SensorWeb 3G: Extending On-Orbit Sensor Capabilities to Enable Near Realtime User Configurability

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mandl, Daniel; Cappelaere, Pat; Frye, Stuart; Sohlberg, Rob; Ly, Vuong; Chien, Steve; Tran, Daniel; Davies, Ashley; Sullivan, Don; Ames, Troy;

A web service for service composition to aid geospatial modelers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bigagli, L.; Santoro, M.; Roncella, R.; Mazzetti, P.

2012-04-01

The identification of appropriate mechanisms for process reuse, chaining and composition is considered a key enabler for the effective uptake of a global Earth Observation infrastructure, currently pursued by the international geospatial research community. In the Earth and Space Sciences, such a facility could primarily enable integrated and interoperable modeling, for what several approaches have been proposed and developed, over the last years. In fact, GEOSS is specifically tasked with the development of the so-called "Model Web". At increasing levels of abstraction and generalization, the initial stove-pipe software tools have evolved to community-wide modeling frameworks, to Component-Based Architecture solution, and, more recently, started to embrace Service-Oriented Architectures technologies, such as the OGC WPS specification and the WS-* stack of W3C standards for service composition. However, so far, the level of abstraction seems too low for implementing the Model Web vision, and far too complex technological aspects must still be addressed by both providers and users, resulting in limited usability and, eventually, difficult uptake. As by the recent ICT trend of resource virtualization, it has been suggested that users in need of a particular processing capability, required by a given modeling workflow, may benefit from outsourcing the composition activities into an external first-class service, according to the Composition as a Service (CaaS) approach. A CaaS system provides the necessary interoperability service framework for adaptation, reuse and complementation of existing processing resources (including models and geospatial services in general) in the form of executable workflows. This work introduces the architecture of a CaaS system, as a distributed information system for creating, validating, editing, storing, publishing, and executing geospatial workflows. This way, the users can be freed from the need of a composition infrastructure and alleviated from the technicalities of workflow definitions (type matching, identification of external services endpoints, binding issues, etc.) and focus on their intended application. Moreover, the user may submit an incomplete workflow definition, and leverage CaaS recommendations (that may derive from an aggregated knowledge base of user feedback, underpinned by Web 2.0 technologies) to execute it. This is of particular interest for multidisciplinary scientific contexts, where different communities may benefit of each other knowledge through model chaining. Indeed, the CaaS approach is presented as an attempt to combine the recent advances in service-oriented computing with collaborative research principles, and social network information in general. Arguably, it may be considered a fundamental capability of the Model Web. The CaaS concept is being investigated in several application scenarios identified in the FP7 UncertWeb and EuroGEOSS projects. Key aspects of the described CaaS solution are: it provides a standard WPS interface for invoking Business Processes and allows on the fly recursive compositions of Business Processes into other Composite Processes; it is designed according to the extended SOA (broker-based) and the System-of-Systems approach, to support the reuse and integration of existing resources, in compliance with the GEOSS Model Web architecture. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under Grant Agreement n° 248488.

Vocabularies in the VO

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gray, A. J. G.; Gray, N.; Ounis, I.

2009-09-01

There are multiple vocabularies and thesauri within astronomy, of which the best known are the 1993 IAU Thesaurus and the keyword list maintained by A&A, ApJ and MNRAS. The IVOA has agreed on a standard for publishing vocabularies, based on the W3C skos standard, to allow greater automated interaction with them, in particular on the Web. This allows links with the Semantic Web and looks forward to richer applications using the technologies of that domain. Vocabulary-aware applications can benefit from improvements in both precision and recall when searching for bibliographic or science data, and lightweight intelligent filtering for services such as VOEvent streams. In this paper we present two applications, the Vocabulary Explorer and its companion the Mapping Editor, which have been developed to support the use of vocabularies in the Virtual Observatory. These combine Semantic Web and Information Retrieval technologies to illustrate the way in which formal vocabularies might be used in a practical application, provide an online service which will allow astronomers to explore and relate existing vocabularies, and provide a service which translates free text user queries into vocabulary terms.

EOforge: Generic Open Framework for Earth Observation Data Processing Systems

DTIC Science & Technology

2006-09-01

Allow the use of existing interfaces, i.e. MUIS: ESA multimission catalogue for EO products. • Support last EO systems technologies, i.e. MASS ...5. Extensibility and configurability to allow customisation and the inclusion of new functionality. 6. Multi-instrument and multi-mission processing...such as: • MUIS: ESA multimission catalogue for EO products. • MASS (Multi-Application Support Service System): ESA web services technology standard

A RESTful interface to pseudonymization services in modern web applications.

PubMed

Lablans, Martin; Borg, Andreas; Ückert, Frank

2015-02-07

Medical research networks rely on record linkage and pseudonymization to determine which records from different sources relate to the same patient. To establish informational separation of powers, the required identifying data are redirected to a trusted third party that has, in turn, no access to medical data. This pseudonymization service receives identifying data, compares them with a list of already reported patient records and replies with a (new or existing) pseudonym. We found existing solutions to be technically outdated, complex to implement or not suitable for internet-based research infrastructures. In this article, we propose a new RESTful pseudonymization interface tailored for use in web applications accessed by modern web browsers. The interface is modelled as a resource-oriented architecture, which is based on the representational state transfer (REST) architectural style. We translated typical use-cases into resources to be manipulated with well-known HTTP verbs. Patients can be re-identified in real-time by authorized users' web browsers using temporary identifiers. We encourage the use of PID strings for pseudonyms and the EpiLink algorithm for record linkage. As a proof of concept, we developed a Java Servlet as reference implementation. The following resources have been identified: Sessions allow data associated with a client to be stored beyond a single request while still maintaining statelessness. Tokens authorize for a specified action and thus allow the delegation of authentication. Patients are identified by one or more pseudonyms and carry identifying fields. Relying on HTTP calls alone, the interface is firewall-friendly. The reference implementation has proven to be production stable. The RESTful pseudonymization interface fits the requirements of web-based scenarios and allows building applications that make pseudonymization transparent to the user using ordinary web technology. The open-source reference implementation implements the web interface as well as a scientifically grounded algorithm to generate non-speaking pseudonyms.

A Grid job monitoring system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dumitrescu, Catalin; Nowack, Andreas; Padhi, Sanjay; Sarkar, Subir

2010-04-01

This paper presents a web-based Job Monitoring framework for individual Grid sites that allows users to follow in detail their jobs in quasi-real time. The framework consists of several independent components : (a) a set of sensors that run on the site CE and worker nodes and update a database, (b) a simple yet extensible web services framework and (c) an Ajax powered web interface having a look-and-feel and control similar to a desktop application. The monitoring framework supports LSF, Condor and PBS-like batch systems. This is one of the first monitoring systems where an X.509 authenticated web interface can be seamlessly accessed by both end-users and site administrators. While a site administrator has access to all the possible information, a user can only view the jobs for the Virtual Organizations (VO) he/she is a part of. The monitoring framework design supports several possible deployment scenarios. For a site running a supported batch system, the system may be deployed as a whole, or existing site sensors can be adapted and reused with the web services components. A site may even prefer to build the web server independently and choose to use only the Ajax powered web interface. Finally, the system is being used to monitor a glideinWMS instance. This broadens the scope significantly, allowing it to monitor jobs over multiple sites.

Providing Geographic Datasets as Linked Data in Sdi

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hietanen, E.; Lehto, L.; Latvala, P.

2016-06-01

In this study, a prototype service to provide data from Web Feature Service (WFS) as linked data is implemented. At first, persistent and unique Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) are created to all spatial objects in the dataset. The objects are available from those URIs in Resource Description Framework (RDF) data format. Next, a Web Ontology Language (OWL) ontology is created to describe the dataset information content using the Open Geospatial Consortium's (OGC) GeoSPARQL vocabulary. The existing data model is modified in order to take into account the linked data principles. The implemented service produces an HTTP response dynamically. The data for the response is first fetched from existing WFS. Then the Geographic Markup Language (GML) format output of the WFS is transformed on-the-fly to the RDF format. Content Negotiation is used to serve the data in different RDF serialization formats. This solution facilitates the use of a dataset in different applications without replicating the whole dataset. In addition, individual spatial objects in the dataset can be referred with URIs. Furthermore, the needed information content of the objects can be easily extracted from the RDF serializations available from those URIs. A solution for linking data objects to the dataset URI is also introduced by using the Vocabulary of Interlinked Datasets (VoID). The dataset is divided to the subsets and each subset is given its persistent and unique URI. This enables the whole dataset to be explored with a web browser and all individual objects to be indexed by search engines.

Securing the anonymity of content providers in the World Wide Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Demuth, Thomas; Rieke, Andreas

1999-04-01

Nowadays the World Wide Web (WWW) is an established service used by people all over the world. Most of them do not recognize the fact that they reveal plenty of information about themselves or their affiliation and computer equipment to the providers of web pages they connect to. As a result, a lot of services offer users to access web pages unrecognized or without risk of being backtracked, respectively. This kind of anonymity is called user or client anonymity. But on the other hand, an equivalent protection for content providers does not exist, although this feature is desirable for many situations in which the identity of a publisher or content provider shall be hidden. We call this property server anonymity. We will introduce the first system with the primary target to offer anonymity for providers of information in the WWW. Beside this property, it provides also client anonymity. Based on David Chaum's idea of mixes and in relation to the context of the WWW, we explain the term 'server anonymity' motivating the system JANUS which offers both client and server anonymity.

Personalization of Rule-based Web Services.

PubMed

Choi, Okkyung; Han, Sang Yong

2008-04-04

Nowadays Web users have clearly expressed their wishes to receive personalized services directly. Personalization is the way to tailor services directly to the immediate requirements of the user. However, the current Web Services System does not provide any features supporting this such as consideration of personalization of services and intelligent matchmaking. In this research a flexible, personalized Rule-based Web Services System to address these problems and to enable efficient search, discovery and construction across general Web documents and Semantic Web documents in a Web Services System is proposed. This system utilizes matchmaking among service requesters', service providers' and users' preferences using a Rule-based Search Method, and subsequently ranks search results. A prototype of efficient Web Services search and construction for the suggested system is developed based on the current work.

Microservices in Web Objects Enabled IoT Environment for Enhancing Reusability

PubMed Central

Chong, Ilyoung

2018-01-01

In the ubiquitous Internet of Things (IoT) environment, reusing objects instead of creating new one has become important in academics and industries. The situation becomes complex due to the availability of a huge number of connected IoT objects, and each individual service creates a new object instead of reusing the existing one to fulfill a requirement. A well-standard mechanism not only improves the reusability of objects but also improves service modularity and extensibility, and reduces cost. Web Objects enabled IoT environment applies the principle of reusability of objects in multiple IoT application domains through central objects repository and microservices. To reuse objects with microservices and to maintain a relationship with them, this study presents an architecture of Web of Objects platform. In the case of a similar request for an object, the already instantiated object that exists in the same or from other domain can be reused. Reuse of objects through microservices avoids duplications, and reduces time to search and instantiate them from their registries. Further, this article presents an algorithm for microservices and related objects discovery that considers the reusability of objects through the central objects repository. To support the reusability of objects, the necessary algorithm for objects matching is also presented. To realize the reusability of objects in Web Objects enabled IoT environment, a prototype has been designed and implemented based on a use case scenario. Finally, the results of the prototype have been analyzed and discussed to validate the proposed approach. PMID:29373491

Microservices in Web Objects Enabled IoT Environment for Enhancing Reusability.

PubMed

Jarwar, Muhammad Aslam; Kibria, Muhammad Golam; Ali, Sajjad; Chong, Ilyoung

2018-01-26

In the ubiquitous Internet of Things (IoT) environment, reusing objects instead of creating new one has become important in academics and industries. The situation becomes complex due to the availability of a huge number of connected IoT objects, and each individual service creates a new object instead of reusing the existing one to fulfill a requirement. A well-standard mechanism not only improves the reusability of objects but also improves service modularity and extensibility, and reduces cost. Web Objects enabled IoT environment applies the principle of reusability of objects in multiple IoT application domains through central objects repository and microservices. To reuse objects with microservices and to maintain a relationship with them, this study presents an architecture of Web of Objects platform. In the case of a similar request for an object, the already instantiated object that exists in the same or from other domain can be reused. Reuse of objects through microservices avoids duplications, and reduces time to search and instantiate them from their registries. Further, this article presents an algorithm for microservices and related objects discovery that considers the reusability of objects through the central objects repository. To support the reusability of objects, the necessary algorithm for objects matching is also presented. To realize the reusability of objects in Web Objects enabled IoT environment, a prototype has been designed and implemented based on a use case scenario. Finally, the results of the prototype have been analyzed and discussed to validate the proposed approach.

Ultrabroadband photonic internet: safety aspects

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kalicki, Arkadiusz; Romaniuk, Ryszard

2008-11-01

Web applications became most popular medium in the Internet. Popularity, easiness of web application frameworks together with careless development results in high number of vulnerabilities and attacks. There are several types of attacks possible because of improper input validation. SQL injection is ability to execute arbitrary SQL queries in a database through an existing application. Cross-site scripting is the vulnerability which allows malicious web users to inject code into the web pages viewed by other users. Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) is an attack that tricks the victim into loading a page that contains malicious request. Web spam in blogs. There are several techniques to mitigate attacks. Most important are web application strong design, correct input validation, defined data types for each field and parameterized statements in SQL queries. Server hardening with firewall, modern security policies systems and safe web framework interpreter configuration are essential. It is advised to keep proper security level on client side, keep updated software and install personal web firewalls or IDS/IPS systems. Good habits are logging out from services just after finishing work and using even separate web browser for most important sites, like e-banking.

Distributed spatial information integration based on web service

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tong, Hengjian; Zhang, Yun; Shao, Zhenfeng

2008-10-01

Spatial information systems and spatial information in different geographic locations usually belong to different organizations. They are distributed and often heterogeneous and independent from each other. This leads to the fact that many isolated spatial information islands are formed, reducing the efficiency of information utilization. In order to address this issue, we present a method for effective spatial information integration based on web service. The method applies asynchronous invocation of web service and dynamic invocation of web service to implement distributed, parallel execution of web map services. All isolated information islands are connected by the dispatcher of web service and its registration database to form a uniform collaborative system. According to the web service registration database, the dispatcher of web services can dynamically invoke each web map service through an asynchronous delegating mechanism. All of the web map services can be executed at the same time. When each web map service is done, an image will be returned to the dispatcher. After all of the web services are done, all images are transparently overlaid together in the dispatcher. Thus, users can browse and analyze the integrated spatial information. Experiments demonstrate that the utilization rate of spatial information resources is significantly raised thought the proposed method of distributed spatial information integration.

Distributed spatial information integration based on web service

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tong, Hengjian; Zhang, Yun; Shao, Zhenfeng

2009-10-01

Spatial information systems and spatial information in different geographic locations usually belong to different organizations. They are distributed and often heterogeneous and independent from each other. This leads to the fact that many isolated spatial information islands are formed, reducing the efficiency of information utilization. In order to address this issue, we present a method for effective spatial information integration based on web service. The method applies asynchronous invocation of web service and dynamic invocation of web service to implement distributed, parallel execution of web map services. All isolated information islands are connected by the dispatcher of web service and its registration database to form a uniform collaborative system. According to the web service registration database, the dispatcher of web services can dynamically invoke each web map service through an asynchronous delegating mechanism. All of the web map services can be executed at the same time. When each web map service is done, an image will be returned to the dispatcher. After all of the web services are done, all images are transparently overlaid together in the dispatcher. Thus, users can browse and analyze the integrated spatial information. Experiments demonstrate that the utilization rate of spatial information resources is significantly raised thought the proposed method of distributed spatial information integration.

Creating the first MedlinePlus "Go Local" service: lessons and recommendations from the evaluation of NC Health Info.

PubMed

Silbajoris, Christie; McDuffee, Diana; Olney, Cynthia

2007-01-01

NC Health Info is an online collection of North Carolina based health services Web sites that seamlessly links local health resources to topical health information on MedlinePlus, the National Library of Medicine's consumer health information Web site. NC Health Info was the first project to connect local resources with MedlinePlus in the "Go Local" initiative. As such, NC Health Info serves as a model for other states to follow in connecting their own local information with Medline- Plus. This paper describes the processes used and lessons learned during a year-long evaluation of NC Health Info. Evaluation results may be of interest and applicable to any existing or planned "Go Local" project.

An Automated End-To Multi-Agent Qos Based Architecture for Selection of Geospatial Web Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shah, M.; Verma, Y.; Nandakumar, R.

2012-07-01

Over the past decade, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web services have gained wide popularity and acceptance from researchers and industries all over the world. SOA makes it easy to build business applications with common services, and it provides like: reduced integration expense, better asset reuse, higher business agility, and reduction of business risk. Building of framework for acquiring useful geospatial information for potential users is a crucial problem faced by the GIS domain. Geospatial Web services solve this problem. With the help of web service technology, geospatial web services can provide useful geospatial information to potential users in a better way than traditional geographic information system (GIS). A geospatial Web service is a modular application designed to enable the discovery, access, and chaining of geospatial information and services across the web that are often both computation and data-intensive that involve diverse sources of data and complex processing functions. With the proliferation of web services published over the internet, multiple web services may provide similar functionality, but with different non-functional properties. Thus, Quality of Service (QoS) offers a metric to differentiate the services and their service providers. In a quality-driven selection of web services, it is important to consider non-functional properties of the web service so as to satisfy the constraints or requirements of the end users. The main intent of this paper is to build an automated end-to-end multi-agent based solution to provide the best-fit web service to service requester based on QoS.

Design and Applications of a GeoSemantic Framework for Integration of Data and Model Resources in Hydrologic Systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Elag, M.; Kumar, P.

2016-12-01

Hydrologists today have to integrate resources such as data and models, which originate and reside in multiple autonomous and heterogeneous repositories over the Web. Several resource management systems have emerged within geoscience communities for sharing long-tail data, which are collected by individual or small research groups, and long-tail models, which are developed by scientists or small modeling communities. While these systems have increased the availability of resources within geoscience domains, deficiencies remain due to the heterogeneity in the methods, which are used to describe, encode, and publish information about resources over the Web. This heterogeneity limits our ability to access the right information in the right context so that it can be efficiently retrieved and understood without the Hydrologist's mediation. A primary challenge of the Web today is the lack of the semantic interoperability among the massive number of resources, which already exist and are continually being generated at rapid rates. To address this challenge, we have developed a decentralized GeoSemantic (GS) framework, which provides three sets of micro-web services to support (i) semantic annotation of resources, (ii) semantic alignment between the metadata of two resources, and (iii) semantic mediation among Standard Names. Here we present the design of the framework and demonstrate its application for semantic integration between data and models used in the IML-CZO. First we show how the IML-CZO data are annotated using the Semantic Annotation Services. Then we illustrate how the Resource Alignment Services and Knowledge Integration Services are used to create a semantic workflow among TopoFlow model, which is a spatially-distributed hydrologic model and the annotated data. Results of this work are (i) a demonstration of how the GS framework advances the integration of heterogeneous data and models of water-related disciplines by seamless handling of their semantic heterogeneity, (ii) an introduction of new paradigm for reusing existing and new standards as well as tools and models without the need of their implementation in the Cyberinfrastructures of water-related disciplines, and (iii) an investigation of a methodology by which distributed models can be coupled in a workflow using the GS services.

A BPMN solution for chaining OGC services to quality assure location-based crowdsourced data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Meek, Sam; Jackson, Mike; Leibovici, Didier G.

2016-02-01

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Processing Service (WPS) standard enables access to a centralized repository of processes and services from compliant clients. A crucial part of the standard includes the provision to chain disparate processes and services to form a reusable workflow. To date this has been realized by methods such as embedding XML requests, using Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) engines and other external orchestration engines. Although these allow the user to define tasks and data artifacts as web services, they are often considered inflexible and complicated, often due to vendor specific solutions and inaccessible documentation. This paper introduces a new method of flexible service chaining using the standard Business Process Markup Notation (BPMN). A prototype system has been developed upon an existing open source BPMN suite to illustrate the advantages of the approach. The motivation for the software design is qualification of crowdsourced data for use in policy-making. The software is tested as part of a project that seeks to qualify, assure, and add value to crowdsourced data in a biological monitoring use case.

MedlinePlus Connect: Web Service

MedlinePlus

... https://medlineplus.gov/connect/service.html MedlinePlus Connect: Web Service To use the sharing features on this ... if you implement MedlinePlus Connect by contacting us . Web Service Overview The parameters for the Web service ...

Assessing uncertain human exposure to ambient air pollution using environmental models in the Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gerharz, L. E.; Pebesma, E.; Denby, B.

2012-04-01

Ambient air quality can have significant impact on human health by causing respiratory and cardio-vascular diseases. Thereby, the pollutant concentration a person is exposed to can differ considerably between individuals depending on their daily routine and movement patterns. Using a straight forward approach this exposure can be estimated by integration of individual space-time paths and spatio-temporally resolved ambient air quality data. To allow a realistic exposure assessment, it is furthermore important to consider uncertainties due to input and model errors. In this work, we present a generic, web-based approach for estimating individual exposure by integration of uncertain position and air quality information implemented as a web service. Following the Model Web initiative envisioning an infrastructure for deploying, executing and chaining environmental models as services, existing models and data sources for e.g. air quality, can be used to assess exposure. Therefore, the service needs to deal with different formats, resolutions and uncertainty representations provided by model or data services. Potential mismatch can be accounted for by transformation of uncertainties and (dis-)aggregation of data under consideration of changes in the uncertainties using components developed in the UncertWeb project. In UncertWeb, the Model Web vision is extended to an Uncertainty-enabled Model Web, where services can process and communicate uncertainties in the data and models. The propagation of uncertainty to the exposure results is quantified using Monte Carlo simulation by combining different realisations of positions and ambient concentrations. Two case studies were used to evaluate the developed exposure assessment service. In a first study, GPS tracks with a positional uncertainty of a few meters, collected in the urban area of Münster, Germany were used to assess exposure to PM10 (particulate matter smaller 10 µm). Air quality data was provided by an uncertainty-enabled air quality model system which provided realisations of concentrations per hour on a 250 m x 250 m resolved grid over Münster. The second case study uses modelled human trajectories in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. The trajectories were provided as realisations in 15 min resolution per 4 digit postal code from an activity model. Air quality estimates were provided for different pollutants as ensembles by a coupled meteorology and air quality model system on a 1 km x 1 km grid with hourly resolution. Both case studies show the successful application of the service to different resolutions and uncertainty representations.

An Extensible, Modular Architecture Coupling HydroShare and Tethys Platform to Deploy Water Science Web Apps

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nelson, J.; Ames, D. P.; Jones, N.; Tarboton, D. G.; Li, Z.; Qiao, X.; Crawley, S.

2016-12-01

As water resources data continue to move to the web in the form of well-defined, open access, machine readable web services provided by government, academic, and private institutions, there is increased opportunity to move additional parts of the water science workflow to the web (e.g. analysis, modeling, decision support, and collaboration.) Creating such web-based functionality can be extremely time-consuming and resource-intensive and can lead the erstwhile water scientist down a veritable cyberinfrastructure rabbit hole, through an unintended tunnel of transformation to become a Cyber-Wonderland software engineer. We posit that such transformations were never the intention of the research programs that fund earth science cyberinfrastructure, nor is it in the best interest of water researchers to spend exorbitant effort developing and deploying such technologies. This presentation will introduce a relatively simple and ready-to-use water science web app environment funded by the National Science Foundation that couples the new HydroShare data publishing system with the Tethys Platform web app development toolkit. The coupled system has already been shown to greatly lower the barrier to deploying of web based visualization and analysis tools for the CUAHSI Water Data Center and for the National Weather Service's National Water Model. The design and implementation of the developed web app architecture will be presented together key examples of existing apps created using this system. In each of the cases presented, water resources students with basic programming skills were able to develop and deploy highly functional web apps in a relatively short period of time (days to weeks) - allowing the focus to remain on water science rather on cyberinfrastructure. This presentation is accompanied by an open invitation for new collaborations that use the HydroShare-Tethys web app environment.

Climate Model Diagnostic Analyzer Web Service System

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lee, S.; Pan, L.; Zhai, C.; Tang, B.; Jiang, J. H.

2014-12-01

We have developed a cloud-enabled web-service system that empowers physics-based, multi-variable model performance evaluations and diagnoses through the comprehensive and synergistic use of multiple observational data, reanalysis data, and model outputs. We have developed a methodology to transform an existing science application code into a web service using a Python wrapper interface and Python web service frameworks. The web-service system, called Climate Model Diagnostic Analyzer (CMDA), currently supports (1) all the observational datasets from Obs4MIPs and a few ocean datasets from NOAA and Argo, which can serve as observation-based reference data for model evaluation, (2) many of CMIP5 model outputs covering a broad range of atmosphere, ocean, and land variables from the CMIP5 specific historical runs and AMIP runs, and (3) ECMWF reanalysis outputs for several environmental variables in order to supplement observational datasets. Analysis capabilities currently supported by CMDA are (1) the calculation of annual and seasonal means of physical variables, (2) the calculation of time evolution of the means in any specified geographical region, (3) the calculation of correlation between two variables, (4) the calculation of difference between two variables, and (5) the conditional sampling of one physical variable with respect to another variable. A web user interface is chosen for CMDA because it not only lowers the learning curve and removes the adoption barrier of the tool but also enables instantaneous use, avoiding the hassle of local software installation and environment incompatibility. CMDA will be used as an educational tool for the summer school organized by JPL's Center for Climate Science in 2014. In order to support 30+ simultaneous users during the school, we have deployed CMDA to the Amazon cloud environment. The cloud-enabled CMDA will provide each student with a virtual machine while the user interaction with the system will remain the same through web-browser interfaces. The summer school will serve as a valuable testbed for the tool development, preparing CMDA to serve its target community: Earth-science modeling and model-analysis community.

Building Geospatial Web Services for Ecological Monitoring and Forecasting

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hiatt, S. H.; Hashimoto, H.; Melton, F. S.; Michaelis, A. R.; Milesi, C.; Nemani, R. R.; Wang, W.

2008-12-01

The Terrestrial Observation and Prediction System (TOPS) at NASA Ames Research Center is a modeling system that generates a suite of gridded data products in near real-time that are designed to enhance management decisions related to floods, droughts, forest fires, human health, as well as crop, range, and forest production. While these data products introduce great possibilities for assisting management decisions and informing further research, realization of their full potential is complicated by their shear volume and by the need for a necessary infrastructure for remotely browsing, visualizing, and analyzing the data. In order to address these difficulties we have built an OGC-compliant WMS and WCS server based on an open source software stack that provides standardized access to our archive of data. This server is built using the open source Java library GeoTools which achieves efficient I/O and image rendering through Java Advanced Imaging. We developed spatio-temporal raster management capabilities using the PostGrid raster indexation engine. We provide visualization and browsing capabilities through a customized Ajax web interface derived from the kaMap project. This interface allows resource managers to quickly assess ecosystem conditions and identify significant trends and anomalies from within their web browser without the need to download source data or install special software. Our standardized web services also expose TOPS data to a range of potential clients, from web mapping applications to virtual globes and desktop GIS packages. However, support for managing the temporal dimension of our data is currently limited in existing software systems. Future work will attempt to overcome this shortcoming by building time-series visualization and analysis tools that can be integrated with existing geospatial software.

Provenance-Based Approaches to Semantic Web Service Discovery and Usage

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Narock, Thomas William

2012-01-01

The World Wide Web Consortium defines a Web Service as "a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network." Web Services have become increasingly important both within and across organizational boundaries. With the recent advent of the Semantic Web, web services have evolved into semantic…

Sealife: a semantic grid browser for the life sciences applied to the study of infectious diseases.

PubMed

Schroeder, Michael; Burger, Albert; Kostkova, Patty; Stevens, Robert; Habermann, Bianca; Dieng-Kuntz, Rose

2006-01-01

The objective of Sealife is the conception and realisation of a semantic Grid browser for the life sciences, which will link the existing Web to the currently emerging eScience infrastructure. The SeaLife Browser will allow users to automatically link a host of Web servers and Web/Grid services to the Web content he/she is visiting. This will be accomplished using eScience's growing number of Web/Grid Services and its XML-based standards and ontologies. The browser will identify terms in the pages being browsed through the background knowledge held in ontologies. Through the use of Semantic Hyperlinks, which link identified ontology terms to servers and services, the SeaLife Browser will offer a new dimension of context-based information integration. In this paper, we give an overview over the different components of the browser and their interplay. This SeaLife Browser will be demonstrated within three application scenarios in evidence-based medicine, literature & patent mining, and molecular biology, all relating to the study of infectious diseases. The three applications vertically integrate the molecule/cell, the tissue/organ and the patient/population level by covering the analysis of high-throughput screening data for endocytosis (the molecular entry pathway into the cell), the expression of proteins in the spatial context of tissue and organs, and a high-level library on infectious diseases designed for clinicians and their patients. For more information see http://www.biote.ctu-dresden.de/sealife.

Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) for preventive management of COPD patients.

PubMed

Velickovski, Filip; Ceccaroni, Luigi; Roca, Josep; Burgos, Felip; Galdiz, Juan B; Marina, Nuria; Lluch-Ariet, Magí

2014-11-28

The use of information and communication technologies to manage chronic diseases allows the application of integrated care pathways, and the optimization and standardization of care processes. Decision support tools can assist in the adherence to best-practice medicine in critical decision points during the execution of a care pathway. The objectives are to design, develop, and assess a clinical decision support system (CDSS) offering a suite of services for the early detection and assessment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which can be easily integrated into a healthcare providers' work-flow. The software architecture model for the CDSS, interoperable clinical-knowledge representation, and inference engine were designed and implemented to form a base CDSS framework. The CDSS functionalities were iteratively developed through requirement-adjustment/development/validation cycles using enterprise-grade software-engineering methodologies and technologies. Within each cycle, clinical-knowledge acquisition was performed by a health-informatics engineer and a clinical-expert team. A suite of decision-support web services for (i) COPD early detection and diagnosis, (ii) spirometry quality-control support, (iii) patient stratification, was deployed in a secured environment on-line. The CDSS diagnostic performance was assessed using a validation set of 323 cases with 90% specificity, and 96% sensitivity. Web services were integrated in existing health information system platforms. Specialized decision support can be offered as a complementary service to existing policies of integrated care for chronic-disease management. The CDSS was able to issue recommendations that have a high degree of accuracy to support COPD case-finding. Integration into healthcare providers' work-flow can be achieved seamlessly through the use of a modular design and service-oriented architecture that connect to existing health information systems.

Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) for preventive management of COPD patients

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

Background The use of information and communication technologies to manage chronic diseases allows the application of integrated care pathways, and the optimization and standardization of care processes. Decision support tools can assist in the adherence to best-practice medicine in critical decision points during the execution of a care pathway. Objectives The objectives are to design, develop, and assess a clinical decision support system (CDSS) offering a suite of services for the early detection and assessment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which can be easily integrated into a healthcare providers' work-flow. Methods The software architecture model for the CDSS, interoperable clinical-knowledge representation, and inference engine were designed and implemented to form a base CDSS framework. The CDSS functionalities were iteratively developed through requirement-adjustment/development/validation cycles using enterprise-grade software-engineering methodologies and technologies. Within each cycle, clinical-knowledge acquisition was performed by a health-informatics engineer and a clinical-expert team. Results A suite of decision-support web services for (i) COPD early detection and diagnosis, (ii) spirometry quality-control support, (iii) patient stratification, was deployed in a secured environment on-line. The CDSS diagnostic performance was assessed using a validation set of 323 cases with 90% specificity, and 96% sensitivity. Web services were integrated in existing health information system platforms. Conclusions Specialized decision support can be offered as a complementary service to existing policies of integrated care for chronic-disease management. The CDSS was able to issue recommendations that have a high degree of accuracy to support COPD case-finding. Integration into healthcare providers' work-flow can be achieved seamlessly through the use of a modular design and service-oriented architecture that connect to existing health information systems. PMID:25471545

Development of Web Mapping Service Capabilities to Support NASA Disasters Applications/App Development

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Burks, Jason E.; Molthan, Andrew L.; McGrath, Kevin M.

2014-01-01

During the last year several significant disasters have occurred such as Superstorm Sandy on the East coast of the United States, and Typhoon Bopha in the Phillipines, along with several others. In support of these disasters NASA's Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) Center delivered various products derived from satellite imagery to help in the assessment of damage and recovery of the affected areas. To better support the decision makers responding to the disasters SPoRT quickly developed several solutions to provide the data using open Geographical Information Service (GIS) formats. Providing the data in open GIS standard formats allowed the end user to easily integrate the data into existing Decision Support Systems (DSS). Both Tile Mapping Service (TMS) and Web Mapping Service (WMS) were leveraged to quickly provide the data to the end-user. Development of the deliver methodology allowed quick response to rapidly developing disasters and enabled NASA SPoRT to bring science data to decision makers in a successful research to operations transition.

Development of Web Mapping Service Capabilities to Support NASA Disasters Applications / App Development

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Burks, Jason E.; Molthan, Andrew L.; McGrath, Kevin M.

2014-01-01

During the last year several significant disasters have occurred such as Superstorm Sandy on the East coast of the United States, and Typhoon Bopha in the Phillipines, along with several others. In support of these disasters NASA's Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) Center delivered various products derived from satellite imagery to help in the assessment of damage and recovery of the affected areas. To better support the decision makers responding to the disasters SPoRT quickly developed several solutions to provide the data using open Geographical Information Service (GIS) formats. Providing the data in open GIS standard formats allowed the end user to easily integrate the data into existing Decision Support Systems (DSS). Both Tile Mapping Service (TMS) and Web Mapping Service (WMS) were leveraged to quickly provide the data to the end-user. Development of the deliver methodology allowed quick response to rapidly developing disasters and enabled NASA SPoRT to bring science data to decision makers in a successful research to operations transition.

Smart Aerospace eCommerce: Using Intelligent Agents in a NASA Mission Services Ordering Application

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Moleski, Walt; Luczak, Ed; Morris, Kim; Clayton, Bill; Scherf, Patricia; Obenschain, Arthur F. (Technical Monitor)

2002-01-01

This paper describes how intelligent agent technology was successfully prototyped and then deployed in a smart eCommerce application for NASA. An intelligent software agent called the Intelligent Service Validation Agent (ISVA) was added to an existing web-based ordering application to validate complex orders for spacecraft mission services. This integration of intelligent agent technology with conventional web technology satisfies an immediate NASA need to reduce manual order processing costs. The ISVA agent checks orders for completeness, consistency, and correctness, and notifies users of detected problems. ISVA uses NASA business rules and a knowledge base of NASA services, and is implemented using the Java Expert System Shell (Jess), a fast rule-based inference engine. The paper discusses the design of the agent and knowledge base, and the prototyping and deployment approach. It also discusses future directions and other applications, and discusses lessons-learned that may help other projects make their aerospace eCommerce applications smarter.

Process model-based atomic service discovery and composition of composite semantic web services using web ontology language for services (OWL-S)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Paulraj, D.; Swamynathan, S.; Madhaiyan, M.

2012-11-01

Web Service composition has become indispensable as a single web service cannot satisfy complex functional requirements. Composition of services has received much interest to support business-to-business (B2B) or enterprise application integration. An important component of the service composition is the discovery of relevant services. In Semantic Web Services (SWS), service discovery is generally achieved by using service profile of Ontology Web Languages for Services (OWL-S). The profile of the service is a derived and concise description but not a functional part of the service. The information contained in the service profile is sufficient for atomic service discovery, but it is not sufficient for the discovery of composite semantic web services (CSWS). The purpose of this article is two-fold: first to prove that the process model is a better choice than the service profile for service discovery. Second, to facilitate the composition of inter-organisational CSWS by proposing a new composition method which uses process ontology. The proposed service composition approach uses an algorithm which performs a fine grained match at the level of atomic process rather than at the level of the entire service in a composite semantic web service. Many works carried out in this area have proposed solutions only for the composition of atomic services and this article proposes a solution for the composition of composite semantic web services.

Automatic geospatial information Web service composition based on ontology interface matching

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xu, Xianbin; Wu, Qunyong; Wang, Qinmin

2008-10-01

With Web services technology the functions of WebGIS can be presented as a kind of geospatial information service, and helped to overcome the limitation of the information-isolated situation in geospatial information sharing field. Thus Geospatial Information Web service composition, which conglomerates outsourced services working in tandem to offer value-added service, plays the key role in fully taking advantage of geospatial information services. This paper proposes an automatic geospatial information web service composition algorithm that employed the ontology dictionary WordNet to analyze semantic distances among the interfaces. Through making matching between input/output parameters and the semantic meaning of pairs of service interfaces, a geospatial information web service chain can be created from a number of candidate services. A practice of the algorithm is also proposed and the result of it shows the feasibility of this algorithm and the great promise in the emerging demand for geospatial information web service composition.

Using component technologies for web based wavelet enhanced mammographic image visualization.

PubMed

Sakellaropoulos, P; Costaridou, L; Panayiotakis, G

2000-01-01

The poor contrast detectability of mammography can be dealt with by domain specific software visualization tools. Remote desktop client access and time performance limitations of a previously reported visualization tool are addressed, aiming at more efficient visualization of mammographic image resources existing in web or PACS image servers. This effort is also motivated by the fact that at present, web browsers do not support domain-specific medical image visualization. To deal with desktop client access the tool was redesigned by exploring component technologies, enabling the integration of stand alone domain specific mammographic image functionality in a web browsing environment (web adaptation). The integration method is based on ActiveX Document Server technology. ActiveX Document is a part of Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) extensible systems object technology, offering new services in existing applications. The standard DICOM 3.0 part 10 compatible image-format specification Papyrus 3.0 is supported, in addition to standard digitization formats such as TIFF. The visualization functionality of the tool has been enhanced by including a fast wavelet transform implementation, which allows for real time wavelet based contrast enhancement and denoising operations. Initial use of the tool with mammograms of various breast structures demonstrated its potential in improving visualization of diagnostic mammographic features. Web adaptation and real time wavelet processing enhance the potential of the previously reported tool in remote diagnosis and education in mammography.

The PubChem chemical structure sketcher

PubMed Central

2009-01-01

PubChem is an important public, Web-based information source for chemical and bioactivity information. In order to provide convenient structure search methods on compounds stored in this database, one mandatory component is a Web-based drawing tool for interactive sketching of chemical query structures. Web-enabled chemical structure sketchers are not new, being in existence for years; however, solutions available rely on complex technology like Java applets or platform-dependent plug-ins. Due to general policy and support incident rate considerations, Java-based or platform-specific sketchers cannot be deployed as a part of public NCBI Web services. Our solution: a chemical structure sketching tool based exclusively on CGI server processing, client-side JavaScript functions, and image sequence streaming. The PubChem structure editor does not require the presence of any specific runtime support libraries or browser configurations on the client. It is completely platform-independent and verified to work on all major Web browsers, including older ones without support for Web2.0 JavaScript objects. PMID:20298522

BioSWR – Semantic Web Services Registry for Bioinformatics

PubMed Central

Repchevsky, Dmitry; Gelpi, Josep Ll.

2014-01-01

Despite of the variety of available Web services registries specially aimed at Life Sciences, their scope is usually restricted to a limited set of well-defined types of services. While dedicated registries are generally tied to a particular format, general-purpose ones are more adherent to standards and usually rely on Web Service Definition Language (WSDL). Although WSDL is quite flexible to support common Web services types, its lack of semantic expressiveness led to various initiatives to describe Web services via ontology languages. Nevertheless, WSDL 2.0 descriptions gained a standard representation based on Web Ontology Language (OWL). BioSWR is a novel Web services registry that provides standard Resource Description Framework (RDF) based Web services descriptions along with the traditional WSDL based ones. The registry provides Web-based interface for Web services registration, querying and annotation, and is also accessible programmatically via Representational State Transfer (REST) API or using a SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language. BioSWR server is located at http://inb.bsc.es/BioSWR/and its code is available at https://sourceforge.net/projects/bioswr/under the LGPL license. PMID:25233118

BioSWR--semantic web services registry for bioinformatics.

PubMed

Repchevsky, Dmitry; Gelpi, Josep Ll

2014-01-01

Despite of the variety of available Web services registries specially aimed at Life Sciences, their scope is usually restricted to a limited set of well-defined types of services. While dedicated registries are generally tied to a particular format, general-purpose ones are more adherent to standards and usually rely on Web Service Definition Language (WSDL). Although WSDL is quite flexible to support common Web services types, its lack of semantic expressiveness led to various initiatives to describe Web services via ontology languages. Nevertheless, WSDL 2.0 descriptions gained a standard representation based on Web Ontology Language (OWL). BioSWR is a novel Web services registry that provides standard Resource Description Framework (RDF) based Web services descriptions along with the traditional WSDL based ones. The registry provides Web-based interface for Web services registration, querying and annotation, and is also accessible programmatically via Representational State Transfer (REST) API or using a SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language. BioSWR server is located at http://inb.bsc.es/BioSWR/and its code is available at https://sourceforge.net/projects/bioswr/under the LGPL license.

Reliable Execution Based on CPN and Skyline Optimization for Web Service Composition

PubMed Central

Ha, Weitao; Zhang, Guojun

2013-01-01

With development of SOA, the complex problem can be solved by combining available individual services and ordering them to best suit user's requirements. Web services composition is widely used in business environment. With the features of inherent autonomy and heterogeneity for component web services, it is difficult to predict the behavior of the overall composite service. Therefore, transactional properties and nonfunctional quality of service (QoS) properties are crucial for selecting the web services to take part in the composition. Transactional properties ensure reliability of composite Web service, and QoS properties can identify the best candidate web services from a set of functionally equivalent services. In this paper we define a Colored Petri Net (CPN) model which involves transactional properties of web services in the composition process. To ensure reliable and correct execution, unfolding processes of the CPN are followed. The execution of transactional composition Web service (TCWS) is formalized by CPN properties. To identify the best services of QoS properties from candidate service sets formed in the TCSW-CPN, we use skyline computation to retrieve dominant Web service. It can overcome that the reduction of individual scores to an overall similarity leads to significant information loss. We evaluate our approach experimentally using both real and synthetically generated datasets. PMID:23935431

Reliable execution based on CPN and skyline optimization for Web service composition.

PubMed

Chen, Liping; Ha, Weitao; Zhang, Guojun

2013-01-01

With development of SOA, the complex problem can be solved by combining available individual services and ordering them to best suit user's requirements. Web services composition is widely used in business environment. With the features of inherent autonomy and heterogeneity for component web services, it is difficult to predict the behavior of the overall composite service. Therefore, transactional properties and nonfunctional quality of service (QoS) properties are crucial for selecting the web services to take part in the composition. Transactional properties ensure reliability of composite Web service, and QoS properties can identify the best candidate web services from a set of functionally equivalent services. In this paper we define a Colored Petri Net (CPN) model which involves transactional properties of web services in the composition process. To ensure reliable and correct execution, unfolding processes of the CPN are followed. The execution of transactional composition Web service (TCWS) is formalized by CPN properties. To identify the best services of QoS properties from candidate service sets formed in the TCSW-CPN, we use skyline computation to retrieve dominant Web service. It can overcome that the reduction of individual scores to an overall similarity leads to significant information loss. We evaluate our approach experimentally using both real and synthetically generated datasets.

The Use of RESTful Web Services in Medical Informatics and Clinical Research and Its Implementation in Europe.

PubMed

Aerts, Jozef

2017-01-01

RESTful web services nowadays are state-of-the-art in business transactions over the internet. They are however not very much used in medical informatics and in clinical research, especially not in Europe. To make an inventory of RESTful web services that can be used in medical informatics and clinical research, including those that can help in patient empowerment in the DACH region and in Europe, and to develop some new RESTful web services for use in clinical research and regulatory review. A literature search on available RESTful web services has been performed and new RESTful web services have been developed on an application server using the Java language. Most of the web services found originate from institutes and organizations in the USA, whereas no similar web services could be found that are made available by European organizations. New RESTful web services have been developed for LOINC codes lookup, for UCUM conversions and for use with CDISC Standards. A comparison is made between "top down" and "bottom up" web services, the latter meant to answer concrete questions immediately. The lack of RESTful web services made available by European organizations in healthcare and medical informatics is striking. RESTful web services may in short future play a major role in medical informatics, and when localized for the German language and other European languages, can help to considerably facilitate patient empowerment. This however requires an EU equivalent of the US National Library of Medicine.

A Services-Oriented Architecture for Water Observations Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Maidment, D. R.; Zaslavsky, I.; Valentine, D.; Tarboton, D. G.; Whitenack, T.; Whiteaker, T.; Hooper, R.; Kirschtel, D.

2009-04-01

Water observations data are time series of measurements made at point locations of water level, flow, and quality and corresponding data for climatic observations at point locations such as gaged precipitation and weather variables. A services-oriented architecture has been built for such information for the United States that has three components: hydrologic information servers, hydrologic information clients, and a centralized metadata cataloging system. These are connected using web services for observations data and metadata defined by an XML-based language called WaterML. A Hydrologic Information Server can be built by storing observations data in a relational database schema in the CUAHSI Observations Data Model, in which case, web services access to the data and metadata is automatically provided by query functions for WaterML that are wrapped around the relational database within a web server. A Hydrologic Information Server can also be constructed by custom-programming an interface to an existing water agency web site so that responds to the same queries by producing data in WaterML as do the CUAHSI Observations Data Model based servers. A Hydrologic Information Client is one which can interpret and ingest WaterML metadata and data. We have two client applications for Excel and ArcGIS and have shown how WaterML web services can be ingested into programming environments such as Matlab and Visual Basic. HIS Central, maintained at the San Diego Supercomputer Center is a repository of observational metadata for WaterML web services which presently indexes 342 million data measured at 1.75 million locations. This is the largest catalog water observational data for the United States presently in existence. As more observation networks join what we term "CUAHSI Water Data Federation", and the system accommodates a growing number of sites, measured parameters, applications, and users, rapid and reliable access to large heterogeneous hydrologic data repositories becomes critical. The CUAHSI HIS solution to the scalability and heterogeneity challenges has several components. Structural differences across the data repositories are addressed by building a standard services foundation for the exchange of hydrologic data, as derived from a common information model for observational data measured at stationary points and its implementation as a relational schema (ODM) and an XML schema (WaterML). Semantic heterogeneity is managed by mapping water quantity, water quality, and other parameters collected by government agencies and academic projects to a common ontology. The WaterML-compliant web services are indexed in a community services registry called HIS Central (hiscentral.cuahsi.org). Once a web service is registered in HIS Central, its metadata (site and variable characteristics, period of record for each variable at each site, etc.) is harvested and appended to the central catalog. The catalog is further updated as the service publisher associates the variables in the published service with ontology concepts. After this, the newly published service becomes available for spatial and semantics-based queries from online and desktop client applications developed by the project. Hydrologic system server software is now deployed at more than a dozen locations in the United States and Australia. To provide rapid access to data summaries, in particular for several nation-wide data repositories including EPA STORET, USGS NWIS, and USDA SNOTEL, we convert the observation data catalogs and databases with harvested data values into special representations that support high-performance analysis and visualization. The construction of OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) cubes, often called data cubes, is an approach to organizing and querying large multi-dimensional data collections. We have applied the OLAP techniques, as implemented in Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008, to the analysis of the catalogs from several agencies. OLAP analysis results reflect geography and history of observation data availability from USGS NWIS, EPA STORET, and USDA SNOTEL repositories, and spatial and temporal dynamics of the available measurements for several key nutrient-related parameters. Our experience developing the CUAHSI HIS cyberinfrastructure demonstrated that efficient integration of hydrologic observations from multiple government and academic sources requires a range of technical approaches focused on managing different components of data heterogeneity and system scalability. While this submission addresses technical aspects of developing a national-scale information system for hydrologic observations, the challenges of explicating shared semantics of hydrologic observations and building a community of HIS users and developers remain critical in constructing a nation-wide federation of water data services.

Training Requirements and Curriculum Content for Primary Care Providers Delivering Preventive Oral Health Services to Children Enrolled in Medicaid.

PubMed

Sams, Lattice D; Rozier, R Gary; Quinonez, Rocio B

2016-07-01

Despite the emphasis on delivery of preventive oral health services in non-dental settings, limited information exists about state Medicaid policies and strategies to educate practicing physicians in the delivery of these services. This study aims to determine: (1) training requirements and policies for reimbursement of oral health services, (2) teaching delivery methods used to train physicians, and (3) curricula content available to providers among states that reimburse non-dental providers for oral health services. Using Web-based Internet searches as the primary data source, and a supplemental e-mail survey of all states offering in-person training, we assessed training requirements, methods of delivery for training, and curriculum content for states with Medicaid reimbursement to primary care providers delivering preventive oral health services. RESULTS of descriptive analyses are presented for information collected and updated in 2014. Forty-two states provide training sessions or resources to providers, 34 requiring provider training before reimbursement for oral health services. Web-based training is the most common CME delivery method. Only small differences in curricular content were reported by the 11 states that use in-person didactic sessions as the delivery method. Although we found that most states require training and curricular content is similar, training was most often delivered using Web-based courses without any additional delivery methods. Research is needed to evaluate the impact of a mixture of training methods and other quality improvement methods on increased adoption and implementation of preventive oral health services in medical practices.

Determining Appropriate Coupling between User Experiences and Earth Science Data Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Moghaddam-Taaheri, E.; Pilone, D.; Newman, D. J.; Mitchell, A. E.; Goff, T. D.; Baynes, K.

2012-12-01

NASA's Earth Observing System ClearingHOuse (ECHO) is a format agnostic metadata repository supporting over 3000 collections and 100M granules. ECHO exposes FTP and RESTful Data Ingest APIs in addition to both SOAP and RESTful search and order capabilities. Built on top of ECHO is a human facing search and order web application named Reverb. Reverb exposes ECHO's capabilities through an interactive, Web 2.0 application designed around searching for Earth Science data and downloading or ordering data of interest. ECHO and Reverb have supported the concept of Earth Science data services for several years but only for discovery. Invocation of these services was not a primary capability of the user experience. As more and more Earth Science data moves online and away from the concept of data ordering, progress has been made in making on demand services available for directly accessed data. These concepts have existed through access mechanisms such as OPeNDAP but are proliferating to accommodate a wider variety of services and service providers. Recently, the EOSDIS Service Interface (ESI) was defined and integrated into the ECS system. The ESI allows data providers to expose a wide variety of service capabilities including reprojection, reformatting, spatial and band subsetting, and resampling. ECHO and Reverb were tasked with making these services available to end-users in a meaningful and usable way that integrated into its existing search and ordering workflow. This presentation discusses the challenges associated with exposing disparate service capabilities while presenting a meaningful and cohesive user experience. Specifically, we'll discuss: - Benefits and challenges of tightly coupling the user interface with underlying services - Approaches to generic service descriptions - Approaches to dynamic user interfaces that better describe service capabilities while minimizing application coupling - Challenges associated with traditional WSDL / UDDI style service descriptions - Walkthrough of the solution used by ECHO and Reverb to integrate and expose ESI compliant services to our users

BOWS (bioinformatics open web services) to centralize bioinformatics tools in web services.

