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When the scientific dataset evolves or is reused in workflows creating derived datasets, the integrity of the dataset with its metadata information, including provenance, needs to be securely preserved while providing assurances that they are not accidentally or maliciously altered during the process. Providing a secure method to efficiently share and verify the data as well as metadata is essential for the reuse of the scientific data. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Open Science Chain (OSC) utilizes consortium blockchain to provide a cyberinfrastructure solution to maintain integrity of the provenance metadata for published datasets and provides a way to perform independent verification of the dataset while promoting reuse and reproducibility. The NSF- and National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Neuroscience Gateway (NSG) provides a freely available web portal that allows neuroscience researchers to execute computational data analysis pipeline on high performance computing resources. Combined, the OSC and NSG platforms form an efficient, integrated framework to automatically and securely preserve and verify the integrity of the artifacts used in research workflows while using the NSG platform. This paper presents the results of the first study that integrates OSC–NSG frameworks to track the provenance of neurophysiological signal data analysis to study brain network dynamics using the Neuro-Integrative Connectivity tool, which is deployed in the NSG platform.

Database URL: https://www.opensciencechain.org.

We measure the 3D kinematic structures of the young stars within the central 0.5 pc of our Galactic Center using the 10 m telescopes of the W. M. Keck Observatory over a time span of 25 yr. Using high-precision measurements of positions on the sky and proper motions and radial velocities from new observations and the literature, we constrain the orbital parameters for each young star. Our results show two statistically significant substructures: a clockwise stellar disk with 18 candidate stars, as has been proposed before, but with an improved disk membership; and a second, almost edge-on plane of 10 candidate stars oriented east–west on the sky that includes at least one IRS 13 star. We estimate the eccentricity distribution of each substructure and find that the clockwise disk has 〈e〉 = 0.39 and the edge-on plane has 〈e〉 = 0.68. We also perform simulations of each disk/plane with incompleteness and spatially variable extinction to search for asymmetry. Our results show that the clockwise stellar disk is consistent with a uniform azimuthal distribution within the disk. The edge-on plane has an asymmetry that cannot be explained by variable extinction or incompleteness in the field. The orientation, asymmetric stellar distribution, and high eccentricity of the edge-on plane members suggest that this structure may be a stream associated with the IRS 13 group. The complex dynamical structure of the young nuclear cluster indicates that the star formation process involved complex gas structures and dynamics and is inconsistent with a single massive gaseous disk.