierarchy and synonyms. Human study through Amazon Mechanical Turk verifies that the proposed metrics are more close to the humans judgment than traditional metrics. Experiments on two benchmark datasets show that the proposed method can produce more representative and diverse tags, compared with existing image annotation methods.

  2. Discovering gene annotations in biomedical text databases

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ozsoyoglu Gultekin

    2008-03-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Genes and gene products are frequently annotated with Gene Ontology concepts based on the evidence provided in genomics articles. Manually locating and curating information about a genomic entity from the biomedical literature requires vast amounts of human effort. Hence, there is clearly a need forautomated computational tools to annotate the genes and gene products with Gene Ontology concepts by computationally capturing the related knowledge embedded in textual data. Results In this article, we present an automated genomic entity annotation system, GEANN, which extracts information about the characteristics of genes and gene products in article abstracts from PubMed, and translates the discoveredknowledge into Gene Ontology (GO concepts, a widely-used standardized vocabulary of genomic traits. GEANN utilizes textual "extraction patterns", and a semantic matching framework to locate phrases matching to a pattern and produce Gene Ontology annotations for genes and gene products. In our experiments, GEANN has reached to the precision level of 78% at therecall level of 61%. On a select set of Gene Ontology concepts, GEANN either outperforms or is comparable to two other automated annotation studies. Use of WordNet for semantic pattern matching improves the precision and recall by 24% and 15%, respectively, and the improvement due to semantic pattern matching becomes more apparent as the Gene Ontology terms become more general. Conclusion GEANN is useful for two distinct purposes: (i automating the annotation of genomic entities with Gene Ontology concepts, and (ii providing existing annotations with additional "evidence articles" from the literature. The use of textual extraction patterns that are constructed based on the existing annotations achieve high precision. The semantic pattern matching framework provides a more flexible pattern matching scheme with respect to "exactmatching" with the advantage of locating approximate

  3. Annotating the human genome with Disease Ontology

    Science.gov (United States)

    Osborne, John D; Flatow, Jared; Holko, Michelle; Lin, Simon M; Kibbe, Warren A; Zhu, Lihua (Julie); Danila, Maria I; Feng, Gang; Chisholm, Rex L

    2009-01-01

    Background The human genome has been extensively annotated with Gene Ontology for biological functions, but minimally computationally annotated for diseases. Results We used the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) MetaMap Transfer tool (MMTx) to discover gene-disease relationships from the GeneRIF database. We utilized a comprehensive subset of UMLS, which is disease-focused and structured as a directed acyclic graph (the Disease Ontology), to filter and interpret results from MMTx. The results were validated against the Homayouni gene collection using recall and precision measurements. We compared our results with the widely used Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) annotations. Conclusion The validation data set suggests a 91% recall rate and 97% precision rate of disease annotation using GeneRIF, in contrast with a 22% recall and 98% precision using OMIM. Our thesaurus-based approach allows for comparisons to be made between disease containing databases and allows for increased accuracy in disease identification through synonym matching. The much higher recall rate of our approach demonstrates that annotating human genome with Disease Ontology and GeneRIF for diseases dramatically increases the coverage of the disease annotation of human genome. PMID:19594883

  4. MIPS bacterial genomes functional annotation benchmark dataset.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tetko, Igor V; Brauner, Barbara; Dunger-Kaltenbach, Irmtraud; Frishman, Goar; Montrone, Corinna; Fobo, Gisela; Ruepp, Andreas; Antonov, Alexey V; Surmeli, Dimitrij; Mewes, Hans-Wernen

    2005-05-15

    Any development of new methods for automatic functional annotation of proteins according to their sequences requires high-quality data (as benchmark) as well as tedious preparatory work to generate sequence parameters required as input data for the machine learning methods. Different program settings and incompatible protocols make a comparison of the analyzed methods difficult. The MIPS Bacterial Functional Annotation Benchmark dataset (MIPS-BFAB) is a new, high-quality resource comprising four bacterial genomes manually annotated according to the MIPS functional catalogue (FunCat). These resources include precalculated sequence parameters, such as sequence similarity scores, InterPro domain composition and other parameters that could be used to develop and benchmark methods for functional annotation of bacterial protein sequences. These data are provided in XML format and can be used by scientists who are not necessarily experts in genome annotation. BFAB is available at http://mips.gsf.de/proj/bfab

  5. River Protection Project information systems assessment

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    JOHNSON, A.L.

    1999-01-01

    The Information Systems Assessment Report documents the results from assessing the Project Hanford Management Contract (PHMC) Hanford Data Integrator 2000 (HANDI 2000) system, Business Management System (BMS) and Work Management System phases (WMS), with respect to the System Engineering Capability Assessment Model (CAM). The assessment was performed in accordance with the expectations stated in the fiscal year (FY) 1999 Performance Agreement 7.1.1, item (2) which reads, ''Provide an assessment report on the selected Integrated Information System by July 31, 1999.'' This report assesses the BMS and WMS as implemented and planned for the River Protection Project (RPP). The systems implementation is being performed under the PHMC HANDI 2000 information system project. The project began in FY 1998 with the BMS, proceeded in FY 1999 with the Master Equipment List portion of the WMS, and will continue the WMS implementation as funding provides. This report constitutes an interim quality assessment providing information necessary for planning RPP's information systems activities. To avoid confusion, HANDI 2000 will be used when referring to the entire system, encompassing both the BMS and WMS. A graphical depiction of the system is shown in Figure 2-1 of this report

  6. Annotating non-coding regions of the genome.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Alexander, Roger P; Fang, Gang; Rozowsky, Joel; Snyder, Michael; Gerstein, Mark B

    2010-08-01

    Most of the human genome consists of non-protein-coding DNA. Recently, progress has been made in annotating these non-coding regions through the interpretation of functional genomics experiments and comparative sequence analysis. One can conceptualize functional genomics analysis as involving a sequence of steps: turning the output of an experiment into a 'signal' at each base pair of the genome; smoothing this signal and segmenting it into small blocks of initial annotation; and then clustering these small blocks into larger derived annotations and networks. Finally, one can relate functional genomics annotations to conserved units and measures of conservation derived from comparative sequence analysis.

  7. Systems Theory and Communication. Annotated Bibliography.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Covington, William G., Jr.

    This annotated bibliography presents annotations of 31 books and journal articles dealing with systems theory and its relation to organizational communication, marketing, information theory, and cybernetics. Materials were published between 1963 and 1992 and are listed alphabetically by author. (RS)

  8. The surplus value of semantic annotations

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Marx, M.

    2010-01-01

    We compare the costs of semantic annotation of textual documents to its benefits for information processing tasks. Semantic annotation can improve the performance of retrieval tasks and facilitates an improved search experience through faceted search, focused retrieval, better document summaries,

  9. Annotation-based enrichment of Digital Objects using open-source frameworks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marcus Emmanuel Barnes

    2017-07-01

    Full Text Available The W3C Web Annotation Data Model, Protocol, and Vocabulary unify approaches to annotations across the web, enabling their aggregation, discovery and persistence over time. In addition, new javascript libraries provide the ability for users to annotate multi-format content. In this paper, we describe how we have leveraged these developments to provide annotation features alongside Islandora’s existing preservation, access, and management capabilities. We also discuss our experience developing with the Web Annotation Model as an open web architecture standard, as well as our approach to integrating mature external annotation libraries. The resulting software (the Web Annotation Utility Module for Islandora accommodates annotation across multiple formats. This solution can be used in various digital scholarship contexts.

  10. Protannotator: a semiautomated pipeline for chromosome-wise functional annotation of the "missing" human proteome.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Islam, Mohammad T; Garg, Gagan; Hancock, William S; Risk, Brian A; Baker, Mark S; Ranganathan, Shoba

    2014-01-03

    The chromosome-centric human proteome project (C-HPP) aims to define the complete set of proteins encoded in each human chromosome. The neXtProt database (September 2013) lists 20,128 proteins for the human proteome, of which 3831 human proteins (∼19%) are considered "missing" according to the standard metrics table (released September 27, 2013). In support of the C-HPP initiative, we have extended the annotation strategy developed for human chromosome 7 "missing" proteins into a semiautomated pipeline to functionally annotate the "missing" human proteome. This pipeline integrates a suite of bioinformatics analysis and annotation software tools to identify homologues and map putative functional signatures, gene ontology, and biochemical pathways. From sequential BLAST searches, we have primarily identified homologues from reviewed nonhuman mammalian proteins with protein evidence for 1271 (33.2%) "missing" proteins, followed by 703 (18.4%) homologues from reviewed nonhuman mammalian proteins and subsequently 564 (14.7%) homologues from reviewed human proteins. Functional annotations for 1945 (50.8%) "missing" proteins were also determined. To accelerate the identification of "missing" proteins from proteomics studies, we generated proteotypic peptides in silico. Matching these proteotypic peptides to ENCODE proteogenomic data resulted in proteomic evidence for 107 (2.8%) of the 3831 "missing proteins, while evidence from a recent membrane proteomic study supported the existence for another 15 "missing" proteins. The chromosome-wise functional annotation of all "missing" proteins is freely available to the scientific community through our web server (http://biolinfo.org/protannotator).

  11. Students' Framing of a Reading Annotation Tool in the Context of Research-Based Teaching

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dahl, Jan Erik

    2016-01-01

    In the studied master's course, students participated both as research objects in a digital annotation experiment and as critical investigators of this technology in their semester projects. The students' role paralleled the researcher's role, opening an opportunity for researcher-student co-learning within what is often referred to as…

  12. Current and future trends in marine image annotation software

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gomes-Pereira, Jose Nuno; Auger, Vincent; Beisiegel, Kolja; Benjamin, Robert; Bergmann, Melanie; Bowden, David; Buhl-Mortensen, Pal; De Leo, Fabio C.; Dionísio, Gisela; Durden, Jennifer M.; Edwards, Luke; Friedman, Ariell; Greinert, Jens; Jacobsen-Stout, Nancy; Lerner, Steve; Leslie, Murray; Nattkemper, Tim W.; Sameoto, Jessica A.; Schoening, Timm; Schouten, Ronald; Seager, James; Singh, Hanumant; Soubigou, Olivier; Tojeira, Inês; van den Beld, Inge; Dias, Frederico; Tempera, Fernando; Santos, Ricardo S.

    2016-12-01

    Given the need to describe, analyze and index large quantities of marine imagery data for exploration and monitoring activities, a range of specialized image annotation tools have been developed worldwide. Image annotation - the process of transposing objects or events represented in a video or still image to the semantic level, may involve human interactions and computer-assisted solutions. Marine image annotation software (MIAS) have enabled over 500 publications to date. We review the functioning, application trends and developments, by comparing general and advanced features of 23 different tools utilized in underwater image analysis. MIAS requiring human input are basically a graphical user interface, with a video player or image browser that recognizes a specific time code or image code, allowing to log events in a time-stamped (and/or geo-referenced) manner. MIAS differ from similar software by the capability of integrating data associated to video collection, the most simple being the position coordinates of the video recording platform. MIAS have three main characteristics: annotating events in real time, posteriorly to annotation and interact with a database. These range from simple annotation interfaces, to full onboard data management systems, with a variety of toolboxes. Advanced packages allow to input and display data from multiple sensors or multiple annotators via intranet or internet. Posterior human-mediated annotation often include tools for data display and image analysis, e.g. length, area, image segmentation, point count; and in a few cases the possibility of browsing and editing previous dive logs or to analyze the annotations. The interaction with a database allows the automatic integration of annotations from different surveys, repeated annotation and collaborative annotation of shared datasets, browsing and querying of data. Progress in the field of automated annotation is mostly in post processing, for stable platforms or still images

  13. Annotated bibliography of remote sensing methods for monitoring desertification

    Science.gov (United States)

    Walker, A.S.; Robinove, Charles J.

    1981-01-01

    Remote sensing techniques are valuable for locating, assessing, and monitoring desertification. Remotely sensed data provide a permanent record of the condition of the land in a format that allows changes in land features and condition to be measured. The annotated bibliography of 118 items discusses remote sensing methods that may be applied to desertification studies.

  14. Vital analysis: field validation of a framework for annotating biological signals of first responders in action.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gomes, P; Lopes, B; Coimbra, M

    2012-01-01

    First responders are professionals that are exposed to extreme stress and fatigue during extended periods of time. That is why it is necessary to research and develop technological solutions based on wearable sensors that can continuously monitor the health of these professionals in action, namely their stress and fatigue levels. In this paper we present the Vital Analysis smartphone-based framework, integrated into the broader Vital Responder project, that allows the annotation and contextualization of the signals collected during real action. After a contextual study we have implemented and deployed this framework in a firefighter team with 5 elements, from where we have collected over 3300 hours of annotations during 174 days, covering 382 different events. Results are analysed and discussed, validating the framework as a useful and usable tool for annotating biological signals of first responders in action.

  15. PANNZER2: a rapid functional annotation web server.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Törönen, Petri; Medlar, Alan; Holm, Liisa

    2018-05-08

    The unprecedented growth of high-throughput sequencing has led to an ever-widening annotation gap in protein databases. While computational prediction methods are available to make up the shortfall, a majority of public web servers are hindered by practical limitations and poor performance. Here, we introduce PANNZER2 (Protein ANNotation with Z-scoRE), a fast functional annotation web server that provides both Gene Ontology (GO) annotations and free text description predictions. PANNZER2 uses SANSparallel to perform high-performance homology searches, making bulk annotation based on sequence similarity practical. PANNZER2 can output GO annotations from multiple scoring functions, enabling users to see which predictions are robust across predictors. Finally, PANNZER2 predictions scored within the top 10 methods for molecular function and biological process in the CAFA2 NK-full benchmark. The PANNZER2 web server is updated on a monthly schedule and is accessible at http://ekhidna2.biocenter.helsinki.fi/sanspanz/. The source code is available under the GNU Public Licence v3.

  16. River Protection Project information systems assessment

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    JOHNSON, A.L.

    1999-07-28

    The Information Systems Assessment Report documents the results from assessing the Project Hanford Management Contract (PHMC) Hanford Data Integrator 2000 (HANDI 2000) system, Business Management System (BMS) and Work Management System phases (WMS), with respect to the System Engineering Capability Assessment Model (CAM). The assessment was performed in accordance with the expectations stated in the fiscal year (FY) 1999 Performance Agreement 7.1.1, item (2) which reads, ''Provide an assessment report on the selected Integrated Information System by July 31, 1999.'' This report assesses the BMS and WMS as implemented and planned for the River Protection Project (RPP). The systems implementation is being performed under the PHMC HANDI 2000 information system project. The project began in FY 1998 with the BMS, proceeded in FY 1999 with the Master Equipment List portion of the WMS, and will continue the WMS implementation as funding provides. This report constitutes an interim quality assessment providing information necessary for planning RPP's information systems activities. To avoid confusion, HANDI 2000 will be used when referring to the entire system, encompassing both the BMS and WMS. A graphical depiction of the system is shown in Figure 2-1 of this report.

  17. Annotating activation/inhibition relationships to protein-protein interactions using gene ontology relations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yim, Soorin; Yu, Hasun; Jang, Dongjin; Lee, Doheon

    2018-04-11

    Signaling pathways can be reconstructed by identifying 'effect types' (i.e. activation/inhibition) of protein-protein interactions (PPIs). Effect types are composed of 'directions' (i.e. upstream/downstream) and 'signs' (i.e. positive/negative), thereby requiring directions as well as signs of PPIs to predict signaling events from PPI networks. Here, we propose a computational method for systemically annotating effect types to PPIs using relations between functional information of proteins. We used regulates, positively regulates, and negatively regulates relations in Gene Ontology (GO) to predict directions and signs of PPIs. These relations indicate both directions and signs between GO terms so that we can project directions and signs between relevant GO terms to PPIs. Independent test results showed that our method is effective for predicting both directions and signs of PPIs. Moreover, our method outperformed a previous GO-based method that did not consider the relations between GO terms. We annotated effect types to human PPIs and validated several highly confident effect types against literature. The annotated human PPIs are available in Additional file 2 to aid signaling pathway reconstruction and network biology research. We annotated effect types to PPIs by using regulates, positively regulates, and negatively regulates relations in GO. We demonstrated that those relations are effective for predicting not only signs, but also directions of PPIs. The usefulness of those relations suggests their potential applications to other types of interactions such as protein-DNA interactions.

  18. Fast and accurate semantic annotation of bioassays exploiting a hybrid of machine learning and user confirmation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Clark, Alex M; Bunin, Barry A; Litterman, Nadia K; Schürer, Stephan C; Visser, Ubbo

    2014-01-01

    Bioinformatics and computer aided drug design rely on the curation of a large number of protocols for biological assays that measure the ability of potential drugs to achieve a therapeutic effect. These assay protocols are generally published by scientists in the form of plain text, which needs to be more precisely annotated in order to be useful to software methods. We have developed a pragmatic approach to describing assays according to the semantic definitions of the BioAssay Ontology (BAO) project, using a hybrid of machine learning based on natural language processing, and a simplified user interface designed to help scientists curate their data with minimum effort. We have carried out this work based on the premise that pure machine learning is insufficiently accurate, and that expecting scientists to find the time to annotate their protocols manually is unrealistic. By combining these approaches, we have created an effective prototype for which annotation of bioassay text within the domain of the training set can be accomplished very quickly. Well-trained annotations require single-click user approval, while annotations from outside the training set domain can be identified using the search feature of a well-designed user interface, and subsequently used to improve the underlying models. By drastically reducing the time required for scientists to annotate their assays, we can realistically advocate for semantic annotation to become a standard part of the publication process. Once even a small proportion of the public body of bioassay data is marked up, bioinformatics researchers can begin to construct sophisticated and useful searching and analysis algorithms that will provide a diverse and powerful set of tools for drug discovery researchers.

  19. Fast and accurate semantic annotation of bioassays exploiting a hybrid of machine learning and user confirmation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alex M. Clark

    2014-08-01

    Full Text Available Bioinformatics and computer aided drug design rely on the curation of a large number of protocols for biological assays that measure the ability of potential drugs to achieve a therapeutic effect. These assay protocols are generally published by scientists in the form of plain text, which needs to be more precisely annotated in order to be useful to software methods. We have developed a pragmatic approach to describing assays according to the semantic definitions of the BioAssay Ontology (BAO project, using a hybrid of machine learning based on natural language processing, and a simplified user interface designed to help scientists curate their data with minimum effort. We have carried out this work based on the premise that pure machine learning is insufficiently accurate, and that expecting scientists to find the time to annotate their protocols manually is unrealistic. By combining these approaches, we have created an effective prototype for which annotation of bioassay text within the domain of the training set can be accomplished very quickly. Well-trained annotations require single-click user approval, while annotations from outside the training set domain can be identified using the search feature of a well-designed user interface, and subsequently used to improve the underlying models. By drastically reducing the time required for scientists to annotate their assays, we can realistically advocate for semantic annotation to become a standard part of the publication process. Once even a small proportion of the public body of bioassay data is marked up, bioinformatics researchers can begin to construct sophisticated and useful searching and analysis algorithms that will provide a diverse and powerful set of tools for drug discovery researchers.

  20. Formalization of taxon-based constraints to detect inconsistencies in annotation and ontology development

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mungall Christopher J

    2010-10-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background The Gene Ontology project supports categorization of gene products according to their location of action, the molecular functions that they carry out, and the processes that they are involved in. Although the ontologies are intentionally developed to be taxon neutral, and to cover all species, there are inherent taxon specificities in some branches. For example, the process 'lactation' is specific to mammals and the location 'mitochondrion' is specific to eukaryotes. The lack of an explicit formalization of these constraints can lead to errors and inconsistencies in automated and manual annotation. Results We have formalized the taxonomic constraints implicit in some GO classes, and specified these at various levels in the ontology. We have also developed an inference system that can be used to check for violations of these constraints in annotations. Using the constraints in conjunction with the inference system, we have detected and removed errors in annotations and improved the structure of the ontology. Conclusions Detection of inconsistencies in taxon-specificity enables gradual improvement of the ontologies, the annotations, and the formalized constraints. This is progressively improving the quality of our data. The full system is available for download, and new constraints or proposed changes to constraints can be submitted online at https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=605890&group_id=36855.

  1. Conservation Science Fair Projects.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Soil Conservation Society of America, Ankeny, IA.

    Included are ideas, suggestions, and examples for selecting and designing conservation science projects. Over 70 possible conservation subject areas are presented with suggested projects. References are cited with each of these subject areas, and a separate list of annotated references is included. The references pertain to general subject…

  2. MitoBamAnnotator: A web-based tool for detecting and annotating heteroplasmy in human mitochondrial DNA sequences.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhidkov, Ilia; Nagar, Tal; Mishmar, Dan; Rubin, Eitan

    2011-11-01

    The use of Next-Generation Sequencing of mitochondrial DNA is becoming widespread in biological and clinical research. This, in turn, creates a need for a convenient tool that detects and analyzes heteroplasmy. Here we present MitoBamAnnotator, a user friendly web-based tool that allows maximum flexibility and control in heteroplasmy research. MitoBamAnnotator provides the user with a comprehensively annotated overview of mitochondrial genetic variation, allowing for an in-depth analysis with no prior knowledge in programming. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. and Mitochondria Research Society. All rights reserved. All rights reserved.

  3. Correction of the Caulobacter crescentus NA1000 genome annotation.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bert Ely

    Full Text Available Bacterial genome annotations are accumulating rapidly in the GenBank database and the use of automated annotation technologies to create these annotations has become the norm. However, these automated methods commonly result in a small, but significant percentage of genome annotation errors. To improve accuracy and reliability, we analyzed the Caulobacter crescentus NA1000 genome utilizing computer programs Artemis and MICheck to manually examine the third codon position GC content, alignment to a third codon position GC frame plot peak, and matches in the GenBank database. We identified 11 new genes, modified the start site of 113 genes, and changed the reading frame of 38 genes that had been incorrectly annotated. Furthermore, our manual method of identifying protein-coding genes allowed us to remove 112 non-coding regions that had been designated as coding regions. The improved NA1000 genome annotation resulted in a reduction in the use of rare codons since noncoding regions with atypical codon usage were removed from the annotation and 49 new coding regions were added to the annotation. Thus, a more accurate codon usage table was generated as well. These results demonstrate that a comparison of the location of peaks third codon position GC content to the location of protein coding regions could be used to verify the annotation of any genome that has a GC content that is greater than 60%.

  4. Quantification of the impact of PSI:Biology according to the annotations of the determined structures.

    Science.gov (United States)

    DePietro, Paul J; Julfayev, Elchin S; McLaughlin, William A

    2013-10-21

    Protein Structure Initiative:Biology (PSI:Biology) is the third phase of PSI where protein structures are determined in high-throughput to characterize their biological functions. The transition to the third phase entailed the formation of PSI:Biology Partnerships which are composed of structural genomics centers and biomedical science laboratories. We present a method to examine the impact of protein structures determined under the auspices of PSI:Biology by measuring their rates of annotations. The mean numbers of annotations per structure and per residue are examined. These are designed to provide measures of the amount of structure to function connections that can be leveraged from each structure. One result is that PSI:Biology structures are found to have a higher rate of annotations than structures determined during the first two phases of PSI. A second result is that the subset of PSI:Biology structures determined through PSI:Biology Partnerships have a higher rate of annotations than those determined exclusive of those partnerships. Both results hold when the annotation rates are examined either at the level of the entire protein or for annotations that are known to fall at specific residues within the portion of the protein that has a determined structure. We conclude that PSI:Biology determines structures that are estimated to have a higher degree of biomedical interest than those determined during the first two phases of PSI based on a broad array of biomedical annotations. For the PSI:Biology Partnerships, we see that there is an associated added value that represents part of the progress toward the goals of PSI:Biology. We interpret the added value to mean that team-based structural biology projects that utilize the expertise and technologies of structural genomics centers together with biological laboratories in the community are conducted in a synergistic manner. We show that the annotation rates can be used in conjunction with established metrics, i

  5. Annotation of regular polysemy and underspecification

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Martínez Alonso, Héctor; Pedersen, Bolette Sandford; Bel, Núria

    2013-01-01

    We present the result of an annotation task on regular polysemy for a series of seman- tic classes or dot types in English, Dan- ish and Spanish. This article describes the annotation process, the results in terms of inter-encoder agreement, and the sense distributions obtained with two methods...

  6. PCAS – a precomputed proteome annotation database resource

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Luo Jingchu

    2003-11-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Many model proteomes or "complete" sets of proteins of given organisms are now publicly available. Much effort has been invested in computational annotation of those "draft" proteomes. Motif or domain based algorithms play a pivotal role in functional classification of proteins. Employing most available computational algorithms, mainly motif or domain recognition algorithms, we set up to develop an online proteome annotation system with integrated proteome annotation data to complement existing resources. Results We report here the development of PCAS (ProteinCentric Annotation System as an online resource of pre-computed proteome annotation data. We applied most available motif or domain databases and their analysis methods, including hmmpfam search of HMMs in Pfam, SMART and TIGRFAM, RPS-PSIBLAST search of PSSMs in CDD, pfscan of PROSITE patterns and profiles, as well as PSI-BLAST search of SUPERFAMILY PSSMs. In addition, signal peptide and TM are predicted using SignalP and TMHMM respectively. We mapped SUPERFAMILY and COGs to InterPro, so the motif or domain databases are integrated through InterPro. PCAS displays table summaries of pre-computed data and a graphical presentation of motifs or domains relative to the protein. As of now, PCAS contains human IPI, mouse IPI, and rat IPI, A. thaliana, C. elegans, D. melanogaster, S. cerevisiae, and S. pombe proteome. PCAS is available at http://pak.cbi.pku.edu.cn/proteome/gca.php Conclusion PCAS gives better annotation coverage for model proteomes by employing a wider collection of available algorithms. Besides presenting the most confident annotation data, PCAS also allows customized query so users can inspect statistically less significant boundary information as well. Therefore, besides providing general annotation information, PCAS could be used as a discovery platform. We plan to update PCAS twice a year. We will upgrade PCAS when new proteome annotation algorithms

  7. Computational prediction of over-annotated protein-coding genes in the genome of Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain C58

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yu, Jia-Feng; Sui, Tian-Xiang; Wang, Hong-Mei; Wang, Chun-Ling; Jing, Li; Wang, Ji-Hua

    2015-12-01

    Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain C58 is a type of pathogen that can cause tumors in some dicotyledonous plants. Ever since the genome of A. tumefaciens strain C58 was sequenced, the quality of annotation of its protein-coding genes has been queried continually, because the annotation varies greatly among different databases. In this paper, the questionable hypothetical genes were re-predicted by integrating the TN curve and Z curve methods. As a result, 30 genes originally annotated as “hypothetical” were discriminated as being non-coding sequences. By testing the re-prediction program 10 times on data sets composed of the function-known genes, the mean accuracy of 99.99% and mean Matthews correlation coefficient value of 0.9999 were obtained. Further sequence analysis and COG analysis showed that the re-annotation results were very reliable. This work can provide an efficient tool and data resources for future studies of A. tumefaciens strain C58. Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61302186 and 61271378) and the Funding from the State Key Laboratory of Bioelectronics of Southeast University.

  8. Annotated Bibliography of Dr Salmani Nodoushan's Research on Education and Language Teaching

    Science.gov (United States)

    Etemadfar Kashani, Abbas Ali

    2016-01-01

    This is an annotated bibliography of the research conducted on education and language teaching and assessment by Dr. Mohammad Ali Salmani Nodoushan in the past 25 years. This bibliography is a precise picture of the current state of education and language teaching and assessment in Iran. Dr. Salmani Nodoushan is the most distinguished Iranian…

  9. A semi-automatic annotation tool for cooking video

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bianco, Simone; Ciocca, Gianluigi; Napoletano, Paolo; Schettini, Raimondo; Margherita, Roberto; Marini, Gianluca; Gianforme, Giorgio; Pantaleo, Giuseppe

    2013-03-01

    In order to create a cooking assistant application to guide the users in the preparation of the dishes relevant to their profile diets and food preferences, it is necessary to accurately annotate the video recipes, identifying and tracking the foods of the cook. These videos present particular annotation challenges such as frequent occlusions, food appearance changes, etc. Manually annotate the videos is a time-consuming, tedious and error-prone task. Fully automatic tools that integrate computer vision algorithms to extract and identify the elements of interest are not error free, and false positive and false negative detections need to be corrected in a post-processing stage. We present an interactive, semi-automatic tool for the annotation of cooking videos that integrates computer vision techniques under the supervision of the user. The annotation accuracy is increased with respect to completely automatic tools and the human effort is reduced with respect to completely manual ones. The performance and usability of the proposed tool are evaluated on the basis of the time and effort required to annotate the same video sequences.

  10. Experiments with crowdsourced re-annotation of a POS tagging data set

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hovy, Dirk; Plank, Barbara; Søgaard, Anders

    2014-01-01

    Crowdsourcing lets us collect multiple annotations for an item from several annotators. Typically, these are annotations for non-sequential classification tasks. While there has been some work on crowdsourcing named entity annotations, researchers have assumed that syntactic tasks such as part......-of-speech (POS) tagging cannot be crowdsourced. This paper shows that workers can actually annotate sequential data almost as well as experts. Further, we show that the models learned from crowdsourced annotations fare as well as the models learned from expert annotations in downstream tasks....

  11. Functional annotation by sequence-weighted structure alignments: statistical analysis and case studies from the Protein 3000 structural genomics project in Japan.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Standley, Daron M; Toh, Hiroyuki; Nakamura, Haruki

    2008-09-01

    A method to functionally annotate structural genomics targets, based on a novel structural alignment scoring function, is proposed. In the proposed score, position-specific scoring matrices are used to weight structurally aligned residue pairs to highlight evolutionarily conserved motifs. The functional form of the score is first optimized for discriminating domains belonging to the same Pfam family from domains belonging to different families but the same CATH or SCOP superfamily. In the optimization stage, we consider four standard weighting functions as well as our own, the "maximum substitution probability," and combinations of these functions. The optimized score achieves an area of 0.87 under the receiver-operating characteristic curve with respect to identifying Pfam families within a sequence-unique benchmark set of domain pairs. Confidence measures are then derived from the benchmark distribution of true-positive scores. The alignment method is next applied to the task of functionally annotating 230 query proteins released to the public as part of the Protein 3000 structural genomics project in Japan. Of these queries, 78 were found to align to templates with the same Pfam family as the query or had sequence identities > or = 30%. Another 49 queries were found to match more distantly related templates. Within this group, the template predicted by our method to be the closest functional relative was often not the most structurally similar. Several nontrivial cases are discussed in detail. Finally, 103 queries matched templates at the fold level, but not the family or superfamily level, and remain functionally uncharacterized. 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

  12. MPEG-7 based video annotation and browsing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hoeynck, Michael; Auweiler, Thorsten; Wellhausen, Jens

    2003-11-01

    The huge amount of multimedia data produced worldwide requires annotation in order to enable universal content access and to provide content-based search-and-retrieval functionalities. Since manual video annotation can be time consuming, automatic annotation systems are required. We review recent approaches to content-based indexing and annotation of videos for different kind of sports and describe our approach to automatic annotation of equestrian sports videos. We especially concentrate on MPEG-7 based feature extraction and content description, where we apply different visual descriptors for cut detection. Further, we extract the temporal positions of single obstacles on the course by analyzing MPEG-7 edge information. Having determined single shot positions as well as the visual highlights, the information is jointly stored with meta-textual information in an MPEG-7 description scheme. Based on this information, we generate content summaries which can be utilized in a user-interface in order to provide content-based access to the video stream, but further for media browsing on a streaming server.

  13. Ground Truth Annotation in T Analyst

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    2015-01-01

    This video shows how to annotate the ground truth tracks in the thermal videos. The ground truth tracks are produced to be able to compare them to tracks obtained from a Computer Vision tracking approach. The program used for annotation is T-Analyst, which is developed by Aliaksei Laureshyn, Ph...

  14. Propagating annotations of molecular networks using in silico fragmentation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    da Silva, Ricardo R; Wang, Mingxun; Nothias, Louis-Félix; van der Hooft, Justin J J; Caraballo-Rodríguez, Andrés Mauricio; Fox, Evan; Balunas, Marcy J; Klassen, Jonathan L; Lopes, Norberto Peporine; Dorrestein, Pieter C

    2018-04-18

    The annotation of small molecules is one of the most challenging and important steps in untargeted mass spectrometry analysis, as most of our biological interpretations rely on structural annotations. Molecular networking has emerged as a structured way to organize and mine data from untargeted tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) experiments and has been widely applied to propagate annotations. However, propagation is done through manual inspection of MS/MS spectra connected in the spectral networks and is only possible when a reference library spectrum is available. One of the alternative approaches used to annotate an unknown fragmentation mass spectrum is through the use of in silico predictions. One of the challenges of in silico annotation is the uncertainty around the correct structure among the predicted candidate lists. Here we show how molecular networking can be used to improve the accuracy of in silico predictions through propagation of structural annotations, even when there is no match to a MS/MS spectrum in spectral libraries. This is accomplished through creating a network consensus of re-ranked structural candidates using the molecular network topology and structural similarity to improve in silico annotations. The Network Annotation Propagation (NAP) tool is accessible through the GNPS web-platform https://gnps.ucsd.edu/ProteoSAFe/static/gnps-theoretical.jsp.

  15. Gene calling and bacterial genome annotation with BG7.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tobes, Raquel; Pareja-Tobes, Pablo; Manrique, Marina; Pareja-Tobes, Eduardo; Kovach, Evdokim; Alekhin, Alexey; Pareja, Eduardo

    2015-01-01

    New massive sequencing technologies are providing many bacterial genome sequences from diverse taxa but a refined annotation of these genomes is crucial for obtaining scientific findings and new knowledge. Thus, bacterial genome annotation has emerged as a key point to investigate in bacteria. Any efficient tool designed specifically to annotate bacterial genomes sequenced with massively parallel technologies has to consider the specific features of bacterial genomes (absence of introns and scarcity of nonprotein-coding sequence) and of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies (presence of errors and not perfectly assembled genomes). These features make it convenient to focus on coding regions and, hence, on protein sequences that are the elements directly related with biological functions. In this chapter we describe how to annotate bacterial genomes with BG7, an open-source tool based on a protein-centered gene calling/annotation paradigm. BG7 is specifically designed for the annotation of bacterial genomes sequenced with NGS. This tool is sequence error tolerant maintaining their capabilities for the annotation of highly fragmented genomes or for annotating mixed sequences coming from several genomes (as those obtained through metagenomics samples). BG7 has been designed with scalability as a requirement, with a computing infrastructure completely based on cloud computing (Amazon Web Services).

  16. Annotated bibliography of cultural resources literature for the Nevada Nuclear Waste Storage Investigations

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    1983-11-01

    This annotated bibliography of the cultural resources literature pertinent for the Nevada Nuclear Waste Storage Investigations was assembled in order to (1) identify and evaluate the prehistoric and historic properties previously recorded in the Nevada Nuclear Waste Storage Investigations Project Area of southern Nye County, Nevada, (2) identify and develop research problems that have been and/or could be addressed by the cultural resources of this area, (3) isolate factors that might be important in the selection of a potential locality for a high level nuclear waste repository in the project area, and (4) critically evaluate the adequacy and current status of cultural resources knowledge in the project area. 195 references

  17. Interoperable Multimedia Annotation and Retrieval for the Tourism Sector

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Chatzitoulousis, Antonios; Efraimidis, Pavlos S.; Athanasiadis, I.N.

    2015-01-01

    The Atlas Metadata System (AMS) employs semantic web annotation techniques in order to create an interoperable information annotation and retrieval platform for the tourism sector. AMS adopts state-of-the-art metadata vocabularies, annotation techniques and semantic web technologies.