PubMed

Velloso, Henrique; Vialle, Ricardo A; Ortega, J Miguel

2015-06-02

Bioinformaticians face a range of difficulties to get locally-installed tools running and producing results; they would greatly benefit from a system that could centralize most of the tools, using an easy interface for input and output. Web services, due to their universal nature and widely known interface, constitute a very good option to achieve this goal. Bioinformatics open web services (BOWS) is a system based on generic web services produced to allow programmatic access to applications running on high-performance computing (HPC) clusters. BOWS intermediates the access to registered tools by providing front-end and back-end web services. Programmers can install applications in HPC clusters in any programming language and use the back-end service to check for new jobs and their parameters, and then to send the results to BOWS. Programs running in simple computers consume the BOWS front-end service to submit new processes and read results. BOWS compiles Java clients, which encapsulate the front-end web service requisitions, and automatically creates a web page that disposes the registered applications and clients. Bioinformatics open web services registered applications can be accessed from virtually any programming language through web services, or using standard java clients. The back-end can run in HPC clusters, allowing bioinformaticians to remotely run high-processing demand applications directly from their machines.

ScotlandsPlaces XML: Bespoke XML or XML Mapping?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beamer, Ashley; Gillick, Mark

2010-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate web services (in the form of parameterised URLs), specifically in the context of the ScotlandsPlaces project. This involves cross-domain querying, data retrieval and display via the development of a bespoke XML standard rather than existing XML formats and mapping between them.…

ATIS evaluation for 511 and internet-based ATIS enhancements and implementation. Task 1, Evaluation of existing web and phone-based ATIS in Nebraska

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2003-05-01

The Nebraska Department of Roads (NDOR) currently makes statewide travel information available via the Internet and 511 phone service. As NDOR moves forward with enhancing and automating its ATIS capabilities, the department desires to upgrade its cu...

31 CFR 344.3 - What provisions apply to the SLGSafe Service?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... documents, which may be downloaded from BPD's Web site and which may change from time to time, apply to... and other transaction requests exclusively through SLGSafe, except to the extent you establish to the satisfaction of BPD that good cause exists for you to submit such subscriptions and requests by other means...

"Pretty Rad": Explorations in User Satisfaction with a Discovery Layer at Ryerson University

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lundrigan, Courtney; Manuel, Kevin; Yan, May

2015-01-01

Web-scale discovery systems are becoming prevalent in research libraries. Although a number of studies have explored various impacts of discovery systems, few studies exist on user satisfaction. The investigators of this study evaluated user satisfaction with the discovery service Summon at Ryerson University, using online questionnaires and…

The Digital Divide Revisited: What Is Next?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Huffman, Stephanie

2018-01-01

As soon as the Internet came into existence and the World Wide Web was introduced to make Internet utilization much easier, leaders have been worried about the "digital divide." The digital divide refers to the inequality of access to information services. There has been marked improvements over the last 20 years, however the poorest…

Automated Data Tagging in the HLA

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gaffney, N. I.; Miller, W. W.

2008-08-01

One of the more powerful and popular forms of data organization implemented in most popular information sharing web applications is data tagging. With a rich user base from which to gather and digest tags, many interesting and often unanticipated yet very useful associations are revealed. With regard to an existing information, the astronomical community has a rich pool of existing digitally stored and searchable data than any of the currently popular web community, such as You Tube or My Space, had when they started. In initial experiments with the search engine for the Hubble Legacy Archive, we have created a simple yet powerful scheme by which the information from a footprint service, the NED and SIMBAD catalog services, and the ADS abstracts and keywords can be used to initially tag data with standard keywords. By then ingesting this into a public ally available information search engine, such as Apache Lucene, one can create a simple and powerful data tag search engine and association system. By then augmenting this with user provided keys and usage pattern analysis, one can produce a powerful modern data mining system for any astronomical data warehouse.

Introducing a Web API for Dataset Submission into a NASA Earth Science Data Center

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Moroni, D. F.; Quach, N.; Francis-Curley, W.

2016-12-01

As the landscape of data becomes increasingly more diverse in the domain of Earth Science, the challenges of managing and preserving data become more onerous and complex, particularly for data centers on fixed budgets and limited staff. Many solutions already exist to ease the cost burden for the downstream component of the data lifecycle, yet most archive centers are still racing to keep up with the influx of new data that still needs to find a quasi-permanent resting place. For instance, having well-defined metadata that is consistent across the entire data landscape provides for well-managed and preserved datasets throughout the latter end of the data lifecycle. Translators between different metadata dialects are already in operational use, and facilitate keeping older datasets relevant in today's world of rapidly evolving metadata standards. However, very little is done to address the first phase of the lifecycle, which deals with the entry of both data and the corresponding metadata into a system that is traditionally opaque and closed off to external data producers, thus resulting in a significant bottleneck to the dataset submission process. The ATRAC system was the NOAA NCEI's answer to this previously obfuscated barrier to scientists wishing to find a home for their climate data records, providing a web-based entry point to submit timely and accurate metadata and information about a very specific dataset. A couple of NASA's Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) have implemented their own versions of a web-based dataset and metadata submission form including the ASDC and the ORNL DAAC. The Physical Oceanography DAAC is the most recent in the list of NASA-operated DAACs who have begun to offer their own web-based dataset and metadata submission services to data producers. What makes the PO.DAAC dataset and metadata submission service stand out from these pre-existing services is the option of utilizing both a web browser GUI and a RESTful API to facilitate rapid and efficient updating of dataset metadata records by external data producers. Here we present this new service and demonstrate the variety of ways in which a multitude of Earth Science datasets may be submitted in a manner that significantly reduces the time in ensuring that new, vital data reaches the public domain.

Web Services--A Buzz Word with Potentials

Treesearch

János T. Füstös

2006-01-01

The simplest definition of a web service is an application that provides a web API. The web API exposes the functionality of the solution to other applications. The web API relies on other Internet-based technologies to manage communications. The resulting web services are pervasive, vendor-independent, language-neutral, and very low-cost. The main purpose of a web API...

BioServices: a common Python package to access biological Web Services programmatically.

PubMed

Cokelaer, Thomas; Pultz, Dennis; Harder, Lea M; Serra-Musach, Jordi; Saez-Rodriguez, Julio

2013-12-15

Web interfaces provide access to numerous biological databases. Many can be accessed to in a programmatic way thanks to Web Services. Building applications that combine several of them would benefit from a single framework. BioServices is a comprehensive Python framework that provides programmatic access to major bioinformatics Web Services (e.g. KEGG, UniProt, BioModels, ChEMBLdb). Wrapping additional Web Services based either on Representational State Transfer or Simple Object Access Protocol/Web Services Description Language technologies is eased by the usage of object-oriented programming. BioServices releases and documentation are available at http://pypi.python.org/pypi/bioservices under a GPL-v3 license.

Realising the Uncertainty Enabled Model Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cornford, D.; Bastin, L.; Pebesma, E. J.; Williams, M.; Stasch, C.; Jones, R.; Gerharz, L.

2012-12-01

The FP7 funded UncertWeb project aims to create the "uncertainty enabled model web". The central concept here is that geospatial models and data resources are exposed via standard web service interfaces, such as the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) suite of encodings and interface standards, allowing the creation of complex workflows combining both data and models. The focus of UncertWeb is on the issue of managing uncertainty in such workflows, and providing the standards, architecture, tools and software support necessary to realise the "uncertainty enabled model web". In this paper we summarise the developments in the first two years of UncertWeb, illustrating several key points with examples taken from the use case requirements that motivate the project. Firstly we address the issue of encoding specifications. We explain the usage of UncertML 2.0, a flexible encoding for representing uncertainty based on a probabilistic approach. This is designed to be used within existing standards such as Observations and Measurements (O&M) and data quality elements of ISO19115 / 19139 (geographic information metadata and encoding specifications) as well as more broadly outside the OGC domain. We show profiles of O&M that have been developed within UncertWeb and how UncertML 2.0 is used within these. We also show encodings based on NetCDF and discuss possible future directions for encodings in JSON. We then discuss the issues of workflow construction, considering discovery of resources (both data and models). We discuss why a brokering approach to service composition is necessary in a world where the web service interfaces remain relatively heterogeneous, including many non-OGC approaches, in particular the more mainstream SOAP and WSDL approaches. We discuss the trade-offs between delegating uncertainty management functions to the service interfaces themselves and integrating the functions in the workflow management system. We describe two utility services to address conversion between uncertainty types, and between the spatial / temporal support of service inputs / outputs. Finally we describe the tools being generated within the UncertWeb project, considering three main aspects: i) Elicitation of uncertainties on model inputs. We are developing tools to enable domain experts to provide judgements about input uncertainties from UncertWeb model components (e.g. parameters in meteorological models) which allow panels of experts to engage in the process and reach a consensus view on the current knowledge / beliefs about that parameter or variable. We are developing systems for continuous and categorical variables as well as stationary spatial fields. ii) Visualisation of the resulting uncertain outputs from the end of the workflow, but also at intermediate steps. At this point we have prototype implementations driven by the requirements from the use cases that motivate UncertWeb. iii) Sensitivity and uncertainty analysis on model outputs. Here we show the design of the overall system we are developing, including the deployment of an emulator framework to allow computationally efficient approaches. We conclude with a summary of the open issues and remaining challenges we are facing in UncertWeb, and provide a brief overview of how we plan to tackle these.

Turning Interoperability Operational with GST

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schaeben, Helmut; Gabriel, Paul; Gietzel, Jan; Le, Hai Ha

2013-04-01

GST - Geosciences in space and time is being developed and implemented as hub to facilitate the exchange of spatially and temporally indexed multi-dimensional geoscience data and corresponding geomodels amongst partners. It originates from TUBAF's contribution to the EU project "ProMine" and its perspective extensions are TUBAF's contribution to the actual EU project "GeoMol". As of today, it provides basic components of a geodata infrastructure as required to establish interoperability with respect to geosciences. Generally, interoperability means the facilitation of cross-border and cross-sector information exchange, taking into account legal, organisational, semantic and technical aspects, cf. Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations (ISA), cf. http://ec.europa.eu/isa/. Practical interoperability for partners of a joint geoscience project, say European Geological Surveys acting in a border region, means in particular provision of IT technology to exchange spatially and maybe additionally temporally indexed multi-dimensional geoscience data and corresponding models, i.e. the objects composing geomodels capturing the geometry, topology, and various geoscience contents. Geodata Infrastructure (GDI) and interoperability are objectives of several inititatives, e.g. INSPIRE, OneGeology-Europe, and most recently EGDI-SCOPE to name just the most prominent ones. Then there are quite a few markup languages (ML) related to geographical or geological information like GeoSciML, EarthResourceML, BoreholeML, ResqML for reservoir characterization, earth and reservoir models, and many others featuring geoscience information. Several Web Services are focused on geographical or geoscience information. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) promotes specifications of a Web Feature Service (WFS), a Web Map Service (WMS), a Web Coverage Serverice (WCS), a Web 3D Service (W3DS), and many more. It will be clarified how GST is related to these initiatives, especially how it complies with existing or developing standards or quasi-standards and how it applies and extents services towards interoperability in the Earth sciences.

In Interactive, Web-Based Approach to Metadata Authoring

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Pollack, Janine; Wharton, Stephen W. (Technical Monitor)

2001-01-01

NASA's Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) serves a growing number of users by assisting the scientific community in the discovery of and linkage to Earth science data sets and related services. The GCMD holds over 8000 data set descriptions in Directory Interchange Format (DIF) and 200 data service descriptions in Service Entry Resource Format (SERF), encompassing the disciplines of geology, hydrology, oceanography, meteorology, and ecology. Data descriptions also contain geographic coverage information, thus allowing researchers to discover data pertaining to a particular geographic location, as well as subject of interest. The GCMD strives to be the preeminent data locator for world-wide directory level metadata. In this vein, scientists and data providers must have access to intuitive and efficient metadata authoring tools. Existing GCMD tools are not currently attracting. widespread usage. With usage being the prime indicator of utility, it has become apparent that current tools must be improved. As a result, the GCMD has released a new suite of web-based authoring tools that enable a user to create new data and service entries, as well as modify existing data entries. With these tools, a more interactive approach to metadata authoring is taken, as they feature a visual "checklist" of data/service fields that automatically update when a field is completed. In this way, the user can quickly gauge which of the required and optional fields have not been populated. With the release of these tools, the Earth science community will be further assisted in efficiently creating quality data and services metadata. Keywords: metadata, Earth science, metadata authoring tools

Information Retrieval System for Japanese Standard Disease-Code Master Using XML Web Service

PubMed Central

Hatano, Kenji; Ohe, Kazuhiko

2003-01-01

Information retrieval system of Japanese Standard Disease-Code Master Using XML Web Service is developed. XML Web Service is a new distributed processing system by standard internet technologies. With seamless remote method invocation of XML Web Service, users are able to get the latest disease code master information from their rich desktop applications or internet web sites, which refer to this service. PMID:14728364

A RESTful API for accessing microbial community data for MG-RAST

DOE PAGES

Wilke, Andreas; Bischof, Jared; Harrison, Travis; ...

2015-01-08

Metagenomic sequencing has produced significant amounts of data in recent years. For example, as of summer 2013, MGRAST has been used to annotate over 110,000 data sets totaling over 43 Terabases. With metagenomic sequencing finding even wider adoption in the scientific community, the existing web-based analysis tools and infrastructure in MG-RAST provide limited capability for data retrieval and analysis, such as comparative analysis between multiple data sets. Moreover, although the system provides many analysis tools, it is not comprehensive. By opening MG-RAST up via a web services API (application programmers interface) we have greatly expanded access to MG-RAST data, asmore » well as provided a mechanism for the use of third-party analysis tools with MG-RAST data. This RESTful API makes all data and data objects created by the MG-RAST pipeline accessible as JSON objects. As part of the DOE Systems Biology Knowledgebase project (KBase, http:// kbase.us) we have implemented a web services API for MG-RAST. This API complements the existing MG-RAST web interface and constitutes the basis of KBase’s microbial community capabilities. In addition, the API exposes a comprehensive collection of data to programmers. This API, which uses a RESTful (Representational State Transfer) implementation, is compatible with most programming environments and should be easy to use for end users and third parties. It provides comprehensive access to sequence data, quality control results, annotations, and many other data types. Where feasible, we have used standards to expose data and metadata. Code examples are provided in a number of languages both to show the versatility of the API and to provide a starting point for users. We present an API that exposes the data in MG-RAST for consumption by our users, greatly enhancing the utility of the MG-RAST service.« less

A Lifecycle Approach to Brokered Data Management for Hydrologic Modeling Data Using Open Standards.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Blodgett, D. L.; Booth, N.; Kunicki, T.; Walker, J.

2012-12-01

The U.S. Geological Survey Center for Integrated Data Analytics has formalized an information management-architecture to facilitate hydrologic modeling and subsequent decision support throughout a project's lifecycle. The architecture is based on open standards and open source software to decrease the adoption barrier and to build on existing, community supported software. The components of this system have been developed and evaluated to support data management activities of the interagency Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, Department of Interior's Climate Science Centers and WaterSmart National Water Census. Much of the research and development of this system has been in cooperation with international interoperability experiments conducted within the Open Geospatial Consortium. Community-developed standards and software, implemented to meet the unique requirements of specific disciplines, are used as a system of interoperable, discipline specific, data types and interfaces. This approach has allowed adoption of existing software that satisfies the majority of system requirements. Four major features of the system include: 1) assistance in model parameter and forcing creation from large enterprise data sources; 2) conversion of model results and calibrated parameters to standard formats, making them available via standard web services; 3) tracking a model's processes, inputs, and outputs as a cohesive metadata record, allowing provenance tracking via reference to web services; and 4) generalized decision support tools which rely on a suite of standard data types and interfaces, rather than particular manually curated model-derived datasets. Recent progress made in data and web service standards related to sensor and/or model derived station time series, dynamic web processing, and metadata management are central to this system's function and will be presented briefly along with a functional overview of the applications that make up the system. As the separate pieces of this system progress, they will be combined and generalized to form a sort of social network for nationally consistent hydrologic modeling.

A RESTful API for Accessing Microbial Community Data for MG-RAST

PubMed Central

Wilke, Andreas; Bischof, Jared; Harrison, Travis; Brettin, Tom; D'Souza, Mark; Gerlach, Wolfgang; Matthews, Hunter; Paczian, Tobias; Wilkening, Jared; Glass, Elizabeth M.; Desai, Narayan; Meyer, Folker

2015-01-01

Metagenomic sequencing has produced significant amounts of data in recent years. For example, as of summer 2013, MG-RAST has been used to annotate over 110,000 data sets totaling over 43 Terabases. With metagenomic sequencing finding even wider adoption in the scientific community, the existing web-based analysis tools and infrastructure in MG-RAST provide limited capability for data retrieval and analysis, such as comparative analysis between multiple data sets. Moreover, although the system provides many analysis tools, it is not comprehensive. By opening MG-RAST up via a web services API (application programmers interface) we have greatly expanded access to MG-RAST data, as well as provided a mechanism for the use of third-party analysis tools with MG-RAST data. This RESTful API makes all data and data objects created by the MG-RAST pipeline accessible as JSON objects. As part of the DOE Systems Biology Knowledgebase project (KBase, http://kbase.us) we have implemented a web services API for MG-RAST. This API complements the existing MG-RAST web interface and constitutes the basis of KBase's microbial community capabilities. In addition, the API exposes a comprehensive collection of data to programmers. This API, which uses a RESTful (Representational State Transfer) implementation, is compatible with most programming environments and should be easy to use for end users and third parties. It provides comprehensive access to sequence data, quality control results, annotations, and many other data types. Where feasible, we have used standards to expose data and metadata. Code examples are provided in a number of languages both to show the versatility of the API and to provide a starting point for users. We present an API that exposes the data in MG-RAST for consumption by our users, greatly enhancing the utility of the MG-RAST service. PMID:25569221

[Internet presence of psychiatrists in private practice. Status, chances and legal framework].

PubMed

Kuhnigk, O; Ramuschkat, M; Schreiner, J; Schäfer, I; Reimer, J

2013-05-01

Physicians increasingly use home pages to call attention to their practice. Based on predefined criteria, this study examines the web presence of psychiatrists and medical psychotherapists in private practice. All registered psychiatrists and psychotherapists of six northern German states were examined in May 2010 with regards to existence and quality of their web presence. Homepages were evaluated by means of a standardized criteria catalogue with 42 items. Statistical analysis comprised descriptive and analytic approaches (ANOVA, linear models). The analysis included 956 physicians, 168 of whom (17.6%) had a web presence. More physicians in city states had a web presence as compared to those in states with larger territories. However, there was no difference between eastern and western states. Male as compared to female physicians more often possessed an Internet presence. The average score was 19 (± 5.2) out of 42 items, with practices with more than one physician scoring higher than single physician practices. Websites often contained general information about the practice, medical services and diseases, and rarely online services, professional information about the physician, access for disabled, emergency services and holiday substitution. Legal requirements were not sufficiently considered by more than half of the physicians. Only a smaller number of psychiatrists and psychotherapists in private practice make use of their own web presence. The quality of information varies. The criteria catalogue used in this study may offer a guideline for development of a good quality Internet presence. A consensus Internet guideline with participation of physician chambers and medical societies would be of use to establish quality standards.

Persistence and availability of Web services in computational biology.

PubMed

Schultheiss, Sebastian J; Münch, Marc-Christian; Andreeva, Gergana D; Rätsch, Gunnar

2011-01-01

We have conducted a study on the long-term availability of bioinformatics Web services: an observation of 927 Web services published in the annual Nucleic Acids Research Web Server Issues between 2003 and 2009. We found that 72% of Web sites are still available at the published addresses, only 9% of services are completely unavailable. Older addresses often redirect to new pages. We checked the functionality of all available services: for 33%, we could not test functionality because there was no example data or a related problem; 13% were truly no longer working as expected; we could positively confirm functionality only for 45% of all services. Additionally, we conducted a survey among 872 Web Server Issue corresponding authors; 274 replied. 78% of all respondents indicate their services have been developed solely by students and researchers without a permanent position. Consequently, these services are in danger of falling into disrepair after the original developers move to another institution, and indeed, for 24% of services, there is no plan for maintenance, according to the respondents. We introduce a Web service quality scoring system that correlates with the number of citations: services with a high score are cited 1.8 times more often than low-scoring services. We have identified key characteristics that are predictive of a service's survival, providing reviewers, editors, and Web service developers with the means to assess or improve Web services. A Web service conforming to these criteria receives more citations and provides more reliable service for its users. The most effective way of ensuring continued access to a service is a persistent Web address, offered either by the publishing journal, or created on the authors' own initiative, for example at http://bioweb.me. The community would benefit the most from a policy requiring any source code needed to reproduce results to be deposited in a public repository.

Persistence and Availability of Web Services in Computational Biology

PubMed Central

Schultheiss, Sebastian J.; Münch, Marc-Christian; Andreeva, Gergana D.; Rätsch, Gunnar

2011-01-01

We have conducted a study on the long-term availability of bioinformatics Web services: an observation of 927 Web services published in the annual Nucleic Acids Research Web Server Issues between 2003 and 2009. We found that 72% of Web sites are still available at the published addresses, only 9% of services are completely unavailable. Older addresses often redirect to new pages. We checked the functionality of all available services: for 33%, we could not test functionality because there was no example data or a related problem; 13% were truly no longer working as expected; we could positively confirm functionality only for 45% of all services. Additionally, we conducted a survey among 872 Web Server Issue corresponding authors; 274 replied. 78% of all respondents indicate their services have been developed solely by students and researchers without a permanent position. Consequently, these services are in danger of falling into disrepair after the original developers move to another institution, and indeed, for 24% of services, there is no plan for maintenance, according to the respondents. We introduce a Web service quality scoring system that correlates with the number of citations: services with a high score are cited 1.8 times more often than low-scoring services. We have identified key characteristics that are predictive of a service's survival, providing reviewers, editors, and Web service developers with the means to assess or improve Web services. A Web service conforming to these criteria receives more citations and provides more reliable service for its users. The most effective way of ensuring continued access to a service is a persistent Web address, offered either by the publishing journal, or created on the authors' own initiative, for example at http://bioweb.me. The community would benefit the most from a policy requiring any source code needed to reproduce results to be deposited in a public repository. PMID:21966383

Space Physics Data Facility Web Services

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Candey, Robert M.; Harris, Bernard T.; Chimiak, Reine A.

2005-01-01

The Space Physics Data Facility (SPDF) Web services provides a distributed programming interface to a portion of the SPDF software. (A general description of Web services is available at http://www.w3.org/ and in many current software-engineering texts and articles focused on distributed programming.) The SPDF Web services distributed programming interface enables additional collaboration and integration of the SPDF software system with other software systems, in furtherance of the SPDF mission to lead collaborative efforts in the collection and utilization of space physics data and mathematical models. This programming interface conforms to all applicable Web services specifications of the World Wide Web Consortium. The interface is specified by a Web Services Description Language (WSDL) file. The SPDF Web services software consists of the following components: 1) A server program for implementation of the Web services; and 2) A software developer s kit that consists of a WSDL file, a less formal description of the interface, a Java class library (which further eases development of Java-based client software), and Java source code for an example client program that illustrates the use of the interface.

The EMBRACE web service collection

PubMed Central

Pettifer, Steve; Ison, Jon; Kalaš, Matúš; Thorne, Dave; McDermott, Philip; Jonassen, Inge; Liaquat, Ali; Fernández, José M.; Rodriguez, Jose M.; Partners, INB-; Pisano, David G.; Blanchet, Christophe; Uludag, Mahmut; Rice, Peter; Bartaseviciute, Edita; Rapacki, Kristoffer; Hekkelman, Maarten; Sand, Olivier; Stockinger, Heinz; Clegg, Andrew B.; Bongcam-Rudloff, Erik; Salzemann, Jean; Breton, Vincent; Attwood, Teresa K.; Cameron, Graham; Vriend, Gert

2010-01-01

The EMBRACE (European Model for Bioinformatics Research and Community Education) web service collection is the culmination of a 5-year project that set out to investigate issues involved in developing and deploying web services for use in the life sciences. The project concluded that in order for web services to achieve widespread adoption, standards must be defined for the choice of web service technology, for semantically annotating both service function and the data exchanged, and a mechanism for discovering services must be provided. Building on this, the project developed: EDAM, an ontology for describing life science web services; BioXSD, a schema for exchanging data between services; and a centralized registry (http://www.embraceregistry.net) that collects together around 1000 services developed by the consortium partners. This article presents the current status of the collection and its associated recommendations and standards definitions. PMID:20462862

Enhancing UCSF Chimera through web services

PubMed Central

Huang, Conrad C.; Meng, Elaine C.; Morris, John H.; Pettersen, Eric F.; Ferrin, Thomas E.

2014-01-01

Integrating access to web services with desktop applications allows for an expanded set of application features, including performing computationally intensive tasks and convenient searches of databases. We describe how we have enhanced UCSF Chimera (http://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/), a program for the interactive visualization and analysis of molecular structures and related data, through the addition of several web services (http://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/webservices.html). By streamlining access to web services, including the entire job submission, monitoring and retrieval process, Chimera makes it simpler for users to focus on their science projects rather than data manipulation. Chimera uses Opal, a toolkit for wrapping scientific applications as web services, to provide scalable and transparent access to several popular software packages. We illustrate Chimera's use of web services with an example workflow that interleaves use of these services with interactive manipulation of molecular sequences and structures, and we provide an example Python program to demonstrate how easily Opal-based web services can be accessed from within an application. Web server availability: http://webservices.rbvi.ucsf.edu/opal2/dashboard?command=serviceList. PMID:24861624

Real-time GIS data model and sensor web service platform for environmental data management.

PubMed

Gong, Jianya; Geng, Jing; Chen, Zeqiang

2015-01-09

Effective environmental data management is meaningful for human health. In the past, environmental data management involved developing a specific environmental data management system, but this method often lacks real-time data retrieving and sharing/interoperating capability. With the development of information technology, a Geospatial Service Web method is proposed that can be employed for environmental data management. The purpose of this study is to determine a method to realize environmental data management under the Geospatial Service Web framework. A real-time GIS (Geographic Information System) data model and a Sensor Web service platform to realize environmental data management under the Geospatial Service Web framework are proposed in this study. The real-time GIS data model manages real-time data. The Sensor Web service platform is applied to support the realization of the real-time GIS data model based on the Sensor Web technologies. To support the realization of the proposed real-time GIS data model, a Sensor Web service platform is implemented. Real-time environmental data, such as meteorological data, air quality data, soil moisture data, soil temperature data, and landslide data, are managed in the Sensor Web service platform. In addition, two use cases of real-time air quality monitoring and real-time soil moisture monitoring based on the real-time GIS data model in the Sensor Web service platform are realized and demonstrated. The total time efficiency of the two experiments is 3.7 s and 9.2 s. The experimental results show that the method integrating real-time GIS data model and Sensor Web Service Platform is an effective way to manage environmental data under the Geospatial Service Web framework.

Similarity Based Semantic Web Service Match

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Peng, Hui; Niu, Wenjia; Huang, Ronghuai

Semantic web service discovery aims at returning the most matching advertised services to the service requester by comparing the semantic of the request service with an advertised service. The semantic of a web service are described in terms of inputs, outputs, preconditions and results in Ontology Web Language for Service (OWL-S) which formalized by W3C. In this paper we proposed an algorithm to calculate the semantic similarity of two services by weighted averaging their inputs and outputs similarities. Case study and applications show the effectiveness of our algorithm in service match.

Boverhof's App Earns Honorable Mention in Amazon's Web Services

Science.gov Websites

» Boverhof's App Earns Honorable Mention in Amazon's Web Services Competition News & Publications News Publications Facebook Google+ Twitter Boverhof's App Earns Honorable Mention in Amazon's Web Services by Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amazon officially announced the winners of its EC2 Spotathon on Monday

Biological Web Service Repositories Review

PubMed Central

Urdidiales‐Nieto, David; Navas‐Delgado, Ismael

2016-01-01

Abstract Web services play a key role in bioinformatics enabling the integration of database access and analysis of algorithms. However, Web service repositories do not usually publish information on the changes made to their registered Web services. Dynamism is directly related to the changes in the repositories (services registered or unregistered) and at service level (annotation changes). Thus, users, software clients or workflow based approaches lack enough relevant information to decide when they should review or re‐execute a Web service or workflow to get updated or improved results. The dynamism of the repository could be a measure for workflow developers to re‐check service availability and annotation changes in the services of interest to them. This paper presents a review on the most well‐known Web service repositories in the life sciences including an analysis of their dynamism. Freshness is introduced in this paper, and has been used as the measure for the dynamism of these repositories. PMID:27783459

Signal and image processing algorithm performance in a virtual and elastic computing environment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bennett, Kelly W.; Robertson, James

2013-05-01

The U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) supports the development of classification, detection, tracking, and localization algorithms using multiple sensing modalities including acoustic, seismic, E-field, magnetic field, PIR, and visual and IR imaging. Multimodal sensors collect large amounts of data in support of algorithm development. The resulting large amount of data, and their associated high-performance computing needs, increases and challenges existing computing infrastructures. Purchasing computer power as a commodity using a Cloud service offers low-cost, pay-as-you-go pricing models, scalability, and elasticity that may provide solutions to develop and optimize algorithms without having to procure additional hardware and resources. This paper provides a detailed look at using a commercial cloud service provider, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), to develop and deploy simple signal and image processing algorithms in a cloud and run the algorithms on a large set of data archived in the ARL Multimodal Signatures Database (MMSDB). Analytical results will provide performance comparisons with existing infrastructure. A discussion on using cloud computing with government data will discuss best security practices that exist within cloud services, such as AWS.

Geospatial Service Platform for Education and Research

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gong, J.; Wu, H.; Jiang, W.; Guo, W.; Zhai, X.; Yue, P.

2014-04-01

We propose to advance the scientific understanding through applications of geospatial service platforms, which can help students and researchers investigate various scientific problems in a Web-based environment with online tools and services. The platform also offers capabilities for sharing data, algorithm, and problem-solving knowledge. To fulfil this goal, the paper introduces a new course, named "Geospatial Service Platform for Education and Research", to be held in the ISPRS summer school in May 2014 at Wuhan University, China. The course will share cutting-edge achievements of a geospatial service platform with students from different countries, and train them with online tools from the platform for geospatial data processing and scientific research. The content of the course includes the basic concepts of geospatial Web services, service-oriented architecture, geoprocessing modelling and chaining, and problem-solving using geospatial services. In particular, the course will offer a geospatial service platform for handson practice. There will be three kinds of exercises in the course: geoprocessing algorithm sharing through service development, geoprocessing modelling through service chaining, and online geospatial analysis using geospatial services. Students can choose one of them, depending on their interests and background. Existing geoprocessing services from OpenRS and GeoPW will be introduced. The summer course offers two service chaining tools, GeoChaining and GeoJModelBuilder, as instances to explain specifically the method for building service chains in view of different demands. After this course, students can learn how to use online service platforms for geospatial resource sharing and problem-solving.

Operational monitoring and forecasting of bathing water quality through exploiting satellite Earth observation and models: The AlgaRisk demonstration service

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shutler, J. D.; Warren, M. A.; Miller, P. I.; Barciela, R.; Mahdon, R.; Land, P. E.; Edwards, K.; Wither, A.; Jonas, P.; Murdoch, N.; Roast, S. D.; Clements, O.; Kurekin, A.

2015-04-01

Coastal zones and shelf-seas are important for tourism, commercial fishing and aquaculture. As a result the importance of good water quality within these regions to support life is recognised worldwide and a number of international directives for monitoring them now exist. This paper describes the AlgaRisk water quality monitoring demonstration service that was developed and operated for the UK Environment Agency in response to the microbiological monitoring needs within the revised European Union Bathing Waters Directive. The AlgaRisk approach used satellite Earth observation to provide a near-real time monitoring of microbiological water quality and a series of nested operational models (atmospheric and hydrodynamic-ecosystem) provided a forecast capability. For the period of the demonstration service (2008-2013) all monitoring and forecast datasets were processed in near-real time on a daily basis and disseminated through a dedicated web portal, with extracted data automatically emailed to agency staff. Near-real time data processing was achieved using a series of supercomputers and an Open Grid approach. The novel web portal and java-based viewer enabled users to visualise and interrogate current and historical data. The system description, the algorithms employed and example results focussing on a case study of an incidence of the harmful algal bloom Karenia mikimotoi are presented. Recommendations and the potential exploitation of web services for future water quality monitoring services are discussed.

Enhancing the AliEn Web Service Authentication

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhu, Jianlin; Saiz, Pablo; Carminati, Federico; Betev, Latchezar; Zhou, Daicui; Mendez Lorenzo, Patricia; Grigoras, Alina Gabriela; Grigoras, Costin; Furano, Fabrizio; Schreiner, Steffen; Vladimirovna Datskova, Olga; Sankar Banerjee, Subho; Zhang, Guoping

2011-12-01

Web Services are an XML based technology that allow applications to communicate with each other across disparate systems. Web Services are becoming the de facto standard that enable inter operability between heterogeneous processes and systems. AliEn2 is a grid environment based on web services. The AliEn2 services can be divided in three categories: Central services, deployed once per organization; Site services, deployed on each of the participating centers; Job Agents running on the worker nodes automatically. A security model to protect these services is essential for the whole system. Current implementations of web server, such as Apache, are not suitable to be used within the grid environment. Apache with the mod_ssl and OpenSSL only supports the X.509 certificates. But in the grid environment, the common credential is the proxy certificate for the purpose of providing restricted proxy and delegation. An Authentication framework was taken for AliEn2 web services to add the ability to accept X.509 certificates and proxy certificates from client-side to Apache Web Server. The authentication framework could also allow the generation of access control policies to limit access to the AliEn2 web services.

SolarSoft Web Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Freeland, S.; Hurlburt, N.

2005-12-01

The SolarSoft system (SSW) is a set of integrated software libraries, databases, and system utilities which provide a common programming and data analysis environment for solar physics. The system includes contributions from a large community base, representing the efforts of many NASA PI team MO&DA teams,spanning many years and multiple NASA and international orbital and ground based missions. The SSW general use libraries include Many hundreds of utilities which are instrument and mission independent. A large subset are also SOLAR independent, such as time conversions, digital detector cleanup, time series analysis, mathematics, image display, WWW server communications and the like. PI teams may draw on these general purpose libraries for analysis and application development while concentrating efforts on instrument specific calibration issues rather than reinvention of general use software. By the same token, PI teams are encouraged to contribute new applications or enhancements to existing utilities which may have more general interest. Recent areas of intense evolution include space weather applications, automated distributed data access and analysis, interfaces with the ongoing Virtual Solar Observatory efforts, and externalization of SolarSoft power through Web Services. We will discuss the current status of SSW web services and demonstrate how this facilitates accessing the underlying power of SolarSoft in more abstract terms. In this context, we will describe the use of SSW services within the Collaborative Sun Earth Connector environment.

Publishing and Editing of Semantically-Enabled Scientific Metadata Across Multiple Web Platforms: Challenges and Experiences

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Patton, E. W.; West, P.; Greer, R.; Jin, B.

2011-12-01

Following on work presented at the 2010 AGU Fall Meeting, we present a number of real-world collections of semantically-enabled scientific metadata ingested into the Tetherless World RDF2HTML system as structured data and presented and edited using that system. Two separate datasets from two different domains (oceanography and solar sciences) are made available using existing web standards and services, e.g. encoded using ontologies represented with the Web Ontology Language (OWL) and stored in a SPARQL endpoint for querying. These datasets are deployed for use in three different web environments, i.e. Drupal, MediaWiki, and a custom web portal written in Java, to highlight the cross-platform nature of the data presentation. Stylesheets used to transform concepts in each domain as well as shared terms into HTML will be presented to show the power of using common ontologies to publish data and support reuse of existing terminologies. In addition, a single domain dataset is shared between two separate portal instances to demonstrate the ability for this system to offer distributed access and modification of content across the Internet. Lastly, we will highlight challenges that arose in the software engineering process, outline the design choices we made in solving those issues, and discuss how future improvements to this and other systems will enable the evolution of distributed, decentralized collaborations for scientific data sharing across multiple research groups.

Web service discovery among large service pools utilising semantic similarity and clustering

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, Fuzan; Li, Minqiang; Wu, Harris; Xie, Lingli

2017-03-01

With the rapid development of electronic business, Web services have attracted much attention in recent years. Enterprises can combine individual Web services to provide new value-added services. An emerging challenge is the timely discovery of close matches to service requests among large service pools. In this study, we first define a new semantic similarity measure combining functional similarity and process similarity. We then present a service discovery mechanism that utilises the new semantic similarity measure for service matching. All the published Web services are pre-grouped into functional clusters prior to the matching process. For a user's service request, the discovery mechanism first identifies matching services clusters and then identifies the best matching Web services within these matching clusters. Experimental results show that the proposed semantic discovery mechanism performs better than a conventional lexical similarity-based mechanism.

Pragmatic Computing - A Semiotic Perspective to Web Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Kecheng

The web seems to have evolved from a syntactic web, a semantic web to a pragmatic web. This evolution conforms to the study of information and technology from the theory of semiotics. The pragmatics, concerning with the use of information in relation to the context and intended purposes, is extremely important in web service and applications. Much research in pragmatics has been carried out; but in the same time, attempts and solutions have led to some more questions. After reviewing the current work in pragmatic web, the paper presents a semiotic approach to website services, particularly on request decomposition and service aggregation.

GIS Technologies For The New Planetary Science Archive (PSA)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Docasal, R.; Barbarisi, I.; Rios, C.; Macfarlane, A. J.; Gonzalez, J.; Arviset, C.; De Marchi, G.; Martinez, S.; Grotheer, E.; Lim, T.; Besse, S.; Heather, D.; Fraga, D.; Barthelemy, M.

2015-12-01

Geographical information system (GIS) is becoming increasingly used for planetary science. GIS are computerised systems for the storage, retrieval, manipulation, analysis, and display of geographically referenced data. Some data stored in the Planetary Science Archive (PSA), for instance, a set of Mars Express/Venus Express data, have spatial metadata associated to them. To facilitate users in handling and visualising spatial data in GIS applications, the new PSA should support interoperability with interfaces implementing the standards approved by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). These standards are followed in order to develop open interfaces and encodings that allow data to be exchanged with GIS Client Applications, well-known examples of which are Google Earth and NASA World Wind as well as open source tools such as Openlayers. The technology already exists within PostgreSQL databases to store searchable geometrical data in the form of the PostGIS extension. An existing open source maps server is GeoServer, an instance of which has been deployed for the new PSA, uses the OGC standards to allow, among others, the sharing, processing and editing of data and spatial data through the Web Feature Service (WFS) standard as well as serving georeferenced map images through the Web Map Service (WMS). The final goal of the new PSA, being developed by the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) Science Data Centre (ESDC), is to create an archive which enables science exploitation of ESA's planetary missions datasets. This can be facilitated through the GIS framework, offering interfaces (both web GUI and scriptable APIs) that can be used more easily and scientifically by the community, and that will also enable the community to build added value services on top of the PSA.

Internet protocol television for personalized home-based health information: design-based research on a diabetes education system.

PubMed

Gray, Kathleen Mary; Clarke, Ken; Alzougool, Basil; Hines, Carolyn; Tidhar, Gil; Frukhtman, Feodor

2014-03-10

The use of Internet protocol television (IPTV) as a channel for consumer health information is a relatively under-explored area of medical Internet research. IPTV may afford new opportunities for health care service providers to provide health information and for consumers, patients, and caretakers to access health information. The technologies of Web 2.0 add a new and even less explored dimension to IPTV's potential. Our research explored an application of Web 2.0 integrated with IPTV for personalized home-based health information in diabetes education, particularly for people with diabetes who are not strong computer and Internet users, and thus may miss out on Web-based resources. We wanted to establish whether this system could enable diabetes educators to deliver personalized health information directly to people with diabetes in their homes; and whether this system could encourage people with diabetes who make little use of Web-based health information to build their health literacy via the interface of a home television screen and remote control. This project was undertaken as design-based research in two stages. Stage 1 comprised a feasibility study into the technical work required to integrate an existing Web 2.0 platform with an existing IPTV system, populated with content and implemented for user trials in a laboratory setting. Stage 2 comprised an evaluation of the system by consumers and providers of diabetes information. The project succeeded in developing a Web 2.0 IPTV system for people with diabetes and low literacies and their diabetes educators. The performance of the system in the laboratory setting gave them the confidence to engage seriously in thinking about the actual and potential features and benefits of a more widely-implemented system. In their feedback they pointed out a range of critical usability and usefulness issues related to Web 2.0 affordances and learning fundamentals. They also described their experiences with the system in terms that bode well for its educational potential, and they suggested many constructive improvements to the system. The integration of Web 2.0 and IPTV merits further technical development, business modeling, and health services and health outcomes research, as a solution to extend the reach and scale of home-based health care.

QoS measurement of workflow-based web service compositions using Colored Petri net.

PubMed

Nematzadeh, Hossein; Motameni, Homayun; Mohamad, Radziah; Nematzadeh, Zahra

2014-01-01

Workflow-based web service compositions (WB-WSCs) is one of the main composition categories in service oriented architecture (SOA). Eflow, polymorphic process model (PPM), and business process execution language (BPEL) are the main techniques of the category of WB-WSCs. Due to maturity of web services, measuring the quality of composite web services being developed by different techniques becomes one of the most important challenges in today's web environments. Business should try to provide good quality regarding the customers' requirements to a composed web service. Thus, quality of service (QoS) which refers to nonfunctional parameters is important to be measured since the quality degree of a certain web service composition could be achieved. This paper tried to find a deterministic analytical method for dependability and performance measurement using Colored Petri net (CPN) with explicit routing constructs and application of theory of probability. A computer tool called WSET was also developed for modeling and supporting QoS measurement through simulation.

Using Standardized Lexicons for Report Template Validation with LexMap, a Web-based Application.

PubMed

Hostetter, Jason; Wang, Kenneth; Siegel, Eliot; Durack, Jeremy; Morrison, James J

2015-06-01

An enormous amount of data exists in unstructured diagnostic and interventional radiology reports. Free text or non-standardized terminologies limit the ability to parse, extract, and analyze these report data elements. Medical lexicons and ontologies contain standardized terms for relevant concepts including disease entities, radiographic technique, and findings. The use of standardized terms offers the potential to improve reporting consistency and facilitate computer analysis. The purpose of this project was to implement an interface to aid in the creation of standards-compliant reporting templates for use in interventional radiology. Non-standardized procedure report text was analyzed and referenced to RadLex, SNOMED-CT, and LOINC. Using JavaScript, a web application was developed which determined whether exact terms or synonyms in reports existed within these three reference resources. The NCBO BioPortal Annotator web service was used to map terms, and output from this application was used to create an interactive annotated version of the original report. The application was successfully used to analyze and modify five distinct reports for the Society of Interventional Radiology's standardized reporting project.

Enhancing UCSF Chimera through web services.

PubMed

Huang, Conrad C; Meng, Elaine C; Morris, John H; Pettersen, Eric F; Ferrin, Thomas E

2014-07-01

Integrating access to web services with desktop applications allows for an expanded set of application features, including performing computationally intensive tasks and convenient searches of databases. We describe how we have enhanced UCSF Chimera (http://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/), a program for the interactive visualization and analysis of molecular structures and related data, through the addition of several web services (http://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/webservices.html). By streamlining access to web services, including the entire job submission, monitoring and retrieval process, Chimera makes it simpler for users to focus on their science projects rather than data manipulation. Chimera uses Opal, a toolkit for wrapping scientific applications as web services, to provide scalable and transparent access to several popular software packages. We illustrate Chimera's use of web services with an example workflow that interleaves use of these services with interactive manipulation of molecular sequences and structures, and we provide an example Python program to demonstrate how easily Opal-based web services can be accessed from within an application. Web server availability: http://webservices.rbvi.ucsf.edu/opal2/dashboard?command=serviceList. © The Author(s) 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.

DTMiner: identification of potential disease targets through biomedical literature mining

PubMed Central

Xu, Dong; Zhang, Meizhuo; Xie, Yanping; Wang, Fan; Chen, Ming; Zhu, Kenny Q.; Wei, Jia

2016-01-01

Motivation: Biomedical researchers often search through massive catalogues of literature to look for potential relationships between genes and diseases. Given the rapid growth of biomedical literature, automatic relation extraction, a crucial technology in biomedical literature mining, has shown great potential to support research of gene-related diseases. Existing work in this field has produced datasets that are limited both in scale and accuracy. Results: In this study, we propose a reliable and efficient framework that takes large biomedical literature repositories as inputs, identifies credible relationships between diseases and genes, and presents possible genes related to a given disease and possible diseases related to a given gene. The framework incorporates name entity recognition (NER), which identifies occurrences of genes and diseases in texts, association detection whereby we extract and evaluate features from gene–disease pairs, and ranking algorithms that estimate how closely the pairs are related. The F1-score of the NER phase is 0.87, which is higher than existing studies. The association detection phase takes drastically less time than previous work while maintaining a comparable F1-score of 0.86. The end-to-end result achieves a 0.259 F1-score for the top 50 genes associated with a disease, which performs better than previous work. In addition, we released a web service for public use of the dataset. Availability and Implementation: The implementation of the proposed algorithms is publicly available at http://gdr-web.rwebox.com/public_html/index.php?page=download.php. The web service is available at http://gdr-web.rwebox.com/public_html/index.php. Contact: jenny.wei@astrazeneca.com or kzhu@cs.sjtu.edu.cn Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. PMID:27506226

DTMiner: identification of potential disease targets through biomedical literature mining.

PubMed

Xu, Dong; Zhang, Meizhuo; Xie, Yanping; Wang, Fan; Chen, Ming; Zhu, Kenny Q; Wei, Jia

2016-12-01

Biomedical researchers often search through massive catalogues of literature to look for potential relationships between genes and diseases. Given the rapid growth of biomedical literature, automatic relation extraction, a crucial technology in biomedical literature mining, has shown great potential to support research of gene-related diseases. Existing work in this field has produced datasets that are limited both in scale and accuracy. In this study, we propose a reliable and efficient framework that takes large biomedical literature repositories as inputs, identifies credible relationships between diseases and genes, and presents possible genes related to a given disease and possible diseases related to a given gene. The framework incorporates name entity recognition (NER), which identifies occurrences of genes and diseases in texts, association detection whereby we extract and evaluate features from gene-disease pairs, and ranking algorithms that estimate how closely the pairs are related. The F1-score of the NER phase is 0.87, which is higher than existing studies. The association detection phase takes drastically less time than previous work while maintaining a comparable F1-score of 0.86. The end-to-end result achieves a 0.259 F1-score for the top 50 genes associated with a disease, which performs better than previous work. In addition, we released a web service for public use of the dataset. The implementation of the proposed algorithms is publicly available at http://gdr-web.rwebox.com/public_html/index.php?page=download.php The web service is available at http://gdr-web.rwebox.com/public_html/index.php CONTACT: jenny.wei@astrazeneca.com or kzhu@cs.sjtu.edu.cn Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press.

PubMed and beyond: a survey of web tools for searching biomedical literature

PubMed Central

Lu, Zhiyong

2011-01-01

The past decade has witnessed the modern advances of high-throughput technology and rapid growth of research capacity in producing large-scale biological data, both of which were concomitant with an exponential growth of biomedical literature. This wealth of scholarly knowledge is of significant importance for researchers in making scientific discoveries and healthcare professionals in managing health-related matters. However, the acquisition of such information is becoming increasingly difficult due to its large volume and rapid growth. In response, the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is continuously making changes to its PubMed Web service for improvement. Meanwhile, different entities have devoted themselves to developing Web tools for helping users quickly and efficiently search and retrieve relevant publications. These practices, together with maturity in the field of text mining, have led to an increase in the number and quality of various Web tools that provide comparable literature search service to PubMed. In this study, we review 28 such tools, highlight their respective innovations, compare them to the PubMed system and one another, and discuss directions for future development. Furthermore, we have built a website dedicated to tracking existing systems and future advances in the field of biomedical literature search. Taken together, our work serves information seekers in choosing tools for their needs and service providers and developers in keeping current in the field. Database URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/CBBresearch/Lu/search PMID:21245076

Metadata Authoring with Versatility and Extensibility

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Pollack, Janine; Olsen, Lola

2004-01-01

NASA's Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) assists the scientific community in the discovery of and linkage to Earth science data sets and related services. The GCMD holds over 13,800 data set descriptions in Directory Interchange Format (DIF) and 700 data service descriptions in Service Entry Resource Format (SERF), encompassing the disciplines of geology, hydrology, oceanography, meteorology, and ecology. Data descriptions also contain geographic coverage information and direct links to the data, thus allowing researchers to discover data pertaining to a geographic location of interest, then quickly acquire those data. The GCMD strives to be the preferred data locator for world-wide directory-level metadata. In this vein, scientists and data providers must have access to intuitive and efficient metadata authoring tools. Existing GCMD tools are attracting widespread usage; however, a need for tools that are portable, customizable and versatile still exists. With tool usage directly influencing metadata population, it has become apparent that new tools are needed to fill these voids. As a result, the GCMD has released a new authoring tool allowing for both web-based and stand-alone authoring of descriptions. Furthermore, this tool incorporates the ability to plug-and-play the metadata format of choice, offering users options of DIF, SERF, FGDC, ISO or any other defined standard. Allowing data holders to work with their preferred format, as well as an option of a stand-alone application or web-based environment, docBUlLDER will assist the scientific community in efficiently creating quality data and services metadata.

Progress toward a Semantic eScience Framework; building on advanced cyberinfrastructure

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

McGuinness, D. L.; Fox, P. A.; West, P.; Rozell, E.; Zednik, S.; Chang, C.

2010-12-01

The configurable and extensible semantic eScience framework (SESF) has begun development and implementation of several semantic application components. Extensions and improvements to several ontologies have been made based on distinct interdisciplinary use cases ranging from solar physics, to biologicl and chemical oceanography. Importantly, these semantic representations mediate access to a diverse set of existing and emerging cyberinfrastructure. Among the advances are the population of triple stores with web accessible query services. A triple store is akin to a relational data store where the basic stored unit is a subject-predicate-object tuple. Access via a query is provided by the W3 Recommendation language specification SPARQL. Upon this middle tier of semantic cyberinfrastructure, we have developed several forms of semantic faceted search, including provenance-awareness. We report on the rapid advances in semantic technologies and tools and how we are sustaining the software path for the required technical advances as well as the ontology improvements and increased functionality of the semantic applications including how they are integrated into web-based portals (e.g. Drupal) and web services. Lastly, we indicate future work direction and opportunities for collaboration.

User Needs of Digital Service Web Portals: A Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Heo, Misook; Song, Jung-Sook; Seol, Moon-Won

2013-01-01

The authors examined the needs of digital information service web portal users. More specifically, the needs of Korean cultural portal users were examined as a case study. The conceptual framework of a web-based portal is that it is a complex, web-based service application with characteristics of information systems and service agents. In…

Compression-based aggregation model for medical web services.

