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At least 1,423 records · Page 79

Harmonizing model organism data in the Alliance of Genome Resources

The Alliance of Genome Resources (the Alliance) is a combined effort of 7 knowledgebase projects: Saccharomyces Genome Database, WormBase, FlyBase, Mouse Genome Database, the Zebrafish Information Network, Rat Genome Database, and the Gene Ontology Resource. The Alliance seeks to provide several benefits: better service to the various communities served by these projects; a harmonized view of data for all biomedical researchers, bioinformaticians, clinicians, and students; and a more sustainable infrastructure. The Alliance has harmonized cross-organism data to provide useful comparative views of gene function, gene expression, and human disease relevance. The basis of the comparative views is shared calls of orthology relationships and the use of common ontologies. The key types of data are alleles and variants, gene function based on gene ontology annotations, phenotypes, association to human disease, gene expression, protein–protein and genetic interactions, and participation in pathways. The information is presented on uniform gene pages that allow facile summarization of information about each gene in each of the 7 organisms covered (budding yeast, roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, fruit fly, house mouse, zebrafish, brown rat, and human). The harmonized knowledge is freely available on the alliancegenome.org portal, as downloadable files, and by APIs. We expect other existing and emerging knowledge bases to join in the effort to provide the union of useful data and features that each knowledge base currently provides.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

The Human Phenotype Ontology project: linking molecular biology and disease through phenotype data

The Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO) project, available at http://www.human-phenotype-ontology.org, provides a structured, comprehensive and welldefined set of 10,088 classes (terms) describing human phenotypic abnormalities and 13,326 subclass relations between the HPO classes. In addition we have developed logical definitions for 46% of all HPO classes using terms from ontologies for anatomy, cell types, function, embryology, pathology and other domains. This allows interoperability with several resources, especially those containing phenotype information on model organisms such as mouse and zebrafish. Here we describe the updated HPO database, which provides annotations of 7,278 human hereditary syndromes listed in OMIM, Orphanet and DECIPHER to classes of the HPO. Various meta-attributes such as frequency, references and negations are associated with each annotation. Several large-scale projects worldwide utilize the HPO for describing phenotype information in their datasets. We have therefore generated equivalence mappings to other phenotype vocabularies such as LDDB, Orphanet, MedDRA, UMLS and phenoDB, allowing integration of existing datasets and interoperability with multiple biomedical resources. We have created various ways to access the HPO database content using flat files, a MySQL database, and Web-based tools. All data and documentation on the HPO project can be found online.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

The SEED and the Rapid Annotation of microbial genomes using Subsystems Technology (RAST)

In 2004, the SEED (http://pubseed.theseed.org/) was created to provide consistent and accurate genome annotations across thousands of genomes and as a platform for discovering and developing de novo annotations. The SEED is a constantly updated integration of genomic data with a genome database, web front end, API and server scripts. It is used by many scientists for predicting gene functions and discovering new pathways. In addition to being a powerful database for bioinformatics research, the SEED also houses subsystems (collections of functionally related protein families) and their derived FIGfams (protein families), which represent the core of the RAST annotation engine (http://rast. nmpdr.org/). When a new genome is submitted to RAST, genes are called and their annotations are made by comparison to the FIGfam collection. If the genome is made public, it is then housed within the SEED and its proteins populate the FIGfam collection. This annotation cycle has proven to be a robust and scalable solution to the problem of annotating the exponentially increasing number of genomes. To date, >12 000 users worldwide have annotated >60 000 distinct genomes using RAST. Here we describe the interconnectedness of the SEED database and RAST, the RAST annotation pipeline and updates to both resources.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

The BioMart community portal: an innovative alternative to large, centralized data repositories

The BioMart Community Portal (www.biomart.org) is a community-driven effort to provide a unified interface to biomedical databases that are distributed worldwide. The portal provides access to numerous database projects supported by 30 scientific organizations. It includes over 800 different biological datasets spanning genomics, proteomics, model organisms, cancer data, ontology information and more. All resources available through the portal are independently administered and funded by their host organizations. The BioMart data federation technology provides a unified interface to all the available data. The latest version of the portal comes with many new databases that have been created by our ever-growing community. It also comes with better support and extensibility for data analysis and visualization tools. A new addition to our toolbox, the enrichment analysis tool is now accessible through graphical and web service interface. The BioMart community portal averages over one million requests per day. Building on this level of service and the wealth of information that has become available, the BioMart Community Portal has introduced a new, more scalable and cheaper alternative to the large data stores maintained by specialized organizations.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

