XSEDE Project Brings Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, Digital Services and Expertise to Nation’s Scientists and Engineers

A partnership of 17 institutions last week announced a new project that allows researchers open access to the power of supercomputers, advanced computational tools and digital resources and services directly from their desktops.

Called Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment XSEDE, the project links computers, data and people from around the world to establish a single, virtual system that scientists can interactively use to conduct research.

Supported by the National Science Foundation NSF, XSEDE will be the most advanced, powerful, and robust collection of integrated advanced digital resources and services in the world. NSF will fund the project for five years at $121 million.

from: NSF News

From Big Data to New Insights

from the Office of Science and Technology blog post: From Big Data to New Insights:

Today, Microsoft is announcing the availability of a new tool called Daytona that will make it easier for researchers to harness the power of “cloud computing” to discover insights in huge quantities of data.

Daytona, which will be freely available to the research community, builds on an existing cloud computing collaboration between the National Science Foundation and Microsoft. In April, NSF announced that it was funding 13 teams to take advantage of Microsoft’s offer to provide free access to its Windows Azure cloud. Among other things, these projects will improve our understanding of large watersheds such as the Savannah River Basin, enable more and better use of renewable energy through improved weather forecasting, predict the interactions between proteins, and make cloud computing more secure, reliable, and accessible over mobile devices.

The new partnership, along with NSF collaborations with other leading IT companies, will help researchers access the computing power and storage capacity they need to tackle the big questions in their field. That’s important because researchers in a growing number of fields are generating extremely large data sets, commonly referred to as “Big Data.” For example, the size of DNA sequencing databases is increasing by a factor of 10 every 18 months! Researchers need better tools to help them store, index, search, visualize, and analyze these data, allowing them to discover new patterns and connections.

 

JISC calls for all metadata to be openly accessible : JISC

If all UK metadata was made openly accessible, the taskforce says, then the resources themselves would be more visible and it would be easier to build innovative new ways for researchers, teachers and students to explore the resources.

Twelve national organisations have signed up to a new set of open metadata principles and now JISC is inviting all publicly funded organisations including universities, colleges, libraries, museums and archives to make the same commitment.

via JISC calls for all metadata to be openly accessible.

Growing Knowledge – The evolution of research

The British Library has an exhibit on the evolution of scientific research.

Highlighted on the site are short (~ 4 min) videos about new methods of doing research and data-driven science, the role of the research library in support of e-science, and dealing with information overload.

How have digital technologies changed research? What are the new challenges they pose? What role should a research library play in the 21st Century? Growing Knowledge at the British Library explores these questions with our researchers in order to inform the debate on the future of research.

from: British Library – Growing Knowledge – The evolution of research.

Input on Strategies to Encourage Broad Data Sharing in Environmental Health Sciences Research

The NIEHS is seeking input on ways to encourage broader data sharing among researchers in the field of environmental health sciences who are conducting clinical or epidemiologic studies. Input is being sought from the environmental health science extramural research community and other interested stakeholders. Information is requested regarding additional perspectives on what, if any, unique considerations exist for sharing of data in studies collecting environmental exposure information, what are the primary characteristics of successful data sharing resources and strategies in use currently by researchers, what are the barriers to broad sharing of data and what additional resources and tools are needed to promote timelier, more efficient sharing of environmental health science data.

via NOT-ES-11-009: Request for Information RFI: Input on Strategies to Encourage Broad Data Sharing in Environmental Health Sciences Research.

Interdisciplinary Computing and Open Science

The Science Libraries will be hosting two sessions by Microsoft Research on May 24, to explore “Interdisciplinary Computing and Open Science”. Sessions will be from 10:30 – noon, and 1:30 – 3 pm, in room B90. Please register for the session you plan to attend so we can plan for refreshments.

