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At least 109 records · Page 6

An infrared spectral database for gas-phase quantitation of volatile per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)

We report the construction of a database of vetted infrared spectra specifically targeting volatile fluorocarbon gases that may be emitted during thermal treatment of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) to assist understanding of treatment processes and improve quantification. To populate this database, protocols derived from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) infrared spectral database are used, curtailing the species selection for this data set. Each spectrum in the database is a weighted average derived from 10 or more individual measurements at different partial pressures (static method) or flow rates (dissemination method) to yield good fidelity of both strong and weak infrared signatures, with each composite spectrum ranging from = 6500 cm-1 to = 600 cm-1 with an apodized resolution of 0.112 cm-1. This resolution was chosen to fully resolve all spectral features, recognizing that atmospheric pressure broadening results in nearly all ro-vibrational lines having linewidths = 0.1 cm-1. As an example case, application of the database is demonstrated via identification and quantification of dominant 1H-perfluoroheptane and perfluorohept-1-ene fluorocarbon products resulting from thermal decomposition of perfluorooctanoate (PFOA) below 450 °C.

Infrared, Gas-phase spectra, FTIR, Spectral databa↗

Tripal, a community update after 10 years of supporting open source, standards-based genetic, genomic and breeding databases

Abstract Online, open access databases for biological knowledge serve as central repositories for research communities to store, find and analyze integrated, multi-disciplinary datasets. With increasing volumes, complexity and the need to integrate genomic, transcriptomic, metabolomic, proteomic, phenomic and environmental data, community databases face tremendous challenges in ongoing maintenance, expansion and upgrades. A common infrastructure framework using community standards shared by many databases can reduce development burden, provide interoperability, ensure use of common standards and support long-term sustainability. Tripal is a mature, open source platform built to meet this need. With ongoing improvement since its first release in 2009, Tripal provides full functionality for searching, browsing, loading and curating numerous types of data and is a primary technology powering at least 31 publicly available databases spanning plants, animals and human data, primarily storing genomics, genetics and breeding data. Tripal software development is managed by a shared, inclusive governance structure including both project management and advisory teams. Here, we report on the most important and innovative aspects of Tripal after 11 years development, including integration of diverse types of biological data, successful collaborative projects across member databases, and support for implementing FAIR principles.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

The Natural Products Magnetic Resonance Database (NP-MRD) for 2025

The Natural Products Magnetic Resonance Database or NP-MRD (https://np-mrd.org) is a comprehensive, freely accessible, web-based resource for the deposition, distribution, extraction and retrieval of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) data on natural products. The NP-MRD was initially established to support compound de-replication and data dissemination for the natural products community. However, that community has now grown to include many users from the metabolomics, microbiomics, foodomics and nutrition science fields. Indeed, since its launch in 2021, the NP-MRD has expanded enormously in size, scope and popularity. The current version of NP-MRD now contains nearly 7X more compounds (281,859 vs. 40,908) and 7X more NMR spectra (5.1 million vs. 817,000) than the first release. More specifically, an additional 4.6 million predicted spectra and another 11,000 spectra simulated from experimental chemical shifts were deposited into the database. Likewise, the number of NMR raw spectral data depositions has grown from a 165 spectra per year to more than 10,000 per year. As a result of this expansion, the number of monthly webpage views has grown from 55 to 20,000 and the number of monthly visitors has increased from 7 to 2500. To address this growth and to better support the expanding needs of its diverse community of users, many additional improvements to the NP-MRD have been made. These include significant enhancements to the data submission process, important improvements to the visualization and display of NMR spectra, notable updates to the database’s spectral search utilities and useful additions to support better NMR spectral analysis/prediction. Significant efforts have also been undertaken to remediate and update many of NP-MRD’s database entries. This manuscript describes these database improvements and expansion efforts, along with how they have been implemented and what future upgrades to the NP-MRD are planned.