FUSARIUM-ID v.3.0: An Updated, Downloadable Resource for Fusarium Species Identification

Species within Fusarium are of global agricultural, medical, and food/feed safety concern and have been extensively characterized. However, accurate identification of species is challenging and usually requires DNA sequence data. FUSARIUM-ID ( http://isolate.fusariumdb.org/blast.php ) is a publicly available database designed to support the identification of Fusarium species using sequences of multiple phylogenetically informative loci, especially the highly informative ~680-bp 5' portion of the translation elongation factor 1-alpha (TEF1) gene that has been adopted as the primary barcoding locus in the genus. However, FUSARIUM-ID v.1.0 and 2.0 had several limitations, including inconsistent metadata annotation for the archived sequences and poor representation of some species complexes and marker loci. Here, we present FUSARIUM-ID v.3.0, which provides the following improvements: (i) additional and updated annotation of metadata for isolates associated with each sequence, (ii) expanded taxon representation in the TEF1 sequence database, (iii) availability of the sequence database as a downloadable file to enable local BLAST queries, and (iv) a tutorial file for users to perform local BLAST searches using either freely available software, such as SequenceServer, BLAST+ executable in the command line, and Galaxy, or the proprietary Geneious software. FUSARIUM-ID will be updated on a regular basis by archiving sequences of TEF1 and other loci from newly identified species and greater in-depth sampling of currently recognized species.

Plant Sciences↗

Machine learning the relationship between Debye temperature and superconducting transition temperature

Recently a relationship between the Debye temperature $Θ_D$ and the superconducting transition temperature $T_c$ of conventional superconductors has been proposed [Esterlis et al., npj Quantum Mater. 3, 59 (2018)]. The relationship indicates that $T_c$ ≤ $AΘ_D$ for phonon-mediated BCS superconductors, with $A$ being a prefactor of order ~ $0.1$. In order to verify this bound, we train machine learning (ML) models with 10 330 samples in the Materials Project database to predict $Θ_D$. Here, by applying our ML models to 9860 known superconductors in the NIMS SuperCon database, we find that the conventional superconductors in the database indeed follow the proposed bound. We also perform first-principles phonon calculations for $\mathrm{H_3S}$ and $\mathrm{LaH_{10}}$ at 200 GPa. The calculation results indicate that these high-pressure hydrides essentially saturate the bound of $T_c$ versus $Θ_D$.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Extension of the sasCIF format and its applications for data processing and deposition

Recent advances in small-angle scattering (SAS) experimental facilities and data analysis methods have prompted a dramatic increase in the number of users and of projects conducted, causing an upsurge in the number of objects studied, experimental data available and structural models generated. To organize the data and models and make them accessible to the community, the Task Forces on SAS and hybrid methods for the International Union of Crystallography and the Worldwide Protein Data Bank envisage developing a federated approach to SAS data and model archiving. Within the framework of this approach, the existing databases may exchange information and provide independent but synchronized entries to users. At present, ways of exchanging information between the various SAS databases are not established, leading to possible duplication and incompatibility of entries, and limiting the opportunities for data-driven research for SAS users. In this work, a solution is developed to resolve these issues and provide a universal exchange format for the community, based on the use of the widely adopted crystallographic information framework (CIF). The previous version of the sasCIF format, implemented as an extension of the core CIF dictionary, has been available since 2000 to facilitate SAS data exchange between laboratories. The sasCIF format has now been extended to describe comprehensively the necessary experimental information, results and models, including relevant metadata for SAS data analysis and for deposition into a database. Processing tools for these files ( sasCIFtools ) have been developed, and these are available both as standalone open-source programs and integrated into the SAS Biological Data Bank, allowing the export and import of data entries as sasCIF files. Software modules to save the relevant information directly from beamline data-processing pipelines in sasCIF format are also developed. Lastly, this update of sasCIF and the relevant tools are an important step in the standardization of the way SAS data are presented and exchanged, to make the results easily accessible to users and to promote further the application of SAS in the structural biology community.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗

