One of 43 monkeys bred for medical research that escaped a compound in South Carolina has been recovered unharmed, officials said Saturday.

After working at a crowded and dangerous internment camp in Iraq, Air Force Staff Sgt. Heather O'Brien returned to the U.S. with anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is pushing President-elect Donald Trump to crack down on fluoride levels in drinking water, saying the mineral can lead to unintended medical problems -- and setting up a clash with medical experts who defend it as a proven way to fighting cavities.

Worsening air pollution sickened an estimated 1.8 million people in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province in the past month, health officials said Tuesday, as schools across the province were ordered to close for five days to protect children's health.

The Justice Department is suing to block UnitedHealth Group's $3.3 billion purchase of Amedisys, citing concerns the combination would hinder access to home health and hospice services in the U.S.

Fernando Valenzuela, the Los Angeles Dodgers pitching ace who helped the team win the 1981 World Series, died of septic shock last month, according to his death certificate.

American gymnast Jordan Chiles is asking Switzerland's Supreme Court to overturn a ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport that stripped Chiles of a bronze medal in floor exercise at the 2024 Olympics.

Four-time Grand Prix series medalist Rika Kihira will miss the upcoming figure skating season because of a stress fracture in her right ankle that has not fully healed, the Japanese star announced Wednesday.

Not long after Edwin Moses figured out how to attack the solution to track's ultimate math problem, he transformed himself into the best hurdler in history.

IOC presidential candidate Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. has urged European lawmakers to regard investing in sport as a public health policy in his first keynote speech of a six-month Olympic leadership campaign.

In his first visit back to Utah since awarding Salt Lake City the 2034 Winter Games, the International Olympic Committee president sought to ease worries that the city could lose its second Olympics if organizers don't fulfill an agreement to play peacemaker between anti-doping authorities.

Yannic Seidenberg, who won the silver medal with the German men's hockey team at the 2018 Olympics, has had his doping ban cut by 18 months.

American figure skater Ilia Malinin has been doing gymnastics off the ice much of his life, one of the many reasons why he can so effortlessly land the dazzling quadruple jumps that made him a world champion at just 19 years old last March.

USA Track and Field is bringing the U.S. Paralympics Track & Field program in-house beginning Jan. 1 as part of a partnership that will unite all of its athletes under one roof.

Olympic silver medalist race walker Koki Ikeda of Japan has been provisionally banned for suspected blood doping, track and field's Athletics Integrity Unit said on Friday.

Paris's Notre Dame cathedral, whose historic bells were silenced following 2019's devastating fire, will soon echo again with fresh chimes.

The two biggest events in world sports are coming to America. And if President-elect Donald Trump is not thinking about them yet, organizers of the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Los Angeles Olympics certainly are.

Former Duke star Kyle Singler's cryptic Instagram post saying he fears for his life has drawn an outpouring of concern and support from former teammates and others.

A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked a state law that would require classrooms in Louisiana to post the Ten Commandments starting in January.

British writer Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for fiction on Tuesday with "Orbital," a short, wonder-filled novel set aboard the International Space Station.

Democrats for Life of America said Tuesday that 97% of its endorsed candidates won their races in last week's election, which raises the question: Is there such a thing as a pro-life Democrat?

President-elect Donald Trump showed his intention to shake up the federal government Tuesday by naming former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to lead the CIA, Elon Musk to head a new department to cut waste and regulations, and the unexpected choice of military reservist and Fox News figure Pete Hegseth to serve as Defense Secretary.

Clone Force 99 returns with new adventures in the ashes of the Galactic Republic.

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The final season is now streaming on Paramount+, reuniting the beloved cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation

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The crew of Discovery uncover a mystery that sends them on an adventure across the galaxy.

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Strange New Worlds gets another season, but it's the end of the road for the animated hit Star Trek: Lower Decks.

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Season 2 of the sci-fi thriller premieres on TNT in the United States on Sunday, June 9. But there's a catch.

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Take a look at the first photos from Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson's first season in the TARDIS, streaming this Friday on Disney+.

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The prequel series will chronicle the rise of the Bene Gesserit order thousands of years before Paul Atreides.

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Netflix is teasing the upcoming fourth season of The Witcher, with Liam Hemsworth taking over the lead role.

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Disney+ has ordered a new series for the Marvel character, picking up where WandaVision left off.

