Research Article

Open-source sensor for measuring oxygen partial pressures below 100 microbars

Publishing date: 2018-12-20 Published on: PLOS ONE summary: This nifty device measures partial pressure of oxygen in a similar manner to commercial devices, yet at substantially reduced cost. In a nutshell, a sinusoidally modulated LED excites a luminescent dye over time, while a photodiode picks up the spectrally shifted emission light from the dye.

A large-scale analysis of bioinformatics code on GitHub

Publishing date: 2018-12-10 Published on: PLOS ONE summary: In recent years, the explosion of genomic data and bioinformatic tools has been accompanied by a growing conversation around reproducibility of results and usability of software.

An open-source k-mer based machine learning tool for fast and accurate subtyping of HIV-1 genomes

Publishing date: 2018-12-10 Published on: PLOS ONE summary: The classification of infections is a routine component of clinical management. Kameris is an open source toolkit for a supervised and alignment-free subtyping method which operates on HIV-1 sequences.

Assessing a novel way to measure step count while walking using a custom mobile phone application

Publishing date: 2018-12-10 Published on: PLOS ONE summary: Walking speed has been associated with many clinical outcomes (e.g., frailty, mortality, joint replacement need, etc.). Accurately measuring walking speed (stride length x step count/time) typically requires significant clinician/staff time or a gait lab with specialized equipment (i.

Viridot: An automated virus plaque (immunofocus) counter for the measurement of serological neutralizing responses with application to dengue virus

Publishing date: 2018-12-10 Published on: PLOS NEGLECTED TROPICAL DISEASES summary: Although the plaque reduction neutralization test (PRNT) is an important assay for measuring neutralizing antibody responses against many viruses, no free, open-source programs specifically designed for virus plaque counting and neutralizing antibody titer estimation are available.

Design and validation of an open-source modular Microplate Photoirradiation System for high-throughput photobiology experiments

Publishing date: 2018-11-19 Published on: PLOS ONE summary: This paper presents a useful open-source Microplate Photoirradiation System (MPS) for use in standard 96- and 24-well microplates that allows photobiologists to conduct a variety of experiments in a high-throughput format, inlcuding inside incubators.

GC4S: A bioinformatics-oriented Java software library of reusable graphical user interface components

Publishing date: 2018-10-23 Published on: PLOS ONE summary: This paper introduces GC4S, a bioinformatics-oriented collection of high-level, extensible, and reusable Java GUI elements specifically designed to speed up bioinformatics software development.

meaRtools: An R package for the analysis of neuronal networks recorded on microelectrode arrays

Publishing date: 2018-10-23 Published on: PLOS Computational Biology summary: In this paper, Gelfman et al. present an open-source R package ‘meaRtools’ that provides a platform for analyzing neuronal networks recorded on Microelectrode Arrays (MEAs).

Adapting open-source drone autopilots for real-time iceberg observations

Publishing date: 2018-10-01 Published on: MethodsX summary: In a nice example of adapting an existing tool, Daniel F.Carlson and Søren Rysgaard used OS control boards for Drones and its respective software as dataloggers to measure Iceberg characteristics (eg movement speed, orientation over time).

Approaches to Open Source 3-D Printable Probe Positioners and Micromanipulators for Probe Stations

Publishing date: 2018-10-01 Published on: HardwareX summary: This review of micromanipulator designs from Iiro Hietanen et al puts three open source alternatives through their paces with rigorous experimental testing, and explains the trade-off and decisions in weighing up cost and precision.