Artifical Intelligence↗

Research applications of primary biodiversity databases in the digital age

Our world is in the midst of unprecedented change-climate shifts and sustained, widespread habitat degradation have led to dramatic declines in biodiversity rivaling historical extinction events. At the same time, new approaches to publishing and integrating previously disconnected data resources promise to help provide the evidence needed for more efficient and effective conservation and management. Stakeholders have invested considerable resources to contribute to online databases of species occurrences. However, estimates suggest that only 10% of biocollections are available in digital form. The biocollections community must therefore continue to promote digitization efforts, which in part requires demonstrating compelling applications of the data. Our overarching goal is therefore to determine trends in use of mobilized species occurrence data since 2010, as online systems have grown and now provide over one billion records. To do this, we characterized 501 papers that use openly accessible biodiversity databases. Our standardized tagging protocol was based on key topics of interest, including: database(s) used, taxa addressed, general uses of data, other data types linked to species occurrence data, and data quality issues addressed. We found that the most common uses of online biodiversity databases have been to estimate species distribution and richness, to outline data compilation and publication, and to assist in developing species checklists or describing new species. Only 69% of papers in our dataset addressed one or more aspects of data quality, which is low considering common errors and biases known to exist in opportunistic datasets. Globally, we find that biodiversity databases are still in the initial stages of data compilation. Novel and integrative applications are restricted to certain taxonomic groups and regions with higher numbers of quality records. Continued data digitization, publication, enhancement, and quality control efforts are necessary to make biodiversity science more efficient and relevant in our fast-changing environment.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

SERDP PFAS 2.0 - An infrared spectral database for gas-phase quantitation of volatile per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)

We report the construction of a database of vetted infrared spectra specifically targeting volatile fluorocarbon gases that may be emitted during thermal treatment of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) to assist understanding of treatment processes and improve quantification. To populate this database, protocols derived from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) infrared spectral database are used, curtailing the species selection for this data set. Each spectrum in the database is a weighted average derived from 10 or more individual measurements at different partial pressures (static method) or flow rates (dissemination method) to yield good fidelity of both strong and weak infrared signatures, with each composite spectrum ranging from = 6500 cm-1 to = 600 cm-1 with an apodized resolution of 0.112 cm-1. This resolution was chosen to fully resolve all spectral features, recognizing that atmospheric pressure broadening results in nearly all ro-vibrational lines having linewidths = 0.1 cm-1. As an example case, application of the database is demonstrated via identification and quantification of dominant 1H-perfluoroheptane and perfluorohept-1-ene fluorocarbon products resulting from thermal decomposition of perfluorooctanoate (PFOA) below 450 °C.

Infrared, Gas-phase spectra, FTIR, Spectral databa↗

G2Aero Database of Airfoils - Curated Airfoils

This dataset contains a curated set of 19,164 airfoil shapes from various applications and the data-driven design space of separable shape tensors (PGA space), which can be used as a parameter space for machine-learning applications focused on airfoil shapes. We constructed the airfoil dataset in two main stages. First, we identified 13 baseline airfoils from the NREL 5MW and IEA 15MW reference wind turbines. We reparameterized these shapes using least-squares fits of 8-order CST parametrizations, which involve 18 coefficients. By uniformly perturbing all 18 CST coefficients by +/-20% around each baseline airfoil, we generated 1,000 unique airfoils. Each airfoil was sampled with 1,001 shape landmarks whose x-coordinates followed a cosine distribution along the chord. This process resulted in a total of 13,000 airfoil shapes, each with 1,001 landmarks. In the second phase, we gathered additional airfoils from the extensive BigFoil database, which consolidates data from sources such as the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) airfoil database, the JavaFoil database, the NACA-TR-824 database, and others. We undertook a thorough pre-processing step to filter out shapes with sparse, noisy, or incomplete data. We also removed airfoils with sharp leading edge and those exceeding our threshold for trailing edge thickness. Additionally, we thinned out the collection of NACA airfoils-- parametric sweeps of NACA airfoils with increasing thickness and camber present in BigFoil database-- by selecting every fourth step in the parameter sweeps. Finally, we regularized the airfoils by reparametrizing them with an 8-order CST parametrization (with 1,001 shape landmarks with x coordinated following cosine distribution along the chord) and removing airfoils with high reconstruction errors. This data pre-processing resulted in a set of 6,164 airfoils. In total, our curated airfoil dataset comprises 19,164 airfoils, each with 1,001 landmarks, and is stored in the curated_airfoils.npz file. Using this curated airfoil dataset, we utilized the separable shape tensors framework to develop a data-driven parameterization of airfoils based on principal geodesic analysis (PGA) of separable shape tensors. This PGA space is provided in PGAspace.npz file.