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Dal and the crew of the U.S.S. Protostar return for a second season of adventures this summer at its new streaming home.

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The second season of the out-of-this-quadrant animated series finally arrives July 1 at its new home.

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The EU BON project is pleased to announce the International Symposium "Nature and Governance – Biodiversity Data, Science, and the Policy Interface", which was held in Berlin from 11 to 12 February. The symposium aimed at clarifying and popularizing EU BON's objectives prior to the official EU BON Kick-off Meeting held from 13 to 15 February 2013.

The symposium was hosted by the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and brought together high-ranking speakers and guests from across the world to talk and discuss the different aspects of the EU BON Project. Among the main issues covered was the future of biodiversity information, the challenges in front of new data policies, new approaches in collecting information, and ways to engage the public in biodiversity monitoring and assessments.

The EU BON project was started on 1 December, 2012, and will continue for 4.5 years. The aim of EU BON is to build a substantial part and contribute to the Group on Earth Observation's Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON), through an innovative approach of integration of biodiversity information systems. The project, built as an answer to the need of a new integrated biodiversity data, will facilitate access to this knowledge and will effectively improve the work in the field of biodiversity observation in general.

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For more information on the symposium and the events planned, please visit our programme page.

All interested parties are most welcome to attend the symposium or to follow it on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.

Additional information

EU BON (2012) stands for "Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network" and is a European research project, financed by the 7th EU framework programme for research and development (FP7). EU BON seeks ways to better integrate biodiversity information and implement into policy and decision-making of biodiversity monitoring and management in the EU.

GEO BON stands for "Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network". It coordinates activities relating to the Societal Benefit Area (SBA) on Biodiversity of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). Some 100 governmental, inter-governmental and non-governmental organisations are collaborating through GEO BON to organise and improve terrestrial, freshwater and marine biodiversity observations globally and make their biodiversity data, information and forecasts more readily accessible to policymakers, managers, experts and other users. Moreover, GEO BON has been recognized by the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. More information at: http://www.earthobservations.org/geobon.shtml.

Zur Unterstützung der Beteiligung des MfN an EU BON ist am Museum für Naturkunde Berlin zum nächstmöglichen Zeitpunkt eine vorerst auf 2 Jahre befristete (mit der Option der Verlängerung)
Position eines/einer Wissenschaftlichen Mitarbeiters/in mit 75% der regelmäßigen wöchentlichen Arbeitszeit Entgeltgruppe E13 TV-L Berlin zu besetzen
Aufgabengebiete:
Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeit und eigenständige Durchführung spezifischer Aufgaben innerhalb des EU BON Projektes, vor allem innerhalb der Arbeitspakete 1 (Datenquellen) und 2 (Datenintegration), i.b.
- Datenrecherche und Erstellung von Übersichten für EU BON relevanter Daten- und Informationsquellen;
- Bewertung und Lückenanalyse bestehender Datenbanken und Informationssysteme zur Biodiversität;
- Harmonisierung, Aktualisierung und Koordinierung taxonomischer Referenz-Datenbanken i.b. für Europa;
- Unterstützung der Einführung und Verbesserung von Datenstandards zur Verbesserung der Integration und Interoperabilität unterschiedlicher Datenebenen
- Mitwirkung bei Erprobung neuer Datenerhebungsansätze und –verfahren, auch im Gelände
- Planung und Durchführung von Projekttreffen und -veranstaltungen
- Erstellung von Ergebnisberichten und wissenschaftlichen Präsentationen / Veröffentlichungen.

