Web-based resources for retrieving health policy information: NLM and beyond

This paper identifies Web-based resources of interest to the health policy community. Both information useful for developing health policy and information about existing health policy are included. Resources described are classified into three major categories: traditional and grey literature, statistical and epidemiological data, and legal and legislative material. National Library of Medicine (NLM) resources include MEDLINE, DIRLINE, HealthSTAR, HSRProj, and HSTAT. In addition, NLM's National Information Center on Health Services Research and Health Care Technology (NICHSR) has a Web page (http:/(/)www.nlm.nih.gov/nichsr/nichsr.++ +html) that provides an extensive listing of health-policy-related Web sites. Some of the other resources highlighted include those available from the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Committee for Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS), and the Library of Congress.     

Histone Sequence Database: sequences, structures, post-translational modifications and genetic loci

The Histone Sequence Database is an annotated and searchable collection of all available histone and histone fold sequences and structures. Particular emphasis has been placed on documenting conflicts between similar sequence entries from a number of source databases, conflicts that are not necessarily documented in the source databases themselves. New additions to the database include compilations of post-translational modifications for each of the core and linker histones, as well as genomic information in the form of map loci for the human histone gene complement, with the genetic loci linked to Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM). The database is freely accessible through the World Wide Web at either http://genome.nhgri.nih.gov/histones/ or http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih. gov/Baxevani/HISTONES     

Clarifying the UKCC's position in relation to higher level practice

The UKCC is currently consulting on its proposals to recognize and regulate a higher level of practice (UKCC, 1998a). These proposals follow the work undertaken by the UKCC from 1996-1998 on advanced and specialist practice and seek to build on the current postregistration education and practice (PREP) framework (UKCC, 1994). This article outlines the background to the consultation and puts the proposals into context. It is hoped that it will encourage practitioners to respond to the consultation, as the UKCC is very keen to hear the views of specialist nurses, midwives and health visitors. Copies of the UKCC's consultation document are available from Katrina Neal, Professional Officer (0171 333 6542) and are also available on our web site (http:/(/)www.ukcc.org.uk.). Responses should reach Sarah Waller, Director of Standards Promotion at the UKCC, by 20 October 1998.     

POPSIM: a general population simulation program

MOTIVATION: The investigation of common disorders of polygenic inheritance using both population-based association designs and non-parametric linkage analysis within families is gaining increasing importance. We have created a program that allows for the flexible simulation of populations as a tool to investigate the properties of population-based mapping approaches. RESULTS: We have created a population simulation program, POPSIM, that (i) creates a virtual representation of every individual, (ii) makes no prior assumptions but the Mendelian rules and (iii) allows populations of several million individuals in size to be generated and to be followed over hundreds of generations. The parameters of the disease model, population structure and population expansion rate can be specified. Flexible sampling options exist that allow samples of families and individuals to be drawn at any given point during the population history. The program may be a useful tool in the study of the influence of genetic drift, recombination and admixture on the generation and maintenance of linkage disequilibrium in populations, as well as the evaluation of stochastic sampling characteristics of families and individuals conditional on a complex genetic phenotype from homogeneous and heterogeneous populations. AVAILABILITY: The source code as well as Sun and Windows NT4.0 console executables of the program are available under http://www.ukrv. de/ch/medgen/html/benutzer/j.hampe/popsim. html. CONTACT: J. Hampe@mucosa.de     

More information on infectious diseases provided by a national information system

The Infectious Diseases Information System (ISIS) was established to improve the exchange of information about infectious diseases among those combating these diseases. Information about infectious diseases is obtained from municipal health services by means of a data processing system elaborated by the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment. After adjustment to the new Act on Combating and Tracing of Infectious Diseases it will be introduced nation-wide in 1998. Information about pathogens is obtained from medical microbiological laboratories (MMLs) through automatic storage of positive and negative results in a central data bank. After a pilot project had shown that the data from one MML, Arnhem, were complete and reliable, the MMLs of Roermond and Tilburg were also connected. For feedback of information to medical microbiologists and infectious diseases specialists, but also to, for instance, GPs, data from the whole country are presented daily on a public Internet site (http:/(/)www.isis.rivm.nl).     