airfoils↗

A restructured and updated global soil respiration database (SRDB-V5)

Field-measured soil respiration (R S , the soil-to-atmosphere CO 2 flux) observations were compiled into a global soil respiration database (SRDB) a decade ago, a resource that has been widely used by the biogeochemistry community to advance our understanding of R S dynamics. Novel carbon cycle science questions require updated and augmented global information with better interoperability among datasets. Here, we restructured and updated the global R S database to version SRDB-V5. The updated version has all previous fields revised for consistency and simplicity, and it has several new fields to include ancillary information (e.g., R S measurement time, collar insertion depth, collar area). The new SRDB-V5 includes published papers through 2017 (800 independent studies), where total observations increased from 6633 in SRDB-V4 to 10 366 in SRDB-V5. The SRDB-V5 features more R S data published in the Russian and Chinese scientific literature and has an improved global spatio-temporal coverage and improved global climate space representation. We also restructured the database so that it has stronger interoperability with other datasets related to carbon cycle science. For instance, linking SRDB-V5 with an hourly timescale global soil respiration database (HGRsD) and a community database for continuous soil respiration (COSORE) enables researchers to explore new questions. The updated SRDB-V5 aims to be a data framework for the scientific community to share seasonal to annual field R S measurements, and it provides opportunities for the biogeochemistry community to better understand the spatial and temporal variability in R S , its components, and the overall carbon cycle.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

ForC: a global database of forest carbon stocks and fluxes

Forests play an influential role in the global carbon (C) cycle, storing roughly half of terrestrial C and annually exchanging with the atmosphere more than ten times the carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emitted by anthropogenic activities. Yet, scaling up from ground-based measurements of forest C stocks and fluxes to understand global scale C cycling and its climate sensitivity remains an important challenge. Tens of thousands of forest C measurements have been made, but these data have yet to be integrated into a single database that makes them accessible for integrated analyses. Here we present an open-access global Forest Carbon database (ForC) containing records of ground-based measurements of ecosystem-level C stocks and annual fluxes, along with disturbance history and methodological information. ForC expands upon the previously published tropical portion of this database, TropForC (DOI: 10.5061/dryad.t516f), now including 17,538 records (previously 3568) representing 2,731 plots (previously 845) in 826 geographically distinct areas (previously 178). The database covers all forested biogeographic and climate zones, represents forest stands of all ages, and includes 89 C cycle variables collected between 1934 and 2015. We expect that ForC will prove useful for macroecological analyses of forest C cycling, for evaluation of model predictions or remote sensing products, for quantifying the contribution of forests to the global C cycle, and for supporting international efforts to inventory forest carbon and greenhouse gas exchange. A dynamic version of ForC-db is maintained at https://github.com/forc-db, and we encourage the research community to collaborate in updating, correcting, expanding, and utilizing this database.