  18. Gene Ontology annotation of the rice blast fungus, Magnaporthe oryzae

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Deng Jixin

    2009-02-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Magnaporthe oryzae, the causal agent of blast disease of rice, is the most destructive disease of rice worldwide. The genome of this fungal pathogen has been sequenced and an automated annotation has recently been updated to Version 6 http://www.broad.mit.edu/annotation/genome/magnaporthe_grisea/MultiDownloads.html. However, a comprehensive manual curation remains to be performed. Gene Ontology (GO annotation is a valuable means of assigning functional information using standardized vocabulary. We report an overview of the GO annotation for Version 5 of M. oryzae genome assembly. Methods A similarity-based (i.e., computational GO annotation with manual review was conducted, which was then integrated with a literature-based GO annotation with computational assistance. For similarity-based GO annotation a stringent reciprocal best hits method was used to identify similarity between predicted proteins of M. oryzae and GO proteins from multiple organisms with published associations to GO terms. Significant alignment pairs were manually reviewed. Functional assignments were further cross-validated with manually reviewed data, conserved domains, or data determined by wet lab experiments. Additionally, biological appropriateness of the functional assignments was manually checked. Results In total, 6,286 proteins received GO term assignment via the homology-based annotation, including 2,870 hypothetical proteins. Literature-based experimental evidence, such as microarray, MPSS, T-DNA insertion mutation, or gene knockout mutation, resulted in 2,810 proteins being annotated with GO terms. Of these, 1,673 proteins were annotated with new terms developed for Plant-Associated Microbe Gene Ontology (PAMGO. In addition, 67 experiment-determined secreted proteins were annotated with PAMGO terms. Integration of the two data sets resulted in 7,412 proteins (57% being annotated with 1,957 distinct and specific GO terms. Unannotated proteins

  19. Combined evidence annotation of transposable elements in genome sequences.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hadi Quesneville

    2005-07-01

    Full Text Available Transposable elements (TEs are mobile, repetitive sequences that make up significant fractions of metazoan genomes. Despite their near ubiquity and importance in genome and chromosome biology, most efforts to annotate TEs in genome sequences rely on the results of a single computational program, RepeatMasker. In contrast, recent advances in gene annotation indicate that high-quality gene models can be produced from combining multiple independent sources of computational evidence. To elevate the quality of TE annotations to a level comparable to that of gene models, we have developed a combined evidence-model TE annotation pipeline, analogous to systems used for gene annotation, by integrating results from multiple homology-based and de novo TE identification methods. As proof of principle, we have annotated "TE models" in Drosophila melanogaster Release 4 genomic sequences using the combined computational evidence derived from RepeatMasker, BLASTER, TBLASTX, all-by-all BLASTN, RECON, TE-HMM and the previous Release 3.1 annotation. Our system is designed for use with the Apollo genome annotation tool, allowing automatic results to be curated manually to produce reliable annotations. The euchromatic TE fraction of D. melanogaster is now estimated at 5.3% (cf. 3.86% in Release 3.1, and we found a substantially higher number of TEs (n = 6,013 than previously identified (n = 1,572. Most of the new TEs derive from small fragments of a few hundred nucleotides long and highly abundant families not previously annotated (e.g., INE-1. We also estimated that 518 TE copies (8.6% are inserted into at least one other TE, forming a nest of elements. The pipeline allows rapid and thorough annotation of even the most complex TE models, including highly deleted and/or nested elements such as those often found in heterochromatic sequences. Our pipeline can be easily adapted to other genome sequences, such as those of the D. melanogaster heterochromatin or other

  20. NoGOA: predicting noisy GO annotations using evidences and sparse representation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yu, Guoxian; Lu, Chang; Wang, Jun

    2017-07-21

    Gene Ontology (GO) is a community effort to represent functional features of gene products. GO annotations (GOA) provide functional associations between GO terms and gene products. Due to resources limitation, only a small portion of annotations are manually checked by curators, and the others are electronically inferred. Although quality control techniques have been applied to ensure the quality of annotations, the community consistently report that there are still considerable noisy (or incorrect) annotations. Given the wide application of annotations, however, how to identify noisy annotations is an important but yet seldom studied open problem. We introduce a novel approach called NoGOA to predict noisy annotations. NoGOA applies sparse representation on the gene-term association matrix to reduce the impact of noisy annotations, and takes advantage of sparse representation coefficients to measure the semantic similarity between genes. Secondly, it preliminarily predicts noisy annotations of a gene based on aggregated votes from semantic neighborhood genes of that gene. Next, NoGOA estimates the ratio of noisy annotations for each evidence code based on direct annotations in GOA files archived on different periods, and then weights entries of the association matrix via estimated ratios and propagates weights to ancestors of direct annotations using GO hierarchy. Finally, it integrates evidence-weighted association matrix and aggregated votes to predict noisy annotations. Experiments on archived GOA files of six model species (H. sapiens, A. thaliana, S. cerevisiae, G. gallus, B. Taurus and M. musculus) demonstrate that NoGOA achieves significantly better results than other related methods and removing noisy annotations improves the performance of gene function prediction. The comparative study justifies the effectiveness of integrating evidence codes with sparse representation for predicting noisy GO annotations. Codes and datasets are available at http://mlda.swu.edu.cn/codes.php?name=NoGOA .

  1. Plann: A command-line application for annotating plastome sequences.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huang, Daisie I; Cronk, Quentin C B

    2015-08-01

    Plann automates the process of annotating a plastome sequence in GenBank format for either downstream processing or for GenBank submission by annotating a new plastome based on a similar, well-annotated plastome. Plann is a Perl script to be executed on the command line. Plann compares a new plastome sequence to the features annotated in a reference plastome and then shifts the intervals of any matching features to the locations in the new plastome. Plann's output can be used in the National Center for Biotechnology Information's tbl2asn to create a Sequin file for GenBank submission. Unlike Web-based annotation packages, Plann is a locally executable script that will accurately annotate a plastome sequence to a locally specified reference plastome. Because it executes from the command line, it is ready to use in other software pipelines and can be easily rerun as a draft plastome is improved.

  2. Semantator: annotating clinical narratives with semantic web ontologies.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Song, Dezhao; Chute, Christopher G; Tao, Cui

    2012-01-01

    To facilitate clinical research, clinical data needs to be stored in a machine processable and understandable way. Manual annotating clinical data is time consuming. Automatic approaches (e.g., Natural Language Processing systems) have been adopted to convert such data into structured formats; however, the quality of such automatically extracted data may not always be satisfying. In this paper, we propose Semantator, a semi-automatic tool for document annotation with Semantic Web ontologies. With a loaded free text document and an ontology, Semantator supports the creation/deletion of ontology instances for any document fragment, linking/disconnecting instances with the properties in the ontology, and also enables automatic annotation by connecting to the NCBO annotator and cTAKES. By representing annotations in Semantic Web standards, Semantator supports reasoning based upon the underlying semantics of the owl:disjointWith and owl:equivalentClass predicates. We present discussions based on user experiences of using Semantator.

  3. Using Microbial Genome Annotation as a Foundation for Collaborative Student Research

    Science.gov (United States)

    Reed, Kelynne E.; Richardson, John M.

    2013-01-01

    We used the Integrated Microbial Genomes Annotation Collaboration Toolkit as a framework to incorporate microbial genomics research into a microbiology and biochemistry course in a way that promoted student learning of bioinformatics and research skills and emphasized teamwork and collaboration as evidenced through multiple assessment mechanisms.…

  4. Interactive Tree Of Life v2: online annotation and display of phylogenetic trees made easy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Letunic, Ivica; Bork, Peer

    2011-07-01

    Interactive Tree Of Life (http://itol.embl.de) is a web-based tool for the display, manipulation and annotation of phylogenetic trees. It is freely available and open to everyone. In addition to classical tree viewer functions, iTOL offers many novel ways of annotating trees with various additional data. Current version introduces numerous new features and greatly expands the number of supported data set types. Trees can be interactively manipulated and edited. A free personal account system is available, providing management and sharing of trees in user defined workspaces and projects. Export to various bitmap and vector graphics formats is supported. Batch access interface is available for programmatic access or inclusion of interactive trees into other web services.

  5. Ontology modularization to improve semantic medical image annotation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wennerberg, Pinar; Schulz, Klaus; Buitelaar, Paul

    2011-02-01

    Searching for medical images and patient reports is a significant challenge in a clinical setting. The contents of such documents are often not described in sufficient detail thus making it difficult to utilize the inherent wealth of information contained within them. Semantic image annotation addresses this problem by describing the contents of images and reports using medical ontologies. Medical images and patient reports are then linked to each other through common annotations. Subsequently, search algorithms can more effectively find related sets of documents on the basis of these semantic descriptions. A prerequisite to realizing such a semantic search engine is that the data contained within should have been previously annotated with concepts from medical ontologies. One major challenge in this regard is the size and complexity of medical ontologies as annotation sources. Manual annotation is particularly time consuming labor intensive in a clinical environment. In this article we propose an approach to reducing the size of clinical ontologies for more efficient manual image and text annotation. More precisely, our goal is to identify smaller fragments of a large anatomy ontology that are relevant for annotating medical images from patients suffering from lymphoma. Our work is in the area of ontology modularization, which is a recent and active field of research. We describe our approach, methods and data set in detail and we discuss our results. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  6. [Prescription annotations in Welfare Pharmacy].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Han, Yi

    2018-03-01

    Welfare Pharmacy contains medical formulas documented by the government and official prescriptions used by the official pharmacy in the pharmaceutical process. In the last years of Southern Song Dynasty, anonyms gave a lot of prescription annotations, made textual researches for the name, source, composition and origin of the prescriptions, and supplemented important historical data of medical cases and researched historical facts. The annotations of Welfare Pharmacy gathered the essence of medical theory, and can be used as precious materials to correctly understand the syndrome differentiation, compatibility regularity and clinical application of prescriptions. This article deeply investigated the style and form of the prescription annotations in Welfare Pharmacy, the name of prescriptions and the evolution of terminology, the major functions of the prescriptions, processing methods, instructions for taking medicine and taboos of prescriptions, the medical cases and clinical efficacy of prescriptions, the backgrounds, sources, composition and cultural meanings of prescriptions, proposed that the prescription annotations played an active role in the textual dissemination, patent medicine production and clinical diagnosis and treatment of Welfare Pharmacy. This not only helps understand the changes in the names and terms of traditional Chinese medicines in Welfare Pharmacy, but also provides the basis for understanding the knowledge sources, compatibility regularity, important drug innovations and clinical medications of prescriptions in Welfare Pharmacy. Copyright© by the Chinese Pharmaceutical Association.

  7. A framework for annotating human genome in disease context.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xu, Wei; Wang, Huisong; Cheng, Wenqing; Fu, Dong; Xia, Tian; Kibbe, Warren A; Lin, Simon M

    2012-01-01

    Identification of gene-disease association is crucial to understanding disease mechanism. A rapid increase in biomedical literatures, led by advances of genome-scale technologies, poses challenge for manually-curated-based annotation databases to characterize gene-disease associations effectively and timely. We propose an automatic method-The Disease Ontology Annotation Framework (DOAF) to provide a comprehensive annotation of the human genome using the computable Disease Ontology (DO), the NCBO Annotator service and NCBI Gene Reference Into Function (GeneRIF). DOAF can keep the resulting knowledgebase current by periodically executing automatic pipeline to re-annotate the human genome using the latest DO and GeneRIF releases at any frequency such as daily or monthly. Further, DOAF provides a computable and programmable environment which enables large-scale and integrative analysis by working with external analytic software or online service platforms. A user-friendly web interface (doa.nubic.northwestern.edu) is implemented to allow users to efficiently query, download, and view disease annotations and the underlying evidences.

  8. wANNOVAR: annotating genetic variants for personal genomes via the web.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chang, Xiao; Wang, Kai

    2012-07-01

    High-throughput DNA sequencing platforms have become widely available. As a result, personal genomes are increasingly being sequenced in research and clinical settings. However, the resulting massive amounts of variants data pose significant challenges to the average biologists and clinicians without bioinformatics skills. We developed a web server called wANNOVAR to address the critical needs for functional annotation of genetic variants from personal genomes. The server provides simple and intuitive interface to help users determine the functional significance of variants. These include annotating single nucleotide variants and insertions/deletions for their effects on genes, reporting their conservation levels (such as PhyloP and GERP++ scores), calculating their predicted functional importance scores (such as SIFT and PolyPhen scores), retrieving allele frequencies in public databases (such as the 1000 Genomes Project and NHLBI-ESP 5400 exomes), and implementing a 'variants reduction' protocol to identify a subset of potentially deleterious variants/genes. We illustrated how wANNOVAR can help draw biological insights from sequencing data, by analysing genetic variants generated on two Mendelian diseases. We conclude that wANNOVAR will help biologists and clinicians take advantage of the personal genome information to expedite scientific discoveries. The wANNOVAR server is available at http://wannovar.usc.edu, and will be continuously updated to reflect the latest annotation information.

  9. Risk assessment and management in IOR projects

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Goodyear, S.G.; Gregory, A.T.

    1994-01-01

    The application of IOR techniques is one of the investment opportunities open to Exploration and Production companies. A project will only go forward if the perceived balance between the rewards and the risks is acceptable. IOR projects may be ruled out because they are considered to involve significantly higher risks than conventional developments. Therefore, some means of evaluating the actual level of risk may be required if the full economic benefits from IOR techniques are to be realized. Risk assessment is a key element in safety cases, where a well-established methodology for quantifying risk exists. This paper discusses the extension of these methods to IOR project risk assessment. Combining reservoir and IOR technique uncertainties with their impact on project performance allows project risk to be better quantified. The results of the risk assessment are presented in terms of a risk-reward diagram that plots the probability surface for possible project outcomes as a function of NPV (reward) and exposure (risk)

  10. Supporting Keyword Search for Image Retrieval with Integration of Probabilistic Annotation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tie Hua Zhou

    2015-05-01

    Full Text Available The ever-increasing quantities of digital photo resources are annotated with enriching vocabularies to form semantic annotations. Photo-sharing social networks have boosted the need for efficient and intuitive querying to respond to user requirements in large-scale image collections. In order to help users formulate efficient and effective image retrieval, we present a novel integration of a probabilistic model based on keyword query architecture that models the probability distribution of image annotations: allowing users to obtain satisfactory results from image retrieval via the integration of multiple annotations. We focus on the annotation integration step in order to specify the meaning of each image annotation, thus leading to the most representative annotations of the intent of a keyword search. For this demonstration, we show how a probabilistic model has been integrated to semantic annotations to allow users to intuitively define explicit and precise keyword queries in order to retrieve satisfactory image results distributed in heterogeneous large data sources. Our experiments on SBU (collected by Stony Brook University database show that (i our integrated annotation contains higher quality representatives and semantic matches; and (ii the results indicating annotation integration can indeed improve image search result quality.

  11. Annotated bibliography of selected reports relating to the isolation of nuclear waste in crystalline rock

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    1988-06-01

    BMI/OCRD-29 is an annotated bibliography of published reports that have been produced for the US Department of Energy Crystalline Repository Project Office or the Swedish-American Cooperative Program on Radioactive Waste Storage in Mined Caverns. This document consists of a main report listing of citations and abstracts and a topical index

  12. The Contribution of Project Environmental Assessment to Assessing and Managing Cumulative Effects: Individually and Collectively Insignificant?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Noble, Bram; Liu, Jialang; Hackett, Paul

    2017-04-01

    This paper explores the opportunities and constraints to project-based environmental assessment as a means to support the assessment and management of cumulative environmental effects. A case study of the hydroelectric sector is used to determine whether sufficient information is available over time through project-by-project assessments to support an adequate understanding of cumulative change. Results show inconsistency from one project to the next in terms of the components and indicators assessed, limited transfer of baseline information between project assessments over time, and the same issues and concerns being raised by review panels-even though the projects reviewed are operating in the same watershed and operated by the same proponent. Project environmental assessments must be managed, and coordinated, as part of a larger system of impact assessment, if project-by-project assessments are to provide a meaningful forum for learning and understanding cumulative change. The paper concludes with recommendations for improved project-based assessment practice in support of cumulative effects assessment and management.

  13. Quick Pad Tagger : An Efficient Graphical User Interface for Building Annotated Corpora with Multiple Annotation Layers

    OpenAIRE

    Marc Schreiber; Kai Barkschat; Bodo Kraft; Albert Zundorf

    2015-01-01

    More and more domain specific applications in the internet make use of Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools (e. g. Information Extraction systems). The output quality of these applications relies on the output quality of the used NLP tools. Often, the quality can be increased by annotating a domain specific corpus. However, annotating a corpus is a time consuming and exhaustive task. To reduce the annota tion time we present...

  14. Supplementary Material for: BEACON: automated tool for Bacterial GEnome Annotation ComparisON

    KAUST Repository

    Kalkatawi, Manal M.; Alam, Intikhab; Bajic, Vladimir B.

    2015-01-01

    Abstract Background Genome annotation is one way of summarizing the existing knowledge about genomic characteristics of an organism. There has been an increased interest during the last several decades in computer-based structural and functional genome annotation. Many methods for this purpose have been developed for eukaryotes and prokaryotes. Our study focuses on comparison of functional annotations of prokaryotic genomes. To the best of our knowledge there is no fully automated system for detailed comparison of functional genome annotations generated by different annotation methods (AMs). Results The presence of many AMs and development of new ones introduce needs to: a/ compare different annotations for a single genome, and b/ generate annotation by combining individual ones. To address these issues we developed an Automated Tool for Bacterial GEnome Annotation ComparisON (BEACON) that benefits both AM developers and annotation analysers. BEACON provides detailed comparison of gene function annotations of prokaryotic genomes obtained by different AMs and generates extended annotations through combination of individual ones. For the illustration of BEACONâ s utility, we provide a comparison analysis of multiple different annotations generated for four genomes and show on these examples that the extended annotation can increase the number of genes annotated by putative functions up to 27 %, while the number of genes without any function assignment is reduced. Conclusions We developed BEACON, a fast tool for an automated and a systematic comparison of different annotations of single genomes. The extended annotation assigns putative functions to many genes with unknown functions. BEACON is available under GNU General Public License version 3.0 and is accessible at: http://www.cbrc.kaust.edu.sa/BEACON/ .

  15. Crowdsourcing and annotating NER for Twitter #drift

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Fromreide, Hege; Hovy, Dirk; Søgaard, Anders

    2014-01-01

    We present two new NER datasets for Twitter; a manually annotated set of 1,467 tweets (kappa=0.942) and a set of 2,975 expert-corrected, crowdsourced NER annotated tweets from the dataset described in Finin et al. (2010). In our experiments with these datasets, we observe two important points: (a......) language drift on Twitter is significant, and while off-the-shelf systems have been reported to perform well on in-sample data, they often perform poorly on new samples of tweets, (b) state-of-the-art performance across various datasets can beobtained from crowdsourced annotations, making it more feasible...

  16. SNAD: sequence name annotation-based designer

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gorbalenya Alexander E

    2009-08-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background A growing diversity of biological data is tagged with unique identifiers (UIDs associated with polynucleotides and proteins to ensure efficient computer-mediated data storage, maintenance, and processing. These identifiers, which are not informative for most people, are often substituted by biologically meaningful names in various presentations to facilitate utilization and dissemination of sequence-based knowledge. This substitution is commonly done manually that may be a tedious exercise prone to mistakes and omissions. Results Here we introduce SNAD (Sequence Name Annotation-based Designer that mediates automatic conversion of sequence UIDs (associated with multiple alignment or phylogenetic tree, or supplied as plain text list into biologically meaningful names and acronyms. This conversion is directed by precompiled or user-defined templates that exploit wealth of annotation available in cognate entries of external databases. Using examples, we demonstrate how this tool can be used to generate names for practical purposes, particularly in virology. Conclusion A tool for controllable annotation-based conversion of sequence UIDs into biologically meaningful names and acronyms has been developed and placed into service, fostering links between quality of sequence annotation, and efficiency of communication and knowledge dissemination among researchers.

  17. An open annotation ontology for science on web 3.0.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ciccarese, Paolo; Ocana, Marco; Garcia Castro, Leyla Jael; Das, Sudeshna; Clark, Tim

    2011-05-17

    There is currently a gap between the rich and expressive collection of published biomedical ontologies, and the natural language expression of biomedical papers consumed on a daily basis by scientific researchers. The purpose of this paper is to provide an open, shareable structure for dynamic integration of biomedical domain ontologies with the scientific document, in the form of an Annotation Ontology (AO), thus closing this gap and enabling application of formal biomedical ontologies directly to the literature as it emerges. Initial requirements for AO were elicited by analysis of integration needs between biomedical web communities, and of needs for representing and integrating results of biomedical text mining. Analysis of strengths and weaknesses of previous efforts in this area was also performed. A series of increasingly refined annotation tools were then developed along with a metadata model in OWL, and deployed for feedback and additional requirements the ontology to users at a major pharmaceutical company and a major academic center. Further requirements and critiques of the model were also elicited through discussions with many colleagues and incorporated into the work. This paper presents Annotation Ontology (AO), an open ontology in OWL-DL for annotating scientific documents on the web. AO supports both human and algorithmic content annotation. It enables "stand-off" or independent metadata anchored to specific positions in a web document by any one of several methods. In AO, the document may be annotated but is not required to be under update control of the annotator. AO contains a provenance model to support versioning, and a set model for specifying groups and containers of annotation. AO is freely available under open source license at http://purl.org/ao/, and extensive documentation including screencasts is available on AO's Google Code page: http://code.google.com/p/annotation-ontology/ . The Annotation Ontology meets critical requirements for

  18. ACID: annotation of cassette and integron data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Stokes Harold W

    2009-04-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Although integrons and their associated gene cassettes are present in ~10% of bacteria and can represent up to 3% of the genome in which they are found, very few have been properly identified and annotated in public databases. These genetic elements have been overlooked in comparison to other vectors that facilitate lateral gene transfer between microorganisms. Description By automating the identification of integron integrase genes and of the non-coding cassette-associated attC recombination sites, we were able to assemble a database containing all publicly available sequence information regarding these genetic elements. Specialists manually curated the database and this information was used to improve the automated detection and annotation of integrons and their encoded gene cassettes. ACID (annotation of cassette and integron data can be searched using a range of queries and the data can be downloaded in a number of formats. Users can readily annotate their own data and integrate it into ACID using the tools provided. Conclusion ACID is a community resource providing easy access to annotations of integrons and making tools available to detect them in novel sequence data. ACID also hosts a forum to prompt integron-related discussion, which can hopefully lead to a more universal definition of this genetic element.

  19. Use of Annotations for Component and Framework Interoperability

    Science.gov (United States)

    David, O.; Lloyd, W.; Carlson, J.; Leavesley, G. H.; Geter, F.

    2009-12-01

    The popular programming languages Java and C# provide annotations, a form of meta-data construct. Software frameworks for web integration, web services, database access, and unit testing now take advantage of annotations to reduce the complexity of APIs and the quantity of integration code between the application and framework infrastructure. Adopting annotation features in frameworks has been observed to lead to cleaner and leaner application code. The USDA Object Modeling System (OMS) version 3.0 fully embraces the annotation approach and additionally defines a meta-data standard for components and models. In version 3.0 framework/model integration previously accomplished using API calls is now achieved using descriptive annotations. This enables the framework to provide additional functionality non-invasively such as implicit multithreading, and auto-documenting capabilities while achieving a significant reduction in the size of the model source code. Using a non-invasive methodology leads to models and modeling components with only minimal dependencies on the modeling framework. Since models and modeling components are not directly bound to framework by the use of specific APIs and/or data types they can more easily be reused both within the framework as well as outside of it. To study the effectiveness of an annotation based framework approach with other modeling frameworks, a framework-invasiveness study was conducted to evaluate the effects of framework design on model code quality. A monthly water balance model was implemented across several modeling frameworks and several software metrics were collected. The metrics selected were measures of non-invasive design methods for modeling frameworks from a software engineering perspective. It appears that the use of annotations positively impacts several software quality measures. In a next step, the PRMS model was implemented in OMS 3.0 and is currently being implemented for water supply forecasting in the

  20. SoFIA: a data integration framework for annotating high-throughput datasets.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Childs, Liam Harold; Mamlouk, Soulafa; Brandt, Jörgen; Sers, Christine; Leser, Ulf

    2016-09-01

    Integrating heterogeneous datasets from several sources is a common bioinformatics task that often requires implementing a complex workflow intermixing database access, data filtering, format conversions, identifier mapping, among further diverse operations. Data integration is especially important when annotating next generation sequencing data, where a multitude of diverse tools and heterogeneous databases can be used to provide a large variety of annotation for genomic locations, such a single nucleotide variants or genes. Each tool and data source is potentially useful for a given project and often more than one are used in parallel for the same purpose. However, software that always produces all available data is difficult to maintain and quickly leads to an excess of data, creating an information overload rather than the desired goal-oriented and integrated result. We present SoFIA, a framework for workflow-driven data integration with a focus on genomic annotation. SoFIA conceptualizes workflow templates as comprehensive workflows that cover as many data integration operations as possible in a given domain. However, these templates are not intended to be executed as a whole; instead, when given an integration task consisting of a set of input data and a set of desired output data, SoFIA derives a minimal workflow that completes the task. These workflows are typically fast and create exactly the information a user wants without requiring them to do any implementation work. Using a comprehensive genome annotation template, we highlight the flexibility, extensibility and power of the framework using real-life case studies. https://github.com/childsish/sofia/releases/latest under the GNU General Public License liam.childs@hu-berlin.de Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  1. The Ensembl genome database project.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hubbard, T; Barker, D; Birney, E; Cameron, G; Chen, Y; Clark, L; Cox, T; Cuff, J; Curwen, V; Down, T; Durbin, R; Eyras, E; Gilbert, J; Hammond, M; Huminiecki, L; Kasprzyk, A; Lehvaslaiho, H; Lijnzaad, P; Melsopp, C; Mongin, E; Pettett, R; Pocock, M; Potter, S; Rust, A; Schmidt, E; Searle, S; Slater, G; Smith, J; Spooner, W; Stabenau, A; Stalker, J; Stupka, E; Ureta-Vidal, A; Vastrik, I; Clamp, M

    2002-01-01

    The Ensembl (http://www.ensembl.org/) database project provides a bioinformatics framework to organise biology around the sequences of large genomes. It is a comprehensive source of stable automatic annotation of the human genome sequence, with confirmed gene predictions that have been integrated with external data sources, and is available as either an interactive web site or as flat files. It is also an open source software engineering project to develop a portable system able to handle very large genomes and associated requirements from sequence analysis to data storage and visualisation. The Ensembl site is one of the leading sources of human genome sequence annotation and provided much of the analysis for publication by the international human genome project of the draft genome. The Ensembl system is being installed around the world in both companies and academic sites on machines ranging from supercomputers to laptops.

  2. Creating Gaze Annotations in Head Mounted Displays

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Mardanbeigi, Diako; Qvarfordt, Pernilla

    2015-01-01

    To facilitate distributed communication in mobile settings, we developed GazeNote for creating and sharing gaze annotations in head mounted displays (HMDs). With gaze annotations it possible to point out objects of interest within an image and add a verbal description. To create an annota- tion...

  3. Ontological Annotation with WordNet

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Sanfilippo, Antonio P.; Tratz, Stephen C.; Gregory, Michelle L.; Chappell, Alan R.; Whitney, Paul D.; Posse, Christian; Paulson, Patrick R.; Baddeley, Bob; Hohimer, Ryan E.; White, Amanda M.

    2006-06-06

    Semantic Web applications require robust and accurate annotation tools that are capable of automating the assignment of ontological classes to words in naturally occurring text (ontological annotation). Most current ontologies do not include rich lexical databases and are therefore not easily integrated with word sense disambiguation algorithms that are needed to automate ontological annotation. WordNet provides a potentially ideal solution to this problem as it offers a highly structured lexical conceptual representation that has been extensively used to develop word sense disambiguation algorithms. However, WordNet has not been designed as an ontology, and while it can be easily turned into one, the result of doing this would present users with serious practical limitations due to the great number of concepts (synonym sets) it contains. Moreover, mapping WordNet to an existing ontology may be difficult and requires substantial labor. We propose to overcome these limitations by developing an analytical platform that (1) provides a WordNet-based ontology offering a manageable and yet comprehensive set of concept classes, (2) leverages the lexical richness of WordNet to give an extensive characterization of concept class in terms of lexical instances, and (3) integrates a class recognition algorithm that automates the assignment of concept classes to words in naturally occurring text. The ensuing framework makes available an ontological annotation platform that can be effectively integrated with intelligence analysis systems to facilitate evidence marshaling and sustain the creation and validation of inference models.

  4. Enabling Histopathological Annotations on Immunofluorescent Images through Virtualization of Hematoxylin and Eosin.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lahiani, Amal; Klaiman, Eldad; Grimm, Oliver

    2018-01-01

    Medical diagnosis and clinical decisions rely heavily on the histopathological evaluation of tissue samples, especially in oncology. Historically, classical histopathology has been the gold standard for tissue evaluation and assessment by pathologists. The most widely and commonly used dyes in histopathology are hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) as most malignancies diagnosis is largely based on this protocol. H&E staining has been used for more than a century to identify tissue characteristics and structures morphologies that are needed for tumor diagnosis. In many cases, as tissue is scarce in clinical studies, fluorescence imaging is necessary to allow staining of the same specimen with multiple biomarkers simultaneously. Since fluorescence imaging is a relatively new technology in the pathology landscape, histopathologists are not used to or trained in annotating or interpreting these images. To allow pathologists to annotate these images without the need for additional training, we designed an algorithm for the conversion of fluorescence images to brightfield H&E images. In this algorithm, we use fluorescent nuclei staining to reproduce the hematoxylin information and natural tissue autofluorescence to reproduce the eosin information avoiding the necessity to specifically stain the proteins or intracellular structures with an additional fluorescence stain. Our method is based on optimizing a transform function from fluorescence to H&E images using least mean square optimization. It results in high quality virtual H&E digital images that can easily and efficiently be analyzed by pathologists. We validated our results with pathologists by making them annotate tumor in real and virtual H&E whole slide images and we obtained promising results. Hence, we provide a solution that enables pathologists to assess tissue and annotate specific structures based on multiplexed fluorescence images.

  5. Enabling histopathological annotations on immunofluorescent images through virtualization of hematoxylin and eosin

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Amal Lahiani

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Context: Medical diagnosis and clinical decisions rely heavily on the histopathological evaluation of tissue samples, especially in oncology. Historically, classical histopathology has been the gold standard for tissue evaluation and assessment by pathologists. The most widely and commonly used dyes in histopathology are hematoxylin and eosin (H&E as most malignancies diagnosis is largely based on this protocol. H&E staining has been used for more than a century to identify tissue characteristics and structures morphologies that are needed for tumor diagnosis. In many cases, as tissue is scarce in clinical studies, fluorescence imaging is necessary to allow staining of the same specimen with multiple biomarkers simultaneously. Since fluorescence imaging is a relatively new technology in the pathology landscape, histopathologists are not used to or trained in annotating or interpreting these images. Aims, Settings and Design: To allow pathologists to annotate these images without the need for additional training, we designed an algorithm for the conversion of fluorescence images to brightfield H&E images. Subjects and Methods: In this algorithm, we use fluorescent nuclei staining to reproduce the hematoxylin information and natural tissue autofluorescence to reproduce the eosin information avoiding the necessity to specifically stain the proteins or intracellular structures with an additional fluorescence stain. Statistical Analysis Used: Our method is based on optimizing a transform function from fluorescence to H&E images using least mean square optimization. Results: It results in high quality virtual H&E digital images that can easily and efficiently be analyzed by pathologists. We validated our results with pathologists by making them annotate tumor in real and virtual H&E whole slide images and we obtained promising results. Conclusions: Hence, we provide a solution that enables pathologists to assess tissue and annotate specific structures

  6. Challenges in Whole-Genome Annotation of Pyrosequenced Eukaryotic Genomes

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Kuo, Alan; Grigoriev, Igor

    2009-04-17

    Pyrosequencing technologies such as 454/Roche and Solexa/Illumina vastly lower the cost of nucleotide sequencing compared to the traditional Sanger method, and thus promise to greatly expand the number of sequenced eukaryotic genomes. However, the new technologies also bring new challenges such as shorter reads and new kinds and higher rates of sequencing errors, which complicate genome assembly and gene prediction. At JGI we are deploying 454 technology for the sequencing and assembly of ever-larger eukaryotic genomes. Here we describe our first whole-genome annotation of a purely 454-sequenced fungal genome that is larger than a yeast (>30 Mbp). The pezizomycotine (filamentous ascomycote) Aspergillus carbonarius belongs to the Aspergillus section Nigri species complex, members of which are significant as platforms for bioenergy and bioindustrial technology, as members of soil microbial communities and players in the global carbon cycle, and as agricultural toxigens. Application of a modified version of the standard JGI Annotation Pipeline has so far predicted ~;;10k genes. ~;;12percent of these preliminary annotations suffer a potential frameshift error, which is somewhat higher than the ~;;9percent rate in the Sanger-sequenced and conventionally assembled and annotated genome of fellow Aspergillus section Nigri member A. niger. Also,>90percent of A. niger genes have potential homologs in the A. carbonarius preliminary annotation. Weconclude, and with further annotation and comparative analysis expect to confirm, that 454 sequencing strategies provide a promising substrate for annotation of modestly sized eukaryotic genomes. We will also present results of annotation of a number of other pyrosequenced fungal genomes of bioenergy interest.

  7. Subjective risk assessment for planning conservation projects

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Game, Edward T; Fitzsimons, James A; Lipsett-Moore, Geoff; McDonald-Madden, Eve

    2013-01-01

    Conservation projects occur under many types of uncertainty. Where this uncertainty can affect achievement of a project’s objectives, there is risk. Understanding risks to project success should influence a range of strategic and tactical decisions in conservation, and yet, formal risk assessment rarely features in the guidance or practice of conservation planning. We describe how subjective risk analysis tools can be framed to facilitate the rapid identification and assessment of risks to conservation projects, and how this information should influence conservation planning. Our approach is illustrated with an assessment of risks to conservation success as part of a conservation plan for the work of The Nature Conservancy in northern Australia. Risks can be both internal and external to a project, and occur across environmental, social, economic and political systems. Based on the relative importance of a risk and the level of certainty in its assessment we propose a series of appropriate, project level responses including research, monitoring, and active amelioration. Explicit identification, prioritization, and where possible, management of risks are important elements of using conservation resources in an informed and accountable manner. (letter)

  8. Project W-420 Ventilation Stack Monitoring System Year 2000 Compliance Assessment Project Plan

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    BUSSELL, J.H.

    1999-01-01

    This document contains a limited assessment of Year 2000 compliance for Project W-420. Additional information is provided as a road map to project documents and other references that may be used to verify Year 2000 compliance. This assessment describes the potential Year 2000 (Y2K) problems and describes the methods for achieving Y2K Compliance for Project W-420, Ventilation Stack Monitoring Systems Upgrades. The purpose of this assessment is to give an overview of the project. This document will not be updated and any dates contained in this document are estimates and may change. The project work scope includes upgrades to ventilation stacks and generic effluent monitoring systems (GEMS) at the 244-A Double Contained Receiver Tank (DCRT), the 244-BX DCRT, the 244-CR Vault, tanks 241-C-105 and 241-C-106, the 244-S DCRT, and the 244-TX DCRT. A detailed description of system dates, functions, interfaces, potential Y2K problems, and date resolutions can not be described since the project is in the definitive design phase, This assessment will describe the methods, protocols, and practices to ensure that equipment and systems do not have Y2K problems

  9. Functional annotation of hierarchical modularity.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kanchana Padmanabhan

    Full Text Available In biological networks of molecular interactions in a cell, network motifs that are biologically relevant are also functionally coherent, or form functional modules. These functionally coherent modules combine in a hierarchical manner into larger, less cohesive subsystems, thus revealing one of the essential design principles of system-level cellular organization and function-hierarchical modularity. Arguably, hierarchical modularity has not been explicitly taken into consideration by most, if not all, functional annotation systems. As a result, the existing methods would often fail to assign a statistically significant functional coherence score to biologically relevant molecular machines. We developed a methodology for hierarchical functional annotation. Given the hierarchical taxonomy of functional concepts (e.g., Gene Ontology and the association of individual genes or proteins with these concepts (e.g., GO terms, our method will assign a Hierarchical Modularity Score (HMS to each node in the hierarchy of functional modules; the HMS score and its p-value measure functional coherence of each module in the hierarchy. While existing methods annotate each module with a set of "enriched" functional terms in a bag of genes, our complementary method provides the hierarchical functional annotation of the modules and their hierarchically organized components. A hierarchical organization of functional modules often comes as a bi-product of cluster analysis of gene expression data or protein interaction data. Otherwise, our method will automatically build such a hierarchy by directly incorporating the functional taxonomy information into the hierarchy search process and by allowing multi-functional genes to be part of more than one component in the hierarchy. In addition, its underlying HMS scoring metric ensures that functional specificity of the terms across different levels of the hierarchical taxonomy is properly treated. We have evaluated our

  10. Fluid Annotations in a Open World

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Zellweger, Polle Trescott; Bouvin, Niels Olof; Jehøj, Henning

    2001-01-01

    Fluid Documents use animated typographical changes to provide a novel and appealing user experience for hypertext browsing and for viewing document annotations in context. This paper describes an effort to broaden the utility of Fluid Documents by using the open hypermedia Arakne Environment to l...... to layer fluid annotations and links on top of abitrary HTML pages on the World Wide Web. Changes to both Fluid Documents and Arakne are required....

  11. Pratiques d'annotations à l'ère des médias numériques : étude de cas de l'architexte Diigo.

    OpenAIRE

    Kerneis , Jacques; Thiault , Florence

    2014-01-01

    International audience; The integration of technology in higher education raises questions about the potential of digital university teaching. In this article, we approach the influence of environments (hardware or platforms) on the practice of digital annotation. Our project is to analyze the types of use produced by the architext of an online management tool of bookmarks Diigo. We rely on two case studies to identify annotation practices. A first study relates to the practices which student...

  12. Systematic interpretation of microarray data using experiment annotations

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Frohme Marcus

    2006-12-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Up to now, microarray data are mostly assessed in context with only one or few parameters characterizing the experimental conditions under study. More explicit experiment annotations, however, are highly useful for interpreting microarray data, when available in a statistically accessible format. Results We provide means to preprocess these additional data, and to extract relevant traits corresponding to the transcription patterns under study. We found correspondence analysis particularly well-suited for mapping such extracted traits. It visualizes associations both among and between the traits, the hereby annotated experiments, and the genes, revealing how they are all interrelated. Here, we apply our methods to the systematic interpretation of radioactive (single channel and two-channel data, stemming from model organisms such as yeast and drosophila up to complex human cancer samples. Inclusion of technical parameters allows for identification of artifacts and flaws in experimental design. Conclusion Biological and clinical traits can act as landmarks in transcription space, systematically mapping the variance of large datasets from the predominant changes down toward intricate details.

  13. Annotations to quantum statistical mechanics

    CERN Document Server

    Kim, In-Gee

    2018-01-01

    This book is a rewritten and annotated version of Leo P. Kadanoff and Gordon Baym’s lectures that were presented in the book Quantum Statistical Mechanics: Green’s Function Methods in Equilibrium and Nonequilibrium Problems. The lectures were devoted to a discussion on the use of thermodynamic Green’s functions in describing the properties of many-particle systems. The functions provided a method for discussing finite-temperature problems with no more conceptual difficulty than ground-state problems, and the method was equally applicable to boson and fermion systems and equilibrium and nonequilibrium problems. The lectures also explained nonequilibrium statistical physics in a systematic way and contained essential concepts on statistical physics in terms of Green’s functions with sufficient and rigorous details. In-Gee Kim thoroughly studied the lectures during one of his research projects but found that the unspecialized method used to present them in the form of a book reduced their readability. He st...

  14. Model and Interoperability using Meta Data Annotations

    Science.gov (United States)

    David, O.