Overview of the regional collaboratives

Responding to demands that nursing leaders conduct business in creative, proactive ways, the authors of this department share the work of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's national program. Colleagues in Caring: Regional Collaboratives for Nursing Work Force Development. The purpose of this initiative is to enhance regional and state collaborative planning and implement actions and policies to address the rapid changes occurring in the United States nursing labor market. This department presents the ongoing work of the program, highlighting the work of the 20 individual collaboratives. Regional approaches to the expected program outcomes and specific challenges and opportunities that are unique to each region's environment are included. The Colleagues in Caring program is administered by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. Current information on the initiative can be found at http:/(/)www.aacn.nche.edu under Special Projects. The staff at the National Program Office can be reached at 202/496-1095 (fax: 202/496-1093).     

CINEMA--a novel colour INteractive editor for multiple alignments

CINEMA is a new editor for manipulating and generating multiple sequence alignments. The program provides both an interface to existing databases of alignments on the Internet and a tool for constructing and modifying alignments locally. It is written in Java, so executable code will run on most major desktop platforms without modification. The implementation is highly flexible, so the applet can be easily customised with additional functions; and the object classes are reusable, promoting rapid development of program extensions. Formerly, such extended functionality might have been provided via browser plug-ins, which have to be downloaded and installed on every client before loading data. Now, for the first time, an applet is available that allows interactive client-side processing of an alignment, which can then be stored or processed automatically on the server. The program is embedded in a comprehensive help file and is accessible both as a stand-alone tool on UCL's Bioinformatics Server; http:/(/)www.biochem.ucl.ac.uk/bsm/dbbrowser+ ++/CINEMA2.02/, and as an integral part of the PRINTS protein fingerprint database. Exploitation of such novel technologies revolutionises the way users may interact with public databases in the future: bioinformatics centres need not simply provide data, but are now able to offer the means by which information is visualised and manipulated, without the requirement for users to install software.     

Denatured venous homograft as an arterial substitute in civilian vascular injuries. Thirty months'' experience

Osteosarcoma, chondrosarcoma and tumors of the Ewing group are the most frequently observed primary malignant bone tumors. In an Internet homepage recently constructed for the Orthopedic Hospital Rizzoli Bologna, Italy, these tumors have represented the majority of 4423 malignant bone tumors in the archives of this institution since 1920 (http:/(/)www.tizeta.it/rizzoli). Malignant fibrous histiocytoma, fibrosarcoma, hemangioendothelioma, malignant hemangiopericytoma and giant-cell tumors are diagnosed less frequently. Since the introduction of modern molecular and cytogenetic techniques, knowledge of genetic aberrations in malignant bone tumors has steadily increased. However, so far only for the group of Ewing tumors has a recurrent chromosomal marker, the translocation t(11;22) (q24;q12), been identified.     

Complete genome structure of the unicellular cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC6803

Cyanobacteria are photoautotrophic organisms capable of oxygen-producing photosynthesis similar to that in eukaryotic algae and plants, and because of this, they have been used as model organisms for the study of the mechanism and regulation of oxygen-producing photosynthesis. To understand the entire genetic system in cyanobacteria, the nucleotide sequence of the entire genome of the unicellular cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC6803 has been determined. The total length of the circular genome is 3,573,470 bp, with a GC content of 47.7%. A total of 3,168 potential protein coding genes were assigned. Of these, 145 (4.6%) were identical to reported genes, and 1,259 (39.6%) and 342 (10.8%) showed similarity to reported and hypothetical genes, respectively. The remaining 1,422 (45.0%) showed no apparent similarity to any genes registered in the databases. Classification of the genes by their biological function and comparison of the gene complement with those of other organisms have revealed a variety of features of the genetic information characteristic of a photoautotrophic organism. The sequence data, as well as other information on the Synechocystis genome, is presented in CyanoBase on WWW [http:/(/)www.kazusa.or.jp/cyano/].     

A yeast artificial chromosome-based physical map of the juvenile amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS2) critical region on human chromosome 2q33-q34

The Gene Expression Database (GXD) is a community resource that stores and integrates expression information for the laboratory mouse, with a particular emphasis on mouse development, and makes these data freely available in formats appropriate for comprehensive analysis. GXD is implemented as a relational database and integrated with the Mouse Genome Database (MGD) to enable global analysis of genotype, expression and phenotype information. Interconnections with sequence databases and with databases from other species further extend GXD's utility for the analysis of gene expression data. GXD is available through the Mouse Genome Informatics Web Site at http://www.informatics.jax.org/     