Anderson-Teixeira, Kristina J.↗

Database development and exploration of process–microstructure relationships using variational autoencoders

The paper demonstrates graphical representation of a large database containing process–microstructure relationships using an unsupervised machine learning algorithm. Correlating microstructural features to processing is an essential first step to answer the difficult problem of process sequence design. Here, a large database of 346,200 orientation distribution functions resulting from a variety of process sequences is constructed, where each sequence comprises up to four stages of tension, compression and rolling along different directions in various permutations. This open-source database is constructed for collaborative development of process design algorithms. The paper demonstrates a novel application of the large database: graphical representation of texture–process relationships. A variational autoencoder is used to reduce the entire database to a two dimensional latent space where variations in processes and properties can be visualized. Using proximity analysis in this latent space, we can quickly unearth multiple process solutions to the problem of texture or property design.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Applying a Template of Expected Uncertainties to Updating 239 Pu(n,f) Cross-section Covariances in the Neutron Data Standards Database

Templates of uncertainties expected in specific measurement types were recently developed. One aim of these templates is to help evaluators in identifying (1) missing or suspiciously low uncertainties and (2) missing correlations between uncertainties of the same and different experiments, when estimating covariances for experimental data employed in their evaluations. These templates also provide realistic estimates of standard deviations and correlations for a particular uncertainty source and measurement type that can be used by evaluators in situations where they are not supplied by the experimenters. This information allows for a more comprehensive uncertainty analysis across all measurements considered in an evaluation and, thus, more realistic evaluated covariances. Here, in this work, we extend a template that is applicable to uncertainties expected in neutron-induced fission, (n,f), cross-section measurements. It is applied to improving covariances of 239 Pu(n,f) cross-section measurements in the database underlying the Neutron Data Standards evaluations. This particular example was chosen since this evaluation is primarily based on experimental information. Also, some uncertainties of individual 239 Pu(n,f) cross-section experiments in this database were suspected to be underestimated. The evaluated uncertainties obtained after updating the covariances in the database by means of the template indeed do increase compared to their original values. Even more importantly, the evaluated mean values change noticeably. These modified cross sections impact application calculations significantly, as is demonstrated by employing them in simulations of the effective neutron multiplication factor for a few selected critical assemblies. However, this updated evaluated 239 Pu(n,f) cross section should not be interpreted as the final one that should replace values of the current Neutron Data Standards project. Evaluations for the Neutron Data Standards of the 239 Pu(n,f) cross section must be linked to many other observables included in the associated database, most notably to cross sections for 235 U(n,f), but also to those for 10 B(n, α ), 6 Li(n,t), 238 U(n,f), and 238 U(n, γ ), because of included measurements of the 239 Pu(n,f) cross section that appear as ratios to these reactions. Some of these other reactions are correlated to further observables in the database. Hence, updating uncertainties of data sets of any of these observables can potentially impact the 239 Pu(n,f) cross section. Uncertainties for all measurements of these linked physical observables have to be updated before a comprehensive evaluation of the 239 Pu(n,f) cross section and its corresponding uncertainties can be provided.

239Pu Neutron-induced fission cross-section↗

Blending Education and Polymer Science: Semiautomated Creation of a Thermodynamic Property Database

Structured databases of chemical and physical properties play a central role in the everyday research activities of scientists and engineers. In materials science, researchers and engineers turn to these databases to quickly query, compare, and aggregate various properties, thereby allowing for the development or application of new materials. The vast majority of these databases have been generated manually, through decades of labor-intensive harvesting of information from the literature, yet while there are many examples of commonly used databases, a significant number of important properties remain locked within the tables, figures, and text of publications. The question addressed in our work is whether and to what extent the process of data collection can be automated. Students of the physical sciences and engineering are often confronted with the challenge of finding and applying property data from the literature, and a central aspect of their education is to develop the critical skills needed to identify such data and discern their meaning or validity. To address shortcomings associated with automated information extraction while simultaneously preparing the next generation of scientists for their future endeavors, we developed a novel course-based approach in which students develop skills in polymer chemistry and physics and apply their knowledge by assisting with the semiautomated creation of a thermodynamic property database.

