A taxonomically intelligent feed reader

Anglophone readers of Tela Botanica may be glad to know of the excellent « uBioRSS: a taxonomically intelligent feed reader » ( http://names.ubio.org/rss )

uBio has its origins in the MBLWHOI Library in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and began with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The uBio Taxonomic Name Server acts as a name thesaurus.

Names have many different classes of relationships that can be used to organize and retrieve information that is annotated with names. These classes are divided into two inter-connected services.

NameBank is a repository of millions of recorded biological names and facts that link those names together.

ClassificationBank stores multiple classifications and taxonomic concepts that are the result of expert opinions. It extends the functionality of NameBank.

All data within these components are linked to mechanisms that provide credit and attribution to experts who provide name and linkage information within the TNS.

Lastly, NameBank promotes the emergence of a layered biological informatics infrastructure that allows different expert systems to share common information. This conserves scarce resources and enhances the means to support continued expert work.