Automated prediction of lattice parameters from X-ray powder diffraction patterns

A key step in the analysis of powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) data is the accurate determination of unit-cell lattice parameters. This step often requires significant human intervention and is a bottleneck that hinders efforts towards automated analysis. This work develops a series of one-dimensional convolutional neural networks (1D-CNNs) trained to provide lattice parameter estimates for each crystal system. A mean absolute percentage error of approximately 10% is achieved for each crystal system, which corresponds to a 100- to 1000-fold reduction in lattice parameter search space volume. The models learn from nearly one million crystal structures contained within the Inorganic Crystal Structure Database and the Cambridge Structural Database and, due to the nature of these two complimentary databases, the models generalize well across chemistries. A key component of this work is a systematic analysis of the effect of different realistic experimental non-idealities on model performance. It is found that the addition of impurity phases, baseline noise and peak broadening present the greatest challenges to learning, while zero-offset error and random intensity modulations have little effect. However, appropriate data modification schemes can be used to bolster model performance and yield reasonable predictions, even for data which simulate realistic experimental non-idealities. In order to obtain accurate results, a new approach is introduced which uses the initial machine learning estimates with existing iterative whole-pattern refinement schemes to tackle automated unit-cell solution.

42 ENGINEERING↗

SIMBAD : a sequence-independent molecular-replacement pipeline

The conventional approach to finding structurally similar search models for use in molecular replacement (MR) is to use the sequence of the target to search against those of a set of known structures. Sequence similarity often correlates with structure similarity. Given sufficient similarity, a known structure correctly positioned in the target cell by the MR process can provide an approximation to the unknown phases of the target. An alternative approach to identifying homologous structures suitable for MR is to exploit the measured data directly, comparing the lattice parameters or the experimentally derived structure-factor amplitudes with those of known structures. Here, SIMBAD , a new sequence-independent MR pipeline which implements these approaches, is presented. SIMBAD can identify cases of contaminant crystallization and other mishaps such as mistaken identity (swapped crystallization trays), as well as solving unsequenced targets and providing a brute-force approach where sequence-dependent search-model identification may be nontrivial, for example because of conformational diversity among identifiable homologues. The program implements a three-step pipeline to efficiently identify a suitable search model in a database of known structures. The first step performs a lattice-parameter search against the entire Protein Data Bank (PDB), rapidly determining whether or not a homologue exists in the same crystal form. The second step is designed to screen the target data for the presence of a crystallized contaminant, a not uncommon occurrence in macromolecular crystallography. Solving structures with MR in such cases can remain problematic for many years, since the search models, which are assumed to be similar to the structure of interest, are not necessarily related to the structures that have actually crystallized. To cater for this eventuality, SIMBAD rapidly screens the data against a database of known contaminant structures. Where the first two steps fail to yield a solution, a final step in SIMBAD can be invoked to perform a brute-force search of a nonredundant PDB database provided by the MoRDa MR software. Through early-access usage of SIMBAD , this approach has solved novel cases that have otherwise proved difficult to solve.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Two-Stage Optimization Framework for Detecting and Correcting Parameter Cyber-Attacks in Power System State Estimation

One major tool of Energy Management Systems for monitoring the status of the power grid is State Estimation. Since the results of state estimation are used within the energy management system, the security of the state estimation process is most important. The focus research in this area is on detecting False Data Injection attacks on measurements. While this is important, State Estimation also rely on database that are used to describe the relationship between measurements and systems' states. This paper presents a two-stage programming framework to detect and correct attacks in the parameters of the measurement model used by the state estimation process in the Energy Management System. In the first stage, an estimate of the line parameters ratios are obtained. In the second stage, the estimated ratios from stage I are used in a Bi-Level model for obtaining a final estimate of the measurements' model parameters. Hence, the presented framework does not only unify the detection and correction in a single optimization run, but also provide a monitoring scheme for the SE database that is typically considered static. In addition, in the two stages, linear programming framework is preserved. For validation, the IEEE 118 bus system is used for implementation. The results of this paper illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed model for detecting attacks in the database used in the state estimation process.