Collaborative/Cooperative Learning↗

Strategies to improve reference databases for soil microbiomes

A database of curated genomes is needed to better assess soil microbial communities and their processes associated with differing land management and environmental impacts. Interpreting soil metagenomic datasets with existing sequence databases is challenging because these datasets are biased towards medical and biotechnology research and can result in misleading annotations. We have curated a database of 928 genomes of soil-associated organisms (888 bacteria, 34 archaea, and 6 fungi). Using this database as a representation of the current state of knowledge of soil microbes that are well-characterized, we evaluated its composition and compared it to broader microbial databases, specifically NCBI’s RefSeq, as well as 3,035 publicly available soil amplicon datasets. These comparisons identified phyla and functions that are enriched in soils as well as those that may be underrepresented in RefSoil. For example, RefSoil was observed to have increased representation of Firmicutes despite its low abundance in soil environments and also lacked representation of Acidobacteria and Verrucomicrobia, which are abundant in soils. Our comparison of RefSoil to soil amplicon datasets allowed us to identify targets that if cultured or sequenced would significantly increase the biodiversity represented within RefSoil. To demonstrate the opportunities to access these underrepresented targets, we employed single cell genomics in a pilot experiment to recover 14 genomes from the "most wanted" list, which improved RefSoil's representation of EMP sequences by 7% by abundance. This effort demonstrates the value of RefSoil in the guidance of future research efforts and the capability of single cell genomics as a practical means to fill the existing genomic data gaps.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

A database of refractive indices and dielectric constants auto-generated using ChemDataExtractor

The ability to auto-generate databases of optical properties holds great potential for advancing optical research, especially with regards to the data-driven discovery of optical materials. An optical property database of refractive indices and dielectric constants is presented, which comprises a total of 49,076 refractive index and 60,804 dielectric constant data records on 11,054 unique chemicals. The database was auto-generated using the state-of-the-art natural language processing software, ChemDataExtractor, using a corpus of 388,461 scientific papers. The data repository offers a representative overview of the information on linear optical properties that resides in scientific papers from the past 30 years. Public availability of these data will enable a quick search for the optical property of certain materials. The large size of this repository will accelerate data-driven research on the design and prediction of optical materials and their properties. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first auto-generated database of optical properties from a large number of scientific papers. We provide a web interface to aid the use of our database.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Perovskite- and Dye-Sensitized Solar-Cell Device Databases Auto-generated Using ChemDataExtractor

The number of scientific publications reporting cutting-edge third-generation photovoltaic devices is increasing rapidly, owing to the pressing need to develop renewable-energy technologies that address the climate-change crisis. Consequently, the field could benefit from a central repository where photovoltaic-performance metrics, such as the power-conversion efficiency (η) are recorded. We present two automatically generated databases that contain photovoltaic properties and device material data for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) and perovskite solar cells (PSCs), totalling 660,881 data entries representing 57,678 photovoltaic devices. The databases were generated by applying the text-mining toolkit ChemDataExtractor on a corpus of 25,720 articles. A multi-faceted evaluation, incorporating manual and automatic methods, was applied to ensure that the data contained therein were of the highest quality, with precision metrics ranging from 73.1% to 95.8%. The DSC database contains 475,045 entries representing 41,680 devices, and the PSC database contains 185,836 entries representing 15,818 devices. The databases are available in MongoDB and JSON formats, which can be queried in Python, R, Java and MATLAB for data-driven photovoltaic materials discovery.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Auto-generated materials database of Curie and Néel temperatures via semi-supervised relationship extraction

article presents an auto-generated database of 39,822 records containing chemical compounds and their associated Curie and Néel magnetic phase transition temperatures. The database was produced using natural language processing and semi-supervised quaternary relationship extraction, applied to a corpus of 68,078 chemistry and physics articles. Evaluation of the database shows an estimated overall precision of 73%. Therein, records processed with the text-mining toolkit, ChemDataExtractor, were assisted by a modified Snowball algorithm, whose original binary relationship extraction capabilities were extended to quaternary relationship extraction. Consequently, its machine learning component can now train with ≤500 seeds, rather than the 4,000 originally used. Data processed with the modified Snowball algorithm affords 82% precision. Database records are available in MongoDB, CSV and JSON formats which can easily be read using Python, R, Java and MatLab. As a result, this makes the database easy to query for tackling big-data materials science initiatives and provides a basis for magnetic materials discovery.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