    2011-12-01

    Software frameworks and architectures are in need for meta data to efficiently support model integration. Modelers have to know the context of a model, often stepping into modeling semantics and auxiliary information usually not provided in a concise structure and universal format, consumable by a range of (modeling) tools. XML often seems the obvious solution for capturing meta data, but its wide adoption to facilitate model interoperability is limited by XML schema fragmentation, complexity, and verbosity outside of a data-automation process. Ontologies seem to overcome those shortcomings, however the practical significance of their use remains to be demonstrated. OMS version 3 took a different approach for meta data representation. The fundamental building block of a modular model in OMS is a software component representing a single physical process, calibration method, or data access approach. Here, programing language features known as Annotations or Attributes were adopted. Within other (non-modeling) frameworks it has been observed that annotations lead to cleaner and leaner application code. Framework-supported model integration, traditionally accomplished using Application Programming Interfaces (API) calls is now achieved using descriptive code annotations. Fully annotated components for various hydrological and Ag-system models now provide information directly for (i) model assembly and building, (ii) data flow analysis for implicit multi-threading or visualization, (iii) automated and comprehensive model documentation of component dependencies, physical data properties, (iv) automated model and component testing, calibration, and optimization, and (v) automated audit-traceability to account for all model resources leading to a particular simulation result. Such a non-invasive methodology leads to models and modeling components with only minimal dependencies on the modeling framework but a strong reference to its originating code. Since models and

  15. Black English Annotations for Elementary Reading Programs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Prasad, Sandre

    This report describes a program that uses annotations in the teacher's editions of existing reading programs to indicate the characteristics of black English that may interfere with the reading process of black children. The first part of the report provides a rationale for the annotation approach, explaining that the discrepancy between written…

  16. Bibliography. Computer-Oriented Projects, 1987.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Smith, Richard L., Comp.

    1988-01-01

    Provides an annotated list of references on computer-oriented projects. Includes information on computers; hands-on versus simulations; games; instruction; students' attitudes and learning styles; artificial intelligence; tutoring; and application of spreadsheets. (RT)

  17. Special Issue: Annotated Bibliography for Volumes XIX-XXXII.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pullin, Richard A.

    1998-01-01

    This annotated bibliography lists 310 articles from the "Journal of Cooperative Education" from Volumes XIX-XXXII, 1983-1997. Annotations are presented in the order they appear in the journal; author and subject indexes are provided. (JOW)

  18. MetaStorm: A Public Resource for Customizable Metagenomics Annotation.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gustavo Arango-Argoty

    Full Text Available Metagenomics is a trending research area, calling for the need to analyze large quantities of data generated from next generation DNA sequencing technologies. The need to store, retrieve, analyze, share, and visualize such data challenges current online computational systems. Interpretation and annotation of specific information is especially a challenge for metagenomic data sets derived from environmental samples, because current annotation systems only offer broad classification of microbial diversity and function. Moreover, existing resources are not configured to readily address common questions relevant to environmental systems. Here we developed a new online user-friendly metagenomic analysis server called MetaStorm (http://bench.cs.vt.edu/MetaStorm/, which facilitates customization of computational analysis for metagenomic data sets. Users can upload their own reference databases to tailor the metagenomics annotation to focus on various taxonomic and functional gene markers of interest. MetaStorm offers two major analysis pipelines: an assembly-based annotation pipeline and the standard read annotation pipeline used by existing web servers. These pipelines can be selected individually or together. Overall, MetaStorm provides enhanced interactive visualization to allow researchers to explore and manipulate taxonomy and functional annotation at various levels of resolution.

  19. MetaStorm: A Public Resource for Customizable Metagenomics Annotation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arango-Argoty, Gustavo; Singh, Gargi; Heath, Lenwood S; Pruden, Amy; Xiao, Weidong; Zhang, Liqing

    2016-01-01

    Metagenomics is a trending research area, calling for the need to analyze large quantities of data generated from next generation DNA sequencing technologies. The need to store, retrieve, analyze, share, and visualize such data challenges current online computational systems. Interpretation and annotation of specific information is especially a challenge for metagenomic data sets derived from environmental samples, because current annotation systems only offer broad classification of microbial diversity and function. Moreover, existing resources are not configured to readily address common questions relevant to environmental systems. Here we developed a new online user-friendly metagenomic analysis server called MetaStorm (http://bench.cs.vt.edu/MetaStorm/), which facilitates customization of computational analysis for metagenomic data sets. Users can upload their own reference databases to tailor the metagenomics annotation to focus on various taxonomic and functional gene markers of interest. MetaStorm offers two major analysis pipelines: an assembly-based annotation pipeline and the standard read annotation pipeline used by existing web servers. These pipelines can be selected individually or together. Overall, MetaStorm provides enhanced interactive visualization to allow researchers to explore and manipulate taxonomy and functional annotation at various levels of resolution.

  20. MetaStorm: A Public Resource for Customizable Metagenomics Annotation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arango-Argoty, Gustavo; Singh, Gargi; Heath, Lenwood S.; Pruden, Amy; Xiao, Weidong; Zhang, Liqing

    2016-01-01

    Metagenomics is a trending research area, calling for the need to analyze large quantities of data generated from next generation DNA sequencing technologies. The need to store, retrieve, analyze, share, and visualize such data challenges current online computational systems. Interpretation and annotation of specific information is especially a challenge for metagenomic data sets derived from environmental samples, because current annotation systems only offer broad classification of microbial diversity and function. Moreover, existing resources are not configured to readily address common questions relevant to environmental systems. Here we developed a new online user-friendly metagenomic analysis server called MetaStorm (http://bench.cs.vt.edu/MetaStorm/), which facilitates customization of computational analysis for metagenomic data sets. Users can upload their own reference databases to tailor the metagenomics annotation to focus on various taxonomic and functional gene markers of interest. MetaStorm offers two major analysis pipelines: an assembly-based annotation pipeline and the standard read annotation pipeline used by existing web servers. These pipelines can be selected individually or together. Overall, MetaStorm provides enhanced interactive visualization to allow researchers to explore and manipulate taxonomy and functional annotation at various levels of resolution. PMID:27632579

  1. The Bologna Annotation Resource (BAR 3.0): improving protein functional annotation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Profiti, Giuseppe; Martelli, Pier Luigi; Casadio, Rita

    2017-07-03

    BAR 3.0 updates our server BAR (Bologna Annotation Resource) for predicting protein structural and functional features from sequence. We increase data volume, query capabilities and information conveyed to the user. The core of BAR 3.0 is a graph-based clustering procedure of UniProtKB sequences, following strict pairwise similarity criteria (sequence identity ≥40% with alignment coverage ≥90%). Each cluster contains the available annotation downloaded from UniProtKB, GO, PFAM and PDB. After statistical validation, GO terms and PFAM domains are cluster-specific and annotate new sequences entering the cluster after satisfying similarity constraints. BAR 3.0 includes 28 869 663 sequences in 1 361 773 clusters, of which 22.2% (22 241 661 sequences) and 47.4% (24 555 055 sequences) have at least one validated GO term and one PFAM domain, respectively. 1.4% of the clusters (36% of all sequences) include PDB structures and the cluster is associated to a hidden Markov model that allows building template-target alignment suitable for structural modeling. Some other 3 399 026 sequences are singletons. BAR 3.0 offers an improved search interface, allowing queries by UniProtKB-accession, Fasta sequence, GO-term, PFAM-domain, organism, PDB and ligand/s. When evaluated on the CAFA2 targets, BAR 3.0 largely outperforms our previous version and scores among state-of-the-art methods. BAR 3.0 is publicly available and accessible at http://bar.biocomp.unibo.it/bar3. © The Author(s) 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.

  2. International Arctic Seas Assessment Project (IASAP)

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sjoeblom, K.L.; Linsley, G.S.

    1995-01-01

    The purpose of this paper was to give an overall view of the International Arctic Seas Assessment Project (IASAP). The IASAP project was initiated in 1993 to address concerns about the possible health and environmental impacts of radioactive wastes dumped in the shallow waters of the Arctic seas by the former Soviet Union. The project is being executed as a part of the IAEA's responsibilities under the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter (London Convention 1972). The results and conclusions of the project are expected to be reported to the London Convention in late 1996. The objectives of the project are: 1) to assess the risks to human health and to the environment associated with the radioactive waste dumped in the Kara and Barents Seas; and 2) to examine possible remedial actions related to the dumped wastes and to advise on whether they are necessary and justified. The project is organized in five working areas: source terms, existing environmental concentrations, transfer mechanisms and models, impact assessment and remedial measures. Progress made in all working areas of IASAP is reviewed each year by a group of senior scientists (IASAP Advisory Group Meeting). During the first two years of the IASAP project, a considerable amount of new information has been produced and published as IASAP working documents. Experts from 15 countries and several international organizations are involved in the different Working Groups and Advisory Group Meetings of the project. It is planned that in addition to the report to the London Convention, which will be prepared by the Advisory Group, detailed technical reports covering the work of all areas of the IASAP will be produced. 12 refs., 3 figs., 1 tab

  3. BAT: An open-source, web-based audio events annotation tool

    OpenAIRE

    Blai Meléndez-Catalan, Emilio Molina, Emilia Gómez

    2017-01-01

    In this paper we present BAT (BMAT Annotation Tool), an open-source, web-based tool for the manual annotation of events in audio recordings developed at BMAT (Barcelona Music and Audio Technologies). The main feature of the tool is that it provides an easy way to annotate the salience of simultaneous sound sources. Additionally, it allows to define multiple ontologies to adapt to multiple tasks and offers the possibility to cross-annotate audio data. Moreover, it is easy to install and deploy...

  4. Tidd PFBC Demonstration Project, A DOE Assessment

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    National Energy Technology Laboratory

    2001-08-31

    The Clean Coal Technology (CCT) Demonstration Program is a government and industry co-funded technology development effort to demonstrate a new generation of innovative coal utilization processes. One goal of the program is to furnish the energy marketplace with a variety of energy efficient, environmentally superior coal-based technologies. Demonstration projects seek to establish the commercial feasibility of the most promising coal technologies that have proceeded beyond the proof-of-concept stage. This report is a post-project assessment of the DOE CCT Demonstration Program, the Tidd PFBC Demonstration Project. A major objective of the CCT Program is to provide the technical data necessary for the private sector to proceed confidently with the commercial replication of the demonstrated technologies. An essential element of meeting this goal is the dissemination of results from the demonstration projects. This post-project assessment (PPA) report is an independent DOE appraisal of the successes that the completed project had in achieving its objectives and aiding in the commercialization of the demonstrated technology. The report also provides an assessment of the expected technical, environmental, and economic performance of the commercial version of the technology, as well as an analysis of the commercial market.

  5. Annotating images by mining image search results.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Xin-Jing; Zhang, Lei; Li, Xirong; Ma, Wei-Ying

    2008-11-01

    Although it has been studied for years by the computer vision and machine learning communities, image annotation is still far from practical. In this paper, we propose a novel attempt at model-free image annotation, which is a data-driven approach that annotates images by mining their search results. Some 2.4 million images with their surrounding text are collected from a few photo forums to support this approach. The entire process is formulated in a divide-and-conquer framework where a query keyword is provided along with the uncaptioned image to improve both the effectiveness and efficiency. This is helpful when the collected data set is not dense everywhere. In this sense, our approach contains three steps: 1) the search process to discover visually and semantically similar search results, 2) the mining process to identify salient terms from textual descriptions of the search results, and 3) the annotation rejection process to filter out noisy terms yielded by Step 2. To ensure real-time annotation, two key techniques are leveraged-one is to map the high-dimensional image visual features into hash codes, the other is to implement it as a distributed system, of which the search and mining processes are provided as Web services. As a typical result, the entire process finishes in less than 1 second. Since no training data set is required, our approach enables annotating with unlimited vocabulary and is highly scalable and robust to outliers. Experimental results on both real Web images and a benchmark image data set show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithm. It is also worth noting that, although the entire approach is illustrated within the divide-and conquer framework, a query keyword is not crucial to our current implementation. We provide experimental results to prove this.

  6. Collaborative Paper-Based Annotation of Lecture Slides

    Science.gov (United States)

    Steimle, Jurgen; Brdiczka, Oliver; Muhlhauser, Max

    2009-01-01

    In a study of notetaking in university courses, we found that the large majority of students prefer paper to computer-based media like Tablet PCs for taking notes and making annotations. Based on this finding, we developed CoScribe, a concept and system which supports students in making collaborative handwritten annotations on printed lecture…

  7. Music journals in South Africa 1854-2010: an annotated bibliography

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Music journals in South Africa 1854-2010: an annotated bibliography. ... The article focuses on presenting an annotated bibliography of music journalism in South Africa from as early as 1854 until 2010. Most of ... Key words: annotated bibliography, electronic journals, music journals, periodicals, South African music history ...

  8. An annotated corpus with nanomedicine and pharmacokinetic parameters.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lewinski, Nastassja A; Jimenez, Ivan; McInnes, Bridget T

    2017-01-01

    A vast amount of data on nanomedicines is being generated and published, and natural language processing (NLP) approaches can automate the extraction of unstructured text-based data. Annotated corpora are a key resource for NLP and information extraction methods which employ machine learning. Although corpora are available for pharmaceuticals, resources for nanomedicines and nanotechnology are still limited. To foster nanotechnology text mining (NanoNLP) efforts, we have constructed a corpus of annotated drug product inserts taken from the US Food and Drug Administration's Drugs@FDA online database. In this work, we present the development of the Engineered Nanomedicine Database corpus to support the evaluation of nanomedicine entity extraction. The data were manually annotated for 21 entity mentions consisting of nanomedicine physicochemical characterization, exposure, and biologic response information of 41 Food and Drug Administration-approved nanomedicines. We evaluate the reliability of the manual annotations and demonstrate the use of the corpus by evaluating two state-of-the-art named entity extraction systems, OpenNLP and Stanford NER. The annotated corpus is available open source and, based on these results, guidelines and suggestions for future development of additional nanomedicine corpora are provided.

  9. Plann: A command-line application for annotating plastome sequences1

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huang, Daisie I.; Cronk, Quentin C. B.

    2015-01-01

    Premise of the study: Plann automates the process of annotating a plastome sequence in GenBank format for either downstream processing or for GenBank submission by annotating a new plastome based on a similar, well-annotated plastome. Methods and Results: Plann is a Perl script to be executed on the command line. Plann compares a new plastome sequence to the features annotated in a reference plastome and then shifts the intervals of any matching features to the locations in the new plastome. Plann’s output can be used in the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s tbl2asn to create a Sequin file for GenBank submission. Conclusions: Unlike Web-based annotation packages, Plann is a locally executable script that will accurately annotate a plastome sequence to a locally specified reference plastome. Because it executes from the command line, it is ready to use in other software pipelines and can be easily rerun as a draft plastome is improved. PMID:26312193

  10. Evaluation of web-based annotation of ophthalmic images for multicentric clinical trials.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chalam, K V; Jain, P; Shah, V A; Shah, Gaurav Y

    2006-06-01

    An Internet browser-based annotation system can be used to identify and describe features in digitalized retinal images, in multicentric clinical trials, in real time. In this web-based annotation system, the user employs a mouse to draw and create annotations on a transparent layer, that encapsulates the observations and interpretations of a specific image. Multiple annotation layers may be overlaid on a single image. These layers may correspond to annotations by different users on the same image or annotations of a temporal sequence of images of a disease process, over a period of time. In addition, geometrical properties of annotated figures may be computed and measured. The annotations are stored in a central repository database on a server, which can be retrieved by multiple users in real time. This system facilitates objective evaluation of digital images and comparison of double-blind readings of digital photographs, with an identifiable audit trail. Annotation of ophthalmic images allowed clinically feasible and useful interpretation to track properties of an area of fundus pathology. This provided an objective method to monitor properties of pathologies over time, an essential component of multicentric clinical trials. The annotation system also allowed users to view stereoscopic images that are stereo pairs. This web-based annotation system is useful and valuable in monitoring patient care, in multicentric clinical trials, telemedicine, teaching and routine clinical settings.

  11. Essential Annotation Schema for Ecology (EASE)-A framework supporting the efficient data annotation and faceted navigation in ecology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pfaff, Claas-Thido; Eichenberg, David; Liebergesell, Mario; König-Ries, Birgitta; Wirth, Christian

    2017-01-01

    Ecology has become a data intensive science over the last decades which often relies on the reuse of data in cross-experimental analyses. However, finding data which qualifies for the reuse in a specific context can be challenging. It requires good quality metadata and annotations as well as efficient search strategies. To date, full text search (often on the metadata only) is the most widely used search strategy although it is known to be inaccurate. Faceted navigation is providing a filter mechanism which is based on fine granular metadata, categorizing search objects along numeric and categorical parameters relevant for their discovery. Selecting from these parameters during a full text search creates a system of filters which allows to refine and improve the results towards more relevance. We developed a framework for the efficient annotation and faceted navigation in ecology. It consists of an XML schema for storing the annotation of search objects and is accompanied by a vocabulary focused on ecology to support the annotation process. The framework consolidates ideas which originate from widely accepted metadata standards, textbooks, scientific literature, and vocabularies as well as from expert knowledge contributed by researchers from ecology and adjacent disciplines.

  12. Essential Annotation Schema for Ecology (EASE-A framework supporting the efficient data annotation and faceted navigation in ecology.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Claas-Thido Pfaff

    Full Text Available Ecology has become a data intensive science over the last decades which often relies on the reuse of data in cross-experimental analyses. However, finding data which qualifies for the reuse in a specific context can be challenging. It requires good quality metadata and annotations as well as efficient search strategies. To date, full text search (often on the metadata only is the most widely used search strategy although it is known to be inaccurate. Faceted navigation is providing a filter mechanism which is based on fine granular metadata, categorizing search objects along numeric and categorical parameters relevant for their discovery. Selecting from these parameters during a full text search creates a system of filters which allows to refine and improve the results towards more relevance. We developed a framework for the efficient annotation and faceted navigation in ecology. It consists of an XML schema for storing the annotation of search objects and is accompanied by a vocabulary focused on ecology to support the annotation process. The framework consolidates ideas which originate from widely accepted metadata standards, textbooks, scientific literature, and vocabularies as well as from expert knowledge contributed by researchers from ecology and adjacent disciplines.

  13. Annotating Logical Forms for EHR Questions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Roberts, Kirk; Demner-Fushman, Dina

    2016-05-01

    This paper discusses the creation of a semantically annotated corpus of questions about patient data in electronic health records (EHRs). The goal is to provide the training data necessary for semantic parsers to automatically convert EHR questions into a structured query. A layered annotation strategy is used which mirrors a typical natural language processing (NLP) pipeline. First, questions are syntactically analyzed to identify multi-part questions. Second, medical concepts are recognized and normalized to a clinical ontology. Finally, logical forms are created using a lambda calculus representation. We use a corpus of 446 questions asking for patient-specific information. From these, 468 specific questions are found containing 259 unique medical concepts and requiring 53 unique predicates to represent the logical forms. We further present detailed characteristics of the corpus, including inter-annotator agreement results, and describe the challenges automatic NLP systems will face on this task.

  14. Expressed Peptide Tags: An additional layer of data for genome annotation

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Savidor, Alon [ORNL; Donahoo, Ryan S [ORNL; Hurtado-Gonzales, Oscar [University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK); Verberkmoes, Nathan C [ORNL; Shah, Manesh B [ORNL; Lamour, Kurt H [ORNL; McDonald, W Hayes [ORNL

    2006-01-01

    While genome sequencing is becoming ever more routine, genome annotation remains a challenging process. Identification of the coding sequences within the genomic milieu presents a tremendous challenge, especially for eukaryotes with their complex gene architectures. Here we present a method to assist the annotation process through the use of proteomic data and bioinformatics. Mass spectra of digested protein preparations of the organism of interest were acquired and searched against a protein database created by a six frame translation of the genome. The identified peptides were mapped back to the genome, compared to the current annotation, and then categorized as supporting or extending the current genome annotation. We named the classified peptides Expressed Peptide Tags (EPTs). The well annotated bacterium Rhodopseudomonas palustris was used as a control for the method and showed high degree of correlation between EPT mapping and the current annotation, with 86% of the EPTs confirming existing gene calls and less than 1% of the EPTs expanding on the current annotation. The eukaryotic plant pathogens Phytophthora ramorum and Phytophthora sojae, whose genomes have been recently sequenced and are much less well annotated, were also subjected to this method. A series of algorithmic steps were taken to increase the confidence of EPT identification for these organisms, including generation of smaller sub-databases to be searched against, and definition of EPT criteria that accommodates the more complex eukaryotic gene architecture. As expected, the analysis of the Phytophthora species showed less correlation between EPT mapping and their current annotation. While ~77% of Phytophthora EPTs supported the current annotation, a portion of them (7.2% and 12.6% for P. ramorum and P. sojae, respectively) suggested modification to current gene calls or identified novel genes that were missed by the current genome annotation of these organisms.

  15. Fuzzy Emotional Semantic Analysis and Automated Annotation of Scene Images

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jianfang Cao

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available With the advances in electronic and imaging techniques, the production of digital images has rapidly increased, and the extraction and automated annotation of emotional semantics implied by images have become issues that must be urgently addressed. To better simulate human subjectivity and ambiguity for understanding scene images, the current study proposes an emotional semantic annotation method for scene images based on fuzzy set theory. A fuzzy membership degree was calculated to describe the emotional degree of a scene image and was implemented using the Adaboost algorithm and a back-propagation (BP neural network. The automated annotation method was trained and tested using scene images from the SUN Database. The annotation results were then compared with those based on artificial annotation. Our method showed an annotation accuracy rate of 91.2% for basic emotional values and 82.4% after extended emotional values were added, which correspond to increases of 5.5% and 8.9%, respectively, compared with the results from using a single BP neural network algorithm. Furthermore, the retrieval accuracy rate based on our method reached approximately 89%. This study attempts to lay a solid foundation for the automated emotional semantic annotation of more types of images and therefore is of practical significance.

  16. Multiview Hessian regularization for image annotation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Weifeng; Tao, Dacheng

    2013-07-01

    The rapid development of computer hardware and Internet technology makes large scale data dependent models computationally tractable, and opens a bright avenue for annotating images through innovative machine learning algorithms. Semisupervised learning (SSL) therefore received intensive attention in recent years and was successfully deployed in image annotation. One representative work in SSL is Laplacian regularization (LR), which smoothes the conditional distribution for classification along the manifold encoded in the graph Laplacian, however, it is observed that LR biases the classification function toward a constant function that possibly results in poor generalization. In addition, LR is developed to handle uniformly distributed data (or single-view data), although instances or objects, such as images and videos, are usually represented by multiview features, such as color, shape, and texture. In this paper, we present multiview Hessian regularization (mHR) to address the above two problems in LR-based image annotation. In particular, mHR optimally combines multiple HR, each of which is obtained from a particular view of instances, and steers the classification function that varies linearly along the data manifold. We apply mHR to kernel least squares and support vector machines as two examples for image annotation. Extensive experiments on the PASCAL VOC'07 dataset validate the effectiveness of mHR by comparing it with baseline algorithms, including LR and HR.

  17. Sustainable assessment of learning experiences based on projects

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ignacio TRAVERSO RIBÓN

    2016-05-01

    Full Text Available In a project-based learning experience, the detailed monitoring of the activities in which team members participate can be useful to evaluate their work. Using learning-oriented assessment procedures, supervisors can assess the teamwork abilities with a formative purpose. Evaluation strategies such as self-assessment, peer assessment and co-assessment are often used to make evaluation formative and sustainable. Conducting an assessment strategy is not easy for team members, since they need before to have a reasonable understanding of the evaluation process and criteria. This paper describes a learning-oriented evaluation methodology and an open data framework that can be applied to collaborative project settings. An evaluation rubric and a series of indicators that provide evidences about the developed skills have been elaborated and applied in a small-scale project-based course. Projects were managed and developed with the help of an open source software forge that contains a ticketing tool for planning and tracking of tasks, a version control repository to save the software outcomes, and using a wiki to host text deliverables. The experience provides evidences in favor of using the assessment method and open data framework to make teamwork evaluation more sustainable.

  18. Annotation-based feature extraction from sets of SBML models.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Alm, Rebekka; Waltemath, Dagmar; Wolfien, Markus; Wolkenhauer, Olaf; Henkel, Ron

    2015-01-01

    Model repositories such as BioModels Database provide computational models of biological systems for the scientific community. These models contain rich semantic annotations that link model entities to concepts in well-established bio-ontologies such as Gene Ontology. Consequently, thematically similar models are likely to share similar annotations. Based on this assumption, we argue that semantic annotations are a suitable tool to characterize sets of models. These characteristics improve model classification, allow to identify additional features for model retrieval tasks, and enable the comparison of sets of models. In this paper we discuss four methods for annotation-based feature extraction from model sets. We tested all methods on sets of models in SBML format which were composed from BioModels Database. To characterize each of these sets, we analyzed and extracted concepts from three frequently used ontologies, namely Gene Ontology, ChEBI and SBO. We find that three out of the methods are suitable to determine characteristic features for arbitrary sets of models: The selected features vary depending on the underlying model set, and they are also specific to the chosen model set. We show that the identified features map on concepts that are higher up in the hierarchy of the ontologies than the concepts used for model annotations. Our analysis also reveals that the information content of concepts in ontologies and their usage for model annotation do not correlate. Annotation-based feature extraction enables the comparison of model sets, as opposed to existing methods for model-to-keyword comparison, or model-to-model comparison.

  19. DaMold: A data-mining platform for variant annotation and visualization in molecular diagnostics research.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pandey, Ram Vinay; Pabinger, Stephan; Kriegner, Albert; Weinhäusel, Andreas

    2017-07-01

    Next-generation sequencing (NGS) has become a powerful and efficient tool for routine mutation screening in clinical research. As each NGS test yields hundreds of variants, the current challenge is to meaningfully interpret the data and select potential candidates. Analyzing each variant while manually investigating several relevant databases to collect specific information is a cumbersome and time-consuming process, and it requires expertise and familiarity with these databases. Thus, a tool that can seamlessly annotate variants with clinically relevant databases under one common interface would be of great help for variant annotation, cross-referencing, and visualization. This tool would allow variants to be processed in an automated and high-throughput manner and facilitate the investigation of variants in several genome browsers. Several analysis tools are available for raw sequencing-read processing and variant identification, but an automated variant filtering, annotation, cross-referencing, and visualization tool is still lacking. To fulfill these requirements, we developed DaMold, a Web-based, user-friendly tool that can filter and annotate variants and can access and compile information from 37 resources. It is easy to use, provides flexible input options, and accepts variants from NGS and Sanger sequencing as well as hotspots in VCF and BED formats. DaMold is available as an online application at http://damold.platomics.com/index.html, and as a Docker container and virtual machine at https://sourceforge.net/projects/damold/. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  20. ePIANNO: ePIgenomics ANNOtation tool.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Chia-Hsin Liu

    Full Text Available Recently, with the development of next generation sequencing (NGS, the combination of chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP and NGS, namely ChIP-seq, has become a powerful technique to capture potential genomic binding sites of regulatory factors, histone modifications and chromatin accessible regions. For most researchers, additional information including genomic variations on the TF binding site, allele frequency of variation between different populations, variation associated disease, and other neighbour TF binding sites are essential to generate a proper hypothesis or a meaningful conclusion. Many ChIP-seq datasets had been deposited on the public domain to help researchers make new discoveries. However, researches are often intimidated by the complexity of data structure and largeness of data volume. Such information would be more useful if they could be combined or downloaded with ChIP-seq data. To meet such demands, we built a webtool: ePIgenomic ANNOtation tool (ePIANNO, http://epianno.stat.sinica.edu.tw/index.html. ePIANNO is a web server that combines SNP information of populations (1000 Genomes Project and gene-disease association information of GWAS (NHGRI with ChIP-seq (hmChIP, ENCODE, and ROADMAP epigenomics data. ePIANNO has a user-friendly website interface allowing researchers to explore, navigate, and extract data quickly. We use two examples to demonstrate how users could use functions of ePIANNO webserver to explore useful information about TF related genomic variants. Users could use our query functions to search target regions, transcription factors, or annotations. ePIANNO may help users to generate hypothesis or explore potential biological functions for their studies.

  1. Automatic annotation of protein motif function with Gene Ontology terms

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gopalakrishnan Vanathi

    2004-09-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Conserved protein sequence motifs are short stretches of amino acid sequence patterns that potentially encode the function of proteins. Several sequence pattern searching algorithms and programs exist foridentifying candidate protein motifs at the whole genome level. However, amuch needed and importanttask is to determine the functions of the newly identified protein motifs. The Gene Ontology (GO project is an endeavor to annotate the function of genes or protein sequences with terms from a dynamic, controlled vocabulary and these annotations serve well as a knowledge base. Results This paperpresents methods to mine the GO knowledge base and use the association between the GO terms assigned to a sequence and the motifs matched by the same sequence as evidence for predicting the functions of novel protein motifs automatically. The task of assigning GO terms to protein motifsis viewed as both a binary classification and information retrieval problem, where PROSITE motifs are used as samples for mode training and functional prediction. The mutual information of a motif and aGO term association isfound to be a very useful feature. We take advantageof the known motifs to train a logistic regression classifier, which allows us to combine mutual information with other frequency-based features and obtain a probability of correctassociation. The trained logistic regression model has intuitively meaningful and logically plausible parameter values, and performs very well empirically according to our evaluation criteria. Conclusions In this research, different methods for automatic annotation of protein motifs have been investigated. Empirical result demonstrated that the methods have a great potential for detecting and augmenting information about thefunctions of newly discovered candidate protein motifs.

  2. Evaluating Functional Annotations of Enzymes Using the Gene Ontology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Holliday, Gemma L; Davidson, Rebecca; Akiva, Eyal; Babbitt, Patricia C

    2017-01-01

    The Gene Ontology (GO) (Ashburner et al., Nat Genet 25(1):25-29, 2000) is a powerful tool in the informatics arsenal of methods for evaluating annotations in a protein dataset. From identifying the nearest well annotated homologue of a protein of interest to predicting where misannotation has occurred to knowing how confident you can be in the annotations assigned to those proteins is critical. In this chapter we explore what makes an enzyme unique and how we can use GO to infer aspects of protein function based on sequence similarity. These can range from identification of misannotation or other errors in a predicted function to accurate function prediction for an enzyme of entirely unknown function. Although GO annotation applies to any gene products, we focus here a describing our approach for hierarchical classification of enzymes in the Structure-Function Linkage Database (SFLD) (Akiva et al., Nucleic Acids Res 42(Database issue):D521-530, 2014) as a guide for informed utilisation of annotation transfer based on GO terms.

  3. IntelliGO: a new vector-based semantic similarity measure including annotation origin

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Devignes Marie-Dominique

    2010-12-01

    previously published measures. Conclusions The IntelliGO similarity measure provides a customizable and comprehensive method for quantifying gene similarity based on GO annotations. It also displays a robust set-discriminating power which suggests it will be useful for functional clustering. Availability An on-line version of the IntelliGO similarity measure is available at: http://bioinfo.loria.fr/Members/benabdsi/intelligo_project/

  4. Essential Annotation Schema for Ecology (EASE)—A framework supporting the efficient data annotation and faceted navigation in ecology

    Science.gov (United States)

    Eichenberg, David; Liebergesell, Mario; König-Ries, Birgitta; Wirth, Christian

    2017-01-01

    Ecology has become a data intensive science over the last decades which often relies on the reuse of data in cross-experimental analyses. However, finding data which qualifies for the reuse in a specific context can be challenging. It requires good quality metadata and annotations as well as efficient search strategies. To date, full text search (often on the metadata only) is the most widely used search strategy although it is known to be inaccurate. Faceted navigation is providing a filter mechanism which is based on fine granular metadata, categorizing search objects along numeric and categorical parameters relevant for their discovery. Selecting from these parameters during a full text search creates a system of filters which allows to refine and improve the results towards more relevance. We developed a framework for the efficient annotation and faceted navigation in ecology. It consists of an XML schema for storing the annotation of search objects and is accompanied by a vocabulary focused on ecology to support the annotation process. The framework consolidates ideas which originate from widely accepted metadata standards, textbooks, scientific literature, and vocabularies as well as from expert knowledge contributed by researchers from ecology and adjacent disciplines. PMID:29023519

  5. Project Spectrum: An Innovative Assessment Alternative.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Krechevsky, Mara

    1991-01-01

    Project Spectrum attempts to reconceptualize the traditional linguistic and logical/mathematical bases of intelligence. Spectrum blurs the line between curriculum and assessment, embeds assessment in meaningful, real-world activities, uses "intelligence-fair" measures, emphasizes children's strengths, and recognizes the stylistic…

  6. Risk assessment for construction projects of transport infrastructure objects

    Science.gov (United States)

    Titarenko, Boris

    2017-10-01

    The paper analyzes and compares different methods of risk assessment for construction projects of transport objects. The management of such type of projects demands application of special probabilistic methods due to large level of uncertainty of their implementation. Risk management in the projects requires the use of probabilistic and statistical methods. The aim of the work is to develop a methodology for using traditional methods in combination with robust methods that allow obtaining reliable risk assessments in projects. The robust approach is based on the principle of maximum likelihood and in assessing the risk allows the researcher to obtain reliable results in situations of great uncertainty. The application of robust procedures allows to carry out a quantitative assessment of the main risk indicators of projects when solving the tasks of managing innovation-investment projects. Calculation of damage from the onset of a risky event is possible by any competent specialist. And an assessment of the probability of occurrence of a risky event requires the involvement of special probabilistic methods based on the proposed robust approaches. Practice shows the effectiveness and reliability of results. The methodology developed in the article can be used to create information technologies and their application in automated control systems for complex projects.

  7. Automating Ontological Annotation with WordNet

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Sanfilippo, Antonio P.; Tratz, Stephen C.; Gregory, Michelle L.; Chappell, Alan R.; Whitney, Paul D.; Posse, Christian; Paulson, Patrick R.; Baddeley, Bob L.; Hohimer, Ryan E.; White, Amanda M.

    2006-01-22

    Semantic Web applications require robust and accurate annotation tools that are capable of automating the assignment of ontological classes to words in naturally occurring text (ontological annotation). Most current ontologies do not include rich lexical databases and are therefore not easily integrated with word sense disambiguation algorithms that are needed to automate ontological annotation. WordNet provides a potentially ideal solution to this problem as it offers a highly structured lexical conceptual representation that has been extensively used to develop word sense disambiguation algorithms. However, WordNet has not been designed as an ontology, and while it can be easily turned into one, the result of doing this would present users with serious practical limitations due to the great number of concepts (synonym sets) it contains. Moreover, mapping WordNet to an existing ontology may be difficult and requires substantial labor. We propose to overcome these limitations by developing an analytical platform that (1) provides a WordNet-based ontology offering a manageable and yet comprehensive set of concept classes, (2) leverages the lexical richness of WordNet to give an extensive characterization of concept class in terms of lexical instances, and (3) integrates a class recognition algorithm that automates the assignment of concept classes to words in naturally occurring text. The ensuing framework makes available an ontological annotation platform that can be effectively integrated with intelligence analysis systems to facilitate evidence marshaling and sustain the creation and validation of inference models.

  8. A Selected Annotated Bibliography on Work Time Options.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ivantcho, Barbara

    This annotated bibliography is divided into three sections. Section I contains annotations of general publications on work time options. Section II presents resources on flexitime and the compressed work week. In Section III are found resources related to these reduced work time options: permanent part-time employment, job sharing, voluntary…

  9. Mongolia wind resource assessment project

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Elliott, D.; Chadraa, B.; Natsagdorj, L.

    1998-01-01

    The development of detailed, regional wind-resource distributions and other pertinent wind resource characteristics (e.g., assessment maps and reliable estimates of seasonal, diurnal, and directional) is an important step in planning and accelerating the deployment of wind energy systems. This paper summarizes the approach and methods being used to conduct a wind energy resource assessment of Mongolia. The primary goals of this project are to develop a comprehensive wind energy resource atlas of Mongolia and to establish a wind measurement program in specific regions of Mongolia to identify prospective sites for wind energy projects and to help validate some of the wind resource estimates. The Mongolian wind resource atlas will include detailed, computerized wind power maps and other valuable wind resource characteristic information for the different regions of Mongolia

  10. Discussion on the post-project assessment of environmental impact for nuclear facilities

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Shang Zhaorong

    2013-01-01

    The paper introduces the background of post-project assessment of environmental impact in the world and focuses on the characteristic of environmental impact assessment for Chinese nuclear facilities construction projects, analyzes the necessity, principle and contents of post-project assessment of environmental impact on current Chinese nuclear facilities operation. It is considered that to start the post-project assessment of environmental impact, perfect the post-project assessment mechanism, introduce the post-project assessment into environmental impact assessment system are just at the night time. (author)

  11. Prepare-Participate-Connect: Active Learning with Video Annotation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Colasante, Meg; Douglas, Kathy

    2016-01-01

    Annotation of video provides students with the opportunity to view and engage with audiovisual content in an interactive and participatory way rather than in passive-receptive mode. This article discusses research into the use of video annotation in four vocational programs at RMIT University in Melbourne, which allowed students to interact with…

  12. Developing Annotation Solutions for Online Data Driven Learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Perez-Paredes, Pascual; Alcaraz-Calero, Jose M.

    2009-01-01

    Although "annotation" is a widely-researched topic in Corpus Linguistics (CL), its potential role in Data Driven Learning (DDL) has not been addressed in depth by Foreign Language Teaching (FLT) practitioners. Furthermore, most of the research in the use of DDL methods pays little attention to annotation in the design and implementation…

  13. Re-annotation and re-analysis of the Campylobacter jejuni NCTC11168 genome sequence

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dorrell Nick

    2007-06-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Campylobacter jejuni is the leading bacterial cause of human gastroenteritis in the developed world. To improve our understanding of this important human pathogen, the C. jejuni NCTC11168 genome was sequenced and published in 2000. The original annotation was a milestone in Campylobacter research, but is outdated. We now describe the complete re-annotation and re-analysis of the C. jejuni NCTC11168 genome using current database information, novel tools and annotation techniques not used during the original annotation. Results Re-annotation was carried out using sequence database searches such as FASTA, along with programs such as TMHMM for additional support. The re-annotation also utilises sequence data from additional Campylobacter strains and species not available during the original annotation. Re-annotation was accompanied by a full literature search that was incorporated into the updated EMBL file [EMBL: AL111168]. The C. jejuni NCTC11168 re-annotation reduced the total number of coding sequences from 1654 to 1643, of which 90.0% have additional information regarding the identification of new motifs and/or relevant literature. Re-annotation has led to 18.2% of coding sequence product functions being revised. Conclusions Major updates were made to genes involved in the biosynthesis of important surface structures such as lipooligosaccharide, capsule and both O- and N-linked glycosylation. This re-annotation will be a key resource for Campylobacter research and will also provide a prototype for the re-annotation and re-interpretation of other bacterial genomes.

