Automatically exposing OpenLifeData via SADI semantic Web Services

Background: Two distinct trends are emerging with respect to how data is shared, collected, and analyzed within the bioinformatics community. First, Linked Data, exposed as SPARQL endpoints, promises to make data easier to collect and integrate by moving towards the harmonization of data syntax, descriptive vocabularies, and identifiers, as well as providing a standardized mechanism for data access. Second, Web Services, often linked together into workflows, normalize data access and create transparent, reproducible scientific methodologies that can, in principle, be re-used and customized to suit new scientific questions. Constructing queries that traverse semantically-rich Linked Data requires substantial expertise, yet traditional RESTful or SOAP Web Services cannot adequately describe the content of a SPARQL endpoint. We propose that content-driven Semantic Web Services can enable facile discovery of Linked Data, independent of their location. Results: We use a well-curated Linked Dataset - OpenLifeData - and utilize its descriptive metadata to automatically configure a series of more than 22,000 Semantic Web Services that expose all of its content via the SADI set of design principles. The OpenLifeData SADI services are discoverable via queries to the SHARE registry and easy to integrate into new or existing bioinformatics workflows and analytical pipelines. We demonstrate the utility of this system through comparison of Web Service-mediated data access with traditional SPARQL, and note that this approach not only simplifies data retrieval, but simultaneously provides protection against resource-intensive queries. Conclusions: We show, through a variety of different clients and examples of varying complexity, that data from the myriad OpenLifeData can be recovered without any need for prior-knowledge of the content or structure of the SPARQL endpoints. We also demonstrate that, via clients such as SHARE, the complexity of federated SPARQL queries is dramatically reduced.

The scientific legacy of the "Instituto Eduardo Torroja" in Bilbao (1960-1980)

By means of this analysis, we have endeavored to evaluate and understand both the influence that the IETcc started to bear on scientific progress in Bilbao, mainly during the 1960s and the 1970s, as well as the determined efforts of the local financial and industrial elite of the time to transform Bilbao into the great metropolis of the north, i.e. the economic capital of that part of Spain, using as a model, among other metropolises, New York, the financial capital of America, and Pittsburg, the industrial capital. The various means to accomplish this have been studied: from the institutions of investigation, exposition and information which would initiate the longed for scientific progress, to the pathways for reproducing the fascinating American way.