PubMed

Al-Shammary, Dhiah; Khalil, Ibrahim

2010-01-01

Many organizations such as hospitals have adopted Cloud Web services in applying their network services to avoid investing heavily computing infrastructure. SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is the basic communication protocol of Cloud Web services that is XML based protocol. Generally,Web services often suffer congestions and bottlenecks as a result of the high network traffic that is caused by the large XML overhead size. At the same time, the massive load on Cloud Web services in terms of the large demand of client requests has resulted in the same problem. In this paper, two XML-aware aggregation techniques that are based on exploiting the compression concepts are proposed in order to aggregate the medical Web messages and achieve higher message size reduction.

A snapshot of 3649 Web-based services published between 1994 and 2017 shows a decrease in availability after 2 years.

PubMed

Osz, Ágnes; Pongor, Lorinc Sándor; Szirmai, Danuta; Gyorffy, Balázs

2017-12-08

The long-term availability of online Web services is of utmost importance to ensure reproducibility of analytical results. However, because of lack of maintenance following acceptance, many servers become unavailable after a short period of time. Our aim was to monitor the accessibility and the decay rate of published Web services as well as to determine the factors underlying trends changes. We searched PubMed to identify publications containing Web server-related terms published between 1994 and 2017. Automatic and manual screening was used to check the status of each Web service. Kruskall-Wallis, Mann-Whitney and Chi-square tests were used to evaluate various parameters, including availability, accessibility, platform, origin of authors, citation, journal impact factor and publication year. We identified 3649 publications in 375 journals of which 2522 (69%) were currently active. Over 95% of sites were running in the first 2 years, but this rate dropped to 84% in the third year and gradually sank afterwards (P < 1e-16). The mean half-life of Web services is 10.39 years. Working Web services were published in journals with higher impact factors (P = 4.8e-04). Services published before the year 2000 received minimal attention. The citation of offline services was less than for those online (P = 0.022). The majority of Web services provide analytical tools, and the proportion of databases is slowly decreasing. Conclusions. Almost one-third of Web services published to date went out of service. We recommend continued support of Web-based services to increase the reproducibility of published results. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press.

Automatic energy expenditure measurement for health science.

PubMed

Catal, Cagatay; Akbulut, Akhan

2018-04-01

It is crucial to predict the human energy expenditure in any sports activity and health science application accurately to investigate the impact of the activity. However, measurement of the real energy expenditure is not a trivial task and involves complex steps. The objective of this work is to improve the performance of existing estimation models of energy expenditure by using machine learning algorithms and several data from different sensors and provide this estimation service in a cloud-based platform. In this study, we used input data such as breathe rate, and hearth rate from three sensors. Inputs are received from a web form and sent to the web service which applies a regression model on Azure cloud platform. During the experiments, we assessed several machine learning models based on regression methods. Our experimental results showed that our novel model which applies Boosted Decision Tree Regression in conjunction with the median aggregation technique provides the best result among other five regression algorithms. This cloud-based energy expenditure system which uses a web service showed that cloud computing technology is a great opportunity to develop estimation systems and the new model which applies Boosted Decision Tree Regression with the median aggregation provides remarkable results. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Argo_CUDA: Exhaustive GPU based approach for motif discovery in large DNA datasets.

PubMed

Vishnevsky, Oleg V; Bocharnikov, Andrey V; Kolchanov, Nikolay A

2018-02-01

The development of chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-seq) technology has revolutionized the genetic analysis of the basic mechanisms underlying transcription regulation and led to accumulation of information about a huge amount of DNA sequences. There are a lot of web services which are currently available for de novo motif discovery in datasets containing information about DNA/protein binding. An enormous motif diversity makes their finding challenging. In order to avoid the difficulties, researchers use different stochastic approaches. Unfortunately, the efficiency of the motif discovery programs dramatically declines with the query set size increase. This leads to the fact that only a fraction of top "peak" ChIP-Seq segments can be analyzed or the area of analysis should be narrowed. Thus, the motif discovery in massive datasets remains a challenging issue. Argo_Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) web service is designed to process the massive DNA data. It is a program for the detection of degenerate oligonucleotide motifs of fixed length written in 15-letter IUPAC code. Argo_CUDA is a full-exhaustive approach based on the high-performance GPU technologies. Compared with the existing motif discovery web services, Argo_CUDA shows good prediction quality on simulated sets. The analysis of ChIP-Seq sequences revealed the motifs which correspond to known transcription factor binding sites.

Analysis Tool Web Services from the EMBL-EBI.

PubMed

McWilliam, Hamish; Li, Weizhong; Uludag, Mahmut; Squizzato, Silvano; Park, Young Mi; Buso, Nicola; Cowley, Andrew Peter; Lopez, Rodrigo

2013-07-01

Since 2004 the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) has provided access to a wide range of databases and analysis tools via Web Services interfaces. This comprises services to search across the databases available from the EMBL-EBI and to explore the network of cross-references present in the data (e.g. EB-eye), services to retrieve entry data in various data formats and to access the data in specific fields (e.g. dbfetch), and analysis tool services, for example, sequence similarity search (e.g. FASTA and NCBI BLAST), multiple sequence alignment (e.g. Clustal Omega and MUSCLE), pairwise sequence alignment and protein functional analysis (e.g. InterProScan and Phobius). The REST/SOAP Web Services (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/Tools/webservices/) interfaces to these databases and tools allow their integration into other tools, applications, web sites, pipeline processes and analytical workflows. To get users started using the Web Services, sample clients are provided covering a range of programming languages and popular Web Service tool kits, and a brief guide to Web Services technologies, including a set of tutorials, is available for those wishing to learn more and develop their own clients. Users of the Web Services are informed of improvements and updates via a range of methods.

Analysis Tool Web Services from the EMBL-EBI

PubMed Central

McWilliam, Hamish; Li, Weizhong; Uludag, Mahmut; Squizzato, Silvano; Park, Young Mi; Buso, Nicola; Cowley, Andrew Peter; Lopez, Rodrigo

2013-01-01

Since 2004 the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) has provided access to a wide range of databases and analysis tools via Web Services interfaces. This comprises services to search across the databases available from the EMBL-EBI and to explore the network of cross-references present in the data (e.g. EB-eye), services to retrieve entry data in various data formats and to access the data in specific fields (e.g. dbfetch), and analysis tool services, for example, sequence similarity search (e.g. FASTA and NCBI BLAST), multiple sequence alignment (e.g. Clustal Omega and MUSCLE), pairwise sequence alignment and protein functional analysis (e.g. InterProScan and Phobius). The REST/SOAP Web Services (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/Tools/webservices/) interfaces to these databases and tools allow their integration into other tools, applications, web sites, pipeline processes and analytical workflows. To get users started using the Web Services, sample clients are provided covering a range of programming languages and popular Web Service tool kits, and a brief guide to Web Services technologies, including a set of tutorials, is available for those wishing to learn more and develop their own clients. Users of the Web Services are informed of improvements and updates via a range of methods. PMID:23671338

Standardized acquisition, storing and provision of 3D enabled spatial data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wagner, B.; Maier, S.; Peinsipp-Byma, E.

2017-05-01

In the area of working with spatial data, in addition to the classic, two-dimensional geometrical data (maps, aerial images, etc.), the needs for three-dimensional spatial data (city models, digital elevation models, etc.) is increasing. Due to this increased demand the acquiring, storing and provision of 3D enabled spatial data in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is more and more important. Existing proprietary solutions quickly reaches their limits during data exchange and data delivery to other systems. They generate a large workload, which will be very costly. However, it is noticeable that these expenses and costs can generally be significantly reduced using standards. The aim of this research is therefore to develop a concept in the field of three-dimensional spatial data that runs on existing standards whenever possible. In this research, the military image analysts are the preferred user group of the system. To achieve the objective of the widest possible use of standards in spatial 3D data, existing standards, proprietary interfaces and standards under discussion have been analyzed. Since the here used GIS of the Fraunhofer IOSB is already using and supporting OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) and NATO-STANAG (NATO-Standardization Agreement) standards for the most part of it, a special attention for possible use was laid on their standards. The most promising standard is the OGC standard 3DPS (3D Portrayal Service) with its occurrences W3DS (Web 3D Service) and WVS (Web View Service). A demo system was created, using a standardized workflow from the data acquiring, storing and provision and showing the benefit of our approach.

OntologyWidget – a reusable, embeddable widget for easily locating ontology terms

PubMed Central

Beauheim, Catherine C; Wymore, Farrell; Nitzberg, Michael; Zachariah, Zachariah K; Jin, Heng; Skene, JH Pate; Ball, Catherine A; Sherlock, Gavin

2007-01-01

Background Biomedical ontologies are being widely used to annotate biological data in a computer-accessible, consistent and well-defined manner. However, due to their size and complexity, annotating data with appropriate terms from an ontology is often challenging for experts and non-experts alike, because there exist few tools that allow one to quickly find relevant ontology terms to easily populate a web form. Results We have produced a tool, OntologyWidget, which allows users to rapidly search for and browse ontology terms. OntologyWidget can easily be embedded in other web-based applications. OntologyWidget is written using AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and has two related elements. The first is a dynamic auto-complete ontology search feature. As a user enters characters into the search box, the appropriate ontology is queried remotely for terms that match the typed-in text, and the query results populate a drop-down list with all potential matches. Upon selection of a term from the list, the user can locate this term within a generic and dynamic ontology browser, which comprises the second element of the tool. The ontology browser shows the paths from a selected term to the root as well as parent/child tree hierarchies. We have implemented web services at the Stanford Microarray Database (SMD), which provide the OntologyWidget with access to over 40 ontologies from the Open Biological Ontology (OBO) website [1]. Each ontology is updated weekly. Adopters of the OntologyWidget can either use SMD's web services, or elect to rely on their own. Deploying the OntologyWidget can be accomplished in three simple steps: (1) install Apache Tomcat [2] on one's web server, (2) download and install the OntologyWidget servlet stub that provides access to the SMD ontology web services, and (3) create an html (HyperText Markup Language) file that refers to the OntologyWidget using a simple, well-defined format. Conclusion We have developed OntologyWidget, an easy-to-use ontology search and display tool that can be used on any web page by creating a simple html description. OntologyWidget provides a rapid auto-complete search function paired with an interactive tree display. We have developed a web service layer that communicates between the web page interface and a database of ontology terms. We currently store 40 of the ontologies from the OBO website [1], as well as a several others. These ontologies are automatically updated on a weekly basis. OntologyWidget can be used in any web-based application to take advantage of the ontologies we provide via web services or any other ontology that is provided elsewhere in the correct format. The full source code for the JavaScript and description of the OntologyWidget is available from . PMID:17854506

OntologyWidget - a reusable, embeddable widget for easily locating ontology terms.

PubMed

Beauheim, Catherine C; Wymore, Farrell; Nitzberg, Michael; Zachariah, Zachariah K; Jin, Heng; Skene, J H Pate; Ball, Catherine A; Sherlock, Gavin

2007-09-13

Biomedical ontologies are being widely used to annotate biological data in a computer-accessible, consistent and well-defined manner. However, due to their size and complexity, annotating data with appropriate terms from an ontology is often challenging for experts and non-experts alike, because there exist few tools that allow one to quickly find relevant ontology terms to easily populate a web form. We have produced a tool, OntologyWidget, which allows users to rapidly search for and browse ontology terms. OntologyWidget can easily be embedded in other web-based applications. OntologyWidget is written using AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and has two related elements. The first is a dynamic auto-complete ontology search feature. As a user enters characters into the search box, the appropriate ontology is queried remotely for terms that match the typed-in text, and the query results populate a drop-down list with all potential matches. Upon selection of a term from the list, the user can locate this term within a generic and dynamic ontology browser, which comprises the second element of the tool. The ontology browser shows the paths from a selected term to the root as well as parent/child tree hierarchies. We have implemented web services at the Stanford Microarray Database (SMD), which provide the OntologyWidget with access to over 40 ontologies from the Open Biological Ontology (OBO) website 1. Each ontology is updated weekly. Adopters of the OntologyWidget can either use SMD's web services, or elect to rely on their own. Deploying the OntologyWidget can be accomplished in three simple steps: (1) install Apache Tomcat 2 on one's web server, (2) download and install the OntologyWidget servlet stub that provides access to the SMD ontology web services, and (3) create an html (HyperText Markup Language) file that refers to the OntologyWidget using a simple, well-defined format. We have developed OntologyWidget, an easy-to-use ontology search and display tool that can be used on any web page by creating a simple html description. OntologyWidget provides a rapid auto-complete search function paired with an interactive tree display. We have developed a web service layer that communicates between the web page interface and a database of ontology terms. We currently store 40 of the ontologies from the OBO website 1, as well as a several others. These ontologies are automatically updated on a weekly basis. OntologyWidget can be used in any web-based application to take advantage of the ontologies we provide via web services or any other ontology that is provided elsewhere in the correct format. The full source code for the JavaScript and description of the OntologyWidget is available from http://smd.stanford.edu/ontologyWidget/.

Biological Web Service Repositories Review.

PubMed

Urdidiales-Nieto, David; Navas-Delgado, Ismael; Aldana-Montes, José F

2017-05-01

Web services play a key role in bioinformatics enabling the integration of database access and analysis of algorithms. However, Web service repositories do not usually publish information on the changes made to their registered Web services. Dynamism is directly related to the changes in the repositories (services registered or unregistered) and at service level (annotation changes). Thus, users, software clients or workflow based approaches lack enough relevant information to decide when they should review or re-execute a Web service or workflow to get updated or improved results. The dynamism of the repository could be a measure for workflow developers to re-check service availability and annotation changes in the services of interest to them. This paper presents a review on the most well-known Web service repositories in the life sciences including an analysis of their dynamism. Freshness is introduced in this paper, and has been used as the measure for the dynamism of these repositories. © 2017 The Authors. Published by Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

The value of Web-based library services at Cedars-Sinai Health System.

PubMed

Halub, L P

1999-07-01

Cedars-Sinai Medical Library/Information Center has maintained Web-based services since 1995 on the Cedars-Sinai Health System network. In that time, the librarians have found the provision of Web-based services to be a very worthwhile endeavor. Library users value the services that they access from their desktops because the services save time. They also appreciate being able to access services at their convenience, without restriction by the library's hours of operation. The library values its Web site because it brings increased visibility within the health system, and it enables library staff to expand services when budget restrictions have forced reduced hours of operation. In creating and maintaining the information center Web site, the librarians have learned the following lessons: consider the design carefully; offer what services you can, but weigh the advantages of providing the services against the time required to maintain them; make the content as accessible as possible; promote your Web site; and make friends in other departments, especially information services.

The value of Web-based library services at Cedars-Sinai Health System.

PubMed Central

Halub, L P

1999-01-01

Cedars-Sinai Medical Library/Information Center has maintained Web-based services since 1995 on the Cedars-Sinai Health System network. In that time, the librarians have found the provision of Web-based services to be a very worthwhile endeavor. Library users value the services that they access from their desktops because the services save time. They also appreciate being able to access services at their convenience, without restriction by the library's hours of operation. The library values its Web site because it brings increased visibility within the health system, and it enables library staff to expand services when budget restrictions have forced reduced hours of operation. In creating and maintaining the information center Web site, the librarians have learned the following lessons: consider the design carefully; offer what services you can, but weigh the advantages of providing the services against the time required to maintain them; make the content as accessible as possible; promote your Web site; and make friends in other departments, especially information services. PMID:10427423

MedlinePlus Connect: How it Works

MedlinePlus

... it looks depends on how it is implemented. Web Application The Web application returns a formatted response ... for more examples of Web Application response pages. Web Service The MedlinePlus Connect REST-based Web service ...

Unifying Access to National Hydrologic Data Repositories via Web Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Valentine, D. W.; Jennings, B.; Zaslavsky, I.; Maidment, D. R.

2006-12-01

The CUAHSI hydrologic information system (HIS) is designed to be a live, multiscale web portal system for accessing, querying, visualizing, and publishing distributed hydrologic observation data and models for any location or region in the United States. The HIS design follows the principles of open service oriented architecture, i.e. system components are represented as web services with well defined standard service APIs. WaterOneFlow web services are the main component of the design. The currently available services have been completely re-written compared to the previous version, and provide programmatic access to USGS NWIS. (steam flow, groundwater and water quality repositories), DAYMET daily observations, NASA MODIS, and Unidata NAM streams, with several additional web service wrappers being added (EPA STORET, NCDC and others.). Different repositories of hydrologic data use different vocabularies, and support different types of query access. Resolving semantic and structural heterogeneities across different hydrologic observation archives and distilling a generic set of service signatures is one of the main scalability challenges in this project, and a requirement in our web service design. To accomplish the uniformity of the web services API, data repositories are modeled following the CUAHSI Observation Data Model. The web service responses are document-based, and use an XML schema to express the semantics in a standard format. Access to station metadata is provided via web service methods, GetSites, GetSiteInfo and GetVariableInfo. The methdods form the foundation of CUAHSI HIS discovery interface and may execute over locally-stored metadata or request the information from remote repositories directly. Observation values are retrieved via a generic GetValues method which is executed against national data repositories. The service is implemented in ASP.Net, and other providers are implementing WaterOneFlow services in java. Reference implementation of WaterOneFlow web services is available. More information about the ongoing development of CUAHSI HIS is available from http://www.cuahsi.org/his/.

A Privacy Access Control Framework for Web Services Collaboration with Role Mechanisms

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Linyuan; Huang, Zhiqiu; Zhu, Haibin

With the popularity of Internet technology, web services are becoming the most promising paradigm for distributed computing. This increased use of web services has meant that more and more personal information of consumers is being shared with web service providers, leading to the need to guarantee the privacy of consumers. This paper proposes a role-based privacy access control framework for Web services collaboration, it utilizes roles to specify the privacy privileges of services, and considers the impact on the reputation degree of the historic experience of services in playing roles. Comparing to the traditional privacy access control approaches, this framework can make the fine-grained authorization decision, thus efficiently protecting consumers' privacy.

The Plate Boundary Observatory: Community Focused Web Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Matykiewicz, J.; Anderson, G.; Lee, E.; Hoyt, B.; Hodgkinson, K.; Persson, E.; Wright, J.; Torrez, D.; Jackson, M.

2006-12-01

The Plate Boundary Observatory (PBO), part of the NSF-funded EarthScope project, is designed to study the three-dimensional strain field resulting from deformation across the active boundary zone between the Pacific and North American plates in the western United States. To meet these goals, PBO will install 852 continuous GPS stations, 103 borehole strainmeter stations, 28 tiltmeters, and five laser strainmeters, as well as manage data for 209 previously existing continuous GPS stations. UNAVCO provides access to data products from these stations, as well as general information about the PBO project, via the PBO web site (http://pboweb.unavco.org). GPS and strainmeter data products can be found using a variety of channels, including map searches, text searches, and station specific data retrieval. In addition, the PBO construction status is available via multiple mapping interfaces, including custom web based map widgets and Google Earth. Additional construction details can be accessed from PBO operational pages and station specific home pages. The current state of health for the PBO network is available with the statistical snap-shot, full map interfaces, tabular web based reports, and automatic data mining and alerts. UNAVCO is currently working to enhance the community access to this information by developing a web service framework for the discovery of data products, interfacing with operational engineers, and exposing data services to third party participants. In addition, UNAVCO, through the PBO project, provides advanced data management and monitoring systems for use by the community in operating geodetic networks in the United States and beyond. We will demonstrate these systems during the AGU meeting, and we welcome inquiries from the community at any time.

Biotea: RDFizing PubMed Central in support for the paper as an interface to the Web of Data

PubMed Central

2013-01-01

Background The World Wide Web has become a dissemination platform for scientific and non-scientific publications. However, most of the information remains locked up in discrete documents that are not always interconnected or machine-readable. The connectivity tissue provided by RDF technology has not yet been widely used to support the generation of self-describing, machine-readable documents. Results In this paper, we present our approach to the generation of self-describing machine-readable scholarly documents. We understand the scientific document as an entry point and interface to the Web of Data. We have semantically processed the full-text, open-access subset of PubMed Central. Our RDF model and resulting dataset make extensive use of existing ontologies and semantic enrichment services. We expose our model, services, prototype, and datasets at http://biotea.idiginfo.org/ Conclusions The semantic processing of biomedical literature presented in this paper embeds documents within the Web of Data and facilitates the execution of concept-based queries against the entire digital library. Our approach delivers a flexible and adaptable set of tools for metadata enrichment and semantic processing of biomedical documents. Our model delivers a semantically rich and highly interconnected dataset with self-describing content so that software can make effective use of it. PMID:23734622

SIDECACHE: Information access, management and dissemination framework for web services.

PubMed

Doderer, Mark S; Burkhardt, Cory; Robbins, Kay A

2011-06-14

Many bioinformatics algorithms and data sets are deployed using web services so that the results can be explored via the Internet and easily integrated into other tools and services. These services often include data from other sites that is accessed either dynamically or through file downloads. Developers of these services face several problems because of the dynamic nature of the information from the upstream services. Many publicly available repositories of bioinformatics data frequently update their information. When such an update occurs, the developers of the downstream service may also need to update. For file downloads, this process is typically performed manually followed by web service restart. Requests for information obtained by dynamic access of upstream sources is sometimes subject to rate restrictions. SideCache provides a framework for deploying web services that integrate information extracted from other databases and from web sources that are periodically updated. This situation occurs frequently in biotechnology where new information is being continuously generated and the latest information is important. SideCache provides several types of services including proxy access and rate control, local caching, and automatic web service updating. We have used the SideCache framework to automate the deployment and updating of a number of bioinformatics web services and tools that extract information from remote primary sources such as NCBI, NCIBI, and Ensembl. The SideCache framework also has been used to share research results through the use of a SideCache derived web service.

A Security Architecture for Grid-enabling OGC Web Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Angelini, Valerio; Petronzio, Luca

2010-05-01

In the proposed presentation we describe an architectural solution for enabling a secure access to Grids and possibly other large scale on-demand processing infrastructures through OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) Web Services (OWS). This work has been carried out in the context of the security thread of the G-OWS Working Group. G-OWS (gLite enablement of OGC Web Services) is an international open initiative started in 2008 by the European CYCLOPS , GENESI-DR, and DORII Project Consortia in order to collect/coordinate experiences in the enablement of OWS's on top of the gLite Grid middleware. G-OWS investigates the problem of the development of Spatial Data and Information Infrastructures (SDI and SII) based on the Grid/Cloud capacity in order to enable Earth Science applications and tools. Concerning security issues, the integration of OWS compliant infrastructures and gLite Grids needs to address relevant challenges, due to their respective design principles. In fact OWS's are part of a Web based architecture that demands security aspects to other specifications, whereas the gLite middleware implements the Grid paradigm with a strong security model (the gLite Grid Security Infrastructure: GSI). In our work we propose a Security Architectural Framework allowing the seamless use of Grid-enabled OGC Web Services through the federation of existing security systems (mostly web based) with the gLite GSI. This is made possible mediating between different security realms, whose mutual trust is established in advance during the deployment of the system itself. Our architecture is composed of three different security tiers: the user's security system, a specific G-OWS security system, and the gLite Grid Security Infrastructure. Applying the separation-of-concerns principle, each of these tiers is responsible for controlling the access to a well-defined resource set, respectively: the user's organization resources, the geospatial resources and services, and the Grid resources. While the gLite middleware is tied to a consolidated security approach based on X.509 certificates, our system is able to support different kinds of user's security infrastructures. Our central component, the G-OWS Security Framework, is based on the OASIS WS-Trust specifications and on the OGC GeoRM architectural framework. This allows to satisfy advanced requirements such as the enforcement of specific geospatial policies and complex secure web service chained requests. The typical use case is represented by a scientist belonging to a given organization who issues a request to a G-OWS Grid-enabled Web Service. The system initially asks the user to authenticate to his/her organization's security system and, after verification of the user's security credentials, it translates the user's digital identity into a G-OWS identity. This identity is linked to a set of attributes describing the user's access rights to the G-OWS services and resources. Inside the G-OWS Security system, access restrictions are applied making use of the enhanced Geospatial capabilities specified by the OGC GeoXACML. If the required action needs to make use of the Grid environment the system checks if the user is entitled to access a Grid infrastructure. In that case his/her identity is translated to a temporary Grid security token using the Short Lived Credential Services (IGTF Standard). In our case, for the specific gLite Grid infrastructure, some information (VOMS Attributes) is plugged into the Grid Security Token to grant the access to the user's Virtual Organization Grid resources. The resulting token is used to submit the request to the Grid and also by the various gLite middleware elements to verify the user's grants. Basing on the presented framework, the G-OWS Security Working Group developed a prototype, enabling the execution of OGC Web Services on the EGEE Production Grid through the federation with a Shibboleth based security infrastructure. Future plans aim to integrate other Web authentication services such as OpenID, Kerberos and WS-Federation.

Design for Connecting Spatial Data Infrastructures with Sensor Web (sensdi)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bhattacharya, D.; M., M.

2016-06-01

Integrating Sensor Web With Spatial Data Infrastructures (SENSDI) aims to extend SDIs with sensor web enablement, converging geospatial and built infrastructure, and implement test cases with sensor data and SDI. It is about research to harness the sensed environment by utilizing domain specific sensor data to create a generalized sensor webframework. The challenges being semantic enablement for Spatial Data Infrastructures, and connecting the interfaces of SDI with interfaces of Sensor Web. The proposed research plan is to Identify sensor data sources, Setup an open source SDI, Match the APIs and functions between Sensor Web and SDI, and Case studies like hazard applications, urban applications etc. We take up co-operative development of SDI best practices to enable a new realm of a location enabled and semantically enriched World Wide Web - the "Geospatial Web" or "Geosemantic Web" by setting up one to one correspondence between WMS, WFS, WCS, Metadata and 'Sensor Observation Service' (SOS); 'Sensor Planning Service' (SPS); 'Sensor Alert Service' (SAS); a service that facilitates asynchronous message interchange between users and services, and between two OGC-SWE services, called the 'Web Notification Service' (WNS). Hence in conclusion, it is of importance to geospatial studies to integrate SDI with Sensor Web. The integration can be done through merging the common OGC interfaces of SDI and Sensor Web. Multi-usability studies to validate integration has to be undertaken as future research.

Description and testing of the Geo Data Portal: Data integration framework and Web processing services for environmental science collaboration

USGS Publications Warehouse

Blodgett, David L.; Booth, Nathaniel L.; Kunicki, Thomas C.; Walker, Jordan I.; Viger, Roland J.

2011-01-01

Interest in sharing interdisciplinary environmental modeling results and related data is increasing among scientists. The U.S. Geological Survey Geo Data Portal project enables data sharing by assembling open-standard Web services into an integrated data retrieval and analysis Web application design methodology that streamlines time-consuming and resource-intensive data management tasks. Data-serving Web services allow Web-based processing services to access Internet-available data sources. The Web processing services developed for the project create commonly needed derivatives of data in numerous formats. Coordinate reference system manipulation and spatial statistics calculation components implemented for the Web processing services were confirmed using ArcGIS 9.3.1, a geographic information science software package. Outcomes of the Geo Data Portal project support the rapid development of user interfaces for accessing and manipulating environmental data.

Dynamic Generation of Reduced Ontologies to Support Resource Constraints of Mobile Devices

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schrimpsher, Dan

2011-01-01

As Web Services and the Semantic Web become more important, enabling technologies such as web service ontologies will grow larger. At the same time, use of mobile devices to access web services has doubled in the last year. The ability of these resource constrained devices to download and reason across these ontologies to support service discovery…

A Smart Modeling Framework for Integrating BMI-enabled Models as Web Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jiang, P.; Elag, M.; Kumar, P.; Peckham, S. D.; Liu, R.; Marini, L.; Hsu, L.

2015-12-01

Serviced-oriented computing provides an opportunity to couple web service models using semantic web technology. Through this approach, models that are exposed as web services can be conserved in their own local environment, thus making it easy for modelers to maintain and update the models. In integrated modeling, the serviced-oriented loose-coupling approach requires (1) a set of models as web services, (2) the model metadata describing the external features of a model (e.g., variable name, unit, computational grid, etc.) and (3) a model integration framework. We present the architecture of coupling web service models that are self-describing by utilizing a smart modeling framework. We expose models that are encapsulated with CSDMS (Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System) Basic Model Interfaces (BMI) as web services. The BMI-enabled models are self-describing by uncovering models' metadata through BMI functions. After a BMI-enabled model is serviced, a client can initialize, execute and retrieve the meta-information of the model by calling its BMI functions over the web. Furthermore, a revised version of EMELI (Peckham, 2015), an Experimental Modeling Environment for Linking and Interoperability, is chosen as the framework for coupling BMI-enabled web service models. EMELI allows users to combine a set of component models into a complex model by standardizing model interface using BMI as well as providing a set of utilities smoothing the integration process (e.g., temporal interpolation). We modify the original EMELI so that the revised modeling framework is able to initialize, execute and find the dependencies of the BMI-enabled web service models. By using the revised EMELI, an example will be presented on integrating a set of topoflow model components that are BMI-enabled and exposed as web services. Reference: Peckham, S.D. (2014) EMELI 1.0: An experimental smart modeling framework for automatic coupling of self-describing models, Proceedings of HIC 2014, 11th International Conf. on Hydroinformatics, New York, NY.

US NDC Modernization: Service Oriented Architecture Proof of Concept

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Hamlet, Benjamin R.; Encarnacao, Andre Villanova; Jackson, Keilan R.

2014-12-01

This report is a progress update on the US NDC Modernization Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) study describing results from a proof of concept project completed from May through September 2013. Goals for this proof of concept are 1) gain experience configuring, using, and running an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), 2) understand the implications of wrapping existing software in standardized interfaces for use as web services, and 3) gather performance metrics for a notional seismic event monitoring pipeline implemented using services with various data access and communication patterns. The proof of concept is a follow on to a previous SOA performancemore » study. Work was performed by four undergraduate summer student interns under the guidance of Sandia staff.« less

A Neuroimaging Web Services Interface as a Cyber Physical System for Medical Imaging and Data Management in Brain Research: Design Study

PubMed Central

2018-01-01

Background Structural and functional brain images are essential imaging modalities for medical experts to study brain anatomy. These images are typically visually inspected by experts. To analyze images without any bias, they must be first converted to numeric values. Many software packages are available to process the images, but they are complex and difficult to use. The software packages are also hardware intensive. The results obtained after processing vary depending on the native operating system used and its associated software libraries; data processed in one system cannot typically be combined with data on another system. Objective The aim of this study was to fulfill the neuroimaging community’s need for a common platform to store, process, explore, and visualize their neuroimaging data and results using Neuroimaging Web Services Interface: a series of processing pipelines designed as a cyber physical system for neuroimaging and clinical data in brain research. Methods Neuroimaging Web Services Interface accepts magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography, diffusion tensor imaging, and functional magnetic resonance imaging. These images are processed using existing and custom software packages. The output is then stored as image files, tabulated files, and MySQL tables. The system, made up of a series of interconnected servers, is password-protected and is securely accessible through a Web interface and allows (1) visualization of results and (2) downloading of tabulated data. Results All results were obtained using our processing servers in order to maintain data validity and consistency. The design is responsive and scalable. The processing pipeline started from a FreeSurfer reconstruction of Structural magnetic resonance imaging images. The FreeSurfer and regional standardized uptake value ratio calculations were validated using Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative input images, and the results were posted at the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging data archive. Notable leading researchers in the field of Alzheimer’s Disease and epilepsy have used the interface to access and process the data and visualize the results. Tabulated results with unique visualization mechanisms help guide more informed diagnosis and expert rating, providing a truly unique multimodal imaging platform that combines magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography, diffusion tensor imaging, and resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging. A quality control component was reinforced through expert visual rating involving at least 2 experts. Conclusions To our knowledge, there is no validated Web-based system offering all the services that Neuroimaging Web Services Interface offers. The intent of Neuroimaging Web Services Interface is to create a tool for clinicians and researchers with keen interest on multimodal neuroimaging. More importantly, Neuroimaging Web Services Interface significantly augments the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative data, especially since our data contain a large cohort of Hispanic normal controls and Alzheimer’s Disease patients. The obtained results could be scrutinized visually or through the tabulated forms, informing researchers on subtle changes that characterize the different stages of the disease. PMID:29699962

Managing the Web-Enhanced Geographic Information Service.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stephens, Denise

1997-01-01

Examines key management issues involved in delivering geographic information services on the World Wide Web, using the Geographic Information Center (GIC) program at the University of Virginia Library as a reference. Highlights include integrating the Web into services; building collections for Web delivery; and evaluating spatial information…

Automated geospatial Web Services composition based on geodata quality requirements

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cruz, Sérgio A. B.; Monteiro, Antonio M. V.; Santos, Rafael

2012-10-01

Service-Oriented Architecture and Web Services technologies improve the performance of activities involved in geospatial analysis with a distributed computing architecture. However, the design of the geospatial analysis process on this platform, by combining component Web Services, presents some open issues. The automated construction of these compositions represents an important research topic. Some approaches to solving this problem are based on AI planning methods coupled with semantic service descriptions. This work presents a new approach using AI planning methods to improve the robustness of the produced geospatial Web Services composition. For this purpose, we use semantic descriptions of geospatial data quality requirements in a rule-based form. These rules allow the semantic annotation of geospatial data and, coupled with the conditional planning method, this approach represents more precisely the situations of nonconformities with geodata quality that may occur during the execution of the Web Service composition. The service compositions produced by this method are more robust, thus improving process reliability when working with a composition of chained geospatial Web Services.

BioCatalogue: a universal catalogue of web services for the life sciences

PubMed Central

Bhagat, Jiten; Tanoh, Franck; Nzuobontane, Eric; Laurent, Thomas; Orlowski, Jerzy; Roos, Marco; Wolstencroft, Katy; Aleksejevs, Sergejs; Stevens, Robert; Pettifer, Steve; Lopez, Rodrigo; Goble, Carole A.

2010-01-01

The use of Web Services to enable programmatic access to on-line bioinformatics is becoming increasingly important in the Life Sciences. However, their number, distribution and the variable quality of their documentation can make their discovery and subsequent use difficult. A Web Services registry with information on available services will help to bring together service providers and their users. The BioCatalogue (http://www.biocatalogue.org/) provides a common interface for registering, browsing and annotating Web Services to the Life Science community. Services in the BioCatalogue can be described and searched in multiple ways based upon their technical types, bioinformatics categories, user tags, service providers or data inputs and outputs. They are also subject to constant monitoring, allowing the identification of service problems and changes and the filtering-out of unavailable or unreliable resources. The system is accessible via a human-readable ‘Web 2.0’-style interface and a programmatic Web Service interface. The BioCatalogue follows a community approach in which all services can be registered, browsed and incrementally documented with annotations by any member of the scientific community. PMID:20484378

BioCatalogue: a universal catalogue of web services for the life sciences.

PubMed

Bhagat, Jiten; Tanoh, Franck; Nzuobontane, Eric; Laurent, Thomas; Orlowski, Jerzy; Roos, Marco; Wolstencroft, Katy; Aleksejevs, Sergejs; Stevens, Robert; Pettifer, Steve; Lopez, Rodrigo; Goble, Carole A

2010-07-01

The use of Web Services to enable programmatic access to on-line bioinformatics is becoming increasingly important in the Life Sciences. However, their number, distribution and the variable quality of their documentation can make their discovery and subsequent use difficult. A Web Services registry with information on available services will help to bring together service providers and their users. The BioCatalogue (http://www.biocatalogue.org/) provides a common interface for registering, browsing and annotating Web Services to the Life Science community. Services in the BioCatalogue can be described and searched in multiple ways based upon their technical types, bioinformatics categories, user tags, service providers or data inputs and outputs. They are also subject to constant monitoring, allowing the identification of service problems and changes and the filtering-out of unavailable or unreliable resources. The system is accessible via a human-readable 'Web 2.0'-style interface and a programmatic Web Service interface. The BioCatalogue follows a community approach in which all services can be registered, browsed and incrementally documented with annotations by any member of the scientific community.

Efficient QoS-aware Service Composition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Alrifai, Mohammad; Risse, Thomas

Web service composition requests are usually combined with endto-end QoS requirements, which are specified in terms of non-functional properties (e.g. response time, throughput and price). The goal of QoS-aware service composition is to find the best combination of services such that their aggregated QoS values meet these end-to-end requirements. Local selection techniques are very efficient but fail short in handling global QoS constraints. Global optimization techniques, on the other hand, can handle global constraints, but their poor performance render them inappropriate for applications with dynamic and real-time requirements. In this paper we address this problem and propose a solution that combines global optimization with local selection techniques for achieving a better performance. The proposed solution consists of two steps: first we use mixed integer linear programming (MILP) to find the optimal decomposition of global QoS constraints into local constraints. Second, we use local search to find the best web services that satisfy these local constraints. Unlike existing MILP-based global planning solutions, the size of the MILP model in our case is much smaller and independent on the number of available services, yields faster computation and more scalability. Preliminary experiments have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed solution.

Integrating existing software toolkits into VO system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cui, Chenzhou; Zhao, Yong-Heng; Wang, Xiaoqian; Sang, Jian; Luo, Ze

2004-09-01

Virtual Observatory (VO) is a collection of interoperating data archives and software tools. Taking advantages of the latest information technologies, it aims to provide a data-intensively online research environment for astronomers all around the world. A large number of high-qualified astronomical software packages and libraries are powerful and easy of use, and have been widely used by astronomers for many years. Integrating those toolkits into the VO system is a necessary and important task for the VO developers. VO architecture greatly depends on Grid and Web services, consequently the general VO integration route is "Java Ready - Grid Ready - VO Ready". In the paper, we discuss the importance of VO integration for existing toolkits and discuss the possible solutions. We introduce two efforts in the field from China-VO project, "gImageMagick" and "Galactic abundance gradients statistical research under grid environment". We also discuss what additional work should be done to convert Grid service to VO service.

Ubiquitous Computing Services Discovery and Execution Using a Novel Intelligent Web Services Algorithm

PubMed Central

Choi, Okkyung; Han, SangYong

2007-01-01

Ubiquitous Computing makes it possible to determine in real time the location and situations of service requesters in a web service environment as it enables access to computers at any time and in any place. Though research on various aspects of ubiquitous commerce is progressing at enterprises and research centers, both domestically and overseas, analysis of a customer's personal preferences based on semantic web and rule based services using semantics is not currently being conducted. This paper proposes a Ubiquitous Computing Services System that enables a rule based search as well as semantics based search to support the fact that the electronic space and the physical space can be combined into one and the real time search for web services and the construction of efficient web services thus become possible.

Security techniques for prevention of rank manipulation in social tagging services including robotic domains.

PubMed

Choi, Okkyung; Jung, Hanyoung; Moon, Seungbin

2014-01-01

With smartphone distribution becoming common and robotic applications on the rise, social tagging services for various applications including robotic domains have advanced significantly. Though social tagging plays an important role when users are finding the exact information through web search, reliability and semantic relation between web contents and tags are not considered. Spams are making ill use of this aspect and put irrelevant tags deliberately on contents and induce users to advertise contents when they click items of search results. Therefore, this study proposes a detection method for tag-ranking manipulation to solve the problem of the existing methods which cannot guarantee the reliability of tagging. Similarity is measured for ranking the grade of registered tag on the contents, and weighted values of each tag are measured by means of synonym relevance, frequency, and semantic distances between tags. Lastly, experimental evaluation results are provided and its efficiency and accuracy are verified through them.

Some Programs Should Not Run on Laptops - Providing Programmatic Access to Applications Via Web Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gupta, V.; Gupta, N.; Gupta, S.; Field, E.; Maechling, P.

2003-12-01

Modern laptop computers, and personal computers, can provide capabilities that are, in many ways, comparable to workstations or departmental servers. However, this doesn't mean we should run all computations on our local computers. We have identified several situations in which it preferable to implement our seismological application programs in a distributed, server-based, computing model. In this model, application programs on the user's laptop, or local computer, invoke programs that run on an organizational server, and the results are returned to the invoking system. Situations in which a server-based architecture may be preferred include: (a) a program is written in a language, or written for an operating environment, that is unsupported on the local computer, (b) software libraries or utilities required to execute a program are not available on the users computer, (c) a computational program is physically too large, or computationally too expensive, to run on a users computer, (d) a user community wants to enforce a consistent method of performing a computation by standardizing on a single implementation of a program, and (e) the computational program may require current information, that is not available to all client computers. Until recently, distributed, server-based, computational capabilities were implemented using client/server architectures. In these architectures, client programs were often written in the same language, and they executed in the same computing environment, as the servers. Recently, a new distributed computational model, called Web Services, has been developed. Web Services are based on Internet standards such as XML, SOAP, WDSL, and UDDI. Web Services offer the promise of platform, and language, independent distributed computing. To investigate this new computational model, and to provide useful services to the SCEC Community, we have implemented several computational and utility programs using a Web Service architecture. We have hosted these Web Services as a part of the SCEC Community Modeling Environment (SCEC/CME) ITR Project (http://www.scec.org/cme). We have implemented Web Services for several of the reasons sited previously. For example, we implemented a FORTRAN-based Earthquake Rupture Forecast (ERF) as a Web Service for use by client computers that don't support a FORTRAN runtime environment. We implemented a Generic Mapping Tool (GMT) Web Service for use by systems that don't have local access to GMT. We implemented a Hazard Map Calculator Web Service to execute Hazard calculations that are too computationally intensive to run on a local system. We implemented a Coordinate Conversion Web Service to enforce a standard and consistent method for converting between UTM and Lat/Lon. Our experience developing these services indicates both strengths and weakness in current Web Service technology. Client programs that utilize Web Services typically need network access, a significant disadvantage at times. Programs with simple input and output parameters were the easiest to implement as Web Services, while programs with complex parameter-types required a significant amount of additional development. We also noted that Web services are very data-oriented, and adapting object-oriented software into the Web Service model proved problematic. Also, the Web Service approach of converting data types into XML format for network transmission has significant inefficiencies for some data sets.

78 FR 60303 - Agency Information Collection Activities: Online Survey of Web Services Employers; New...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-10-01

...-NEW] Agency Information Collection Activities: Online Survey of Web Services Employers; New... Web site at http://www.Regulations.gov under e-Docket ID number USCIS-2013- 0003. When submitting... information collection. (2) Title of the Form/Collection: Online Survey of Web Services Employers. (3) Agency...

78 FR 42537 - Agency Information Collection Activities: Online Survey of Web Services Employers; New...

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2013-07-16

...-NEW] Agency Information Collection Activities: Online Survey of Web Services Employers; New... Information Collection: New information collection. (2) Title of the Form/Collection: Online Survey of Web... sector. It is necessary that USCIS obtains data on the E-Verify Program Web Services. Gaining an...

Anon-Pass: Practical Anonymous Subscriptions

PubMed Central

Lee, Michael Z.; Dunn, Alan M.; Katz, Jonathan; Waters, Brent; Witchel, Emmett

2014-01-01

We present the design, security proof, and implementation of an anonymous subscription service. Users register for the service by providing some form of identity, which might or might not be linked to a real-world identity such as a credit card, a web login, or a public key. A user logs on to the system by presenting a credential derived from information received at registration. Each credential allows only a single login in any authentication window, or epoch. Logins are anonymous in the sense that the service cannot distinguish which user is logging in any better than random guessing. This implies unlinkability of a user across different logins. We find that a central tension in an anonymous subscription service is the service provider’s desire for a long epoch (to reduce server-side computation) versus users’ desire for a short epoch (so they can repeatedly “re-anonymize” their sessions). We balance this tension by having short epochs, but adding an efficient operation for clients who do not need unlinkability to cheaply re-authenticate themselves for the next time period. We measure performance of a research prototype of our protocol that allows an independent service to offer anonymous access to existing services. We implement a music service, an Android-based subway-pass application, and a web proxy, and show that adding anonymity adds minimal client latency and only requires 33 KB of server memory per active user. PMID:24504081

Anon-Pass: Practical Anonymous Subscriptions.

PubMed

Lee, Michael Z; Dunn, Alan M; Katz, Jonathan; Waters, Brent; Witchel, Emmett

2013-12-31

We present the design, security proof, and implementation of an anonymous subscription service. Users register for the service by providing some form of identity, which might or might not be linked to a real-world identity such as a credit card, a web login, or a public key. A user logs on to the system by presenting a credential derived from information received at registration. Each credential allows only a single login in any authentication window, or epoch . Logins are anonymous in the sense that the service cannot distinguish which user is logging in any better than random guessing. This implies unlinkability of a user across different logins. We find that a central tension in an anonymous subscription service is the service provider's desire for a long epoch (to reduce server-side computation) versus users' desire for a short epoch (so they can repeatedly "re-anonymize" their sessions). We balance this tension by having short epochs, but adding an efficient operation for clients who do not need unlinkability to cheaply re-authenticate themselves for the next time period. We measure performance of a research prototype of our protocol that allows an independent service to offer anonymous access to existing services. We implement a music service, an Android-based subway-pass application, and a web proxy, and show that adding anonymity adds minimal client latency and only requires 33 KB of server memory per active user.

Protecting Database Centric Web Services against SQL/XPath Injection Attacks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Laranjeiro, Nuno; Vieira, Marco; Madeira, Henrique

Web services represent a powerful interface for back-end database systems and are increasingly being used in business critical applications. However, field studies show that a large number of web services are deployed with security flaws (e.g., having SQL Injection vulnerabilities). Although several techniques for the identification of security vulnerabilities have been proposed, developing non-vulnerable web services is still a difficult task. In fact, security-related concerns are hard to apply as they involve adding complexity to already complex code. This paper proposes an approach to secure web services against SQL and XPath Injection attacks, by transparently detecting and aborting service invocations that try to take advantage of potential vulnerabilities. Our mechanism was applied to secure several web services specified by the TPC-App benchmark, showing to be 100% effective in stopping attacks, non-intrusive and very easy to use.

SAS- Semantic Annotation Service for Geoscience resources on the web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

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.

A Web service substitution method based on service cluster nets

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Du, YuYue; Gai, JunJing; Zhou, MengChu

2017-11-01

Service substitution is an important research topic in the fields of Web services and service-oriented computing. This work presents a novel method to analyse and substitute Web services. A new concept, called a Service Cluster Net Unit, is proposed based on Web service clusters. A service cluster is converted into a Service Cluster Net Unit. Then it is used to analyse whether the services in the cluster can satisfy some service requests. Meanwhile, the substitution methods of an atomic service and a composite service are proposed. The correctness of the proposed method is proved, and the effectiveness is shown and compared with the state-of-the-art method via an experiment. It can be readily applied to e-commerce service substitution to meet the business automation needs.

Technology in Mental Health: Creating New Knowledge and Inventing the Future of Services.

PubMed

Ben-Zeev, Dror

2017-02-01

The mental health services now in place are intrinsically linked with the technology that has been at our disposal for decades of research and practice. Advancements in Web, mobile, sensor, and informatics technology can do more than serve as tools to enhance existing models of care. Novel technologies can help us better understand the very nature of mental illness and revise our fundamental assumptions about the structure, boundaries, and modalities of mental health treatment. Recognizing the unprecedented opportunities new technology offers to improve the outcomes of people with mental illness, Psychiatric Services announces a new column on technology and mental health.

Web Services as Public Services: Are We Supporting Our Busiest Service Point?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Riley-Huff, Debra A.

2009-01-01

This article is an analysis of academic library organizational culture, patterns, and processes as they relate to Web services. Data gathered in a research survey is examined in an attempt to reveal current departmental and administrative attitudes, practices, and support for Web services in the library research environment. (Contains 10 tables.)

Urban Climate Resilience - Connecting climate models with decision support cyberinfrastructure using open standards

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bermudez, L. E.; Percivall, G.; Idol, T. A.

2015-12-01

Experts in climate modeling, remote sensing of the Earth, and cyber infrastructure must work together in order to make climate predictions available to decision makers. Such experts and decision makers worked together in the Open Geospatial Consortium's (OGC) Testbed 11 to address a scenario of population displacement by coastal inundation due to the predicted sea level rise. In a Policy Fact Sheet "Harnessing Climate Data to Boost Ecosystem & Water Resilience", issued by White House Office of Science and Technology (OSTP) in December 2014, OGC committed to increase access to climate change information using open standards. In July 2015, the OGC Testbed 11 Urban Climate Resilience activity delivered on that commitment with open standards based support for climate-change preparedness. Using open standards such as the OGC Web Coverage Service and Web Processing Service and the NetCDF and GMLJP2 encoding standards, Testbed 11 deployed an interoperable high-resolution flood model to bring climate model outputs together with global change assessment models and other remote sensing data for decision support. Methods to confirm model predictions and to allow "what-if-scenarios" included in-situ sensor webs and crowdsourcing. A scenario was in two locations: San Francisco Bay Area and Mozambique. The scenarios demonstrated interoperation and capabilities of open geospatial specifications in supporting data services and processing services. The resultant High Resolution Flood Information System addressed access and control of simulation models and high-resolution data in an open, worldwide, collaborative Web environment. The scenarios examined the feasibility and capability of existing OGC geospatial Web service specifications in supporting the on-demand, dynamic serving of flood information from models with forecasting capacity. Results of this testbed included identification of standards and best practices that help researchers and cities deal with climate-related issues. Results of the testbeds will now be deployed in pilot applications. The testbed also identified areas of additional development needed to help identify scientific investments and cyberinfrastructure approaches needed to improve the application of climate science research results to urban climate resilence.

Cloud computing geospatial application for water resources based on free and open source software and open standards - a prototype

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Delipetrev, Blagoj

2016-04-01

Presently, most of the existing software is desktop-based, designed to work on a single computer, which represents a major limitation in many ways, starting from limited computer processing, storage power, accessibility, availability, etc. The only feasible solution lies in the web and cloud. This abstract presents research and development of a cloud computing geospatial application for water resources based on free and open source software and open standards using hybrid deployment model of public - private cloud, running on two separate virtual machines (VMs). The first one (VM1) is running on Amazon web services (AWS) and the second one (VM2) is running on a Xen cloud platform. The presented cloud application is developed using free and open source software, open standards and prototype code. The cloud application presents a framework how to develop specialized cloud geospatial application that needs only a web browser to be used. This cloud application is the ultimate collaboration geospatial platform because multiple users across the globe with internet connection and browser can jointly model geospatial objects, enter attribute data and information, execute algorithms, and visualize results. The presented cloud application is: available all the time, accessible from everywhere, it is scalable, works in a distributed computer environment, it creates a real-time multiuser collaboration platform, the programing languages code and components are interoperable, and it is flexible in including additional components. The cloud geospatial application is implemented as a specialized water resources application with three web services for 1) data infrastructure (DI), 2) support for water resources modelling (WRM), 3) user management. The web services are running on two VMs that are communicating over the internet providing services to users. The application was tested on the Zletovica river basin case study with concurrent multiple users. The application is a state-of-the-art cloud geospatial collaboration platform. The presented solution is a prototype and can be used as a foundation for developing of any specialized cloud geospatial applications. Further research will be focused on distributing the cloud application on additional VMs, testing the scalability and availability of services.

