More Like this

1. A functional-data approach to the Argo data

   https://doi.org/10.1214/21-AOAS1477  

   Yarger, Drew; Stoev, Stilian; Hsing, Tailen (March 2022, The Annals of Applied Statistics)
2. Pathways to Data: From Plans to Datasets

   https://doi.org/10.1109/JCDL52503.2021.00077  

   Bennett, Anastasia; Sutherland, Will; Tian, Yubing; Finn, Megan; Acker, Amelia (September 2021, 2021 ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL))

   What is the relationship between Data Management Plans (DMPs), DMP guidance documents, and the reality of end-of-project data preservation and access? In this short paper we report on some preliminary findings of a 3-year investigation into the impact of DMPs on federally funded science in the United States. We investigated a small sample of publicly accessible DMPs (N=14) published using DMPTool. We found that while DMPs followed the National Science Foundation's guidelines, the pathways to the resulting research data are often obscure, vague, or not obvious. We define two “data pathways” as the search tactics and strategies deployed in order to find datasets. 

   more » « less
3. From data to information: automating data science to explore the U.S. court system

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3462757.3466100  

   Paley, Andrew; Zhao, Andong L.; Pack, Harper; Servantez, Sergio; Adler, Rachel F.; Sterbentz, Marko; Pah, Adam; Schwartz, David; Barrie, Cameron; Einarsson, Alexander; et al (June 2021, ICAIL '21: Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law)

   null (Ed.)

   The U.S. court system is the nation's arbiter of justice, tasked with the responsibility of ensuring equal protection under the law. But hurdles to information access obscure the inner workings of the system, preventing stakeholders - from legal scholars to journalists and members of the public - from understanding the state of justice in America at scale. There is an ongoing data access argument here: U.S. court records are public data and should be freely available. But open data arguments represent a half-measure; what we really need is open information. This distinction marks the difference between downloading a zip file containing a quarter-million case dockets and getting the real-time answer to a question like "Are pro se parties more or less likely to receive fee waivers?" To help bridge that gap, we introduce a novel platform and user experience that provides users with the tools necessary to explore data and drive analysis via natural language statements. Our approach leverages an ontology configuration that adds domain-relevant data semantics to database schemas to provide support for user guidance and for search and analysis without user-entered code or SQL. The system is embodied in a "natural-language notebook" user experience, and we apply this approach to the space of case docket data from the U.S. federal court system. Additionally, we provide detail on the collection, ingestion and processing of the dockets themselves, including early experiments in the use of language modeling for docket entry classification with an initial focus on motions. 

   more » « less
4. TIMSCONVERT: a workflow to convert trapped ion mobility data to open data formats

   https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btac419  

   Luu, Gordon T.; Freitas, Michael A.; Lizama-Chamu, Itzel; McCaughey, Catherine S.; Sanchez, Laura M.; Wang, Mingxun; Vitek, ed., Olga (June 2022, Bioinformatics)

   Abstract MotivationAdvances in mass spectrometry have led to the development of mass spectrometers with ion mobility spectrometry capabilities and dual-source instrumentation; however, the current software ecosystem lacks interoperability with downstream data analysis using open-source software and pipelines. ResultsHere, we present TIMSCONVERT, a data conversion high-throughput workflow from timsTOF Pro/fleX mass spectrometer raw data files to mzML and imzML formats that incorporates ion mobility data while maintaining compatibility with data analysis tools. We showcase several examples using data acquired across different experiments and acquisition modalities on the timsTOF fleX MS. Availability and implementationTIMSCONVERT and its documentation can be found at https://github.com/gtluu/timsconvert and is available as a standalone command-line interface tool for Windows and Linux, NextFlow workflow and online in the Global Natural Products Social (GNPS) platform. Supplementary informationSupplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. 

   more » « less
5. Data Market Discipline: From Financial Regulation to Data Governance

   Benthall, Sebastian P.; Viljoen, Salome (December 2021, Journal of international and comparative law)

   Johnson, Kristin N.; Reyes, Carla L. (Ed.)

   Privacy regulation has traditionally been the remit of consumer protection, and privacy harm is cast as a contractual harm arising from the interpersonal exchanges between data subjects and data collectors. This frames surveillance of people by companies as primarily a consumer harm. In this article, we argue that the modern economy of personal data is better understood as an extension of the financial system. The data economy intersects with capital markets in ways that may increase systemic and systematic financial risks. We contribute a new regulatory approach to privacy harms: as a source of risk correlated across households, firms and the economy as a whole. We consider adapting tools from macroprudential regulations designed to mitigate financial crises to the market for personal data. We identify both promises and pitfalls to viewing individual privacy through the lens of the financial system. 

   more » « less