Sharing behavioral data through a grid infrastructure using data standards.

Objective: In an effort to standardize behavioral measures and their data representation, the present study develops a methodology for incorporating measures found in the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) grid-enabled measures (GEM) portal, a repository for behavioral and social measures, into the cancer data standards registry and repository (caDSR).

Methods: The methodology consists of four parts for curating GEM measures into the caDSR: (1) develop unified modeling language (UML) models for behavioral measures; (2) create common data elements (CDE) for UML components; (3) bind CDE with concepts from the NCI thesaurus; and (4) register CDE in the caDSR.

Results: UML models have been developed for four GEM measures, which have been registered in the caDSR as CDE.

FuGEFlow: data model and markup language for flow cytometry.

Background: Flow cytometry technology is widely used in both health care and research. The rapid expansion of flow cytometry applications has outpaced the development of data storage and analysis tools. Collaborative efforts being taken to eliminate this gap include building common vocabularies and ontologies, designing generic data models, and defining data exchange formats.

MIFlowCyt: the minimum information about a Flow Cytometry Experiment.

A fundamental tenet of scientific research is that published results are open to independent validation and refutation. Minimum data standards aid data providers, users, and publishers by providing a specification of what is required to unambiguously interpret experimental findings. Here, we present the Minimum Information about a Flow Cytometry Experiment (MIFlowCyt) standard, stating the minimum information required to report flow cytometry (FCM) experiments.

Proteomics LIMS: A caBIG project, year 1.

protLIMS is a web-based proteomics laboratory information management system. In February, we released version 1 of protLIMS, completed to the year one goal: The web-interface provides for recording of the biological material, protein mixture preparation, 2D-PAGE, gel image files and spot and plug mapping. Associated files may be uploaded and retrieved through the web-interface to the file system.