Virtualization of open-source secure web services to support data exchange in a pediatric critical care research network

PubMed Central

Sward, Katherine A; Newth, Christopher JL; Khemani, Robinder G; Cryer, Martin E; Thelen, Julie L; Enriquez, Rene; Shaoyu, Su; Pollack, Murray M; Harrison, Rick E; Meert, Kathleen L; Berg, Robert A; Wessel, David L; Shanley, Thomas P; Dalton, Heidi; Carcillo, Joseph; Jenkins, Tammara L; Dean, J Michael

2015-01-01

Objectives To examine the feasibility of deploying a virtual web service for sharing data within a research network, and to evaluate the impact on data consistency and quality. Material and Methods Virtual machines (VMs) encapsulated an open-source, semantically and syntactically interoperable secure web service infrastructure along with a shadow database. The VMs were deployed to 8 Collaborative Pediatric Critical Care Research Network Clinical Centers. Results Virtual web services could be deployed in hours. The interoperability of the web services reduced format misalignment from 56% to 1% and demonstrated that 99% of the data consistently transferred using the data dictionary and 1% needed human curation. Conclusions Use of virtualized open-source secure web service technology could enable direct electronic abstraction of data from hospital databases for research purposes. PMID:25796596

An Architecture for Autonomic Web Service Process Planning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Moore, Colm; Xue Wang, Ming; Pahl, Claus

Web service composition is a technology that has received considerable attention in the last number of years. Languages and tools to aid in the process of creating composite Web services have been received specific attention. Web service composition is the process of linking single Web services together in order to accomplish more complex tasks. One area of Web service composition that has not received as much attention is the area of dynamic error handling and re-planning, enabling autonomic composition. Given a repository of service descriptions and a task to complete, it is possible for AI planners to automatically create a plan that will achieve this goal. If however a service in the plan is unavailable or erroneous the plan will fail. Motivated by this problem, this paper suggests autonomous re-planning as a means to overcome dynamic problems. Our solution involves automatically recovering from faults and creating a context-dependent alternate plan. We present an architecture that serves as a basis for the central activities autonomous composition, monitoring and fault handling.

Domain-specific Web Service Discovery with Service Class Descriptions

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Rocco, D; Caverlee, J; Liu, L

2005-02-14

This paper presents DynaBot, a domain-specific web service discovery system. The core idea of the DynaBot service discovery system is to use domain-specific service class descriptions powered by an intelligent Deep Web crawler. In contrast to current registry-based service discovery systems--like the several available UDDI registries--DynaBot promotes focused crawling of the Deep Web of services and discovers candidate services that are relevant to the domain of interest. It uses intelligent filtering algorithms to match services found by focused crawling with the domain-specific service class descriptions. We demonstrate the capability of DynaBot through the BLAST service discovery scenario and describe ourmore » initial experience with DynaBot.« less

Available, intuitive and free! Building e-learning modules using web 2.0 services.

PubMed

Tam, Chun Wah Michael; Eastwood, Anne

2012-01-01

E-learning is part of the mainstream in medical education and often provides the most efficient and effective means of engaging learners in a particular topic. However, translating design and content ideas into a useable product can be technically challenging, especially in the absence of information technology (IT) support. There is little published literature on the use of web 2.0 services to build e-learning activities. To describe the web 2.0 tools and solutions employed to build the GP Synergy evidence-based medicine and critical appraisal online course. We used and integrated a number of free web 2.0 services including: Prezi, a web-based presentation platform; YouTube, a video sharing service; Google Docs, a online document platform; Tiny.cc, a URL shortening service; and Wordpress, a blogging platform. The course consisting of five multimedia-rich, tutorial-like modules was built without IT specialist assistance or specialised software. The web 2.0 services used were free. The course can be accessed with a modern web browser. Modern web 2.0 services remove many of the technical barriers for creating and sharing content on the internet. When used synergistically, these services can be a flexible and low-cost platform for building e-learning activities. They were a pragmatic solution in our context.

76 FR 28439 - Submission for OMB Review; Comment Request; NCI Cancer Genetics Services Directory Web-Based...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-05-17

...; Comment Request; NCI Cancer Genetics Services Directory Web-Based Application Form and Update Mailer... currently valid OMB control number. Proposed Collection: Title: NCI Cancer Genetics Services Directory Web... application form and the Web-based update mailer is to collect information about genetics professionals to be...

SOA approach to battle command: simulation interoperability

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mayott, Gregory; Self, Mid; Miller, Gordon J.; McDonnell, Joseph S.

2010-04-01

NVESD is developing a Sensor Data and Management Services (SDMS) Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) that provides an innovative approach to achieve seamless application functionality across simulation and battle command systems. In 2010, CERDEC will conduct a SDMS Battle Command demonstration that will highlight the SDMS SOA capability to couple simulation applications to existing Battle Command systems. The demonstration will leverage RDECOM MATREX simulation tools and TRADOC Maneuver Support Battle Laboratory Virtual Base Defense Operations Center facilities. The battle command systems are those specific to the operation of a base defense operations center in support of force protection missions. The SDMS SOA consists of four components that will be discussed. An Asset Management Service (AMS) will automatically discover the existence, state, and interface definition required to interact with a named asset (sensor or a sensor platform, a process such as level-1 fusion, or an interface to a sensor or other network endpoint). A Streaming Video Service (SVS) will automatically discover the existence, state, and interfaces required to interact with a named video stream, and abstract the consumers of the video stream from the originating device. A Task Manager Service (TMS) will be used to automatically discover the existence of a named mission task, and will interpret, translate and transmit a mission command for the blue force unit(s) described in a mission order. JC3IEDM data objects, and software development kit (SDK), will be utilized as the basic data object definition for implemented web services.

General Practitioners' Attitudes Toward a Web-Based Mental Health Service for Adolescents: Implications for Service Design and Delivery.

PubMed

Subotic-Kerry, Mirjana; King, Catherine; O'Moore, Kathleen; Achilles, Melinda; O'Dea, Bridianne

2018-03-23

Anxiety disorders and depression are prevalent among youth. General practitioners (GPs) are often the first point of professional contact for treating health problems in young people. A Web-based mental health service delivered in partnership with schools may facilitate increased access to psychological care among adolescents. However, for such a model to be implemented successfully, GPs' views need to be measured. This study aimed to examine the needs and attitudes of GPs toward a Web-based mental health service for adolescents, and to identify the factors that may affect the provision of this type of service and likelihood of integration. Findings will inform the content and overall service design. GPs were interviewed individually about the proposed Web-based service. Qualitative analysis of transcripts was performed using thematic coding. A short follow-up questionnaire was delivered to assess background characteristics, level of acceptability, and likelihood of integration of the Web-based mental health service. A total of 13 GPs participated in the interview and 11 completed a follow-up online questionnaire. Findings suggest strong support for the proposed Web-based mental health service. A wide range of factors were found to influence the likelihood of GPs integrating a Web-based service into their clinical practice. Coordinated collaboration with parents, students, school counselors, and other mental health care professionals were considered important by nearly all GPs. Confidence in Web-based care, noncompliance of adolescents and GPs, accessibility, privacy, and confidentiality were identified as potential barriers to adopting the proposed Web-based service. GPs were open to a proposed Web-based service for the monitoring and management of anxiety and depression in adolescents, provided that a collaborative approach to care is used, the feedback regarding the client is clear, and privacy and security provisions are assured. ©Mirjana Subotic-Kerry, Catherine King, Kathleen O'Moore, Melinda Achilles, Bridianne O'Dea. Originally published in JMIR Human Factors (http://humanfactors.jmir.org), 23.03.2018.

Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS) - Rapidly Serving NASA Imagery for Applications and Science Users

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schmaltz, J. E.; Ilavajhala, S.; Plesea, L.; Hall, J. R.; Boller, R. A.; Chang, G.; Sadaqathullah, S.; Kim, R.; Murphy, K. J.; Thompson, C. K.

2012-12-01

Expedited processing of imagery from NASA satellites for near-real time use by non-science applications users has a long history, especially since the beginning of the Terra and Aqua missions. Several years ago, the Land Atmosphere Near-real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE) was created to greatly expand the range of near-real time data products from a variety of Earth Observing System (EOS) instruments. NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) began exploring methods to distribute these data as imagery in an intuitive, geo-referenced format, which would be available within three hours of acquisition. Toward this end, EOSDIS has developed the Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS, http://earthdata.nasa.gov/gibs) to provide highly responsive, scalable, and expandable imagery services. The baseline technology chosen for GIBS was a Tiled Web Mapping Service (TWMS) developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Using this, global images and mosaics are divided into tiles with fixed bounding boxes for a pyramid of fixed resolutions. Initially, the satellite imagery is created at the existing data systems for each sensor, ensuring the oversight of those most knowledgeable about the science. There, the satellite data is geolocated and converted to an image format such as JPEG, TIFF, or PNG. The GIBS ingest server retrieves imagery from the various data systems and converts them into image tiles, which are stored in a highly-optimized raster format named Meta Raster Format (MRF). The image tiles are then served to users via HTTP by means of an Apache module. Services are available for the entire globe (lat-long projection) and for both polar regions (polar stereographic projection). Requests to the services can be made with the non-standard, but widely known, TWMS format or via the well-known OGC Web Map Tile Service (WMTS) standard format. Standard OGC Web Map Service (WMS) access to the GIBS server is also available. In addition, users may request a KML pyramid. This variety of access methods allows stakeholders to develop visualization/browse clients for a diverse variety of specific audiences. Currently, EOSDIS is providing an OpenLayers web client, Worldview (http://earthdata.nasa.gov/worldview), as an interface to GIBS. A variety of other existing clients can also be developed using such tools as Google Earth, Google Earth browser Plugin, ESRI's Adobe Flash/Flex Client Library, NASA World Wind, Perceptive Pixel Client, Esri's iOS Client Library, and OpenLayers for Mobile. The imagery browse capabilities from GIBS can be combined with other EOSDIS services (i.e. ECHO OpenSearch) via a client that ties them both together to provide an interface that enables data download from the onscreen imagery. Future plans for GIBS include providing imagery based on science quality data from the entire data record of these EOS instruments.

PaaS for web applications with OpenShift Origin

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lossent, A.; Rodriguez Peon, A.; Wagner, A.

2017-10-01

The CERN Web Frameworks team has deployed OpenShift Origin to facilitate deployment of web applications and to improving efficiency in terms of computing resource usage. OpenShift leverages Docker containers and Kubernetes orchestration to provide a Platform-as-a-service solution oriented for web applications. We will review use cases and how OpenShift was integrated with other services such as source control, web site management and authentication services.

76 FR 14034 - Proposed Collection; Comment Request; NCI Cancer Genetics Services Directory Web-Based...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-03-15

... Request; NCI Cancer Genetics Services Directory Web-Based Application Form and Update Mailer Summary: In... Cancer Genetics Services Directory Web-based Application Form and Update Mailer. [[Page 14035

Building asynchronous geospatial processing workflows with web services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhao, Peisheng; Di, Liping; Yu, Genong

2012-02-01

Geoscience research and applications often involve a geospatial processing workflow. This workflow includes a sequence of operations that use a variety of tools to collect, translate, and analyze distributed heterogeneous geospatial data. Asynchronous mechanisms, by which clients initiate a request and then resume their processing without waiting for a response, are very useful for complicated workflows that take a long time to run. Geospatial contents and capabilities are increasingly becoming available online as interoperable Web services. This online availability significantly enhances the ability to use Web service chains to build distributed geospatial processing workflows. This paper focuses on how to orchestrate Web services for implementing asynchronous geospatial processing workflows. The theoretical bases for asynchronous Web services and workflows, including asynchrony patterns and message transmission, are examined to explore different asynchronous approaches to and architecture of workflow code for the support of asynchronous behavior. A sample geospatial processing workflow, issued by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Service, Phase 6 (OWS-6), is provided to illustrate the implementation of asynchronous geospatial processing workflows and the challenges in using Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL) to develop them.

OneGeology Web Services and Portal as a global geological SDI - latest standards and technology

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Duffy, Tim; Tellez-Arenas, Agnes

2014-05-01

The global coverage of OneGeology Web Services (www.onegeology.org and portal.onegeology.org) achieved since 2007 from the 120 participating geological surveys will be reviewed and issues arising discussed. Recent enhancements to the OneGeology Web Services capabilities will be covered including new up to 5 star service accreditation scheme utilising the ISO/OGC Web Mapping Service standard version 1.3, core ISO 19115 metadata additions and Version 2.0 Web Feature Services (WFS) serving the new IUGS-CGI GeoSciML V3.2 geological web data exchange language standard (http://www.geosciml.org/) with its associated 30+ IUGS-CGI available vocabularies (http://resource.geosciml.org/ and http://srvgeosciml.brgm.fr/eXist2010/brgm/client.html). Use of the CGI simpelithology and timescale dictionaries now allow those who wish to do so to offer data harmonisation to query their GeoSciML 3.2 based Web Feature Services and their GeoSciML_Portrayal V2.0.1 (http://www.geosciml.org/) Web Map Services in the OneGeology portal (http://portal.onegeology.org). Contributing to OneGeology involves offering to serve ideally 1:1000,000 scale geological data (in practice any scale now is warmly welcomed) as an OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) standard based WMS (Web Mapping Service) service from an available WWW server. This may either be hosted within the Geological Survey or a neighbouring, regional or elsewhere institution that offers to serve that data for them i.e. offers to help technically by providing the web serving IT infrastructure as a 'buddy'. OneGeology is a standards focussed Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) and works to ensure that these standards work together and it is now possible for European Geological Surveys to register their INSPIRE web services within the OneGeology SDI (e.g. see http://www.geosciml.org/geosciml/3.2/documentation/cookbook/INSPIRE_GeoSciML_Cookbook%20_1.0.pdf). The Onegeology portal (http://portal.onegeology.org) is the first port of call for anyone wishing to discover the availability of global geological web services and has new functionality to view and use such services including multiple projection support. KEYWORDS : OneGeology; GeoSciML V 3.2; Data exchange; Portal; INSPIRE; Standards; OGC; Interoperability; GeoScience information; WMS; WFS; Cookbook.

Web Services and Other Enhancements at the Northern California Earthquake Data Center

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Neuhauser, D. S.; Zuzlewski, S.; Allen, R. M.

2012-12-01

The Northern California Earthquake Data Center (NCEDC) provides data archive and distribution services for seismological and geophysical data sets that encompass northern California. The NCEDC is enhancing its ability to deliver rapid information through Web Services. NCEDC Web Services use well-established web server and client protocols and REST software architecture to allow users to easily make queries using web browsers or simple program interfaces and to receive the requested data in real-time rather than through batch or email-based requests. Data are returned to the user in the appropriate format such as XML, RESP, or MiniSEED depending on the service, and are compatible with the equivalent IRIS DMC web services. The NCEDC is currently providing the following Web Services: (1) Station inventory and channel response information delivered in StationXML format, (2) Channel response information delivered in RESP format, (3) Time series availability delivered in text and XML formats, (4) Single channel and bulk data request delivered in MiniSEED format. The NCEDC is also developing a rich Earthquake Catalog Web Service to allow users to query earthquake catalogs based on selection parameters such as time, location or geographic region, magnitude, depth, azimuthal gap, and rms. It will return (in QuakeML format) user-specified results that can include simple earthquake parameters, as well as observations such as phase arrivals, codas, amplitudes, and computed parameters such as first motion mechanisms, moment tensors, and rupture length. The NCEDC will work with both IRIS and the International Federation of Digital Seismograph Networks (FDSN) to define a uniform set of web service specifications that can be implemented by multiple data centers to provide users with a common data interface across data centers. The NCEDC now hosts earthquake catalogs and waveforms from the US Department of Energy (DOE) Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) monitoring networks. These data can be accessed through the above web services and through special NCEDC web pages.

Research of three level match method about semantic web service based on ontology

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xiao, Jie; Cai, Fang

2011-10-01

An important step of Web service Application is the discovery of useful services. Keywords are used in service discovery in traditional technology like UDDI and WSDL, with the disadvantage of user intervention, lack of semantic description and low accuracy. To cope with these problems, OWL-S is introduced and extended with QoS attributes to describe the attribute and functions of Web Services. A three-level service matching algorithm based on ontology and QOS in proposed in this paper. Our algorithm can match web service by utilizing the service profile, QoS parameters together with input and output of the service. Simulation results shows that it greatly enhanced the speed of service matching while high accuracy is also guaranteed.

Interoperability And Value Added To Earth Observation Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gasperi, J.

2012-04-01

Geospatial web services technology has provided a new means for geospatial data interoperability. Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) services such as Web Map Service (WMS) to request maps on the Internet, Web Feature Service (WFS) to exchange vectors or Catalog Service for the Web (CSW) to search for geospatialized data have been widely adopted in the Geosciences community in general and in the remote sensing community in particular. These services make Earth Observation data available to a wider range of public users than ever before. The mapshup web client offers an innovative and efficient user interface that takes advantage of the power of interoperability. This presentation will demonstrate how mapshup can be effectively used in the context of natural disasters management.

SSWAP: A Simple Semantic Web Architecture and Protocol for semantic web services

PubMed Central

Gessler, Damian DG; Schiltz, Gary S; May, Greg D; Avraham, Shulamit; Town, Christopher D; Grant, David; Nelson, Rex T

2009-01-01

Background SSWAP (Simple Semantic Web Architecture and Protocol; pronounced "swap") is an architecture, protocol, and platform for using reasoning to semantically integrate heterogeneous disparate data and services on the web. SSWAP was developed as a hybrid semantic web services technology to overcome limitations found in both pure web service technologies and pure semantic web technologies. Results There are currently over 2400 resources published in SSWAP. Approximately two dozen are custom-written services for QTL (Quantitative Trait Loci) and mapping data for legumes and grasses (grains). The remaining are wrappers to Nucleic Acids Research Database and Web Server entries. As an architecture, SSWAP establishes how clients (users of data, services, and ontologies), providers (suppliers of data, services, and ontologies), and discovery servers (semantic search engines) interact to allow for the description, querying, discovery, invocation, and response of semantic web services. As a protocol, SSWAP provides the vocabulary and semantics to allow clients, providers, and discovery servers to engage in semantic web services. The protocol is based on the W3C-sanctioned first-order description logic language OWL DL. As an open source platform, a discovery server running at (as in to "swap info") uses the description logic reasoner Pellet to integrate semantic resources. The platform hosts an interactive guide to the protocol at , developer tools at , and a portal to third-party ontologies at (a "swap meet"). Conclusion SSWAP addresses the three basic requirements of a semantic web services architecture (i.e., a common syntax, shared semantic, and semantic discovery) while addressing three technology limitations common in distributed service systems: i.e., i) the fatal mutability of traditional interfaces, ii) the rigidity and fragility of static subsumption hierarchies, and iii) the confounding of content, structure, and presentation. SSWAP is novel by establishing the concept of a canonical yet mutable OWL DL graph that allows data and service providers to describe their resources, to allow discovery servers to offer semantically rich search engines, to allow clients to discover and invoke those resources, and to allow providers to respond with semantically tagged data. SSWAP allows for a mix-and-match of terms from both new and legacy third-party ontologies in these graphs. PMID:19775460

Brandenburg 3D - a comprehensive 3D Subsurface Model, Conception of an Infrastructure Node and a Web Application

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kerschke, Dorit; Schilling, Maik; Simon, Andreas; Wächter, Joachim

2014-05-01

The Energiewende and the increasing scarcity of raw materials will lead to an intensified utilization of the subsurface in Germany. Within this context, geological 3D modeling is a fundamental approach for integrated decision and planning processes. Initiated by the development of the European Geospatial Infrastructure INSPIRE, the German State Geological Offices started digitizing their predominantly analog archive inventory. Until now, a comprehensive 3D subsurface model of Brandenburg did not exist. Therefore the project B3D strived to develop a new 3D model as well as a subsequent infrastructure node to integrate all geological and spatial data within the Geodaten-Infrastruktur Brandenburg (Geospatial Infrastructure, GDI-BB) and provide it to the public through an interactive 2D/3D web application. The functionality of the web application is based on a client-server architecture. Server-sided, all available spatial data is published through GeoServer. GeoServer is designed for interoperability and acts as the reference implementation of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Feature Service (WFS) standard that provides the interface that allows requests for geographical features. In addition, GeoServer implements, among others, the high performance certified compliant Web Map Service (WMS) that serves geo-referenced map images. For publishing 3D data, the OGC Web 3D Service (W3DS), a portrayal service for three-dimensional geo-data, is used. The W3DS displays elements representing the geometry, appearance, and behavior of geographic objects. On the client side, the web application is solely based on Free and Open Source Software and leans on the JavaScript API WebGL that allows the interactive rendering of 2D and 3D graphics by means of GPU accelerated usage of physics and image processing as part of the web page canvas without the use of plug-ins. WebGL is supported by most web browsers (e.g., Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and Opera). The web application enables an intuitive navigation through all available information and allows the visualization of geological maps (2D), seismic transects (2D/3D), wells (2D/3D), and the 3D-model. These achievements will alleviate spatial and geological data management within the German State Geological Offices and foster the interoperability of heterogeneous systems. It will provide guidance to a systematic subsurface management across system, domain and administrative boundaries on the basis of a federated spatial data infrastructure, and include the public in the decision processes (e-Governance). Yet, the interoperability of the systems has to be strongly propelled forward through agreements on standards that need to be decided upon in responsible committees. The project B3D is funded with resources from the European Fund for Regional Development (EFRE).

39 CFR 3001.12 - Service of documents.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... or presiding officer has determined is unable to receive service through the Commission's Web site... presiding officer has determined is unable to receive service through the Commission Web site shall be by... service list for each current proceeding will be available on the Commission's Web site http://www.prc.gov...

Web 2.0, Library 2.0, Library User 2.0, Librarian 2.0: Innovative Services for Sustainable Libraries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Peltier-Davis, Cheryl

2009-01-01

Since its widespread public adoption in the 1990s, the internet has inextricably woven itself into every facet of human existence, influencing and in some ways reshaping every aspect of modern life--people's communication patterns, the way people seek information, the way people think, and, in some instances, the way people act. It is highly…

ChemCalc: a building block for tomorrow's chemical infrastructure.

PubMed

Patiny, Luc; Borel, Alain

2013-05-24

Web services, as an aspect of cloud computing, are becoming an important part of the general IT infrastructure, and scientific computing is no exception to this trend. We propose a simple approach to develop chemical Web services, through which servers could expose the essential data manipulation functionality that students and researchers need for chemical calculations. These services return their results as JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) objects, which facilitates their use for Web applications. The ChemCalc project http://www.chemcalc.org demonstrates this approach: we present three Web services related with mass spectrometry, namely isotopic distribution simulation, peptide fragmentation simulation, and molecular formula determination. We also developed a complete Web application based on these three Web services, taking advantage of modern HTML5 and JavaScript libraries (ChemDoodle and jQuery).

A cross disciplinary study of link decay and the effectiveness of mitigation techniques

PubMed Central

2013-01-01

Background The dynamic, decentralized world-wide-web has become an essential part of scientific research and communication. Researchers create thousands of web sites every year to share software, data and services. These valuable resources tend to disappear over time. The problem has been documented in many subject areas. Our goal is to conduct a cross-disciplinary investigation of the problem and test the effectiveness of existing remedies. Results We accessed 14,489 unique web pages found in the abstracts within Thomson Reuters' Web of Science citation index that were published between 1996 and 2010 and found that the median lifespan of these web pages was 9.3 years with 62% of them being archived. Survival analysis and logistic regression were used to find significant predictors of URL lifespan. The availability of a web page is most dependent on the time it is published and the top-level domain names. Similar statistical analysis revealed biases in current solutions: the Internet Archive favors web pages with fewer layers in the Universal Resource Locator (URL) while WebCite is significantly influenced by the source of publication. We also created a prototype for a process to submit web pages to the archives and increased coverage of our list of scientific webpages in the Internet Archive and WebCite by 22% and 255%, respectively. Conclusion Our results show that link decay continues to be a problem across different disciplines and that current solutions for static web pages are helping and can be improved. PMID:24266891

A cross disciplinary study of link decay and the effectiveness of mitigation techniques.

PubMed

Hennessey, Jason; Ge, Steven

2013-01-01

The dynamic, decentralized world-wide-web has become an essential part of scientific research and communication. Researchers create thousands of web sites every year to share software, data and services. These valuable resources tend to disappear over time. The problem has been documented in many subject areas. Our goal is to conduct a cross-disciplinary investigation of the problem and test the effectiveness of existing remedies. We accessed 14,489 unique web pages found in the abstracts within Thomson Reuters' Web of Science citation index that were published between 1996 and 2010 and found that the median lifespan of these web pages was 9.3 years with 62% of them being archived. Survival analysis and logistic regression were used to find significant predictors of URL lifespan. The availability of a web page is most dependent on the time it is published and the top-level domain names. Similar statistical analysis revealed biases in current solutions: the Internet Archive favors web pages with fewer layers in the Universal Resource Locator (URL) while WebCite is significantly influenced by the source of publication. We also created a prototype for a process to submit web pages to the archives and increased coverage of our list of scientific webpages in the Internet Archive and WebCite by 22% and 255%, respectively. Our results show that link decay continues to be a problem across different disciplines and that current solutions for static web pages are helping and can be improved.

Can They Plan to Teach with Web 2.0? Future Teachers' Potential Use of the Emerging Web

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kale, Ugur

2014-01-01

This study examined pre-service teachers' potential use of Web 2.0 technologies for teaching. A coding scheme incorporating the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework guided the analysis of pre-service teachers' Web 2.0-enhanced learning activity descriptions. The results indicated that while pre-service teachers were able…

Adopting and adapting a commercial view of web services for the Navy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Warner, Elizabeth; Ladner, Roy; Katikaneni, Uday; Petry, Fred

2005-05-01

Web Services are being adopted as the enabling technology to provide net-centric capabilities for many Department of Defense operations. The Navy Enterprise Portal, for example, is Web Services-based, and the Department of the Navy is promulgating guidance for developing Web Services. Web Services, however, only constitute a baseline specification that provides the foundation on which users, under current approaches, write specialized applications in order to retrieve data over the Internet. Application development may increase dramatically as the number of different available Web Services increases. Reasons for specialized application development include XML schema versioning differences, adoption/use of diverse business rules, security access issues, and time/parameter naming constraints, among others. We are currently developing for the US Navy a system which will improve delivery of timely and relevant meteorological and oceanographic (MetOc) data to the warfighter. Our objective is to develop an Advanced MetOc Broker (AMB) that leverages Web Services technology to identify, retrieve and integrate relevant MetOc data in an automated manner. The AMB will utilize a Mediator, which will be developed by applying ontological research and schema matching techniques to MetOc forms of data. The AMB, using the Mediator, will support a new, advanced approach to the use of Web Services; namely, the automated identification, retrieval and integration of MetOc data. Systems based on this approach will then not require extensive end-user application development for each Web Service from which data can be retrieved. Users anywhere on the globe will be able to receive timely environmental data that fits their particular needs.

Concept of a spatial data infrastructure for web-mapping, processing and service provision for geo-hazards

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Weinke, Elisabeth; Hölbling, Daniel; Albrecht, Florian; Friedl, Barbara

2017-04-01

Geo-hazards and their effects are distributed geographically over wide regions. The effective mapping and monitoring is essential for hazard assessment and mitigation. It is often best achieved using satellite imagery and new object-based image analysis approaches to identify and delineate geo-hazard objects (landslides, floods, forest fires, storm damages, etc.). At the moment, several local/national databases and platforms provide and publish data of different types of geo-hazards as well as web-based risk maps and decision support systems. Also, the European commission implemented the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (EMS) in 2015 that publishes information about natural and man-made disasters and risks. Currently, no platform for landslides or geo-hazards as such exists that enables the integration of the user in the mapping and monitoring process. In this study we introduce the concept of a spatial data infrastructure for object delineation, web-processing and service provision of landslide information with the focus on user interaction in all processes. A first prototype for the processing and mapping of landslides in Austria and Italy has been developed within the project Land@Slide, funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency FFG in the Austrian Space Applications Program ASAP. The spatial data infrastructure and its services for the mapping, processing and analysis of landslides can be extended to other regions and to all types of geo-hazards for analysis and delineation based on Earth Observation (EO) data. The architecture of the first prototypical spatial data infrastructure includes four main areas of technical components. The data tier consists of a file storage system and the spatial data catalogue for the management of EO-data, other geospatial data on geo-hazards, as well as descriptions and protocols for the data processing and analysis. An interface to extend the data integration from external sources (e.g. Sentinel-2 data) is planned for the possibility of rapid mapping. The server tier consists of java based web and GIS server. Sub and main services are part of the service tier. Sub services are for example map services, feature editing services, geometry services, geoprocessing services and metadata services. For (meta)data provision and to support data interoperability, web standards of the OGC and the rest-interface is used. Four central main services are designed and developed: (1) a mapping service (including image segmentation and classification approaches), (2) a monitoring service to monitor changes over time, (3) a validation service to analyze landslide delineations from different sources and (4) an infrastructure service to identify affected landslides. The main services use and combine parts of the sub services. Furthermore, a series of client applications based on new technology standards making use of the data and services offered by the spatial data infrastructure. Next steps include the design to extend the current spatial data infrastructure to other areas and geo-hazard types to develop a spatial data infrastructure that can assist targeted mapping and monitoring of geo-hazards on a global context.

Building a print on demand web service

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Reddy, Prakash; Rozario, Benedict; Dudekula, Shariff; V, Anil Dev

2011-03-01

There is considerable effort underway to digitize all books that have ever been printed. There is need for a service that can take raw book scans and convert them into Print on Demand (POD) books. Such a service definitely augments the digitization effort and enables broader access to a wider audience. To make this service practical we have identified three key challenges that needed to be addressed. These are: a) produce high quality image images by eliminating artifacts that exist due to the age of the document or those that are introduced during the scanning process b) develop an efficient automated system to process book scans with minimum human intervention; and c) build an eco system which allows us the target audience to discover these books.

A New Approach for Semantic Web Matching

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zamanifar, Kamran; Heidary, Golsa; Nematbakhsh, Naser; Mardukhi, Farhad

In this work we propose a new approach for semantic web matching to improve the performance of Web Service replacement. Because in automatic systems we should ensure the self-healing, self-configuration, self-optimization and self-management, all services should be always available and if one of them crashes, it should be replaced with the most similar one. Candidate services are advertised in Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) all in Web Ontology Language (OWL). By the help of bipartite graph, we did the matching between the crashed service and a Candidate one. Then we chose the best service, which had the maximum rate of matching. In fact we compare two services' functionalities and capabilities to see how much they match. We found that the best way for matching two web services, is comparing the functionalities of them.

Generating Mosaics of Astronomical Images

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bergou, Attila; Berriman, Bruce; Good, John; Jacob, Joseph; Katz, Daniel; Laity, Anastasia; Prince, Thomas; Williams, Roy

2005-01-01

"Montage" is the name of a service of the National Virtual Observatory (NVO), and of software being developed to implement the service via the World Wide Web. Montage generates science-grade custom mosaics of astronomical images on demand from input files that comply with the Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) standard and contain image data registered on projections that comply with the World Coordinate System (WCS) standards. "Science-grade" in this context signifies that terrestrial and instrumental features are removed from images in a way that can be described quantitatively. "Custom" refers to user-specified parameters of projection, coordinates, size, rotation, and spatial sampling. The greatest value of Montage is expected to lie in its ability to analyze images at multiple wavelengths, delivering them on a common projection, coordinate system, and spatial sampling, and thereby enabling further analysis as though they were part of a single, multi-wavelength image. Montage will be deployed as a computation-intensive service through existing astronomy portals and other Web sites. It will be integrated into the emerging NVO architecture and will be executed on the TeraGrid. The Montage software will also be portable and publicly available.

Understanding the online health information user profiles in Korea: from a psychological perspective.

PubMed

Shin, Sung Hee; Yun, Eun Kyoung

2011-06-01

This study was conducted to explore the profiles of online health information users in terms of certain psychological characteristics and to suggest guidelines for the provision of better user-oriented health information service. The cross-sectional study design was used with convenient sampling by Web-based questionnaire survey in Korea. To analyze health information user profiles on the Internet, a two-step cluster analysis was conducted. The results reveal that online health information users can be classified into four groups according to their level of subjective knowledge and health concern. The findings also suggest that four clusters that exhibit distinct profile patterns exist. The findings of this study would be useful for health portal developers who would like to understand users' characteristics and behaviors and to provide more user-oriented service in a satisfactory manner. It is suggested that to develop a full understanding of users' behaviors regarding Internet health information service, further research would be needed to explore users' various needs, their preferences, and relevant factors among users across a variety of health problem-addressing Web sites at different professional levels.

Enabler for the agile virtual enterprise

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fuerst, Karl; Schmidt, Thomas; Wippel, Gerald

2001-10-01

In this presentation, a new approach for a flexible low-cost Internet extended enterprise (project FLoCI-EE) will be presented. FLoCI-EE is a project in the fifth framework program of the European commission with 8 partners from 4 countries, which started in January 2001 and will be finished in December 2003. The main objective of FLoCI-EE is the development of a software prototype, which enables flexible enterprise cooperation with the aim to design, manufacture and sell products commonly, independent of enterprise borderlines. The needed IT-support includes functions of product data management (PDM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM) and customer relationship management (CRM). Especially for small and medium sized enterprises, existing solutions are too expensive and inflexible to be of use under current turbulent market conditions. The second part of this paper covers the item Web Services, because in the role-specific support approach of FLoCI-EE, there are user- interface-components, which are tailored for specific roles in an enterprise. These components integrate automatically the services of the so-called basic-components, and the externally offered Web Services like UDDI.

Commercial products that convey personal health information in emergencies.

PubMed

Potini, Vishnu C; Weerasuriya, Dilani N; Lowery-North, Douglas W; Kellermann, Arthur L

2011-12-01

Describe commercially available products and services designed to convey personal health information in emergencies. The search engine Google®, supplemented by print ads, was used to identify companies and organizations that offer relevant products and services to the general market. Disease-specific, health system, and health plan-specific offerings were excluded. Vendor web sites were the primary sources of information, supplemented by telephone and e-mail queries to sales representatives. Perfect inter-rater agreement was achieved. Thirty-nine unique vendors were identified. Eight sell engraved jewelry. Three offer an embossed card or pamphlet. Twelve supply USB drives with various features. Eleven support password-protected web sites. Five maintain national call centers. Available media differed markedly with respect to capacity and accessibility. Quoted prices ranged from a one-time expenditure of $3.50 to an annual fee of $200. Associated features and annual fees varied widely. A wide range of products and services exist to help patients convey personal health information. Health care providers should be familiar with their features, so they can access the information in a disaster or emergency.

Climatological Data Option in My Weather Impacts Decision Aid (MyWIDA) Overview

DTIC Science & Technology

2017-07-18

rules. It consists of 2 databases, a data service server, a collection of web service, and web applications that show weather impacts on selected...3.1.2 ClimoDB 5 3.2 Data Service 5 3.2.1 Data Requestor 5 3.2.2 Data Decoder 6 3.2.3 Post Processor 6 3.2.4 Job Scheduler 6 3.3 Web Service 6...6.1 Additional Data Option 9 6.2 Impact Overlay Web Service 9 6.3 Graphical User Interface 9 7. References 10 List of Symbols, Abbreviations, and

Design and implementation of CUAHSI WaterML and WaterOneFlow Web Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Valentine, D. W.; Zaslavsky, I.; Whitenack, T.; Maidment, D.

2007-12-01

WaterOneFlow is a term for a group of web services created by and for the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI) community. CUAHSI web services facilitate the retrieval of hydrologic observations information from online data sources using the SOAP protocol. CUAHSI Water Markup Language (below referred to as WaterML) is an XML schema defining the format of messages returned by the WaterOneFlow web services. \

Processing biological literature with customizable Web services supporting interoperable formats.

PubMed

Rak, Rafal; Batista-Navarro, Riza Theresa; Carter, Jacob; Rowley, Andrew; Ananiadou, Sophia

2014-01-01

Web services have become a popular means of interconnecting solutions for processing a body of scientific literature. This has fuelled research on high-level data exchange formats suitable for a given domain and ensuring the interoperability of Web services. In this article, we focus on the biological domain and consider four interoperability formats, BioC, BioNLP, XMI and RDF, that represent domain-specific and generic representations and include well-established as well as emerging specifications. We use the formats in the context of customizable Web services created in our Web-based, text-mining workbench Argo that features an ever-growing library of elementary analytics and capabilities to build and deploy Web services straight from a convenient graphical user interface. We demonstrate a 2-fold customization of Web services: by building task-specific processing pipelines from a repository of available analytics, and by configuring services to accept and produce a combination of input and output data interchange formats. We provide qualitative evaluation of the formats as well as quantitative evaluation of automatic analytics. The latter was carried out as part of our participation in the fourth edition of the BioCreative challenge. Our analytics built into Web services for recognizing biochemical concepts in BioC collections achieved the highest combined scores out of 10 participating teams. Database URL: http://argo.nactem.ac.uk. © The Author(s) 2014. Published by Oxford University Press.

Data partitioning enables the use of standard SOAP Web Services in genome-scale workflows.

PubMed

Sztromwasser, Pawel; Puntervoll, Pål; Petersen, Kjell

2011-07-26

Biological databases and computational biology tools are provided by research groups around the world, and made accessible on the Web. Combining these resources is a common practice in bioinformatics, but integration of heterogeneous and often distributed tools and datasets can be challenging. To date, this challenge has been commonly addressed in a pragmatic way, by tedious and error-prone scripting. Recently however a more reliable technique has been identified and proposed as the platform that would tie together bioinformatics resources, namely Web Services. In the last decade the Web Services have spread wide in bioinformatics, and earned the title of recommended technology. However, in the era of high-throughput experimentation, a major concern regarding Web Services is their ability to handle large-scale data traffic. We propose a stream-like communication pattern for standard SOAP Web Services, that enables efficient flow of large data traffic between a workflow orchestrator and Web Services. We evaluated the data-partitioning strategy by comparing it with typical communication patterns on an example pipeline for genomic sequence annotation. The results show that data-partitioning lowers resource demands of services and increases their throughput, which in consequence allows to execute in-silico experiments on genome-scale, using standard SOAP Web Services and workflows. As a proof-of-principle we annotated an RNA-seq dataset using a plain BPEL workflow engine.

Processing biological literature with customizable Web services supporting interoperable formats

PubMed Central

Rak, Rafal; Batista-Navarro, Riza Theresa; Carter, Jacob; Rowley, Andrew; Ananiadou, Sophia

2014-01-01

Web services have become a popular means of interconnecting solutions for processing a body of scientific literature. This has fuelled research on high-level data exchange formats suitable for a given domain and ensuring the interoperability of Web services. In this article, we focus on the biological domain and consider four interoperability formats, BioC, BioNLP, XMI and RDF, that represent domain-specific and generic representations and include well-established as well as emerging specifications. We use the formats in the context of customizable Web services created in our Web-based, text-mining workbench Argo that features an ever-growing library of elementary analytics and capabilities to build and deploy Web services straight from a convenient graphical user interface. We demonstrate a 2-fold customization of Web services: by building task-specific processing pipelines from a repository of available analytics, and by configuring services to accept and produce a combination of input and output data interchange formats. We provide qualitative evaluation of the formats as well as quantitative evaluation of automatic analytics. The latter was carried out as part of our participation in the fourth edition of the BioCreative challenge. Our analytics built into Web services for recognizing biochemical concepts in BioC collections achieved the highest combined scores out of 10 participating teams. Database URL: http://argo.nactem.ac.uk. PMID:25006225

Exploring NASA GES DISC Data with Interoperable Services

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Zhao, Peisheng; Yang, Wenli; Hegde, Mahabal; Wei, Jennifer C.; Kempler, Steven; Pham, Long; Teng, William; Savtchenko, Andrey

2015-01-01

Overview of NASA GES DISC (NASA Goddard Earth Science Data and Information Services Center) data with interoperable services: Open-standard and Interoperable Services Improve data discoverability, accessibility, and usability with metadata, catalogue and portal standards Achieve data, information and knowledge sharing across applications with standardized interfaces and protocols Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Data Services and Specifications Web Coverage Service (WCS) -- data Web Map Service (WMS) -- pictures of data Web Map Tile Service (WMTS) --- pictures of data tiles Styled Layer Descriptors (SLD) --- rendered styles.

Semantically-enabled sensor plug & play for the sensor web.

PubMed

Bröring, Arne; Maúe, Patrick; Janowicz, Krzysztof; Nüst, Daniel; Malewski, Christian

2011-01-01

Environmental sensors have continuously improved by becoming smaller, cheaper, and more intelligent over the past years. As consequence of these technological advancements, sensors are increasingly deployed to monitor our environment. The large variety of available sensor types with often incompatible protocols complicates the integration of sensors into observing systems. The standardized Web service interfaces and data encodings defined within OGC's Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) framework make sensors available over the Web and hide the heterogeneous sensor protocols from applications. So far, the SWE framework does not describe how to integrate sensors on-the-fly with minimal human intervention. The driver software which enables access to sensors has to be implemented and the measured sensor data has to be manually mapped to the SWE models. In this article we introduce a Sensor Plug & Play infrastructure for the Sensor Web by combining (1) semantic matchmaking functionality, (2) a publish/subscribe mechanism underlying the SensorWeb, as well as (3) a model for the declarative description of sensor interfaces which serves as a generic driver mechanism. We implement and evaluate our approach by applying it to an oil spill scenario. The matchmaking is realized using existing ontologies and reasoning engines and provides a strong case for the semantic integration capabilities provided by Semantic Web research.

Semantically-Enabled Sensor Plug & Play for the Sensor Web

PubMed Central

Bröring, Arne; Maúe, Patrick; Janowicz, Krzysztof; Nüst, Daniel; Malewski, Christian

2011-01-01

Environmental sensors have continuously improved by becoming smaller, cheaper, and more intelligent over the past years. As consequence of these technological advancements, sensors are increasingly deployed to monitor our environment. The large variety of available sensor types with often incompatible protocols complicates the integration of sensors into observing systems. The standardized Web service interfaces and data encodings defined within OGC’s Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) framework make sensors available over the Web and hide the heterogeneous sensor protocols from applications. So far, the SWE framework does not describe how to integrate sensors on-the-fly with minimal human intervention. The driver software which enables access to sensors has to be implemented and the measured sensor data has to be manually mapped to the SWE models. In this article we introduce a Sensor Plug & Play infrastructure for the Sensor Web by combining (1) semantic matchmaking functionality, (2) a publish/subscribe mechanism underlying the SensorWeb, as well as (3) a model for the declarative description of sensor interfaces which serves as a generic driver mechanism. We implement and evaluate our approach by applying it to an oil spill scenario. The matchmaking is realized using existing ontologies and reasoning engines and provides a strong case for the semantic integration capabilities provided by Semantic Web research. PMID:22164033

31 CFR 515.578 - Exportation of certain services incident to Internet-based communications.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... Internet, such as instant messaging, chat and email, social networking, sharing of photos and movies, web... direct or indirect exportation of web-hosting services that are for purposes other than personal communications (e.g., web-hosting services for commercial endeavors) or of domain name registration services. (4...

31 CFR 515.578 - Exportation of certain services incident to Internet-based communications.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... Internet, such as instant messaging, chat and email, social networking, sharing of photos and movies, web... direct or indirect exportation of web-hosting services that are for purposes other than personal communications (e.g., web-hosting services for commercial endeavors) or of domain name registration services. (4...

REMORA: a pilot in the ocean of BioMoby web-services.

PubMed

Carrere, Sébastien; Gouzy, Jérôme

2006-04-01

Emerging web-services technology allows interoperability between multiple distributed architectures. Here, we present REMORA, a web server implemented according to the BioMoby web-service specifications, providing life science researchers with an easy-to-use workflow generator and launcher, a repository of predefined workflows and a survey system. Jerome.Gouzy@toulouse.inra.fr The REMORA web server is freely available at http://bioinfo.genopole-toulouse.prd.fr/remora, sources are available upon request from the authors.

jORCA: easily integrating bioinformatics Web Services.

PubMed

Martín-Requena, Victoria; Ríos, Javier; García, Maximiliano; Ramírez, Sergio; Trelles, Oswaldo

2010-02-15

Web services technology is becoming the option of choice to deploy bioinformatics tools that are universally available. One of the major strengths of this approach is that it supports machine-to-machine interoperability over a network. However, a weakness of this approach is that various Web Services differ in their definition and invocation protocols, as well as their communication and data formats-and this presents a barrier to service interoperability. jORCA is a desktop client aimed at facilitating seamless integration of Web Services. It does so by making a uniform representation of the different web resources, supporting scalable service discovery, and automatic composition of workflows. Usability is at the top of the jORCA agenda; thus it is a highly customizable and extensible application that accommodates a broad range of user skills featuring double-click invocation of services in conjunction with advanced execution-control, on the fly data standardization, extensibility of viewer plug-ins, drag-and-drop editing capabilities, plus a file-based browsing style and organization of favourite tools. The integration of bioinformatics Web Services is made easier to support a wider range of users. .

MR-Tandem: parallel X!Tandem using Hadoop MapReduce on Amazon Web Services.

PubMed

Pratt, Brian; Howbert, J Jeffry; Tasman, Natalie I; Nilsson, Erik J

2012-01-01

MR-Tandem adapts the popular X!Tandem peptide search engine to work with Hadoop MapReduce for reliable parallel execution of large searches. MR-Tandem runs on any Hadoop cluster but offers special support for Amazon Web Services for creating inexpensive on-demand Hadoop clusters, enabling search volumes that might not otherwise be feasible with the compute resources a researcher has at hand. MR-Tandem is designed to drop in wherever X!Tandem is already in use and requires no modification to existing X!Tandem parameter files, and only minimal modification to X!Tandem-based workflows. MR-Tandem is implemented as a lightly modified X!Tandem C++ executable and a Python script that drives Hadoop clusters including Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Map Reduce (EMR), using the modified X!Tandem program as a Hadoop Streaming mapper and reducer. The modified X!Tandem C++ source code is Artistic licensed, supports pluggable scoring, and is available as part of the Sashimi project at http://sashimi.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/sashimi/trunk/trans_proteomic_pipeline/extern/xtandem/. The MR-Tandem Python script is Apache licensed and available as part of the Insilicos Cloud Army project at http://ica.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ica/trunk/mr-tandem/. Full documentation and a windows installer that configures MR-Tandem, Python and all necessary packages are available at this same URL. brian.pratt@insilicos.com

National Centers for Environmental Prediction

Science.gov Websites

. Government's official Web portal to all Federal, state and local government Web resources and services. MISSION Web Page [scroll down to "Verification" Section] HRRR Verification at NOAA ESRL HRRR Web Verification Web Page NOAA / National Weather Service National Centers for Environmental Prediction

A scalable architecture for extracting, aligning, linking, and visualizing multi-Int data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Knoblock, Craig A.; Szekely, Pedro

2015-05-01

An analyst today has a tremendous amount of data available, but each of the various data sources typically exists in their own silos, so an analyst has limited ability to see an integrated view of the data and has little or no access to contextual information that could help in understanding the data. We have developed the Domain-Insight Graph (DIG) system, an innovative architecture for extracting, aligning, linking, and visualizing massive amounts of domain-specific content from unstructured sources. Under the DARPA Memex program we have already successfully applied this architecture to multiple application domains, including the enormous international problem of human trafficking, where we extracted, aligned and linked data from 50 million online Web pages. DIG builds on our Karma data integration toolkit, which makes it easy to rapidly integrate structured data from a variety of sources, including databases, spreadsheets, XML, JSON, and Web services. The ability to integrate Web services allows Karma to pull in live data from the various social media sites, such as Twitter, Instagram, and OpenStreetMaps. DIG then indexes the integrated data and provides an easy to use interface for query, visualization, and analysis.

Component, Context, and Manufacturing Model Library (C2M2L)

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-11-01

123 5.1 MML Population and Web Service Interface...104 Table 41. Relevant Questions with Associated Web Services...the models, and implementing web services that provide semantically aware programmatic access to the models, including implementing the MS&T

WebGLORE: a web service for Grid LOgistic REgression.

PubMed

Jiang, Wenchao; Li, Pinghao; Wang, Shuang; Wu, Yuan; Xue, Meng; Ohno-Machado, Lucila; Jiang, Xiaoqian

2013-12-15

WebGLORE is a free web service that enables privacy-preserving construction of a global logistic regression model from distributed datasets that are sensitive. It only transfers aggregated local statistics (from participants) through Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure to a trusted server, where the global model is synthesized. WebGLORE seamlessly integrates AJAX, JAVA Applet/Servlet and PHP technologies to provide an easy-to-use web service for biomedical researchers to break down policy barriers during information exchange. http://dbmi-engine.ucsd.edu/webglore3/. WebGLORE can be used under the terms of GNU general public license as published by the Free Software Foundation.

The Semantic Automated Discovery and Integration (SADI) Web service Design-Pattern, API and Reference Implementation

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

Background The complexity and inter-related nature of biological data poses a difficult challenge for data and tool integration. There has been a proliferation of interoperability standards and projects over the past decade, none of which has been widely adopted by the bioinformatics community. Recent attempts have focused on the use of semantics to assist integration, and Semantic Web technologies are being welcomed by this community. Description SADI - Semantic Automated Discovery and Integration - is a lightweight set of fully standards-compliant Semantic Web service design patterns that simplify the publication of services of the type commonly found in bioinformatics and other scientific domains. Using Semantic Web technologies at every level of the Web services "stack", SADI services consume and produce instances of OWL Classes following a small number of very straightforward best-practices. In addition, we provide codebases that support these best-practices, and plug-in tools to popular developer and client software that dramatically simplify deployment of services by providers, and the discovery and utilization of those services by their consumers. Conclusions SADI Services are fully compliant with, and utilize only foundational Web standards; are simple to create and maintain for service providers; and can be discovered and utilized in a very intuitive way by biologist end-users. In addition, the SADI design patterns significantly improve the ability of software to automatically discover appropriate services based on user-needs, and automatically chain these into complex analytical workflows. We show that, when resources are exposed through SADI, data compliant with a given ontological model can be automatically gathered, or generated, from these distributed, non-coordinating resources - a behaviour we have not observed in any other Semantic system. Finally, we show that, using SADI, data dynamically generated from Web services can be explored in a manner very similar to data housed in static triple-stores, thus facilitating the intersection of Web services and Semantic Web technologies. PMID:22024447

The Semantic Automated Discovery and Integration (SADI) Web service Design-Pattern, API and Reference Implementation.