  14. Comparison of concept recognizers for building the Open Biomedical Annotator

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rubin Daniel

    2009-09-01

    Full Text Available Abstract The National Center for Biomedical Ontology (NCBO is developing a system for automated, ontology-based access to online biomedical resources (Shah NH, et al.: Ontology-driven indexing of public datasets for translational bioinformatics. BMC Bioinformatics 2009, 10(Suppl 2:S1. The system's indexing workflow processes the text metadata of diverse resources such as datasets from GEO and ArrayExpress to annotate and index them with concepts from appropriate ontologies. This indexing requires the use of a concept-recognition tool to identify ontology concepts in the resource's textual metadata. In this paper, we present a comparison of two concept recognizers – NLM's MetaMap and the University of Michigan's Mgrep. We utilize a number of data sources and dictionaries to evaluate the concept recognizers in terms of precision, recall, speed of execution, scalability and customizability. Our evaluations demonstrate that Mgrep has a clear edge over MetaMap for large-scale service oriented applications. Based on our analysis we also suggest areas of potential improvements for Mgrep. We have subsequently used Mgrep to build the Open Biomedical Annotator service. The Annotator service has access to a large dictionary of biomedical terms derived from the United Medical Language System (UMLS and NCBO ontologies. The Annotator also leverages the hierarchical structure of the ontologies and their mappings to expand annotations. The Annotator service is available to the community as a REST Web service for creating ontology-based annotations of their data.

  15. Project W-420 Ventilation Stack Monitoring System Year 2000 Compliance Assessment Project Plan

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    BUSSELL, J.H.

    1999-01-01

    This assessment describes the potential Year 2000 (Y2K) problems and describes the methods for achieving Y2K Compliance for Project W-420, Ventilation Stack Monitoring Systems Upgrades. The purpose of this assessment is to give an overview of the project. This document will not be updated and any dates contained in this document are estimates and may change. The project work scope includes upgrades to ventilation stacks and generic effluent monitoring systems (GEMS) at the 244-A Double Contained Receiver Tank (DCRT), the 244-BX DCRT, the 244-CR Vault, tanks 241-C-105 and 241-C-106, the 244-S DCRT, and the 244-TX DCRT. A detailed description of system dates, functions, interfaces, potential Y2K problems, and date resolutions can not be described since the project is in the definitive design phase, This assessment will describe the methods, protocols, and practices to ensure that equipment and systems do not have Y2K problems

  16. Effects of Reviewing Annotations and Homework Solutions on Math Learning Achievement

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hwang, Wu-Yuin; Chen, Nian-Shing; Shadiev, Rustam; Li, Jin-Sing

    2011-01-01

    Previous studies have demonstrated that making annotations can be a meaningful and useful learning method that promote metacognition and enhance learning achievement. A web-based annotation system, Virtual Pen (VPEN), which provides for the creation and review of annotations and homework solutions, has been developed to foster learning process…

  17. Needs assessment in health research projects: a new approach to project management in iran.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Peykari, Niloofar; Owlia, Parviz; Malekafzali, Hossein; Ghanei, Mostafa; Babamahmoodi, Abdolreza; Djalalinia, Shirin

    2013-01-01

    The science and technology health plan has defined the outline of health research to the national vision of Iran by 2025. The aim of this study was to focus on the process of needs assessment of health research projects also health research priority setting in Iran. THE PROJECT MANAGEMENT LIFE CYCLE HAS FOUR PHASES: Initiation, Planning, Execution and Closure. Based on abovementioned points we conducted the study. Focusing on the needs assessment led to systematic implementation of needs assessment of health project in all of the medical sciences universities. Parallel with this achieved strategies health research priority setting was followed through specific process from empowerment to implementation. We should adopt with more systematic progressive methods of health project managements for both our national convenience as well as our international health research programs.

  18. Assessing corporate project impacts in changeable contexts: A human rights perspective

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Salcito, Kendyl, E-mail: kendyl.salcito@unibas.ch [Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, P.O. Box, CH-4002 Basel (Switzerland); University of Basel, P.O. Box, CH-4003 Basel (Switzerland); NomoGaia, 1900 Wazee Street, Suite 303, Denver, CO 80202 (United States); NewFields, LLC, Denver, CO 80202 (United States); Singer, Burton H., E-mail: bhsinger@epi.ufl.edu [Emerging Pathogens Institute, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32610 (United States); Krieger, Gary R., E-mail: gkrieger@newfields.com [NewFields, LLC, Denver, CO 80202 (United States); Weiss, Mitchell G., E-mail: mitchell-g.weiss@unibas.ch [Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, P.O. Box, CH-4002 Basel (Switzerland); University of Basel, P.O. Box, CH-4003 Basel (Switzerland); Wielga, Mark, E-mail: wielga@nomogaia.org [NomoGaia, 1900 Wazee Street, Suite 303, Denver, CO 80202 (United States); NewFields, LLC, Denver, CO 80202 (United States); Utzinger, Jürg, E-mail: juerg.utzinger@unibas.ch [Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, P.O. Box, CH-4002 Basel (Switzerland); University of Basel, P.O. Box, CH-4003 Basel (Switzerland)

    2014-07-01

    Project-level impact assessment was originally conceived as a snapshot taken in advance of project implementation, contrasting current conditions with a likely future scenario involving a variety of predicted impacts. Current best practice guidance has encouraged a shift towards longitudinal assessments from the pre-project stage through the implementation and operating phases. Experience and study show, however, that assessment of infrastructure-intensive projects rarely endures past the project's construction phase. Negative consequences for environmental, social and health outcomes have been documented. Such consequences clarify the pressing need for longitudinal assessment in each of these domains, with human rights impact assessment (HRIA) as an umbrella over, and critical augmentation of, environmental, social and health assessments. Project impacts on human rights are more closely linked to political, economic and other factors beyond immediate effects of a company's policy and action throughout the project lifecycle. Delineating these processes requires an adequate framework, with strategies for collecting longitudinal data, protocols that provide core information for impact assessment and guidance for adaptive mitigation strategies as project-related effects change over time. This article presents general principles for the design and implementation of sustained, longitudinal HRIA, based on experience assessing and responding to human rights impact in a uranium mining project in Malawi. The case study demonstrates the value of longitudinal assessment both for limiting corporate risk and improving human welfare. - Graphical abstract: Assessing changes in human rights condition as affected by both project and context, over time. - Highlights: • Corporate capital projects affect human rights in myriad ways. • Ongoing, longitudinal impact assessment techniques are needed. • We present an approach for conducting longitudinal human rights impact

  19. Assessing corporate project impacts in changeable contexts: A human rights perspective

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Salcito, Kendyl; Singer, Burton H.; Krieger, Gary R.; Weiss, Mitchell G.; Wielga, Mark; Utzinger, Jürg

    2014-01-01

    Project-level impact assessment was originally conceived as a snapshot taken in advance of project implementation, contrasting current conditions with a likely future scenario involving a variety of predicted impacts. Current best practice guidance has encouraged a shift towards longitudinal assessments from the pre-project stage through the implementation and operating phases. Experience and study show, however, that assessment of infrastructure-intensive projects rarely endures past the project's construction phase. Negative consequences for environmental, social and health outcomes have been documented. Such consequences clarify the pressing need for longitudinal assessment in each of these domains, with human rights impact assessment (HRIA) as an umbrella over, and critical augmentation of, environmental, social and health assessments. Project impacts on human rights are more closely linked to political, economic and other factors beyond immediate effects of a company's policy and action throughout the project lifecycle. Delineating these processes requires an adequate framework, with strategies for collecting longitudinal data, protocols that provide core information for impact assessment and guidance for adaptive mitigation strategies as project-related effects change over time. This article presents general principles for the design and implementation of sustained, longitudinal HRIA, based on experience assessing and responding to human rights impact in a uranium mining project in Malawi. The case study demonstrates the value of longitudinal assessment both for limiting corporate risk and improving human welfare. - Graphical abstract: Assessing changes in human rights condition as affected by both project and context, over time. - Highlights: • Corporate capital projects affect human rights in myriad ways. • Ongoing, longitudinal impact assessment techniques are needed. • We present an approach for conducting longitudinal human rights impact assessment

  20. LocusTrack: Integrated visualization of GWAS results and genomic annotation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cuellar-Partida, Gabriel; Renteria, Miguel E; MacGregor, Stuart

    2015-01-01

    Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are an important tool for the mapping of complex traits and diseases. Visual inspection of genomic annotations may be used to generate insights into the biological mechanisms underlying GWAS-identified loci. We developed LocusTrack, a web-based application that annotates and creates plots of regional GWAS results and incorporates user-specified tracks that display annotations such as linkage disequilibrium (LD), phylogenetic conservation, chromatin state, and other genomic and regulatory elements. Currently, LocusTrack can integrate annotation tracks from the UCSC genome-browser as well as from any tracks provided by the user. LocusTrack is an easy-to-use application and can be accessed at the following URL: http://gump.qimr.edu.au/general/gabrieC/LocusTrack/. Users can upload and manage GWAS results and select from and/or provide annotation tracks using simple and intuitive menus. LocusTrack scripts and associated data can be downloaded from the website and run locally.

  1. "Annotated Lectures": Student-Instructor Interaction in Large-Scale Global Education

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Roger Diehl

    2009-10-01

    Full Text Available We describe an "Annotated Lectures" system, which will be used in a global virtual teaching and student collaboration event on embodied intelligence presented by the University of Zurich. The lectures will be broadcasted via video-conference to lecture halls of different universities around the globe. Among other collaboration features, an "Annotated Lectures" system will be implemented in a 3D collaborative virtual environment and used by the participating students to make annotations to the video-recorded lectures, which will be sent to and answered by their supervisors, and forwarded to the lecturers in an aggregated way. The "Annotated Lectures" system aims to overcome the issues of limited studentinstructor interaction in large-scale education, and to foster an intercultural and multidisciplinary discourse among students who review the lectures in a group. After presenting the concept of the "Annotated Lectures" system, we discuss a prototype version including a description of the technical components and its expected benefit for large-scale global education.

  2. BioCause: Annotating and analysing causality in the biomedical domain.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mihăilă, Claudiu; Ohta, Tomoko; Pyysalo, Sampo; Ananiadou, Sophia

    2013-01-16

    Biomedical corpora annotated with event-level information represent an important resource for domain-specific information extraction (IE) systems. However, bio-event annotation alone cannot cater for all the needs of biologists. Unlike work on relation and event extraction, most of which focusses on specific events and named entities, we aim to build a comprehensive resource, covering all statements of causal association present in discourse. Causality lies at the heart of biomedical knowledge, such as diagnosis, pathology or systems biology, and, thus, automatic causality recognition can greatly reduce the human workload by suggesting possible causal connections and aiding in the curation of pathway models. A biomedical text corpus annotated with such relations is, hence, crucial for developing and evaluating biomedical text mining. We have defined an annotation scheme for enriching biomedical domain corpora with causality relations. This schema has subsequently been used to annotate 851 causal relations to form BioCause, a collection of 19 open-access full-text biomedical journal articles belonging to the subdomain of infectious diseases. These documents have been pre-annotated with named entity and event information in the context of previous shared tasks. We report an inter-annotator agreement rate of over 60% for triggers and of over 80% for arguments using an exact match constraint. These increase significantly using a relaxed match setting. Moreover, we analyse and describe the causality relations in BioCause from various points of view. This information can then be leveraged for the training of automatic causality detection systems. Augmenting named entity and event annotations with information about causal discourse relations could benefit the development of more sophisticated IE systems. These will further influence the development of multiple tasks, such as enabling textual inference to detect entailments, discovering new facts and providing new

  3. Automatic Function Annotations for Hoare Logic

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Daniel Matichuk

    2012-11-01

    Full Text Available In systems verification we are often concerned with multiple, inter-dependent properties that a program must satisfy. To prove that a program satisfies a given property, the correctness of intermediate states of the program must be characterized. However, this intermediate reasoning is not always phrased such that it can be easily re-used in the proofs of subsequent properties. We introduce a function annotation logic that extends Hoare logic in two important ways: (1 when proving that a function satisfies a Hoare triple, intermediate reasoning is automatically stored as function annotations, and (2 these function annotations can be exploited in future Hoare logic proofs. This reduces duplication of reasoning between the proofs of different properties, whilst serving as a drop-in replacement for traditional Hoare logic to avoid the costly process of proof refactoring. We explain how this was implemented in Isabelle/HOL and applied to an experimental branch of the seL4 microkernel to significantly reduce the size and complexity of existing proofs.

  4. Automatically Annotated Mapping for Indoor Mobile Robot Applications

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Özkil, Ali Gürcan; Howard, Thomas J.

    2012-01-01

    This paper presents a new and practical method for mapping and annotating indoor environments for mobile robot use. The method makes use of 2D occupancy grid maps for metric representation, and topology maps to indicate the connectivity of the ‘places-of-interests’ in the environment. Novel use...... localization and mapping in topology space, and fuses camera and robot pose estimations to build an automatically annotated global topo-metric map. It is developed as a framework for a hospital service robot and tested in a real hospital. Experiments show that the method is capable of producing globally...... consistent, automatically annotated hybrid metric-topological maps that is needed by mobile service robots....

  5. tagtog: interactive and text-mining-assisted annotation of gene mentions in PLOS full-text articles.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cejuela, Juan Miguel; McQuilton, Peter; Ponting, Laura; Marygold, Steven J; Stefancsik, Raymund; Millburn, Gillian H; Rost, Burkhard

    2014-01-01

    The breadth and depth of biomedical literature are increasing year upon year. To keep abreast of these increases, FlyBase, a database for Drosophila genomic and genetic information, is constantly exploring new ways to mine the published literature to increase the efficiency and accuracy of manual curation and to automate some aspects, such as triaging and entity extraction. Toward this end, we present the 'tagtog' system, a web-based annotation framework that can be used to mark up biological entities (such as genes) and concepts (such as Gene Ontology terms) in full-text articles. tagtog leverages manual user annotation in combination with automatic machine-learned annotation to provide accurate identification of gene symbols and gene names. As part of the BioCreative IV Interactive Annotation Task, FlyBase has used tagtog to identify and extract mentions of Drosophila melanogaster gene symbols and names in full-text biomedical articles from the PLOS stable of journals. We show here the results of three experiments with different sized corpora and assess gene recognition performance and curation speed. We conclude that tagtog-named entity recognition improves with a larger corpus and that tagtog-assisted curation is quicker than manual curation. DATABASE URL: www.tagtog.net, www.flybase.org.

  6. HET/JUPITER project assessment report

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Baxter, B.J.; Harrington, F.E.; Kaiser, G.G.; Wolf, J.

    1979-05-01

    This report is an assessment of the United States' Hot Engineering Test (HET) and the Federal Republic of Germany's Juelich Pilot Plant Thorium Element Reprocessing (JUPITER) Projects. The assessment was conducted with a view to developing mutually supportive roles in the achievement of hot engineering test objectives. Conclusions of the assessment are positive and identify several technical areas with potential for US/FRG cooperation. Recommendations presented in this report support a cost-effective US/FRG program to jointly develop high temperature gas-cooled reactor fuel recycle technology. (orig.) [de

  7. Students' annotated drawings of Sun, Moon and Earth mediating teachers' professional development

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Nielsen, Birgitte Lund

    A case study of a teacher examining her 4th graders’ conceptual understanding of factors causing day and night, seasons, and the phases of the Moon is presented. The teaching example and the data-collection are sourced from the Danish continuous professional development (CPD) project QUEST......-making model. The pre-teaching annotated drawings reveal several alternative conceptions, but based on the post-teaching drawings the teaching must be seen as rather efficient in most areas concerning challenging students’ alternative conceptions; however not in relation to the phases of the Moon. The teacher...

  8. An annotated corpus with nanomedicine and pharmacokinetic parameters

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lewinski NA

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available Nastassja A Lewinski,1 Ivan Jimenez,1 Bridget T McInnes2 1Department of Chemical and Life Science Engineering, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, 2Department of Computer Science, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA Abstract: A vast amount of data on nanomedicines is being generated and published, and natural language processing (NLP approaches can automate the extraction of unstructured text-based data. Annotated corpora are a key resource for NLP and information extraction methods which employ machine learning. Although corpora are available for pharmaceuticals, resources for nanomedicines and nanotechnology are still limited. To foster nanotechnology text mining (NanoNLP efforts, we have constructed a corpus of annotated drug product inserts taken from the US Food and Drug Administration’s Drugs@FDA online database. In this work, we present the development of the Engineered Nanomedicine Database corpus to support the evaluation of nanomedicine entity extraction. The data were manually annotated for 21 entity mentions consisting of nanomedicine physicochemical characterization, exposure, and biologic response information of 41 Food and Drug Administration-approved nanomedicines. We evaluate the reliability of the manual annotations and demonstrate the use of the corpus by evaluating two state-of-the-art named entity extraction systems, OpenNLP and Stanford NER. The annotated corpus is available open source and, based on these results, guidelines and suggestions for future development of additional nanomedicine corpora are provided. Keywords: nanotechnology, informatics, natural language processing, text mining, corpora

  9. Annotated Tsunami bibliography: 1962-1976

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Pararas-Carayannis, G.; Dong, B.; Farmer, R.

    1982-08-01

    This compilation contains annotated citations to nearly 3000 tsunami-related publications from 1962 to 1976 in English and several other languages. The foreign-language citations have English titles and abstracts

  10. Comprehensive assessment of the status scientific and technical projects using Technology Project Readiness Level

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    A. N. Petrov

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available The balanced methodology for assessing the Technology Project Readiness Level for commercialization (TPRL is proposed. TPRL allows to determine the dynamics and balance of development projects that use the standardized approaches used in assessing the readiness of the technology. Validation of the methodology undertaken for the projects of Federal target programs “Research and development on priority directions of development of scientific-technological complex of Russia for 2007–2013” and “Research and development on priority directions of development of scientific-technological complex of Russia for 2014–2020”. The obtained results showed the possibility of application of the methodology for the evaluation of projects, improving efficiency of expert activity in the evaluation of projects, monitoring the status of individual project and group of projects (portfolio. The application of the methodology allowed us to improve the management of individual project and portfolio of projects.Methodology TPRL will allow the implementers, industry partners, investors, and innovative industrial companies to improve the efficiency of its activities.

  11. NNP-LANL Utilities - Condition Assessment and Project Approach

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Stewart, Grant Lorenz [Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

    2017-11-21

    This report is a presentation on LANL Utilities & Transportation Asset Management; Utility Assets Overview; Condition Assessment; Utilities Project Nominations & Ranking; and Utilities Project Execution.

  12. Annotation-Based Whole Genomic Prediction and Selection

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Kadarmideen, Haja; Do, Duy Ngoc; Janss, Luc

    Genomic selection is widely used in both animal and plant species, however, it is performed with no input from known genomic or biological role of genetic variants and therefore is a black box approach in a genomic era. This study investigated the role of different genomic regions and detected QTLs...... in their contribution to estimated genomic variances and in prediction of genomic breeding values by applying SNP annotation approaches to feed efficiency. Ensembl Variant Predictor (EVP) and Pig QTL database were used as the source of genomic annotation for 60K chip. Genomic prediction was performed using the Bayes...... classes. Predictive accuracy was 0.531, 0.532, 0.302, and 0.344 for DFI, RFI, ADG and BF, respectively. The contribution per SNP to total genomic variance was similar among annotated classes across different traits. Predictive performance of SNP classes did not significantly differ from randomized SNP...

  13. Towards e-Government project assessment: European approach

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pavel Mates

    2013-06-01

    Full Text Available The objective of the paper is to analyse current approaches to the assessment of e-Government projects as the specifi c public projects and to suggest how to improve these approaches in order to eliminate their shortcomings. The nonnormative theoretical methods are used to analyse empirical results of previous researches; particularly the deduction method is used to prove that current approaches to the evaluation of e-Government projects have some inequalities, the analogy and comparison methods are used to create general typology of e-Government projects and the induction method is used to seek examples of the indicators and metrics. The results are based on analysis of extensive amount of e-Government projects, which have been realized in different European countries in the past twenty years. The basic result of the research is creation of the ten most common types of e-Government projects typology. The fundamental conclusion obtained from the results of this research is that this typology can be used as the core of new E-Government General Assessment Framework, which eliminates problems of previous approaches, allows adjusting metrics and indicators to each type of projects, keeps comparability of results and thus making possible the use of benchmarking methods.

  14. Creating New Medical Ontologies for Image Annotation A Case Study

    CERN Document Server

    Stanescu, Liana; Brezovan, Marius; Mihai, Cristian Gabriel

    2012-01-01

    Creating New Medical Ontologies for Image Annotation focuses on the problem of the medical images automatic annotation process, which is solved in an original manner by the authors. All the steps of this process are described in detail with algorithms, experiments and results. The original algorithms proposed by authors are compared with other efficient similar algorithms. In addition, the authors treat the problem of creating ontologies in an automatic way, starting from Medical Subject Headings (MESH). They have presented some efficient and relevant annotation models and also the basics of the annotation model used by the proposed system: Cross Media Relevance Models. Based on a text query the system will retrieve the images that contain objects described by the keywords.

  15. Self-evaluation and peer-feedback of medical students' communication skills using a web-based video annotation system. Exploring content and specificity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hulsman, Robert L; van der Vloodt, Jane

    2015-03-01

    Self-evaluation and peer-feedback are important strategies within the reflective practice paradigm for the development and maintenance of professional competencies like medical communication. Characteristics of the self-evaluation and peer-feedback annotations of medical students' video recorded communication skills were analyzed. Twenty-five year 4 medical students recorded history-taking consultations with a simulated patient, uploaded the video to a web-based platform, marked and annotated positive and negative events. Peers reviewed the video and self-evaluations and provided feedback. Analyzed were the number of marked positive and negative annotations and the amount of text entered. Topics and specificity of the annotations were coded and analyzed qualitatively. Students annotated on average more negative than positive events. Additional peer-feedback was more often positive. Topics most often related to structuring the consultation. Students were most critical about their biomedical topics. Negative annotations were more specific than positive annotations. Self-evaluations were more specific than peer-feedback and both show a significant correlation. Four response patterns were detected that negatively bias specificity assessment ratings. Teaching students to be more specific in their self-evaluations may be effective for receiving more specific peer-feedback. Videofragmentrating is a convenient tool to implement reflective practice activities like self-evaluation and peer-feedback to the classroom in the teaching of clinical skills. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  16. Elucidating high-dimensional cancer hallmark annotation via enriched ontology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yan, Shankai; Wong, Ka-Chun

    2017-09-01

    Cancer hallmark annotation is a promising technique that could discover novel knowledge about cancer from the biomedical literature. The automated annotation of cancer hallmarks could reveal relevant cancer transformation processes in the literature or extract the articles that correspond to the cancer hallmark of interest. It acts as a complementary approach that can retrieve knowledge from massive text information, advancing numerous focused studies in cancer research. Nonetheless, the high-dimensional nature of cancer hallmark annotation imposes a unique challenge. To address the curse of dimensionality, we compared multiple cancer hallmark annotation methods on 1580 PubMed abstracts. Based on the insights, a novel approach, UDT-RF, which makes use of ontological features is proposed. It expands the feature space via the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) ontology graph and utilizes novel feature selections for elucidating the high-dimensional cancer hallmark annotation space. To demonstrate its effectiveness, state-of-the-art methods are compared and evaluated by a multitude of performance metrics, revealing the full performance spectrum on the full set of cancer hallmarks. Several case studies are conducted, demonstrating how the proposed approach could reveal novel insights into cancers. https://github.com/cskyan/chmannot. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  17. Rfam: annotating families of non-coding RNA sequences.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Daub, Jennifer; Eberhardt, Ruth Y; Tate, John G; Burge, Sarah W

    2015-01-01

    The primary task of the Rfam database is to collate experimentally validated noncoding RNA (ncRNA) sequences from the published literature and facilitate the prediction and annotation of new homologues in novel nucleotide sequences. We group homologous ncRNA sequences into "families" and related families are further grouped into "clans." We collate and manually curate data cross-references for these families from other databases and external resources. Our Web site offers researchers a simple interface to Rfam and provides tools with which to annotate their own sequences using our covariance models (CMs), through our tools for searching, browsing, and downloading information on Rfam families. In this chapter, we will work through examples of annotating a query sequence, collating family information, and searching for data.

  18. A computational genomics pipeline for prokaryotic sequencing projects.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kislyuk, Andrey O; Katz, Lee S; Agrawal, Sonia; Hagen, Matthew S; Conley, Andrew B; Jayaraman, Pushkala; Nelakuditi, Viswateja; Humphrey, Jay C; Sammons, Scott A; Govil, Dhwani; Mair, Raydel D; Tatti, Kathleen M; Tondella, Maria L; Harcourt, Brian H; Mayer, Leonard W; Jordan, I King

    2010-08-01

    New sequencing technologies have accelerated research on prokaryotic genomes and have made genome sequencing operations outside major genome sequencing centers routine. However, no off-the-shelf solution exists for the combined assembly, gene prediction, genome annotation and data presentation necessary to interpret sequencing data. The resulting requirement to invest significant resources into custom informatics support for genome sequencing projects remains a major impediment to the accessibility of high-throughput sequence data. We present a self-contained, automated high-throughput open source genome sequencing and computational genomics pipeline suitable for prokaryotic sequencing projects. The pipeline has been used at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the analysis of Neisseria meningitidis and Bordetella bronchiseptica genomes. The pipeline is capable of enhanced or manually assisted reference-based assembly using multiple assemblers and modes; gene predictor combining; and functional annotation of genes and gene products. Because every component of the pipeline is executed on a local machine with no need to access resources over the Internet, the pipeline is suitable for projects of a sensitive nature. Annotation of virulence-related features makes the pipeline particularly useful for projects working with pathogenic prokaryotes. The pipeline is licensed under the open-source GNU General Public License and available at the Georgia Tech Neisseria Base (http://nbase.biology.gatech.edu/). The pipeline is implemented with a combination of Perl, Bourne Shell and MySQL and is compatible with Linux and other Unix systems.

  19. Radiological impact assessment within the IAEA Arctic Assessment Project (IASAP)

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Scott, E.M.; Gurbutt, P.; Harmes, I.

    1998-01-01

    As part of the International Arctic Seas Assessment Project (IASAP) of IAEA, a working group was created to model the dispersal and transfer of radionuclides released from radioactive waste disposed of in the Kara Sea and bays of Novaya Zemlya and to assess the radiological impact. Existing models...

  20. Intra-species sequence comparisons for annotating genomes

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Boffelli, Dario; Weer, Claire V.; Weng, Li; Lewis, Keith D.; Shoukry, Malak I.; Pachter, Lior; Keys, David N.; Rubin, Edward M.

    2004-07-15

    Analysis of sequence variation among members of a single species offers a potential approach to identify functional DNA elements responsible for biological features unique to that species. Due to its high rate of allelic polymorphism and ease of genetic manipulability, we chose the sea squirt, Ciona intestinalis, to explore intra-species sequence comparisons for genome annotation. A large number of C. intestinalis specimens were collected from four continents and a set of genomic intervals amplified, resequenced and analyzed to determine the mutation rates at each nucleotide in the sequence. We found that regions with low mutation rates efficiently demarcated functionally constrained sequences: these include a set of noncoding elements, which we showed in C intestinalis transgenic assays to act as tissue-specific enhancers, as well as the location of coding sequences. This illustrates that comparisons of multiple members of a species can be used for genome annotation, suggesting a path for the annotation of the sequenced genomes of organisms occupying uncharacterized phylogenetic branches of the animal kingdom and raises the possibility that the resequencing of a large number of Homo sapiens individuals might be used to annotate the human genome and identify sequences defining traits unique to our species. The sequence data from this study has been submitted to GenBank under accession nos. AY667278-AY667407.

  1. Experimental-confirmation and functional-annotation of predicted proteins in the chicken genome

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    McCarthy Fiona M

    2007-11-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background The chicken genome was sequenced because of its phylogenetic position as a non-mammalian vertebrate, its use as a biomedical model especially to study embryology and development, its role as a source of human disease organisms and its importance as the major source of animal derived food protein. However, genomic sequence data is, in itself, of limited value; generally it is not equivalent to understanding biological function. The benefit of having a genome sequence is that it provides a basis for functional genomics. However, the sequence data currently available is poorly structurally and functionally annotated and many genes do not have standard nomenclature assigned. Results We analysed eight chicken tissues and improved the chicken genome structural annotation by providing experimental support for the in vivo expression of 7,809 computationally predicted proteins, including 30 chicken proteins that were only electronically predicted or hypothetical translations in human. To improve functional annotation (based on Gene Ontology, we mapped these identified proteins to their human and mouse orthologs and used this orthology to transfer Gene Ontology (GO functional annotations to the chicken proteins. The 8,213 orthology-based GO annotations that we produced represent an 8% increase in currently available chicken GO annotations. Orthologous chicken products were also assigned standardized nomenclature based on current chicken nomenclature guidelines. Conclusion We demonstrate the utility of high-throughput expression proteomics for rapid experimental structural annotation of a newly sequenced eukaryote genome. These experimentally-supported predicted proteins were further annotated by assigning the proteins with standardized nomenclature and functional annotation. This method is widely applicable to a diverse range of species. Moreover, information from one genome can be used to improve the annotation of other genomes and

  2. Annotating risk factors for heart disease in clinical narratives for diabetic patients.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stubbs, Amber; Uzuner, Özlem

    2015-12-01

    The 2014 i2b2/UTHealth natural language processing shared task featured a track focused on identifying risk factors for heart disease (specifically, Cardiac Artery Disease) in clinical narratives. For this track, we used a "light" annotation paradigm to annotate a set of 1304 longitudinal medical records describing 296 patients for risk factors and the times they were present. We designed the annotation task for this track with the goal of balancing annotation load and time with quality, so as to generate a gold standard corpus that can benefit a clinically-relevant task. We applied light annotation procedures and determined the gold standard using majority voting. On average, the agreement of annotators with the gold standard was above 0.95, indicating high reliability. The resulting document-level annotations generated for each record in each longitudinal EMR in this corpus provide information that can support studies of progression of heart disease risk factors in the included patients over time. These annotations were used in the Risk Factor track of the 2014 i2b2/UTHealth shared task. Participating systems achieved a mean micro-averaged F1 measure of 0.815 and a maximum F1 measure of 0.928 for identifying these risk factors in patient records. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  3. Annotating Emotions in Meetings

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Reidsma, Dennis; Heylen, Dirk K.J.; Ordelman, Roeland J.F.

    We present the results of two trials testing procedures for the annotation of emotion and mental state of the AMI corpus. The first procedure is an adaptation of the FeelTrace method, focusing on a continuous labelling of emotion dimensions. The second method is centered around more discrete

  4. Project W-211 initial tank retrieval systems year 2000 compliance assessment project plan

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    BUSSELL, J.H.

    1999-01-01

    This document contains a limited assessment of Year 2000 compliance for Project W-211. Additional information is provided as a road map to project documents and other references that may be used to verify Year 2000 compliance

  5. Consumer energy research: an annotated bibliography. Vol. 3

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Anderson, D.C.; McDougall, G.H.G.

    1983-04-01

    This annotated bibliography attempts to provide a comprehensive package of existing information in consumer related energy research. A concentrated effort was made to collect unpublished material as well as material from journals and other sources, including governments, utilities research institutes and private firms. A deliberate effort was made to include agencies outside North America. For the most part the bibliography is limited to annotations of empiracal studies. However, it includes a number of descriptive reports which appear to make a significant contribution to understanding consumers and energy use. The format of the annotations displays the author, date of publication, title and source of the study. Annotations of empirical studies are divided into four parts: objectives, methods, variables and findings/implications. Care was taken to provide a reasonable amount of detail in the annotations to enable the reader to understand the methodology, the results and the degree to which the implications fo the study can be generalized to other situations. Studies are arranged alphabetically by author. The content of the studies reviewed is classified in a series of tables which are intended to provide a summary of sources, types and foci of the various studies. These tables are intended to aid researchers interested in specific topics to locate those studies most relevant to their work. The studies are categorized using a number of different classification criteria, for example, methodology used, type of energy form, type of policy initiative, and type of consumer activity. A general overview of the studies is also presented. 17 tabs.

  6. 105-B Reactor museum feasibility assessment (Phase 2) project

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Heckel, R. P.

    2000-01-01

    This 105-B Reactor Museum feasibility assessment project report documents project activities that have been performed, including a review and assessment of previously existing information, a walk-through of the facility, an assessment of potential hazards, and selection of mitigative measures deemed to be appropriate to allow unescorted access by members of the public to a specified primary tour route

  7. m6ASNP: a tool for annotating genetic variants by m6A function.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jiang, Shuai; Xie, Yubin; He, Zhihao; Zhang, Ya; Zhao, Yuli; Chen, Li; Zheng, Yueyuan; Miao, Yanyan; Zuo, Zhixiang; Ren, Jian

    2018-04-02

    Large-scale genome sequencing projects have identified many genetic variants for diverse diseases. A major goal of these projects is to characterize these genetic variants to provide insight into their function and roles in diseases. N6-methyladenosine (m6A) is one of the most abundant RNA modifications in eukaryotes. Recent studies have revealed that aberrant m6A modifications are involved in many diseases. In this study, we present a user-friendly web server called "m6ASNP" that is dedicated to the identification of genetic variants targeting m6A modification sites. A random forest model was implemented in m6ASNP to predict whether the methylation status of a m6A site is altered by the variants surrounding the site. In m6ASNP, genetic variants in a standard VCF format are accepted as the input data, and the output includes an interactive table containing the genetic variants annotated by m6A function. In addition, statistical diagrams and a genome browser are provided to visualize the characteristics and annotate the genetic variants. We believe that m6ASNP is a highly convenient tool that can be used to boost further functional studies investigating genetic variants. The web server "m6ASNP" is implemented in JAVA and PHP and is freely available at http://m6asnp.renlab.org.

  8. Ontorat: automatic generation of new ontology terms, annotations, and axioms based on ontology design patterns.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xiang, Zuoshuang; Zheng, Jie; Lin, Yu; He, Yongqun

    2015-01-01

    It is time-consuming to build an ontology with many terms and axioms. Thus it is desired to automate the process of ontology development. Ontology Design Patterns (ODPs) provide a reusable solution to solve a recurrent modeling problem in the context of ontology engineering. Because ontology terms often follow specific ODPs, the Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) developers proposed a Quick Term Templates (QTTs) process targeted at generating new ontology classes following the same pattern, using term templates in a spreadsheet format. Inspired by the ODPs and QTTs, the Ontorat web application is developed to automatically generate new ontology terms, annotations of terms, and logical axioms based on a specific ODP(s). The inputs of an Ontorat execution include axiom expression settings, an input data file, ID generation settings, and a target ontology (optional). The axiom expression settings can be saved as a predesigned Ontorat setting format text file for reuse. The input data file is generated based on a template file created by a specific ODP (text or Excel format). Ontorat is an efficient tool for ontology expansion. Different use cases are described. For example, Ontorat was applied to automatically generate over 1,000 Japan RIKEN cell line cell terms with both logical axioms and rich annotation axioms in the Cell Line Ontology (CLO). Approximately 800 licensed animal vaccines were represented and annotated in the Vaccine Ontology (VO) by Ontorat. The OBI team used Ontorat to add assay and device terms required by ENCODE project. Ontorat was also used to add missing annotations to all existing Biobank specific terms in the Biobank Ontology. A collection of ODPs and templates with examples are provided on the Ontorat website and can be reused to facilitate ontology development. With ever increasing ontology development and applications, Ontorat provides a timely platform for generating and annotating a large number of ontology terms by following

  9. Rapid Response Risk Assessment in New Project Development

    Science.gov (United States)

    Graber, Robert R.

    2010-01-01

    A capability for rapidly performing quantitative risk assessments has been developed by JSC Safety and Mission Assurance for use on project design trade studies early in the project life cycle, i.e., concept development through preliminary design phases. A risk assessment tool set has been developed consisting of interactive and integrated software modules that allow a user/project designer to assess the impact of alternative design or programmatic options on the probability of mission success or other risk metrics. The risk and design trade space includes interactive options for selecting parameters and/or metrics for numerous design characteristics including component reliability characteristics, functional redundancy levels, item or system technology readiness levels, and mission event characteristics. This capability is intended for use on any project or system development with a defined mission, and an example project will used for demonstration and descriptive purposes, e.g., landing a robot on the moon. The effects of various alternative design considerations and their impact of these decisions on mission success (or failure) can be measured in real time on a personal computer. This capability provides a high degree of efficiency for quickly providing information in NASA s evolving risk-based decision environment

  10. Fiscal Feasibility Assessment Applied to Transport Infrastructure Projects

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Guilherme de Aragão, J.J.; Santos Fontes Pereira, L. dos; Yamashita, Y.; Brandão, R.

