Collaborative Research: ABI: Innovation: The "Global Names Architecture," an infrastructure for unifying taxonomic databases and services for managers of biological information.

海洋生物实验室（伍兹霍尔，马萨诸塞州）、毕晓普博物馆（檀香山）、加州科学院（旧金山弗朗西斯科）和密苏里州植物园（圣刘易斯）获得了ABI创新奖，以建立全球名称体系结构（GNA），这是一套模块化的数据库、应用程序和语义Web服务，有助于整合生命科学领域的信息。 该项目将扩展现有的概念验证组件，探索技术挑战的替代解决方案，并将这些组件集成到试点GNA中。 GNA利用了林奈的生物体拉丁学名系统，该系统一直是科学界最古老、最普遍的标准之一。 事实上，生物学中的所有信息都是由进化和它所产生的共享相似性的层次模式所赋予的。 科学家们命名物种，并随着对它们的进化和关系的了解而改变它们。 这些变化创造了一个错综复杂的同义词网络，沿着同音异义词和变体拼写，使得有效管理信息变得困难。GNA将创建一个系统，使我们能够在文献和在线数据集中正确翻译名称。 虽然全球需求评估对生命科学信息的长期管理有影响，但最初的受益者将是全世界10 000多名分类学家，我们对世界生物多样性的了解依赖于他们的专业知识。 一个科学名称“用法库”与生物多样性遗产图书馆的CiteBank相结合，将生成分类学文献的共享索引和访问密钥，这是我们关于近200万个物种的大部分知识的来源。由真菌索引和国际动物学命名委员会的ZooBank合作建立的新命名登记处将在登记时广播新发现。 其他工具将帮助分类学家合作建立权威的地球目录？GNA将把这一过程转化为语义网络基础设施，将组织不断增长的、可通过互联网访问的地球生物圈知识。 最终，生命科学领域的其他NSF受资助者应该能够通过将其网站暴露给创建分类索引的服务来增强其数据管理计划。 关于这个项目的更多信息可以从http://globalnames.org或dpatterson@mbl.edu获得。

The Marine Biological Laboratory (Woods Hole, MA), Bishop Museum (Honolulu), California Academy of Sciences (San Francisco), and Missouri Botanical Gardens (St Louis) have received an ABI innovation award to establish the Global Names Architecture (GNA), a modular suite of databases, applications, and semantic web services that will help integrate information across the Life Sciences. The project will extend existing proof of concept components, explore alternative solutions for technical challenges, and integrate the components into a pilot GNA. The GNA capitalizes on Linnaeus' system of Latin scientific names for organisms, a system that has endured as one of the oldest and most universal standards in science. Virtually all information in biology is given context by evolution and the hierarchical pattern of shared similarities it has produced. Scientists name species and change them with growing knowledge about their evolution and relationships. These changes create a tangled network of synonyms that, along with homonyms and variant spellings, make it difficult to manage information effectively The GNA will create a system that enables us to translate names correctly across the literature and on-line datasets. While the GNA has implications for the long-term management of information in the life sciences, the initial beneficiaries will be the more than 10,000 taxonomists worldwide, on whose expertise our understanding of the world's biodiversity rests. A scientific name 'usage bank' coupled with the Biodiversity Heritage Library's CiteBank will generate shared indexes and access keys to the taxonomic literature, the source of most of our knowledge about nearly 2 million species. New nomenclatural registries founded by the co-operation of the Index Fungorum and the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature's ZooBank will broadcast new discoveries as they are registered. Other tools will help taxonomists collaborate to build authoritative catalogs of the Earth?s biodiversity, then merge and integrate them, a process that GNA will transform into a semantic cyberinfrastructure that will organize the growing, internet-accessible, knowledge of Earth's biosphere. Ultimately, other NSF grantees in the life sciences should be able to augment their Data Management Plans by exposing their web sites to services that will create taxonomic indices. More information about this project can be obtained from http://globalnames.org or dpatterson@mbl.edu.