PubMed

Wilkinson, Mark D; Vandervalk, Benjamin; McCarthy, Luke

2011-10-24

The complexity and inter-related nature of biological data poses a difficult challenge for data and tool integration. There has been a proliferation of interoperability standards and projects over the past decade, none of which has been widely adopted by the bioinformatics community. Recent attempts have focused on the use of semantics to assist integration, and Semantic Web technologies are being welcomed by this community. SADI - Semantic Automated Discovery and Integration - is a lightweight set of fully standards-compliant Semantic Web service design patterns that simplify the publication of services of the type commonly found in bioinformatics and other scientific domains. Using Semantic Web technologies at every level of the Web services "stack", SADI services consume and produce instances of OWL Classes following a small number of very straightforward best-practices. In addition, we provide codebases that support these best-practices, and plug-in tools to popular developer and client software that dramatically simplify deployment of services by providers, and the discovery and utilization of those services by their consumers. SADI Services are fully compliant with, and utilize only foundational Web standards; are simple to create and maintain for service providers; and can be discovered and utilized in a very intuitive way by biologist end-users. In addition, the SADI design patterns significantly improve the ability of software to automatically discover appropriate services based on user-needs, and automatically chain these into complex analytical workflows. We show that, when resources are exposed through SADI, data compliant with a given ontological model can be automatically gathered, or generated, from these distributed, non-coordinating resources - a behaviour we have not observed in any other Semantic system. Finally, we show that, using SADI, data dynamically generated from Web services can be explored in a manner very similar to data housed in static triple-stores, thus facilitating the intersection of Web services and Semantic Web technologies.

Web-services-based spatial decision support system to facilitate nuclear waste siting

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Huang, L. Xinglai; Sheng, Grant

2006-10-01

The availability of spatial web services enables data sharing among managers, decision and policy makers and other stakeholders in much simpler ways than before and subsequently has created completely new opportunities in the process of spatial decision making. Though generally designed for a certain problem domain, web-services-based spatial decision support systems (WSDSS) can provide a flexible problem-solving environment to explore the decision problem, understand and refine problem definition, and generate and evaluate multiple alternatives for decision. This paper presents a new framework for the development of a web-services-based spatial decision support system. The WSDSS is comprised of distributed web services that either have their own functions or provide different geospatial data and may reside in different computers and locations. WSDSS includes six key components, namely: database management system, catalog, analysis functions and models, GIS viewers and editors, report generators, and graphical user interfaces. In this study, the architecture of a web-services-based spatial decision support system to facilitate nuclear waste siting is described as an example. The theoretical, conceptual and methodological challenges and issues associated with developing web services-based spatial decision support system are described.

A Neuroimaging Web Services Interface as a Cyber Physical System for Medical Imaging and Data Management in Brain Research: Design Study.

PubMed

Lizarraga, Gabriel; Li, Chunfei; Cabrerizo, Mercedes; Barker, Warren; Loewenstein, David A; Duara, Ranjan; Adjouadi, Malek

2018-04-26

Structural and functional brain images are essential imaging modalities for medical experts to study brain anatomy. These images are typically visually inspected by experts. To analyze images without any bias, they must be first converted to numeric values. Many software packages are available to process the images, but they are complex and difficult to use. The software packages are also hardware intensive. The results obtained after processing vary depending on the native operating system used and its associated software libraries; data processed in one system cannot typically be combined with data on another system. The aim of this study was to fulfill the neuroimaging community’s need for a common platform to store, process, explore, and visualize their neuroimaging data and results using Neuroimaging Web Services Interface: a series of processing pipelines designed as a cyber physical system for neuroimaging and clinical data in brain research. Neuroimaging Web Services Interface accepts magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography, diffusion tensor imaging, and functional magnetic resonance imaging. These images are processed using existing and custom software packages. The output is then stored as image files, tabulated files, and MySQL tables. The system, made up of a series of interconnected servers, is password-protected and is securely accessible through a Web interface and allows (1) visualization of results and (2) downloading of tabulated data. All results were obtained using our processing servers in order to maintain data validity and consistency. The design is responsive and scalable. The processing pipeline started from a FreeSurfer reconstruction of Structural magnetic resonance imaging images. The FreeSurfer and regional standardized uptake value ratio calculations were validated using Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative input images, and the results were posted at the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging data archive. Notable leading researchers in the field of Alzheimer’s Disease and epilepsy have used the interface to access and process the data and visualize the results. Tabulated results with unique visualization mechanisms help guide more informed diagnosis and expert rating, providing a truly unique multimodal imaging platform that combines magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography, diffusion tensor imaging, and resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging. A quality control component was reinforced through expert visual rating involving at least 2 experts. To our knowledge, there is no validated Web-based system offering all the services that Neuroimaging Web Services Interface offers. The intent of Neuroimaging Web Services Interface is to create a tool for clinicians and researchers with keen interest on multimodal neuroimaging. More importantly, Neuroimaging Web Services Interface significantly augments the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative data, especially since our data contain a large cohort of Hispanic normal controls and Alzheimer’s Disease patients. The obtained results could be scrutinized visually or through the tabulated forms, informing researchers on subtle changes that characterize the different stages of the disease. ©Gabriel Lizarraga, Chunfei Li, Mercedes Cabrerizo, Warren Barker, David A Loewenstein, Ranjan Duara, Malek Adjouadi. Originally published in JMIR Medical Informatics (http://medinform.jmir.org), 26.04.2018.

Availability of the OGC geoprocessing standard: March 2011 reality check

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lopez-Pellicer, Francisco J.; Rentería-Agualimpia, Walter; Béjar, Rubén; Muro-Medrano, Pedro R.; Zarazaga-Soria, F. Javier

2012-10-01

This paper presents an investigation about the servers available in March 2011 conforming to the Web Processing Service interface specification published by the geospatial standards organization Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) in 2007. This interface specification gives support to standard Web-based geoprocessing. The data used in this research were collected using a focused crawler configured for finding OGC Web services. The research goals are (i) to provide a reality check of the availability of Web Processing Service servers, (ii) to provide quantitative data about the use of different features defined in the standard that are relevant for a scalable Geoprocessing Web (e.g. long-running processes, Web-accessible data outputs), and (iii) to test if the advances in the use of search engines and focused crawlers for finding Web services can be applied for finding geoscience processing systems. Research results show the feasibility of the discovery approach and provide data about the implementation of the Web Processing Service specification. These results also show extensive use of features related to scalability, except for those related to technical and semantic interoperability.

Maintenance and Exchange of Learning Objects in a Web Services Based e-Learning System

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vossen, Gottfried; Westerkamp, Peter

2004-01-01

"Web services" enable partners to exploit applications via the Internet. Individual services can be composed to build new and more complex ones with additional and more comprehensive functionality. In this paper, we apply the Web service paradigm to electronic learning, and show how to exchange and maintain learning objects is a…

Developer Network

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

2012-08-21

NREL's Developer Network, developer.nrel.gov, provides data that users can access to provide data to their own analyses, mobile and web applications. Developers can retrieve the data through a Web services API (application programming interface). The Developer Network handles overhead of serving up web services such as key management, authentication, analytics, reporting, documentation standards, and throttling in a common architecture, while allowing web services and APIs to be maintained and managed independently.

API REST Web service and backend system Of Lecturer’s Assessment Information System on Politeknik Negeri Bali

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Manuaba, I. B. P.; Rudiastini, E.

2018-01-01

Assessment of lecturers is a tool used to measure lecturer performance. Lecturer’s assessment variable can be measured from three aspects : teaching activities, research and community service. Broad aspect to measure the performance of lecturers requires a special framework, so that the system can be developed in a sustainable manner. Issues of this research is to create a API web service data tool, so the lecturer assessment system can be developed in various frameworks. The research was developed with web service and php programming language with the output of json extension data. The conclusion of this research is API web service data application can be developed using several platforms such as web, mobile application

Multicast for savings in cache-based video distribution

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Griwodz, Carsten; Zink, Michael; Liepert, Michael; On, Giwon; Steinmetz, Ralf

1999-12-01

Internet video-on-demand (VoD) today streams videos directly from server to clients, because re-distribution is not established yet. Intranet solutions exist but are typically managed centrally. Caching may overcome these management needs, however existing web caching strategies are not applicable because they work in different conditions. We propose movie distribution by means of caching, and study the feasibility from the service providers' point of view. We introduce the combination of our reliable multicast protocol LCRTP for caching hierarchies combined with our enhancement to the patching technique for bandwidth friendly True VoD, not depending on network resource guarantees.

GENESIS: GPS Environmental and Earth Science Information System

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hajj, George

1999-01-01

This presentation reviews the GPS ENvironmental and Earth Science Information System (GENESIS). The objectives of GENESIS are outlined (1) Data Archiving, searching and distribution for science data products derived from Space borne TurboRogue Space Receivers for GPS science and other ground based GPS receivers, (2) Data browsing using integrated visualization tools, (3) Interactive web/java-based data search and retrieval, (4) Data subscription service, (5) Data migration from existing GPS archived data, (6) On-line help and documentation, and (7) participation in the WP-ESIP federation. The presentation reviews the products and services of Genesis, and the technology behind the system.

Patient satisfaction scores and their relationship to hospital website quality measures.

PubMed

Ford, Eric W; Huerta, Timothy R; Diana, Mark L; Kazley, Abby Swanson; Menachemi, Nir

2013-01-01

Hospitals and health systems are using web-based and social media tools to market themselves to consumers with increasingly sophisticated strategies. These efforts are designed to shape the consumers' expectations, influence their purchase decisions, and build a positive reputation in the marketplace. Little is known about how these web-based marketing efforts are taking form and if they have any relationship to consumers' satisfaction with the services they receive. The purpose of this study is to assess if a relationship exists between the quality of hospitals' public websites and their aggregated patient satisfaction ratings. Based on analyses of 1,952 U.S. hospitals, our results show that website quality is significantly and positively related to patients' overall rating of the hospital and their intention to recommend the facility to others. The potential for web-based information sources to influence consumer behavior has important implications for policymakers, third-party payers, health care providers, and consumers.

Implementation of Sensor Twitter Feed Web Service Server and Client

DTIC Science & Technology

2016-12-01

ARL-TN-0807 ● DEC 2016 US Army Research Laboratory Implementation of Sensor Twitter Feed Web Service Server and Client by...Implementation of Sensor Twitter Feed Web Service Server and Client by Bhagyashree V Kulkarni University of Maryland Michael H Lee Computational...

AWSCS-A System to Evaluate Different Approaches for the Automatic Composition and Execution of Web Services Flows

PubMed Central

Tardiole Kuehne, Bruno; Estrella, Julio Cezar; Nunes, Luiz Henrique; Martins de Oliveira, Edvard; Hideo Nakamura, Luis; Gomes Ferreira, Carlos Henrique; Carlucci Santana, Regina Helena; Reiff-Marganiec, Stephan; Santana, Marcos José

2015-01-01

This paper proposes a system named AWSCS (Automatic Web Service Composition System) to evaluate different approaches for automatic composition of Web services, based on QoS parameters that are measured at execution time. The AWSCS is a system to implement different approaches for automatic composition of Web services and also to execute the resulting flows from these approaches. Aiming at demonstrating the results of this paper, a scenario was developed, where empirical flows were built to demonstrate the operation of AWSCS, since algorithms for automatic composition are not readily available to test. The results allow us to study the behaviour of running composite Web services, when flows with the same functionality but different problem-solving strategies were compared. Furthermore, we observed that the influence of the load applied on the running system as the type of load submitted to the system is an important factor to define which approach for the Web service composition can achieve the best performance in production. PMID:26068216

Virtualization of open-source secure web services to support data exchange in a pediatric critical care research network.

PubMed

Frey, Lewis J; Sward, Katherine A; Newth, Christopher J L; Khemani, Robinder G; Cryer, Martin E; Thelen, Julie L; Enriquez, Rene; Shaoyu, Su; Pollack, Murray M; Harrison, Rick E; Meert, Kathleen L; Berg, Robert A; Wessel, David L; Shanley, Thomas P; Dalton, Heidi; Carcillo, Joseph; Jenkins, Tammara L; Dean, J Michael

2015-11-01

To examine the feasibility of deploying a virtual web service for sharing data within a research network, and to evaluate the impact on data consistency and quality. Virtual machines (VMs) encapsulated an open-source, semantically and syntactically interoperable secure web service infrastructure along with a shadow database. The VMs were deployed to 8 Collaborative Pediatric Critical Care Research Network Clinical Centers. Virtual web services could be deployed in hours. The interoperability of the web services reduced format misalignment from 56% to 1% and demonstrated that 99% of the data consistently transferred using the data dictionary and 1% needed human curation. Use of virtualized open-source secure web service technology could enable direct electronic abstraction of data from hospital databases for research purposes. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

AWSCS-A System to Evaluate Different Approaches for the Automatic Composition and Execution of Web Services Flows.

PubMed

Tardiole Kuehne, Bruno; Estrella, Julio Cezar; Nunes, Luiz Henrique; Martins de Oliveira, Edvard; Hideo Nakamura, Luis; Gomes Ferreira, Carlos Henrique; Carlucci Santana, Regina Helena; Reiff-Marganiec, Stephan; Santana, Marcos José

2015-01-01

This paper proposes a system named AWSCS (Automatic Web Service Composition System) to evaluate different approaches for automatic composition of Web services, based on QoS parameters that are measured at execution time. The AWSCS is a system to implement different approaches for automatic composition of Web services and also to execute the resulting flows from these approaches. Aiming at demonstrating the results of this paper, a scenario was developed, where empirical flows were built to demonstrate the operation of AWSCS, since algorithms for automatic composition are not readily available to test. The results allow us to study the behaviour of running composite Web services, when flows with the same functionality but different problem-solving strategies were compared. Furthermore, we observed that the influence of the load applied on the running system as the type of load submitted to the system is an important factor to define which approach for the Web service composition can achieve the best performance in production.

Web services as applications' integration tool: QikProp case study.

PubMed

Laoui, Abdel; Polyakov, Valery R

2011-07-15

Web services are a new technology that enables to integrate applications running on different platforms by using primarily XML to enable communication among different computers over the Internet. Large number of applications was designed as stand alone systems before the concept of Web services was introduced and it is a challenge to integrate them into larger computational networks. A generally applicable method of wrapping stand alone applications into Web services was developed and is described. To test the technology, it was applied to the QikProp for DOS (Windows). Although performance of the application did not change when it was delivered as a Web service, this form of deployment had offered several advantages like simplified and centralized maintenance, smaller number of licenses, and practically no training for the end user. Because by using the described approach almost any legacy application can be wrapped as a Web service, this form of delivery may be recommended as a global alternative to traditional deployment solutions. Copyright © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

SSWAP: A Simple Semantic Web Architecture and Protocol for semantic web services.

PubMed

Gessler, Damian D G; Schiltz, Gary S; May, Greg D; Avraham, Shulamit; Town, Christopher D; Grant, David; Nelson, Rex T

2009-09-23

SSWAP (Simple Semantic Web Architecture and Protocol; pronounced "swap") is an architecture, protocol, and platform for using reasoning to semantically integrate heterogeneous disparate data and services on the web. SSWAP was developed as a hybrid semantic web services technology to overcome limitations found in both pure web service technologies and pure semantic web technologies. There are currently over 2400 resources published in SSWAP. Approximately two dozen are custom-written services for QTL (Quantitative Trait Loci) and mapping data for legumes and grasses (grains). The remaining are wrappers to Nucleic Acids Research Database and Web Server entries. As an architecture, SSWAP establishes how clients (users of data, services, and ontologies), providers (suppliers of data, services, and ontologies), and discovery servers (semantic search engines) interact to allow for the description, querying, discovery, invocation, and response of semantic web services. As a protocol, SSWAP provides the vocabulary and semantics to allow clients, providers, and discovery servers to engage in semantic web services. The protocol is based on the W3C-sanctioned first-order description logic language OWL DL. As an open source platform, a discovery server running at http://sswap.info (as in to "swap info") uses the description logic reasoner Pellet to integrate semantic resources. The platform hosts an interactive guide to the protocol at http://sswap.info/protocol.jsp, developer tools at http://sswap.info/developer.jsp, and a portal to third-party ontologies at http://sswapmeet.sswap.info (a "swap meet"). SSWAP addresses the three basic requirements of a semantic web services architecture (i.e., a common syntax, shared semantic, and semantic discovery) while addressing three technology limitations common in distributed service systems: i.e., i) the fatal mutability of traditional interfaces, ii) the rigidity and fragility of static subsumption hierarchies, and iii) the confounding of content, structure, and presentation. SSWAP is novel by establishing the concept of a canonical yet mutable OWL DL graph that allows data and service providers to describe their resources, to allow discovery servers to offer semantically rich search engines, to allow clients to discover and invoke those resources, and to allow providers to respond with semantically tagged data. SSWAP allows for a mix-and-match of terms from both new and legacy third-party ontologies in these graphs.

Web marketing for oral and maxillofacial surgeons.

PubMed

Brandt, Chad

2008-02-01

Whether you intend to attract new customers, keep existing clients, or expand into new areas, marketing will play an important role. Most small businesses have very limited time and resources for marketing, so it is crucial that the investment receives a significant return. Advertising your business via the internet is a great way to stretch marketing dollars and have the information about your doctors, practice, and services available 24 hours a day.

AFAL: a web service for profiling amino acids surrounding ligands in proteins

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Arenas-Salinas, Mauricio; Ortega-Salazar, Samuel; Gonzales-Nilo, Fernando; Pohl, Ehmke; Holmes, David S.; Quatrini, Raquel

2014-11-01

With advancements in crystallographic technology and the increasing wealth of information populating structural databases, there is an increasing need for prediction tools based on spatial information that will support the characterization of proteins and protein-ligand interactions. Herein, a new web service is presented termed amino acid frequency around ligand (AFAL) for determining amino acids type and frequencies surrounding ligands within proteins deposited in the Protein Data Bank and for assessing the atoms and atom-ligand distances involved in each interaction (availability: http://structuralbio.utalca.cl/AFAL/index.html). AFAL allows the user to define a wide variety of filtering criteria (protein family, source organism, resolution, sequence redundancy and distance) in order to uncover trends and evolutionary differences in amino acid preferences that define interactions with particular ligands. Results obtained from AFAL provide valuable statistical information about amino acids that may be responsible for establishing particular ligand-protein interactions. The analysis will enable investigators to compare ligand-binding sites of different proteins and to uncover general as well as specific interaction patterns from existing data. Such patterns can be used subsequently to predict ligand binding in proteins that currently have no structural information and to refine the interpretation of existing protein models. The application of AFAL is illustrated by the analysis of proteins interacting with adenosine-5'-triphosphate.

AFAL: a web service for profiling amino acids surrounding ligands in proteins.

PubMed

Arenas-Salinas, Mauricio; Ortega-Salazar, Samuel; Gonzales-Nilo, Fernando; Pohl, Ehmke; Holmes, David S; Quatrini, Raquel

2014-11-01

With advancements in crystallographic technology and the increasing wealth of information populating structural databases, there is an increasing need for prediction tools based on spatial information that will support the characterization of proteins and protein-ligand interactions. Herein, a new web service is presented termed amino acid frequency around ligand (AFAL) for determining amino acids type and frequencies surrounding ligands within proteins deposited in the Protein Data Bank and for assessing the atoms and atom-ligand distances involved in each interaction (availability: http://structuralbio.utalca.cl/AFAL/index.html ). AFAL allows the user to define a wide variety of filtering criteria (protein family, source organism, resolution, sequence redundancy and distance) in order to uncover trends and evolutionary differences in amino acid preferences that define interactions with particular ligands. Results obtained from AFAL provide valuable statistical information about amino acids that may be responsible for establishing particular ligand-protein interactions. The analysis will enable investigators to compare ligand-binding sites of different proteins and to uncover general as well as specific interaction patterns from existing data. Such patterns can be used subsequently to predict ligand binding in proteins that currently have no structural information and to refine the interpretation of existing protein models. The application of AFAL is illustrated by the analysis of proteins interacting with adenosine-5'-triphosphate.

WebGLORE: a Web service for Grid LOgistic REgression

PubMed Central

Jiang, Wenchao; Li, Pinghao; Wang, Shuang; Wu, Yuan; Xue, Meng; Ohno-Machado, Lucila; Jiang, Xiaoqian

2013-01-01

WebGLORE is a free web service that enables privacy-preserving construction of a global logistic regression model from distributed datasets that are sensitive. It only transfers aggregated local statistics (from participants) through Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure to a trusted server, where the global model is synthesized. WebGLORE seamlessly integrates AJAX, JAVA Applet/Servlet and PHP technologies to provide an easy-to-use web service for biomedical researchers to break down policy barriers during information exchange. Availability and implementation: http://dbmi-engine.ucsd.edu/webglore3/. WebGLORE can be used under the terms of GNU general public license as published by the Free Software Foundation. Contact: x1jiang@ucsd.edu PMID:24072732

Development of spatial density maps based on geoprocessing web services: application to tuberculosis incidence in Barcelona, Spain.

PubMed

Dominkovics, Pau; Granell, Carlos; Pérez-Navarro, Antoni; Casals, Martí; Orcau, Angels; Caylà, Joan A

2011-11-29

Health professionals and authorities strive to cope with heterogeneous data, services, and statistical models to support decision making on public health. Sophisticated analysis and distributed processing capabilities over geocoded epidemiological data are seen as driving factors to speed up control and decision making in these health risk situations. In this context, recent Web technologies and standards-based web services deployed on geospatial information infrastructures have rapidly become an efficient way to access, share, process, and visualize geocoded health-related information. Data used on this study is based on Tuberculosis (TB) cases registered in Barcelona city during 2009. Residential addresses are geocoded and loaded into a spatial database that acts as a backend database. The web-based application architecture and geoprocessing web services are designed according to the Representational State Transfer (REST) principles. These web processing services produce spatial density maps against the backend database. The results are focused on the use of the proposed web-based application to the analysis of TB cases in Barcelona. The application produces spatial density maps to ease the monitoring and decision making process by health professionals. We also include a discussion of how spatial density maps may be useful for health practitioners in such contexts. In this paper, we developed web-based client application and a set of geoprocessing web services to support specific health-spatial requirements. Spatial density maps of TB incidence were generated to help health professionals in analysis and decision-making tasks. The combined use of geographic information tools, map viewers, and geoprocessing services leads to interesting possibilities in handling health data in a spatial manner. In particular, the use of spatial density maps has been effective to identify the most affected areas and its spatial impact. This study is an attempt to demonstrate how web processing services together with web-based mapping capabilities suit the needs of health practitioners in epidemiological analysis scenarios.

Development of spatial density maps based on geoprocessing web services: application to tuberculosis incidence in Barcelona, Spain

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

Background Health professionals and authorities strive to cope with heterogeneous data, services, and statistical models to support decision making on public health. Sophisticated analysis and distributed processing capabilities over geocoded epidemiological data are seen as driving factors to speed up control and decision making in these health risk situations. In this context, recent Web technologies and standards-based web services deployed on geospatial information infrastructures have rapidly become an efficient way to access, share, process, and visualize geocoded health-related information. Methods Data used on this study is based on Tuberculosis (TB) cases registered in Barcelona city during 2009. Residential addresses are geocoded and loaded into a spatial database that acts as a backend database. The web-based application architecture and geoprocessing web services are designed according to the Representational State Transfer (REST) principles. These web processing services produce spatial density maps against the backend database. Results The results are focused on the use of the proposed web-based application to the analysis of TB cases in Barcelona. The application produces spatial density maps to ease the monitoring and decision making process by health professionals. We also include a discussion of how spatial density maps may be useful for health practitioners in such contexts. Conclusions In this paper, we developed web-based client application and a set of geoprocessing web services to support specific health-spatial requirements. Spatial density maps of TB incidence were generated to help health professionals in analysis and decision-making tasks. The combined use of geographic information tools, map viewers, and geoprocessing services leads to interesting possibilities in handling health data in a spatial manner. In particular, the use of spatial density maps has been effective to identify the most affected areas and its spatial impact. This study is an attempt to demonstrate how web processing services together with web-based mapping capabilities suit the needs of health practitioners in epidemiological analysis scenarios. PMID:22126392

Pragmatic service development and customisation with the CEDA OGC Web Services framework

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pascoe, Stephen; Stephens, Ag; Lowe, Dominic

2010-05-01

The CEDA OGC Web Services framework (COWS) emphasises rapid service development by providing a lightweight layer of OGC web service logic on top of Pylons, a mature web application framework for the Python language. This approach gives developers a flexible web service development environment without compromising access to the full range of web application tools and patterns: Model-View-Controller paradigm, XML templating, Object-Relational-Mapper integration and authentication/authorization. We have found this approach useful for exploring evolving standards and implementing protocol extensions to meet the requirements of operational deployments. This paper outlines how COWS is being used to implement customised WMS, WCS, WFS and WPS services in a variety of web applications from experimental prototypes to load-balanced cluster deployments serving 10-100 simultaneous users. In particular we will cover 1) The use of Climate Science Modeling Language (CSML) in complex-feature aware WMS, WCS and WFS services, 2) Extending WMS to support applications with features specific to earth system science and 3) A cluster-enabled Web Processing Service (WPS) supporting asynchronous data processing. The COWS WPS underpins all backend services in the UK Climate Projections User Interface where users can extract, plot and further process outputs from a multi-dimensional probabilistic climate model dataset. The COWS WPS supports cluster job execution, result caching, execution time estimation and user management. The COWS WMS and WCS components drive the project-specific NCEO and QESDI portals developed by the British Atmospheric Data Centre. These portals use CSML as a backend description format and implement features such as multiple WMS layer dimensions and climatology axes that are beyond the scope of general purpose GIS tools and yet vital for atmospheric science applications.

Technical Services and the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Scheschy, Virginia M.

The World Wide Web and browsers such as Netscape and Mosaic have simplified access to electronic resources. Today, technical services librarians can share in the wealth of information available on the Web. One of the premier Web sites for acquisitions librarians is AcqWeb, a cousin of the AcqNet listserv. In addition to interesting news items,…

EarthServer - an FP7 project to enable the web delivery and analysis of 3D/4D models

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Laxton, John; Sen, Marcus; Passmore, James

2013-04-01

EarthServer aims at open access and ad-hoc analytics on big Earth Science data, based on the OGC geoservice standards Web Coverage Service (WCS) and Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS). The WCS model defines "coverages" as a unifying paradigm for multi-dimensional raster data, point clouds, meshes, etc., thereby addressing a wide range of Earth Science data including 3D/4D models. WCPS allows declarative SQL-style queries on coverages. The project is developing a pilot implementing these standards, and will also investigate the use of GeoSciML to describe coverages. Integration of WCPS with XQuery will in turn allow coverages to be queried in combination with their metadata and GeoSciML description. The unified service will support navigation, extraction, aggregation, and ad-hoc analysis on coverage data from SQL. Clients will range from mobile devices to high-end immersive virtual reality, and will enable 3D model visualisation using web browser technology coupled with developing web standards. EarthServer is establishing open-source client and server technology intended to be scalable to Petabyte/Exabyte volumes, based on distributed processing, supercomputing, and cloud virtualization. Implementation will be based on the existing rasdaman server technology developed. Services using rasdaman technology are being installed serving the atmospheric, oceanographic, geological, cryospheric, planetary and general earth observation communities. The geology service (http://earthserver.bgs.ac.uk/) is being provided by BGS and at present includes satellite imagery, superficial thickness data, onshore DTMs and 3D models for the Glasgow area. It is intended to extend the data sets available to include 3D voxel models. Use of the WCPS standard allows queries to be constructed against single or multiple coverages. For example on a single coverage data for a particular area can be selected or data with a particular range of pixel values. Queries on multiple surfaces can be constructed to calculate, for example, the thickness between two surfaces in a 3D model or the depth from ground surface to the top of a particular geologic unit. In the first version of the service a simple interface showing some example queries has been implemented in order to show the potential of the technologies. The project aims to develop the services available in light of user feedback, both in terms of the data available, the functionality and the interface. User feedback on the services guides the software and standards development aspects of the project, leading to enhanced versions of the software which will be implemented in upgraded versions of the services during the lifetime of the project.

Building Capacity for a Long-Term, in-Situ, National-Scale Phenology Monitoring Network: Successes, Challenges and Lessons Learned

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Weltzin, J. F.; Browning, D. M.

2014-12-01

The USA National Phenology Network (USA-NPN; www.usanpn.org) is a national-scale science and monitoring initiative focused on phenology - the study of seasonal life-cycle events such as leafing, flowering, reproduction, and migration - as a tool to understand the response of biodiversity to environmental variation and change. USA-NPN provides a hierarchical, national monitoring framework that enables other organizations to leverage the capacity of the Network for their own applications - minimizing investment and duplication of effort - while promoting interoperability. Network participants can leverage: (1) Standardized monitoring protocols that have been broadly vetted, tested and published; (2) A centralized National Phenology Database (NPDb) for maintaining, archiving and replicating data, with standard metadata, terms-of-use, web-services, and documentation of QA/QC, plus tools for discovery, visualization and download of raw data and derived data products; and/or (3) A national in-situ, multi-taxa phenological monitoring system, Nature's Notebook, which enables participants to observe and record phenology of plants and animals - based on the protocols and information management system (IMS) described above - via either web or mobile applications. The protocols, NPDb and IMS, and Nature's Notebook represent a hierarchy of opportunities for involvement by a broad range of interested stakeholders, from individuals to agencies. For example, some organizations have adopted (e.g., the National Ecological Observatory Network or NEON) -- or are considering adopting (e.g., the Long-Term Agroecosystems Network or LTAR) -- the USA-NPN standardized protocols, but will develop their own database and IMS with web services to promote sharing of data with the NPDb. Other organizations (e.g., the Inventory and Monitoring Programs of the National Wildlife Refuge System and the National Park Service) have elected to use Nature's Notebook to support their phenological monitoring programs. We highlight the challenges and benefits of integrating phenology monitoring within existing and emerging national monitoring networks, and showcase opportunities that exist when standardized protocols are adopted and implemented to promote data interoperability and sharing.

Dumbing Down the Net

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jamison, Mark A.; Hauge, Janice A.

It is commonplace for sellers of goods and services to enhance the value of their products by paying extra for premium delivery service. For example, package delivery services such as Federal Express and the US Postal Service offer shippers a variety of delivery speeds and insurance programs. Web content providers such as Yahoo! and MSN Live Earth can purchase web-enhancing services from companies such as Akamai to speed the delivery of their web content to customers.1

Determinants of Corporate Web Services Adoption: A Survey of Companies in Korea

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kim, Daekil

2010-01-01

Despite the growing interest and attention from Information Technology researchers and practitioners, empirical research on factors that influence an organization's likelihood of adoption of Web Services has been limited. This study identified the factors influencing Web Services adoption from the perspective of 151 South Korean firms. The…

Web 2.0 Strategy in Libraries and Information Services

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Byrne, Alex

2008-01-01

Web 2.0 challenges libraries to change from their predominantly centralised service models with integrated library management systems at the hub. Implementation of Web 2.0 technologies and the accompanying attitudinal shifts will demand reconceptualisation of the nature of library and information service around a dynamic, ever changing, networked,…

WIWS: a protein structure bioinformatics Web service collection.

PubMed

Hekkelman, M L; Te Beek, T A H; Pettifer, S R; Thorne, D; Attwood, T K; Vriend, G

2010-07-01

The WHAT IF molecular-modelling and drug design program is widely distributed in the world of protein structure bioinformatics. Although originally designed as an interactive application, its highly modular design and inbuilt control language have recently enabled its deployment as a collection of programmatically accessible web services. We report here a collection of WHAT IF-based protein structure bioinformatics web services: these relate to structure quality, the use of symmetry in crystal structures, structure correction and optimization, adding hydrogens and optimizing hydrogen bonds and a series of geometric calculations. The freely accessible web services are based on the industry standard WS-I profile and the EMBRACE technical guidelines, and are available via both REST and SOAP paradigms. The web services run on a dedicated computational cluster; their function and availability is monitored daily.

Using EMBL-EBI services via Web interface and programmatically via Web Services

PubMed Central

Lopez, Rodrigo; Cowley, Andrew; Li, Weizhong; McWilliam, Hamish

2015-01-01

The European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) provides access to a wide range of databases and analysis tools that are of key importance in bioinformatics. As well as providing Web interfaces to these resources, Web Services are available using SOAP and REST protocols that enable programmatic access to our resources and allow their integration into other applications and analytical workflows. This unit describes the various options available to a typical researcher or bioinformatician who wishes to use our resources via Web interface or programmatically via a range of programming languages. PMID:25501941

BioPortal: enhanced functionality via new Web services from the National Center for Biomedical Ontology to access and use ontologies in software applications.

PubMed

Whetzel, Patricia L; Noy, Natalya F; Shah, Nigam H; Alexander, Paul R; Nyulas, Csongor; Tudorache, Tania; Musen, Mark A

2011-07-01

The National Center for Biomedical Ontology (NCBO) is one of the National Centers for Biomedical Computing funded under the NIH Roadmap Initiative. Contributing to the national computing infrastructure, NCBO has developed BioPortal, a web portal that provides access to a library of biomedical ontologies and terminologies (http://bioportal.bioontology.org) via the NCBO Web services. BioPortal enables community participation in the evaluation and evolution of ontology content by providing features to add mappings between terms, to add comments linked to specific ontology terms and to provide ontology reviews. The NCBO Web services (http://www.bioontology.org/wiki/index.php/NCBO_REST_services) enable this functionality and provide a uniform mechanism to access ontologies from a variety of knowledge representation formats, such as Web Ontology Language (OWL) and Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) format. The Web services provide multi-layered access to the ontology content, from getting all terms in an ontology to retrieving metadata about a term. Users can easily incorporate the NCBO Web services into software applications to generate semantically aware applications and to facilitate structured data collection.

A Modular Framework for Transforming Structured Data into HTML with Machine-Readable Annotations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Patton, E. W.; West, P.; Rozell, E.; Zheng, J.

2010-12-01

There is a plethora of web-based Content Management Systems (CMS) available for maintaining projects and data, i.a. However, each system varies in its capabilities and often content is stored separately and accessed via non-uniform web interfaces. Moving from one CMS to another (e.g., MediaWiki to Drupal) can be cumbersome, especially if a large quantity of data must be adapted to the new system. To standardize the creation, display, management, and sharing of project information, we have assembled a framework that uses existing web technologies to transform data provided by any service that supports the SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL) queries into HTML fragments, allowing it to be embedded in any existing website. The framework utilizes a two-tier XML Stylesheet Transformation (XSLT) that uses existing ontologies (e.g., Friend-of-a-Friend, Dublin Core) to interpret query results and render them as HTML documents. These ontologies can be used in conjunction with custom ontologies suited to individual needs (e.g., domain-specific ontologies for describing data records). Furthermore, this transformation process encodes machine-readable annotations, namely, the Resource Description Framework in attributes (RDFa), into the resulting HTML, so that capable parsers and search engines can extract the relationships between entities (e.g, people, organizations, datasets). To facilitate editing of content, the framework provides a web-based form system, mapping each query to a dynamically generated form that can be used to modify and create entities, while keeping the native data store up-to-date. This open framework makes it easy to duplicate data across many different sites, allowing researchers to distribute their data in many different online forums. In this presentation we will outline the structure of queries and the stylesheets used to transform them, followed by a brief walkthrough that follows the data from storage to human- and machine-accessible web page. We conclude with a discussion on content caching and steps toward performing queries across multiple domains.

SEQADAPT: an adaptable system for the tracking, storage and analysis of high throughput sequencing experiments.

PubMed

Burdick, David B; Cavnor, Chris C; Handcock, Jeremy; Killcoyne, Sarah; Lin, Jake; Marzolf, Bruz; Ramsey, Stephen A; Rovira, Hector; Bressler, Ryan; Shmulevich, Ilya; Boyle, John

2010-07-14

High throughput sequencing has become an increasingly important tool for biological research. However, the existing software systems for managing and processing these data have not provided the flexible infrastructure that research requires. Existing software solutions provide static and well-established algorithms in a restrictive package. However as high throughput sequencing is a rapidly evolving field, such static approaches lack the ability to readily adopt the latest advances and techniques which are often required by researchers. We have used a loosely coupled, service-oriented infrastructure to develop SeqAdapt. This system streamlines data management and allows for rapid integration of novel algorithms. Our approach also allows computational biologists to focus on developing and applying new methods instead of writing boilerplate infrastructure code. The system is based around the Addama service architecture and is available at our website as a demonstration web application, an installable single download and as a collection of individual customizable services.

SEQADAPT: an adaptable system for the tracking, storage and analysis of high throughput sequencing experiments

PubMed Central

2010-01-01

Background High throughput sequencing has become an increasingly important tool for biological research. However, the existing software systems for managing and processing these data have not provided the flexible infrastructure that research requires. Results Existing software solutions provide static and well-established algorithms in a restrictive package. However as high throughput sequencing is a rapidly evolving field, such static approaches lack the ability to readily adopt the latest advances and techniques which are often required by researchers. We have used a loosely coupled, service-oriented infrastructure to develop SeqAdapt. This system streamlines data management and allows for rapid integration of novel algorithms. Our approach also allows computational biologists to focus on developing and applying new methods instead of writing boilerplate infrastructure code. Conclusion The system is based around the Addama service architecture and is available at our website as a demonstration web application, an installable single download and as a collection of individual customizable services. PMID:20630057

SSWAP: A Simple Semantic Web Architecture and Protocol for Semantic Web Services

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

SSWAP (Simple Semantic Web Architecture and Protocol) is an architecture, protocol, and platform for using reasoning to semantically integrate heterogeneous disparate data and services on the web. SSWAP is the driving technology behind the Virtual Plant Information Network, an NSF-funded semantic w...

Climate Model Diagnostic Analyzer Web Service System

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lee, S.; Pan, L.; Zhai, C.; Tang, B.; Jiang, J. H.

2013-12-01

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report stressed the need for the comprehensive and innovative evaluation of climate models with newly available global observations. The traditional approach to climate model evaluation, which compares a single parameter at a time, identifies symptomatic model biases and errors but fails to diagnose the model problems. The model diagnosis process requires physics-based multi-variable comparisons that typically involve large-volume and heterogeneous datasets, making them both computationally- and data-intensive. To address these challenges, we are developing a parallel, distributed web-service system that enables the physics-based multi-variable model performance evaluations and diagnoses through the comprehensive and synergistic use of multiple observational data, reanalysis data, and model outputs. We have developed a methodology to transform an existing science application code into a web service using a Python wrapper interface and Python web service frameworks (i.e., Flask, Gunicorn, and Tornado). The web-service system, called Climate Model Diagnostic Analyzer (CMDA), currently supports (1) all the datasets from Obs4MIPs and a few ocean datasets from NOAA and Argo, which can serve as observation-based reference data for model evaluation and (2) many of CMIP5 model outputs covering a broad range of atmosphere, ocean, and land variables from the CMIP5 specific historical runs and AMIP runs. Analysis capabilities currently supported by CMDA are (1) the calculation of annual and seasonal means of physical variables, (2) the calculation of time evolution of the means in any specified geographical region, (3) the calculation of correlation between two variables, and (4) the calculation of difference between two variables. A web user interface is chosen for CMDA because it not only lowers the learning curve and removes the adoption barrier of the tool but also enables instantaneous use, avoiding the hassle of local software installation and environment incompatibility. CMDA is planned to be used as an educational tool for the summer school organized by JPL's Center for Climate Science in 2014. The requirements of the educational tool are defined with the interaction with the school organizers, and CMDA is customized to meet the requirements accordingly. The tool needs to be production quality for 30+ simultaneous users. The summer school will thus serve as a valuable testbed for the tool development, preparing CMDA to serve the Earth-science modeling and model-analysis community at the end of the project. This work was funded by the NASA Earth Science Program called Computational Modeling Algorithms and Cyberinfrastructure (CMAC).

EarthServer2 : The Marine Data Service - Web based and Programmatic Access to Ocean Colour Open Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Clements, Oliver; Walker, Peter

2017-04-01

The ESA Ocean Colour - Climate Change Initiative (ESA OC-CCI) has produced a long-term high quality global dataset with associated per-pixel uncertainty data. This dataset has now grown to several hundred terabytes (uncompressed) and is freely available to download. However, the sheer size of the dataset can act as a barrier to many users; large network bandwidth, local storage and processing requirements can prevent researchers without the backing of a large organisation from taking advantage of this raw data. The EC H2020 project, EarthServer2, aims to create a federated data service providing access to more than 1 petabyte of earth science data. Within this federation the Marine Data Service already provides an innovative on-line tool-kit for filtering, analysing and visualising OC-CCI data. Data are made available, filtered and processed at source through a standards-based interface, the Open Geospatial Consortium Web Coverage Service and Web Coverage Processing Service. This work was initiated in the EC FP7 EarthServer project where it was found that the unfamiliarity and complexity of these interfaces itself created a barrier to wider uptake. The continuation project, EarthServer2, addresses these issues by providing higher level tools for working with these data. We will present some examples of these tools. Many researchers wish to extract time series data from discrete points of interest. We will present a web based interface, based on NASA/ESA WebWorldWind, for selecting points of interest and plotting time series from a chosen dataset. In addition, a CSV file of locations and times, such as a ship's track, can be uploaded and these points extracted and returned in a CSV file allowing researchers to work with the extract locally, such as a spreadsheet. We will also present a set of Python and JavaScript APIs that have been created to complement and extend the web based GUI. These APIs allow the selection of single points and areas for extraction. The extracted data is returned as structured data (for instance a Python array) which can then be passed directly to local processing code. We will highlight how the libraries can be used by the community and integrated into existing systems, for instance by the use of Jupyter notebooks to share Python code examples which can then be used by other researchers as a basis for their own work.

Proof of Concept Integration of a Single-Level Service-Oriented Architecture into a Multi-Domain Secure Environment

DTIC Science & Technology

2008-03-01

Machine [29]. OC4J applications support Java Servlets , Web services, and the following J2EE specific standards: Extensible Markup Language (XML...IMAP Internet Message Access Protocol IP Internet Protocol IT Information Technology xviii J2EE Java Enterprise Environment JSR 168 Java ...LDAP), World Wide Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDav), Java Specification Request 168 (JSR 168), and Web Services for Remote

Security Techniques for Prevention of Rank Manipulation in Social Tagging Services including Robotic Domains

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

With smartphone distribution becoming common and robotic applications on the rise, social tagging services for various applications including robotic domains have advanced significantly. Though social tagging plays an important role when users are finding the exact information through web search, reliability and semantic relation between web contents and tags are not considered. Spams are making ill use of this aspect and put irrelevant tags deliberately on contents and induce users to advertise contents when they click items of search results. Therefore, this study proposes a detection method for tag-ranking manipulation to solve the problem of the existing methods which cannot guarantee the reliability of tagging. Similarity is measured for ranking the grade of registered tag on the contents, and weighted values of each tag are measured by means of synonym relevance, frequency, and semantic distances between tags. Lastly, experimental evaluation results are provided and its efficiency and accuracy are verified through them. PMID:25114975

Expedition Memory: Towards Agent-based Web Services for Creating and Using Mars Exploration Data.

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Clancey, William J.; Sierhuis, Maarten; Briggs, Geoff; Sims, Mike

2005-01-01

Explorers ranging over kilometers of rugged, sometimes "feature-less" terrain for over a year could be overwhelmed by tracking and sharing what they have done and learned. An automated system based on the existing Mobile Agents design [ I ] and Mars Exploration Rover experience [2], could serve as an "expedition memory" that would be indexed by voice as wel1 as a web interface, linking people, places, activities, records (voice notes, photographs, samples). and a descriptive scientific ontology. This database would be accessible during EVAs by astronauts, annotated by the remote science team, linked to EVA plans, and allow cross indexing between sites and expeditions. We consider the basic problem, our philosophical approach, technical methods, and uses of the expedition memory for facilitating long-term collaboration between Mars crews and Earth support teams. We emphasize that a "memory" does not mean a database per se, but an interactive service that combines different resources, and ultimately could be like a helpful librarian.

Models and Simulations as a Service: Exploring the Use of Galaxy for Delivering Computational Models

PubMed Central

Walker, Mark A.; Madduri, Ravi; Rodriguez, Alex; Greenstein, Joseph L.; Winslow, Raimond L.

2016-01-01

We describe the ways in which Galaxy, a web-based reproducible research platform, can be used for web-based sharing of complex computational models. Galaxy allows users to seamlessly customize and run simulations on cloud computing resources, a concept we refer to as Models and Simulations as a Service (MaSS). To illustrate this application of Galaxy, we have developed a tool suite for simulating a high spatial-resolution model of the cardiac Ca2+ spark that requires supercomputing resources for execution. We also present tools for simulating models encoded in the SBML and CellML model description languages, thus demonstrating how Galaxy’s reproducible research features can be leveraged by existing technologies. Finally, we demonstrate how the Galaxy workflow editor can be used to compose integrative models from constituent submodules. This work represents an important novel approach, to our knowledge, to making computational simulations more accessible to the broader scientific community. PMID:26958881

Weather forecasting with open source software

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rautenhaus, Marc; Dörnbrack, Andreas

2013-04-01

To forecast the weather situation during aircraft-based atmospheric field campaigns, we employ a tool chain of existing and self-developed open source software tools and open standards. Of particular value are the Python programming language with its extension libraries NumPy, SciPy, PyQt4, Matplotlib and the basemap toolkit, the NetCDF standard with the Climate and Forecast (CF) Metadata conventions, and the Open Geospatial Consortium Web Map Service standard. These open source libraries and open standards helped to implement the "Mission Support System", a Web Map Service based tool to support weather forecasting and flight planning during field campaigns. The tool has been implemented in Python and has also been released as open source (Rautenhaus et al., Geosci. Model Dev., 5, 55-71, 2012). In this presentation we discuss the usage of free and open source software for weather forecasting in the context of research flight planning, and highlight how the field campaign work benefits from using open source tools and open standards.

Persistent identifiers for web service requests relying on a provenance ontology design pattern

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Car, Nicholas; Wang, Jingbo; Wyborn, Lesley; Si, Wei

2016-04-01

Delivering provenance information for datasets produced from static inputs is relatively straightforward: we represent the processing actions and data flow using provenance ontologies and link to stored copies of the inputs stored in repositories. If appropriate detail is given, the provenance information can then describe what actions have occurred (transparency) and enable reproducibility. When web service-generated data is used by a process to create a dataset instead of a static inputs, we need to use sophisticated provenance representations of the web service request as we can no longer just link to data stored in a repository. A graph-based provenance representation, such as the W3C's PROV standard, can be used to model the web service request as a single conceptual dataset and also as a small workflow with a number of components within the same provenance report. This dual representation does more than just allow simplified or detailed views of a dataset's production to be used where appropriate. It also allow persistent identifiers to be assigned to instances of a web service requests, thus enabling one form of dynamic data citation, and for those identifiers to resolve to whatever level of detail implementers think appropriate in order for that web service request to be reproduced. In this presentation we detail our reasoning in representing web service requests as small workflows. In outline, this stems from the idea that web service requests are perdurant things and in order to most easily persist knowledge of them for provenance, we should represent them as a nexus of relationships between endurant things, such as datasets and knowledge of particular system types, as these endurant things are far easier to persist. We also describe the ontology design pattern that we use to represent workflows in general and how we apply it to different types of web service requests. We give examples of specific web service requests instances that were made by systems at Australia's National Computing Infrastructure and show how one can 'click' through provenance interfaces to see the dual representations of the requests using provenance management tooling we have built.

Tweeting in the Classroom: Instant feedback and assessment using a mobile web app

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Saravanan, R.

2011-12-01

Cell phones with texting capabilities are ubiquitous in the college classroom, and smart phones are becoming increasingly common. These phones are used primarily for personal activities, including social networking, and are expected to remain switched off during instruction. The powerful communication capability of these devices, which could potentially facilitate novel forms of "instructional networking", remains untapped. Instead, special-purpose devices ("clickers") are used when instant feedback is desired in the classroom. A number of technical and behavioral challenges need to be overcome before mobile phones can be used routinely to assist in classroom instruction. This presentation will describe the experience of developing and deploying a mobile web app that enables students to provide instant feedback in the classroom using their mobile phones. The web app leverages existing social networking infrastructure, e.g., using the Twitter microblogging service to aggregate text messages sent by students, to promote classroom interaction. The web app was deployed both in a regular lecture hall and in a computer lab. Topics to be discussed include the technical challenges of deploying a mobile web app in a classroom setting, such as internet accessibility and latency, as well as non-technical issues relating to privacy, student reactions, etc.

Lowering the Barrier for Standards-Compliant and Discoverable Hydrological Data Publication

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kadlec, J.

2013-12-01

The growing need for sharing and integration of hydrological and climate data across multiple organizations has resulted in the development of distributed, services-based, standards-compliant hydrological data management and data hosting systems. The problem with these systems is complicated set-up and deployment. Many existing systems assume that the data publisher has remote-desktop access to a locally managed server and experience with computer network setup. For corporate websites, shared web hosting services with limited root access provide an inexpensive, dynamic web presence solution using the Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (LAMP) software stack. In this paper, we hypothesize that a webhosting service provides an optimal, low-cost solution for hydrological data hosting. We propose a software architecture of a standards-compliant, lightweight and easy-to-deploy hydrological data management system that can be deployed on the majority of existing shared internet webhosting services. The architecture and design is validated by developing Hydroserver Lite: a PHP and MySQL-based hydrological data hosting package that is fully standards-compliant and compatible with the Consortium of Universities for Advancement of Hydrologic Sciences (CUAHSI) hydrologic information system. It is already being used for management of field data collection by students of the McCall Outdoor Science School in Idaho. For testing, the Hydroserver Lite software has been installed on multiple different free and low-cost webhosting sites including Godaddy, Bluehost and 000webhost. The number of steps required to set-up the server is compared with the number of steps required to set-up other standards-compliant hydrologic data hosting systems including THREDDS, IstSOS and MapServer SOS.

An Extraction Method of an Informative DOM Node from a Web Page by Using Layout Information

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tsuruta, Masanobu; Masuyama, Shigeru

We propose an informative DOM node extraction method from a Web page for preprocessing of Web content mining. Our proposed method LM uses layout data of DOM nodes generated by a generic Web browser, and the learning set consists of hundreds of Web pages and the annotations of informative DOM nodes of those Web pages. Our method does not require large scale crawling of the whole Web site to which the target Web page belongs. We design LM so that it uses the information of the learning set more efficiently in comparison to the existing method that uses the same learning set. By experiments, we evaluate the methods obtained by combining one that consists of the method for extracting the informative DOM node both the proposed method and the existing methods, and the existing noise elimination methods: Heur removes advertisements and link-lists by some heuristics and CE removes the DOM nodes existing in the Web pages in the same Web site to which the target Web page belongs. Experimental results show that 1) LM outperforms other methods for extracting the informative DOM node, 2) the combination method (LM, {CE(10), Heur}) based on LM (precision: 0.755, recall: 0.826, F-measure: 0.746) outperforms other combination methods.