    2016-07-01

    The demand for transport infrastructure investment is a latent issue for several countries, mainly for developing countries. However, investments in major logistics projects should be carefully evaluated, in order that their deployment induces development without endangering fiscal sustainability by excessive public indebtedness. Fiscal accounting practices used currently in the feasibility studies of transport infrastructures in Brazil are very limited, as they do not consider indirect and induced effects of the infrastructure investment in the fiscal evaluation. In addition, the corresponding influence area has not an established delimitation method. The aim of the present paper is to develop a model for calculating economic and fiscal impacts of transport infrastructure investment projects that includes the direct, indirect and induced effects within a reference area do be determined. First, different project assessment guides in Brazil and abroad are examined with a special focus on the assessment of economic and fiscal impacts of the projects. Based on the assessment experience and on the definition of the fiscal balance of an infrastructure project, the next step sets up a framework for the calculation of the impacts, using more simplified data. (Author)

  11. Inter- and intra-observer variability of time-lapse annotations

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Sundvall, Linda; Ingerslev, Hans Jakob; Breth Knudsen, Ulla

    2013-01-01

    . This provides the basis for further investigation of embryo assessment and selection by time-lapse imaging in prospective trials. Study funding/competing interest(s): Research at the Fertility Clinic was funded by an unrestricted grant from Ferring and MSD. The authors have no competing interests to declare.......Study question: How consistent is the time-lapse annotation of dynamic and static morphologic parameters of embryo development, within and between observers? Summary answer: The assessment of dynamic parameters is characterized by almost perfect agreement within and between observers. What is known...... already: The commonly employed method used to assess embryos in IVF treatments is based on static evaluation of morphology in a microscope, but this is limited by substantial intra- and inter-observer variation. Time-lapse imaging has been proposed as a method to refine embryo selection by adding new...

  12. Image annotation based on positive-negative instances learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Kai; Hu, Jiwei; Liu, Quan; Lou, Ping

    2017-07-01

    Automatic image annotation is now a tough task in computer vision, the main sense of this tech is to deal with managing the massive image on the Internet and assisting intelligent retrieval. This paper designs a new image annotation model based on visual bag of words, using the low level features like color and texture information as well as mid-level feature as SIFT, and mixture the pic2pic, label2pic and label2label correlation to measure the correlation degree of labels and images. We aim to prune the specific features for each single label and formalize the annotation task as a learning process base on Positive-Negative Instances Learning. Experiments are performed using the Corel5K Dataset, and provide a quite promising result when comparing with other existing methods.

  13. An Annotated Dataset of 14 Meat Images

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Stegmann, Mikkel Bille

    2002-01-01

    This note describes a dataset consisting of 14 annotated images of meat. Points of correspondence are placed on each image. As such, the dataset can be readily used for building statistical models of shape. Further, format specifications and terms of use are given.......This note describes a dataset consisting of 14 annotated images of meat. Points of correspondence are placed on each image. As such, the dataset can be readily used for building statistical models of shape. Further, format specifications and terms of use are given....

  14. Basic environmental bookshelf: An annotated bibliography. Current issue paper No. 116

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Yeager, L.

    1995-11-01

    This bibliography is intended to provide objective basic information on science and the environment, and includes books and journal articles that should be understandable to the nonspecialist. The bibliographic entries are arranged alphabetically by author within broad categories such as acid precipitation, air quality, climate change, ecology and ecosystems, energy, environmental assessment, hazardous wastes, law, natural history, ozone depletion, parks and urban issues, public policy, toxic chemicals, and water resources. Most entries have brief annotations.

  15. The Minnesota Articulation Project and Its Proficiency-Based Assessments.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chalhoub-Deville, Micheline

    1997-01-01

    Reports on the Minnesota Articulation Project, providing an overview of the projects' three principal working groups: political action, curriculum, and assessment. The article then outlines the theoretical underpinnings of the proficiency-based assessment instruments developed in French, German, and Spanish and describes in detail the content and…

  16. EST-PAC a web package for EST annotation and protein sequence prediction

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Strahm Yvan

    2006-10-01

    Full Text Available Abstract With the decreasing cost of DNA sequencing technology and the vast diversity of biological resources, researchers increasingly face the basic challenge of annotating a larger number of expressed sequences tags (EST from a variety of species. This typically consists of a series of repetitive tasks, which should be automated and easy to use. The results of these annotation tasks need to be stored and organized in a consistent way. All these operations should be self-installing, platform independent, easy to customize and amenable to using distributed bioinformatics resources available on the Internet. In order to address these issues, we present EST-PAC a web oriented multi-platform software package for expressed sequences tag (EST annotation. EST-PAC provides a solution for the administration of EST and protein sequence annotations accessible through a web interface. Three aspects of EST annotation are automated: 1 searching local or remote biological databases for sequence similarities using Blast services, 2 predicting protein coding sequence from EST data and, 3 annotating predicted protein sequences with functional domain predictions. In practice, EST-PAC integrates the BLASTALL suite, EST-Scan2 and HMMER in a relational database system accessible through a simple web interface. EST-PAC also takes advantage of the relational database to allow consistent storage, powerful queries of results and, management of the annotation process. The system allows users to customize annotation strategies and provides an open-source data-management environment for research and education in bioinformatics.

  17. BOWiki: an ontology-based wiki for annotation of data and integration of knowledge in biology

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gregorio Sergio E

    2009-05-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Motivation Ontology development and the annotation of biological data using ontologies are time-consuming exercises that currently require input from expert curators. Open, collaborative platforms for biological data annotation enable the wider scientific community to become involved in developing and maintaining such resources. However, this openness raises concerns regarding the quality and correctness of the information added to these knowledge bases. The combination of a collaborative web-based platform with logic-based approaches and Semantic Web technology can be used to address some of these challenges and concerns. Results We have developed the BOWiki, a web-based system that includes a biological core ontology. The core ontology provides background knowledge about biological types and relations. Against this background, an automated reasoner assesses the consistency of new information added to the knowledge base. The system provides a platform for research communities to integrate information and annotate data collaboratively. Availability The BOWiki and supplementary material is available at http://www.bowiki.net/. The source code is available under the GNU GPL from http://onto.eva.mpg.de/trac/BoWiki.

  18. An efficient annotation and gene-expression derivation tool for Illumina Solexa datasets.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hosseini, Parsa; Tremblay, Arianne; Matthews, Benjamin F; Alkharouf, Nadim W

    2010-07-02

    The data produced by an Illumina flow cell with all eight lanes occupied, produces well over a terabyte worth of images with gigabytes of reads following sequence alignment. The ability to translate such reads into meaningful annotation is therefore of great concern and importance. Very easily, one can get flooded with such a great volume of textual, unannotated data irrespective of read quality or size. CASAVA, a optional analysis tool for Illumina sequencing experiments, enables the ability to understand INDEL detection, SNP information, and allele calling. To not only extract from such analysis, a measure of gene expression in the form of tag-counts, but furthermore to annotate such reads is therefore of significant value. We developed TASE (Tag counting and Analysis of Solexa Experiments), a rapid tag-counting and annotation software tool specifically designed for Illumina CASAVA sequencing datasets. Developed in Java and deployed using jTDS JDBC driver and a SQL Server backend, TASE provides an extremely fast means of calculating gene expression through tag-counts while annotating sequenced reads with the gene's presumed function, from any given CASAVA-build. Such a build is generated for both DNA and RNA sequencing. Analysis is broken into two distinct components: DNA sequence or read concatenation, followed by tag-counting and annotation. The end result produces output containing the homology-based functional annotation and respective gene expression measure signifying how many times sequenced reads were found within the genomic ranges of functional annotations. TASE is a powerful tool to facilitate the process of annotating a given Illumina Solexa sequencing dataset. Our results indicate that both homology-based annotation and tag-count analysis are achieved in very efficient times, providing researchers to delve deep in a given CASAVA-build and maximize information extraction from a sequencing dataset. TASE is specially designed to translate sequence data

  19. BEACON: automated tool for Bacterial GEnome Annotation ComparisON

    KAUST Repository

    Kalkatawi, Manal M.; Alam, Intikhab; Bajic, Vladimir B.

    2015-01-01

    We developed BEACON, a fast tool for an automated and a systematic comparison of different annotations of single genomes. The extended annotation assigns putative functions to many genes with unknown functions. BEACON is available under GNU General Public License version 3.0 and is accessible at: http://www.cbrc.kaust.edu.sa/BEACON/

  20. Importing statistical measures into Artemis enhances gene identification in the Leishmania genome project

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    McDonagh Paul D

    2003-06-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Seattle Biomedical Research Institute (SBRI as part of the Leishmania Genome Network (LGN is sequencing chromosomes of the trypanosomatid protozoan species Leishmania major. At SBRI, chromosomal sequence is annotated using a combination of trained and untrained non-consensus gene-prediction algorithms with ARTEMIS, an annotation platform with rich and user-friendly interfaces. Results Here we describe a methodology used to import results from three different protein-coding gene-prediction algorithms (GLIMMER, TESTCODE and GENESCAN into the ARTEMIS sequence viewer and annotation tool. Comparison of these methods, along with the CODONUSAGE algorithm built into ARTEMIS, shows the importance of combining methods to more accurately annotate the L. major genomic sequence. Conclusion An improvised and powerful tool for gene prediction has been developed by importing data from widely-used algorithms into an existing annotation platform. This approach is especially fruitful in the Leishmania genome project where there is large proportion of novel genes requiring manual annotation.

  1. Transport project evaluation: feasibility risk assessment and scenario forecasting

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Salling, Kim Bang; Leleur, Steen

    2017-01-01

    This paper presents a new approach to transport project assessment in terms of feasibility risk assessment and reference class forecasting. Conventionally, transport project assessment is based upon a Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) where evaluation criteria such as Benefit Cost Ratios (BCR...... on the preliminary construction cost estimates. Hereafter, a quantitative risk analysis is provided making use of Monte Carlo simulation. This approach facilitates random input parameters based upon reference class forecasting, hence, a parameter data fit has been performed in order to obtain validated probability...... Scenario Forecasting (RSF) frame. The RSF is anchored in the cost-benefit analysis; thus, it provides decision-makers with a quantitative mean of assessing the transport infrastructure project. First, the RSF method introduces uncertainties within the CBA by applying Optimism Bias uplifts...

  2. The 1000 bull genome project

    Science.gov (United States)

    To meet growing global demands for high value protein from milk and meat, rates of genetic gain in domestic cattle must be accelerated. At the same time, animal health and welfare must be considered. The 1000 bull genomes project supports these goals by providing annotated sequence variants and ge...

  3. The International Arctic Seas Assessment Project

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Linsley, G.S.; Sjoeblom, K.L.

    1994-01-01

    The International Arctic Seas Assessment Project (IASAP) was initiated in 1993 to address widespread concern over the possible health and environmental impacts associated with the radioactive waste dumped into the shallow waters of the Arctic Seas. This article discusses the project with these general topics: A brief history of dumping activities; the international control system; perspectives on arctic Seas dumping; the IASAP aims and implementation; the IASAP work plan and progress. 2 figs

  4. Automatic medical image annotation and keyword-based image retrieval using relevance feedback.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ko, Byoung Chul; Lee, JiHyeon; Nam, Jae-Yeal

    2012-08-01

    This paper presents novel multiple keywords annotation for medical images, keyword-based medical image retrieval, and relevance feedback method for image retrieval for enhancing image retrieval performance. For semantic keyword annotation, this study proposes a novel medical image classification method combining local wavelet-based center symmetric-local binary patterns with random forests. For keyword-based image retrieval, our retrieval system use the confidence score that is assigned to each annotated keyword by combining probabilities of random forests with predefined body relation graph. To overcome the limitation of keyword-based image retrieval, we combine our image retrieval system with relevance feedback mechanism based on visual feature and pattern classifier. Compared with other annotation and relevance feedback algorithms, the proposed method shows both improved annotation performance and accurate retrieval results.

  5. Annotated bibliography National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) documents for Sandia National Laboratories

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Harris, J.M.

    1995-04-01

    The following annotated bibliography lists documents prepared by the Department of Energy (DOE), and predecessor agencies, to meet the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for activities and facilities at Sandia National Laboratories sites. For each NEPA document summary information and a brief discussion of content is provided. This information may be used to reduce the amount of time or cost associated with NEPA compliance for future Sandia National Laboratories projects. This summary may be used to identify model documents, documents to use as sources of information, or documents from which to tier additional NEPA documents

  6. Annotated bibliography National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) documents for Sandia National Laboratories

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Harris, J.M.

    1995-04-01

    The following annotated bibliography lists documents prepared by the Department of Energy (DOE), and predecessor agencies, to meet the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for activities and facilities at Sandia National Laboratories sites. For each NEPA document summary information and a brief discussion of content is provided. This information may be used to reduce the amount of time or cost associated with NEPA compliance for future Sandia National Laboratories projects. This summary may be used to identify model documents, documents to use as sources of information, or documents from which to tier additional NEPA documents.

  7. Annotating the Function of the Human Genome with Gene Ontology and Disease Ontology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hu, Yang; Zhou, Wenyang; Ren, Jun; Dong, Lixiang; Wang, Yadong; Jin, Shuilin; Cheng, Liang

    2016-01-01

    Increasing evidences indicated that function annotation of human genome in molecular level and phenotype level is very important for systematic analysis of genes. In this study, we presented a framework named Gene2Function to annotate Gene Reference into Functions (GeneRIFs), in which each functional description of GeneRIFs could be annotated by a text mining tool Open Biomedical Annotator (OBA), and each Entrez gene could be mapped to Human Genome Organisation Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) gene symbol. After annotating all the records about human genes of GeneRIFs, 288,869 associations between 13,148 mRNAs and 7,182 terms, 9,496 associations between 948 microRNAs and 533 terms, and 901 associations between 139 long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) and 297 terms were obtained as a comprehensive annotation resource of human genome. High consistency of term frequency of individual gene (Pearson correlation = 0.6401, p = 2.2e - 16) and gene frequency of individual term (Pearson correlation = 0.1298, p = 3.686e - 14) in GeneRIFs and GOA shows our annotation resource is very reliable.

  8. IAEA Nuclear Security Assessment Methodologies (NUSAM) Project for Regulated Facilities

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Jang, Sung Soon

    2016-01-01

    Nuclear Security Assessment Methodologies (NUSAM) is a coordinate research project. The objectives of the NUSAM project is to establish a risk informed, performance-based methodological framework in a systematic, structured, comprehensive and appropriately transparent manner; to provide an environment for the sharing and transfer of knowledge and experience; and to provide guidance on, and practical examples of good practices in assessing the security of nuclear and other radioactive materials, as well as associated facilities and activities. The author worked as an IAEA scientific secretary of the NUAM project from 2013 to 2015. IAEA launched this project in 2013 and performed many activities: meetings, document development, table-top exercises and computer simulations. Now the project is in the final stage and will be concluded in the late 2016. The project will produce documents on NUSAM assessment methods and case study documents on NPP, Irradiator Facility and Transport. South Korea as a main contributor to this project will get benefits from the NUSAM. In 2014, South Korea introduced force-on-force exercises, which could be used as the assessment of physical protection system by the methods of NUSAM

  9. IAEA Nuclear Security Assessment Methodologies (NUSAM) Project for Regulated Facilities

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Jang, Sung Soon [Korea Nuclear Non-proliferation and Control, Daejeon (Korea, Republic of)

    2016-05-15

    Nuclear Security Assessment Methodologies (NUSAM) is a coordinate research project. The objectives of the NUSAM project is to establish a risk informed, performance-based methodological framework in a systematic, structured, comprehensive and appropriately transparent manner; to provide an environment for the sharing and transfer of knowledge and experience; and to provide guidance on, and practical examples of good practices in assessing the security of nuclear and other radioactive materials, as well as associated facilities and activities. The author worked as an IAEA scientific secretary of the NUAM project from 2013 to 2015. IAEA launched this project in 2013 and performed many activities: meetings, document development, table-top exercises and computer simulations. Now the project is in the final stage and will be concluded in the late 2016. The project will produce documents on NUSAM assessment methods and case study documents on NPP, Irradiator Facility and Transport. South Korea as a main contributor to this project will get benefits from the NUSAM. In 2014, South Korea introduced force-on-force exercises, which could be used as the assessment of physical protection system by the methods of NUSAM.

  10. Annotation: The Savant Syndrome

    Science.gov (United States)

    Heaton, Pamela; Wallace, Gregory L.

    2004-01-01

    Background: Whilst interest has focused on the origin and nature of the savant syndrome for over a century, it is only within the past two decades that empirical group studies have been carried out. Methods: The following annotation briefly reviews relevant research and also attempts to address outstanding issues in this research area.…

  11. Annotation and Curation of Uncharacterized proteins- Challenges

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Johny eIjaq

    2015-03-01

    Full Text Available Hypothetical Proteins are the proteins that are predicted to be expressed from an open reading frame (ORF, constituting a substantial fraction of proteomes in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Genome projects have led to the identification of many therapeutic targets, the putative function of the protein and their interactions. In this review we have enlisted various methods. Annotation linked to structural and functional prediction of hypothetical proteins assist in the discovery of new structures and functions serving as markers and pharmacological targets for drug designing, discovery and screening. Mass spectrometry is an analytical technique for validating protein characterisation. Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization–mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS is an efficient analytical method. Microarrays and Protein expression profiles help understanding the biological systems through a systems-wide study of proteins and their interactions with other proteins and non-proteinaceous molecules to control complex processes in cells and tissues and even whole organism. Next generation sequencing technology accelerates multiple areas of genomics research.

  12. Analysis of LYSA-calculus with explicit confidentiality annotations

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Gao, Han; Nielson, Hanne Riis

    2006-01-01

    Recently there has been an increased research interest in applying process calculi in the verification of cryptographic protocols due to their ability to formally model protocols. This work presents LYSA with explicit confidentiality annotations for indicating the expected behavior of target...... malicious activities performed by attackers as specified by the confidentiality annotations. The proposed analysis approach is fully automatic without the need of human intervention and has been applied successfully to a number of protocols....

  13. Facility Interface Capability Assessment (FICA) project report

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Pope, R.B.; MacDonald, R.R.; Viebrock, J.M.; Mote, N.

    1995-09-01

    The US Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) is responsible for developing the Civilian Radioactive Waste Management System (CRWMS) to accept spent nuclear fuel from commercial facilities. The objective of the Facility Interface Capability Assessment (FICA) project was to assess the capability of each commercial spent nuclear fuel (SNF) storage facility, at which SNF is stored, to handle various SNF shipping casks. The purpose of this report is to present and analyze the results of the facility assessments completed within the FICA project. During Phase 1, the data items required to complete the facility assessments were identified and the database for the project was created. During Phase 2, visits were made to 122 facilities on 76 sites to collect data and information, the database was updated, and assessments of the cask-handling capabilities at each facility were performed. Each assessment of cask-handling capability contains three parts: the current capability of the facility (planning base); the potential enhanced capability if revisions were made to the facility licensing and/or administrative controls; and the potential enhanced capability if limited physical modifications were made to the facility. The main conclusion derived from the planning base assessments is that the current facility capabilities will not allow handling of any of the FICA Casks at 49 of the 122 facilities evaluated. However, consideration of potential revisions and/or modifications showed that all but one of the 49 facilities could be adapted to handle at least one of the FICA Casks. For this to be possible, facility licensing, administrative controls, and/or physical aspects of the facility would need to be modified

  14. Facility Interface Capability Assessment (FICA) project report

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Pope, R.B. [ed.] [Oak Ridge National Lab., TN (United States); MacDonald, R.R. [ed.] [Civilian Radioactive Waste Management System, Vienna, VA (United States); Viebrock, J.M.; Mote, N. [Nuclear Assurance Corp., Norcross, GA (United States)

    1995-09-01

    The US Department of Energy`s (DOE) Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) is responsible for developing the Civilian Radioactive Waste Management System (CRWMS) to accept spent nuclear fuel from commercial facilities. The objective of the Facility Interface Capability Assessment (FICA) project was to assess the capability of each commercial spent nuclear fuel (SNF) storage facility, at which SNF is stored, to handle various SNF shipping casks. The purpose of this report is to present and analyze the results of the facility assessments completed within the FICA project. During Phase 1, the data items required to complete the facility assessments were identified and the database for the project was created. During Phase 2, visits were made to 122 facilities on 76 sites to collect data and information, the database was updated, and assessments of the cask-handling capabilities at each facility were performed. Each assessment of cask-handling capability contains three parts: the current capability of the facility (planning base); the potential enhanced capability if revisions were made to the facility licensing and/or administrative controls; and the potential enhanced capability if limited physical modifications were made to the facility. The main conclusion derived from the planning base assessments is that the current facility capabilities will not allow handling of any of the FICA Casks at 49 of the 122 facilities evaluated. However, consideration of potential revisions and/or modifications showed that all but one of the 49 facilities could be adapted to handle at least one of the FICA Casks. For this to be possible, facility licensing, administrative controls, and/or physical aspects of the facility would need to be modified.

  15. First generation annotations for the fathead minnow (Pimephales promelas) genome

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ab initio gene prediction and evidence alignment were used to produce the first annotations for the fathead minnow SOAPdenovo genome assembly. Additionally, a genome browser hosted at genome.setac.org provides simplified access to the annotation data in context with fathead minno...

  16. Extracting Cross-Ontology Weighted Association Rules from Gene Ontology Annotations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Agapito, Giuseppe; Milano, Marianna; Guzzi, Pietro Hiram; Cannataro, Mario

    2016-01-01

    Gene Ontology (GO) is a structured repository of concepts (GO Terms) that are associated to one or more gene products through a process referred to as annotation. The analysis of annotated data is an important opportunity for bioinformatics. There are different approaches of analysis, among those, the use of association rules (AR) which provides useful knowledge, discovering biologically relevant associations between terms of GO, not previously known. In a previous work, we introduced GO-WAR (Gene Ontology-based Weighted Association Rules), a methodology for extracting weighted association rules from ontology-based annotated datasets. We here adapt the GO-WAR algorithm to mine cross-ontology association rules, i.e., rules that involve GO terms present in the three sub-ontologies of GO. We conduct a deep performance evaluation of GO-WAR by mining publicly available GO annotated datasets, showing how GO-WAR outperforms current state of the art approaches.

  17. Linking Disparate Datasets of the Earth Sciences with the SemantEco Annotator

    Science.gov (United States)

    Seyed, P.; Chastain, K.; McGuinness, D. L.

    2013-12-01

    Use of Semantic Web technologies for data management in the Earth sciences (and beyond) has great potential but is still in its early stages, since the challenges of translating data into a more explicit or semantic form for immediate use within applications has not been fully addressed. In this abstract we help address this challenge by introducing the SemantEco Annotator, which enables anyone, regardless of expertise, to semantically annotate tabular Earth Science data and translate it into linked data format, while applying the logic inherent in community-standard vocabularies to guide the process. The Annotator was conceived under a desire to unify dataset content from a variety of sources under common vocabularies, for use in semantically-enabled web applications. Our current use case employs linked data generated by the Annotator for use in the SemantEco environment, which utilizes semantics to help users explore, search, and visualize water or air quality measurement and species occurrence data through a map-based interface. The generated data can also be used immediately to facilitate discovery and search capabilities within 'big data' environments. The Annotator provides a method for taking information about a dataset, that may only be known to its maintainers, and making it explicit, in a uniform and machine-readable fashion, such that a person or information system can more easily interpret the underlying structure and meaning. Its primary mechanism is to enable a user to formally describe how columns of a tabular dataset relate and/or describe entities. For example, if a user identifies columns for latitude and longitude coordinates, we can infer the data refers to a point that can be plotted on a map. Further, it can be made explicit that measurements of 'nitrate' and 'NO3-' are of the same entity through vocabulary assignments, thus more easily utilizing data sets that use different nomenclatures. The Annotator provides an extensive and searchable

  18. Annotation of phenotypic diversity: decoupling data curation and ontology curation using Phenex.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Balhoff, James P; Dahdul, Wasila M; Dececchi, T Alexander; Lapp, Hilmar; Mabee, Paula M; Vision, Todd J

    2014-01-01

    Phenex (http://phenex.phenoscape.org/) is a desktop application for semantically annotating the phenotypic character matrix datasets common in evolutionary biology. Since its initial publication, we have added new features that address several major bottlenecks in the efficiency of the phenotype curation process: allowing curators during the data curation phase to provisionally request terms that are not yet available from a relevant ontology; supporting quality control against annotation guidelines to reduce later manual review and revision; and enabling the sharing of files for collaboration among curators. We decoupled data annotation from ontology development by creating an Ontology Request Broker (ORB) within Phenex. Curators can use the ORB to request a provisional term for use in data annotation; the provisional term can be automatically replaced with a permanent identifier once the term is added to an ontology. We added a set of annotation consistency checks to prevent common curation errors, reducing the need for later correction. We facilitated collaborative editing by improving the reliability of Phenex when used with online folder sharing services, via file change monitoring and continual autosave. With the addition of these new features, and in particular the Ontology Request Broker, Phenex users have been able to focus more effectively on data annotation. Phenoscape curators using Phenex have reported a smoother annotation workflow, with much reduced interruptions from ontology maintenance and file management issues.

  19. Automated evaluation of annotators for museum collections using subjective login

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Ceolin, D.; Nottamkandath, A.; Fokkink, W.J.; Dimitrakos, Th.; Moona, R.; Patel, Dh.; Harrison McKnight, D.

    2012-01-01

    Museums are rapidly digitizing their collections, and face a huge challenge to annotate every digitized artifact in store. Therefore they are opening up their archives for receiving annotations from experts world-wide. This paper presents an architecture for choosing the most eligible set of

  20. Annotation of the protein coding regions of the equine genome

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hestand, Matthew S.; Kalbfleisch, Theodore S.; Coleman, Stephen J.

    2015-01-01

    Current gene annotation of the horse genome is largely derived from in silico predictions and cross-species alignments. Only a small number of genes are annotated based on equine EST and mRNA sequences. To expand the number of equine genes annotated from equine experimental evidence, we sequenced m...... and appear to be small errors in the equine reference genome, since they are also identified as homozygous variants by genomic DNA resequencing of the reference horse. Taken together, we provide a resource of equine mRNA structures and protein coding variants that will enhance equine and cross...

  1. Genome Annotation and Transcriptomics of Oil-Producing Algae

    Science.gov (United States)

    2015-03-16

    AFRL-OSR-VA-TR-2015-0103 GENOME ANNOTATION AND TRANSCRIPTOMICS OF OIL-PRODUCING ALGAE Sabeeha Merchant UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES Final...2010 To 12-31-2014 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE GENOME ANNOTATION AND TRANSCRIPTOMICS OF OIL-PRODUCING ALGAE 5a. CONTRACT NUMBER FA9550-10-1-0095 5b...NOTES 14. ABSTRACT Most algae accumulate triacylglycerols (TAGs) when they are starved for essential nutrients like N, S, P (or Si in the case of some

  2. Annotating smart environment sensor data for activity learning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Szewcyzk, S; Dwan, K; Minor, B; Swedlove, B; Cook, D

    2009-01-01

    The pervasive sensing technologies found in smart homes offer unprecedented opportunities for providing health monitoring and assistance to individuals experiencing difficulties living independently at home. In order to monitor the functional health of smart home residents, we need to design technologies that recognize and track the activities that people perform at home. Machine learning techniques can perform this task, but the software algorithms rely upon large amounts of sample data that is correctly labeled with the corresponding activity. Labeling, or annotating, sensor data with the corresponding activity can be time consuming, may require input from the smart home resident, and is often inaccurate. Therefore, in this paper we investigate four alternative mechanisms for annotating sensor data with a corresponding activity label. We evaluate the alternative methods along the dimensions of annotation time, resident burden, and accuracy using sensor data collected in a real smart apartment.

  3. Annotation Method (AM): SE7_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available base search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary se...arch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are ma...SE7_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary data

  4. Annotation Method (AM): SE36_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available abase search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary s...earch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are m...SE36_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary dat

  5. Annotation Method (AM): SE14_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available abase search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary s...earch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are m...SE14_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary dat

  6. Annotation Method (AM): SE33_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available abase search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary s...earch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are m...SE33_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary dat

  7. Annotation Method (AM): SE12_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available abase search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary s...earch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are m...SE12_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary dat

  8. Annotation Method (AM): SE20_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available abase search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary s...earch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are m...SE20_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary dat

  9. Annotation Method (AM): SE2_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available base search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary se...arch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are ma...SE2_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary data

  10. Annotation Method (AM): SE28_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available abase search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary s...earch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are m...SE28_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary dat

  11. Annotation Method (AM): SE11_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available abase search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary s...earch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are m...SE11_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary dat

  12. Annotation Method (AM): SE17_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available abase search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary s...earch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are m...SE17_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary dat

  13. Annotation Method (AM): SE10_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available abase search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary s...earch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are m...SE10_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary dat

  14. Annotation Method (AM): SE4_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available base search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary se...arch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are ma...SE4_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary data

  15. Annotation Method (AM): SE9_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available base search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary se...arch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are ma...SE9_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary data

  16. Annotation Method (AM): SE3_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available base search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary se...arch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are ma...SE3_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary data

  17. Annotation Method (AM): SE25_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available abase search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary s...earch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are m...SE25_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary dat

  18. Annotation Method (AM): SE30_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available abase search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary s...earch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are m...SE30_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary dat

  19. Annotation Method (AM): SE16_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available abase search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary s...earch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are m...SE16_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary dat

  20. Annotation Method (AM): SE29_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available abase search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary s...earch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are m...SE29_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary dat

  1. Annotation Method (AM): SE35_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available abase search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary s...earch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are m...SE35_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary dat

  2. Annotation Method (AM): SE6_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available base search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary se...arch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are ma...SE6_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary data

  3. Annotation Method (AM): SE1_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available base search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary se...arch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are ma...SE1_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary data

  4. Annotation Method (AM): SE8_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available base search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary se...arch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are ma...SE8_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary data

  5. Annotation Method (AM): SE13_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available abase search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary s...earch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are m...SE13_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary dat

  6. Annotation Method (AM): SE26_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available abase search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary s...earch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are m...SE26_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary dat

  7. Annotation Method (AM): SE27_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available abase search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary s...earch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are m...SE27_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary dat

  8. Annotation Method (AM): SE34_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available abase search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary s...earch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are m...SE34_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary dat

  9. Annotation Method (AM): SE5_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available base search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary se...arch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are ma...SE5_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary data

  10. Annotation Method (AM): SE15_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available abase search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary s...earch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are m...SE15_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary dat

  11. Annotation Method (AM): SE31_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available abase search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary s...earch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are m...SE31_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary dat

  12. Annotation Method (AM): SE32_AM1 [Metabolonote[Archive

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available abase search. Peaks with no hit to these databases are then selected to secondary s...earch using exactMassDB and Pep1000 databases. After the database search processes, each database hits are m...SE32_AM1 PowerGet annotation A1 In annotation process, KEGG, KNApSAcK and LipidMAPS are used for primary dat

  13. Assessment of online public opinions on large infrastructure projects: A case study of the Three Gorges Project in China

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Jiang, Hanchen; Qiang, Maoshan; Lin, Peng

    2016-01-01

    Public opinion becomes increasingly salient in the ex post evaluation stage of large infrastructure projects which have significant impacts to the environment and the society. However, traditional survey methods are inefficient in collection and assessment of the public opinion due to its large quantity and diversity. Recently, Social media platforms provide a rich data source for monitoring and assessing the public opinion on controversial infrastructure projects. This paper proposes an assessment framework to transform unstructured online public opinions on large infrastructure projects into sentimental and topical indicators for enhancing practices of ex post evaluation and public participation. The framework uses web crawlers to collect online comments related to a large infrastructure project and employs two natural language processing technologies, including sentiment analysis and topic modeling, with spatio-temporal analysis, to transform these comments into indicators for assessing online public opinion on the project. Based on the framework, we investigate the online public opinion of the Three Gorges Project on China's largest microblogging site, namely, Weibo. Assessment results present spatial-temporal distributions of post intensity and sentiment polarity, reveals major topics with different sentiments and summarizes managerial implications, for ex post evaluation of the world's largest hydropower project. The proposed assessment framework is expected to be widely applied as a methodological strategy to assess public opinion in the ex post evaluation stage of large infrastructure projects. - Highlights: • We developed a framework to assess online public opinion on large infrastructure projects with environmental impacts. • Indicators were built to assess post intensity, sentiment polarity and major topics of the public opinion. • We took the Three Gorges Project (TGP) as an example to demonstrate the effectiveness proposed framework.

  14. Assessment of online public opinions on large infrastructure projects: A case study of the Three Gorges Project in China

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Jiang, Hanchen, E-mail: jhc13@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn; Qiang, Maoshan, E-mail: qiangms@tsinghua.edu.cn; Lin, Peng, E-mail: celinpe@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn

    2016-11-15

    Public opinion becomes increasingly salient in the ex post evaluation stage of large infrastructure projects which have significant impacts to the environment and the society. However, traditional survey methods are inefficient in collection and assessment of the public opinion due to its large quantity and diversity. Recently, Social media platforms provide a rich data source for monitoring and assessing the public opinion on controversial infrastructure projects. This paper proposes an assessment framework to transform unstructured online public opinions on large infrastructure projects into sentimental and topical indicators for enhancing practices of ex post evaluation and public participation. The framework uses web crawlers to collect online comments related to a large infrastructure project and employs two natural language processing technologies, including sentiment analysis and topic modeling, with spatio-temporal analysis, to transform these comments into indicators for assessing online public opinion on the project. Based on the framework, we investigate the online public opinion of the Three Gorges Project on China's largest microblogging site, namely, Weibo. Assessment results present spatial-temporal distributions of post intensity and sentiment polarity, reveals major topics with different sentiments and summarizes managerial implications, for ex post evaluation of the world's largest hydropower project. The proposed assessment framework is expected to be widely applied as a methodological strategy to assess public opinion in the ex post evaluation stage of large infrastructure projects. - Highlights: • We developed a framework to assess online public opinion on large infrastructure projects with environmental impacts. • Indicators were built to assess post intensity, sentiment polarity and major topics of the public opinion. • We took the Three Gorges Project (TGP) as an example to demonstrate the effectiveness proposed framework.

  15. Project W-519 TWRS privatization phase 1 infrastructure year 2000 compliance assessment project plan

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    BUSSELL, J.H.

    1999-01-01

    This document contains a limited assessment of Year 2000 compliance for Project W-519. Additional information is provided as a road map to project documents and other references that may be used to verify Year 2000 compliance

  16. Software for computing and annotating genomic ranges.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lawrence, Michael; Huber, Wolfgang; Pagès, Hervé; Aboyoun, Patrick; Carlson, Marc; Gentleman, Robert; Morgan, Martin T; Carey, Vincent J

    2013-01-01

    We describe Bioconductor infrastructure for representing and computing on annotated genomic ranges and integrating genomic data with the statistical computing features of R and its extensions. At the core of the infrastructure are three packages: IRanges, GenomicRanges, and GenomicFeatures. These packages provide scalable data structures for representing annotated ranges on the genome, with special support for transcript structures, read alignments and coverage vectors. Computational facilities include efficient algorithms for overlap and nearest neighbor detection, coverage calculation and other range operations. This infrastructure directly supports more than 80 other Bioconductor packages, including those for sequence analysis, differential expression analysis and visualization.

  17. FALDO: a semantic standard for describing the location of nucleotide and protein feature annotation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bolleman, Jerven T; Mungall, Christopher J; Strozzi, Francesco; Baran, Joachim; Dumontier, Michel; Bonnal, Raoul J P; Buels, Robert; Hoehndorf, Robert; Fujisawa, Takatomo; Katayama, Toshiaki; Cock, Peter J A

    2016-06-13

    Nucleotide and protein sequence feature annotations are essential to understand biology on the genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic level. Using Semantic Web technologies to query biological annotations, there was no standard that described this potentially complex location information as subject-predicate-object triples. We have developed an ontology, the Feature Annotation Location Description Ontology (FALDO), to describe the positions of annotated features on linear and circular sequences. FALDO can be used to describe nucleotide features in sequence records, protein annotations, and glycan binding sites, among other features in coordinate systems of the aforementioned "omics" areas. Using the same data format to represent sequence positions that are independent of file formats allows us to integrate sequence data from multiple sources and data types. The genome browser JBrowse is used to demonstrate accessing multiple SPARQL endpoints to display genomic feature annotations, as well as protein annotations from UniProt mapped to genomic locations. Our ontology allows users to uniformly describe - and potentially merge - sequence annotations from multiple sources. Data sources using FALDO can prospectively be retrieved using federalised SPARQL queries against public SPARQL endpoints and/or local private triple stores.

  18. EXTRACT: interactive extraction of environment metadata and term suggestion for metagenomic sample annotation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pafilis, Evangelos; Buttigieg, Pier Luigi; Ferrell, Barbra; Pereira, Emiliano; Schnetzer, Julia; Arvanitidis, Christos; Jensen, Lars Juhl

    2016-01-01

    The microbial and molecular ecology research communities have made substantial progress on developing standards for annotating samples with environment metadata. However, sample manual annotation is a highly labor intensive process and requires familiarity with the terminologies used. We have therefore developed an interactive annotation tool, EXTRACT, which helps curators identify and extract standard-compliant terms for annotation of metagenomic records and other samples. Behind its web-based user interface, the system combines published methods for named entity recognition of environment, organism, tissue and disease terms. The evaluators in the BioCreative V Interactive Annotation Task found the system to be intuitive, useful, well documented and sufficiently accurate to be helpful in spotting relevant text passages and extracting organism and environment terms. Comparison of fully manual and text-mining-assisted curation revealed that EXTRACT speeds up annotation by 15-25% and helps curators to detect terms that would otherwise have been missed. Database URL: https://extract.hcmr.gr/. © The Author(s) 2016. Published by Oxford University Press.

  19. Integrative specimen information service - a campus-wide resource for tissue banking, experimental data annotation, and analysis services.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schadow, Gunther; Dhaval, Rakesh; McDonald, Clement J; Ragg, Susanne

    2006-01-01

    We present the architecture and approach of an evolving campus-wide information service for tissues with clinical and data annotations to be used and contributed to by clinical researchers across the campus. The services provided include specimen tracking, long term data storage, and computational analysis services. The project is conceived and sustained by collaboration among researchers on the campus as well as participation in standards organizations and national collaboratives.