DUNE Database Development

The DUNE experiment will produce vast amounts of metadata, which describe the data coming from the read-out of the primary DUNE detectors. Various databases will make up the overall DB architecture for this metadata. ProtoDUNE at CERN is the largest existing prototype for DUNE and serves as a testing ground for - among other things - possible database solutions for DUNE. The subset of all metadata that is accessed during offline data reconstruction and analysis is referred to as ‘conditions data’ and it is stored in a dedicated database. As offline data reconstruction and analysis will be deployed on HTC and HPC resources, conditions data is expected to be accessed at very high rates. It is therefore crucial to store it in a granularity that matches the expected access patterns allowing for extensive caching. This requires a good understanding of the sources and use cases of conditions data. This contribution will briefly summarize the database architecture deployed at ProtoDUNE and explain the various sources of conditions data. We will present how the conditions data is retrieved and streamed from the databases and how it is handled to match expected access patterns.

Vizcaya Hernandez, Ana Paula↗

RNAcentral 2021: secondary structure integration, improved sequence search and new member databases

RNAcentral is a comprehensive database of non-coding RNA (ncRNA) sequences that provides a single access point to 44 RNA resources and >18 million ncRNA sequences from a wide range of organisms and RNA types. RNAcentral now also includes secondary (2D) structure information for >13 million sequences, making RNAcentral the world’s largest RNA 2D structure database. The 2D diagrams are displayed using R2DT, a new 2D structure visualization method that uses consistent, reproducible and recognizable layouts for related RNAs. The sequence similarity search has been updated with a faster interface featuring facets for filtering search results by RNA type, organism, source database or any keyword. This sequence search tool is available as a reusable web component, and has been integrated into several RNAcentral member databases, including Rfam, miRBase and snoDB. To allow for a more fine-grained assignment of RNA types and subtypes, all RNAcentral sequences have been annotated with Sequence Ontology terms. The RNAcentral database continues to grow and provide a central data resource for the RNA community. RNAcentral is freely available at https://rnacentral.org.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Carbon dynamics of mature and regrowth tropical forests derived from a pantropical database ( T rop F or C ‐db)

Abstract Tropical forests play a critical role in the global carbon (C) cycle, storing ~45% of terrestrial C and constituting the largest component of the terrestrial C sink. Despite their central importance to the global C cycle, their ecosystem‐level C cycles are not as well‐characterized as those of extra‐tropical forests, and knowledge gaps hamper efforts to quantify C budgets across the tropics and to model tropical forest‐climate interactions. To advance understanding of C dynamics of pantropical forests, we compiled a new database, the Tropical Forest C database (TropForC‐db), which contains data on ground‐based measurements of ecosystem‐level C stocks and annual fluxes along with disturbance history. This database currently contains 3568 records from 845 plots in 178 geographically distinct areas, making it the largest and most comprehensive database of its type. Using TropForC‐db, we characterized C stocks and fluxes for young, intermediate‐aged, and mature forests. Relative to existing C budgets of extra‐tropical forests, mature tropical broadleaf evergreen forests had substantially higher gross primary productivity ( GPP ) and ecosystem respiration (R eco ), their autotropic respiration (R a ) consumed a larger proportion (~67%) of GPP , and their woody stem growth ( ANPP stem ) represented a smaller proportion of net primary productivity ( NPP , ~32%) or GPP (~9%). In regrowth stands, aboveground biomass increased rapidly during the first 20 years following stand‐clearing disturbance, with slower accumulation following agriculture and in deciduous forests, and continued to accumulate at a slower pace in forests aged 20–100 years. Most other C stocks likewise increased with stand age, while potential to describe age trends in C fluxes was generally data‐limited. We expect that TropForC‐db will prove useful for model evaluation and for quantifying the contribution of forests to the global C cycle. The database version associated with this publication is archived in Dryad ( DOI : 10.5061/dryad.t516f ) and a dynamic version is maintained at https://github.com/forc-db .

Anderson‐Teixeira, Kristina J.↗