A flexible geospatial sensor observation service for diverse sensor data based on Web service

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, Nengcheng; Di, Liping; Yu, Genong; Min, Min

Achieving a flexible and efficient geospatial Sensor Observation Service (SOS) is difficult, given the diversity of sensor networks, the heterogeneity of sensor data storage, and the differing requirements of users. This paper describes development of a service-oriented multi-purpose SOS framework. The goal is to create a single method of access to the data by integrating the sensor observation service with other Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) services — Catalogue Service for the Web (CSW), Transactional Web Feature Service (WFS-T) and Transactional Web Coverage Service (WCS-T). The framework includes an extensible sensor data adapter, an OGC-compliant geospatial SOS, a geospatial catalogue service, a WFS-T, and a WCS-T for the SOS, and a geospatial sensor client. The extensible sensor data adapter finds, stores, and manages sensor data from live sensors, sensor models, and simulation systems. Abstract factory design patterns are used during design and implementation. A sensor observation service compatible with the SWE is designed, following the OGC "core" and "transaction" specifications. It is implemented using Java servlet technology. It can be easily deployed in any Java servlet container and automatically exposed for discovery using Web Service Description Language (WSDL). Interaction sequences between a Sensor Web data consumer and an SOS, between a producer and an SOS, and between an SOS and a CSW are described in detail. The framework has been successfully demonstrated in application scenarios for EO-1 observations, weather observations, and water height gauge observations.

Accessing the SEED genome databases via Web services API: tools for programmers.

PubMed

Disz, Terry; Akhter, Sajia; Cuevas, Daniel; Olson, Robert; Overbeek, Ross; Vonstein, Veronika; Stevens, Rick; Edwards, Robert A

2010-06-14

The SEED integrates many publicly available genome sequences into a single resource. The database contains accurate and up-to-date annotations based on the subsystems concept that leverages clustering between genomes and other clues to accurately and efficiently annotate microbial genomes. The backend is used as the foundation for many genome annotation tools, such as the Rapid Annotation using Subsystems Technology (RAST) server for whole genome annotation, the metagenomics RAST server for random community genome annotations, and the annotation clearinghouse for exchanging annotations from different resources. In addition to a web user interface, the SEED also provides Web services based API for programmatic access to the data in the SEED, allowing the development of third-party tools and mash-ups. The currently exposed Web services encompass over forty different methods for accessing data related to microbial genome annotations. The Web services provide comprehensive access to the database back end, allowing any programmer access to the most consistent and accurate genome annotations available. The Web services are deployed using a platform independent service-oriented approach that allows the user to choose the most suitable programming platform for their application. Example code demonstrate that Web services can be used to access the SEED using common bioinformatics programming languages such as Perl, Python, and Java. We present a novel approach to access the SEED database. Using Web services, a robust API for access to genomics data is provided, without requiring large volume downloads all at once. The API ensures timely access to the most current datasets available, including the new genomes as soon as they come online.

The impact of a state-sponsored mass media campaign on use of telephone quitline and web-based cessation services.

PubMed

Duke, Jennifer C; Mann, Nathan; Davis, Kevin C; MacMonegle, Anna; Allen, Jane; Porter, Lauren

2014-12-24

Most US smokers do not use evidence-based interventions as part of their quit attempts. Quitlines and Web-based treatments may contribute to reductions in population-level tobacco use if successfully promoted. Currently, few states implement sustained media campaigns to promote services and increase adult smoking cessation. This study examines the effects of Florida's tobacco cessation media campaign and a nationally funded media campaign on telephone quitline and Web-based registrations for cessation services from November 2010 through September 2013. We conducted multivariable analyses of weekly media-market-level target rating points (TRPs) and weekly registrations for cessation services through the Florida Quitline (1-877-U-CAN-NOW) or its Web-based cessation service, Web Coach (www.quitnow.net/florida). During 35 months, 141,221 tobacco users registered for cessation services through the Florida Quitline, and 53,513 registered through Web Coach. An increase in 100 weekly TRPs was associated with an increase of 7 weekly Florida Quitline registrants (β = 6.8, P < .001) and 2 Web Coach registrants (β = 1.7, P = .003) in an average media market. An increase in TRPs affected registrants from multiple demographic subgroups similarly. When state and national media campaigns aired simultaneously, approximately one-fifth of Florida's Quitline registrants came from the nationally advertised portal (1-800-QUIT-NOW). Sustained, state-sponsored media can increase the number of registrants to telephone quitlines and Web-based cessation services. Federally funded media campaigns can further increase the reach of state-sponsored cessation services.

The Impact of a State-Sponsored Mass Media Campaign on Use of Telephone Quitline and Web-Based Cessation Services

PubMed Central

Mann, Nathan; Davis, Kevin C.; MacMonegle, Anna; Allen, Jane; Porter, Lauren

2014-01-01

Introduction Most US smokers do not use evidence-based interventions as part of their quit attempts. Quitlines and Web-based treatments may contribute to reductions in population-level tobacco use if successfully promoted. Currently, few states implement sustained media campaigns to promote services and increase adult smoking cessation. This study examines the effects of Florida’s tobacco cessation media campaign and a nationally funded media campaign on telephone quitline and Web-based registrations for cessation services from November 2010 through September 2013. Methods We conducted multivariable analyses of weekly media-market–level target rating points (TRPs) and weekly registrations for cessation services through the Florida Quitline (1-877-U-CAN-NOW) or its Web-based cessation service, Web Coach (www.quitnow.net/florida). Results During 35 months, 141,221 tobacco users registered for cessation services through the Florida Quitline, and 53,513 registered through Web Coach. An increase in 100 weekly TRPs was associated with an increase of 7 weekly Florida Quitline registrants (β = 6.8, P < .001) and 2 Web Coach registrants (β = 1.7, P = .003) in an average media market. An increase in TRPs affected registrants from multiple demographic subgroups similarly. When state and national media campaigns aired simultaneously, approximately one-fifth of Florida’s Quitline registrants came from the nationally advertised portal (1-800-QUIT-NOW). Conclusion Sustained, state-sponsored media can increase the number of registrants to telephone quitlines and Web-based cessation services. Federally funded media campaigns can further increase the reach of state-sponsored cessation services. PMID:25539129

A Web-based graphical user interface for evidence-based decision making for health care allocations in rural areas

PubMed Central

Schuurman, Nadine; Leight, Margo; Berube, Myriam

2008-01-01

Background The creation of successful health policy and location of resources increasingly relies on evidence-based decision-making. The development of intuitive, accessible tools to analyse, display and disseminate spatial data potentially provides the basis for sound policy and resource allocation decisions. As health services are rationalized, the development of tools such graphical user interfaces (GUIs) is especially valuable at they assist decision makers in allocating resources such that the maximum number of people are served. GIS can used to develop GUIs that enable spatial decision making. Results We have created a Web-based GUI (wGUI) to assist health policy makers and administrators in the Canadian province of British Columbia make well-informed decisions about the location and allocation of time-sensitive service capacities in rural regions of the province. This tool integrates datasets for existing hospitals and services, regional populations and road networks to allow users to ascertain the percentage of population in any given service catchment who are served by a specific health service, or baskets of linked services. The wGUI allows policy makers to map trauma and obstetric services against rural populations within pre-specified travel distances, illustrating service capacity by region. Conclusion The wGUI can be used by health policy makers and administrators with little or no formal GIS training to visualize multiple health resource allocation scenarios. The GUI is poised to become a critical decision-making tool especially as evidence is increasingly required for distribution of health services. PMID:18793428

Development of XML Schema for Broadband Digital Seismograms and Data Center Portal

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Takeuchi, N.; Tsuboi, S.; Ishihara, Y.; Nagao, H.; Yamagishi, Y.; Watanabe, T.; Yanaka, H.; Yamaji, H.

2008-12-01

There are a number of data centers around the globe, where the digital broadband seismograms are opened to researchers. Those centers use their own user interfaces and there are no standard to access and retrieve seismograms from different data centers using unified interface. One of the emergent technologies to realize unified user interface for different data centers is the concept of WebService and WebService portal. Here we have developed a prototype of data center portal for digital broadband seismograms. This WebService portal uses WSDL (Web Services Description Language) to accommodate differences among the different data centers. By using the WSDL, alteration and addition of data center user interfaces can be easily managed. This portal, called NINJA Portal, assumes three WebServices: (1) database Query service, (2) Seismic event data request service, and (3) Seismic continuous data request service. Current system supports both station search of database Query service and seismic continuous data request service. Data centers supported by this NINJA portal will be OHP data center in ERI and Pacific21 data center in IFREE/JAMSTEC in the beginning. We have developed metadata standard for seismological data based on QuakeML for parametric data, which has been developed by ETH Zurich, and XML-SEED for waveform data, which was developed by IFREE/JAMSTEC. The prototype of NINJA portal is now released through IFREE web page (http://www.jamstec.go.jp/pacific21/).

75 FR 75170 - APHIS User Fee Web Site

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-12-02

...] APHIS User Fee Web Site AGENCY: Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, USDA. ACTION: Notice... recover the costs of providing certain services. This notice announces the availability of a Web site that contains information about the Agency's user fees. ADDRESSES: The Agency's user fee Web site is located at...

MedlinePlus Connect: Technical Information

MedlinePlus

... Service Technical Information Page MedlinePlus Connect Implementation Options Web Application How does it work? Responds to requests ... examples of MedlinePlus Connect Web Application response pages. Web Service How does it work? Responds to requests ...

GENESIS SciFlo: Choreographing Interoperable Web Services on the Grid using a Semantically-Enabled Dataflow Execution Environment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wilson, B. D.; Manipon, G.; Xing, Z.

2007-12-01

The General Earth Science Investigation Suite (GENESIS) project is a NASA-sponsored partnership between the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, academia, and NASA data centers to develop a new suite of Web Services tools to facilitate multi-sensor investigations in Earth System Science. The goal of GENESIS is to enable large-scale, multi-instrument atmospheric science using combined datasets from the AIRS, MODIS, MISR, and GPS sensors. Investigations include cross-comparison of spaceborne climate sensors, cloud spectral analysis, study of upper troposphere-stratosphere water transport, study of the aerosol indirect cloud effect, and global climate model validation. The challenges are to bring together very large datasets, reformat and understand the individual instrument retrievals, co-register or re-grid the retrieved physical parameters, perform computationally-intensive data fusion and data mining operations, and accumulate complex statistics over months to years of data. To meet these challenges, we have developed a Grid computing and dataflow framework, named SciFlo, in which we are deploying a set of versatile and reusable operators for data access, subsetting, registration, mining, fusion, compression, and advanced statistical analysis. SciFlo leverages remote Web Services, called via Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) or REST (one-line) URLs, and the Grid Computing standards (WS-* & Globus Alliance toolkits), and enables scientists to do multi- instrument Earth Science by assembling reusable Web Services and native executables into a distributed computing flow (tree of operators). The SciFlo client & server engines optimize the execution of such distributed data flows and allow the user to transparently find and use datasets and operators without worrying about the actual location of the Grid resources. In particular, SciFlo exploits the wealth of datasets accessible by OpenGIS Consortium (OGC) Web Mapping Servers & Web Coverage Servers (WMS/WCS), and by Open Data Access Protocol (OpenDAP) servers. SciFlo also publishes its own SOAP services for space/time query and subsetting of Earth Science datasets, and automated access to large datasets via lists of (FTP, HTTP, or DAP) URLs which point to on-line HDF or netCDF files. Typical distributed workflows obtain datasets by calling standard WMS/WCS servers or discovering and fetching data granules from ftp sites; invoke remote analysis operators available as SOAP services (interface described by a WSDL document); and merge results into binary containers (netCDF or HDF files) for further analysis using local executable operators. Naming conventions (HDFEOS and CF-1.0 for netCDF) are exploited to automatically understand and read on-line datasets. More interoperable conventions, and broader adoption of existing converntions, are vital if we are to "scale up" automated choreography of Web Services beyond toy applications. Recently, the ESIP Federation sponsored a collaborative activity in which several ESIP members developed some collaborative science scenarios for atmospheric and aerosol science, and then choreographed services from multiple groups into demonstration workflows using the SciFlo engine and a Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) workflow engine. We will discuss the lessons learned from this activity, the need for standardized interfaces (like WMS/WCS), the difficulty in agreeing on even simple XML formats and interfaces, the benefits of doing collaborative science analysis at the "touch of a button" once services are connected, and further collaborations that are being pursued.

Developing Web Services for Technology Education. The Graphic Communication Electronic Publishing Project.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sanders, Mark

1999-01-01

Graphic Communication Electronic Publishing Project supports a Web site (http://TechEd.vt.edu/gcc/) for graphic communication teachers and students, providing links to Web materials, conversion of print materials to electronic formats, and electronic products and services including job listings, resume posting service, and a listserv. (SK)

Publication, discovery and interoperability of Clinical Decision Support Systems: A Linked Data approach.

PubMed

Marco-Ruiz, Luis; Pedrinaci, Carlos; Maldonado, J A; Panziera, Luca; Chen, Rong; Bellika, J Gustav

2016-08-01

The high costs involved in the development of Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) make it necessary to share their functionality across different systems and organizations. Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) have been proposed to allow reusing CDSS by encapsulating them in a Web service. However, strong barriers in sharing CDS functionality are still present as a consequence of lack of expressiveness of services' interfaces. Linked Services are the evolution of the Semantic Web Services paradigm to process Linked Data. They aim to provide semantic descriptions over SOA implementations to overcome the limitations derived from the syntactic nature of Web services technologies. To facilitate the publication, discovery and interoperability of CDS services by evolving them into Linked Services that expose their interfaces as Linked Data. We developed methods and models to enhance CDS SOA as Linked Services that define a rich semantic layer based on machine interpretable ontologies that powers their interoperability and reuse. These ontologies provided unambiguous descriptions of CDS services properties to expose them to the Web of Data. We developed models compliant with Linked Data principles to create a semantic representation of the components that compose CDS services. To evaluate our approach we implemented a set of CDS Linked Services using a Web service definition ontology. The definitions of Web services were linked to the models developed in order to attach unambiguous semantics to the service components. All models were bound to SNOMED-CT and public ontologies (e.g. Dublin Core) in order to count on a lingua franca to explore them. Discovery and analysis of CDS services based on machine interpretable models was performed reasoning over the ontologies built. Linked Services can be used effectively to expose CDS services to the Web of Data by building on current CDS standards. This allows building shared Linked Knowledge Bases to provide machine interpretable semantics to the CDS service description alleviating the challenges on interoperability and reuse. Linked Services allow for building 'digital libraries' of distributed CDS services that can be hosted and maintained in different organizations. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

An Innovative Open Data-driven Approach for Improved Interpretation of Coverage Data at NASA JPL's PO.DAA

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

McGibbney, L. J.; Armstrong, E. M.

2016-12-01

Figuratively speaking, Scientific Datasets (SD) are shared by data producers in a multitude of shapes, sizes and flavors. Primarily however they exist as machine-independent manifestations supporting the creation, access, and sharing of array-oriented SD that can on occasion be spread across multiple files. Within the Earth Sciences, the most notable general examples include the HDF family, NetCDF, etc. with other formats such as GRIB being used pervasively within specific domains such as the Oceanographic, Atmospheric and Meteorological sciences. Such file formats contain Coverage Data e.g. a digital representation of some spatio-temporal phenomenon. A challenge for large data producers such as NASA and NOAA as well as consumers of coverage datasets (particularly surrounding visualization and interactive use within web clients) is that this is still not a straight-forward issue due to size, serialization and inherent complexity. Additionally existing data formats are either unsuitable for the Web (like netCDF files) or hard to interpret independently due to missing standard structures and metadata (e.g. the OPeNDAP protocol). Therefore alternative, Web friendly manifestations of such datasets are required.CoverageJSON is an emerging data format for publishing coverage data to the web in a web-friendly, way which fits in with the linked data publication paradigm hence lowering the barrier for interpretation by consumers via mobile devices and client applications, etc. as well as data producers who can build next generation Web friendly Web services around datasets. This work will detail how CoverageJSON is being evaluated at NASA JPL's PO.DAAC as an enabling data representation format for publishing SD as Linked Open Data embedded within SD landing pages as well as via semantic data repositories. We are currently evaluating how utilization of CoverageJSON within SD landing pages addresses the long-standing acknowledgement that SD producers are not currently addressing content-based optimization within their SD landing pages for better crawlability by commercial search engines.

Global approaches to regulating electronic cigarettes.

PubMed

Kennedy, Ryan David; Awopegba, Ayodeji; De León, Elaine; Cohen, Joanna E

2017-07-01

Classify and describe the policy approaches used by countries to regulate e-cigarettes. National policies regulating e-cigarettes were identified by (1) conducting web searches on Ministry of Health websites, and (2) broad web searches. The mechanisms used to regulate e-cigarettes were classified as new/amended laws, or existing laws. The policy domains identified include restrictions or prohibitions on product: sale, manufacturing, importation, distribution, use, product design including e-liquid ingredients, advertising/promotion/sponsorship, trademarks, and regulation requiring: taxation, health warning labels and child-safety standards. The classification of the policy was reviewed by a country expert. The search identified 68 countries that regulate e-cigarettes: 22 countries regulate e-cigarettes using existing regulations; 25 countries enacted new policies to regulate e-cigarettes; 7 countries made amendments to existing legislation; 14 countries use a combination of new/amended and existing regulation. Common policies include a minimum-age-of-purchase, indoor-use (vape-free public places) bans and marketing restrictions. Few countries are applying a tax to e-cigarettes. A range of regulatory approaches are being applied to e-cigarettes globally; many countries regulate e-cigarettes using legislation not written for e-cigarettes. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/.

Spatial Data Services for Interdisciplinary Applications from the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, R. S.; MacManus, K.; Vinay, S.; Yetman, G.

2016-12-01

The Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), one of 12 Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) in the NASA Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS), has developed a variety of operational spatial data services aimed at providing online access, visualization, and analytic functions for geospatial socioeconomic and environmental data. These services include: open web services that implement Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) specifications such as Web Map Service (WMS), Web Feature Service (WFS), and Web Coverage Service (WCS); spatial query services that support Web Processing Service (WPS) and Representation State Transfer (REST); and web map clients and a mobile app that utilize SEDAC and other open web services. These services may be accessed from a variety of external map clients and visualization tools such as NASA's WorldView, NOAA's Climate Explorer, and ArcGIS Online. More than 200 data layers related to population, settlements, infrastructure, agriculture, environmental pollution, land use, health, hazards, climate change and other aspects of sustainable development are available through WMS, WFS, and/or WCS. Version 2 of the SEDAC Population Estimation Service (PES) supports spatial queries through WPS and REST in the form of a user-defined polygon or circle. The PES returns an estimate of the population residing in the defined area for a specific year (2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, or 2020) based on SEDAC's Gridded Population of the World version 4 (GPWv4) dataset, together with measures of accuracy. The SEDAC Hazards Mapper and the recently released HazPop iOS mobile app enable users to easily submit spatial queries to the PES and see the results. SEDAC has developed an operational virtualized backend infrastructure to manage these services and support their continual improvement as standards change, new data and services become available, and user needs evolve. An ongoing challenge is to improve the reliability and performance of the infrastructure, in conjunction with external services, to meet both research and operational needs.

River Basin Standards Interoperability Pilot

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pesquer, Lluís; Masó, Joan; Stasch, Christoph

2016-04-01

There is a lot of water information and tools in Europe to be applied in the river basin management but fragmentation and a lack of coordination between countries still exists. The European Commission and the member states have financed several research and innovation projects in support of the Water Framework Directive. Only a few of them are using the recently emerging hydrological standards, such as the OGC WaterML 2.0. WaterInnEU is a Horizon 2020 project focused on creating a marketplace to enhance the exploitation of EU funded ICT models, tools, protocols and policy briefs related to water and to establish suitable conditions for new market opportunities based on these offerings. One of WaterInnEU's main goals is to assess the level of standardization and interoperability of these outcomes as a mechanism to integrate ICT-based tools, incorporate open data platforms and generate a palette of interchangeable components that are able to use the water data emerging from the recently proposed open data sharing processes and data models stimulated by initiatives such as the INSPIRE directive. As part of the standardization and interoperability activities in the project, the authors are designing an experiment (RIBASE, the present work) to demonstrate how current ICT-based tools and water data can work in combination with geospatial web services in the Scheldt river basin. The main structure of this experiment, that is the core of the present work, is composed by the following steps: - Extraction of information from river gauges data in OGC WaterML 2.0 format using SOS services (preferably compliant to the OGC SOS 2.0 Hydrology Profile Best Practice). - Model floods using a WPS 2.0, WaterML 2.0 data and weather forecast models as input. - Evaluation of the applicability of Sensor Notification Services in water emergencies. - Open distribution of the input and output data as OGC web services WaterML, / WCS / WFS and with visualization utilities: WMS. The architecture tests the combination of Gauge data in a WPS that is triggered by a meteorological alert. The data is translated into OGC WaterML 2.0 time series data format and will be ingested in a SOS 2.0. SOS data is visualized in a SOS Client that is able to handle time series. The meteorological forecast data (with the supervision of an operator manipulating the WPS user interface) ingests with WaterML 2.0 time series and terrain data is input for a flooding modelling algorithm. The WPS is able to produce flooding datasets in the form of coverages that is offered to clients via a WCS 2.0 service or a WMS 1.3 service, and downloaded and visualized by the respective clients. The WPS triggers a notification or an alert that will be monitored from an emergency control response service. Acronyms AS: Alert Service ES: Event Service ICT: Information and Communication Technology NS: Notification Service OGC: Open Geospatial Consortium RIBASE: River Basin Standards Interoperability Pilot SOS: Sensor Observation Service WaterML: Water Markup Language WCS: Web Coverage Service WMS: Web Map Service WPS: Web Processing Service

First Prototype of a Web Map Interface for ESA's Planetary Science Archive (PSA)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Manaud, N.; Gonzalez, J.

2014-04-01

We present a first prototype of a Web Map Interface that will serve as a proof of concept and design for ESA's future fully web-based Planetary Science Archive (PSA) User Interface. The PSA is ESA's planetary science archiving authority and central repository for all scientific and engineering data returned by ESA's Solar System missions [1]. All data are compliant with NASA's Planetary Data System (PDS) Standards and are accessible through several interfaces [2]: in addition to serving all public data via FTP and the Planetary Data Access Protocol (PDAP), a Java-based User Interface provides advanced search, preview, download, notification and delivery-basket functionality. It allows the user to query and visualise instrument observations footprints using a map-based interface (currently only available for Mars Express HRSC and OMEGA instruments). During the last decade, the planetary mapping science community has increasingly been adopting Geographic Information System (GIS) tools and standards, originally developed for and used in Earth science. There is an ongoing effort to produce and share cartographic products through Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Services, or as standalone data sets, so that they can be readily used in existing GIS applications [3,4,5]. Previous studies conducted at ESAC [6,7] have helped identify the needs of Planetary GIS users, and define key areas of improvement for the future Web PSA User Interface. Its web map interface shall will provide access to the full geospatial content of the PSA, including (1) observation geometry footprints of all remote sensing instruments, and (2) all georeferenced cartographic products, such as HRSC map-projected data or OMEGA global maps from Mars Express. It shall aim to provide a rich user experience for search and visualisation of this content using modern and interactive web mapping technology. A comprehensive set of built-in context maps from external sources, such as MOLA topography, TES infrared maps or planetary surface nomenclature, provided in both simple cylindrical and polar stereographic projections, shall enhance this user experience. In addition, users should be able to import and export data in commonly used open- GIS formats. It is also intended to serve all PSA geospatial data through OGC-compliant Web Services so that they can be captured, visualised and analysed directly from GIS software, along with data from other sources. The following figure illustrates how the PSA web map interface and services shall fit in a typical Planetary GIS user working environment.

XMM-Newton Science Analysis Software: How to Bring New Technologies to Long-life Satellite Missions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ibarra, A.; Calle, I.; Gabriel, C.; Salgado, J.; Osuna, P.

2009-09-01

We present here the beta version of the Remote Interface to SAS Analysis (RISA), a web service-based system that allows users the analysis of XMM-Newton data making use of all of the existing SAS functionalities. RISA takes advantage of GRID architecture to run SAS, achieving high performance in resource management. We are also making the SAS remote analysis compatible with present and future VO standards.

Collaboratively Conceived, Designed and Implemented: Matching Visualization Tools with Geoscience Data Collections and Geoscience Data Collections with Visualization Tools via the ToolMatch Service.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hoebelheinrich, N. J.; Lynnes, C.; West, P.; Ferritto, M.

2014-12-01

Two problems common to many geoscience domains are the difficulties in finding tools to work with a given dataset collection, and conversely, the difficulties in finding data for a known tool. A collaborative team from the Earth Science Information Partnership (ESIP) has gotten together to design and create a web service, called ToolMatch, to address these problems. The team began their efforts by defining an initial, relatively simple conceptual model that addressed the two uses cases briefly described above. The conceptual model is expressed as an ontology using OWL (Web Ontology Language) and DCterms (Dublin Core Terms), and utilizing standard ontologies such as DOAP (Description of a Project), FOAF (Friend of a Friend), SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System) and DCAT (Data Catalog Vocabulary). The ToolMatch service will be taking advantage of various Semantic Web and Web standards, such as OpenSearch, RESTful web services, SWRL (Semantic Web Rule Language) and SPARQL (Simple Protocol and RDF Query Language). The first version of the ToolMatch service was deployed in early fall 2014. While more complete testing is required, a number of communities besides ESIP member organizations have expressed interest in collaborating to create, test and use the service and incorporate it into their own web pages, tools and / or services including the USGS Data Catalog service, DataONE, the Deep Carbon Observatory, Virtual Solar Terrestrial Observatory (VSTO), and the U.S. Global Change Research Program. In this session, presenters will discuss the inception and development of the ToolMatch service, the collaborative process used to design, refine, and test the service, and future plans for the service.

Design Drivers of Water Data Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Valentine, D.; Zaslavsky, I.

2008-12-01

The CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System (HIS) is being developed as a geographically distributed network of hydrologic data sources and functions that are integrated using web services so that they function as a connected whole. The core of the HIS service-oriented architecture is a collection of water web services, which provide uniform access to multiple repositories of observation data. These services use SOAP protocols communicating WaterML (Water Markup Language). When a client makes a data or metadata request using a CUAHSI HIS web service, these requests are made in standard manner, following the CUAHSI HIS web service signatures - regardless of how the underlying data source may be organized. Also, regardless of the format in which the data are returned by the source, the web services respond to requests by returning the data in a standard format of WaterML. The goal of WaterML design has been to capture semantics of hydrologic observations discovery and retrieval and express the point observations information model as an XML schema. To a large extent, it follows the representation of the information model as adopted by the CUASHI Observations Data Model (ODM) relational design. Another driver of WaterML design is specifications and metadata adopted by USGS NWIS, EPA STORET, and other federal agencies, as it seeks to provide a common foundation for exchanging both agency data and data collected in multiple academic projects. Another WaterML design principle was to create, in version 1 of HIS in particular, a fairly rigid and simple XML schema which is easy to generate and parse, thus creating the least barrier for adoption by hydrologists. WaterML includes a series of elements that reflect common notions used in describing hydrologic observations, such as site, variable, source, observation series, seriesCatalog, and data values. Each of the three main request methods in the water web services - GetSiteInfo, GetVariableInfo, and GetValues - has a corresponding response element in WaterML: SitesResponse, VariableResponse, and TimeSeriesResponse. The WaterML specification is being adopted by federal agencies. The experimental USGS NWIS Daily Values web service returns WaterML-compliant TImeSeriesResponse. The National Climatic Data Center is also prototyping WaterML for data delivery, and has developed a REST-based service that generates WaterML- compliant output for the NCDC ASOS network. Such agency-supported web services coming online provide a much more efficient way to deliver agency data compared to the web site scraper services that the CUAHSI HIS project has developed initially. The CUAHSI water data web services will continue to serve as the main communication mechanism within CUAHSI HIS, connecting a variety of data sources with a growing set of web service clients being developed in both academia and the commercial sector. The driving forces for the development of web services continue to be: - Application experience and needs of the growing number of CUAHSI HIS users, who experiment with additional data types, analysis modes, data browsing and searching strategies, and provide feedback to WaterML developers; - Data description requirements posed by various federal and state agencies; - Harmonization with standards being adopted or developed in neighboring communities, in particular the relevant standards being explored within the Open Geospatial Consortium. CUAHSI WaterML is a standard output schema for CUAHSI HIS water web services. Its formal specification is available as OGC discussion paper at www.opengeospatial.org/standards/dp/ class="ab'>

Operational Use of OGC Web Services at the Met Office

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wright, Bruce

2010-05-01

The Met Office has adopted the Service-Orientated Architecture paradigm to deliver services to a range of customers through Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). The approach uses standard Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web services to provide information to web-based applications through a range of generic data services. "Invent", the Met Office beta site, is used to showcase Met Office future plans for presenting web-based weather forecasts, product and information to the public. This currently hosts a freely accessible Weather Map Viewer, written in JavaScript, which accesses a Web Map Service (WMS), to deliver innovative web-based visualizations of weather and its potential impacts to the public. The intention is to engage the public in the development of new web-based services that more accurately meet their needs. As the service is intended for public use within the UK, it has been designed to support a user base of 5 million, the analysed level of UK web traffic reaching the Met Office's public weather information site. The required scalability has been realised through the use of multi-tier tile caching: - WMS requests are made for 256x256 tiles for fixed areas and zoom levels; - a Tile Cache, developed in house, efficiently serves tiles on demand, managing WMS request for the new tiles; - Edge Servers, externally hosted by Akamai, provide a highly scalable (UK-centric) service for pre-cached tiles, passing new requests to the Tile Cache; - the Invent Weather Map Viewer uses the Google Maps API to request tiles from Edge Servers. (We would expect to make use of the Web Map Tiling Service, when it becomes an OGC standard.) The Met Office delivers specialist commercial products to market sectors such as transport, utilities and defence, which exploit a Web Feature Service (WFS) for data relating forecasts and observations to specific geographic features, and a Web Coverage Service (WCS) for sub-selections of gridded data. These are locally rendered as maps or graphs, and combined with the WMS pre-rendered images and text, in a FLEX application, to provide sophisticated, user impact-based view of the weather. The OGC web services supporting these applications have been developed in collaboration with commercial companies. Visual Weather was originally a desktop application for forecasters, but IBL have developed it to expose the full range of forecast and observation data through standard web services (WCS and WMS). Forecasts and observations relating to specific locations and geographic features are held in an Oracle Database, and exposed as a WFS using Snowflake Software's GO-Publisher application. The Met Office has worked closely with both IBL and Snowflake Software to ensure that the web services provided strike a balance between conformance to the standards and performance in an operational environment. This has proved challenging in areas where the standards are rapidly evolving (e.g. WCS) or do not allow adequate description of the Met-Ocean domain (e.g. multiple time coordinates and parametric vertical coordinates). It has also become clear that careful selection of the features to expose, based on the way in which you expect users to query those features, in necessary in order to deliver adequate performance. These experiences are providing useful 'real-world' input in to the recently launched OGC MetOcean Domain Working Group and World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) initiatives in this area.

Web Services and Data Enhancements at the Northern California Earthquake Data Center

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Neuhauser, D. S.; Zuzlewski, S.; Lombard, P. N.; Allen, R. M.

2013-12-01

The Northern California Earthquake Data Center (NCEDC) provides data archive and distribution services for seismological and geophysical data sets that encompass northern California. The NCEDC is enhancing its ability to deliver rapid information through Web Services. NCEDC Web Services use well-established web server and client protocols and REST software architecture to allow users to easily make queries using web browsers or simple program interfaces and to receive the requested data in real-time rather than through batch or email-based requests. Data are returned to the user in the appropriate format such as XML, RESP, simple text, or MiniSEED depending on the service and selected output format. The NCEDC offers the following web services that are compliant with the International Federation of Digital Seismograph Networks (FDSN) web services specifications: (1) fdsn-dataselect: time series data delivered in MiniSEED format, (2) fdsn-station: station and channel metadata and time series availability delivered in StationXML format, (3) fdsn-event: earthquake event information delivered in QuakeML format. In addition, the NCEDC offers the the following IRIS-compatible web services: (1) sacpz: provide channel gains, poles, and zeros in SAC format, (2) resp: provide channel response information in RESP format, (3) dataless: provide station and channel metadata in Dataless SEED format. The NCEDC is also developing a web service to deliver timeseries from pre-assembled event waveform gathers. The NCEDC has waveform gathers for ~750,000 northern and central California events from 1984 to the present, many of which were created by the USGS NCSN prior to the establishment of the joint NCSS (Northern California Seismic System). We are currently adding waveforms to these older event gathers with time series from the UCB networks and other networks with waveforms archived at the NCEDC, and ensuring that the waveform for each channel in the event gathers have the highest quality waveform from the archive.

Using JavaScript and the FDSN web service to create an interactive earthquake information system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fischer, Kasper D.

2015-04-01

The FDSN web service provides a web interface to access earthquake meta-data (e. g. event or station information) and waveform date over the internet. Requests are send to a server as URLs and the output is either XML or miniSEED. This makes it hard to read by humans but easy to process with different software. Different data centers are already supporting the FDSN web service, e. g. USGS, IRIS, ORFEUS. The FDSN web service is also part of the Seiscomp3 (http://www.seiscomp3.org) software. The Seismological Observatory of the Ruhr-University switched to Seiscomp3 as the standard software for the analysis of mining induced earthquakes at the beginning of 2014. This made it necessary to create a new web-based earthquake information service for the publication of results to the general public. This has be done by processing the output of a FDSN web service query by javascript running in a standard browser. The result is an interactive map presenting the observed events and further information of events and stations on a single web page as a table and on a map. In addition the user can download event information, waveform data and station data in different formats like miniSEED, quakeML or FDSNxml. The developed code and all used libraries are open source and freely available.

Factors that influence acceptance of web-based e-learning systems for the in-service education of junior high school teachers in Taiwan.

PubMed

Chen, Hong-Ren; Tseng, Hsiao-Fen

2012-08-01

Web-based e-learning is not restricted by time or place and can provide teachers with a learning environment that is flexible and convenient, enabling them to efficiently learn, quickly develop their professional expertise, and advance professionally. Many research reports on web-based e-learning have neglected the role of the teacher's perspective in the acceptance of using web-based e-learning systems for in-service education. We distributed questionnaires to 402 junior high school teachers in central Taiwan. This study used the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as our theoretical foundation and employed the Structure Equation Model (SEM) to examine factors that influenced intentions to use in-service training conducted through web-based e-learning. The results showed that motivation to use and Internet self-efficacy were significantly positively associated with behavioral intentions regarding the use of web-based e-learning for in-service training through the factors of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. The factor of computer anxiety had a significantly negative effect on behavioral intentions toward web-based e-learning in-service training through the factor of perceived ease of use. Perceived usefulness and motivation to use were the primary reasons for the acceptance by junior high school teachers of web-based e-learning systems for in-service training. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Sharing on Web 3d Models of Ancient Theatres. a Methodological Workflow

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Scianna, A.; La Guardia, M.; Scaduto, M. L.

2016-06-01

In the last few years, the need to share on the Web the knowledge of Cultural Heritage (CH) through navigable 3D models has increased. This need requires the availability of Web-based virtual reality systems and 3D WEBGIS. In order to make the information available to all stakeholders, these instruments should be powerful and at the same time very user-friendly. However, research and experiments carried out so far show that a standardized methodology doesn't exist. All this is due both to complexity and dimensions of geometric models to be published, on the one hand, and to excessive costs of hardware and software tools, on the other. In light of this background, the paper describes a methodological approach for creating 3D models of CH, freely exportable on the Web, based on HTML5 and free and open source software. HTML5, supporting the WebGL standard, allows the exploration of 3D spatial models using most used Web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer. The methodological workflow here described has been tested for the construction of a multimedia geo-spatial platform developed for three-dimensional exploration and documentation of the ancient theatres of Segesta and of Carthage, and the surrounding landscapes. The experimental application has allowed us to explore the potential and limitations of sharing on the Web of 3D CH models based on WebGL standard. Sharing capabilities could be extended defining suitable geospatial Web-services based on capabilities of HTML5 and WebGL technology.

Service-based analysis of biological pathways

PubMed Central

Zheng, George; Bouguettaya, Athman

2009-01-01

Background Computer-based pathway discovery is concerned with two important objectives: pathway identification and analysis. Conventional mining and modeling approaches aimed at pathway discovery are often effective at achieving either objective, but not both. Such limitations can be effectively tackled leveraging a Web service-based modeling and mining approach. Results Inspired by molecular recognitions and drug discovery processes, we developed a Web service mining tool, named PathExplorer, to discover potentially interesting biological pathways linking service models of biological processes. The tool uses an innovative approach to identify useful pathways based on graph-based hints and service-based simulation verifying user's hypotheses. Conclusion Web service modeling of biological processes allows the easy access and invocation of these processes on the Web. Web service mining techniques described in this paper enable the discovery of biological pathways linking these process service models. Algorithms presented in this paper for automatically highlighting interesting subgraph within an identified pathway network enable the user to formulate hypothesis, which can be tested out using our simulation algorithm that are also described in this paper. PMID:19796403

Tobacco cessation among users of telephone and web-based interventions--four states, 2011-2012.

PubMed

Puckett, Mary; Neri, Antonio; Thompson, Trevor; Underwood, J Michael; Momin, Behnoosh; Kahende, Jennifer; Zhang, Lei; Stewart, Sherri L

2015-01-02

Smoking caused an average of 480,000 deaths per year in the United States from 2005 to 2009, and three in 10 cancer deaths in the United States are tobacco related. Tobacco cessation is a high public health priority, and all states offer some form of tobacco cessation service. Quitlines provide telephone-based counseling services and are an effective intervention for tobacco cessation. In addition to telephone services, 96% of all U.S. quitlines offer Web-based cessation services. Evidence is limited on the number of tobacco users who use more than one type of service, and studies report mixed results on whether combined telephone and Web-based counseling improves long-term cessation compared with telephone alone. CDC conducted a survey of users of telephone and Web-based cessation services in four states to determine the cessation success of users of these interventions. After adjusting for multiple variables, persons who used both telephone and Web-based services were more likely to report abstinence from smoking for 30 days at follow up (odds ratio = 1.3) compared with telephone-only users and with Web-only users (odds ratio = 1.5). These findings suggest that states might consider offering both types of cessation services to increase cessation success.

The Virtual Solar Observatory and the Heliophysics Meta-Virtual Observatory

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Gurman, Joseph B.

2007-01-01

The Virtual Solar Observatory (VSO) is now able to search for solar data ranging from the radio to gamma rays, obtained from space and groundbased observatories, from 26 sources at 12 data providers, and from 1915 to the present. The solar physics community can use a Web interface or an Application Programming Interface (API) that allows integrating VSO searches into other software, including other Web services. Over the next few years, this integration will be especially obvious as the NASA Heliophysics division sponsors the development of a heliophysics-wide virtual observatory (VO), based on existing VO's in heliospheric, magnetospheric, and ionospheric physics as well as the VSO. We examine some of the challenges and potential of such a "meta-VO."

A Case Study in Web 2.0 Application Development

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Marganian, P.; Clark, M.; Shelton, A.; McCarty, M.; Sessoms, E.

2010-12-01

Recent web technologies focusing on languages, frameworks, and tools are discussed, using the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescopes (GBT) new Dynamic Scheduling System as the primary example. Within that example, we use a popular Python web framework, Django, to build the extensive web services for our users. We also use a second complimentary server, written in Haskell, to incorporate the core scheduling algorithms. We provide a desktop-quality experience across all the popular browsers for our users with the Google Web Toolkit and judicious use of JQuery in Django templates. Single sign-on and authentication throughout all NRAO web services is accomplished via the Central Authentication Service protocol, or CAS.

Using EMBL-EBI Services via Web Interface and Programmatically via Web Services.

PubMed

Lopez, Rodrigo; Cowley, Andrew; Li, Weizhong; McWilliam, Hamish

2014-12-12

The European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) provides access to a wide range of databases and analysis tools that are of key importance in bioinformatics. As well as providing Web interfaces to these resources, Web Services are available using SOAP and REST protocols that enable programmatic access to our resources and allow their integration into other applications and analytical workflows. This unit describes the various options available to a typical researcher or bioinformatician who wishes to use our resources via Web interface or programmatically via a range of programming languages. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

MR-Tandem: parallel X!Tandem using Hadoop MapReduce on Amazon Web Services

PubMed Central

Pratt, Brian; Howbert, J. Jeffry; Tasman, Natalie I.; Nilsson, Erik J.

2012-01-01

Summary: MR-Tandem adapts the popular X!Tandem peptide search engine to work with Hadoop MapReduce for reliable parallel execution of large searches. MR-Tandem runs on any Hadoop cluster but offers special support for Amazon Web Services for creating inexpensive on-demand Hadoop clusters, enabling search volumes that might not otherwise be feasible with the compute resources a researcher has at hand. MR-Tandem is designed to drop in wherever X!Tandem is already in use and requires no modification to existing X!Tandem parameter files, and only minimal modification to X!Tandem-based workflows. Availability and implementation: MR-Tandem is implemented as a lightly modified X!Tandem C++ executable and a Python script that drives Hadoop clusters including Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Map Reduce (EMR), using the modified X!Tandem program as a Hadoop Streaming mapper and reducer. The modified X!Tandem C++ source code is Artistic licensed, supports pluggable scoring, and is available as part of the Sashimi project at http://sashimi.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/sashimi/trunk/trans_proteomic_pipeline/extern/xtandem/. The MR-Tandem Python script is Apache licensed and available as part of the Insilicos Cloud Army project at http://ica.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ica/trunk/mr-tandem/. Full documentation and a windows installer that configures MR-Tandem, Python and all necessary packages are available at this same URL. Contact: brian.pratt@insilicos.com PMID:22072385

The VO-Dance web application at the IA2 data center

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Molinaro, Marco; Knapic, Cristina; Smareglia, Riccardo

2012-09-01

Italian center for Astronomical Archives (IA2, http://ia2.oats.inaf.it) is a national infrastructure project of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (Istituto Nazionale di AstroFisica, INAF) that provides services for the astronomical community. Besides data hosting for the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) Corporation, the Galileo National Telescope (Telescopio Nazionale Galileo, TNG) Consortium and other telescopes and instruments, IA2 offers proprietary and public data access through user portals (both developed and mirrored) and deploys resources complying the Virtual Observatory (VO) standards. Archiving systems and web interfaces are developed to be extremely flexible about adding new instruments from other telescopes. VO resources publishing, along with data access portals, implements the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) protocols providing astronomers with new ways of analyzing data. Given the large variety of data flavours and IVOA standards, the need for tools to easily accomplish data ingestion and data publishing arises. This paper describes the VO-Dance tool, that IA2 started developing to address VO resources publishing in a dynamical way from already existent database tables or views. The tool consists in a Java web application, potentially DBMS and platform independent, that stores internally the services' metadata and information, exposes restful endpoints to accept VO queries for these services and dynamically translates calls to these endpoints to SQL queries coherent with the published table or view. In response to the call VO-Dance translates back the database answer in a VO compliant way.

Security and Efficiency Concerns With Distributed Collaborative Networking Environments

DTIC Science & Technology

2003-09-01

have the ability to access Web communications services of the WebEx MediaTone Network from a single login. [24] WebEx provides a range of secure...Web. WebEx services enable secure data, voice and video communications through the browser and are supported by the WebEx MediaTone Network, a global...designed to host large-scale, structured events and conferences, featuring a Q&A Manager that allows multiple moderators to handle questions while

Grid Technology as a Cyberinfrastructure for Delivering High-End Services to the Earth and Space Science Community

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hinke, Thomas H.

2004-01-01

Grid technology consists of middleware that permits distributed computations, data and sensors to be seamlessly integrated into a secure, single-sign-on processing environment. In &is environment, a user has to identify and authenticate himself once to the grid middleware, and then can utilize any of the distributed resources to which he has been,panted access. Grid technology allows resources that exist in enterprises that are under different administrative control to be securely integrated into a single processing environment The grid community has adopted commercial web services technology as a means for implementing persistent, re-usable grid services that sit on top of the basic distributed processing environment that grids provide. These grid services can then form building blocks for even more complex grid services. Each grid service is characterized using the Web Service Description Language, which provides a description of the interface and how other applications can access it. The emerging Semantic grid work seeks to associates sufficient semantic information with each grid service such that applications wii1 he able to automatically select, compose and if necessary substitute available equivalent services in order to assemble collections of services that are most appropriate for a particular application. Grid technology has been used to provide limited support to various Earth and space science applications. Looking to the future, this emerging grid service technology can provide a cyberinfrastructures for both the Earth and space science communities. Groups within these communities could transform those applications that have community-wide applicability into persistent grid services that are made widely available to their respective communities. In concert with grid-enabled data archives, users could easily create complex workflows that extract desired data from one or more archives and process it though an appropriate set of widely distributed grid services discovered using semantic grid technology. As required, high-end computational resources could be drawn from available grid resource pools. Using grid technology, this confluence of data, services and computational resources could easily be harnessed to transform data from many different sources into a desired product that is delivered to a user's workstation or to a web portal though which it could be accessed by its intended audience.

Distributed Hydrologic Modeling Apps for Decision Support in the Cloud

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Swain, N. R.; Latu, K.; Christiensen, S.; Jones, N.; Nelson, J.

2013-12-01

Advances in computation resources and greater availability of water resources data represent an untapped resource for addressing hydrologic uncertainties in water resources decision-making. The current practice of water authorities relies on empirical, lumped hydrologic models to estimate watershed response. These models are not capable of taking advantage of many of the spatial datasets that are now available. Physically-based, distributed hydrologic models are capable of using these data resources and providing better predictions through stochastic analysis. However, there exists a digital divide that discourages many science-minded decision makers from using distributed models. This divide can be spanned using a combination of existing web technologies. The purpose of this presentation is to present a cloud-based environment that will offer hydrologic modeling tools or 'apps' for decision support and the web technologies that have been selected to aid in its implementation. Compared to the more commonly used lumped-parameter models, distributed models, while being more intuitive, are still data intensive, computationally expensive, and difficult to modify for scenario exploration. However, web technologies such as web GIS, web services, and cloud computing have made the data more accessible, provided an inexpensive means of high-performance computing, and created an environment for developing user-friendly apps for distributed modeling. Since many water authorities are primarily interested in the scenario exploration exercises with hydrologic models, we are creating a toolkit that facilitates the development of a series of apps for manipulating existing distributed models. There are a number of hurdles that cloud-based hydrologic modeling developers face. One of these is how to work with the geospatial data inherent with this class of models in a web environment. Supporting geospatial data in a website is beyond the capabilities of standard web frameworks and it requires the use of additional software. In particular, there are at least three elements that are needed: a geospatially enabled database, a map server, and geoprocessing toolbox. We recommend a software stack for geospatial web application development comprising: MapServer, PostGIS, and 52 North with Python as the scripting language to tie them together. Another hurdle that must be cleared is managing the cloud-computing load. We are using HTCondor as a solution to this end. Finally, we are creating a scripting environment wherein developers will be able to create apps that use existing hydrologic models in our system with minimal effort. This capability will be accomplished by creating a plugin for a Python content management system called CKAN. We are currently developing cyberinfrastructure that utilizes this stack and greatly lowers the investment required to deploy cloud-based modeling apps. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1135482

Finding, Browsing and Getting Data Easily Using SPDF Web Services

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Candey, R.; Chimiak, R.; Harris, B.; Johnson, R.; Kovalick, T.; Lal, N.; Leckner, H.; Liu, M.; McGuire, R.; Papitashvili, N.;

Web Services Security - Implementation and Evaluation Issues

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pimenidis, Elias; Georgiadis, Christos K.; Bako, Peter; Zorkadis, Vassilis

Web services development is a key theme in the utilization the commercial exploitation of the semantic web. Paramount to the development and offering of such services is the issue of security features and they way these are applied in instituting trust amongst participants and recipients of the service. Implementing such security features is a major challenge to developers as they need to balance these with performance and interoperability requirements. Being able to evaluate the level of security offered is a desirable feature for any prospective participant. The authors attempt to address the issues of security requirements and evaluation criteria, while they discuss the challenges of security implementation through a simple web service application case.

PHL7/441: Fixing a Broken Line between the Perceived "Anarchy" of the Web and a Process-Comfortable Pharmaceutical Company

PubMed Central

Vercellesi, L

1999-01-01

Introduction In 1998 a pharmaceutical company published its Web site to provide: an institutional presence multifunctional information to primary customers and general public a new way of access to the company a link to existing company-sponsored sites a platform for future projects Since the publication, some significant integration have been added; in particular one is a primary interactive service, addressed to a selected audience. The need has been felt to foster new projects and establish the idea of routinely considering the site as a potential tool in the marketing mix, to provide advanced services to customers. Methods Re-assessment of the site towards objectives. Assessment of its perception with company potential suppliers. Results The issue "web use" was discussed in various management meetings; the trend of use of Internet among the primary customers was known; major concerns expressed were about staffing and return of investment for activities run in the Web. These perceptions are being addressed by making the company more comfortable by: Running the site through a detailed process and clear procedures, defining A new process of maintenance of the site, involving representatives of all the functions. Procedures and guidelines. A master file of approved answers and company contacts. Categories of activities (information, promotion, education, information to investors, general services, target-specific services). Measures for all the activities run in the Web site Specifically for the Web site a concise periodical report is being assessed, covering 1. Statistics about hits and mails, compared to the corporate data. Indication of new items published. Description by the "supplier" of new or ongoing innovative projects, to transfer best practice. Basic figures on the Italian trend in internet use and specifically in the pharmaceutical and medical fields. Comments to a few competitor sites. Examples of potential uses deriving from other Web sites. Discussion The comparatively low use of Internet in Italy has affected the systematic professional exploitation of the company site. The definition of "anarchic" commonly linked to the Web by local media has lead to the attempt to "master" and "normalize" the site with a stricter approach than usual: most procedures and guidelines have been designed from scratch as not available for similar activities traditionally run. A short set of information has been requested for inclusion in the report: its wide coverage will help to receive a flavour of the global parallel new world developing in the net. Hopefully this approach will help to create a comfortable attitude towards the medium in the whole organisation and to acquire a working experience with the net.

Knowledge-driven enhancements for task composition in bioinformatics.

PubMed

Sutherland, Karen; McLeod, Kenneth; Ferguson, Gus; Burger, Albert

2009-10-01

A key application area of semantic technologies is the fast-developing field of bioinformatics. Sealife was a project within this field with the aim of creating semantics-based web browsing capabilities for the Life Sciences. This includes meaningfully linking significant terms from the text of a web page to executable web services. It also involves the semantic mark-up of biological terms, linking them to biomedical ontologies, then discovering and executing services based on terms that interest the user. A system was produced which allows a user to identify terms of interest on a web page and subsequently connects these to a choice of web services which can make use of these inputs. Elements of Artificial Intelligence Planning build on this to present a choice of higher level goals, which can then be broken down to construct a workflow. An Argumentation System was implemented to evaluate the results produced by three different gene expression databases. An evaluation of these modules was carried out on users from a variety of backgrounds. Users with little knowledge of web services were able to achieve tasks that used several services in much less time than they would have taken to do this manually. The Argumentation System was also considered a useful resource and feedback was collected on the best way to present results. Overall the system represents a move forward in helping users to both construct workflows and analyse results by incorporating specific domain knowledge into the software. It also provides a mechanism by which web pages can be linked to web services. However, this work covers a specific domain and much co-ordinated effort is needed to make all web services available for use in such a way, i.e. the integration of underlying knowledge is a difficult but essential task.