  20. Economic assessment of a waste hydrogen utilization project

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Zhou, H.; Wang, L.; Zhou, W.; Wu, J.; Wang, Q.

    1993-01-01

    This article reports an economic assessment on a hydride hydrogen recovery, purification, storage, transportation and application project (HRPSTA) set for a system including a nitrogenous fertilizer plant and a float glass factory. In this project, a pretreatment unit and metal hydride containers are used to recover and purify the hydrogen from the purge gas of the ammonia fertilizer plant and to transport and use the hydrogen in the tin bath in the float glass factory. Detailed economic assessment, cost analysis and a cash flow statement are presented, and financial net present value (NPV), as well as intrinsic rate of return (IRR), is calculated. The results shows that this project, which is feasible technologically, is profitable economically. (Author)

  1. miRBase: integrating microRNA annotation and deep-sequencing data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kozomara, Ana; Griffiths-Jones, Sam

    2011-01-01

    miRBase is the primary online repository for all microRNA sequences and annotation. The current release (miRBase 16) contains over 15,000 microRNA gene loci in over 140 species, and over 17,000 distinct mature microRNA sequences. Deep-sequencing technologies have delivered a sharp rise in the rate of novel microRNA discovery. We have mapped reads from short RNA deep-sequencing experiments to microRNAs in miRBase and developed web interfaces to view these mappings. The user can view all read data associated with a given microRNA annotation, filter reads by experiment and count, and search for microRNAs by tissue- and stage-specific expression. These data can be used as a proxy for relative expression levels of microRNA sequences, provide detailed evidence for microRNA annotations and alternative isoforms of mature microRNAs, and allow us to revisit previous annotations. miRBase is available online at: http://www.mirbase.org/.

  2. Incorporating the Technology Roadmap Uncertainties into the Project Risk Assessment

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Bonnema, B.E.

    2002-01-01

    This paper describes two methods, Technology Roadmapping and Project Risk Assessment, which were used to identify and manage the technical risks relating to the treatment of sodium bearing waste at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. The waste treatment technology under consideration was Direct Vitrification. The primary objective of the Technology Roadmap is to identify technical data uncertainties for the technologies involved and to prioritize the testing or development studies to fill the data gaps. Similarly, project management's objective for a multi-million dollar construction project includes managing all the key risks in accordance to DOE O 413.3 - ''Program and Project Management for the Acquisition of Capital Assets.'' In the early stages, the Project Risk Assessment is based upon a qualitative analysis for each risk's probability and consequence. In order to clearly prioritize the work to resolve the technical issues identified in the Technology Roadmap, the issues must be cross- referenced to the project's Risk Assessment. This will enable the project to get the best value for the cost to mitigate the risks

  3. Online Metacognitive Strategies, Hypermedia Annotations, and Motivation on Hypertext Comprehension

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shang, Hui-Fang

    2016-01-01

    This study examined the effect of online metacognitive strategies, hypermedia annotations, and motivation on reading comprehension in a Taiwanese hypertext environment. A path analysis model was proposed based on the assumption that if English as a foreign language learners frequently use online metacognitive strategies and hypermedia annotations,…

  4. Annotating with Propp's Morphology of the Folktale: Reproducibility and Trainability

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Fisseni, B.; Kurji, A.; Löwe, B.

    2014-01-01

    We continue the study of the reproducibility of Propp’s annotations from Bod et al. (2012). We present four experiments in which test subjects were taught Propp’s annotation system; we conclude that Propp’s system needs a significant amount of training, but that with sufficient time investment, it

  5. Annotation of nerve cord transcriptome in earthworm Eisenia fetida

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vasanthakumar Ponesakki

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available In annelid worms, the nerve cord serves as a crucial organ to control the sensory and behavioral physiology. The inadequate genome resource of earthworms has prioritized the comprehensive analysis of their transcriptome dataset to monitor the genes express in the nerve cord and predict their role in the neurotransmission and sensory perception of the species. The present study focuses on identifying the potential transcripts and predicting their functional features by annotating the transcriptome dataset of nerve cord tissues prepared by Gong et al., 2010 from the earthworm Eisenia fetida. Totally 9762 transcripts were successfully annotated against the NCBI nr database using the BLASTX algorithm and among them 7680 transcripts were assigned to a total of 44,354 GO terms. The conserve domain analysis indicated the over representation of P-loop NTPase domain and calcium binding EF-hand domain. The COG functional annotation classified 5860 transcript sequences into 25 functional categories. Further, 4502 contig sequences were found to map with 124 KEGG pathways. The annotated contig dataset exhibited 22 crucial neuropeptides having considerable matches to the marine annelid Platynereis dumerilii, suggesting their possible role in neurotransmission and neuromodulation. In addition, 108 human stem cell marker homologs were identified including the crucial epigenetic regulators, transcriptional repressors and cell cycle regulators, which may contribute to the neuronal and segmental regeneration. The complete functional annotation of this nerve cord transcriptome can be further utilized to interpret genetic and molecular mechanisms associated with neuronal development, nervous system regeneration and nerve cord function.

  6. Tagging like Humans: Diverse and Distinct Image Annotation

    KAUST Repository

    Wu, Baoyuan

    2018-03-31

    In this work we propose a new automatic image annotation model, dubbed {\\\\bf diverse and distinct image annotation} (D2IA). The generative model D2IA is inspired by the ensemble of human annotations, which create semantically relevant, yet distinct and diverse tags. In D2IA, we generate a relevant and distinct tag subset, in which the tags are relevant to the image contents and semantically distinct to each other, using sequential sampling from a determinantal point process (DPP) model. Multiple such tag subsets that cover diverse semantic aspects or diverse semantic levels of the image contents are generated by randomly perturbing the DPP sampling process. We leverage a generative adversarial network (GAN) model to train D2IA. Extensive experiments including quantitative and qualitative comparisons, as well as human subject studies, on two benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed model can produce more diverse and distinct tags than the state-of-the-arts.

  7. An Atlas of annotations of Hydra vulgaris transcriptome.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Evangelista, Daniela; Tripathi, Kumar Parijat; Guarracino, Mario Rosario

    2016-09-22

    RNA sequencing takes advantage of the Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies for analyzing RNA transcript counts with an excellent accuracy. Trying to interpret this huge amount of data in biological information is still a key issue, reason for which the creation of web-resources useful for their analysis is highly desiderable. Starting from a previous work, Transcriptator, we present the Atlas of Hydra's vulgaris, an extensible web tool in which its complete transcriptome is annotated. In order to provide to the users an advantageous resource that include the whole functional annotated transcriptome of Hydra vulgaris water polyp, we implemented the Atlas web-tool contains 31.988 accesible and downloadable transcripts of this non-reference model organism. Atlas, as a freely available resource, can be considered a valuable tool to rapidly retrieve functional annotation for transcripts differentially expressed in Hydra vulgaris exposed to the distinct experimental treatments. WEB RESOURCE URL: http://www-labgtp.na.icar.cnr.it/Atlas .

  8. Automatic annotation of lecture videos for multimedia driven pedagogical platforms

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ali Shariq Imran

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available Today’s eLearning websites are heavily loaded with multimedia contents, which are often unstructured, unedited, unsynchronized, and lack inter-links among different multimedia components. Hyperlinking different media modality may provide a solution for quick navigation and easy retrieval of pedagogical content in media driven eLearning websites. In addition, finding meta-data information to describe and annotate media content in eLearning platforms is challenging, laborious, prone to errors, and time-consuming task. Thus annotations for multimedia especially of lecture videos became an important part of video learning objects. To address this issue, this paper proposes three major contributions namely, automated video annotation, the 3-Dimensional (3D tag clouds, and the hyper interactive presenter (HIP eLearning platform. Combining existing state-of-the-art SIFT together with tag cloud, a novel approach for automatic lecture video annotation for the HIP is proposed. New video annotations are implemented automatically providing the needed random access in lecture videos within the platform, and a 3D tag cloud is proposed as a new way of user interaction mechanism. A preliminary study of the usefulness of the system has been carried out, and the initial results suggest that 70% of the students opted for using HIP as their preferred eLearning platform at Gjøvik University College (GUC.

  9. Spiral and Project-Based Learning with Peer Assessment in a Computer Science Project Management Course

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jaime, Arturo; Blanco, José Miguel; Domínguez, César; Sánchez, Ana; Heras, Jónathan; Usandizaga, Imanol

    2016-01-01

    Different learning methods such as project-based learning, spiral learning and peer assessment have been implemented in science disciplines with different outcomes. This paper presents a proposal for a project management course in the context of a computer science degree. Our proposal combines three well-known methods: project-based learning,…

  10. DFAST: a flexible prokaryotic genome annotation pipeline for faster genome publication.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tanizawa, Yasuhiro; Fujisawa, Takatomo; Nakamura, Yasukazu

    2018-03-15

    We developed a prokaryotic genome annotation pipeline, DFAST, that also supports genome submission to public sequence databases. DFAST was originally started as an on-line annotation server, and to date, over 7000 jobs have been processed since its first launch in 2016. Here, we present a newly implemented background annotation engine for DFAST, which is also available as a standalone command-line program. The new engine can annotate a typical-sized bacterial genome within 10 min, with rich information such as pseudogenes, translation exceptions and orthologous gene assignment between given reference genomes. In addition, the modular framework of DFAST allows users to customize the annotation workflow easily and will also facilitate extensions for new functions and incorporation of new tools in the future. The software is implemented in Python 3 and runs in both Python 2.7 and 3.4-on Macintosh and Linux systems. It is freely available at https://github.com/nigyta/dfast_core/under the GPLv3 license with external binaries bundled in the software distribution. An on-line version is also available at https://dfast.nig.ac.jp/. yn@nig.ac.jp. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

  11. Combining rules, background knowledge and change patterns to maintain semantic annotations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cardoso, Silvio Domingos; Chantal, Reynaud-Delaître; Da Silveira, Marcos; Pruski, Cédric

    2017-01-01

    Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) play a key role in enriching biomedical information in order to make it machine-understandable and shareable. This is done by annotating medical documents, or more specifically, associating concept labels from KOS with pieces of digital information, e.g., images or texts. However, the dynamic nature of KOS may impact the annotations, thus creating a mismatch between the evolved concept and the associated information. To solve this problem, methods to maintain the quality of the annotations are required. In this paper, we define a framework based on rules, background knowledge and change patterns to drive the annotation adaption process. We evaluate experimentally the proposed approach in realistic cases-studies and demonstrate the overall performance of our approach in different KOS considering the precision, recall, F1-score and AUC value of the system.

  12. Phylogenetic molecular function annotation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Engelhardt, Barbara E; Jordan, Michael I; Repo, Susanna T; Brenner, Steven E

    2009-01-01

    It is now easier to discover thousands of protein sequences in a new microbial genome than it is to biochemically characterize the specific activity of a single protein of unknown function. The molecular functions of protein sequences have typically been predicted using homology-based computational methods, which rely on the principle that homologous proteins share a similar function. However, some protein families include groups of proteins with different molecular functions. A phylogenetic approach for predicting molecular function (sometimes called 'phylogenomics') is an effective means to predict protein molecular function. These methods incorporate functional evidence from all members of a family that have functional characterizations using the evolutionary history of the protein family to make robust predictions for the uncharacterized proteins. However, they are often difficult to apply on a genome-wide scale because of the time-consuming step of reconstructing the phylogenies of each protein to be annotated. Our automated approach for function annotation using phylogeny, the SIFTER (Statistical Inference of Function Through Evolutionary Relationships) methodology, uses a statistical graphical model to compute the probabilities of molecular functions for unannotated proteins. Our benchmark tests showed that SIFTER provides accurate functional predictions on various protein families, outperforming other available methods.

  13. A nuclear magnetic resonance based approach to accurate functional annotation of putative enzymes in the methanogen Methanosarcina acetivorans

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nikolau Basil J

    2011-06-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Correct annotation of function is essential if one is to take full advantage of the vast amounts of genomic sequence data. The accuracy of sequence-based functional annotations is often variable, particularly if the sequence homology to a known function is low. Indeed recent work has shown that even proteins with very high sequence identity can have different folds and functions, and therefore caution is needed in assigning functions by sequence homology in the absence of experimental validation. Experimental methods are therefore needed to efficiently evaluate annotations in a way that complements current high throughput technologies. Here, we describe the use of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR-based ligand screening as a tool for testing functional assignments of putative enzymes that may be of variable reliability. Results The target genes for this study are putative enzymes from the methanogenic archaeon Methanosarcina acetivorans (MA that have been selected after manual genome re-annotation and demonstrate detectable in vivo expression at the level of the transcriptome. The experimental approach begins with heterologous E. coli expression and purification of individual MA gene products. An NMR-based ligand screen of the purified protein then identifies possible substrates or products from a library of candidate compounds chosen from the putative pathway and other related pathways. These data are used to determine if the current sequence-based annotation is likely to be correct. For a number of case studies, additional experiments (such as in vivo genetic complementation were performed to determine function so that the reliability of the NMR screen could be independently assessed. Conclusions In all examples studied, the NMR screen was indicative of whether the functional annotation was correct. Thus, the case studies described demonstrate that NMR-based ligand screening is an effective and rapid tool for confirming or

  14. Annotation of rule-based models with formal semantics to enable creation, analysis, reuse and visualization

    Science.gov (United States)

    Misirli, Goksel; Cavaliere, Matteo; Waites, William; Pocock, Matthew; Madsen, Curtis; Gilfellon, Owen; Honorato-Zimmer, Ricardo; Zuliani, Paolo; Danos, Vincent; Wipat, Anil

    2016-01-01

    Motivation: Biological systems are complex and challenging to model and therefore model reuse is highly desirable. To promote model reuse, models should include both information about the specifics of simulations and the underlying biology in the form of metadata. The availability of computationally tractable metadata is especially important for the effective automated interpretation and processing of models. Metadata are typically represented as machine-readable annotations which enhance programmatic access to information about models. Rule-based languages have emerged as a modelling framework to represent the complexity of biological systems. Annotation approaches have been widely used for reaction-based formalisms such as SBML. However, rule-based languages still lack a rich annotation framework to add semantic information, such as machine-readable descriptions, to the components of a model. Results: We present an annotation framework and guidelines for annotating rule-based models, encoded in the commonly used Kappa and BioNetGen languages. We adapt widely adopted annotation approaches to rule-based models. We initially propose a syntax to store machine-readable annotations and describe a mapping between rule-based modelling entities, such as agents and rules, and their annotations. We then describe an ontology to both annotate these models and capture the information contained therein, and demonstrate annotating these models using examples. Finally, we present a proof of concept tool for extracting annotations from a model that can be queried and analyzed in a uniform way. The uniform representation of the annotations can be used to facilitate the creation, analysis, reuse and visualization of rule-based models. Although examples are given, using specific implementations the proposed techniques can be applied to rule-based models in general. Availability and implementation: The annotation ontology for rule-based models can be found at http

  15. Protein Annotators' Assistant: A Novel Application of Information Retrieval Techniques.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wise, Michael J.

    2000-01-01

    Protein Annotators' Assistant (PAA) is a software system which assists protein annotators in assigning functions to newly sequenced proteins. PAA employs a number of information retrieval techniques in a novel setting and is thus related to text categorization, where multiple categories may be suggested, except that in this case none of the…

  16. Research on College Board Programs and Services: Annotated Bibliography 2012. Research in Review 2012-2

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barry, Carol; Bausmith, Jennifer; Cooney, Siobhan; Laitusis, Vytas; Matos-Elefonte, Haifa; McKillip, Mary; Niu, Sunny; Rawls, Anita

    2012-01-01

    This annotated bibliography contains summaries of research studies examining a number of College Board assessments and programs. To be included in the bibliography, each study needed to meet a number of criteria. First, articles must have been published (as a College Board research report, in an external journal, or as an ETS research report).…

  17. Crowdsourcing Twitter annotations to identify first-hand experiences of prescription drug use.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Alvaro, Nestor; Conway, Mike; Doan, Son; Lofi, Christoph; Overington, John; Collier, Nigel

    2015-12-01

    Self-reported patient data has been shown to be a valuable knowledge source for post-market pharmacovigilance. In this paper we propose using the popular micro-blogging service Twitter to gather evidence about adverse drug reactions (ADRs) after firstly having identified micro-blog messages (also know as "tweets") that report first-hand experience. In order to achieve this goal we explore machine learning with data crowdsourced from laymen annotators. With the help of lay annotators recruited from CrowdFlower we manually annotated 1548 tweets containing keywords related to two kinds of drugs: SSRIs (eg. Paroxetine), and cognitive enhancers (eg. Ritalin). Our results show that inter-annotator agreement (Fleiss' kappa) for crowdsourcing ranks in moderate agreement with a pair of experienced annotators (Spearman's Rho=0.471). We utilized the gold standard annotations from CrowdFlower for automatically training a range of supervised machine learning models to recognize first-hand experience. F-Score values are reported for 6 of these techniques with the Bayesian Generalized Linear Model being the best (F-Score=0.64 and Informedness=0.43) when combined with a selected set of features obtained by using information gain criteria. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  18. Semi-supervised learning based probabilistic latent semantic analysis for automatic image annotation

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    Tian Dongping

    2017-01-01

    In recent years, multimedia annotation problem has been attracting significant research attention in multimedia and computer vision areas, especially for automatic image annotation, whose purpose is to provide an efficient and effective searching environment for users to query their images more easily.In this paper, a semi-supervised learning based probabilistic latent semantic analysis ( PL-SA) model for automatic image annotation is presenred.Since it' s often hard to obtain or create la-beled images in large quantities while unlabeled ones are easier to collect, a transductive support vector machine ( TSVM) is exploited to enhance the quality of the training image data.Then, differ-ent image features with different magnitudes will result in different performance for automatic image annotation.To this end, a Gaussian normalization method is utilized to normalize different features extracted from effective image regions segmented by the normalized cuts algorithm so as to reserve the intrinsic content of images as complete as possible.Finally, a PLSA model with asymmetric mo-dalities is constructed based on the expectation maximization( EM) algorithm to predict a candidate set of annotations with confidence scores.Extensive experiments on the general-purpose Corel5k dataset demonstrate that the proposed model can significantly improve performance of traditional PL-SA for the task of automatic image annotation.

  19. Multi-Label Classification Based on Low Rank Representation for Image Annotation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Qiaoyu Tan

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Annotating remote sensing images is a challenging task for its labor demanding annotation process and requirement of expert knowledge, especially when images can be annotated with multiple semantic concepts (or labels. To automatically annotate these multi-label images, we introduce an approach called Multi-Label Classification based on Low Rank Representation (MLC-LRR. MLC-LRR firstly utilizes low rank representation in the feature space of images to compute the low rank constrained coefficient matrix, then it adapts the coefficient matrix to define a feature-based graph and to capture the global relationships between images. Next, it utilizes low rank representation in the label space of labeled images to construct a semantic graph. Finally, these two graphs are exploited to train a graph-based multi-label classifier. To validate the performance of MLC-LRR against other related graph-based multi-label methods in annotating images, we conduct experiments on a public available multi-label remote sensing images (Land Cover. We perform additional experiments on five real-world multi-label image datasets to further investigate the performance of MLC-LRR. Empirical study demonstrates that MLC-LRR achieves better performance on annotating images than these comparing methods across various evaluation criteria; it also can effectively exploit global structure and label correlations of multi-label images.

  20. Software for computing and annotating genomic ranges.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Michael Lawrence

    Full Text Available We describe Bioconductor infrastructure for representing and computing on annotated genomic ranges and integrating genomic data with the statistical computing features of R and its extensions. At the core of the infrastructure are three packages: IRanges, GenomicRanges, and GenomicFeatures. These packages provide scalable data structures for representing annotated ranges on the genome, with special support for transcript structures, read alignments and coverage vectors. Computational facilities include efficient algorithms for overlap and nearest neighbor detection, coverage calculation and other range operations. This infrastructure directly supports more than 80 other Bioconductor packages, including those for sequence analysis, differential expression analysis and visualization.

  1. An Integrated Assessment Framework of Offshore Wind Power Projects Applying Equator Principles and Social Life Cycle Assessment

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yu-Che Tseng

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available This paper reviews offshore wind power project finance and provides an integrated assessment that employs Equator Principles, life cycle assessment, risk assessment, materiality analysis, credit assessment, and ISAE 3000 assurance. We have not seen any comprehensive review papers or book chapters that covers the entire offshore wind power project finance process. We also conducted an SWancor Formosa Phase 1 case study to illustrate the application of integrated assessment to better assist policymakers, wind farm developers, practitioners, potential investors and observers, and stakeholders in their decisions. We believe that this paper can form part of the effort to reduce information asymmetry and the transaction costs of wind power project finance, as well as mobilize green finance investments from the financial sector to renewable energy projects to achieve a national renewable energy policy.

  2. Consumer energy research: an annotated bibliography

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Anderson, C.D.; McDougall, G.H.G.

    1980-01-01

    This document is an updated and expanded version of an earlier annotated bibliography by Dr. C. Dennis Anderson and Carman Cullen (A Review and Annotation of Energy Research on Consumers, March 1978). It is the final draft of the major report that will be published in English and French and made publicly available through the Consumer Research and Evaluation Branch of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, Canada. Two agencies granting permission to include some of their energy abstracts are the Rand Corporation and the DOE Technical Information Center. The bibliography consists mainly of empirical studies, including surveys and experiments. It also includes a number of descriptive and econometric studies that utilize secondary data. Many of the studies provide summaries of research is specific areas, and point out directions for future research efforts. 14 tables.

  3. The role of assessment infrastructures in crafting project-based science classrooms

    Science.gov (United States)

    D'Amico, Laura Marie

    In project-based science teaching, teachers engage students in the practice of conducting meaningful investigations and explanations of natural phenomena, often in collaboration with fellow students or adults. Reformers suggest that this approach can provide students with more profitable learning experiences; but for many teachers, a shift to such instruction can be difficult to manage. As some reform-minded teachers have discovered, classroom assessment can serve as a vital tool for meeting the challenges associated with project science activity. In this research, classroom assessment was viewed as an infrastructure that both students and teachers rely upon as a mediational tool for classroom activity and communications. The study explored the classroom assessment infrastructures created by three teachers involved in the Learning through Collaborative Visualization (CoVis) Project from 1993--94 to 1995--96. Each of the three teachers under study either created a new course or radically reformulated an old one in an effort to incorporate project-based science pedagogy and supporting technologies. Data in the form of interviews, classroom observations, surveys, student work, and teacher records was collected. From these data, an interpretive case study was developed for each course and its accompanying assessment infrastructure. A set of cross-case analyses was also constructed, based upon common themes that emerged from all three cases. These themes included: the assessment challenges based on the nature of project activity, the role of technology in the teachers' assessment infrastructure designs, and the influence of the wider assessment infrastructure on their course and assessment designs. In combination, the case studies and cross-case analyses describe the synergistic relationship between the design of pedagogical reforms and classroom assessment infrastructures, as well as the effectiveness of all three assessment designs. This work contributes to research

  4. Public Relations: Selected, Annotated Bibliography.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Demo, Penny

    Designed for students and practitioners of public relations (PR), this annotated bibliography focuses on recent journal articles and ERIC documents. The 34 citations include the following: (1) surveys of public relations professionals on career-related education; (2) literature reviews of research on measurement and evaluation of PR and…

  5. Persuasion: A Selected, Annotated Bibliography.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McDermott, Steven T.

    Designed to reflect the diversity of approaches to persuasion, this annotated bibliography cites materials selected for their contribution to that diversity as well as for being relatively current and/or especially significant representatives of particular approaches. The bibliography starts with a list of 17 general textbooks on approaches to…

  6. MIPS: analysis and annotation of proteins from whole genomes in 2005.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mewes, H W; Frishman, D; Mayer, K F X; Münsterkötter, M; Noubibou, O; Pagel, P; Rattei, T; Oesterheld, M; Ruepp, A; Stümpflen, V

    2006-01-01

    The Munich Information Center for Protein Sequences (MIPS at the GSF), Neuherberg, Germany, provides resources related to genome information. Manually curated databases for several reference organisms are maintained. Several of these databases are described elsewhere in this and other recent NAR database issues. In a complementary effort, a comprehensive set of >400 genomes automatically annotated with the PEDANT system are maintained. The main goal of our current work on creating and maintaining genome databases is to extend gene centered information to information on interactions within a generic comprehensive framework. We have concentrated our efforts along three lines (i) the development of suitable comprehensive data structures and database technology, communication and query tools to include a wide range of different types of information enabling the representation of complex information such as functional modules or networks Genome Research Environment System, (ii) the development of databases covering computable information such as the basic evolutionary relations among all genes, namely SIMAP, the sequence similarity matrix and the CABiNet network analysis framework and (iii) the compilation and manual annotation of information related to interactions such as protein-protein interactions or other types of relations (e.g. MPCDB, MPPI, CYGD). All databases described and the detailed descriptions of our projects can be accessed through the MIPS WWW server (http://mips.gsf.de).

  7. Annotating spatio-temporal datasets for meaningful analysis in the Web

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stasch, Christoph; Pebesma, Edzer; Scheider, Simon

    2014-05-01

    More and more environmental datasets that vary in space and time are available in the Web. This comes along with an advantage of using the data for other purposes than originally foreseen, but also with the danger that users may apply inappropriate analysis procedures due to lack of important assumptions made during the data collection process. In order to guide towards a meaningful (statistical) analysis of spatio-temporal datasets available in the Web, we have developed a Higher-Order-Logic formalism that captures some relevant assumptions in our previous work [1]. It allows to proof on meaningful spatial prediction and aggregation in a semi-automated fashion. In this poster presentation, we will present a concept for annotating spatio-temporal datasets available in the Web with concepts defined in our formalism. Therefore, we have defined a subset of the formalism as a Web Ontology Language (OWL) pattern. It allows capturing the distinction between the different spatio-temporal variable types, i.e. point patterns, fields, lattices and trajectories, that in turn determine whether a particular dataset can be interpolated or aggregated in a meaningful way using a certain procedure. The actual annotations that link spatio-temporal datasets with the concepts in the ontology pattern are provided as Linked Data. In order to allow data producers to add the annotations to their datasets, we have implemented a Web portal that uses a triple store at the backend to store the annotations and to make them available in the Linked Data cloud. Furthermore, we have implemented functions in the statistical environment R to retrieve the RDF annotations and, based on these annotations, to support a stronger typing of spatio-temporal datatypes guiding towards a meaningful analysis in R. [1] Stasch, C., Scheider, S., Pebesma, E., Kuhn, W. (2014): "Meaningful spatial prediction and aggregation", Environmental Modelling & Software, 51, 149-165.

  8. ESTIMA, a tool for EST management in a multi-project environment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kumar, Charu G; LeDuc, Richard; Gong, George; Roinishivili, Levan; Lewin, Harris A; Liu, Lei

    2004-11-04

    Single-pass, partial sequencing of complementary DNA (cDNA) libraries generates thousands of chromatograms that are processed into high quality expressed sequence tags (ESTs), and then assembled into contigs representative of putative genes. Usually, to be of value, ESTs and contigs must be associated with meaningful annotations, and made available to end-users. A web application, Expressed Sequence Tag Information Management and Annotation (ESTIMA), has been created to meet the EST annotation and data management requirements of multiple high-throughput EST sequencing projects. It is anchored on individual ESTs and organized around different properties of ESTs including chromatograms, base-calling quality scores, structure of assembled transcripts, and multiple sources of comparison to infer functional annotation, Gene Ontology associations, and cDNA library information. ESTIMA consists of a relational database schema and a set of interactive query interfaces. These are integrated with a suite of web-based tools that allow a user to query and retrieve information. Further, query results are interconnected among the various EST properties. ESTIMA has several unique features. Users may run their own EST processing pipeline, search against preferred reference genomes, and use any clustering and assembly algorithm. The ESTIMA database schema is very flexible and accepts output from any EST processing and assembly pipeline. ESTIMA has been used for the management of EST projects of many species, including honeybee (Apis mellifera), cattle (Bos taurus), songbird (Taeniopygia guttata), corn rootworm (Diabrotica vergifera), catfish (Ictalurus punctatus, Ictalurus furcatus), and apple (Malus x domestica). The entire resource may be downloaded and used as is, or readily adapted to fit the unique needs of other cDNA sequencing projects. The scripts used to create the ESTIMA interface are freely available to academic users in an archived format from http

  9. Automatic Annotation Method on Learners' Opinions in Case Method Discussion

    Science.gov (United States)

    Samejima, Masaki; Hisakane, Daichi; Komoda, Norihisa

    2015-01-01

    Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to annotate an attribute of a problem, a solution or no annotation on learners' opinions automatically for supporting the learners' discussion without a facilitator. The case method aims at discussing problems and solutions in a target case. However, the learners miss discussing some of problems and solutions.…

  10. Assessment of Project Website Sustainability: Case of the Arctic EIA Project

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sonja H Bickford

    2016-07-01

    Full Text Available In many cases, temporary websites may be simple, accessible solutions for knowledge management and dissemination of information. However, such sites may become outdated as the funding ends, but yet in many cases, still publicly available through the Internet. The issue of website sustainability is a relevant topic for all organizations that have websites. Website lifecycle, knowledge management, and website sustainability issues are discussed through a theoretical-based literature review. These issues are then summarized and used as lessons learned for the case study approach of this paper. The aim is to identify a solution to address a website’s life and longevity, post project. A practical case study assessment of the issue of project website sustainability is needed to address the website’s longevity—post project—as creation is often made through temporary endeavors. Recommendations for future project websites are made as the outcomes and results of this study and are expressed in the form of suggested practices for project website sustainability in future projects.

  11. High-performance web services for querying gene and variant annotation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xin, Jiwen; Mark, Adam; Afrasiabi, Cyrus; Tsueng, Ginger; Juchler, Moritz; Gopal, Nikhil; Stupp, Gregory S; Putman, Timothy E; Ainscough, Benjamin J; Griffith, Obi L; Torkamani, Ali; Whetzel, Patricia L; Mungall, Christopher J; Mooney, Sean D; Su, Andrew I; Wu, Chunlei

    2016-05-06

    Efficient tools for data management and integration are essential for many aspects of high-throughput biology. In particular, annotations of genes and human genetic variants are commonly used but highly fragmented across many resources. Here, we describe MyGene.info and MyVariant.info, high-performance web services for querying gene and variant annotation information. These web services are currently accessed more than three million times permonth. They also demonstrate a generalizable cloud-based model for organizing and querying biological annotation information. MyGene.info and MyVariant.info are provided as high-performance web services, accessible at http://mygene.info and http://myvariant.info . Both are offered free of charge to the research community.

  12. Modeling multiple time series annotations as noisy distortions of the ground truth: An Expectation-Maximization approach.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gupta, Rahul; Audhkhasi, Kartik; Jacokes, Zach; Rozga, Agata; Narayanan, Shrikanth

    2018-01-01

    Studies of time-continuous human behavioral phenomena often rely on ratings from multiple annotators. Since the ground truth of the target construct is often latent, the standard practice is to use ad-hoc metrics (such as averaging annotator ratings). Despite being easy to compute, such metrics may not provide accurate representations of the underlying construct. In this paper, we present a novel method for modeling multiple time series annotations over a continuous variable that computes the ground truth by modeling annotator specific distortions. We condition the ground truth on a set of features extracted from the data and further assume that the annotators provide their ratings as modification of the ground truth, with each annotator having specific distortion tendencies. We train the model using an Expectation-Maximization based algorithm and evaluate it on a study involving natural interaction between a child and a psychologist, to predict confidence ratings of the children's smiles. We compare and analyze the model against two baselines where: (i) the ground truth in considered to be framewise mean of ratings from various annotators and, (ii) each annotator is assumed to bear a distinct time delay in annotation and their annotations are aligned before computing the framewise mean.

  13. Peer Assessment in Engineering Group Projects

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Triantafyllou, Eva; Timcenko, Olga

    2014-01-01

    Peer review has proved to be beneficial in project-based environments by involving students in the process and encouraging them to take ownership of their learning. This article reviews how peer assessment has been employed within group work for different engineering programs. Since the administr...

  14. AUTHOR’S ANNOTATION AS A MANIFESTATION OF THE COMPOSER’S CREATIVE CONCEPTION

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    CIOBANU GHENADIE

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available Annotation to his own musical works is considered by the author as a form of analysis of these opuses. Designed to provide answers about works, these comments facilitate the perception of contemporary music by performers and the audience. The composer examines various forms of annotations basing himself on their goals and the context of use, and compares them to other genres with informative function, such as the interview, analytical essay, memoirs, personal diary, etc. The article illustrated some possible forms of annotations. Besides a purely informative character of the annotation, the author notes in the conclusions the value of genuine professional analysis, providing a wide circle of listeners and experts with a brief exegetical approach to his musical works.

  15. Djeen (Database for Joomla!'s Extensible Engine): a research information management system for flexible multi-technology project administration.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stahl, Olivier; Duvergey, Hugo; Guille, Arnaud; Blondin, Fanny; Vecchio, Alexandre Del; Finetti, Pascal; Granjeaud, Samuel; Vigy, Oana; Bidaut, Ghislain

    2013-06-06

    With the advance of post-genomic technologies, the need for tools to manage large scale data in biology becomes more pressing. This involves annotating and storing data securely, as well as granting permissions flexibly with several technologies (all array types, flow cytometry, proteomics) for collaborative work and data sharing. This task is not easily achieved with most systems available today. We developed Djeen (Database for Joomla!'s Extensible Engine), a new Research Information Management System (RIMS) for collaborative projects. Djeen is a user-friendly application, designed to streamline data storage and annotation collaboratively. Its database model, kept simple, is compliant with most technologies and allows storing and managing of heterogeneous data with the same system. Advanced permissions are managed through different roles. Templates allow Minimum Information (MI) compliance. Djeen allows managing project associated with heterogeneous data types while enforcing annotation integrity and minimum information. Projects are managed within a hierarchy and user permissions are finely-grained for each project, user and group.Djeen Component source code (version 1.5.1) and installation documentation are available under CeCILL license from http://sourceforge.net/projects/djeen/files and supplementary material.

  16. Annotated Bibliography of MMPI Research Among College Populations: 1962-1970.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cornish, Richard D.

    The MMPI continues to be the focus of a large quantity of research. This article offers an aid to persons working with college student populations by annotating recent MMPI research relating to college populations. A total of 49 articles (each categorized in terms of content into one of 10 sections or subsections) were annotated. The Validity of…

  17. Social Impact Assessment : Guidance for assessing and managing the social impacts of projects

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Vanclay, Francis; Esteves, Ana Maria; Aucamp, Ilse; Franks, Daniel

    2015-01-01

    The purpose of this Guidance Note is to provide advice to various stakeholders about what is expected in good practice social impact assessment (SIA) and social impact management processes, especially in relation to project development. Project development refers to dams, mines, oil and gas

  18. ePNK Applications and Annotations

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Kindler, Ekkart

    2017-01-01

    newapplicationsfor the ePNK and, in particular, visualizing the result of an application in the graphical editor of the ePNK by singannotations, and interacting with the end user using these annotations. In this paper, we give an overview of the concepts of ePNK applications by discussing the implementation...

  19. Experimental Polish-Lithuanian Corpus with the Semantic Annotation Elements

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Danuta Roszko

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available Experimental Polish-Lithuanian Corpus with the Semantic Annotation Elements In the article the authors present the experimental Polish-Lithuanian corpus (ECorpPL-LT formed for the idea of Polish-Lithuanian theoretical contrastive studies, a Polish-Lithuanian electronic dictionary, and as help for a sworn translator. The semantic annotation being brought into ECorpPL-LT is extremely useful in Polish-Lithuanian contrastive studies, and also proves helpful in translation work.

  20. The international arctic seas assessment project: Progress report

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sjoeblom, K.L.; Linsley, G.S.

    1995-01-01

    The article provides some background information on wastes dumped into the Arctic Seas and describes the progress made within the framework of International Arctic Seas Assessment Project (IASAP) lunched to assess the health and environmental implications of the dumping. 1 tab

  1. Project W-151 Tank 101-AZ Waste Retrieval System Year 2000 Compliance Assessment Project Plan

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    BUSSELL, J.H.

    1999-01-01

    This document contains a limited assessment of Year 2000 compliance for Project W-151. Additional information is provided as a road map to project documents and other references that may be used to verify Year 2000 compliance

  2. Annotated bibliography of uranium in Australia, 1970-1987

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    O'Faircheallaigh, C.; Webb, A.; Wade-Marshall, D.

    1989-01-01

    The bibliography contains 845 separate numbered items which deal with uranium mining in Australia during the period 1970-1987, which it was feasible to annotate, which are publicly available, and which are not of a highly technical nature. The bibliography is not restricted to material originating in Australia. The items are organised into nine major subject areas on the basis of their principal subject matter, with cross references being added in cases where more than one subject area is dealt with. The nine sections deal with the development and structure of the Australian uranium industry; the uranium debate; uranium policies; uranium and Aborigines; economic issues; domestic processing and utilisation of Australian uranium; environmental issues; nuclear proliferation and safeguards; and the major individual uranium projects. The bibliography is preceded by a chapter on its scope, organisation and sources and by an overview providing background information on the nuclear fuel cycle, uranium in Australia and Australian uranium policy and is followed by an author index

  3. An annotated history of container candidate material selection

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    McCright, R.D.