MultiCoil: a program for predicting two- and three-stranded coiled coils

A new multidimensional scoring approach for identifying and distinguishing trimeric and dimeric coiled coils is implemented in the MultiCoil program. The program extends the two-stranded coiled-coil prediction program PairCoil to the identification of three-stranded coiled coils. The computations are based upon data gathered from a three-stranded coiled-coil database comprising 6,319 amino acid residues, as well as from the previously constructed two-stranded coiled-coil database. In addition to identifying coiled coils not predicted by the two-stranded database programs, MultiCoil accurately classifies the oligomerization states of known dimeric and trimeric coiled coils. Analysis of the MultiCoil scores provides insight into structural features of coiled coils, and yields estimates that 0.9% of all protein residues form three-stranded coiled coils and that 1.5% form two-stranded coiled coils. The MultiCoil program is available at http:/(/)theory.lcs.mit.edu/multicoil.     

Histone Sequence Database: new histone fold family members

Searches of the major public protein databases with core and linker chicken and human histone sequences have resulted in the compilation of an annotated set of histone protein sequences. In addition, new database searches with two distinct motif search algorithms have identified several members of the histone fold family, including human DRAP1 and yeast CSE4. Database resources include information on conflicts between similar sequence entries in different source databases, multiple sequence alignments, links to the Entrez integrated information retrieval system, structures for histone and histone fold proteins, and the ability to visualize structural data through Cn3D. The database currently contains >1000 protein sequences, which are searchable by protein type, accession number, organism name, or any other free text appearing in the definition line of the entry. All sequences and alignments in this database are available through the World Wide Web at http://www.nhgri.nih. gov/DIR/GTB/HISTONES or http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih. gov/Baxevani/HISTONES     

The Database of Ribosomal Cross-links: an update

The Database of Ribosomal Cross-links (DRC) was created in 1997. Here we describe new data incorporated into this database and several new features of the DRC. The DRC is freely available via World Wide Web at http://visitweb.com/database/ or http://www. mpimg-berlin-dahlem.mpg.de/ approximately ag_ribo/ag_brimacombe/drc/     

WEBMAP: radiation hybrid mapping on the WWW

SUMMARY: A Java interface to radiation hybrid (RH) mapping software is described which enables users to build and interactively refine RH maps over the web. AVAILABILITY: The Java applets described here are available on the internet at http://www.oxmol.com/biolib/webmap/.     

O-GLYCBASE Version 3.0: a revised database of O-glycosylated proteins

O-GLYCBASE is a revised database of information on glycoproteins and their O-linked glycosylation sites. Entries are compiled and revised from the literature, and from the sequence databases. Entries include information about species, sequence, glycosylation sites and glycan type and is fully cross-referenced. Compared to version 2.0 the number of entries has increased by 20%. Sequence logos displaying the acceptor specificity patterns for the GalNAc, mannose and GlcNAc transferases are shown. The O-GLYCBASE database is available through the WWW at http://www.cbs.dtu. dk/databases/OGLYCBASE/     

Mitochondrial susceptibility to oxidative stress exacerbates cerebral infarction that follows permanent focal cerebral ischemia in mutant mice with manganese superoxide dismutase deficiency

Since 1989, about 570 different p53 mutations have been identified in more than 8000 human cancers. A database of these mutations was initiated by M. Hollstein and C. C. Harris in 1990. This database originally consisted of a list of somatic point mutations in the p 53 gene of human tumors and cell lines, compiled from the published literature and made available in a standard electronic form. The database is maintained at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and updated versions are released twice a year (January and July). The current version (July 1997) contains records on 6800 published mutations and will surpass the 8000 mark in the January 1998 release. The database now contains information on somatic and germline mutations in a new format to facilitate data retrieval. In addition, new tools are constructed to improve data analysis, such as a Mutation Viewer Java applet developed at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) to visualise the location and impact of mutations on p53 protein structure. The database is available in different electronic formats at IARC (http://www.iarc. fr/p53/homepage.htm ) or from the EBI server (http://www.ebi.ac.uk ). The IARC p53 website also provides reports on database analysis and links with other p53 sites as well as with related databases. In this report, we describe the criteria for inclusion of data, the revised format and the new visualisation tools. We also briefly discuss the relevance of p 53 mutations to clinical and biological questions.     

The ENZYME data bank in 1999

The ENZYME data bank is a repository of information related to the nomenclature of enzymes. In recent years it has become an indispensable resource for the development of metabolic databases. The current version contains information on 3704 enzymes. It is available through the ExPASy WWW server (http://www.expasy.ch/).