Selecting a Free Web-Hosted Survey Tool for Student Use

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Elbeck, Matt

2014-01-01

This study provides marketing educators a review of free web-based survey services and guidance for student use. A mixed methods approach started with online searches and metrics identifying 13 free web-hosted survey services, described as demonstration or project tools, and ranked using popularity and importance web-based metrics. For each…

About NOAA's National Weather Service

Science.gov Websites

official web portal to all federal, state and local government web resources and services. Follow the Field Offices are located across the country. Links to web sites of these components of the National that affect small businesses have established Web sites, e-mail addresses, and toll free phone numbers

Prediction of toxicity and comparison of alternatives using WebTEST (Web-services Toxicity Estimation Software Tool)

EPA Science Inventory

A Java-based web service is being developed within the US EPA’s Chemistry Dashboard to provide real time estimates of toxicity values and physical properties. WebTEST can generate toxicity predictions directly from a simple URL which includes the endpoint, QSAR method, and ...

Prediction of toxicity and comparison of alternatives using WebTEST (Web-services Toxicity Estimation Software Tool)(Bled Slovenia)

EPA Science Inventory

A Java-based web service is being developed within the US EPA’s Chemistry Dashboard to provide real time estimates of toxicity values and physical properties. WebTEST can generate toxicity predictions directly from a simple URL which includes the endpoint, QSAR method, and ...

A Community-Based Research Approach to Develop an Educational Web Portal

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Preiser-Houy, Lara; Navarrete, Carlos J.

2011-01-01

Service-learning projects are becoming more prevalent in Information Systems education. This study explores the use of community-based research, a special kind of a service-learning strategy, in an Information Systems web development course. The paper presents a case study of a service-learning project to develop an educational web portal for a…

The Business Information Services: Old-Line Online Moves to the Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

O'Leary, Mick

1997-01-01

Although the availability of free information on the World Wide Web has placed traditional, fee-based proprietary online services on the defensive, most major online business services are now on the Web. Highlights several business information providers: Profound, NewsNet and ProQuest Direct, Dow Jones and Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition,…

A Compilation and Review of over 500 Geoscience Misconceptions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Francek, Mark

2013-01-01

This paper organizes and analyses over 500 geoscience misconceptions relating to earthquakes, earth structure, geologic resources, glaciers, historical geology, karst (limestone terrains), plate tectonics, rivers, rocks and minerals, soils, volcanoes, and weathering and erosion. Journal and reliable web resources were reviewed to discover (1) the frequency of misconceptions by subject matter, group (primary, middle-school, high-school, middle-/high-school, college, pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, and undefined) and source (journal versus web); and (2) the pattern of misconceptions across age groups and (3) directions for future research. A total of 502 misconceptions were discovered, with over 40% targeting a middle- and high-school audience. Plate tectonics comprised 19% of all misconceptions, with another 14% and 13% associated with weathering/erosion and historical geology, respectively. Over 80% of all the misconceptions were derived from peer-reviewed journals or web sources, the rest originated from reliable sources on the World Wide Web. The supernatural origin for many of the geoscience phenomena listed here is abandoned by middle school, but in other cases, some misconceptions seem robust through adulthood. Examples of such misconceptions include the origin/pattern of earthquakes, thickness of the earth's crust, oil's origin, movement mechanisms for glaciers, co-existence of humans and dinosaurs, water movement within karst terrains, the nature of plate boundaries, the power of water as an agent of geomorphic change, what constitutes a mineral and a rock, thickness of the soil layer, the distribution of volcanoes, and the difference between weathering and erosion.

Bridging the gap between Hydrologic and Atmospheric communities through a standard based framework

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Boldrini, E.; Salas, F.; Maidment, D. R.; Mazzetti, P.; Santoro, M.; Nativi, S.; Domenico, B.

2012-04-01

Data interoperability in the study of Earth sciences is essential to performing interdisciplinary multi-scale multi-dimensional analyses (e.g. hydrologic impacts of global warming, regional urbanization, global population growth etc.). This research aims to bridge the existing gap between hydrologic and atmospheric communities both at semantic and technological levels. Within the context of hydrology, scientists are usually concerned with data organized as time series: a time series can be seen as a variable measured at a particular point in space over a period of time (e.g. the stream flow values as periodically measured by a buoy sensor in a river); atmospheric scientists instead usually organize their data as coverages: a coverage can be seen as a multidimensional data array (e.g. satellite images acquired through time). These differences make non-trivial the set up of a common framework to perform data discovery and access. A set of web services specifications and implementations is already in place in both the scientific communities to allow data discovery and access in the different domains. The CUAHSI-Hydrologic Information System (HIS) service stack lists different services types and implementations: - a metacatalog (implemented as a CSW) used to discover metadata services by distributing the query to a set of catalogs - time series catalogs (implemented as CSW) used to discover datasets published by the feature services - feature services (implemented as WFS) containing features with data access link - sensor observation services (implemented as SOS) enabling access to the stream of acquisitions Within the Unidata framework, there lies a similar service stack for atmospheric data: - the broker service (implemented as a CSW) distributes a user query to a set of heterogeneous services (i.e. catalogs services, but also inventory and access services) - the catalog service (implemented as a CSW) is able to harvest the available metadata offered by THREDDS services, and executes complex queries against the available metadata. - inventory service (implemented as a THREDDS) being able to hierarchically organize and publish a local collection of multi-dimensional arrays (e.g. NetCDF, GRIB files), as well as publish auxiliary standard services to realize the actual data access and visualization (e.g. WCS, OPeNDAP, WMS). The approach followed in this research is to build on top of the existing standards and implementations, by setting up a standard-aware interoperable framework, able to deal with the existing heterogeneity in an organic way. As a methodology, interoperability tests against real services were performed; existing problems were thus highlighted and possibly solved. The use of flexible tools, able to deal in a smart way with heterogeneity has proven to be successful, in particular experiments were carried on with both GI-cat broker and ESRI GeoPortal frameworks. GI-cat discovery broker was proven successful at implementing the CSW interface, as well as federating heterogeneous resources, such as THREDDS and WCS services published by Unidata, HydroServer, WFS and SOS services published by CUAHSI. Experiments with ESRI GeoPortal were also successful: the GeoPortal was used to deploy a web interface able to distribute searches amongst catalog implementations from both the hydrologic and the atmospheric communities, including HydroServers and GI-cat, combining results from both the domains in a seamless way.

An ontological knowledge framework for adaptive medical workflow.

PubMed

Dang, Jiangbo; Hedayati, Amir; Hampel, Ken; Toklu, Candemir

2008-10-01

As emerging technologies, semantic Web and SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) allow BPMS (Business Process Management System) to automate business processes that can be described as services, which in turn can be used to wrap existing enterprise applications. BPMS provides tools and methodologies to compose Web services that can be executed as business processes and monitored by BPM (Business Process Management) consoles. Ontologies are a formal declarative knowledge representation model. It provides a foundation upon which machine understandable knowledge can be obtained, and as a result, it makes machine intelligence possible. Healthcare systems can adopt these technologies to make them ubiquitous, adaptive, and intelligent, and then serve patients better. This paper presents an ontological knowledge framework that covers healthcare domains that a hospital encompasses-from the medical or administrative tasks, to hospital assets, medical insurances, patient records, drugs, and regulations. Therefore, our ontology makes our vision of personalized healthcare possible by capturing all necessary knowledge for a complex personalized healthcare scenario involving patient care, insurance policies, and drug prescriptions, and compliances. For example, our ontology facilitates a workflow management system to allow users, from physicians to administrative assistants, to manage, even create context-aware new medical workflows and execute them on-the-fly.

A transmission security framework for email-based telemedicine.

PubMed

Caffery, Liam J; Smith, Anthony C

2010-01-01

Encryption is used to convert an email message to an unreadable format thereby securing patient privacy during the transmission of the message across the Internet. Two available means of encryption are: public key infrastructure (PKI) used in conjunction with ordinary email and secure hypertext transfer protocol (HTTPS) used by secure web-mail applications. Both of these approaches have advantages and disadvantages in terms of viability, cost, usability and compliance. The aim of this study was develop an instrument to identify the most appropriate means of encrypting email communication for telemedicine. A multi-method approach was used to construct the instrument. Technical assessment and existing bodies of knowledge regarding the utility of PKI were analyzed, along with survey results from users of Queensland Health's Child and Youth Mental Health Service secure web-mail service. The resultant decision support model identified that the following conditions affect the choice of encryption technology: correspondent's risk perception, correspondent's identification to the security afforded by encryption, email-client used by correspondents, the tolerance to human error and the availability of technical resources. A decision support model is presented as a flow chart to identify the most appropriate encryption for a specific email-based telemedicine service.

Towards Using Reo for Compliance-Aware Business Process Modeling

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Arbab, Farhad; Kokash, Natallia; Meng, Sun

Business process modeling and implementation of process supporting infrastructures are two challenging tasks that are not fully aligned. On the one hand, languages such as Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) exist to capture business processes at the level of domain analysis. On the other hand, programming paradigms and technologies such as Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) and web services have emerged to simplify the development of distributed web systems that underly business processes. BPMN is the most recognized language for specifying process workflows at the early design steps. However, it is rather declarative and may lead to the executable models which are incomplete or semantically erroneous. Therefore, an approach for expressing and analyzing BPMN models in a formal setting is required. In this paper we describe how BPMN diagrams can be represented by means of a semantically precise channel-based coordination language called Reo which admits formal analysis using model checking and bisimulation techniques. Moreover, since additional requirements may come from various regulatory/legislative documents, we discuss the opportunities offered by Reo and its mathematical abstractions for expressing process-related constraints such as Quality of Service (QoS) or time-aware conditions on process states.

BioVeL: a virtual laboratory for data analysis and modelling in biodiversity science and ecology.

PubMed

Hardisty, Alex R; Bacall, Finn; Beard, Niall; Balcázar-Vargas, Maria-Paula; Balech, Bachir; Barcza, Zoltán; Bourlat, Sarah J; De Giovanni, Renato; de Jong, Yde; De Leo, Francesca; Dobor, Laura; Donvito, Giacinto; Fellows, Donal; Guerra, Antonio Fernandez; Ferreira, Nuno; Fetyukova, Yuliya; Fosso, Bruno; Giddy, Jonathan; Goble, Carole; Güntsch, Anton; Haines, Robert; Ernst, Vera Hernández; Hettling, Hannes; Hidy, Dóra; Horváth, Ferenc; Ittzés, Dóra; Ittzés, Péter; Jones, Andrew; Kottmann, Renzo; Kulawik, Robert; Leidenberger, Sonja; Lyytikäinen-Saarenmaa, Päivi; Mathew, Cherian; Morrison, Norman; Nenadic, Aleksandra; de la Hidalga, Abraham Nieva; Obst, Matthias; Oostermeijer, Gerard; Paymal, Elisabeth; Pesole, Graziano; Pinto, Salvatore; Poigné, Axel; Fernandez, Francisco Quevedo; Santamaria, Monica; Saarenmaa, Hannu; Sipos, Gergely; Sylla, Karl-Heinz; Tähtinen, Marko; Vicario, Saverio; Vos, Rutger Aldo; Williams, Alan R; Yilmaz, Pelin

2016-10-20

Making forecasts about biodiversity and giving support to policy relies increasingly on large collections of data held electronically, and on substantial computational capability and capacity to analyse, model, simulate and predict using such data. However, the physically distributed nature of data resources and of expertise in advanced analytical tools creates many challenges for the modern scientist. Across the wider biological sciences, presenting such capabilities on the Internet (as "Web services") and using scientific workflow systems to compose them for particular tasks is a practical way to carry out robust "in silico" science. However, use of this approach in biodiversity science and ecology has thus far been quite limited. BioVeL is a virtual laboratory for data analysis and modelling in biodiversity science and ecology, freely accessible via the Internet. BioVeL includes functions for accessing and analysing data through curated Web services; for performing complex in silico analysis through exposure of R programs, workflows, and batch processing functions; for on-line collaboration through sharing of workflows and workflow runs; for experiment documentation through reproducibility and repeatability; and for computational support via seamless connections to supporting computing infrastructures. We developed and improved more than 60 Web services with significant potential in many different kinds of data analysis and modelling tasks. We composed reusable workflows using these Web services, also incorporating R programs. Deploying these tools into an easy-to-use and accessible 'virtual laboratory', free via the Internet, we applied the workflows in several diverse case studies. We opened the virtual laboratory for public use and through a programme of external engagement we actively encouraged scientists and third party application and tool developers to try out the services and contribute to the activity. Our work shows we can deliver an operational, scalable and flexible Internet-based virtual laboratory to meet new demands for data processing and analysis in biodiversity science and ecology. In particular, we have successfully integrated existing and popular tools and practices from different scientific disciplines to be used in biodiversity and ecological research.

Development of a Dynamic Web Mapping Service for Vegetation Productivity Using Earth Observation and in situ Sensors in a Sensor Web Based Approach

PubMed Central

Kooistra, Lammert; Bergsma, Aldo; Chuma, Beatus; de Bruin, Sytze

2009-01-01

This paper describes the development of a sensor web based approach which combines earth observation and in situ sensor data to derive typical information offered by a dynamic web mapping service (WMS). A prototype has been developed which provides daily maps of vegetation productivity for the Netherlands with a spatial resolution of 250 m. Daily available MODIS surface reflectance products and meteorological parameters obtained through a Sensor Observation Service (SOS) were used as input for a vegetation productivity model. This paper presents the vegetation productivity model, the sensor data sources and the implementation of the automated processing facility. Finally, an evaluation is made of the opportunities and limitations of sensor web based approaches for the development of web services which combine both satellite and in situ sensor sources. PMID:22574019

Regional Climate Service in Northern Germany -The North German Climate Office

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Meinke, I.; Von Storch, H.

2012-12-01

The North German Climate Office was established in 2006 at the Institute for Coastal Research at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht, Germany as consequence of an increased public information need regarding coastal climate change and its impacts in Northern Germany. The service is characterized by an intensive dialogue between regional climate research and stakeholders in Northern Germany. About once a week scientists of the North German climate office are invited to contribute to public dialogue events. Also numerous direct inquiries are answered and expert interviews are conducted. From this dialogue process specific stakeholder information needs are localized and analysed to develop tailored information products. To provide easy and user specific access to research results interactive web tools are developed. One example is the North German climate atlas, an interactive web tool on possible future climate change in Northern Germany. Another interactive web tool is informing on present and future coastal protection needs in Northern Germany. Another aim of our information products is to assess and summarize the existing scientific knowledge on climate, climate change and impacts in Northern Germany. A mini IPCC-like regional assessment report has been published in 2010, which is summarizing, discussing and assessing the scientific knowledge on regional climate, climate change and impacts as well as possible adaptation strategies in the metropolitan region of Hamburg.

Semantic-JSON: a lightweight web service interface for Semantic Web contents integrating multiple life science databases.

PubMed

Kobayashi, Norio; Ishii, Manabu; Takahashi, Satoshi; Mochizuki, Yoshiki; Matsushima, Akihiro; Toyoda, Tetsuro

2011-07-01

Global cloud frameworks for bioinformatics research databases become huge and heterogeneous; solutions face various diametric challenges comprising cross-integration, retrieval, security and openness. To address this, as of March 2011 organizations including RIKEN published 192 mammalian, plant and protein life sciences databases having 8.2 million data records, integrated as Linked Open or Private Data (LOD/LPD) using SciNetS.org, the Scientists' Networking System. The huge quantity of linked data this database integration framework covers is based on the Semantic Web, where researchers collaborate by managing metadata across public and private databases in a secured data space. This outstripped the data query capacity of existing interface tools like SPARQL. Actual research also requires specialized tools for data analysis using raw original data. To solve these challenges, in December 2009 we developed the lightweight Semantic-JSON interface to access each fragment of linked and raw life sciences data securely under the control of programming languages popularly used by bioinformaticians such as Perl and Ruby. Researchers successfully used the interface across 28 million semantic relationships for biological applications including genome design, sequence processing, inference over phenotype databases, full-text search indexing and human-readable contents like ontology and LOD tree viewers. Semantic-JSON services of SciNetS.org are provided at http://semanticjson.org.

Bootstrapping and Maintaining Trust in the Cloud

DTIC Science & Technology

2016-03-16

of infrastructure-as-a- service (IaaS) cloud computing services such as Ama- zon Web Services, Google Compute Engine, Rackspace, et. al. means that...Implementation We implemented keylime in ∼3.2k lines of Python in four components: registrar, node, CV, and tenant. The registrar offers a REST-based web ...bootstrap key K. It provides an unencrypted REST-based web service for these two functions. As described earlier, the pro- tocols for exchanging data

International VLBI Service for Geodesy and Astronomy

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Vandenberg, Nancy R. (Editor); Baver, Karen D. (Editor)

2004-01-01

This volume of reports is the 2003 Annual Report of the International VLBI Service for Geodesy and Astrometry (IVS). The individual reports were contributed by VLBI groups in the international geodetic and astrometric community who constitute the permanent components of IVS. The IVS 2003 Annual Report documents the work of the IVS components for the calendar year 2003, our fifih year of existence. The reports describe changes, activities, and progress of the IVS. Many thanks to all IVS components who contributed to this Annual Report. The entire contents of this Annual Report also appear on the IVS web site at http://ivscc.gsfc.nasa.gov/publications/ar2OO3

Package research based on COM+ technical of web service

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Xiaoyue; Du, Liang

2011-10-01

Early information management systems are established for realization of specific business functions ordered by enterprise, including the control and management of production, supply, sales and customer service and so on. Enterprises in accordance with their various departments establish a variety of enterprise information systems used by them, and in the actual work play a huge role in the production. In this paper, from the overall view a variety of enterprise information management systems is considered, thereafter according to specific business needs to unify arrangement of these systems, and use a suitable platform for the organic integration of existing enterprise information management systems, so that the "information islands" link.

EnviroAtlas - Recreation, Culture, and Aesthetics Metrics for Conterminous United States

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

This EnviroAtlas web service supports research and online mapping activities related to EnviroAtlas (https://www.epa.gov/enviroatlas). The Recreation, Culture, and Aesthetics category in this web service includes layers illustrating the ecosystems and natural resources that provide inherent cultural and aesthetic value or recreation opportunity, the need or demand for these amenities, the impacts associated with their presence and accessibility, and factors that place stress on the natural environment's capability to provide these benefits. EnviroAtlas allows the user to interact with a web-based, easy-to-use, mapping application to view and analyze multiple ecosystem services for the conterminous United States. Additional descriptive information about each attribute in this web service is located within each web service layer (see Full Metadata hyperlink) or can be found in its associated EnviroAtlas Fact Sheet (https://www.epa.gov/enviroatlas/enviroatlas-fact-sheets).

Remote Sensing Information Gateway: A free application and web service for fast, convenient, interoperable access to large repositories of atmospheric data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Plessel, T.; Szykman, J.; Freeman, M.

2012-12-01

EPA's Remote Sensing Information Gateway (RSIG) is a widely used free applet and web service for quickly and easily retrieving, visualizing and saving user-specified subsets of atmospheric data - by variable, geographic domain and time range. Petabytes of available data include thousands of variables from a set of NASA and NOAA satellites, aircraft, ground stations and EPA air-quality models. The RSIG applet is used by atmospheric researchers and uses the rsigserver web service to obtain data and images. The rsigserver web service is compliant with the Open Geospatial Consortium Web Coverage Service (OGC-WCS) standard to facilitate data discovery and interoperability. Since rsigserver is publicly accessible, it can be (and is) used by other applications. This presentation describes the architecture and technical implementation details of this successful system with an emphasis on achieving convenience, high-performance, data integrity and security.

Increasing the availability and usability of terrestrial ecology data through geospatial Web services and visualization tools (Invited)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Santhana Vannan, S.; Cook, R. B.; Wilson, B. E.; Wei, Y.

2010-12-01

Terrestrial ecology data sets are produced from diverse data sources such as model output, field data collection, laboratory analysis and remote sensing observation. These data sets can be created, distributed, and consumed in diverse ways as well. However, this diversity can hinder the usability of the data, and limit data users’ abilities to validate and reuse data for science and application purposes. Geospatial web services, such as those described in this paper, are an important means of reducing this burden. Terrestrial ecology researchers generally create the data sets in diverse file formats, with file and data structures tailored to the specific needs of their project, possibly as tabular data, geospatial images, or documentation in a report. Data centers may reformat the data to an archive-stable format and distribute the data sets through one or more protocols, such as FTP, email, and WWW. Because of the diverse data preparation, delivery, and usage patterns, users have to invest time and resources to bring the data into the format and structure most useful for their analysis. This time-consuming data preparation process shifts valuable resources from data analysis to data assembly. To address these issues, the ORNL DAAC, a NASA-sponsored terrestrial ecology data center, has utilized geospatial Web service technology, such as Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Service (WMS) and OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS) standards, to increase the usability and availability of terrestrial ecology data sets. Data sets are standardized into non-proprietary file formats and distributed through OGC Web Service standards. OGC Web services allow the ORNL DAAC to store data sets in a single format and distribute them in multiple ways and formats. Registering the OGC Web services through search catalogues and other spatial data tools allows for publicizing the data sets and makes them more available across the Internet. The ORNL DAAC has also created a Web-based graphical user interface called Spatial Data Access Tool (SDAT) that utilizes OGC Web services standards and allows data distribution and consumption for users not familiar with OGC standards. SDAT also allows for users to visualize the data set prior to download. Google Earth visualizations of the data set are also provided through SDAT. The use of OGC Web service standards at the ORNL DAAC has enabled an increase in data consumption. In one case, a data set had ~10 fold increase in download through OGC Web service in comparison to the conventional FTP and WWW method of access. The increase in download suggests that users are not only finding the data sets they need but also able to consume them readily in the format they need.

Global polar geospatial information service retrieval based on search engine and ontology reasoning

USGS Publications Warehouse

Chen, Nengcheng; E, Dongcheng; Di, Liping; Gong, Jianya; Chen, Zeqiang

2007-01-01

In order to improve the access precision of polar geospatial information service on web, a new methodology for retrieving global spatial information services based on geospatial service search and ontology reasoning is proposed, the geospatial service search is implemented to find the coarse service from web, the ontology reasoning is designed to find the refined service from the coarse service. The proposed framework includes standardized distributed geospatial web services, a geospatial service search engine, an extended UDDI registry, and a multi-protocol geospatial information service client. Some key technologies addressed include service discovery based on search engine and service ontology modeling and reasoning in the Antarctic geospatial context. Finally, an Antarctica multi protocol OWS portal prototype based on the proposed methodology is introduced.

Weaving Silos--A Leadership Challenge: A Cross-Functional Team Approach to Supporting Web-Based Student Services

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kleemann, Gary L.

2005-01-01

The author reviews the evolution of Web services--from information sharing to transactional to relationship building--and the progression from first-generation to fourth-generation Web sites. (Contains 3 figures.)

Casemix Funding Optimisation: Working Together to Make the Most of Every Episode.

PubMed

Uzkuraitis, Carly; Hastings, Karen; Torney, Belinda

2010-10-01

Eastern Health, a large public Victorian Healthcare network, conducted a WIES optimisation audit across the casemix-funded sites for separations in the 2009/2010 financial year. The audit was conducted using existing staff resources and resulted in a significant increase in casemix funding at a minimal cost. The audit showcased the skill set of existing staff and resulted in enormous benefits to the coding and casemix team by demonstrating the value of the combination of skills that makes clinical coders unique. The development of an internal web-based application allowed accurate and timely reporting of the audit results, providing the basis for a restructure of the coding and casemix service, along with approval for additional staffing resources and inclusion of a regular auditing program to focus on the creation of high quality data for research, health services management and financial reimbursement.

Web service activities at the IRIS DMC to support federated and multidisciplinary access

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Trabant, Chad; Ahern, Timothy K.

2013-04-01

At the IRIS Data Management Center (DMC) we have developed a suite of web service interfaces to access our large archive of, primarily seismological, time series data and related metadata. The goals of these web services include providing: a) next-generation and easily used access interfaces for our current users, b) access to data holdings in a form usable for non-seismologists, c) programmatic access to facilitate integration into data processing workflows and d) a foundation for participation in federated data discovery and access systems. To support our current users, our services provide access to the raw time series data and metadata or conversions of the raw data to commonly used formats. Our services also support simple, on-the-fly signal processing options that are common first steps in many workflows. Additionally, high-level data products derived from raw data are available via service interfaces. To support data access by researchers unfamiliar with seismic data we offer conversion of the data to broadly usable formats (e.g. ASCII text) and data processing to convert the data to Earth units. By their very nature, web services are programmatic interfaces. Combined with ubiquitous support for web technologies in programming & scripting languages and support in many computing environments, web services are very well suited for integrating data access into data processing workflows. As programmatic interfaces that can return data in both discipline-specific and broadly usable formats, our services are also well suited for participation in federated and brokered systems either specific to seismology or multidisciplinary. Working within the International Federation of Digital Seismograph Networks, the DMC collaborated on the specification of standardized web service interfaces for use at any seismological data center. These data access interfaces, when supported by multiple data centers, will form a foundation on which to build discovery and access mechanisms for data sets spanning multiple centers. To promote the adoption of these standardized services the DMC has developed portable implementations of the software needed to host these interfaces, minimizing the work required at each data center. Within the COOPEUS project framework, the DMC is working with EU partners to install web services implementations at multiple data centers in Europe.

Architecture of a spatial data service system for statistical analysis and visualization of regional climate changes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Titov, A. G.; Okladnikov, I. G.; Gordov, E. P.

2017-11-01

The use of large geospatial datasets in climate change studies requires the development of a set of Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) elements, including geoprocessing and cartographical visualization web services. This paper presents the architecture of a geospatial OGC web service system as an integral part of a virtual research environment (VRE) general architecture for statistical processing and visualization of meteorological and climatic data. The architecture is a set of interconnected standalone SDI nodes with corresponding data storage systems. Each node runs a specialized software, such as a geoportal, cartographical web services (WMS/WFS), a metadata catalog, and a MySQL database of technical metadata describing geospatial datasets available for the node. It also contains geospatial data processing services (WPS) based on a modular computing backend realizing statistical processing functionality and, thus, providing analysis of large datasets with the results of visualization and export into files of standard formats (XML, binary, etc.). Some cartographical web services have been developed in a system’s prototype to provide capabilities to work with raster and vector geospatial data based on OGC web services. The distributed architecture presented allows easy addition of new nodes, computing and data storage systems, and provides a solid computational infrastructure for regional climate change studies based on modern Web and GIS technologies.

Enterprise Considerations for Ports and Protocols

DTIC Science & Technology

2016-10-21

selected communications. These protocols are restricted to specific ports or addresses in the receiving web service. HTTPS is familiarly restricted...in use by the web services and applications that are connected to the network are required for interoperability and security. Policies specify the...network or reside at the end-points (i.e., web services or clients). ____________________________ Manuscript received June 1, 2016; revised July

OntoGene web services for biomedical text mining.

PubMed

Rinaldi, Fabio; Clematide, Simon; Marques, Hernani; Ellendorff, Tilia; Romacker, Martin; Rodriguez-Esteban, Raul

2014-01-01

Text mining services are rapidly becoming a crucial component of various knowledge management pipelines, for example in the process of database curation, or for exploration and enrichment of biomedical data within the pharmaceutical industry. Traditional architectures, based on monolithic applications, do not offer sufficient flexibility for a wide range of use case scenarios, and therefore open architectures, as provided by web services, are attracting increased interest. We present an approach towards providing advanced text mining capabilities through web services, using a recently proposed standard for textual data interchange (BioC). The web services leverage a state-of-the-art platform for text mining (OntoGene) which has been tested in several community-organized evaluation challenges,with top ranked results in several of them.

OntoGene web services for biomedical text mining

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

Text mining services are rapidly becoming a crucial component of various knowledge management pipelines, for example in the process of database curation, or for exploration and enrichment of biomedical data within the pharmaceutical industry. Traditional architectures, based on monolithic applications, do not offer sufficient flexibility for a wide range of use case scenarios, and therefore open architectures, as provided by web services, are attracting increased interest. We present an approach towards providing advanced text mining capabilities through web services, using a recently proposed standard for textual data interchange (BioC). The web services leverage a state-of-the-art platform for text mining (OntoGene) which has been tested in several community-organized evaluation challenges, with top ranked results in several of them. PMID:25472638

Multigraph: Interactive Data Graphs on the Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Phillips, M. B.

2010-12-01

Many aspects of geophysical science involve time dependent data that is often presented in the form of a graph. Considering that the web has become a primary means of communication, there are surprisingly few good tools and techniques available for presenting time-series data on the web. The most common solution is to use a desktop tool such as Excel or Matlab to create a graph which is saved as an image and then included in a web page like any other image. This technique is straightforward, but it limits the user to one particular view of the data, and disconnects the graph from the data in a way that makes updating a graph with new data an often cumbersome manual process. This situation is somewhat analogous to the state of mapping before the advent of GIS. Maps existed only in printed form, and creating a map was a laborious process. In the last several years, however, the world of mapping has experienced a revolution in the form of web-based and other interactive computer technologies, so that it is now commonplace for anyone to easily browse through gigabytes of geographic data. Multigraph seeks to bring a similar ease of access to time series data. Multigraph is a program for displaying interactive time-series data graphs in web pages that includes a simple way of configuring the appearance of the graph and the data to be included. It allows multiple data sources to be combined into a single graph, and allows the user to explore the data interactively. Multigraph lets users explore and visualize "data space" in the same way that interactive mapping applications such as Google Maps facilitate exploring and visualizing geography. Viewing a Multigraph graph is extremely simple and intuitive, and requires no instructions. Creating a new graph for inclusion in a web page involves writing a simple XML configuration file and requires no programming. Multigraph can read data in a variety of formats, and can display data from a web service, allowing users to "surf" through large data sets, downloading only those the parts of the data that are needed for display. Multigraph is currently in use on several web sites including the US Drought Portal (www.drought.gov), the NOAA Climate Services Portal (www.climate.gov), the Climate Reference Network (www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn), NCDC's State of the Climate Report (www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc), and the US Forest Service's Forest Change Assessment Viewer (ews.forestthreats.org/NPDE/NPDE.html). More information about Multigraph is available from the web site www.multigraph.org. Interactive Graph of Global Temperature Anomalies from ClimateWatch Magazine (http://www.climatewatch.noaa.gov/2009/articles/climate-change-global-temperature)

Integrating Multilevel Command and Control into a Service Oriented Architecture to Provide Cross Domain Capability

DTIC Science & Technology

2006-06-01

Horizontal Fusion, the JCDX team developed two web services, a Classification Policy Decision Service (cPDS), and a Federated Search Provider (FSP...The cPDS web service primarily provides other systems with methods for handling labeled data such as label comparison. The federated search provider...level domains. To provide defense-in-depth, cPDS and the Federated Search Provider are implemented on a separate server known as the JCDX Web

Designing Crop Simulation Web Service with Service Oriented Architecture Principle

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chinnachodteeranun, R.; Hung, N. D.; Honda, K.

2015-12-01

Crop simulation models are efficient tools for simulating crop growth processes and yield. Running crop models requires data from various sources as well as time-consuming data processing, such as data quality checking and data formatting, before those data can be inputted to the model. It makes the use of crop modeling limited only to crop modelers. We aim to make running crop models convenient for various users so that the utilization of crop models will be expanded, which will directly improve agricultural applications. As the first step, we had developed a prototype that runs DSSAT on Web called as Tomorrow's Rice (v. 1). It predicts rice yields based on a planting date, rice's variety and soil characteristics using DSSAT crop model. A user only needs to select a planting location on the Web GUI then the system queried historical weather data from available sources and expected yield is returned. Currently, we are working on weather data connection via Sensor Observation Service (SOS) interface defined by Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). Weather data can be automatically connected to a weather generator for generating weather scenarios for running the crop model. In order to expand these services further, we are designing a web service framework consisting of layers of web services to support compositions and executions for running crop simulations. This framework allows a third party application to call and cascade each service as it needs for data preparation and running DSSAT model using a dynamic web service mechanism. The framework has a module to manage data format conversion, which means users do not need to spend their time curating the data inputs. Dynamic linking of data sources and services are implemented using the Service Component Architecture (SCA). This agriculture web service platform demonstrates interoperability of weather data using SOS interface, convenient connections between weather data sources and weather generator, and connecting various services for running crop models for decision support.

Web-based health services and clinical decision support.

PubMed

Jegelevicius, Darius; Marozas, Vaidotas; Lukosevicius, Arunas; Patasius, Martynas

2004-01-01

The purpose of this study was the development of a Web-based e-health service for comprehensive assistance and clinical decision support. The service structure consists of a Web server, a PHP-based Web interface linked to a clinical SQL database, Java applets for interactive manipulation and visualization of signals and a Matlab server linked with signal and data processing algorithms implemented by Matlab programs. The service ensures diagnostic signal- and image analysis-sbased clinical decision support. By using the discussed methodology, a pilot service for pathology specialists for automatic calculation of the proliferation index has been developed. Physicians use a simple Web interface for uploading the pictures under investigation to the server; subsequently a Java applet interface is used for outlining the region of interest and, after processing on the server, the requested proliferation index value is calculated. There is also an "expert corner", where experts can submit their index estimates and comments on particular images, which is especially important for system developers. These expert evaluations are used for optimization and verification of automatic analysis algorithms. Decision support trials have been conducted for ECG and ophthalmology ultrasonic investigations of intraocular tumor differentiation. Data mining algorithms have been applied and decision support trees constructed. These services are under implementation by a Web-based system too. The study has shown that the Web-based structure ensures more effective, flexible and accessible services compared with standalone programs and is very convenient for biomedical engineers and physicians, especially in the development phase.

Expanding the use of Scientific Data through Maps and Apps

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shrestha, S. R.; Zimble, D. A.; Herring, D.; Halpert, M.

2014-12-01

The importance of making scientific data more available can't be overstated. There is a wealth of useful scientific data available and demand for this data is only increasing; however, applying scientific data towards practical uses poses several technical challenges. These challenges can arise from difficulty in handling the data due largely to 1) the complexity, variety and volume of scientific data and 2) applying and operating the techniques and tools needed to visualize and analyze the data. As a result, the combined knowledge required to take advantage of these data requires highly specialized skill sets that in total, limit the ability of scientific data from being used in more practical day-to-day decision making activities. While these challenges are daunting, information technologies do exist that can help mitigate some of these issues. Many organizations for years have already been enjoying the benefits of modern service oriented architectures (SOAs) for everyday enterprise tasks. We can use this approach to modernize how we share and access our scientific data where much of the specialized tools and techniques needed to handle and present scientific data can be automated and executed by servers and done so in an appropriate way. We will discuss and show an approach for preparing file based scientific data (e.g. GRIB, netCDF) for use in standard based scientific web services. These scientific web services are able to encapsulate the logic needed to handle and describe scientific data through a variety of service types including, image, map, feature, geoprocessing, and their respective service methods. By combining these types of services and leveraging well-documented and modern web development APIs, we can afford to focus our attention on the design and development of user-friendly maps and apps. Our scenario will include developing online maps through these services by integrating various forecast data from the Climate Forecast System (CFSv2). This presentation showcases a collaboration between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Climate.gov portal, Climate Prediction Center and Esri, Inc. on the implementation of the ArcGIS platform, which is aimed at helping modernize scientific data access through a service oriented architecture.

Evaluation of Norwegian cancer hospitals' Web sites and explorative survey among cancer patients on their use of the Internet

PubMed Central

2001-01-01

Background Hospital homepages should provide comprehensive information on the hospital's services, such as departments and treatments available, prices, waiting time, leisure facilities, and other information important for patients and their relatives. Norway, with its population of approximately 4.3 million, ranks among the top countries globally for its ability to absorb and use technology. It is unclear to what degree Norwegian hospitals and patients use the Internet for information about health services. Objectives This study was undertaken to evaluate the quality of the biggest Norwegian cancer hospitals' Web sites and to gather some preliminary data on patients' use of the Internet. Methods In January 2001, we analyzed Web sites of 5 of the 7 biggest Norwegian hospitals treating cancer patients using a scoring system. The scoring instrument was based on recommendations developed by the Norwegian Central Information Service for Web sites and reflects the scope and depth of service information offered on hospital Web pages. In addition, 31 cancer patients visiting one hospital-based medical oncologist were surveyed about their use of the Internet. Results Of the 7 hospitals, 5 had a Web site. The Web sites differed markedly in quality. Types of information included - and number of Web sites that included each type of information - were, for example: search option, 1; interpreter service, 2; date of last update, 2; postal address, phone number, and e-mail service, 3; information in English, 2. None of the Web sites included information on waiting time or prices. Of the 31 patients surveyed, 12 had personal experience using the Internet and 4 had searched for medical information. The Internet users were significantly younger (mean age 47.8 years, range 28.4-66.8 years) than the nonusers (mean age 61.8 years, range 33.1-90.0 years) ( P= 0.007). Conclusions The hospitals' Web sites offer cancer patients and relatives useful information, but the Web sites were not impressive. PMID:11772545

Obtaining P3P privacy policies for composite services.

PubMed

Sun, Yi; Huang, Zhiqiu; Ke, Changbo

2014-01-01

With the development of web services technology, web services have changed from single to composite services. Privacy protection in composite services is becoming an important issue. P3P (platform for privacy preferences) is a privacy policy language which was designed for single web services. It enables service providers to express how they will deal with the privacy information of service consumers. In order to solve the problem that P3P cannot be applied to composite services directly, we propose a method to obtain P3P privacy policies for composite services. In this method, we present the definitions of Purpose, Recipient, and Retention elements as well as Optional and Required attributes for P3P policies of composite services. We also provide an instantiation to illustrate the feasibility of the method.

SeWeR: a customizable and integrated dynamic HTML interface to bioinformatics services.

PubMed

Basu, M K

2001-06-01

Sequence analysis using Web Resources (SeWeR) is an integrated, Dynamic HTML (DHTML) interface to commonly used bioinformatics services available on the World Wide Web. It is highly customizable, extendable, platform neutral, completely server-independent and can be hosted as a web page as well as being used as stand-alone software running within a web browser.

BPELPower—A BPEL execution engine for geospatial web services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yu, Genong (Eugene); Zhao, Peisheng; Di, Liping; Chen, Aijun; Deng, Meixia; Bai, Yuqi

2012-10-01

The Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) has become a popular choice for orchestrating and executing workflows in the Web environment. As one special kind of scientific workflow, geospatial Web processing workflows are data-intensive, deal with complex structures in data and geographic features, and execute automatically with limited human intervention. To enable the proper execution and coordination of geospatial workflows, a specially enhanced BPEL execution engine is required. BPELPower was designed, developed, and implemented as a generic BPEL execution engine with enhancements for executing geospatial workflows. The enhancements are especially in its capabilities in handling Geography Markup Language (GML) and standard geospatial Web services, such as the Web Processing Service (WPS) and the Web Feature Service (WFS). BPELPower has been used in several demonstrations over the decade. Two scenarios were discussed in detail to demonstrate the capabilities of BPELPower. That study showed a standard-compliant, Web-based approach for properly supporting geospatial processing, with the only enhancement at the implementation level. Pattern-based evaluation and performance improvement of the engine are discussed: BPELPower directly supports 22 workflow control patterns and 17 workflow data patterns. In the future, the engine will be enhanced with high performance parallel processing and broad Web paradigms.

Customizable scientific web-portal for DIII-D nuclear fusion experiment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Abla, G.; Kim, E. N.; Schissel, D. P.

2010-04-01

Increasing utilization of the Internet and convenient web technologies has made the web-portal a major application interface for remote participation and control of scientific instruments. While web-portals have provided a centralized gateway for multiple computational services, the amount of visual output often is overwhelming due to the high volume of data generated by complex scientific instruments and experiments. Since each scientist may have different priorities and areas of interest in the experiment, filtering and organizing information based on the individual user's need can increase the usability and efficiency of a web-portal. DIII-D is the largest magnetic nuclear fusion device in the US. A web-portal has been designed to support the experimental activities of DIII-D researchers worldwide. It offers a customizable interface with personalized page layouts and list of services for users to select. Each individual user can create a unique working environment to fit his own needs and interests. Customizable services are: real-time experiment status monitoring, diagnostic data access, interactive data analysis and visualization. The web-portal also supports interactive collaborations by providing collaborative logbook, and online instant announcement services. The DIII-D web-portal development utilizes multi-tier software architecture, and Web 2.0 technologies and tools, such as AJAX and Django, to develop a highly-interactive and customizable user interface.

Reference Architecture for MNE 5 Technical System

DTIC Science & Technology

2007-05-30

of being available in most experiments. Core Services A core set of applications whi directories, web portal and collaboration applications etc. A...classifications Messages (xml, JMS, content level…) Meta data filtering, who can initiate services Web browsing Collaboration & messaging Border...Exchange Ref Architecture for MNE5 Tech System.doc 9 of 21 audit logging Person and machine Data lev objects, web services, messages rification el

Globus Identity, Access, and Data Management: Platform Services for Collaborative Science

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ananthakrishnan, R.; Foster, I.; Wagner, R.

2016-12-01

Globus is software-as-a-service for research data management, developed at, and operated by, the University of Chicago. Globus, accessible at www.globus.org, provides high speed, secure file transfer; file sharing directly from existing storage systems; and data publication to institutional repositories. 40,000 registered users have used Globus to transfer tens of billions of files totaling hundreds of petabytes between more than 10,000 storage systems within campuses and national laboratories in the US and internationally. Web, command line, and REST interfaces support both interactive use and integration into applications and infrastructures. An important component of the Globus system is its foundational identity and access management (IAM) platform service, Globus Auth. Both Globus research data management and other applications use Globus Auth for brokering authentication and authorization interactions between end-users, identity providers, resource servers (services), and a range of clients, including web, mobile, and desktop applications, and other services. Compliant with important standards such as OAuth, OpenID, and SAML, Globus Auth provides mechanisms required for an extensible, integrated ecosystem of services and clients for the research and education community. It underpins projects such as the US National Science Foundation's XSEDE system, NCAR's Research Data Archive, and the DOE Systems Biology Knowledge Base. Current work is extending Globus services to be compliant with FEDRAMP standards for security assessment, authorization, and monitoring for cloud services. We will present Globus IAM solutions and give examples of Globus use in various projects for federated access to resources. We will also describe how Globus Auth and Globus research data management capabilities enable rapid development and low-cost operations of secure data sharing platforms that leverage Globus services and integrate them with local policy and security.

Recent advancements on the development of web-based applications for the implementation of seismic analysis and surveillance systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Friberg, P. A.; Luis, R. S.; Quintiliani, M.; Lisowski, S.; Hunter, S.

2014-12-01

Recently, a novel set of modules has been included in the Open Source Earthworm seismic data processing system, supporting the use of web applications. These include the Mole sub-system, for storing relevant event data in a MySQL database (see M. Quintiliani and S. Pintore, SRL, 2013), and an embedded webserver, Moleserv, for serving such data to web clients in QuakeML format. These modules have enabled, for the first time using Earthworm, the use of web applications for seismic data processing. These can greatly simplify the operation and maintenance of seismic data processing centers by having one or more servers providing the relevant data as well as the data processing applications themselves to client machines running arbitrary operating systems.Web applications with secure online web access allow operators to work anywhere, without the often cumbersome and bandwidth hungry use of secure shell or virtual private networks. Furthermore, web applications can seamlessly access third party data repositories to acquire additional information, such as maps. Finally, the usage of HTML email brought the possibility of specialized web applications, to be used in email clients. This is the case of EWHTMLEmail, which produces event notification emails that are in fact simple web applications for plotting relevant seismic data.Providing web services as part of Earthworm has enabled a number of other tools as well. One is ISTI's EZ Earthworm, a web based command and control system for an otherwise command line driven system; another is a waveform web service. The waveform web service serves Earthworm data to additional web clients for plotting, picking, and other web-based processing tools. The current Earthworm waveform web service hosts an advanced plotting capability for providing views of event-based waveforms from a Mole database served by Moleserve.The current trend towards the usage of cloud services supported by web applications is driving improvements in JavaScript, css and HTML, as well as faster and more efficient web browsers, including mobile. It is foreseeable that in the near future, web applications are as powerful and efficient as native applications. Hence the work described here has been the first step towards bringing the Open Source Earthworm seismic data processing system to this new paradigm.

Opal web services for biomedical applications.

PubMed

Ren, Jingyuan; Williams, Nadya; Clementi, Luca; Krishnan, Sriram; Li, Wilfred W

2010-07-01

Biomedical applications have become increasingly complex, and they often require large-scale high-performance computing resources with a large number of processors and memory. The complexity of application deployment and the advances in cluster, grid and cloud computing require new modes of support for biomedical research. Scientific Software as a Service (sSaaS) enables scalable and transparent access to biomedical applications through simple standards-based Web interfaces. Towards this end, we built a production web server (http://ws.nbcr.net) in August 2007 to support the bioinformatics application called MEME. The server has grown since to include docking analysis with AutoDock and AutoDock Vina, electrostatic calculations using PDB2PQR and APBS, and off-target analysis using SMAP. All the applications on the servers are powered by Opal, a toolkit that allows users to wrap scientific applications easily as web services without any modification to the scientific codes, by writing simple XML configuration files. Opal allows both web forms-based access and programmatic access of all our applications. The Opal toolkit currently supports SOAP-based Web service access to a number of popular applications from the National Biomedical Computation Resource (NBCR) and affiliated collaborative and service projects. In addition, Opal's programmatic access capability allows our applications to be accessed through many workflow tools, including Vision, Kepler, Nimrod/K and VisTrails. From mid-August 2007 to the end of 2009, we have successfully executed 239,814 jobs. The number of successfully executed jobs more than doubled from 205 to 411 per day between 2008 and 2009. The Opal-enabled service model is useful for a wide range of applications. It provides for interoperation with other applications with Web Service interfaces, and allows application developers to focus on the scientific tool and workflow development. Web server availability: http://ws.nbcr.net.

[Facebook and Twitter, are they already in the pediatrician's office? Survey on the use of social networks].

PubMed

Melamud, Ariel; Otero, Paula

2011-10-01

The Web 2.0 has democratized the use of services and applications, being Facebook and Twitter its leading exponents and it even has been proposed that there exists a Medicine 2.0. A survey for professionals subscribed to discussion lists of Argentine Pediatric Society (SAP) and for visitors to the Website was carried out to know the use of Web 2.0. In 377 responses (76% pediatricians), 81.3% of users use Facebook and Twitter 16.5%. Facebook is used in an 85% for personal purposes, while the professional use of it is 41.2%. Pediatricians frequently use other web 2.0 applications such as YouTube (80.3%), sharing images (52.2%) and listening to Podcasts (34.8%). Around 50% of the professionasl surveyed showed interest in receiving information on the professional activites carried out by SAP. Clinicians should recognize these new tools to incorporate them into their professional activities.

Web server for priority ordered multimedia services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Celenk, Mehmet; Godavari, Rakesh K.; Vetnes, Vermund

2001-10-01

In this work, our aim is to provide finer priority levels in the design of a general-purpose Web multimedia server with provisions of the CM services. The type of services provided include reading/writing a web page, downloading/uploading an audio/video stream, navigating the Web through browsing, and interactive video teleconferencing. The selected priority encoding levels for such operations follow the order of admin read/write, hot page CM and Web multicasting, CM read, Web read, CM write and Web write. Hot pages are the most requested CM streams (e.g., the newest movies, video clips, and HDTV channels) and Web pages (e.g., portal pages of the commercial Internet search engines). Maintaining a list of these hot Web pages and CM streams in a content addressable buffer enables a server to multicast hot streams with lower latency and higher system throughput. Cold Web pages and CM streams are treated as regular Web and CM requests. Interactive CM operations such as pause (P), resume (R), fast-forward (FF), and rewind (RW) have to be executed without allocation of extra resources. The proposed multimedia server model is a part of the distributed network with load balancing schedulers. The SM is connected to an integrated disk scheduler (IDS), which supervises an allocated disk manager. The IDS follows the same priority handling as the SM, and implements a SCAN disk-scheduling method for an improved disk access and a higher throughput. Different disks are used for the Web and CM services in order to meet the QoS requirements of CM services. The IDS ouput is forwarded to an Integrated Transmission Scheduler (ITS). The ITS creates a priority ordered buffering of the retrieved Web pages and CM data streams that are fed into an auto regressive moving average (ARMA) based traffic shaping circuitry before being transmitted through the network.

Enabling Real-time Water Decision Support Services Using Model as a Service

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhao, T.; Minsker, B. S.; Lee, J. S.; Salas, F. R.; Maidment, D. R.; David, C. H.

2014-12-01

Through application of computational methods and an integrated information system, data and river modeling services can help researchers and decision makers more rapidly understand river conditions under alternative scenarios. To enable this capability, workflows (i.e., analysis and model steps) are created and published as Web services delivered through an internet browser, including model inputs, a published workflow service, and visualized outputs. The RAPID model, which is a river routing model developed at University of Texas Austin for parallel computation of river discharge, has been implemented as a workflow and published as a Web application. This allows non-technical users to remotely execute the model and visualize results as a service through a simple Web interface. The model service and Web application has been prototyped in the San Antonio and Guadalupe River Basin in Texas, with input from university and agency partners. In the future, optimization model workflows will be developed to link with the RAPID model workflow to provide real-time water allocation decision support services.

US Geoscience Information Network, Web Services for Geoscience Information Discovery and Access

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Richard, S.; Allison, L.; Clark, R.; Coleman, C.; Chen, G.

2012-04-01

The US Geoscience information network has developed metadata profiles for interoperable catalog services based on ISO19139 and the OGC CSW 2.0.2. Currently data services are being deployed for the US Dept. of Energy-funded National Geothermal Data System. These services utilize OGC Web Map Services, Web Feature Services, and THREDDS-served NetCDF for gridded datasets. Services and underlying datasets (along with a wide variety of other information and non information resources are registered in the catalog system. Metadata for registration is produced by various workflows, including harvest from OGC capabilities documents, Drupal-based web applications, transformation from tabular compilations. Catalog search is implemented using the ESRI Geoportal open-source server. We are pursuing various client applications to demonstrated discovery and utilization of the data services. Currently operational applications allow catalog search and data acquisition from map services in an ESRI ArcMap extension, a catalog browse and search application built on openlayers and Django. We are developing use cases and requirements for other applications to utilize geothermal data services for resource exploration and evaluation.