    1988-07-01

    This paper documents events in the Nevada Nuclear Waste Storage Investigations (NNWSI) Project that have influenced the selection of metals and alloys proposed for fabrication of waste package containers for permanent disposal of high-level nuclear waste in a repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The time period from 1981 to 1988 is covered in this annotated history. The history traces the candidate materials that have been considered at different stages of site characterization planning activities. At present, six candidate materials are considered and described in the 1988 Consultation Draft of the NNWSI Site Characterization Plan (SCP). The six materials are grouped into two alloy families, copper-base materials and iron to nickel-base materials with an austenitic structure. The three austenitic candidates resulted from a 1983 survey of a longer list of candidate materials; the other three candidates resulted from a special request from DOE in 1984 to evaluate copper and copper-base alloys. 24 refs., 2 tabs

  4. Using Nonexperts for Annotating Pharmacokinetic Drug-Drug Interaction Mentions in Product Labeling: A Feasibility Study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hochheiser, Harry; Ning, Yifan; Hernandez, Andres; Horn, John R; Jacobson, Rebecca; Boyce, Richard D

    2016-04-11

    Because vital details of potential pharmacokinetic drug-drug interactions are often described in free-text structured product labels, manual curation is a necessary but expensive step in the development of electronic drug-drug interaction information resources. The use of nonexperts to annotate potential drug-drug interaction (PDDI) mentions in drug product label annotation may be a means of lessening the burden of manual curation. Our goal was to explore the practicality of using nonexpert participants to annotate drug-drug interaction descriptions from structured product labels. By presenting annotation tasks to both pharmacy experts and relatively naïve participants, we hoped to demonstrate the feasibility of using nonexpert annotators for drug-drug information annotation. We were also interested in exploring whether and to what extent natural language processing (NLP) preannotation helped improve task completion time, accuracy, and subjective satisfaction. Two experts and 4 nonexperts were asked to annotate 208 structured product label sections under 4 conditions completed sequentially: (1) no NLP assistance, (2) preannotation of drug mentions, (3) preannotation of drug mentions and PDDIs, and (4) a repeat of the no-annotation condition. Results were evaluated within the 2 groups and relative to an existing gold standard. Participants were asked to provide reports on the time required to complete tasks and their perceptions of task difficulty. One of the experts and 3 of the nonexperts completed all tasks. Annotation results from the nonexpert group were relatively strong in every scenario and better than the performance of the NLP pipeline. The expert and 2 of the nonexperts were able to complete most tasks in less than 3 hours. Usability perceptions were generally positive (3.67 for expert, mean of 3.33 for nonexperts). The results suggest that nonexpert annotation might be a feasible option for comprehensive labeling of annotated PDDIs across a broader

  5. SeqAnt: A web service to rapidly identify and annotate DNA sequence variations

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Patel Viren

    2010-09-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background The enormous throughput and low cost of second-generation sequencing platforms now allow research and clinical geneticists to routinely perform single experiments that identify tens of thousands to millions of variant sites. Existing methods to annotate variant sites using information from publicly available databases via web browsers are too slow to be useful for the large sequencing datasets being routinely generated by geneticists. Because sequence annotation of variant sites is required before functional characterization can proceed, the lack of a high-throughput pipeline to efficiently annotate variant sites can act as a significant bottleneck in genetics research. Results SeqAnt (Sequence Annotator is an open source web service and software package that rapidly annotates DNA sequence variants and identifies recessive or compound heterozygous loci in human, mouse, fly, and worm genome sequencing experiments. Variants are characterized with respect to their functional type, frequency, and evolutionary conservation. Annotated variants can be viewed on a web browser, downloaded in a tab-delimited text file, or directly uploaded in a BED format to the UCSC genome browser. To demonstrate the speed of SeqAnt, we annotated a series of publicly available datasets that ranged in size from 37 to 3,439,107 variant sites. The total time to completely annotate these data completely ranged from 0.17 seconds to 28 minutes 49.8 seconds. Conclusion SeqAnt is an open source web service and software package that overcomes a critical bottleneck facing research and clinical geneticists using second-generation sequencing platforms. SeqAnt will prove especially useful for those investigators who lack dedicated bioinformatics personnel or infrastructure in their laboratories.

  6. A multi-ontology approach to annotate scientific documents based on a modularization technique.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gomes, Priscilla Corrêa E Castro; Moura, Ana Maria de Carvalho; Cavalcanti, Maria Cláudia

    2015-12-01

    Scientific text annotation has become an important task for biomedical scientists. Nowadays, there is an increasing need for the development of intelligent systems to support new scientific findings. Public databases available on the Web provide useful data, but much more useful information is only accessible in scientific texts. Text annotation may help as it relies on the use of ontologies to maintain annotations based on a uniform vocabulary. However, it is difficult to use an ontology, especially those that cover a large domain. In addition, since scientific texts explore multiple domains, which are covered by distinct ontologies, it becomes even more difficult to deal with such task. Moreover, there are dozens of ontologies in the biomedical area, and they are usually big in terms of the number of concepts. It is in this context that ontology modularization can be useful. This work presents an approach to annotate scientific documents using modules of different ontologies, which are built according to a module extraction technique. The main idea is to analyze a set of single-ontology annotations on a text to find out the user interests. Based on these annotations a set of modules are extracted from a set of distinct ontologies, and are made available for the user, for complementary annotation. The reduced size and focus of the extracted modules tend to facilitate the annotation task. An experiment was conducted to evaluate this approach, with the participation of a bioinformatician specialist of the Laboratory of Peptides and Proteins of the IOC/Fiocruz, who was interested in discovering new drug targets aiming at the combat of tropical diseases. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  7. Reference Scenario Forecasting: A New Approach to Transport Project Assessment

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Salling, Kim Bang; Leleur, Steen; Skougaard, Britt Zoëga

    2010-01-01

    This paper presents a new approach to transport project assessment in terms of feasibility risk assessment and reference class forecasting. Normally, transport project assessment is based upon a cost-benefit approach where evaluation criteria such as net present values are obtained. Recent research...... construction cost estimates. Hereafter, a quantitative risk analysis is provided making use of Monte Carlo simulation. This stochastic approach facilitates random input parameters based upon reference class forecasting, hence, a parameter data fit has been performed in order to obtain validated probability...... forecasting (RSF) frame. The RSF is anchored in the cost-benefit analysis (CBA), thus, it provides decision-makers with a quantitative mean of assessing the transport infrastructure project. First, the RSF method introduces uncertainties within the CBA by applying Optimism Bias uplifts on the preliminary...

  8. Preliminary assessment of potential CDM early start projects in Brazil

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Meyers, S.; Sathaye, J.; Lehman, B.; Schumacher, K.; van Vliet, O.; Moreira, J.R.

    2000-11-01

    The Brazil/US Aspen Global Forum on Climate Change Policies and Programs has facilitated a dialogue between key Brazil and US public and private sector leaders on the subject of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). With support from the US government, a cooperative effort between Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Sao Paulo conducted an assessment of a number of projects put forth by Brazilian sponsors. Initially, we gathered information and conducted a screening assessment for ten projects in the energy sector and six projects in the forestry sector. Some of the projects appeared to offer greater potential to be attractive for CDM, or had better information available. We then conducted a more detailed assessment of 12 of these projects, and two other projects that were submitted after the initial screening. An important goal was to assess the potential impact of Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) on the financial performance of projects. With the exception of the two forestry-based fuel displacement projects, the impact of CERs on the internal rate of return (IRR) is fairly small. This is true for both the projects that displace grid electricity and those that displace local (diesel-based) electricity production. The relative effect of CERs is greater for projects whose IRR without CERs is low. CERs have a substantial effect on the IRR of the two short-rotation forestry energy substitution projects. One reason is that the biofuel displaces coke and oil, both of which are carbon-intensive. Another factor is that the product of these projects (charcoal and woodfuel, respectively) is relatively low value, so the revenue from carbon credits has a strong relative impact. CERs also have a substantial effect on the NPV of the carbon sequestration projects. Financial and other barriers pose a challenge for implementation of most of the projects. In most cases, the sponsor lacks sufficient capital, and loans are available only at high interest

  9. Students’ annotated drawings as a mediating artefact in science teachers’ professional development

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Birgitte Lund Nielsen

    2014-10-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents a case study of a teacher examining her 4th graders’ conceptual understanding of factors causing day and night, seasons, and the phases of the Moon both pre- and post-teaching, as a part of participating in the continuous professional development (CPD project QUEST.  The study is framed in reference to the extant research in the two fields of CPD and students’ alternative conceptions in science.  The findings pertain to both the 4th graders’ conceptual understanding and the teacher’s meaning-making when examining the students’ annotated drawings and discussing them with colleagues. The teaching in general seems to be efficient concerning challenging students’ alternative conceptions; however not in relation to the phases of the Moon.  The teacher re-designed her teaching and emphasized the insight gained from looking into a structured analysis.  Nonetheless, she questioned whether teachers would find time for such analyses.  While there are promising indications that this teacher will continue using pre- and post-assessment based on the insights gained, the collaborative analysis seemed rather superficial. The spreading to colleagues is discussed referring to this inquiry as supporting individual but probably not collaborative agency.

  10. An Informally Annotated Bibliography of Sociolinguistics.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tannen, Deborah

    This annotated bibliography of sociolinguistics is divided into the following sections: speech events, ethnography of speaking and anthropological approaches to analysis of conversation; discourse analysis (including analysis of conversation and narrative), ethnomethodology and nonverbal communication; sociolinguistics; pragmatics (including…

  11. Meta-Assessment in a Project-Based Systems Engineering Course

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wengrowicz, Niva; Dori, Yehudit Judy; Dori, Dov

    2017-01-01

    Project-based learning (PBL) facilitates significant learning, but it poses a major assessment challenge for assessing individual content knowledge. We developed and implemented an assessment approach and tool for a mandatory undergraduate systems engineering PBL-based course. We call this type of assessment "student-oriented"…

  12. Enabling a community to dissect an organism: overview of the Neurospora functional genomics project.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dunlap, Jay C; Borkovich, Katherine A; Henn, Matthew R; Turner, Gloria E; Sachs, Matthew S; Glass, N Louise; McCluskey, Kevin; Plamann, Michael; Galagan, James E; Birren, Bruce W; Weiss, Richard L; Townsend, Jeffrey P; Loros, Jennifer J; Nelson, Mary Anne; Lambreghts, Randy; Colot, Hildur V; Park, Gyungsoon; Collopy, Patrick; Ringelberg, Carol; Crew, Christopher; Litvinkova, Liubov; DeCaprio, Dave; Hood, Heather M; Curilla, Susan; Shi, Mi; Crawford, Matthew; Koerhsen, Michael; Montgomery, Phil; Larson, Lisa; Pearson, Matthew; Kasuga, Takao; Tian, Chaoguang; Baştürkmen, Meray; Altamirano, Lorena; Xu, Junhuan

    2007-01-01

    A consortium of investigators is engaged in a functional genomics project centered on the filamentous fungus Neurospora, with an eye to opening up the functional genomic analysis of all the filamentous fungi. The overall goal of the four interdependent projects in this effort is to accomplish functional genomics, annotation, and expression analyses of Neurospora crassa, a filamentous fungus that is an established model for the assemblage of over 250,000 species of non yeast fungi. Building from the completely sequenced 43-Mb Neurospora genome, Project 1 is pursuing the systematic disruption of genes through targeted gene replacements, phenotypic analysis of mutant strains, and their distribution to the scientific community at large. Project 2, through a primary focus in Annotation and Bioinformatics, has developed a platform for electronically capturing community feedback and data about the existing annotation, while building and maintaining a database to capture and display information about phenotypes. Oligonucleotide-based microarrays created in Project 3 are being used to collect baseline expression data for the nearly 11,000 distinguishable transcripts in Neurospora under various conditions of growth and development, and eventually to begin to analyze the global effects of loss of novel genes in strains created by Project 1. cDNA libraries generated in Project 4 document the overall complexity of expressed sequences in Neurospora, including alternative splicing alternative promoters and antisense transcripts. In addition, these studies have driven the assembly of an SNP map presently populated by nearly 300 markers that will greatly accelerate the positional cloning of genes.

  13. Automatic extraction of gene ontology annotation and its correlation with clusters in protein networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mazo Ilya

    2007-07-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Uncovering cellular roles of a protein is a task of tremendous importance and complexity that requires dedicated experimental work as well as often sophisticated data mining and processing tools. Protein functions, often referred to as its annotations, are believed to manifest themselves through topology of the networks of inter-proteins interactions. In particular, there is a growing body of evidence that proteins performing the same function are more likely to interact with each other than with proteins with other functions. However, since functional annotation and protein network topology are often studied separately, the direct relationship between them has not been comprehensively demonstrated. In addition to having the general biological significance, such demonstration would further validate the data extraction and processing methods used to compose protein annotation and protein-protein interactions datasets. Results We developed a method for automatic extraction of protein functional annotation from scientific text based on the Natural Language Processing (NLP technology. For the protein annotation extracted from the entire PubMed, we evaluated the precision and recall rates, and compared the performance of the automatic extraction technology to that of manual curation used in public Gene Ontology (GO annotation. In the second part of our presentation, we reported a large-scale investigation into the correspondence between communities in the literature-based protein networks and GO annotation groups of functionally related proteins. We found a comprehensive two-way match: proteins within biological annotation groups form significantly denser linked network clusters than expected by chance and, conversely, densely linked network communities exhibit a pronounced non-random overlap with GO groups. We also expanded the publicly available GO biological process annotation using the relations extracted by our NLP technology

  14. Recognition of Learner's Personality Traits through Digital Annotations in Distance Learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Omheni, Nizar; Kalboussi, Anis; Mazhoud, Omar; Kacem, Ahmed Hadj

    2017-01-01

    Researchers in distance education are interested in observing and modelling of learner's personality profile, and adapting their learning experiences accordingly. When learners read and interact with their reading materials, they do unselfconscious activities like annotation which may be a key feature of their personalities. Annotation activity…

  15. Metab2MeSH: annotating compounds with medical subject headings.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sartor, Maureen A; Ade, Alex; Wright, Zach; States, David; Omenn, Gilbert S; Athey, Brian; Karnovsky, Alla

    2012-05-15

    Progress in high-throughput genomic technologies has led to the development of a variety of resources that link genes to functional information contained in the biomedical literature. However, tools attempting to link small molecules to normal and diseased physiology and published data relevant to biologists and clinical investigators, are still lacking. With metabolomics rapidly emerging as a new omics field, the task of annotating small molecule metabolites becomes highly relevant. Our tool Metab2MeSH uses a statistical approach to reliably and automatically annotate compounds with concepts defined in Medical Subject Headings, and the National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary for biomedical concepts. These annotations provide links from compounds to biomedical literature and complement existing resources such as PubChem and the Human Metabolome Database.

  16. Annotating breast cancer microarray samples using ontologies

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Hongfang; Li, Xin; Yoon, Victoria; Clarke, Robert

    2008-01-01

    As the most common cancer among women, breast cancer results from the accumulation of mutations in essential genes. Recent advance in high-throughput gene expression microarray technology has inspired researchers to use the technology to assist breast cancer diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment prediction. However, the high dimensionality of microarray experiments and public access of data from many experiments have caused inconsistencies which initiated the development of controlled terminologies and ontologies for annotating microarray experiments, such as the standard microarray Gene Expression Data (MGED) ontology (MO). In this paper, we developed BCM-CO, an ontology tailored specifically for indexing clinical annotations of breast cancer microarray samples from the NCI Thesaurus. Our research showed that the coverage of NCI Thesaurus is very limited with respect to i) terms used by researchers to describe breast cancer histology (covering 22 out of 48 histology terms); ii) breast cancer cell lines (covering one out of 12 cell lines); and iii) classes corresponding to the breast cancer grading and staging. By incorporating a wider range of those terms into BCM-CO, we were able to indexed breast cancer microarray samples from GEO using BCM-CO and MGED ontology and developed a prototype system with web interface that allows the retrieval of microarray data based on the ontology annotations. PMID:18999108

  17. Assessing Embodied Energy and Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Infrastructure Projects

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jan Krantz

    2015-10-01

    Full Text Available Greenhouse gas (GHG emissions from construction processes are a serious concern globally. Of the several approaches taken to assess emissions, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA based methods do not just take into account the construction phase, but consider all phases of the life cycle of the construction. However, many current LCA approaches make general assumptions regarding location and effects, which do not do justice to the inherent dynamics of normal construction projects. This study presents a model to assess the embodied energy and associated GHG emissions, which is specifically adapted to address the dynamics of infrastructure construction projects. The use of the model is demonstrated on the superstructure of a prefabricated bridge. The findings indicate that Building Information Models/Modeling (BIM and Discrete Event Simulation (DES can be used to efficiently generate project-specific data, which is needed for estimating the embodied energy and associated GHG emissions in construction settings. This study has implications for the advancement of LCA-based methods (as well as project management as a way of assessing embodied energy and associated GHG emissions related to construction.

  18. Combining gene prediction methods to improve metagenomic gene annotation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rosen Gail L

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Traditional gene annotation methods rely on characteristics that may not be available in short reads generated from next generation technology, resulting in suboptimal performance for metagenomic (environmental samples. Therefore, in recent years, new programs have been developed that optimize performance on short reads. In this work, we benchmark three metagenomic gene prediction programs and combine their predictions to improve metagenomic read gene annotation. Results We not only analyze the programs' performance at different read-lengths like similar studies, but also separate different types of reads, including intra- and intergenic regions, for analysis. The main deficiencies are in the algorithms' ability to predict non-coding regions and gene edges, resulting in more false-positives and false-negatives than desired. In fact, the specificities of the algorithms are notably worse than the sensitivities. By combining the programs' predictions, we show significant improvement in specificity at minimal cost to sensitivity, resulting in 4% improvement in accuracy for 100 bp reads with ~1% improvement in accuracy for 200 bp reads and above. To correctly annotate the start and stop of the genes, we find that a consensus of all the predictors performs best for shorter read lengths while a unanimous agreement is better for longer read lengths, boosting annotation accuracy by 1-8%. We also demonstrate use of the classifier combinations on a real dataset. Conclusions To optimize the performance for both prediction and annotation accuracies, we conclude that the consensus of all methods (or a majority vote is the best for reads 400 bp and shorter, while using the intersection of GeneMark and Orphelia predictions is the best for reads 500 bp and longer. We demonstrate that most methods predict over 80% coding (including partially coding reads on a real human gut sample sequenced by Illumina technology.

  19. NegGOA: negative GO annotations selection using ontology structure.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fu, Guangyuan; Wang, Jun; Yang, Bo; Yu, Guoxian

    2016-10-01

    Predicting the biological functions of proteins is one of the key challenges in the post-genomic era. Computational models have demonstrated the utility of applying machine learning methods to predict protein function. Most prediction methods explicitly require a set of negative examples-proteins that are known not carrying out a particular function. However, Gene Ontology (GO) almost always only provides the knowledge that proteins carry out a particular function, and functional annotations of proteins are incomplete. GO structurally organizes more than tens of thousands GO terms and a protein is annotated with several (or dozens) of these terms. For these reasons, the negative examples of a protein can greatly help distinguishing true positive examples of the protein from such a large candidate GO space. In this paper, we present a novel approach (called NegGOA) to select negative examples. Specifically, NegGOA takes advantage of the ontology structure, available annotations and potentiality of additional annotations of a protein to choose negative examples of the protein. We compare NegGOA with other negative examples selection algorithms and find that NegGOA produces much fewer false negatives than them. We incorporate the selected negative examples into an efficient function prediction model to predict the functions of proteins in Yeast, Human, Mouse and Fly. NegGOA also demonstrates improved accuracy than these comparing algorithms across various evaluation metrics. In addition, NegGOA is less suffered from incomplete annotations of proteins than these comparing methods. The Matlab and R codes are available at https://sites.google.com/site/guoxian85/neggoa gxyu@swu.edu.cn Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  20. Guidelines for visualizing and annotating rule-based models†

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chylek, Lily A.; Hu, Bin; Blinov, Michael L.; Emonet, Thierry; Faeder, James R.; Goldstein, Byron; Gutenkunst, Ryan N.; Haugh, Jason M.; Lipniacki, Tomasz; Posner, Richard G.; Yang, Jin; Hlavacek, William S.

    2011-01-01

    Rule-based modeling provides a means to represent cell signaling systems in a way that captures site-specific details of molecular interactions. For rule-based models to be more widely understood and (re)used, conventions for model visualization and annotation are needed. We have developed the concepts of an extended contact map and a model guide for illustrating and annotating rule-based models. An extended contact map represents the scope of a model by providing an illustration of each molecule, molecular component, direct physical interaction, post-translational modification, and enzyme-substrate relationship considered in a model. A map can also illustrate allosteric effects, structural relationships among molecular components, and compartmental locations of molecules. A model guide associates elements of a contact map with annotation and elements of an underlying model, which may be fully or partially specified. A guide can also serve to document the biological knowledge upon which a model is based. We provide examples of a map and guide for a published rule-based model that characterizes early events in IgE receptor (FcεRI) signaling. We also provide examples of how to visualize a variety of processes that are common in cell signaling systems but not considered in the example model, such as ubiquitination. An extended contact map and an associated guide can document knowledge of a cell signaling system in a form that is visual as well as executable. As a tool for model annotation, a map and guide can communicate the content of a model clearly and with precision, even for large models. PMID:21647530

  1. Guidelines for visualizing and annotating rule-based models.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chylek, Lily A; Hu, Bin; Blinov, Michael L; Emonet, Thierry; Faeder, James R; Goldstein, Byron; Gutenkunst, Ryan N; Haugh, Jason M; Lipniacki, Tomasz; Posner, Richard G; Yang, Jin; Hlavacek, William S

    2011-10-01

    Rule-based modeling provides a means to represent cell signaling systems in a way that captures site-specific details of molecular interactions. For rule-based models to be more widely understood and (re)used, conventions for model visualization and annotation are needed. We have developed the concepts of an extended contact map and a model guide for illustrating and annotating rule-based models. An extended contact map represents the scope of a model by providing an illustration of each molecule, molecular component, direct physical interaction, post-translational modification, and enzyme-substrate relationship considered in a model. A map can also illustrate allosteric effects, structural relationships among molecular components, and compartmental locations of molecules. A model guide associates elements of a contact map with annotation and elements of an underlying model, which may be fully or partially specified. A guide can also serve to document the biological knowledge upon which a model is based. We provide examples of a map and guide for a published rule-based model that characterizes early events in IgE receptor (FcεRI) signaling. We also provide examples of how to visualize a variety of processes that are common in cell signaling systems but not considered in the example model, such as ubiquitination. An extended contact map and an associated guide can document knowledge of a cell signaling system in a form that is visual as well as executable. As a tool for model annotation, a map and guide can communicate the content of a model clearly and with precision, even for large models.

  2. Djeen (Database for Joomla!’s Extensible Engine): a research information management system for flexible multi-technology project administration

    Science.gov (United States)

    2013-01-01

    Background With the advance of post-genomic technologies, the need for tools to manage large scale data in biology becomes more pressing. This involves annotating and storing data securely, as well as granting permissions flexibly with several technologies (all array types, flow cytometry, proteomics) for collaborative work and data sharing. This task is not easily achieved with most systems available today. Findings We developed Djeen (Database for Joomla!’s Extensible Engine), a new Research Information Management System (RIMS) for collaborative projects. Djeen is a user-friendly application, designed to streamline data storage and annotation collaboratively. Its database model, kept simple, is compliant with most technologies and allows storing and managing of heterogeneous data with the same system. Advanced permissions are managed through different roles. Templates allow Minimum Information (MI) compliance. Conclusion Djeen allows managing project associated with heterogeneous data types while enforcing annotation integrity and minimum information. Projects are managed within a hierarchy and user permissions are finely-grained for each project, user and group. Djeen Component source code (version 1.5.1) and installation documentation are available under CeCILL license from http://sourceforge.net/projects/djeen/files and supplementary material. PMID:23742665

  3. Learning pathology using collaborative vs. individual annotation of whole slide images: a mixed methods trial.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sahota, Michael; Leung, Betty; Dowdell, Stephanie; Velan, Gary M

    2016-12-12

    Students in biomedical disciplines require understanding of normal and abnormal microscopic appearances of human tissues (histology and histopathology). For this purpose, practical classes in these disciplines typically use virtual microscopy, viewing digitised whole slide images in web browsers. To enhance engagement, tools have been developed to enable individual or collaborative annotation of whole slide images within web browsers. To date, there have been no studies that have critically compared the impact on learning of individual and collaborative annotations on whole slide images. Junior and senior students engaged in Pathology practical classes within Medical Science and Medicine programs participated in cross-over trials of individual and collaborative annotation activities. Students' understanding of microscopic morphology was compared using timed online quizzes, while students' perceptions of learning were evaluated using an online questionnaire. For senior medical students, collaborative annotation of whole slide images was superior for understanding key microscopic features when compared to individual annotation; whilst being at least equivalent to individual annotation for junior medical science students. Across cohorts, students agreed that the annotation activities provided a user-friendly learning environment that met their flexible learning needs, improved efficiency, provided useful feedback, and helped them to set learning priorities. Importantly, these activities were also perceived to enhance motivation and improve understanding. Collaborative annotation improves understanding of microscopic morphology for students with sufficient background understanding of the discipline. These findings have implications for the deployment of annotation activities in biomedical curricula, and potentially for postgraduate training in Anatomical Pathology.

  4. Iterative performance assessments as a regulatory tool for evaluating repository safety: How experiences from SKI Project-90 were used in formulating the new performance assessment project SITE-94

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Andersson, J.

    1993-01-01

    The Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate, SKI, regulatory research program has to prepare for the process of licensing a repository for spent nuclear fuel, by building up the necessary knowledge and review capacity. SKIs main strategy for meeting this demand is to develop an independent performance assessment capability. SKIs first own performance assessment project, Project-90, was completed in 1991 and is now followed by a new project, SITE-94. SITE-94 is based on conclusions reached within Project-90. An independent review of Project-90, carried out by a NEA team of experts, has also contributed to the formation of the project. Another important reason for the project is that the implementing organization in Sweden, SKB, has proposed to submit an application to start detailed investigation of a repository candidate site around 1997. SITE-94 is a performance assessment of a hypothetical repository at a real site. The main objective of the project is to determine how site specific data should be assimilated into the performance assessment process, and to evaluate how uncertainties inherent in site characterization will influence performance assessment results. This will be addressed by exploring multiple interpretations, conceptual models, and parameters consistent with the site data. The site evaluation will strive for consistency between geological, hydrological, rock mechanical, and geochemical descriptions. Other important elements of SITE-94 are the development of a practical and defensible methodology for defining, constructing and analyzing scenarios, the development of approaches for treatment of uncertainties, evaluation of canister integrity, and the development and application of an appropriate quality assurance plan for performance assessments

  5. Evaluation of Three Automated Genome Annotations for Halorhabdus utahensis

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Bakke, Peter; Carney, Nick; DeLoache, Will

    2009-01-01

    in databases such as NCBI and used to validate subsequent annotation errors. We submitted the genome sequence of halophilic archaeon Halorhabdus utahensis to be analyzed by three genome annotation services. We have examined the output from each service in a variety of ways in order to compare the methodology...

  6. SPI Project Criticality Task Force initial review and assessment

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    McKinley, K.B.; Cannon, J.W.; Marsden, R.S.; Worle, H.A.

    1980-03-01

    The Slagging Pyrolysis Incinerator (SPI) Facility is being developed to process transuranic waste stored and buried at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL) into a chemically inert, physically stable, basalt-like residue acceptable for a Federal Repository. A task force was established by the SPI Project Division to review and assess all aspects of criticality safety for the SPI Facility. This document presents the initial review, evaluations, and recommendations of the task force and includes the following: background information on waste characterization, and criticality control approaches and philosophies, a description of the SPI Facility Waste Processing Building, a review and assessment of potentially relevant codes and regulations; a review and assessment of the present state of criticality and assaying/monitoring studies, and recommendations for changes in and additions to these studies. The review and assessment of potentially relevant codes and regulations indicate that ERDAM 0530, Nuclear Criticality Safety should be the controlling document for criticality safety for the SPI Project. In general, the criticality control approaches and philosophies for the SPI Project comply with this document

  7. Carroll County Competency Based Teacher Certification Project. Librarian's Report.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Coker, Homer; Coker, Joan G.

    Reference materials, slides, cassettes, books, pamphlets, materials from other states, and articles used in the Carroll County, Georgia, Competency Based Teacher Certification Project, 1973-74, are listed. Brief annotations are included for both the reference materials and articles. (MJM)

  8. Project assessment for construction of new nuclear facility

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    2013-01-01

    Project risk management is an important and integral part of project and quality management. It is also a key part of the due diligence process in making informed project decisions where in addition to the qualitative assessments quantitative ones shall be used to the extend practical. As part of the risk management process, risk identification, evaluation and mitigation must be an on-going activity at senior management levels throughout the planning, design, construction and commissioning phases of a new NPP

  9. Feeling Expression Using Avatars and Its Consistency for Subjective Annotation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ito, Fuyuko; Sasaki, Yasunari; Hiroyasu, Tomoyuki; Miki, Mitsunori

    Consumer Generated Media(CGM) is growing rapidly and the amount of content is increasing. However, it is often difficult for users to extract important contents and the existence of contents recording their experiences can easily be forgotten. As there are no methods or systems to indicate the subjective value of the contents or ways to reuse them, subjective annotation appending subjectivity, such as feelings and intentions, to contents is needed. Representation of subjectivity depends on not only verbal expression, but also nonverbal expression. Linguistically expressed annotation, typified by collaborative tagging in social bookmarking systems, has come into widespread use, but there is no system of nonverbally expressed annotation on the web. We propose the utilization of controllable avatars as a means of nonverbal expression of subjectivity, and confirmed the consistency of feelings elicited by avatars over time for an individual and in a group. In addition, we compared the expressiveness and ease of subjective annotation between collaborative tagging and controllable avatars. The result indicates that the feelings evoked by avatars are consistent in both cases, and using controllable avatars is easier than collaborative tagging for representing feelings elicited by contents that do not express meaning, such as photos.

  10. Chemical annotation of small and peptide-like molecules at the Protein Data Bank

    Science.gov (United States)

    Young, Jasmine Y.; Feng, Zukang; Dimitropoulos, Dimitris; Sala, Raul; Westbrook, John; Zhuravleva, Marina; Shao, Chenghua; Quesada, Martha; Peisach, Ezra; Berman, Helen M.

    2013-01-01

    Over the past decade, the number of polymers and their complexes with small molecules in the Protein Data Bank archive (PDB) has continued to increase significantly. To support scientific advancements and ensure the best quality and completeness of the data files over the next 10 years and beyond, the Worldwide PDB partnership that manages the PDB archive is developing a new deposition and annotation system. This system focuses on efficient data capture across all supported experimental methods. The new deposition and annotation system is composed of four major modules that together support all of the processing requirements for a PDB entry. In this article, we describe one such module called the Chemical Component Annotation Tool. This tool uses information from both the Chemical Component Dictionary and Biologically Interesting molecule Reference Dictionary to aid in annotation. Benchmark studies have shown that the Chemical Component Annotation Tool provides significant improvements in processing efficiency and data quality. Database URL: http://wwpdb.org PMID:24291661

  11. Assessment of Transport Projects: Risk Analysis and Decision Support

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Salling, Kim Bang

    2008-01-01

    functions. New research proved that specifically two impacts stood out in transport project assessment, namely, travel time savings and construction costs. The final concern of this study has been the fitting of distributions, e.g. by the use of data from major databases developed in which Optimism Bias...... choosing probability distributions and performing real term data fits. The perspective of this Ph.D. study presents newer and better understanding of assigning risks within assessment of transport projects....

  12. ANNOTATION SUPPORTED OCCLUDED OBJECT TRACKING

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Devinder Kumar

    2012-08-01

    Full Text Available Tracking occluded objects at different depths has become as extremely important component of study for any video sequence having wide applications in object tracking, scene recognition, coding, editing the videos and mosaicking. The paper studies the ability of annotation to track the occluded object based on pyramids with variation in depth further establishing a threshold at which the ability of the system to track the occluded object fails. Image annotation is applied on 3 similar video sequences varying in depth. In the experiment, one bike occludes the other at a depth of 60cm, 80cm and 100cm respectively. Another experiment is performed on tracking humans with similar depth to authenticate the results. The paper also computes the frame by frame error incurred by the system, supported by detailed simulations. This system can be effectively used to analyze the error in motion tracking and further correcting the error leading to flawless tracking. This can be of great interest to computer scientists while designing surveillance systems etc.

  13. Genome sequencing and annotation of multidrug resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MDR-TB PR10 strain

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mohd Zakihalani A. Halim

    2016-03-01

    Full Text Available Here, we report the draft genome sequence and annotation of a multidrug resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis strain PR10 (MDR-TB PR10 isolated from a patient diagnosed with tuberculosis. The size of the draft genome MDR-TB PR10 is 4.34 Mbp with 65.6% of G + C content and consists of 4637 predicted genes. The determinants were categorized by RAST into 400 subsystems with 4286 coding sequences and 50 RNAs. The whole genome shotgun project has been deposited at DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank under the accession number CP010968. Keywords: Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Genome, MDR, Extrapulmonary

  14. Laughter annotations in conversational speech corpora - possibilities and limitations for phonetic analysis

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Truong, Khiet Phuong; Trouvain, Jürgen

    Existing laughter annotations provided with several publicly available conversational speech corpora (both multiparty and dyadic conversations) were investigated and compared. We discuss the possibilities and limitations of these rather coarse and shallow laughter annotations. There are definition

  15. BIOCAT: a pattern recognition platform for customizable biological image classification and annotation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhou, Jie; Lamichhane, Santosh; Sterne, Gabriella; Ye, Bing; Peng, Hanchuan

    2013-10-04

    Pattern recognition algorithms are useful in bioimage informatics applications such as quantifying cellular and subcellular objects, annotating gene expressions, and classifying phenotypes. To provide effective and efficient image classification and annotation for the ever-increasing microscopic images, it is desirable to have tools that can combine and compare various algorithms, and build customizable solution for different biological problems. However, current tools often offer a limited solution in generating user-friendly and extensible tools for annotating higher dimensional images that correspond to multiple complicated categories. We develop the BIOimage Classification and Annotation Tool (BIOCAT). It is able to apply pattern recognition algorithms to two- and three-dimensional biological image sets as well as regions of interest (ROIs) in individual images for automatic classification and annotation. We also propose a 3D anisotropic wavelet feature extractor for extracting textural features from 3D images with xy-z resolution disparity. The extractor is one of the about 20 built-in algorithms of feature extractors, selectors and classifiers in BIOCAT. The algorithms are modularized so that they can be "chained" in a customizable way to form adaptive solution for various problems, and the plugin-based extensibility gives the tool an open architecture to incorporate future algorithms. We have applied BIOCAT to classification and annotation of images and ROIs of different properties with applications in cell biology and neuroscience. BIOCAT provides a user-friendly, portable platform for pattern recognition based biological image classification of two- and three- dimensional images and ROIs. We show, via diverse case studies, that different algorithms and their combinations have different suitability for various problems. The customizability of BIOCAT is thus expected to be useful for providing effective and efficient solutions for a variety of biological

  16. PANDA: pathway and annotation explorer for visualizing and interpreting gene-centric data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hart, Steven N; Moore, Raymond M; Zimmermann, Michael T; Oliver, Gavin R; Egan, Jan B; Bryce, Alan H; Kocher, Jean-Pierre A

    2015-01-01

    Objective. Bringing together genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and other -omics technologies is an important step towards developing highly personalized medicine. However, instrumentation has advances far beyond expectations and now we are able to generate data faster than it can be interpreted. Materials and Methods. We have developed PANDA (Pathway AND Annotation) Explorer, a visualization tool that integrates gene-level annotation in the context of biological pathways to help interpret complex data from disparate sources. PANDA is a web-based application that displays data in the context of well-studied pathways like KEGG, BioCarta, and PharmGKB. PANDA represents data/annotations as icons in the graph while maintaining the other data elements (i.e., other columns for the table of annotations). Custom pathways from underrepresented diseases can be imported when existing data sources are inadequate. PANDA also allows sharing annotations among collaborators. Results. In our first use case, we show how easy it is to view supplemental data from a manuscript in the context of a user's own data. Another use-case is provided describing how PANDA was leveraged to design a treatment strategy from the somatic variants found in the tumor of a patient with metastatic sarcomatoid renal cell carcinoma. Conclusion. PANDA facilitates the interpretation of gene-centric annotations by visually integrating this information with context of biological pathways. The application can be downloaded or used directly from our website: http://bioinformaticstools.mayo.edu/research/panda-viewer/.

  17. Application of whole slide image markup and annotation for pathologist knowledge capture.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Campbell, Walter S; Foster, Kirk W; Hinrichs, Steven H

    2013-01-01

    The ability to transfer image markup and annotation data from one scanned image of a slide to a newly acquired image of the same slide within a single vendor platform was investigated. The goal was to study the ability to use image markup and annotation data files as a mechanism to capture and retain pathologist knowledge without retaining the entire whole slide image (WSI) file. Accepted mathematical principles were investigated as a method to overcome variations in scans of the same glass slide and to accurately associate image markup and annotation data across different WSI of the same glass slide. Trilateration was used to link fixed points within the image and slide to the placement of markups and annotations of the image in a metadata file. Variation in markup and annotation placement between WSI of the same glass slide was reduced from over 80 μ to less than 4 μ in the x-axis and from 17 μ to 6 μ in the y-axis (P < 0.025). This methodology allows for the creation of a highly reproducible image library of histopathology images and interpretations for educational and research use.

  18. Transcript-level annotation of Affymetrix probesets improves the interpretation of gene expression data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tu Kang

    2007-06-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background The wide use of Affymetrix microarray in broadened fields of biological research has made the probeset annotation an important issue. Standard Affymetrix probeset annotation is at gene level, i.e. a probeset is precisely linked to a gene, and probeset intensity is interpreted as gene expression. The increased knowledge that one gene may have multiple transcript variants clearly brings up the necessity of updating this gene-level annotation to a refined transcript-level. Results Through performing rigorous alignments of the Affymetrix probe sequences against a comprehensive pool of currently available transcript sequences, and further linking the probesets to the International Protein Index, we generated transcript-level or protein-level annotation tables for two popular Affymetrix expression arrays, Mouse Genome 430A 2.0 Array and Human Genome U133A Array. Application of our new annotations in re-examining existing expression data sets shows increased expression consistency among synonymous probesets and strengthened expression correlation between interacting proteins. Conclusion By refining the standard Affymetrix annotation of microarray probesets from the gene level to the transcript level and protein level, one can achieve a more reliable interpretation of their experimental data, which may lead to discovery of more profound regulatory mechanism.

