Frostconrad3252

Data and information technology are key to every aspect of our response to the current COVID-19 pandemic-from how we diagnose patients and deliver care, to the development of predictive models of disease spread, to the management of personnel and equipment. The increasing engagement of informaticians at the forefront of these efforts has been a fundamental shift from an academic to an operational role. However, the past history of informatics as a scientific domain and an area of applied practice provides little guidance or prologue for the incredible challenges that we are now tasked with performing. Building upon our recent experiences, we present four critical lessons-learned that have helped shape our scalable, data-driven response to COVID-19. We describe each of these lessons within the context of specific solutions and strategies we applied in addressing the challenges that we faced. © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email journals.permissions@oup.com.BACKGROUND AND AIMS Understanding how plant allometry, plant architecture, and phenology contribute to fruit production can identify those plant traits that maximize fruit yield. In this study, we compared these variables and fruit yield for two shrub species, Vaccinium angustifolium and Vaccinium myrtilloides to test the hypothesis that phenology is linked to the plants' allometric traits, which are predictors of fruit production. METHODS We measured leaf and flower phenology and the aboveground biomass of both Vaccinium sp. in a commercial wild lowbush blueberry field (Quebec, Canada) over a two-year crop cycle; one year of pruning followed by one year of harvest. Leaf and flower phenology were measured, and the allometric traits of shoots and buds were monitored over the crop cycle. We hand-collected the fruits of each plant to determine fruit attributes and biomass. KEY RESULTS During the harvesting year, the leafing and flowering of V. angustifolium occurred earlier than that of V. myrtilloides. This difxford University Press on behalf of the Annals of Botany Company. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail journals.permissions@oup.com.Invasive species represent a serious ecological threat for many ecosystems worldwide and provide a unique opportunity to investigate rapid adaptation and evolution. Genetic variation allows populations of organisms to be both robust and adaptable to different environmental conditions over evolutionary timeframes. In contrast, invasive animals can rapidly adapt to new environments, with minimal genetic diversity. Thus, the extent to which environmental effects can trigger epigenetic responses is particularly interesting for understanding the role of epigenetics in rapid adaptation. In this review, we provide a brief overview of the different epigenetic mechanisms that control gene expression, and emphasize the importance of epigenetics for environmental adaptation. We also discuss recent publications that provide important examples for the role of epigenetic mechanisms in environmental adaptation. Furthermore, we present an overview of the current knowledge about epigenetic modulation as an adaptive strategy for invasive species. A particularly interesting example is provided by the marbled crayfish, a novel, monoclonal freshwater crayfish species that has colonized diverse habitats within a few years. Finally, we address important limitations of current approaches and highlight the potential importance of less well-known mechanisms for non-genetic organismal adaptation. © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology.BACKGROUND AND AIMS Sugar composition is a key determinant of fruit quality. Soluble sugars and starch concentrations in fruits vary greatly from one species to another. The aim of this paper was to investigate similarities and differences in sugar accumulation strategies across ten contrasting fruit species using a modeling approach. METHODS We developed a coarse-grained model of primary metabolism based on the description of the main metabolic and hydraulic processes (synthesis of other compounds than sugar and starch, synthesis and hydrolysis of starch, water dilution) involved in the accumulation of soluble sugars during fruit development. KEY RESULTS Statistical analyses based on metabolic rates separated the species into six groups according to the rate of synthesis of compounds other than sugar and starch. BMS-935177 Herbaceous species (cucumber, tomato, eggplant, pepper and strawberry) were characterized by a higher synthesis rate than woody species (apple, nectarine, clementine, grape and kiwi). Inspection of tiated events. © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Annals of Botany Company. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail journals.permissions@oup.com.OBJECTIVE To create an online resource that informs the public of COVID-19 outbreaks in their area. MATERIALS AND METHODS This R Shiny application aggregates data from multiple resources that track COVID-19 and visualizes them through an interactive, online dashboard. RESULTS The web resource, called the COVID-19 Watcher, can be accessed at https//covid19watcher.research.cchmc.org/. It displays COVID-19 data from every county and 188 metropolitan areas in the U.S. Features include rankings of the worst affected areas and auto-generating plots that depict temporal changes in testing capacity, cases, and deaths. DISCUSSION The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) do not publish COVID-19 data for local municipalities, so it is critical that academic resources fill this void so the public can stay informed. The data used have limitations and likely underestimate the scale of the outbreak. CONCLUSIONS The COVID-19 Watcher can provide the public with real-time updates of outbreaks in their area. © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email journals.permissions@oup.com.