Generic Sensor Data Fusion Services for Web-enabled Environmental Risk Management and Decision-Support Systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sabeur, Zoheir; Middleton, Stuart; Veres, Galina; Zlatev, Zlatko; Salvo, Nicola

2010-05-01

The advancement of smart sensor technology in the last few years has led to an increase in the deployment of affordable sensors for monitoring the environment around Europe. This is generating large amounts of sensor observation information and inevitably leading to problems about how to manage large volumes of data as well as making sense out the data for decision-making. In addition, the various European Directives (Water Framework Diectives, Bathing Water Directives, Habitat Directives, etc.. ) which regulate human activities in the environment and the INSPIRE Directive on spatial information management regulations have implicitely led the designated European Member States environment agencies and authorities to put in place new sensor monitoring infrastructure and share information about environmental regions under their statutory responsibilities. They will need to work cross border and collectively reach environmental quality standards. They will also need to regularly report to the EC on the quality of the environments of which they are responsible and make such information accessible to the members of the public. In recent years, early pioneering work on the design of service oriented architecture using sensor networks has been achieved. Information web-services infrastructure using existing data catalogues and web-GIS map services can now be enriched with the deployment of new sensor observation and data fusion and modelling services using OGC standards. The deployment of the new services which describe sensor observations and intelligent data-processing using data fusion techniques can now be implemented and provide added value information with spatial-temporal uncertainties to the next generation of decision support service systems. The new decision support service systems have become key to implement across Europe in order to comply with EU environmental regulations and INSPIRE. In this paper, data fusion services using OGC standards with sensor observation data streams are described in context of a geo-distributed service infrastructure specialising in multiple environmental risk management and decision-support. The sensor data fusion services are deployed and validated in two use cases. These are respectively concerned with: 1) Microbial risks forecast in bathing waters; and 2) Geohazards in urban zones during underground tunneling activities. This research was initiated in the SANY Integrated Project(www.sany-ip.org) and funded by the European Commission under the 6th Framework Programme.

Toward Exposing Timing-Based Probing Attacks in Web Applications †

PubMed Central

Mao, Jian; Chen, Yue; Shi, Futian; Jia, Yaoqi; Liang, Zhenkai

2017-01-01

Web applications have become the foundation of many types of systems, ranging from cloud services to Internet of Things (IoT) systems. Due to the large amount of sensitive data processed by web applications, user privacy emerges as a major concern in web security. Existing protection mechanisms in modern browsers, e.g., the same origin policy, prevent the users’ browsing information on one website from being directly accessed by another website. However, web applications executed in the same browser share the same runtime environment. Such shared states provide side channels for malicious websites to indirectly figure out the information of other origins. Timing is a classic side channel and the root cause of many recent attacks, which rely on the variations in the time taken by the systems to process different inputs. In this paper, we propose an approach to expose the timing-based probing attacks in web applications. It monitors the browser behaviors and identifies anomalous timing behaviors to detect browser probing attacks. We have prototyped our system in the Google Chrome browser and evaluated the effectiveness of our approach by using known probing techniques. We have applied our approach on a large number of top Alexa sites and reported the suspicious behavior patterns with corresponding analysis results. Our theoretical analysis illustrates that the effectiveness of the timing-based probing attacks is dramatically limited by our approach. PMID:28245610

Toward Exposing Timing-Based Probing Attacks in Web Applications.

PubMed

Mao, Jian; Chen, Yue; Shi, Futian; Jia, Yaoqi; Liang, Zhenkai

2017-02-25

Web applications have become the foundation of many types of systems, ranging from cloud services to Internet of Things (IoT) systems. Due to the large amount of sensitive data processed by web applications, user privacy emerges as a major concern in web security. Existing protection mechanisms in modern browsers, e.g., the same origin policy, prevent the users' browsing information on one website from being directly accessed by another website. However, web applications executed in the same browser share the same runtime environment. Such shared states provide side channels for malicious websites to indirectly figure out the information of other origins. Timing is a classic side channel and the root cause of many recent attacks, which rely on the variations in the time taken by the systems to process different inputs. In this paper, we propose an approach to expose the timing-based probing attacks in web applications. It monitors the browser behaviors and identifies anomalous timing behaviors to detect browser probing attacks. We have prototyped our system in the Google Chrome browser and evaluated the effectiveness of our approach by using known probing techniques. We have applied our approach on a large number of top Alexa sites and reported the suspicious behavior patterns with corresponding analysis results. Our theoretical analysis illustrates that the effectiveness of the timing-based probing attacks is dramatically limited by our approach.

The anatomy of a World Wide Web library service: the BONES demonstration project. Biomedically Oriented Navigator of Electronic Services.

PubMed Central

Schnell, E H

1995-01-01

In 1994, the John A. Prior Health Sciences Library at Ohio State University began to develop a World Wide Web demonstration project, the Biomedically Oriented Navigator of Electronic Services (BONES). The initial intent of BONES was to facilitate the health professional's access to Internet resources by organizing them in a systematic manner. The project not only met this goal but also helped identify the resources needed to launch a full-scale Web library service. This paper discusses the tasks performed and resources used in the development of BONES and describes the creation and organization of documents on the BONES Web server. The paper also discusses the outcomes of the project and the impact on the library's staff and services. PMID:8547903

A Walk through TRIDEC's intermediate Tsunami Early Warning System

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hammitzsch, M.; Reißland, S.; Lendholt, M.

2012-04-01

The management of natural crises is an important application field of the technology developed in the project Collaborative, Complex, and Critical Decision-Support in Evolving Crises (TRIDEC), co-funded by the European Commission in its Seventh Framework Programme. TRIDEC is based on the development of the German Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (GITEWS) and the Distant Early Warning System (DEWS) providing a service platform for both sensor integration and warning dissemination. In TRIDEC new developments in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) are used to extend the existing platform realising a component-based technology framework for building distributed tsunami warning systems for deployment, e.g. in the North-eastern Atlantic, the Mediterranean and Connected Seas (NEAM) region. The TRIDEC system will be implemented in three phases, each with a demonstrator. Successively, the demonstrators are addressing challenges, such as the design and implementation of a robust and scalable service infrastructure supporting the integration and utilisation of existing resources with accelerated generation of large volumes of data. These include sensor systems, geo-information repositories, simulation tools and data fusion tools. In addition to conventional sensors also unconventional sensors and sensor networks play an important role in TRIDEC. The system version presented is based on service-oriented architecture (SOA) concepts and on relevant standards of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). In this way the system continuously gathers, processes and displays events and data coming from open sensor platforms to enable operators to quickly decide whether an early warning is necessary and to send personalized warning messages to the authorities and the population at large through a wide range of communication channels. The system integrates OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) compliant sensor systems for the rapid detection of hazardous events, like earthquakes, sea level anomalies, ocean floor occurrences, and ground displacements. Using OGC Web Map Service (WMS) and Web Feature Service (WFS) spatial data are utilized to depict the situation picture. The integration of a simulation system to identify affected areas is considered using the OGC Web Processing Service (WPS). Warning messages are compiled and transmitted in the OASIS Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) together with addressing information defined via the OASIS Emergency Data Exchange Language - Distribution Element (EDXL-DE). The first system demonstrator has been designed and implemented to support plausible scenarios demonstrating the treatment of simulated tsunami threats with an essential subset of a National Tsunami Warning Centre (NTWC). The feasibility and the potentials of the implemented approach are demonstrated covering standard operations as well as tsunami detection and alerting functions. The demonstrator presented addresses information management and decision-support processes in a hypothetical natural crisis situation caused by a tsunami in the Eastern Mediterranean. Developments of the system are based to the largest extent on free and open source software (FOSS) components and industry standards. Emphasis has been and will be made on leveraging open source technologies that support mature system architecture models wherever appropriate. All open source software produced is foreseen to be published on a publicly available software repository thus allowing others to reuse results achieved and enabling further development and collaboration with a wide community including scientists, developers, users and stakeholders. This live demonstration is linked with the talk "TRIDEC Natural Crisis Management Demonstrator for Tsunamis" (EGU2012-7275) given in the session "Architecture of Future Tsunami Warning Systems" (NH5.7/ESSI1.7).

When the New Application Smell Is Gone: Traditional Intranet Best Practices and Existing Web 2.0 Intranet Infrastructures

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yoose, Becky

2010-01-01

With the growth of Web 2.0 library intranets in recent years, many libraries are leaving behind legacy, first-generation intranets. As Web 2.0 intranets multiply and mature, how will traditional intranet best practices--especially in the areas of planning, implementation, and evaluation--translate into an existing Web 2.0 intranet infrastructure?…

A palliative care needs assessment of rural hospitals.

PubMed

Fink, Regina M; Oman, Kathleen S; Youngwerth, Jeanie; Bryant, Lucinda L

2013-06-01

Palliative care services are lacking in rural hospitals. Implementing palliative care services in rural and remote areas requires knowledge of available resources, specific barriers, and a commitment from the hospital and community. The purpose of the study was to determine awareness, knowledge, barriers, and resources regarding palliative care services in rural hospitals. A descriptive survey design used an investigator-developed needs assessment to survey 374 (40% response rate) health care providers (chief executive officers, chiefs of medical staff, chief nursing officers, and social worker directors) at 236 rural hospitals (<100 beds) in seven Rocky Mountain states. Significant barriers to integrating palliative care exist: lack of administrative support, mentorship, and access to palliative care resources; inadequate basic knowledge about palliative care strategies; and limited training/skills in palliative care. Having contractual relationships with local hospices is a key facilitator. Respondents (56%) want to learn more about palliative care, specifically focusing on pain management, communication techniques, and end-of-life care issues. Webinar and online courses were suggested as strategies to promote long distance learning. It is imperative for quality of care that rural hospitals have practitioners who are up to date on current evidence and practice within a palliative care framework. Unique challenges exist to implementing palliative care services in rural hospitals. Opportunities for informing rural areas focus around utilizing existing hospice resources and relationships, and favoring Web-based classes and online courses. The development of a multifaceted intervention to facilitate education about palliative care and cultivate palliative care services in rural settings is indicated.

High-performance web services for querying gene and variant annotation.

PubMed

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.

Library Services through the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Xiao, Daniel; Mosley, Pixey Anne; Cornish, Alan

1997-01-01

Provides an overview of the services offered by Texas A&M University's Sterling C. Evans Library via the World Wide Web. Included are public relations, instruction, searching capabilities, enhanced communications, and exhibit options. Future applications of the Web in academic libraries are also addressed. (AEF)

Web services in the U.S. geological survey streamstats web application

USGS Publications Warehouse

Guthrie, J.D.; Dartiguenave, C.; Ries, Kernell G.

2009-01-01

StreamStats is a U.S. Geological Survey Web-based GIS application developed as a tool for waterresources planning and management, engineering design, and other applications. StreamStats' primary functionality allows users to obtain drainage-basin boundaries, basin characteristics, and streamflow statistics for gaged and ungaged sites. Recently, Web services have been developed that provide the capability to remote users and applications to access comprehensive GIS tools that are available in StreamStats, including delineating drainage-basin boundaries, computing basin characteristics, estimating streamflow statistics for user-selected locations, and determining point features that coincide with a National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) reach address. For the state of Kentucky, a web service also has been developed that provides users the ability to estimate daily time series of drainage-basin average values of daily precipitation and temperature. The use of web services allows the user to take full advantage of the datasets and processes behind the Stream Stats application without having to develop and maintain them. ?? 2009 IEEE.

Ruby on Rails Applications

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hochstadt, Jake

2011-01-01

Ruby on Rails is an open source web application framework for the Ruby programming language. The first application I built was a web application to manage and authenticate other applications. One of the main requirements for this application was a single sign-on service. This allowed authentication to be built in one location and be implemented in many different applications. For example, users would be able to login using their existing credentials, and be able to access other NASA applications without authenticating again. The second application I worked on was an internal qualification plan app. Previously, the viewing of employee qualifications was managed through Excel spread sheets. I built a database driven application to streamline the process of managing qualifications. Employees would be able to login securely to view, edit and update their personal qualifications.

New Interfaces to Web Documents and Services

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Carlisle, W. H.

1996-01-01

This paper reports on investigations into how to extend capabilities of the Virtual Research Center (VRC) for NASA's Advanced Concepts Office. The work was performed as part of NASA's 1996 Summer Faculty Fellowship program, and involved research into and prototype development of software components that provide documents and services for the World Wide Web (WWW). The WWW has become a de-facto standard for sharing resources over the internet, primarily because web browsers are freely available for the most common hardware platforms and their operating systems. As a consequence of the popularity of the internet, tools, and techniques associated with web browsers are changing rapidly. New capabilities are offered by companies that support web browsers in order to achieve or remain a dominant participant in internet services. Because a goal of the VRC is to build an environment for NASA centers, universities, and industrial partners to share information associated with Advanced Concepts Office activities, the VRC tracks new techniques and services associated with the web in order to determine the their usefulness for distributed and collaborative engineering research activities. Most recently, Java has emerged as a new tool for providing internet services. Because the major web browser providers have decided to include Java in their software, investigations into Java were conducted this summer.

Research of marine sensor web based on SOA and EDA

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jiang, Yongguo; Dou, Jinfeng; Guo, Zhongwen; Hu, Keyong

2015-04-01

A great deal of ocean sensor observation data exists, for a wide range of marine disciplines, derived from in situ and remote observing platforms, in real-time, near-real-time and delayed mode. Ocean monitoring is routinely completed using sensors and instruments. Standardization is the key requirement for exchanging information about ocean sensors and sensor data and for comparing and combining information from different sensor networks. One or more sensors are often physically integrated into a single ocean `instrument' device, which often brings in many challenges related to diverse sensor data formats, parameters units, different spatiotemporal resolution, application domains, data quality and sensors protocols. To face these challenges requires the standardization efforts aiming at facilitating the so-called Sensor Web, which making it easy to provide public access to sensor data and metadata information. In this paper, a Marine Sensor Web, based on SOA and EDA and integrating the MBARI's PUCK protocol, IEEE 1451 and OGC SWE 2.0, is illustrated with a five-layer architecture. The Web Service layer and Event Process layer are illustrated in detail with an actual example. The demo study has demonstrated that a standard-based system can be built to access sensors and marine instruments distributed globally using common Web browsers for monitoring the environment and oceanic conditions besides marine sensor data on the Web, this framework of Marine Sensor Web can also play an important role in many other domains' information integration.

Exploring weight loss services in primary care and staff views on using a web-based programme.

PubMed

Ware, Lisa J; Williams, Sarah; Bradbury, Katherine; Brant, Catherine; Little, Paul; Hobbs, F D Richard; Yardley, Lucy

2012-01-01

Demand is increasing for primary care to deliver effective weight management services to patients, but research suggests that staff feel inadequately resourced for such a role. Supporting service delivery with a free and effective web-based weight management programme could maximise primary care resource and provide cost-effective support for patients. However, integration of e-health into primary care may face challenges. To explore primary care staff experiences of delivering weight management services and their perceptions of a web-based weight management programme to aid service delivery. Focus groups were conducted with primary care physicians, nurses and healthcare assistants (n = 36) involved in delivering weight loss services. Data were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. Participants thought that primary care should be involved in delivering weight management, especially when weight was aggravating health problems. However, they felt under-resourced to deliver these services and unsure as to the effectiveness of their input, as routine services were not evaluated. Beliefs that current services were ineffective resulted in staff reluctance to allocate more resources. Participants were hopeful that supplementing practice with a web-based weight management programme would enhance patient services and promote service evaluation. Although primary care staff felt they should deliver weight loss services, low levels of faith in the efficacy of current treatments resulted in provision of under-resourced and 'ad hoc' services. Integration of a web-based weight loss programme that promotes service evaluation and provides a cost-effective option for supporting patients may encourage practices to invest more in weight management services.

Sharing environmental models: An Approach using GitHub repositories and Web Processing Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Stasch, Christoph; Nuest, Daniel; Pross, Benjamin

2016-04-01

The GLUES (Global Assessment of Land Use Dynamics, Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Ecosystem Services) project established a spatial data infrastructure for scientific geospatial data and metadata (http://geoportal-glues.ufz.de), where different regional collaborative projects researching the impacts of climate and socio-economic changes on sustainable land management can share their underlying base scenarios and datasets. One goal of the project is to ease the sharing of computational models between institutions and to make them easily executable in Web-based infrastructures. In this work, we present such an approach for sharing computational models relying on GitHub repositories (http://github.com) and Web Processing Services. At first, model providers upload their model implementations to GitHub repositories in order to share them with others. The GitHub platform allows users to submit changes to the model code. The changes can be discussed and reviewed before merging them. However, while GitHub allows sharing and collaborating of model source code, it does not actually allow running these models, which requires efforts to transfer the implementation to a model execution framework. We thus have extended an existing implementation of the OGC Web Processing Service standard (http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wps), the 52°North Web Processing Service (http://52north.org/wps) platform to retrieve all model implementations from a git (http://git-scm.com) repository and add them to the collection of published geoprocesses. The current implementation is restricted to models implemented as R scripts using WPS4R annotations (Hinz et al.) and to Java algorithms using the 52°North WPS Java API. The models hence become executable through a standardized Web API by multiple clients such as desktop or browser GIS and modelling frameworks. If the model code is changed on the GitHub platform, the changes are retrieved by the service and the processes will be updated accordingly. The admin tool of the 52°North WPS was extended to support automated retrieval and deployment of computational models from GitHub repositories. Once the R code is available in the GitHub repo, the contained process can be easily deployed and executed by simply defining the GitHub repository URL in the WPS admin tool. We illustrate the usage of the approach by sharing and running a model for land use system archetypes developed by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ, see Vaclavik et al.). The original R code was extended and published in the 52°North WPS using both, public and non-public datasets (Nüst et al., see also https://github.com/52North/glues-wps). Hosting the analysis in a Git repository now allows WPS administrators, client developers, and modelers to easily work together on new versions or completely new web processes using the powerful GitHub collaboration platform. References: Hinz, M. et. al. (2013): Spatial Statistics on the Geospatial Web. In: The 16th AGILE International Conference on Geographic Information Science, Short Papers. http://www.agile-online.org/Conference_Paper/CDs/agile_2013/Short_Papers/SP_S3.1_Hinz.pdf Nüst, D. et. al.: (2015): Open and reproducible global land use classification. In: EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts . Vol. 17. European Geophysical Union, 2015, p. 9125, http://meetingorganizer.copernicus. org/EGU2015/EGU2015- 9125.pdf Vaclavik, T., et. al. (2013): Mapping global land system archetypes. Global Environmental Change 23(6): 1637-1647. Online available: October 9, 2013, DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2013.09.004

Using ESO Reflex with Web Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Järveläinen, P.; Savolainen, V.; Oittinen, T.; Maisala, S.; Ullgrén, M. Hook, R.

2008-08-01

ESO Reflex is a prototype graphical workflow system, based on Taverna, and primarily intended to be a flexible way of running ESO data reduction recipes along with other legacy applications and user-written tools. ESO Reflex can also readily use the Taverna Web Services features that are based on the Apache Axis SOAP implementation. Taverna is a general purpose Web Service client, and requires no programming to use such services. However, Taverna also has some restrictions: for example, no numerical types such integers. In addition the preferred binding style is document/literal wrapped, but most astronomical services publish the Axis default WSDL using RPC/encoded style. Despite these minor limitations we have created simple but very promising test VO workflow using the Sesame name resolver service at CDS Strasbourg, the Hubble SIAP server at the Multi-Mission Archive at Space Telescope (MAST) and the WESIX image cataloging and catalogue cross-referencing service at the University of Pittsburgh. ESO Reflex can also pass files and URIs via the PLASTIC protocol to visualisation tools and has its own viewer for VOTables. We picked these three Web Services to try to set up a realistic and useful ESO Reflex workflow. They also demonstrate ESO Reflex abilities to use many kind of Web Services because each of them requires a different interface. We describe each of these services in turn and comment on how it was used

KBWS: an EMBOSS associated package for accessing bioinformatics web services.

PubMed

Oshita, Kazuki; Arakawa, Kazuharu; Tomita, Masaru

2011-04-29

The availability of bioinformatics web-based services is rapidly proliferating, for their interoperability and ease of use. The next challenge is in the integration of these services in the form of workflows, and several projects are already underway, standardizing the syntax, semantics, and user interfaces. In order to deploy the advantages of web services with locally installed tools, here we describe a collection of proxy client tools for 42 major bioinformatics web services in the form of European Molecular Biology Open Software Suite (EMBOSS) UNIX command-line tools. EMBOSS provides sophisticated means for discoverability and interoperability for hundreds of tools, and our package, named the Keio Bioinformatics Web Service (KBWS), adds functionalities of local and multiple alignment of sequences, phylogenetic analyses, and prediction of cellular localization of proteins and RNA secondary structures. This software implemented in C is available under GPL from http://www.g-language.org/kbws/ and GitHub repository http://github.com/cory-ko/KBWS. Users can utilize the SOAP services implemented in Perl directly via WSDL file at http://soap.g-language.org/kbws.wsdl (RPC Encoded) and http://soap.g-language.org/kbws_dl.wsdl (Document/literal).

Obtaining P3P Privacy Policies for Composite Services

PubMed Central

Sun, Yi; Huang, Zhiqiu; Ke, Changbo

2014-01-01

With the development of web services technology, web services have changed from single to composite services. Privacy protection in composite services is becoming an important issue. P3P (platform for privacy preferences) is a privacy policy language which was designed for single web services. It enables service providers to express how they will deal with the privacy information of service consumers. In order to solve the problem that P3P cannot be applied to composite services directly, we propose a method to obtain P3P privacy policies for composite services. In this method, we present the definitions of Purpose, Recipient, and Retention elements as well as Optional and Required attributes for P3P policies of composite services. We also provide an instantiation to illustrate the feasibility of the method. PMID:25126609

Sustainable Software Decisions for Long-term Projects (Invited)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shepherd, A.; Groman, R. C.; Chandler, C. L.; Gaylord, D.; Sun, M.

2013-12-01

Adopting new, emerging technologies can be difficult for established projects that are positioned to exist for years to come. In some cases the challenge lies in the pre-existing software architecture. In others, the challenge lies in the fluctuation of resources like people, time and funding. The Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO) was created in late 2006 by combining the data management offices for the U.S. GLOBEC and U.S. JGOFS programs to publish data for researchers funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Since its inception, BCO-DMO has been supporting access and discovery of these data through web-accessible software systems, and the office has worked through many of the challenges of incorporating new technologies into its software systems. From migrating human readable, flat file metadata storage into a relational database, and now, into a content management system (Drupal) to incorporating controlled vocabularies, new technologies can radically affect the existing software architecture. However, through the use of science-driven use cases, effective resource management, and loosely coupled software components, BCO-DMO has been able to adapt its existing software architecture to adopt new technologies. One of the latest efforts at BCO-DMO revolves around applying metadata semantics for publishing linked data in support of data discovery. This effort primarily affects the metadata web interface software at http://bco-dmo.org and the geospatial interface software at http://mapservice.bco-dmo.org/. With guidance from science-driven use cases and consideration of our resources, implementation decisions are made using a strategy to loosely couple the existing software systems to the new technologies. The results of this process led to the use of REST web services and a combination of contributed and custom Drupal modules for publishing BCO-DMO's content using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) via an instance of the Virtuoso Open-Source triplestore.

The NASA Technical Report Server

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Nelson, Michael L.; Gottlich, Gretchen L.; Bianco, David J.; Paulson, Sharon S.; Binkley, Robert L.; Kellogg, Yvonne D.; Beaumont, Chris J.; Schmunk, Robert B.; Kurtz, Michael J.; Accomazzi, Alberto

1995-01-01

The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 established NASA and charged it to "provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof." The search for innovative methods to distribute NASA's information lead a grass-roots team to create the NASA Technical Report Server (NTRS), which uses the World Wide Web and other popular Internet-based information systems as search engines. The NTRS is an inter-center effort which provides uniform access to various distributed publication servers residing on the Internet. Users have immediate desktop access to technical publications from NASA centers and institutes. The NTRS is comprised of several units, some constructed especially for inclusion in NTRS, and others that are existing NASA publication services that NTRS reuses. This paper presents the NTRS architecture, usage metrics, and the lessons learned while implementing and maintaining the service. The NTRS is largely constructed with freely available software running on existing hardware. NTRS builds upon existing hardware and software, and the resulting additional exposure for the body of literature contained ensures that NASA's institutional knowledge base will continue to receive the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination.

Transfer of innovation, knowledge and competencies on the care service for people with acquired disabilities: the European Project "Care for Work".

PubMed

Barchitta, M; Fragapane, S; Consoli, M T; Pennisi, C; Agodi, A

2012-01-01

The growing needs of people with disabilities require to integrate this issue into public health in order to improve political feasibility and to ensure that disability will not be left off from any strategic table. The main aim of the "Care for Work" project was to provide training contents to help workers and unemployed people to adapt their knowledge, skills and competencies to the care services sector in order to facilitate their insertion in a new employment source. The partners participating in the project are Organizations from 5 European countries. The project has been divided into seven Work Packages (WPs): three transversal WPs and four specific WPs, each addressing specific activities necessary to achieve the final objectives of the project. The "Care for Work" learning environment contains specific information and training on the techniques for caring people with acquired physical disabilities, as text documents and short training films. The project combines e-learning (Web 2.0) and mobile learning providing a flexible training platform for workers of care services sector. The "Care for Work" project offers specific training addressed to meet the new existing needs of workers of the care services sector and/or unemployed people. All the information and results of the project are available on the web page: www.careforwork.eu, and the present article is part of the WP "Valorization".

NeuronDepot: keeping your colleagues in sync by combining modern cloud storage services, the local file system, and simple web applications

PubMed Central

Rautenberg, Philipp L.; Kumaraswamy, Ajayrama; Tejero-Cantero, Alvaro; Doblander, Christoph; Norouzian, Mohammad R.; Kai, Kazuki; Jacobsen, Hans-Arno; Ai, Hiroyuki; Wachtler, Thomas; Ikeno, Hidetoshi

2014-01-01

Neuroscience today deals with a “data deluge” derived from the availability of high-throughput sensors of brain structure and brain activity, and increased computational resources for detailed simulations with complex output. We report here (1) a novel approach to data sharing between collaborating scientists that brings together file system tools and cloud technologies, (2) a service implementing this approach, called NeuronDepot, and (3) an example application of the service to a complex use case in the neurosciences. The main drivers for our approach are to facilitate collaborations with a transparent, automated data flow that shields scientists from having to learn new tools or data structuring paradigms. Using NeuronDepot is simple: one-time data assignment from the originator and cloud based syncing—thus making experimental and modeling data available across the collaboration with minimum overhead. Since data sharing is cloud based, our approach opens up the possibility of using new software developments and hardware scalabitliy which are associated with elastic cloud computing. We provide an implementation that relies on existing synchronization services and is usable from all devices via a reactive web interface. We are motivating our solution by solving the practical problems of the GinJang project, a collaboration of three universities across eight time zones with a complex workflow encompassing data from electrophysiological recordings, imaging, morphological reconstructions, and simulations. PMID:24971059

NeuronDepot: keeping your colleagues in sync by combining modern cloud storage services, the local file system, and simple web applications.

PubMed

Rautenberg, Philipp L; Kumaraswamy, Ajayrama; Tejero-Cantero, Alvaro; Doblander, Christoph; Norouzian, Mohammad R; Kai, Kazuki; Jacobsen, Hans-Arno; Ai, Hiroyuki; Wachtler, Thomas; Ikeno, Hidetoshi

2014-01-01

Neuroscience today deals with a "data deluge" derived from the availability of high-throughput sensors of brain structure and brain activity, and increased computational resources for detailed simulations with complex output. We report here (1) a novel approach to data sharing between collaborating scientists that brings together file system tools and cloud technologies, (2) a service implementing this approach, called NeuronDepot, and (3) an example application of the service to a complex use case in the neurosciences. The main drivers for our approach are to facilitate collaborations with a transparent, automated data flow that shields scientists from having to learn new tools or data structuring paradigms. Using NeuronDepot is simple: one-time data assignment from the originator and cloud based syncing-thus making experimental and modeling data available across the collaboration with minimum overhead. Since data sharing is cloud based, our approach opens up the possibility of using new software developments and hardware scalabitliy which are associated with elastic cloud computing. We provide an implementation that relies on existing synchronization services and is usable from all devices via a reactive web interface. We are motivating our solution by solving the practical problems of the GinJang project, a collaboration of three universities across eight time zones with a complex workflow encompassing data from electrophysiological recordings, imaging, morphological reconstructions, and simulations.

75 FR 20400 - Submission for Review: Federal Cyber Service: Scholarship for Service (SFS) Registration Web Site

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-04-19

... OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT Submission for Review: Federal Cyber Service: Scholarship for Service (SFS) Registration Web Site AGENCY: U.S. Office of Personnel Management. ACTION: 60-Day Notice and request for comments. SUMMARY: The Human Resources Solutions, Office of Personnel Management (OPM) offers...

75 FR 57086 - Submission for Review: Federal Cyber Service: Scholarship for Service (SFS) Registration Web Site

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-09-17

... OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT Submission for Review: Federal Cyber Service: Scholarship for Service (SFS) Registration Web Site AGENCY: Office of Personnel Management. ACTION: 30-Day Notice and request for comments. SUMMARY: The Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Human Resources Solutions...

Data as a Service: A Seismic Web Service Pipeline

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Martinez, E.

2016-12-01

Publishing data as a service pipeline provides an improved, dynamic approach over static data archives. A service pipeline is a collection of micro web services that each perform a specific task and expose the results of that task. Structured request/response formats allow micro web services to be chained together into a service pipeline to provide more complex results. The U.S. Geological Survey adopted service pipelines to publish seismic hazard and design data supporting both specific and generalized audiences. The seismic web service pipeline starts at source data and exposes probability and deterministic hazard curves, response spectra, risk-targeted ground motions, and seismic design provision metadata. This pipeline supports public/private organizations and individual engineers/researchers. Publishing data as a service pipeline provides a variety of benefits. Exposing the component services enables advanced users to inspect or use the data at each processing step. Exposing a composite service enables new users quick access to published data with a very low barrier to entry. Advanced users may re-use micro web services by chaining them in new ways or injecting new micros services into the pipeline. This allows the user to test hypothesis and compare their results to published results. Exposing data at each step in the pipeline enables users to review and validate the data and process more quickly and accurately. Making the source code open source, per USGS policy, further enables this transparency. Each micro service may be scaled independent of any other micro service. This ensures data remains available and timely in a cost-effective manner regardless of load. Additionally, if a new or more efficient approach to processing the data is discovered, this new approach may replace the old approach at any time, keeping the pipeline running while not affecting other micro services.

Implementation of Web 2.0 services in academic, medical and research libraries: a scoping review.

PubMed

Gardois, Paolo; Colombi, Nicoletta; Grillo, Gaetano; Villanacci, Maria C

2012-06-01

Academic, medical and research libraries frequently implement Web 2.0 services for users. Several reports notwithstanding, characteristics and effectiveness of services are unclear. To find out: the Web 2.0 services implemented by medical, academic and research libraries; study designs, measures and types of data used in included articles to evaluate effectiveness; whether the identified body of literature is amenable to a systematic review of results. Scoping review mapping the literature on the topic. Searches were performed in 19 databases. research articles in English, Italian, German, French and Spanish (publication date ≥ 2006) about Web 2.0 services for final users implemented by academic, medical and research libraries. Reviewers' agreement was measured by Cohen's kappa. From a data set of 6461 articles, 255 (4%) were coded and analysed. Conferencing/chat/instant messaging, blogging, podcasts, social networking, wikis and aggregators were frequently examined. Services were mainly targeted at general academic users of English-speaking countries. Data prohibit a reliable estimate of the relative frequency of implemented Web 2.0 services. Case studies were the prevalent design. Most articles evaluated different outcomes using diverse assessment methodologies. A systematic review is recommended to assess the effectiveness of such services. © 2012 The authors. Health Information and Libraries Journal © 2012 Health Libraries Group.

A health analytics semantic ETL service for obesity surveillance.

PubMed

Poulymenopoulou, M; Papakonstantinou, D; Malamateniou, F; Vassilacopoulos, G

2015-01-01

The increasingly large amount of data produced in healthcare (e.g. collected through health information systems such as electronic medical records - EMRs or collected through novel data sources such as personal health records - PHRs, social media, web resources) enable the creation of detailed records about people's health, sentiments and activities (e.g. physical activity, diet, sleep quality) that can be used in the public health area among others. However, despite the transformative potential of big data in public health surveillance there are several challenges in integrating big data. In this paper, the interoperability challenge is tackled and a semantic Extract Transform Load (ETL) service is proposed that seeks to semantically annotate big data to result into valuable data for analysis. This service is considered as part of a health analytics engine on the cloud that interacts with existing healthcare information exchange networks, like the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE), PHRs, sensors, mobile applications, and other web resources to retrieve patient health, behavioral and daily activity data. The semantic ETL service aims at semantically integrating big data for use by analytic mechanisms. An illustrative implementation of the service on big data which is potentially relevant to human obesity, enables using appropriate analytic techniques (e.g. machine learning, text mining) that are expected to assist in identifying patterns and contributing factors (e.g. genetic background, social, environmental) for this social phenomenon and, hence, drive health policy changes and promote healthy behaviors where residents live, work, learn, shop and play.

Exploring Students' Perceptions of Service-Learning Experiences in an Undergraduate Web Design Course

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Sang Joon; Wilder, Charlie; Yu, Chien

2018-01-01

Service-learning is an experiential learning experience where students learn and develop through active participation in community service to meet the needs of a community. This study explored student learning experiences in a service-learning group project and their perceptions of service-learning in an undergraduate web design course. The data…

Has the Web really empowered health care consumers? The truth is customers may not have changed as much as we think.

PubMed

Wilkins, S T; Navarro, F H

2001-01-01

The experts tell us that fueled by unprecedented access to health information online, today's new health care consumer will revolutionize the way health care services are organized and delivered. An examination of consumers from a health value-graphic perspective, however, casts some doubt on these predictions. Patterns emerging online are simply making us more aware of existing consumer segments that have always been actively involved in their own health.

Scalable web services for the PSIPRED Protein Analysis Workbench.

PubMed

Buchan, Daniel W A; Minneci, Federico; Nugent, Tim C O; Bryson, Kevin; Jones, David T

2013-07-01

Here, we present the new UCL Bioinformatics Group's PSIPRED Protein Analysis Workbench. The Workbench unites all of our previously available analysis methods into a single web-based framework. The new web portal provides a greatly streamlined user interface with a number of new features to allow users to better explore their results. We offer a number of additional services to enable computationally scalable execution of our prediction methods; these include SOAP and XML-RPC web server access and new HADOOP packages. All software and services are available via the UCL Bioinformatics Group website at http://bioinf.cs.ucl.ac.uk/.

The ICNP-BaT--a multilingual web-based tool to support the collaborative translation of the International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP).

PubMed

Schrader, Ulrich; Tackenberg, Peter; Widmer, Rudolf; Portenier, Lucien; König, Peter

2007-01-01

To ease and speed up the translation of the ICNP version 1 into the German language a web service was developed to support the collaborative work of all Austrian, Swiss, and German translators and subsequently of the evaluators of the resultant translation. The web service does help to support a modified Delphi technique. Since the web service is multilingual by design it can facilitate the translation of the ICNP into other languages as well. The process chosen can be adopted by other projects involved in translating terminologies.

Expanding Access and Usage of NASA Near Real-Time Imagery and Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cechini, M.; Murphy, K. J.; Boller, R. A.; Schmaltz, J. E.; Thompson, C. K.; Huang, T.; McGann, J. M.; Ilavajhala, S.; Alarcon, C.; Roberts, J. T.

2013-12-01

In late 2009, the Land Atmosphere Near-real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE) was created to greatly expand the range of near real-time data products from a variety of Earth Observing System (EOS) instruments. Since that time, NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) developed the Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS) to provide highly responsive, scalable, and expandable imagery services that distribute near real-time imagery in an intuitive and geo-referenced format. The GIBS imagery services provide access through standards-based protocols such as the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Tile Service (WMTS) and standard mapping file formats such as the Keyhole Markup Language (KML). Leveraging these standard mechanisms opens NASA near real-time imagery to a broad landscape of mapping libraries supporting mobile applications. By easily integrating with mobile application development libraries, GIBS makes it possible for NASA imagery to become a reliable and valuable source for end-user applications. Recently, EOSDIS has taken steps to integrate near real-time metadata products into the EOS ClearingHOuse (ECHO) metadata repository. Registration of near real-time metadata allows for near real-time data discovery through ECHO clients. In kind with the near real-time data processing requirements, the ECHO ingest model allows for low-latency metadata insertion and updates. Combining with the ECHO repository, the fast visual access of GIBS imagery can now be linked directly back to the source data file(s). Through the use of discovery standards such as OpenSearch, desktop and mobile applications can connect users to more than just an image. As data services, such as OGC Web Coverage Service, become more prevalent within the EOSDIS system, applications may even be able to connect users from imagery to data values. In addition, the full resolution GIBS imagery provides visual context to other GIS data and tools. The NASA near real-time imagery covers a broad set of Earth science disciplines. By leveraging the ECHO and GIBS services, these data can become a visual context within which other GIS activities are performed. The focus of this presentation is to discuss the GIBS imagery and ECHO metadata services facilitating near real-time discovery and usage. Existing synergies and future possibilities will also be discussed. The NASA Worldview demonstration client will be used to show an existing application combining the ECHO and GIBS services.

A resource oriented webs service for environmental modeling

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ferencik, Ioan

2013-04-01

Environmental modeling is a largely adopted practice in the study of natural phenomena. Environmental models can be difficult to build and use and thus sharing them within the community is an important aspect. The most common approach to share a model is to expose it as a web service. In practice the interaction with this web service is cumbersome due to lack of standardized contract and the complexity of the model being exposed. In this work we investigate the use of a resource oriented approach in exposing environmental models as web services. We view a model as a layered resource build atop the object concept from Object Oriented Programming, augmented with persistence capabilities provided by an embedded object database to keep track of its state and implementing the four basic principles of resource oriented architectures: addressability, statelessness, representation and uniform interface. For implementation we use exclusively open source software: Django framework, dyBase object oriented database and Python programming language. We developed a generic framework of resources structured into a hierarchy of types and consequently extended this typology with recurses specific to the domain of environmental modeling. To test our web service we used cURL, a robust command-line based web client.

The SOOS Data Portal, providing access to Southern Oceans data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Proctor, Roger; Finney, Kim; Blain, Peter; Taylor, Fiona; Newman, Louise; Meredith, Mike; Schofield, Oscar

2013-04-01

The Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS) is an international initiative to enhance, coordinate and expand the strategic observations of the Southern Oceans that are required to address key scientific and societal challenges. A key component of SOOS will be the creation and maintenance of a Southern Ocean Data Portal to provide improved access to historical and ongoing data (Schofield et al., 2012, Eos, Vol. 93, No. 26, pp 241-243). The scale of this effort will require strong leveraging of existing data centres, new cyberinfrastructure development efforts, and defined data collection, quality control, and archiving procedures across the international community. The task of assembling the SOOS data portal is assigned to the SOOS Data Management Sub-Committee. The information infrastructure chosen for the SOOS data portal is based on the Australian Ocean Data Network (AODN, http://portal.aodn.org.au). The AODN infrastructure is built on open-source tools and the use of international standards ensures efficiency of data exchange and interoperability between contributing systems. OGC standard web services protocols are used for serving of data via the internet. These include Web Map Service (WMS) for visualisation, Web Feature Service (WFS) for data download, and Catalogue Service for Web (CSW) for catalogue exchange. The portal offers a number of tools to access and visualize data: - a Search link to the metadata catalogue enables search and discovery by simple text search, by geographic area, temporal extent, keyword, parameter, organisation, or by any combination of these, allowing users to gain access to further information and/or the data for download. Also, searches can be restricted to items which have either data to download, or attached map layers, or both - a Map interface for discovery and display of data, with the ability to change the style and opacity of layers, add additional data layers via OGC Web Map Services, view animated timeseries datastreams - data can be easily accessed and downloaded including directly from OPeNDAP/THREDDS servers. The SOOS data portal (http://soos.aodn.org.au/soos) aims to make access to Southern Ocean data a simple process and the initial layout classifies data into six themes - Heat and Freshwater; Circulation; Ice-sheets and Sea level; Carbon; Sea-ice; and Ecosystems, with the ability to integrate layers between themes. The portal is in its infancy (pilot launched January 2013) with a limited number of datasets available; however, the number of datasets is expected to grow rapidly as the international community becomes fully engaged.

BIRI: a new approach for automatically discovering and indexing available public bioinformatics resources from the literature.

PubMed

de la Calle, Guillermo; García-Remesal, Miguel; Chiesa, Stefano; de la Iglesia, Diana; Maojo, Victor

2009-10-07

The rapid evolution of Internet technologies and the collaborative approaches that dominate the field have stimulated the development of numerous bioinformatics resources. To address this new framework, several initiatives have tried to organize these services and resources. In this paper, we present the BioInformatics Resource Inventory (BIRI), a new approach for automatically discovering and indexing available public bioinformatics resources using information extracted from the scientific literature. The index generated can be automatically updated by adding additional manuscripts describing new resources. We have developed web services and applications to test and validate our approach. It has not been designed to replace current indexes but to extend their capabilities with richer functionalities. We developed a web service to provide a set of high-level query primitives to access the index. The web service can be used by third-party web services or web-based applications. To test the web service, we created a pilot web application to access a preliminary knowledge base of resources. We tested our tool using an initial set of 400 abstracts. Almost 90% of the resources described in the abstracts were correctly classified. More than 500 descriptions of functionalities were extracted. These experiments suggest the feasibility of our approach for automatically discovering and indexing current and future bioinformatics resources. Given the domain-independent characteristics of this tool, it is currently being applied by the authors in other areas, such as medical nanoinformatics. BIRI is available at http://edelman.dia.fi.upm.es/biri/.

A SOAP Web Service for accessing MODIS land product subsets

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

SanthanaVannan, Suresh K; Cook, Robert B; Pan, Jerry Yun

2011-01-01

Remote sensing data from satellites have provided valuable information on the state of the earth for several decades. Since March 2000, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor on board NASA s Terra and Aqua satellites have been providing estimates of several land parameters useful in understanding earth system processes at global, continental, and regional scales. However, the HDF-EOS file format, specialized software needed to process the HDF-EOS files, data volume, and the high spatial and temporal resolution of MODIS data make it difficult for users wanting to extract small but valuable amounts of information from the MODIS record. Tomore » overcome this usability issue, the NASA-funded Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) for Biogeochemical Dynamics at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) developed a Web service that provides subsets of MODIS land products using Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). The ORNL DAAC MODIS subsetting Web service is a unique way of serving satellite data that exploits a fairly established and popular Internet protocol to allow users access to massive amounts of remote sensing data. The Web service provides MODIS land product subsets up to 201 x 201 km in a non-proprietary comma delimited text file format. Users can programmatically query the Web service to extract MODIS land parameters for real time data integration into models, decision support tools or connect to workflow software. Information regarding the MODIS SOAP subsetting Web service is available on the World Wide Web (WWW) at http://daac.ornl.gov/modiswebservice.« less

UltiMatch-NL: A Web Service Matchmaker Based on Multiple Semantic Filters

PubMed Central

Mohebbi, Keyvan; Ibrahim, Suhaimi; Zamani, Mazdak; Khezrian, Mojtaba

2014-01-01

In this paper, a Semantic Web service matchmaker called UltiMatch-NL is presented. UltiMatch-NL applies two filters namely Signature-based and Description-based on different abstraction levels of a service profile to achieve more accurate results. More specifically, the proposed filters rely on semantic knowledge to extract the similarity between a given pair of service descriptions. Thus it is a further step towards fully automated Web service discovery via making this process more semantic-aware. In addition, a new technique is proposed to weight and combine the results of different filters of UltiMatch-NL, automatically. Moreover, an innovative approach is introduced to predict the relevance of requests and Web services and eliminate the need for setting a threshold value of similarity. In order to evaluate UltiMatch-NL, the repository of OWLS-TC is used. The performance evaluation based on standard measures from the information retrieval field shows that semantic matching of OWL-S services can be significantly improved by incorporating designed matching filters. PMID:25157872

UltiMatch-NL: a Web service matchmaker based on multiple semantic filters.

PubMed

Mohebbi, Keyvan; Ibrahim, Suhaimi; Zamani, Mazdak; Khezrian, Mojtaba

2014-01-01

In this paper, a Semantic Web service matchmaker called UltiMatch-NL is presented. UltiMatch-NL applies two filters namely Signature-based and Description-based on different abstraction levels of a service profile to achieve more accurate results. More specifically, the proposed filters rely on semantic knowledge to extract the similarity between a given pair of service descriptions. Thus it is a further step towards fully automated Web service discovery via making this process more semantic-aware. In addition, a new technique is proposed to weight and combine the results of different filters of UltiMatch-NL, automatically. Moreover, an innovative approach is introduced to predict the relevance of requests and Web services and eliminate the need for setting a threshold value of similarity. In order to evaluate UltiMatch-NL, the repository of OWLS-TC is used. The performance evaluation based on standard measures from the information retrieval field shows that semantic matching of OWL-S services can be significantly improved by incorporating designed matching filters.

U.S. Geological Survey Community for Data Integration-NWIS Web Services Snapshot Tool for ArcGIS

USGS Publications Warehouse

Holl, Sally

2011-01-01

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) data resources are so vast that many scientists are unaware of data holdings that may be directly relevant to their research. Data are also difficult to access and large corporate databases, such as the National Water Information System (NWIS) that houses hydrologic data for the Nation, are challenging to use without considerable expertise and investment of time. The USGS Community for Data Integration (CDI) was established in 2009 to address data and information management issues affecting the proficiency of earth science research. A CDI workshop convened in 2009 identified common data integration needs of USGS scientists and targeted high value opportunities that might address these needs by leveraging existing projects in USGS science centers, in-kind contributions, and supplemental funding. To implement this strategy, CDI sponsored a software development project in 2010 to facilitate access and use of NWIS data with ArcGIS, a widely used Geographic Information System. The resulting software product, the NWIS Web Services Snapshot Tool for ArcGIS, is presented here.

Home Energy Saver

Science.gov Websites

Energy Saver (HES) Licensing Information The Home Energy Saver is a web-based residential energy calculator and web service that provides customized estimates of residential energy use, energy bills, and potential energy-saving strategies and ranks them in order of cost-effectiveness. Use of the web-services

Web 2.0 and Nigerian Academic Librarians

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Adekunmisi, Sowemimo Ronke; Odunewu, Abiodun Olusegun

2016-01-01

Web 2.0 applications to library services are aimed at enhancing the provision of relevant and cost-effective information resources for quality education and research. Despite the richness of these web applications and their enormous impact on library and information services as recorded in the developed world, Nigerian academic libraries are yet…

49 CFR 604.15 - Registration of qualified human service organizations.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-10-01

... Human Service Organizations and Duties for Recipients With Respect to Charter Registration Web site... low income, advanced age, or with disabilities), shall register on FTA's charter registration Web site... recipient if it: (1) Registers on the FTA Web site in accordance with paragraph (a) of this section at least...

Online Information Services. Caught in the Web?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Green, Tim

1995-01-01

Provides brief reviews of the sites for several online services of the World Wide Web; the Web as a marketing tool and other aspects of interest to information professionals are highlighted. A sidebar presents information on accessing Internet locations, graphics, online forms, Telnet, saving, printing, mailing, and searching. (AEF)

Connecting long-tail scientists with big data centers using SaaS

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Percivall, G. S.; Bermudez, L. E.

2012-12-01

Big data centers and long tail scientists represent two extremes in the geoscience research community. Interoperability and inter-use based on software-as-a-service (SaaS) increases access to big data holdings by this underserved community of scientists. Large, institutional data centers have long been recognized as vital resources in the geoscience community. Permanent data archiving and dissemination centers provide "access to the data and (are) a critical source of people who have experience in the use of the data and can provide advice and counsel for new applications." [NRC] The "long-tail of science" is the geoscience researchers that work separate from institutional data centers [Heidorn]. Long-tail scientists need to be efficient consumers of data from large, institutional data centers. Discussions in NSF EarthCube capture the challenges: "Like the vast majority of NSF-funded researchers, Alice (a long-tail scientist) works with limited resources. In the absence of suitable expertise and infrastructure, the apparently simple task that she assigns to her graduate student becomes an information discovery and management nightmare. Downloading and transforming datasets takes weeks." [Foster, et.al.] The long-tail metaphor points to methods to bridge the gap, i.e., the Web. A decade ago, OGC began building a geospatial information space using open, web standards for geoprocessing [ORM]. Recently, [Foster, et.al.] accurately observed that "by adopting, adapting, and applying semantic web and SaaS technologies, we can make the use of geoscience data as easy and convenient as consumption of online media." SaaS places web services into Cloud Computing. SaaS for geospatial is emerging rapidly building on the first-generation geospatial web, e.g., OGC Web Coverage Service [WCS] and the Data Access Protocol [DAP]. Several recent examples show progress in applying SaaS to geosciences: - NASA's Earth Data Coherent Web has a goal to improve science user experience using Web Services (e.g. W*S, SOAP, RESTful) to reduce barriers to using EOSDIS data [ECW]. - NASA's LANCE provides direct access to vast amounts of satellite data using the OGC Web Map Tile Service (WMTS). - NOAA's Unified Access Framework for Gridded Data (UAF Grid) is a web service based capability for direct access to a variety of datasets using netCDF, OPeNDAP, THREDDS, WMS and WCS. [UAF] Tools to access SaaS's are many and varied: some proprietary, others open source; some run in browsers, others are stand-alone applications. What's required is interoperability using web interfaces offered by the data centers. NOAA's UAF service stack supports Matlab, ArcGIS, Ferret, GrADS, Google Earth, IDV, LAS. Any SaaS that offers OGC Web Services (WMS, WFS, WCS) can be accessed by scores of clients [OGC]. While there has been much progress in the recent year toward offering web services for the long-tail of scientists, more needs to be done. Web services offer data access but more than access is needed for inter-use of data, e.g. defining data schemas that allow for data fusion, addressing coordinate systems, spatial geometry, and semantics for observations. Connecting long-tail scientists with large, data centers using SaaS and, in the future, semantic web, will address this large and currently underserved user community.

EnviroAtlas National Layers Master Web Service

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

This EnviroAtlas web service supports research and online mapping activities related to EnviroAtlas (https://www.epa.gov/enviroatlas). This web service includes layers depicting EnviroAtlas national metrics mapped at the 12-digit HUC within the conterminous United States. This dataset was produced by the US EPA to support research and online mapping activities related to EnviroAtlas. EnviroAtlas (https://www.epa.gov/enviroatlas) allows the user to interact with a web-based, easy-to-use, mapping application to view and analyze multiple ecosystem services for the contiguous United States. The dataset is available as downloadable data (https://edg.epa.gov/data/Public/ORD/EnviroAtlas) or as an EnviroAtlas map service. Additional descriptive information about each attribute in this dataset can be found in its associated EnviroAtlas Fact Sheet (https://www.epa.gov/enviroatlas/enviroatlas-fact-sheets).