Monographs are fundamental for progress in systematic  botany. They are the vehicles for circumscribing and naming taxa, determining distributions and ecology,  assessing  relationships for formal classification, and interpreting long-term  and short-term  dimensions of the evolutionary process. Despite their importance, fewer monographs are now being prepared by the newer generation  of systematic  botanists, who are understandably involved principally with DNA data and analysis, especially for answering  phylogenetic, biogeographic, and population  genetic questions.  As monographs provide  hypotheses regarding species  boundaries and plant relationships, new insights  in many plant groups  are urgently  needed.  Increasing  pressures  on biodiversity, especially in tropical and developing regions of the world, emphasize this point. The results from a workshop (with 21 participants) reaffirm  the central role that monographs play in systematic  botany. But, rather than advocating abbreviated models  for monographic products,  we recommend a full presentation of relevant  information. Electronic  publication offers numerous  means of illustration of taxa, habitats, characters, and statistical and phylogenetic analyses, which previously  would have been prohibitively costly. Open Access and semantically enhanced  linked electronic  publications provide instant access to content from anywhere  in the world, and at the same time link this content to all underlying data and digital resources  used in the work.  Resources  in support  of monography, especially  databases  and widely  and easily  accessible  digital  literature and specimens, are now more powerful  than ever before, but interfacing and interoperability of databases  are much needed. Priorities  for new resources  to be developed  include an index of type collections and an online global chromosome database. Funding  for sabbaticals for monographers to work uninterrupted on major projects  is strongly  encouraged. We recommend that doctoral  students  be assigned  smaller  genera,  or natural  portions  of larger  ones (subgenera, sections,  etc.), to gain the necessary expertise for producing a monograph, including training in a broad array of data collection (e.g., morphology, anatomy, palynology, cytogenetics, DNA techniques, ecology, biogeography), data analysis (e.g., statistics,  phylogenetics, models), and nomenclature. Training programs, supported by institutes, associations, and agencies, provide means for passing on procedures and perspectives of challenging botanical  monography to the next generation  of young systematists.

The European Biodiversity Observation Network (EU BON), a European project on biodiversity data, was launched in December 2012. The Belgian Biodiversity Platform attended the symposium connected to the EU BON kick-off meeting in Berlin, Germany, on 11-12th February 2013.
The symposium entitled ‘Nature and Governance: Biodiversity Data, Science, and the Policy Interface’ highlighted the importance of biodiversity data for policy-making and research.  The complexity of producing and collating data on an international scale involving different methods and disciplines was well illustrated. The importance of the accessibility of biodiversity data within an integrated system was well demonstrated - the sum of all contributions will in the end enable monitoring, forecasting and policy-making.
EU BON will create a substantial part of the Group on Earth’s Observation’s Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) and will operate in support of biodiversity sciences and policy initiatives, such as the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
EU BON will build on existing components, such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), LifeWatch infrastructures and national biodiversity data centers. As Belgian GBIF node, the Belgian Biodiversity Platform can provide an important support to the development of EU BON. The Belgian partners in the EU BON project are the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA), the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS), and the National Botanic Garden of Belgium (Botanic Garden).
We will follow with interest the development in the EU BON project and will continue publishing data through GBIF. If you would like to support this initiative by having your data published on GBIF, please contact André Heughebaert (GBIF node manager), Dimitri Brosens or Kristina Articus (Biodiversity Experts).

A new "LinkOut" feature introduced by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) NCBI’s allows the easy linking to content on PubMed and GenBank.  Dryad has already introduced the feature benefitting from easy and fast linking of associated content to the two resources.

PubMed and GenBank, from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), are hugely popular resources for searching and retrieving article abstracts and nucleotide sequence data, respectively.  PubMed indexes the vast majority of the biomedical literature, and deposition of nucleotide sequences in GenBank or one of the other INSDC databases is a near universal requirement for publication in a scientific journal. LinkOut allows the data from an article to be distributed among repositories without compromising its discoverability.

Dryad, intends to expand on this feature in a couple of ways. First, it is planned to make Dryad content searchable via the PubMed and GenBank identifiers, which because of their wide use will provide a convenient gateway for other biomedical databases to link out to Dryad.  Second, open web standards will be used to expose relationships between content in Dryad and other repositories, not just NCBI.

Original source: Dryad news and views

Join the online community of EU BON and create buzz around the project. Take full advantage of our social network channels to interact with stakeholders and contribute to the EU BON discussion. Get an easy access and the latest updates on news and events around the project. You are a click away from making a difference to the project’s visibility.

Like, follow or join EU BON Social Media and get involved in the community now!

A main obstacle to reach the 2010 biodiversity goals and to implement the European Biodiversity Strategy is lacking integration of biodiversity aspects into political, economic, and management decisions in different sectors mainly due to knowledge gaps. EU BON will provide access to sound data sources and scientific knowledge that is reliable, relevant, up-todate, and publicly available. Europe maintains substantial capacities to generate and manage such knowledge and to provide data relevant to assessing and managing our biological resources. These capacities concern research and technology development, tools for information management and infrastructure, and procedures for the development and implementation of well-informed environmental policies. 