state estimation, two-stage optimization, cyber-ph↗

Efficient Clustering of Software Vulnerabilities using Self Organizing Map (SOM)

The common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVE) database was created with a mission to ``identify, define, and catalog publicly disclosed cybersecurity vulnerabilities''. This rich body of information can be used to enable rapid and efficient response to secure and defend cyber operations and protect critical cyber infrastructure. The main goal of this paper is to develop a visual analytics tool to enable deep analysis of CVEs using unsupervised clustering techniques. We enhance our analysis by first mapping CVEs to hierarchical-classes in Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) using information in the National Vulnerability Database (NVD). Both the mapping and the numerical representation of CVEs are enabled by V2W-BERT, which uses natural language processing of the extensive information in NVD to generate a large tabular database of 137,226 CVE entries from 1999 to 2020, where each CVE is represented by a vector of 768 numerical features. The vectorized data is processed by Self-Organizing Maps (SOM), which is an unsupervised machine learning technique for dimensionality reduction, visual representation and clustering. Using a Torus map of 6417 units, we achieve ~10-fold data compression of ~140k CVEs using SOM. The trained map is further clustered using standard K-means clustering into 138 clusters of CVEs. We conducted a brief investigation of the rich mapping of CVEs to best-matching-units to K-means clusters, as well as CVEs to CWEs. For example, this novel mapping provided insight into the role of CWE-59 and CWE-264 in several CVEs that is otherwise hard to explore in the original data. We conclude that our this novel approach will not only enable deep analysis of the complex relationships between CVEs and CWEs, but also a mechanism to quickly respond to and design mitigation actions for rapidly evolving vulnerabilities that have not been mapped to existing CWEs.

Panchal, Khyati↗

Reducing Uncertainties in Large-Scale Solar Resource Data: The Impact of Aerosols

This study examines the impact of various aerosol databases on the accuracy of irradiance predictions pertaining to the National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB) over the Americas. Compared to the Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2) reanalysis and moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) space-borne observations, the various improvements that have been made to develop the SOLSUN aerosol database are described, using a monthly temporal resolution and a 4-km spatial resolution. Relative to MERRA-2, these improvements result in lower uncertainty in the solar irradiance components. The most recent version of the NSRDB now uses hourly MERRA-2 aerosol data with bias and elevation correction. This significantly improves the frequency distribution of hourly direct irradiance while having only a small impact on the annual solar resource, as suggested by the validation undertaken here at 12 control sites.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

A Visual Analytics Paradigm Enabling Trillion-Edge Graph Exploration

We present a visual analytics paradigm and a system prototype for exploring web-scale graphs. A web-scale graph is described as a graph with ~one trillion edges and ~50 billion vertices. While there is an aggressive R&D effort in processing and exploring web-scale graphs among internet vendors such as Facebook and Google, visualizing a graph of that scale still remains an underexplored R&D area. The paper describes a nontraditional peek-and-filter strategy that facilitates the exploration of a graph database of unprecedented size for visualization and analytics. We demonstrate that our system prototype can 1) preprocess a graph with ~25 billion edges in less than two hours and 2) support database query and visualization on the processed graph database afterward. Based on our computational performance results, we argue that we most likely will achieve the one trillion edge mark (a computational performance improvement of 40 times) for graph visual analytics in the near future.

graph visualization↗

Evaluation of PV Module Field Performance

This paper describes an effort to inspect and evaluate PV modules in order to determine what failure or degradation modes are occurring in field installations. This paper will report on the results of six site visits, including the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) Hedge Array, Tucson Electric Power (TEP) Springerville, Central Florida Utility, Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC), the TEP Solar Test Yard, and University of Toledo installations. The effort here makes use of a recently developed field inspection data collection protocol, and the results were input into a corresponding database. The results of this work have also been used to develop a draft of the IEC standard for climate and application specific accelerated stress testing beyond module qualification. TEP Solar Test Yard, and University of Toledo installations. The effort here makes use of a recently developed field inspection data collection protocol, and the results were input into a corresponding database. The results of this work have also been used to develop a draft of the IEC standard for climate and application specific accelerated stress testing beyond module qualification. TEP Solar Test Yard, and University of Toledo installations. The effort here makes use of a recently developed field inspection data collection protocol, and the results were input into a corresponding database. The results of this work have also been used to develop a draft of the IEC standard for climate and application specific accelerated stress testing beyond module qualification.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Dynamic Nested Tracking Graphs