  19. Special Project Grants Awarded for Improvement in Nurse Training. A Listing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    National Institutes of Health (DHEW), Bethesda, MD. Div. of Nursing.

    This current directory lists alphabetically by state, special projects funded by the Title II Nurse Training Act of the Health Manpower Act of 1968, which are awarded for improvement programs in nurse training. Projects funded through June 1971 are listed and briefly annotated, including planning grants awarded for the first time during the fiscal…

  20. Processing sequence annotation data using the Lua programming language.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ueno, Yutaka; Arita, Masanori; Kumagai, Toshitaka; Asai, Kiyoshi

    2003-01-01

    The data processing language in a graphical software tool that manages sequence annotation data from genome databases should provide flexible functions for the tasks in molecular biology research. Among currently available languages we adopted the Lua programming language. It fulfills our requirements to perform computational tasks for sequence map layouts, i.e. the handling of data containers, symbolic reference to data, and a simple programming syntax. Upon importing a foreign file, the original data are first decomposed in the Lua language while maintaining the original data schema. The converted data are parsed by the Lua interpreter and the contents are stored in our data warehouse. Then, portions of annotations are selected and arranged into our catalog format to be depicted on the sequence map. Our sequence visualization program was successfully implemented, embedding the Lua language for processing of annotation data and layout script. The program is available at http://staff.aist.go.jp/yutaka.ueno/guppy/.

  1. A Linked Data-Based Collaborative Annotation System for Increasing Learning Achievements

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zarzour, Hafed; Sellami, Mokhtar

    2017-01-01

    With the emergence of the Web 2.0, collaborative annotation practices have become more mature in the field of learning. In this context, several recent studies have shown the powerful effects of the integration of annotation mechanism in learning process. However, most of these studies provide poor support for semantically structured resources,…

  2. Climate Change in Environmental Impact Assessment of Renewable Energy Projects

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Larsen, Sanne Vammen

    2012-01-01

    Many renewable energy projects are subject to EIA. However a question that surfaces is what use an impact assessment is when the project is ‘good for the environment’? One of the current topics receiving much attention in impact assessment is climate change and how this factor is integrated...... in impact assessments. This warrants the question: How do we assess the climate change related impacts of a project that inherently has a positive effect on climate? This paper is based on a document study of EIA reports from Denmark. The results show that climate change is included in most of the EIA...... reports reviewed, and that only climate change mitigation is in focus while adaptation is absent. Also the results point to focus on positive impacts, while the indirect negative impacts are less apparent. This leads to a discussion of the results in the light of the purpose of EIA....

  3. AIGO: Towards a unified framework for the Analysis and the Inter-comparison of GO functional annotations

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Defoin-Platel Michael

    2011-11-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background In response to the rapid growth of available genome sequences, efforts have been made to develop automatic inference methods to functionally characterize them. Pipelines that infer functional annotation are now routinely used to produce new annotations at a genome scale and for a broad variety of species. These pipelines differ widely in their inference algorithms, confidence thresholds and data sources for reasoning. This heterogeneity makes a comparison of the relative merits of each approach extremely complex. The evaluation of the quality of the resultant annotations is also challenging given there is often no existing gold-standard against which to evaluate precision and recall. Results In this paper, we present a pragmatic approach to the study of functional annotations. An ensemble of 12 metrics, describing various aspects of functional annotations, is defined and implemented in a unified framework, which facilitates their systematic analysis and inter-comparison. The use of this framework is demonstrated on three illustrative examples: analysing the outputs of state-of-the-art inference pipelines, comparing electronic versus manual annotation methods, and monitoring the evolution of publicly available functional annotations. The framework is part of the AIGO library (http://code.google.com/p/aigo for the Analysis and the Inter-comparison of the products of Gene Ontology (GO annotation pipelines. The AIGO library also provides functionalities to easily load, analyse, manipulate and compare functional annotations and also to plot and export the results of the analysis in various formats. Conclusions This work is a step toward developing a unified framework for the systematic study of GO functional annotations. This framework has been designed so that new metrics on GO functional annotations can be added in a very straightforward way.

  4. Promoting Health Literacy through the Health Education Assessment Project

    Science.gov (United States)

    Marx, Eva; Hudson, Nancy; Deal, Tami B.; Pateman, Beth; Middleton, Kathleen

    2007-01-01

    Background: The Council of Chief State School Officers' State Collaborative on Assessment and Student Standards Health Education Assessment Project (SCASS-HEAP) allows states to pool financial and human resources to develop effective ready-to-use health education assessment resources through a collaborative process. The purpose of this article is…

  5. Saint: a lightweight integration environment for model annotation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lister, Allyson L; Pocock, Matthew; Taschuk, Morgan; Wipat, Anil

    2009-11-15

    Saint is a web application which provides a lightweight annotation integration environment for quantitative biological models. The system enables modellers to rapidly mark up models with biological information derived from a range of data sources. Saint is freely available for use on the web at http://www.cisban.ac.uk/saint. The web application is implemented in Google Web Toolkit and Tomcat, with all major browsers supported. The Java source code is freely available for download at http://saint-annotate.sourceforge.net. The Saint web server requires an installation of libSBML and has been tested on Linux (32-bit Ubuntu 8.10 and 9.04).

  6. Concepts, Operations, and Feasibility of a Projection-Based Variation Control System

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Stanciulescu, Stefan; Berger, Thorsten; Walkingshaw, Eric

    2016-01-01

    on a subset of all variants could ease the engineering of highly configurable software. We investigate the potential of one kind of such tools: projection-based variation control systems. For such systems we aim to understand: (i) what end-user operations they need to support, and (ii) whether they can...... realize the actual evolution of real-world, highly configurable software. We conduct an experiment that investigates variability-related evolution patterns and that evaluates the feasibility of a projection-based variation control system by replaying parts of the history of a highly configurable real......Highly configurable software often uses preproces- sor annotations to handle variability. However, understanding, maintaining, and evolving code with such annotations is difficult, mainly because a developer has to work with all variants at a time. Dedicated methods and tools that allow working...

  7. How Viral Poems are Annotated : On ‘OCD’ by Neil Hilborn

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van der Starre, K.A.

    2015-01-01

    In How Viral Poems are Annotated: On ‘OCD’ by Neil Hilborn Kila van der Starre explores how, where and by whom viral poems are annotated. The article focuses on the performance of the poem ‘OCD’ by Neil Hilborn that went viral in the summer of 2013 and has been viewed more than 10 million times on

  8. ESTIMA, a tool for EST management in a multi-project environment

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lewin Harris A

    2004-11-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Single-pass, partial sequencing of complementary DNA (cDNA libraries generates thousands of chromatograms that are processed into high quality expressed sequence tags (ESTs, and then assembled into contigs representative of putative genes. Usually, to be of value, ESTs and contigs must be associated with meaningful annotations, and made available to end-users. Results A web application, Expressed Sequence Tag Information Management and Annotation (ESTIMA, has been created to meet the EST annotation and data management requirements of multiple high-throughput EST sequencing projects. It is anchored on individual ESTs and organized around different properties of ESTs including chromatograms, base-calling quality scores, structure of assembled transcripts, and multiple sources of comparison to infer functional annotation, Gene Ontology associations, and cDNA library information. ESTIMA consists of a relational database schema and a set of interactive query interfaces. These are integrated with a suite of web-based tools that allow a user to query and retrieve information. Further, query results are interconnected among the various EST properties. ESTIMA has several unique features. Users may run their own EST processing pipeline, search against preferred reference genomes, and use any clustering and assembly algorithm. The ESTIMA database schema is very flexible and accepts output from any EST processing and assembly pipeline. ESTIMA has been used for the management of EST projects of many species, including honeybee (Apis mellifera, cattle (Bos taurus, songbird (Taeniopygia guttata, corn rootworm (Diabrotica vergifera, catfish (Ictalurus punctatus, Ictalurus furcatus, and apple (Malus x domestica. The entire resource may be downloaded and used as is, or readily adapted to fit the unique needs of other cDNA sequencing projects. Conclusions The scripts used to create the ESTIMA interface are freely available to academic users in

  9. Expression profiling of hypothetical genes in Desulfovibrio vulgaris leads to improved functional annotation

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Elias, Dwayne A.; Mukhopadhyay, Aindrila; Joachimiak, Marcin P.; Drury, Elliott C.; Redding, Alyssa M.; Yen, Huei-Che B.; Fields, Matthew W.; Hazen, Terry C.; Arkin, Adam P.; Keasling, Jay D.; Wall, Judy D.

    2008-10-27

    Hypothetical and conserved hypothetical genes account for>30percent of sequenced bacterial genomes. For the sulfate-reducing bacterium Desulfovibrio vulgaris Hildenborough, 347 of the 3634 genes were annotated as conserved hypothetical (9.5percent) along with 887 hypothetical genes (24.4percent). Given the large fraction of the genome, it is plausible that some of these genes serve critical cellular roles. The study goals were to determine which genes were expressed and provide a more functionally based annotation. To accomplish this, expression profiles of 1234 hypothetical and conserved genes were used from transcriptomic datasets of 11 environmental stresses, complemented with shotgun LC-MS/MS and AMT tag proteomic data. Genes were divided into putatively polycistronic operons and those predicted to be monocistronic, then classified by basal expression levels and grouped according to changes in expression for one or multiple stresses. 1212 of these genes were transcribed with 786 producing detectable proteins. There was no evidence for expression of 17 predicted genes. Except for the latter, monocistronic gene annotation was expanded using the above criteria along with matching Clusters of Orthologous Groups. Polycistronic genes were annotated in the same manner with inferences from their proximity to more confidently annotated genes. Two targeted deletion mutants were used as test cases to determine the relevance of the inferred functional annotations.

  10. Legal Information Sources: An Annotated Bibliography.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Conner, Ronald C.

    This 25-page annotated bibliography describes the legal reference materials in the special collection of a medium-sized public library. Sources are listed in 12 categories: cases, dictionaries, directories, encyclopedias, forms, references for the lay person, general, indexes, laws and legislation, legal research aids, periodicals, and specialized…

  11. Just-in-time : on strategy annotations

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    J.C. van de Pol (Jaco)

    2001-01-01

    textabstractA simple kind of strategy annotations is investigated, giving rise to a class of strategies, including leftmost-innermost. It is shown that under certain restrictions, an interpreter can be written which computes the normal form of a term in a bottom-up traversal. The main contribution

  12. Snap: an integrated SNP annotation platform

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Li, Shengting; Ma, Lijia; Li, Heng

    2007-01-01

    Snap (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism Annotation Platform) is a server designed to comprehensively analyze single genes and relationships between genes basing on SNPs in the human genome. The aim of the platform is to facilitate the study of SNP finding and analysis within the framework of medical...

  13. Improved annotation through genome-scale metabolic modeling of Aspergillus oryzae

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Vongsangnak, Wanwipa; Olsen, Peter; Hansen, Kim

    2008-01-01

    Background: Since ancient times the filamentous fungus Aspergillus oryzae has been used in the fermentation industry for the production of fermented sauces and the production of industrial enzymes. Recently, the genome sequence of A. oryzae with 12,074 annotated genes was released but the number...... to a genome scale metabolic model of A. oryzae. Results: Our assembled EST sequences we identified 1,046 newly predicted genes in the A. oryzae genome. Furthermore, it was possible to assign putative protein functions to 398 of the newly predicted genes. Noteworthy, our annotation strategy resulted...... model was validated and shown to correctly describe the phenotypic behavior of A. oryzae grown on different carbon sources. Conclusion: A much enhanced annotation of the A. oryzae genome was performed and a genomescale metabolic model of A. oryzae was reconstructed. The model accurately predicted...

  14. Supporting Listening Comprehension and Vocabulary Acquisition with Multimedia Annotations: The Students' Voice.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jones, Linda C.

    2003-01-01

    Extends Mayer's (1997, 2001) generative theory of multimedia learning and investigates under what conditions multimedia annotations can support listening comprehension in a second language. Highlights students' views on the effectiveness of multimedia annotations (visual and verbal) in assisting them in their comprehension and acquisition of…

  15. dbCAN2: a meta server for automated carbohydrate-active enzyme annotation

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Zhang, Han; Yohe, Tanner; Huang, Le

    2018-01-01

    of plant and plant-associated microbial genomes and metagenomes being sequenced, there is an urgent need of automatic tools for genomic data mining of CAZymes. We developed the dbCAN web server in 2012 to provide a public service for automated CAZyme annotation for newly sequenced genomes. Here, dbCAN2...... (http://cys.bios.niu.edu/dbCAN2) is presented as an updated meta server, which integrates three state-of-the-art tools for CAZome (all CAZymes of a genome) annotation: (i) HMMER search against the dbCAN HMM (hidden Markov model) database; (ii) DIAMOND search against the CAZy pre-annotated CAZyme...

  16. GRADUATE AND PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION, AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY.

    Science.gov (United States)

    HEISS, ANN M.; AND OTHERS

    THIS ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY CONTAINS REFERENCES TO GENERAL GRADUATE EDUCATION AND TO EDUCATION FOR THE FOLLOWING PROFESSIONAL FIELDS--ARCHITECTURE, BUSINESS, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY, DENTISTRY, ENGINEERING, LAW, LIBRARY SCIENCE, MEDICINE, NURSING, SOCIAL WORK, TEACHING, AND THEOLOGY. (HW)

  17. AnnoLnc: a web server for systematically annotating novel human lncRNAs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hou, Mei; Tang, Xing; Tian, Feng; Shi, Fangyuan; Liu, Fenglin; Gao, Ge

    2016-11-16

    Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been shown to play essential roles in almost every important biological process through multiple mechanisms. Although the repertoire of human lncRNAs has rapidly expanded, their biological function and regulation remain largely elusive, calling for a systematic and integrative annotation tool. Here we present AnnoLnc ( http://annolnc.cbi.pku.edu.cn ), a one-stop portal for systematically annotating novel human lncRNAs. Based on more than 700 data sources and various tool chains, AnnoLnc enables a systematic annotation covering genomic location, secondary structure, expression patterns, transcriptional regulation, miRNA interaction, protein interaction, genetic association and evolution. An intuitive web interface is available for interactive analysis through both desktops and mobile devices, and programmers can further integrate AnnoLnc into their pipeline through standard JSON-based Web Service APIs. To the best of our knowledge, AnnoLnc is the only web server to provide on-the-fly and systematic annotation for newly identified human lncRNAs. Compared with similar tools, the annotation generated by AnnoLnc covers a much wider spectrum with intuitive visualization. Case studies demonstrate the power of AnnoLnc in not only rediscovering known functions of human lncRNAs but also inspiring novel hypotheses.

  18. Wuskwatim generation project : Canadian Environmental Assessment Act comprehensive study report

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    2005-10-01

    This study report described the plan by Manitoba Hydro and the Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation (NCN) to construct a new 200- megawatt (MW) generating station at Taskinigup Falls on the Burntwood River, near the outlet of Wuskwatim Lake. This hydroelectric power project will allow Manitoba Hydro to meet its projected energy needs within the next two decades as identified in its 2002/03 Power Resource Plan. It will also allow Manitoba Hydro and NCN to obtain additional export revenues and profits by advancing the in-service date of the Project from 2020 to 2009. A formal environmental assessment is required under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA) because Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) has determined that the Project would cause fish habitat losses requiring an authorization under the Fisheries Act. Many of the structures to be built in navigable waters would also require formal approval under the Navigable Waters Protection Act (NWPA), which has prompted this application of the CEAA. This environmental assessment report has been prepared by DFO in consultation with Transport Canada and other federal authorities concerned. It provides a summary of the Wuskwatim Generation Project and the environment in which it will be built and operated. In addition, the results of public consultations are discussed. It presents an assessment of the Project's influence on fish and fish habitat, birds, species at risk, human health (local air quality, quality of drinking water and consumption of fishery products), navigation, use of renewable resources, and current use of lands and resources for traditional purposes by Aboriginal persons (hunting, trapping, gathering, subsistence fishing and heritage sites). It was concluded that the proposed Project, as defined by the scope of the study, is not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects. 45 refs., 5 tabs., 13 figs., 3 appendices

  19. Effects of Annotations and Homework on Learning Achievement: An Empirical Study of Scratch Programming Pedagogy

    Science.gov (United States)

    Su, Addison Y. S.; Huang, Chester S. J.; Yang, Stephen J. H.; Ding, T. J.; Hsieh, Y. Z.

    2015-01-01

    In Taiwan elementary schools, Scratch programming has been taught for more than four years. Previous studies have shown that personal annotations is a useful learning method that improve learning performance. An annotation-based Scratch programming (ASP) system provides for the creation, share, and review of annotations and homework solutions in…

  20. Crowdsourcing image annotation for nucleus detection and segmentation in computational pathology: evaluating experts, automated methods, and the crowd.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Irshad, H; Montaser-Kouhsari, L; Waltz, G; Bucur, O; Nowak, J A; Dong, F; Knoblauch, N W; Beck, A H

    2015-01-01

    The development of tools in computational pathology to assist physicians and biomedical scientists in the diagnosis of disease requires access to high-quality annotated images for algorithm learning and evaluation. Generating high-quality expert-derived annotations is time-consuming and expensive. We explore the use of crowdsourcing for rapidly obtaining annotations for two core tasks in com- putational pathology: nucleus detection and nucleus segmentation. We designed and implemented crowdsourcing experiments using the CrowdFlower platform, which provides access to a large set of labor channel partners that accesses and manages millions of contributors worldwide. We obtained annotations from four types of annotators and compared concordance across these groups. We obtained: crowdsourced annotations for nucleus detection and segmentation on a total of 810 images; annotations using automated methods on 810 images; annotations from research fellows for detection and segmentation on 477 and 455 images, respectively; and expert pathologist-derived annotations for detection and segmentation on 80 and 63 images, respectively. For the crowdsourced annotations, we evaluated performance across a range of contributor skill levels (1, 2, or 3). The crowdsourced annotations (4,860 images in total) were completed in only a fraction of the time and cost required for obtaining annotations using traditional methods. For the nucleus detection task, the research fellow-derived annotations showed the strongest concordance with the expert pathologist- derived annotations (F-M =93.68%), followed by the crowd-sourced contributor levels 1,2, and 3 and the automated method, which showed relatively similar performance (F-M = 87.84%, 88.49%, 87.26%, and 86.99%, respectively). For the nucleus segmentation task, the crowdsourced contributor level 3-derived annotations, research fellow-derived annotations, and automated method showed the strongest concordance with the expert pathologist

  1. Malingering dissociative identity disorder: objective and projective assessment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Labott, Susan M; Wallach, Heather R

    2002-04-01

    Verification of dissociative identity disorder presents challenges given the complex nature of the illness. This study addressed the concern that this disorder can be successfully malingered on objective and projective psychological tests. 50 undergraduate women were assigned to a Malingering or a Control condition, then completed the Rorschach Inkblot Test and the Dissociative Experiences Scale II. The Malingering group were asked to simulate dissociative identity disorder; controls received instructions to answer all materials honestly. Analysis indicated that malingerers were significantly more likely to endorse dissociative experiences on the Dissociative Experiences Scale II in the range common to patients with diagnosed dissociative identity disorder. However, on the Rorschach there were no significant differences between the two groups. Results suggest that the assessment of dissociative identity disorder requires a multifaceted approach with both objective and projective assessment tools. Research is needed to assess these issues in clinical populations.

  2. Towards the VWO Annotation Service: a Success Story of the IMAGE RPI Expert Rating System

    Science.gov (United States)

    Reinisch, B. W.; Galkin, I. A.; Fung, S. F.; Benson, R. F.; Kozlov, A. V.; Khmyrov, G. M.; Garcia, L. N.

    2010-12-01

    Interpretation of Heliophysics wave data requires specialized knowledge of wave phenomena. Users of the virtual wave observatory (VWO) will greatly benefit from a data annotation service that will allow querying of data by phenomenon type, thus helping accomplish the VWO goal to make Heliophysics wave data searchable, understandable, and usable by the scientific community. Individual annotations can be sorted by phenomenon type and reduced into event lists (catalogs). However, in contrast to the event lists, annotation records allow a greater flexibility of collaborative management by more easily admitting operations of addition, revision, or deletion. They can therefore become the building blocks for an interactive Annotation Service with a suitable graphic user interface to the VWO middleware. The VWO Annotation Service vision is an interactive, collaborative sharing of domain expert knowledge with fellow scientists and students alike. An effective prototype of the VWO Annotation Service has been in operation at the University of Massachusetts Lowell since 2001. An expert rating system (ERS) was developed for annotating the IMAGE radio plasma imager (RPI) active sounding data containing 1.2 million plasmagrams. The RPI data analysts can use ERS to submit expert ratings of plasmagram features, such as presence of echo traces resulted from reflected RPI signals from distant plasma structures. Since its inception in 2001, the RPI ERS has accumulated 7351 expert plasmagram ratings in 16 phenomenon categories, together with free-text descriptions and other metadata. In addition to human expert ratings, the system holds 225,125 ratings submitted by the CORPRAL data prospecting software that employs a model of the human pre-attentive vision to select images potentially containing interesting features. The annotation records proved to be instrumental in a number of investigations where manual data exploration would have been prohibitively tedious and expensive

  3. Skin Cancer Education Materials: Selected Annotations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    National Cancer Inst. (NIH), Bethesda, MD.

    This annotated bibliography presents 85 entries on a variety of approaches to cancer education. The entries are grouped under three broad headings, two of which contain smaller sub-divisions. The first heading, Public Education, contains prevention and general information, and non-print materials. The second heading, Professional Education,…

  4. SKI SITE-94. Deep Repository Performance Assessment Project. Summary

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    1997-02-01

    The function of SITE-94 is to provide the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate (SKI) with the capacity and supporting knowledge needed for reviewing the Swedish nuclear industry's R and D programs and for reviewing license applications, as stipulated in Swedish legislation. The report is structured as a Performance Assessment exercise needed for input to decisions regarding repository safety, but the SITE-94 is neither a safety assessment nor a model for future assessments to be undertaken by the prospective licensee. The specific project objectives of SITE-94 comprise site evaluation, performance assessment methodology, canister integrity and radionuclide release and transport calculations. The main report (SKI-R--96-36) gives a detailed description of the many inter-related studies undertaken as part of the research project, while the present report presents a condensed summary of the main report. 46 refs

  5. EvolView, an online tool for visualizing, annotating and managing phylogenetic trees.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Huangkai; Gao, Shenghan; Lercher, Martin J; Hu, Songnian; Chen, Wei-Hua

    2012-07-01

    EvolView is a web application for visualizing, annotating and managing phylogenetic trees. First, EvolView is a phylogenetic tree viewer and customization tool; it visualizes trees in various formats, customizes them through built-in functions that can link information from external datasets, and exports the customized results to publication-ready figures. Second, EvolView is a tree and dataset management tool: users can easily organize related trees into distinct projects, add new datasets to trees and edit and manage existing trees and datasets. To make EvolView easy to use, it is equipped with an intuitive user interface. With a free account, users can save data and manipulations on the EvolView server. EvolView is freely available at: http://www.evolgenius.info/evolview.html.

  6. Small molecule annotation for the Protein Data Bank.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sen, Sanchayita; Young, Jasmine; Berrisford, John M; Chen, Minyu; Conroy, Matthew J; Dutta, Shuchismita; Di Costanzo, Luigi; Gao, Guanghua; Ghosh, Sutapa; Hudson, Brian P; Igarashi, Reiko; Kengaku, Yumiko; Liang, Yuhe; Peisach, Ezra; Persikova, Irina; Mukhopadhyay, Abhik; Narayanan, Buvaneswari Coimbatore; Sahni, Gaurav; Sato, Junko; Sekharan, Monica; Shao, Chenghua; Tan, Lihua; Zhuravleva, Marina A

    2014-01-01

    The Protein Data Bank (PDB) is the single global repository for three-dimensional structures of biological macromolecules and their complexes, and its more than 100,000 structures contain more than 20,000 distinct ligands or small molecules bound to proteins and nucleic acids. Information about these small molecules and their interactions with proteins and nucleic acids is crucial for our understanding of biochemical processes and vital for structure-based drug design. Small molecules present in a deposited structure may be attached to a polymer or may occur as a separate, non-covalently linked ligand. During curation of a newly deposited structure by wwPDB annotation staff, each molecule is cross-referenced to the PDB Chemical Component Dictionary (CCD). If the molecule is new to the PDB, a dictionary description is created for it. The information about all small molecule components found in the PDB is distributed via the ftp archive as an external reference file. Small molecule annotation in the PDB also includes information about ligand-binding sites and about covalent and other linkages between ligands and macromolecules. During the remediation of the peptide-like antibiotics and inhibitors present in the PDB archive in 2011, it became clear that additional annotation was required for consistent representation of these molecules, which are quite often composed of several sequential subcomponents including modified amino acids and other chemical groups. The connectivity information of the modified amino acids is necessary for correct representation of these biologically interesting molecules. The combined information is made available via a new resource called the Biologically Interesting molecules Reference Dictionary, which is complementary to the CCD and is now routinely used for annotation of peptide-like antibiotics and inhibitors. © The Author(s) 2014. Published by Oxford University Press.

  7. Crowdsourced emphysema assessment

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ørting, Silas Nyboe; Cheplygina, Veronika; Petersen, Jens

    2017-01-01

    Classification of emphysema patterns is believed to be useful for improved diagnosis and prognosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Emphysema patterns can be assessed visually on lung CT scans. Visual assessment is a complex and time-consuming task performed by experts, making...... it unsuitable for obtaining large amounts of labeled data. We investigate if visual assessment of emphysema can be framed as an image similarity task that does not require expert. Substituting untrained annotators for experts makes it possible to label data sets much faster and at a lower cost. We use crowd...... annotators to gather similarity triplets and use t-distributed stochastic triplet embedding to learn an embedding. The quality of the embedding is evaluated by predicting expert assessed emphysema patterns. We find that although performance varies due to low quality triplets and randomness in the embedding...

  8. Functional Annotation of Ion Channel Structures by Molecular Simulation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Trick, Jemma L; Chelvaniththilan, Sivapalan; Klesse, Gianni; Aryal, Prafulla; Wallace, E Jayne; Tucker, Stephen J; Sansom, Mark S P

    2016-12-06

    Ion channels play key roles in cell membranes, and recent advances are yielding an increasing number of structures. However, their functional relevance is often unclear and better tools are required for their functional annotation. In sub-nanometer pores such as ion channels, hydrophobic gating has been shown to promote dewetting to produce a functionally closed (i.e., non-conductive) state. Using the serotonin receptor (5-HT 3 R) structure as an example, we demonstrate the use of molecular dynamics to aid the functional annotation of channel structures via simulation of the behavior of water within the pore. Three increasingly complex simulation analyses are described: water equilibrium densities; single-ion free-energy profiles; and computational electrophysiology. All three approaches correctly predict the 5-HT 3 R crystal structure to represent a functionally closed (i.e., non-conductive) state. We also illustrate the application of water equilibrium density simulations to annotate different conformational states of a glycine receptor. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

  9. iPad: Semantic annotation and markup of radiological images.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rubin, Daniel L; Rodriguez, Cesar; Shah, Priyanka; Beaulieu, Chris

    2008-11-06

    Radiological images contain a wealth of information,such as anatomy and pathology, which is often not explicit and computationally accessible. Information schemes are being developed to describe the semantic content of images, but such schemes can be unwieldy to operationalize because there are few tools to enable users to capture structured information easily as part of the routine research workflow. We have created iPad, an open source tool enabling researchers and clinicians to create semantic annotations on radiological images. iPad hides the complexity of the underlying image annotation information model from users, permitting them to describe images and image regions using a graphical interface that maps their descriptions to structured ontologies semi-automatically. Image annotations are saved in a variety of formats,enabling interoperability among medical records systems, image archives in hospitals, and the Semantic Web. Tools such as iPad can help reduce the burden of collecting structured information from images, and it could ultimately enable researchers and physicians to exploit images on a very large scale and glean the biological and physiological significance of image content.

  10. Environmental impact assessment for uranium mine, mill and in situ leach projects

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    NONE

    1997-11-01

    Environmental impact assessments and/or statements are an inherent part of any uranium mining project and are a prerequisite for the future opening of an exploitation and its final closure and decommissioning. Since they contain all information related to the physical, biological, chemical and economic condition of the areas where industrial projects are proposed or planned, they present invaluable guidance for the planning and implementation of environmental mitigation as well as environmental restoration after the mine is closed. They further yield relevant data on the socio-economic impacts of a project. The present report provides guidance on the environmental impact assessment of uranium mining and milling projects, including in situ leach projects which will be useful for companies in the process of planning uranium developments as well as for the regional or national authorities who will assess such developments. Additional information and advice is given through environmental case histories from five different countries. Those case histories are not meant to be prescriptions for conducting assessments nor even firm recommendations, but should serve as examples for the type and extent of work involved in assessments. A model assessment and licensing process is recommended based on the experience of the five countries. 1 fig., 5 tabs.

  11. Environmental impact assessment for uranium mine, mill and in situ leach projects

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    1997-11-01

    Environmental impact assessments and/or statements are an inherent part of any uranium mining project and are a prerequisite for the future opening of an exploitation and its final closure and decommissioning. Since they contain all information related to the physical, biological, chemical and economic condition of the areas where industrial projects are proposed or planned, they present invaluable guidance for the planning and implementation of environmental mitigation as well as environmental restoration after the mine is closed. They further yield relevant data on the socio-economic impacts of a project. The present report provides guidance on the environmental impact assessment of uranium mining and milling projects, including in situ leach projects which will be useful for companies in the process of planning uranium developments as well as for the regional or national authorities who will assess such developments. Additional information and advice is given through environmental case histories from five different countries. Those case histories are not meant to be prescriptions for conducting assessments nor even firm recommendations, but should serve as examples for the type and extent of work involved in assessments. A model assessment and licensing process is recommended based on the experience of the five countries

  12. A Machine Learning Based Analytical Framework for Semantic Annotation Requirements

    OpenAIRE

    Hamed Hassanzadeh; MohammadReza Keyvanpour

    2011-01-01

    The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning. The perspective of Semantic Web is to promote the quality and intelligence of the current web by changing its contents into machine understandable form. Therefore, semantic level information is one of the cornerstones of the Semantic Web. The process of adding semantic metadata to web resources is called Semantic Annotation. There are many obstacles against the Semantic Annotation, such as ...

  13. The influence of annotation in graphical organizers

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Bezdan, Eniko; Kester, Liesbeth; Kirschner, Paul A.

    2013-01-01

    Bezdan, E., Kester, L., & Kirschner, P. A. (2012, 29-31 August). The influence of annotation in graphical organizers. Poster presented at the biannual meeting of the EARLI Special Interest Group Comprehension of Text and Graphics, Grenoble, France.

  14. Annotation of mammalian primary microRNAs

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Enright Anton J

    2008-11-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background MicroRNAs (miRNAs are important regulators of gene expression and have been implicated in development, differentiation and pathogenesis. Hundreds of miRNAs have been discovered in mammalian genomes. Approximately 50% of mammalian miRNAs are expressed from introns of protein-coding genes; the primary transcript (pri-miRNA is therefore assumed to be the host transcript. However, very little is known about the structure of pri-miRNAs expressed from intergenic regions. Here we annotate transcript boundaries of miRNAs in human, mouse and rat genomes using various transcription features. The 5' end of the pri-miRNA is predicted from transcription start sites, CpG islands and 5' CAGE tags mapped in the upstream flanking region surrounding the precursor miRNA (pre-miRNA. The 3' end of the pri-miRNA is predicted based on the mapping of polyA signals, and supported by cDNA/EST and ditags data. The predicted pri-miRNAs are also analyzed for promoter and insulator-associated regulatory regions. Results We define sets of conserved and non-conserved human, mouse and rat pre-miRNAs using bidirectional BLAST and synteny analysis. Transcription features in their flanking regions are used to demarcate the 5' and 3' boundaries of the pri-miRNAs. The lengths and boundaries of primary transcripts are highly conserved between orthologous miRNAs. A significant fraction of pri-miRNAs have lengths between 1 and 10 kb, with very few introns. We annotate a total of 59 pri-miRNA structures, which include 82 pre-miRNAs. 36 pri-miRNAs are conserved in all 3 species. In total, 18 of the confidently annotated transcripts express more than one pre-miRNA. The upstream regions of 54% of the predicted pri-miRNAs are found to be associated with promoter and insulator regulatory sequences. Conclusion Little is known about the primary transcripts of intergenic miRNAs. Using comparative data, we are able to identify the boundaries of a significant proportion of

  15. SAS- Semantic Annotation Service for Geoscience resources on the web

    Science.gov (United States)

    Elag, M.; Kumar, P.; Marini, L.; Li, R.; Jiang, P.

    2015-12-01

    There is a growing need for increased integration across the data and model resources that are disseminated on the web to advance their reuse across different earth science applications. Meaningful reuse of resources requires semantic metadata to realize the semantic web vision for allowing pragmatic linkage and integration among resources. Semantic metadata associates standard metadata with resources to turn them into semantically-enabled resources on the web. However, the lack of a common standardized metadata framework as well as the uncoordinated use of metadata fields across different geo-information systems, has led to a situation in which standards and related Standard Names abound. To address this need, we have designed SAS to provide a bridge between the core ontologies required to annotate resources and information systems in order to enable queries and analysis over annotation from a single environment (web). SAS is one of the services that are provided by the Geosematnic framework, which is a decentralized semantic framework to support the integration between models and data and allow semantically heterogeneous to interact with minimum human intervention. Here we present the design of SAS and demonstrate its application for annotating data and models. First we describe how predicates and their attributes are extracted from standards and ingested in the knowledge-base of the Geosemantic framework. Then we illustrate the application of SAS in annotating data managed by SEAD and annotating simulation models that have web interface. SAS is a step in a broader approach to raise the quality of geoscience data and models that are published on the web and allow users to better search, access, and use of the existing resources based on standard vocabularies that are encoded and published using semantic technologies.

  16. Argumentation Theory. [A Selected Annotated Bibliography].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Benoit, William L.

    Materials dealing with aspects of argumentation theory are cited in this annotated bibliography. The 50 citations are organized by topic as follows: (1) argumentation; (2) the nature of argument; (3) traditional perspectives on argument; (4) argument diagrams; (5) Chaim Perelman's theory of rhetoric; (6) the evaluation of argument; (7) argument…

  17. Informatics in radiology: An open-source and open-access cancer biomedical informatics grid annotation and image markup template builder.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mongkolwat, Pattanasak; Channin, David S; Kleper, Vladimir; Rubin, Daniel L

    2012-01-01

    In a routine clinical environment or clinical trial, a case report form or structured reporting template can be used to quickly generate uniform and consistent reports. Annotation and image markup (AIM), a project supported by the National Cancer Institute's cancer biomedical informatics grid, can be used to collect information for a case report form or structured reporting template. AIM is designed to store, in a single information source, (a) the description of pixel data with use of markups or graphical drawings placed on the image, (b) calculation results (which may or may not be directly related to the markups), and (c) supplemental information. To facilitate the creation of AIM annotations with data entry templates, an AIM template schema and an open-source template creation application were developed to assist clinicians, image researchers, and designers of clinical trials to quickly create a set of data collection items, thereby ultimately making image information more readily accessible.

  18. Performance Assessment Framework for Private Finance Initiative Projects in Malaysia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lop Nor Suzila

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Private Finance Initiative (PFI is viewed as restructuring the previous privatisation concept in delivering value for money for the Malaysian public infrastructure. Among the restructuring efforts in the privatisation is specifying the standard assessment of private concessionaires’ performance through the execution of key performance indicators (KPIs where the private concessionaires’ performance is benchmarked against the government’s standard. KPIs have served as useful tools in assessing performance of PFI projects. However, there is still lacking on determination methods performed to define and measure this KPIs and the absence of guidelines or a framework is also an issue in the implementation of the PFI procurement in Malaysia. Therefore, the objectives of this paper is to investigate the notion of performance assessment model approaches globally (i.e. UK, China, Australia, Serbia and Malaysia and to identify direction for PFI performance assessment tools (KPIs to be practiced in Malaysia. Based on the consideration of these models, this research paper propose an initial framework of performance assessment for PFI projects in Malaysia. The framework is deliberate to cover the performance of PFI at the operation and maintenance phase. The outcomes of this paper can serve as a theoretical base for the development of comprehensive and effective performance assessment for PFI projects in Malaysia.

  19. Draft Genome Sequence and Gene Annotation of the Entomopathogenic Fungus Verticillium hemipterigenum

    OpenAIRE

    Horn, Fabian; Habel, Andreas; Scharf, Daniel H.; Dworschak, Jan; Brakhage, Axel A.; Guthke, Reinhard; Hertweck, Christian; Linde, J?rg

    2015-01-01

    Verticillium hemipterigenum (anamorph Torrubiella hemipterigena) is an entomopathogenic fungus and produces a broad range of secondary metabolites. Here, we present the draft genome sequence of the fungus, including gene structure and functional annotation. Genes were predicted incorporating RNA-Seq data and functionally annotated to provide the basis for further genome studies.

  20. Annotating patient clinical records with syntactic chunks and named entities: the Harvey Corpus.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Savkov, Aleksandar; Carroll, John; Koeling, Rob; Cassell, Jackie

    The free text notes typed by physicians during patient consultations contain valuable information for the study of disease and treatment. These notes are difficult to process by existing natural language analysis tools since they are highly telegraphic (omitting many words), and contain many spelling mistakes, inconsistencies in punctuation, and non-standard word order. To support information extraction and classification tasks over such text, we describe a de-identified corpus of free text notes, a shallow syntactic and named entity annotation scheme for this kind of text, and an approach to training domain specialists with no linguistic background to annotate the text. Finally, we present a statistical chunking system for such clinical text with a stable learning rate and good accuracy, indicating that the manual annotation is consistent and that the annotation scheme is tractable for machine learning.