Presenters: Dan Fay and Yan Xu, Microsoft Research

Interdisciplinary computing is becoming a new paradigm in academic research and education. Via interdisciplinary computing, computer science innovations are stimulated by real-world data and computational challenges; natural and social sciences are advanced by applying the new computing technologies to the transformation of data to information and to knowledge. By collaborating with academic partners in many difference fields, Microsoft has been a strong player in interdisciplinary computing over the last decade. Please join us to learn about Microsoft Research (MSR), their vision and strategy in interdisciplinary computing, examples of collaborations between MSR and the academia, and demos of MSR innovative software.

This event is also meant for you to rub elbows with your colleagues in other disciplines and with the Microsoft Research visitors and exchange experiences and thoughts about interdisciplinary computing. Please come with your questions and contribute to creating a mind-swap experience for the event.

Microsoft Research staff members Dan Fay and Yan Xu will lead the sessions. Dan Fay is director of the Earth, Energy, and Environment sector at Microsoft Research. Yan Xu is responsible for research partnerships with academia, industry, and government related to data mining, high-performance computing, workflow automation, and data visualization for research in earth, energy, and the environment.

For more information, contact Brian Westra, Lorry I. Lokey Science Data Services Librarian, 541-346-2654 , bwestra@uoregon.edu.

Cloud computing increasingly attractive to universities, says JISC

JISC News release
16.5.2011

Cloud computing increasingly attractive to universities, says JISC

There is a “compelling case for using the cloud for research”, JISC’s innovation director for digital infrastructure argued last week.

Speaking at an ‘inside government’ forum on cloud in the public sector, Rachel Bruce said: “It’s clear that universities need the right infrastructure for the right job, and hybrid infrastructure with local and public provision is required.  But investment in the cloud is often driven by cost – so cloud computing is a particularly attractive option for smaller institutions who can’t afford to replace their physical hardware to do the same job.”

Rachel highlighted some of the reasons that universities are increasingly looking to use the cloud for their research services.

Cloud is attractive because it can help universities and similar organisations:

1.            Reduce environmental and financial costs – where functions are only needed for short periods, for example

2.            Share the load – when a university is working with a partner organisation so that neither organisation need develop or maintain a physical infrastructure

3.            Be flexible and pay as you go – researchers may need to use specialized web-based software that cannot be supported by in-house facilities or policies

4.            Access data centres, web applications and services from any location

5.            Make experiments more repeatable – write-ups of science experiments performed in the cloud can contain reference to cloud applications like a virtual machine, making the experiment easier to replicate

JISC committee member and Pro Vice Chancellor of Roehampton University, Chris Cobb, also addressed an Eduserv symposium last week on shared services.

He said: “With the universal drive for efficiencies, shared services has become even more topical. The key though is to examine opportunities at a process level and not as whole systems or organisational units. JISC is undertaking valuable work in supporting institutions in improved understanding of their processes and the relationship of processes to systems and physical infrastructure.

“Through this, institutions are better placed to take advantage of services orientated architecture, ‘software as a service’ and cloud based technologies to increase resilience and reduce costs. With cultural barriers to shared services now dissipating, the time is right to consider shared services more strategically and not just opportunistically as has been the case so far.”

JISC is currently working to help organisations better understand the costs of a cloud infrastructure and help them make decisions about how the cloud might fit their business models.

This includes delivering part of the Universities Modernisation Fund, a £12.5 million HEFCE fund that aims to help universities and colleges deliver better efficiency and value for money through shared services.

JISC is, for example, contributing funding to eleven pilot projects with the Engineering and Physical Sciences research council (EPSRC) to explore and develop new cloud computing technologies for research.

Find out how the pilots are going <http://cloudresearch.jiscinvolve.org/wp/about/>

JISC is also helping over 40 UK universities and colleges navigate through the steps needed to improve their IT service delivery for students and staff including evaluating the possibilities for cloud computing.

Read JISC’s tagged articles on cloud computing using the Delicious social bookmarking service <http://www.delicious.com/tag/cloudcomputing+jiscfsd>

Read what Publictechnology.net said about Rachel Bruce’s talk <http://www.publictechnology.net/sector/education/jisc-director-outlines-he-s-cloud-considerations>