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EMBL Australia Bioinformatics Resource (EMBL-ABR) is a developing national research infrastructure, providing bioinformatics resources and support to life science and biomedical researchers in Australia. EMBL-ABR comprises 10 geographically distributed national nodes with one coordinating hub, with current funding provided through Bioplatforms Australia and the University of Melbourne for its initial 2-year development phase. The EMBL-ABR mission is to: (1) increase Australia’s capacity in bioinformatics and data sciences; (2) contribute to the development of training in bioinformatics skills; (3) showcase Australian data sets at an international level and (4) enable engagement in international programs. The activities of EMBL-ABR are focussed in six key areas, aligning with comparable international initiatives such as ELIXIR, CyVerse and NIH Commons. These key areas—Tools, Data, Standards, Platforms, Compute and Training—are described in this article.

The German Network for Bioinformatics Infrastructure (de.NBI) is a national initiative funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The mission of de.NBI is (i) to provide high-quality bioinformatics services to users in basic and applied life sciences research from academia, industry and biomedicine; (ii) to offer bioinformatics training to users in Germany and Europe through a wide range of workshops and courses; and (iii) to foster the cooperation of the German bioinformatics community with international network structures such as the European life-sciences Infrastructure for biological Information (ELIXIR). The network was launched by the BMBF in March 2015 and now includes 40 service projects operated by 30 project partners that are organized in eight service centers. The de.NBI staff develops further and maintains almost 100 bioinformatics services for the human, plant and microbial research fields and provides comprehensive training courses to support users with different expertise levels in bioinformatics. In the future, de.NBI will expand its activities to the European level, as the de.NBI consortium was assigned by the BMBF to establish and run the German node of ELIXIR. The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press.

Bioinformatics is now intrinsic to life science research, but the past decade has witnessed a continuing deficiency in this essential expertise. Basic data stewardship is still taught relatively rarely in life science education programmes, creating a chasm between theory and practice, and fuelling demand for bioinformatics training across all educational levels and career roles. Concerned by this, surveys have been conducted in recent years to monitor bioinformatics and computational training needs worldwide. This article briefly reviews the principal findings of a number of these studies. We see that there is still a strong appetite for short courses to improve expertise and confidence in data analysis and interpretation; strikingly, however, the most urgent appeal is for bioinformatics to be woven into the fabric of life science degree programmes. Satisfying the relentless training needs of current and future generations of life scientists will require a concerted response from stakeholders across the globe, who need to deliver sustainable solutions capable of both transforming education curricula and cultivating a new cadre of trainer scientists.

Demand for training life scientists in bioinformatics methods, tools and resources and computational approaches is urgent and growing. To meet this demand, new trainers must be prepared with effective teaching practices for delivering short hands-on training sessions—a specific type of education that is not typically part of professional preparation of life scientists in many countries. A new Train-the-Trainer (TtT) programme was created by adapting existing models, using input from experienced trainers and experts in bioinformatics, and from educational and cognitive sciences. This programme was piloted across Europe from May 2016 to January 2017. Preparation included drafting the training materials, organizing sessions to pilot them and studying this paradigm for its potential to support the development and delivery of future bioinformatics training by participants. Seven pilot TtT sessions were carried out, and this manuscript describes the results of the pilot year. Lessons learned include (i) support is required for logistics, so that new instructors can focus on their teaching; (ii) institutions must provide incentives to include training opportunities for those who want/need to become new or better instructors; (iii) formal evaluation of the TtT materials is now a priority; (iv) a strategy is needed to recruit, train and certify new instructor trainers (faculty); and (v) future evaluations must assess utility. Additionally, defining a flexible but rigorous and reliable process of TtT ‘certification’ may incentivize participants and will be considered in future.

This review shows the recent advances and state of the art in paper-based analytical devices (PADs) through the analysis of their integration with microfluidics and LOC micro- and nanotechnologies, electrochemical/optical detection and electronic devices as the convergence of various knowledge areas. The important role of the paper design/architecture in the improvement of the performance of sensor devices is discussed. The discussion is fundamentally based on μPADs as the new generation of paper-based (bio)sensors. Data about the scientific publication ranking of PADs, illustrating their increase as an experimental research topic in the past years, are supplied. In addition, an analysis of the simultaneous evolution of PADs in academic lab research and industrial commercialization highlighting the parallelism of the technological transfer from academia to industry is displayed. A general overview of the market behaviour, the leading industries in the sector and their commercialized devices is given. Finally, personal opinions of the authors about future perspectives and tendencies in the design and fabrication technology of PADs are disclosed., A. M. López_Marzo thanks Generalitat of Catalonia for the FI_2010 scholarship awarded for the PhD thesis at UAB (Barcelona). The Nanobiosensors and Bioelectronics Group acknowledges the support from MINECO (project MAT2014- 52485-P and Severo Ochoa Program, Grant SEV-2013-0295) and Secretaria d'Universitats i Recerca del Departament d'Economia i Coneixement de la Generalitat de Catalunya (2014 SGR 260).