In order to meet the demands of the main political stakeholders in the EU, in this workshop an overview of the project will be given and first results will be shown summarized in the first show case which is dealing with datasets in relation to political targets and indicators. In addition, the idea how the science–policy/management interface can function for example via the planned European Biodiversity Portal will be presented and the requirements for policy (political administration) discussed.

Results of this first stakeholder round table will be documented and passed back to the project in order to increase its relevance. Next stakeholder round tables can be used to evaluate the progress of the project with regard to serving the demands of EC, EEA, GEO BON, IPBES and other stakeholders.

The first Informatics Workshop of the EU-FP7 funded project EU BON was held on 29-31 May 2013 in Trondheim, Norway. The meeting was hosted by the EU BON partner Norwegian Biodiversity Information Centre (NBIC). The aims were to highlight the link to infrastructures and processes like GEOSS or DataONE and to discuss the data standards and informatics architecture that will be followed by the EU BON project.

During the three-days of the workshop, the participants of the meeting discussed the important aspects regarding the informatics architecture and decided on the next steps to develop a new open-access platform for sharing biodiversity data and tools in order to advance the European biodiversity knowledge.  On the first day, the aim was to highlight the link of EU BON with GEOSS, GEO BON and other processes like DataONE to find synergies and to build on work that was conducted in these processes. On the second day, detailed discussion on the specific tasks of the workgroup took place. The afternoon session was split into 3 different tracks where issues like architectural design, review and guidelines for using data standards, the design of monitoring sites and the gap analysis of existing biodiversity data were analyzed and discussed.

It was agreed that a new platform is needed which should be built on existing solutions. Thus, the platform will use the technical solutions of the DataONE network that will be adjusted to the specific needs of the EU BON project. EU BON Partners will implement DataONE Member Nodes to start the process and a DataOne coordinating node may be established towards 2015. Furthermore, it was also decided to join and support the GEO BON Working Group pilot project on automating the data flows for the Essential Biodiversity Variables.

The first EU BON Stakeholder Round Table is now approaching. The workshop will take place in Brussels on 18 June 2013 and be hosted by the Leibniz Association. A main obstacle to reach the 2010 biodiversity goals and to implement the European Biodiversity Strategy is the lacking integration of biodiversity aspects into political, economic, and management decisions in different sectors mainly due to knowledge gaps. The aim of the 1-day workshop will be to identify existing gaps, determine current needs regarding biodiversity information and develop solutions to overcome the existing knowledge gaps within the EU BON project.

EU BON will provide access to biodiversity information that is reliable, relevant, up-to-date, and publicly available. In the first Stakeholder Round Table, the EU BON approach for establishing a European Biodiversity Observation Network will be outlined. Based on that introduction, existing approaches that compile biodiversity or biodiversity-relevant data and the possible synergies and possible contributions to EU BON will be discussed. Another important aspect of the meeting will be to highlight the link to policy and governments of the European Union and their specific needs regarding biodiversity information.

Results of this first stakeholder round table will be documented and passed back to the project in order to increase its relevance. Next stakeholder round tables can be used to evaluate the progress of the project with regard to serving the demands of EC, EEA, GEO BON, IPBES, JRC and other stakeholders.

The first EU BON Stakeholder Round Table was held on 18 June 2013 at the Leibniz Association in Brussels, under the motto "Requirements for Policy".

Important topics regarding biodiversity information were discussed with political stakeholders and a variety of valuable recommendations were given for the future process of EU BON. Among the participants were members of the European policy, representatives of recent European biodiversity projects and EU BON members. At the round table, intensive discussions took place regarding what biodiversity policy needs, like which indicators and measurements are needed to answer burning policy questions. Suggestions were made to formalize Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBV’s) and Aichi targets. A future approach was set towards producing a guideline and timeline for indicators that should be established within EU BON.

The challenges of future research policy were also discussed and the collaboration of EU BON with the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) will be a substantial part of the continuous contributions to the global process. EU BON should also serve as a showcase for the European Commission in this respect. EU BON will also be responsible for answering crucial questions regarding data policy, e.g. how to establish a general repository for a long-lasting storage of data and how to handle ‘big data’. Another future task will be to integrate EU relevant projects and initiatives and their data portals, datasets and metadata.