This work describes an approach for the interactive visual analysis of large-scale simulations, where numerous superlevel set components and their evolution are of primary interest. The approach first derives, at simulation runtime, a specialized Cinema database that consists of images of component groups, and topological abstractions. This database is processed by a novel graph operation-based nested tracking graph algorithm (GO-NTG) that dynamically computes NTGs for component groups based on size, overlap, persistence, and level thresholds. Finally, the resulting NTGs are in turn used in a feature-centered visual analytics framework to query specific database elements and update feature parameters, facilitating flexible post hoc analysis.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

The Coastal Carbon Library and Atlas: Open source soil data and tools supporting blue carbon research and policy

Abstract Quantifying carbon fluxes into and out of coastal soils is critical to meeting greenhouse gas reduction and coastal resiliency goals. Numerous ‘blue carbon’ studies have generated, or benefitted from, synthetic datasets. However, the community those efforts inspired does not have a centralized, standardized database of disaggregated data used to estimate carbon stocks and fluxes. In this paper, we describe a data structure designed to standardize data reporting, maximize reuse, and maintain a chain of credit from synthesis to original source. We introduce version 1.0.0. of the Coastal Carbon Library, a global database of 6723 soil profiles representing blue carbon‐storing systems including marshes, mangroves, tidal freshwater forests, and seagrasses. We also present the Coastal Carbon Atlas, an R‐shiny application that can be used to visualize, query, and download portions of the Coastal Carbon Library. The majority (4815) of entries in the database can be used for carbon stock assessments without the need for interpolating missing soil variables, 533 are available for estimating carbon burial rate, and 326 are useful for fitting dynamic soil formation models. Organic matter density significantly varied by habitat with tidal freshwater forests having the highest density, and seagrasses having the lowest. Future work could involve expansion of the synthesis to include more deep stock assessments, increasing the representation of data outside of the U.S., and increasing the amount of data available for mangroves and seagrasses, especially carbon burial rate data. We present proposed best practices for blue carbon data including an emphasis on disaggregation, data publication, dataset documentation, and use of standardized vocabulary and templates whenever appropriate. To conclude, the Coastal Carbon Library and Atlas serve as a general example of a grassroots F.A.I.R. (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data effort demonstrating how data producers can coordinate to develop tools relevant to policy and decision‐making.

Holmquist, James R.↗

Uncertainties in greenhouse gas emission factors: A comprehensive analysis of switchgrass‐based biofuel production

Abstract This study investigates uncertainties in greenhouse gas (GHG) emission factors related to switchgrass‐based biofuel production in Michigan. Using three life cycle assessment (LCA) databases—US lifecycle inventory (USLCI) database, GREET, and Ecoinvent—each with multiple versions, we recalculated the global warming intensity (GWI) and GHG mitigation potential in a static calculation. Employing Monte Carlo simulations along with local and global sensitivity analyses, we assess uncertainties and pinpoint key parameters influencing GWI. The convergence of results across our previous study, static calculations, and Monte Carlo simulations enhances the credibility of estimated GWI values. Static calculations, validated by Monte Carlo simulations, offer reasonable central tendencies, providing a robust foundation for policy considerations. However, the wider range observed in Monte Carlo simulations underscores the importance of potential variations and uncertainties in real‐world applications. Sensitivity analyses identify biofuel yield, GHG emissions of electricity, and soil organic carbon (SOC) change as pivotal parameters influencing GWI. Decreasing uncertainties in GWI may be achieved by making greater efforts to acquire more precise data on these parameters. Our study emphasizes the significance of considering diverse GHG factors and databases in GWI assessments and stresses the need for accurate electricity fuel mixes, crucial information for refining GWI assessments and informing strategies for sustainable biofuel production.

Kim, Seungdo↗