Owing to the emerging impact of bioinformatics and computational biology, in this article, we present an overview of the history and current state of the research on this field in Latin America (LA). It will be difficult to cover without inequality all the efforts, initiatives and works that have happened for the past two decades in this vast region (that includes >19 million km2 and >600 million people). Despite the difficulty, we have done an analytical search looking for publications in the field made by researchers from 19 LA countries in the past 25 years. In this way, we find that research in bioinformatics in this region should develop twice to approach the average world scientific production in the field. We also found some of the pioneering scientists who initiated and led bioinformatics in the region and were promoters of this new scientific field. Our analysis also reveals that spin-off began around some specific areas within the biomolecular sciences: studies on genomes (anchored in the new generation of deep sequencing technologies, followed by developments in proteomics) and studies on protein structures (supported by three-dimensional structural determination technologies and their computational advancement). Finally, we show that the contribution to this endeavour of the Iberoamerican Society for Bioinformatics, founded in Mexico in 2009, has been significant, as it is a leading forum to join efforts of many scientists from LA interested in promoting research, training and education in bioinformatics., The publication charges for this article were funded by the research grant PI15/00328, given by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCiii, MINECO, Spain) and co-funded by the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER, Europe).

Next to xylanases, laccases from fungi and alkali-tolerant bacteria are the most important biocatalysts that can be employed for eco-friendly biobleaching of hard and soft wood pulps in the paper industry. Laccases offer a potential alternative to conventional, environmental-polluting chlorine and chlorine-based bleaching and has no reductive effect on the final yield of pulp as compared to hemicellulases (xylanases and mannanases). In the last decade, reports on biobleaching with laccases are based on laboratory observations only. There are several critical challenges before this enzyme can be implemented for pulp bleaching at the industrial scale. This review discusses significant factors like redox potential, laccase mediator system (LMS)—synthetic or natural, pH, temperature, stability of enzyme, unwanted grafting reactions of laccase, and cost-intensive production at large scale which constitute a great hitch for the successful implementation of laccases at industrial level.

A very important increase in the costs of the edition of scientific journals has taken place in Venezuela, due to difficulties in obtaining imported free acid paper and other materials used for handling documents. Like other journals, Investigaci6n Clinica has been considering switching completely to a digital publication format; however there are several reasons that prevent us to doing it at this time: the journal is distributed in printed form to many national institutions, which do not have immediate access to digital information. In addition, there exists a commitment of shipment of printed issues for some international indices and in exchange with other national and foreign journals, whose printed format we receive. Another important aspect is that our University maintains a weak technological platform that makes difficult the immediacy required for the interchange with authors and consulted referees of received papers; and there is a latent danger of limitations in the use of digital technologies, due to current national politic problems. Consequently, we need to continue with the printed format, but must reduce the amount of printed issues, so as not to limit the number of papers published in each edition. Nevertheless, there is an ever increasing number of contributions from foreign researches and Investigaci6n Clinica has been recently included in two new international indices, the SEIIC from Argentina and the Infobase Index from India, reasons that obligate us to maintain our levels of excellence and commitment to our authors and readers.

With the domestic and international proliferation of biobanks and their associated connections to health information databases, scholarly attention has been turning from the ethical issues arising from the construction of biobanks to the ethical issues that emerge in their operation and management. Calls for greater transparency in governance structures, coupled with stern reminders of the value of maintaining public trust, are seen as critical components in the success of these resources. Two different approaches have been adopted for addressing these types of ethical issues: the first is a ‘top-down’ approach which focuses on developing policy, procedures, regulations and guidelines to aid decision-makers. The second is a ‘bottom-up’ approach, which begins with those who are most affected by the issues and attempts to inductively develop consensus recommendations and policy. While both approaches have merit, I argue that more work needs to be done on ‘bottom-up’ strategies if trust and transparency are to be more than mere slogans. Using 2 case examples from Indiana, the paper summarizes data from a set of surveys we recently conducted that address issues arising from biobanks that provide some insight into issues associated with trust and transparency.

Background Handheld computers are increasingly favoured over paper and pencil methods to capture data in clinical research. Methods This study systematically identified and reviewed randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that compared the two methods for self-recording and reporting data, and where at least one of the following outcomes was assessed: data accuracy; timeliness of data capture; and adherence to protocols for data collection. Results A comprehensive key word search of NLM Gateway's database yielded 9 studies fitting the criteria for inclusion. Data extraction was performed and checked by two of the authors. None of the studies included all outcomes. The results overall, favor handheld computers over paper and pencil for data collection among study participants but the data are not uniform for the different outcomes. Handheld computers appear superior in timeliness of receipt and data handling (four of four studies) and are preferred by most subjects (three of four studies). On the other hand, only one of the trials adequately compared adherence to instructions for recording and submission of data (handheld computers were superior), and comparisons of accuracy were inconsistent between five studies. Conclusion Handhelds are an effective alternative to paper and pencil modes of data collection; they are faster and were preferred by most users.