At the round table it was also discussed how public stakeholders can be involved in the future, particularly citizen scientists, so that they could be integrated in EU BON and provide useful information for scientists and researchers.

Among the participants were representatives of major biodiversity stakeholders including Gilles Ollier, Jane Shiel and Sofie Vandewoestijne - European Commission, DG Research and Innovation; Anne Teller - European Commission, DG Environment;  Georgios Sarantakos - GEO Secretariat; Cigdem Adem - European Environment Agency; representatives of recent European biodiversity projects (FunDiv, BioFresh, STEP and INSPIRE) and EU BON members.

Presentations:

The Brazilian initiative PPBio (The Program for Research on Biodiversity) launches a new book based on over a decade of experience in implementing the biodiversity monitoring system RAPELD in the Brazilian Amazon. Richly illustrated and written in simple language, the book "Biodiversity and Integrated Environmental Monitoring" addresses the issues that led to the system development, covering topics such as the spatial organization and representation of biological diversity, environmental monitoring, and data management.

Monitoring of biodiversity is not merely an academic endeavor. Although scientific aspects such as representation of biodiversity and biodiversity data integration, management and preservation are of a great importance, it is also essential to think about the political context in which decisions will be made and how to incorporate political stakeholders and decision makers.

"As this important book makes clear questions about biodiversity are far from purely scientific. Biodiversity matters. Our needs to assess it embed in a complex of questions posed by managers, policy makers and those who live in or otherwise benefit from biodiversity.",  explains Dr Stuart L. Pimm in the preface of the book. "So how do we ensure that data collected now will be useful for purposes we cannot yet imagine at some unexpected time in the future? Or provide comparison to some other place that we might survey some day?"

Those and many more questions regarding biodiversity data management and policy involvement are discussed in the new book "Biodiversity and Integrated Environmental Monitoring".

The University of Cambridge invites for applications for a Research Associate to work on EU-BON, a major EU-funded research project seeking to improve the use of biodiversity data in public policy.

Applicants should have a PhD in a relevant social science or conservation science. Experience in both qualitative and quantitative analysis is desirable. Applicants should ideally have some first-hand experience of public policy processes and a willingness to travel within the European Union for research. Excellent organisational and communication skills will be essential in working as a successful part of this large, multi-partner and multinational team.

The researcher will carry out research on how biodiversity data is currently used in European policy making and will contribute to analysis of the opportunities to increase its effective provision and use. Research methods are likely to combine qualitative and quantitate analysis and to focus on the use of biodiversity data in public policy contexts. It is expected that some of the research will take place in Brussels. The researcher will have considerable freedom in defining the research project in discussion with Dr Doubleday and Prof Sutherland. In addition to carrying out research on the use of biodiversity data in European policy making, the researcher will support Cambridge's contribution to EU BON as a whole. This will involve contributing to other workpackages as and when required. More information about EU BON can be found here: http://www.eubon.eu

Fixed-term: The funds for this post are available for 36 months in the first instance.

Completed applications consisting of a CHRIS/6 (Parts I & III) (downloadable from http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/hr/forms/chris6/) a covering letter, and CV, should be sent to Danielle Feger, via email: geogrec@hermes.cam.ac.uk or sent to Research Administrator, Department of Geography, Downing Site, Cambridge, CB2 3EN

Please quote reference LC01355 on your application and in any correspondence about this vacancy.

Any enquiries concerning the position can be made to Dr Robert Doubleday, rob.doubleday@csap.cam.ac.uk

For more information about the position, please visit: http://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/1611/

From 16^th to the 18^th of July, a European stakeholder consultation for the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services (IPBES) took place in Leipzig (Germany). The consultation was organized by three European Biodiversity Platforms: Network-Forum Biodiversity Research Germany (NeFo), the Belgian Biodiversity Platform, and the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) (further information on the conference: www.biodiversity.de/index.php/de/ipbes/nefo-aktivitaeten-zu-ipbes/workshops/pan-european-stakeholder-consultation).

IPBES will greatly influence future biodiversity policy and research, and EU BON is expected to provide a European contribution to IPBES. IPBES will be in particular of high interest, because it will need tools to integrate and analyse different data sources, to develop relevant infrastructure and to do assessments of state and trends of biodiversity at multiple scales.

EU BON was represented by several partners at the meeting and we acted as facilitators in the round-tables, gathered input for the project, participated in discussions and exchanged ideas with many representatives and colleagues. We provide you with a short summary of the meeting below.

The aims of the pan-European stakeholder consultation meeting in Leipzig were:

1. To reach out to stakeholders to inform people and institutes and to raise awareness of the dynamics in IPBES.
2. To discuss and obtain feedback on several IPBES-related documents that are currently being drafted. In their final form these documents will be submitted to the Panel for the IPBES 2 plenary session in 9-14 December 2013.

The meeting in Leipzig was organized around round table discussions of several draft documents of importance for stakeholders: the draft work programme, the stakeholder engagement strategy draft and the draft "Vision for pan-European IPBES support perspective". If you are interested these documents, currently for review, can be found here:  http://www.ipbes.net/intersessional-process/current-review-documents-ipbes2.html .

There were several opportunities for EU BON partners to flag the potential biodiversity data and analysis requirements for the future IPBES work program in separate discussions and to give recommendations as to what should be additionally integrated in the draft work programme.

We also brainstormed on a potential EU BON side event at the second IPBES meeting, which will be held in 9-14 December in Antalya, Turkey. Topics discussed by national delegates in that plenary will amongst other topics comprise: the first work programme, budget, stakeholder engagement, the position of observers, technical requirements and a list of thematic priorities for IPBES assessments.

Although the meeting was a success in terms of the number and diversity of participants, the consultation felt for many participants as a top down exercise. However, the importance of being involved at this stage was felt and the hope for stakeholder empowerment in the future was often voiced.

Global Biodiversity Informatics Outlook sets out key steps to harness IT and open data to inform better decisions

Copenhagen, Denmark – A new initiative launched today (2 Oct) aims to coordinate global efforts and funding to deliver the best possible information about life on Earth, and our impacts upon it.

The Global Biodiversity Informatics Outlook sets out a framework to harness the immense power of information technology and an open data culture to gather unprecedented evidence about biodiversity and to inform better decisions.

The framework is outlined in a document and website entitled Delivering Biodiversity Knowledge in the Information Age, inviting policy makers, funders, researchers, informatics specialists, data holders and others to unite around four key focus areas where progress is needed.

The focus areas, each consisting of several specific components, are:

• Culture – promoting practices and infrastructure for sharing data, using common standards and persistent archives, backed up by strong policy incentives and a community of willing specialists;
• Data – addressing the need to transform all data about species, past and present, into usable and accessible digital formats; from historic collections and literature to citizen science observations, remote sensors and gene sequencing;
• Evidence – organizing and assessing data from all sources to provide clear, consistent views giving them context; including taxonomic organization, integrated occurrences in time and space, capturing information about species interactions, and improving data quality through collaborative curation; and
• Understanding – building models from recorded measurements and observations to support data-driven research and evidence-based planning, including predictive tools, better visualization and feedbacks to prioritize new data capture.

The document is being promoted through a number of upcoming events this month, including the Governing Board of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD SBSTTA) where it forms part of the discussion on meeting global targets to end biodiversity loss.

The framework arose from the Global Biodiversity Informatics Conference which gathered around 100 experts in Copenhagen in July, 2012, to identify critical questions relating to biodiversity and tools needed answer them. Workshop leaders at that conference went on to draw up and author the current document.

The Global Biodiversity Informatics Outlook includes examples of projects and initiatives contributing to its objectives, and the accompanying website www.biodiversityinformatics.org invites feedback from others wishing to align their own activities to the framework.

A deck of slides for presentations about GBIO is available at http://www.slideshare.net/GBIF/global-biodiversity-informatics-outlook

The 2014 SCIENCE POLICY SYMPOSIUM to support the implementation of the 2020 Biodiversity strategy and the EU Water Framework Directive will be held between 29-30 Jan 2014 in the Museum of Natural Sciences (RBINS), Brussels. The symposium is jointly organised by the EU FP7 funded projects BioFresh and REFRESH.

Numerous EU biodiversity and water related policies have been designed to protect freshwater ecosystems and ensure their sustainable use. However, major challenges still persist in the implementation of these policies. Freshwater ecosystems support 10% of all animal species on Earth and provide a diverse array of functions and services that contribute to human well-being. In recent decades global freshwater biodiversity has declined at a greater rate compared to terrestrial and marine ecosystems.

The Science Policy Symposium for Freshwater Life is organised with the aim of bringing together policy makers and stakeholders from the water, energy and conservation sector, NGOs, the scientific community and selected experts to discuss challenges to implementing the 2020 Biodiversity strategy and the EU Water Framework Directive.

Contact: waterlives.commitee@freshwaterbiodiversity.eu

A correspondence item, published today, 10 Oct 2013, in Nature focuses on the upcoming calls for Horizon 2020 research funding. The European Commission has said that it would prefer bids from open, collaborative consortia rather than the competitive bids seen in previous funding programmes. The authors call for an effort to forge interdisciplinary links in biodiversity research, and ask readers to contribute to discussions on project ideas.

For more information read the full correspondence item in Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v502/n7470/full/502171d.html

Ecological modellers require reliable sources of data for their analysis. Often, these sources are databases, checklists and specimen labels. Yet another rich source is the corpus of biological literature. It is estimated that there are well over 100 million pages of scientific publications and the volume grows every year. Publishing in advanced XML-based journals, such as Zookeys, Phytokeys or the Biodiversity Data Journal is recommended for new data, but what is the solution for legacy texts?

The EU FP7 project pro-iBiosphere has been piloting the mark-up and extraction of biological information from literature, which has been pioneered by Plazi (Agosti & Egloff, 2009). The EU FP7 Coordination and Support Action "pro-iBiosphere" was launched to investigate ways to increase the accessibility of biodiversity data, improve the efficiency of its curation and increase the user base of biodiversity data consumers and applications. The project addresses the technical and semantic interoperability between different forms in which data are published and analyses the sustainability issues related to the maintenance and curation of biodiversity data and derived information and knowledge. It also involves encouraging the biodiversity community to publish biodiversity data in a way that satisfies the technical requirements for an envisioned Open Biodiversity Knowledge Management System.

In order to reach these objectives three pilots for data mark-up and one for interoperability are being conducted (for detailed information on the pilots please see here). The mark-up pilots are evaluating accessibility of data within literature for a wide range of organisms and data types; and ways to facilitate  extraction of biological information from literature, including observations, traits, nomenclature, habitat information and interactions between organisms. For example, one pilot is looking at biogeographic data using the species Chenopodium vulvaria as a subject. In another, trait data is being extracted from literature on tropical mistletoes; while yet others are extracting data from papers on spiders, ants, centipedes, mosses and fungi.

In order to extract these data one can use either "born" digital texts or scanned texts, converted through text capture. These texts are then progressively marked up into XML documents, with tags defining the meaning of the containing text. The degree of mark-up granularity and the choice of textual elements to be marked-up depend on the type of data to be extracted and its granularity in the text. In taxonomically based literature, text is usually divided into the individual "treatments" for each species. Fortunately, most paragraph elements of these texts are in standard formats, for example, separate blocks of text contain the physical description of the organism, details of the distribution and habitat information, often separated with sub-headings.

The pro-iBiosphere pilots have used several methods for mark-up, but the main tool has been the GoldenGate Editor, which combines manual and automated methods to identify key text elements. For example, an algorithm identifies Latin names and then an interface guides the user through the verification of the algorithm’s results. Once marked-up, the XML document can be uploaded to the Plazi document repository. Plazi is a not-for-profit organization devoted to promoting open-access to taxonomic literature. You are free to use the data contained in Plazi’s repository and if you want you can refine the mark-up for your own purposes.

Extracting data from the legacy literature can be expensive. Modern XML based publications have additional advantages of linkages via DOI identifiers, and immediate dissemination to harvesters like EOL or GBIF. Yet, digitisation and mark-up has the possibility to reanimate the data in our publications, making them almost as useful as modern linked publications.

Task 3.4 of EU-BON is to develop tools to prepare, extract and mine published biodiversity literature (led by Plazi - Donat Agosti). For this task Plazi is looking for rich sources of data from the biodiversity literature, particularly where those data can be applied within other EU-BON tasks. For further information please contact Plazi

Agosti, D., & Egloff, W. (2009). Taxonomic information exchange and copyright: the Plazi approach. BMC research notes, 2(1), 53. doi:10.1186/1756-0500-2-53

Quentin Groom (National Botanic Garden, Belgium) & Donat Agosti (Plazi)