Issue 37, December 2005 News Contents UK e-Science SPICE Project Wins Award at SC05 TG5 Workshop 2005 Digital Preservation Award Wellcome Trust & DCC Joint Workshop National Grid Service User Forum GGF16 Registration Incentives Announcements and Events For more information on anything mentioned in the newsletter, please contact Alison McCall alison@nesc.ac.uk Telephone 0131 651 4783 Newsletter produced by: Alison McCall and Jennifer Hurst Next month’s deadline for articles is 9 January 06. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! NeSC News www.nesc.ac.uk UK e-Science SPICE Project Wins Award at SuperComputing 05 The UK e-Science project SPICE (Simulated Pore Interactive Computing Environment) won a top award as winner of the HP Analytics Challenge at SC05, the world’s premier supercomputing conference in Seattle in November. SPICE achieved success in the HPC Analytics Challenge for demonstrating the use of innovative techniques in rigorous data analysis and high-end visualisation to solve a complex, real-world problem. The HP Analytics Challenge is a unique opportunity for researchers, engineers and analysts to showcase innovative data analysis and highend visualisation to develop and demonstrate applications showcasing powerful analytics techniques for solving complex, real world problems. “SPICE shows how the power of supercomputers on both sides of the Atlantic can be harnessed to simulate and visualise biological processes of unprecedented complexity. We’re delighted with this award,” says Professor Peter Coveney, principal investigator for the SPICE project from University College London. SPICE is one of the first demonstrations of the UK’s new dedicated optical research network, UKLight. SPICE is jointly funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the US National Science Foundation (NSF) as one component of a binational collaboration to exploit state of the art optical (lambda) networks to tackle scientific problems that would otherwise remain out of reach. Two US projects, NeKTAR and VORTRONICS, are using the same infrastructure to simulate blood flow through the entire network of human arteries and to tackle highly computationally-intensive problems in turbulent fluid dynamics. http://www.realitygrid.org/Spice/ Other finalists included: Terascale Music Mining, Network Traffic Analysis with Query Driven Visualisation, Bridging the Macro and Micro: a computing Intensive Earthquake Study using Discovery Net, Visualisation of Large-Scale Unsteady Computational Fluid Dynamics Datasets, Real Time Change Detection and Alerts from highway traffic Data. For more information visit: http://sc05. supercomputing.org/initiatives/home.php Dr Shantenu Jha, University College London, tel. +44 (0) 20 7679 5300, e-mail: s.jha@ucl.ac.uk JISC Workshop on Security and Access Management JISC is holding a workshop entitled Security and Access Management: developments within the JISC Core Middleware Programme in Bristol on 27 February. This is a repeat of a similarly titled workshop held at NeSC in October. The workshop will introduce Middleware and Security and give an overview of developments within the Information Environment and GRID communities, as supported by JISC’s Core Middleware Programmes. For further information and to register an interest, please e-mail judy.redfearn@jisc. Issue 37, December 2005 TG5 Data Management Workshop “Best practice Solutions for Grid Data Management” Wellcome Trust and Digital Curation Centre Joint Workshop January 19-20, 2006 Wellcome Library London e-Science Institute, Edinburgh, January 12th 2006 This two-day workshop will be based around future-proofing institutional websites. Institutional websites have become an increasingly integral tool for disseminating key institutional information and for promoting institutional identities to the general public. The long-term survival, value, and usability of the information presented via institutional websites depends on numerous criteria such as the formats and codes selected for presentation, the capture and binding of associated metadata, the identification of the web resources, and the perceived quality of the web resources among current and future users. Data management is an important topic in European Union Sixth Framework Programme grid projects. For a major uptake of Grid technology in industry, a comprehensive approach will be needed. Applications making use of grid infrastructure - such as ontologies or data mining - have a need for sophisticated data management mechanisms. Previous TG5 meetings have shown a variety of different approaches to data management. Though it is unrealistic and possibly even dangerous to expect that all projects will converge on the same set of technologies, design choices should be made on a common understanding of the available options. To develop a unified view on Grid data management, several grid projects from the EU Sixth Framework Programme and UK eScience Programme will demonstrate how they handle data management in practice, with the particular focus on: • Data Sources • Data Discovery & Metadata • Data Access and Data Transfer Participation is strictly limited to a small amount of FP6 grid projects representatives and associates. This event will focus on practical tools and techniques that can help to ensure that institutional websites are future-proofed against risks such as institutional change and technological obsolescence. In particular, this event will examine appraisal processes, formats for curation and preservation, international curation and preservation activity, and specific experiences via a series of case studies. The workshop will be of benefit to institutions who are in the process of implementing or managing an institutional website and will be delivered over three sessions - international activity, practical tools and techniques, and selected use cases. Each session will be chaired by a leading expert on the topic. The key themes include: overview of international curation and preservation activities, tools and techniques to create and persistently identify website content for curation and preservation and examples of real-life experiences in web archiving Technical Working Groups (TG) are part of the European Grid Concertation Initiative and funded by the European Union Sixth Framework Information Society Technology Programme (EU-FP6 IST). Their purpose is to provide a forum for discussion, exchange of information and the state-of-the-art, thus emphasizing collaboration throughout EU-FP6 IST grid projects. Technical Working Group 5 specifically addresses the topic of Grid data management. Registration http://www.dcc.ac.uk/training/fpw-2006/ register There is a discount for DCC Associate Network members. For more information, see our Associates Network page (http://www.dcc.ac.uk/associates/) Fore more information contact: Please register online at http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/634/ ************************************************************ ******** Joy Davidson DCC Training Coordinator and ERPANET British Editor University of Glasgow http://www.dcc.ac.uk Tel: +44 (131) 650 9833 Fax: +44 (131) 650 9819 Email: adminteam@nesc.ac.uk Dr Michael May, Fraunhofer AIS Dr Neil Chue Hong, EPCC NeSC News 2 www.nesc.ac.uk Issue 37, December 2005 National Grid Service User Forum: 24th January 2006 The National Grid Service has now been in full production since September 2004 and currently has over 300 registered users. With users from a diverse range of academic disciplines and a growing number of resource providers, the NGS is looking towards the future. The first NGS user forum is meeting to bring together existing and potential NGS users and providers, to share experiences, understand future plans and provide an opportunity to influence the development of the NGS provision through the next few years. The meeting will take place at the Palace Hotel, London, SW1W 0PS The current agenda for the day is to discuss what the NGS currently provides, experiences from current users and a look to the future with respect to wider integration and the next phase of NGS resource deployment. An open discussion section will allow all participants the opportunity to discuss their own experiences and requirements for the future. Registration is required for this event as space is strictly limited. Please use the registration form at http://www.ngs.ac.uk/event.html International team wins the 2005 Digital Preservation Award GGF16 The PREMIS Working Group - a team of 30 experts from five countries - was awarded the prestigious Digital Preservation Award for 2005 by Loyd Grossman OBE FSA at the tenth annual Conservation Awards ceremony held at the British Library in November. This is the second year to include the DPC-sponsored £5,000 Digital Preservation Award, which was awarded to the PREMIS Working Group for “leadership and advancement in digital preservation which will benefit the UK” The 16th Global Grid Forum meeting will tkae place in Athens between February 13-16 at the Divani Caravel Hotel. This is the first GGF meeting in Europe after 3 consecutive events in Asia and the US, so it is a good opportunity to touch base with its activities, or familiarise yourselves with the grid standardisation effort. GGF meetings are considered to be premier Grid Computing Events worldwide. Furthermore, GRNET has been working with GGF for an exciting plenary programme on production grids, plus multiple community tracks on issues of interest to everyone. The winning team’s work is to do with “preservation meta-data”, which is essential to ensure that digital objects remain accessible over time. The work of the PREMIS Working Group goes a long way towards establishing an international open-source standard for handling meta-data, which will help libraries and institutions around the world to archive digital content - the volume of which is doubling every year. You are encouraged to register early as in additon to substantial savings, those individuals who register during the early registration period which expires on December 17, 2005 will be entered into a draw to take place during the opening session. Mark Linesch will randomly select 5 winners to receive special GGF16 VIP prize packages. The PREMIS team were chosen ahead of four other shortlisted projects. For more information: http://www.dpconline.org/graphics/advocacy/press/ award2005.html Register now at: http://www.ggf.org/GGF16/ggf_ events_regstrtn_ggf16.htm to become eligible for the draw! NeSC News 3 www.nesc.ac.uk Issue 37, December 2005 Forthcoming Events December 5-7 Microarray Design and Analysis 5-8 International Conference on e-Science and Grid Technologies Melbourne, Australia http://www.gridbus.org/escience/ 8-9 Data Managment on the NGS e-Science Institute, Edinburgh http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/esi.html 12-15 3rd International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC 2005) Amsterdam, The Netherlands http://www.icsoc.org/ 15-17 ICSC Congress on Computational Intelligence Methods and Applications Istanbul, Turkey http://www.cima2005.org/ 5-6 UML for Use Cases e-Science Institute, Edinburgh http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/ events/640/ 13-14 WWW2006 Programme Committee Meeting e-Science Institute, Edinburgh http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/ events/584/ 17-20 Astrogrid Deployment and Development Workshop e-Science Institute, Edinburgh http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/ events/646/ 18-19 Integrative Neuroimaging;Computing Challenges & Solutions University of Newcastle http://www.ncl.ac.uk/ion/news/ workshophome.htm?event=1 26-27 Designing for e-Science: Interrogating new scientific practice for usability, in the lab and beyond e-Science Institute, Edinburgh http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/ events/613/ 31 Second ComparaGRID Domain Modelling Workshop e-Science Institute, Edinburgh http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/ events/612/ 1-2 NERC GridGIS Working Group e-Science Institute, Edinburgh http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/ events/649/ 8 Higgs-Maxwell Particle Physics Workshop: Future Accelerators and Future Physics e-Science Institute, Edinburgh http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/ events/590/ 9-10 2nd DIALOGUE Workshop e-Science Institute, Edinburgh http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/ events/636/ 27-28 Workshop on Electronic Voting & e-Government in the UK e-Science Institute, Edinburgh http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/ events/639/ Integrated Health Records (IHR) - Practice and Technology e-Science Institute, Edinburgh http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/ events/648/ e-Science Institute, Edinburgh http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/ events/625/ January February March 9-10 For more events please look at the NeSC website: www.nesc.ac.uk/events Welcome to... Opening up Access to Research Results: Questions and Answers Elias Theoharopoulos joined NeSC in November to work on the OGSA-DAI Project. Elias previously worked as a software developer in Greece and has just completed an MSc at the University of Edinburgh. To facilitate the rapid and wide dissemination of research results, researchers are being encouraged to deposit their papers in institutional repositories and publish in Open Access journals. The Joint Information Systems Committee, together with Research Councils UK, CCLRC and the Research Libraries Network, have produced a document to help answer some of the questions researchers might ask. Yin Chen also joined NeSC recently to work on the OGSA-DAI project. Yin is with us for a few months and is also working on a PhD in Informatics. Congratulations to Susan Andrews on the birth of her baby girl Emma. Christmas Closure The document is available on-line at : http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=pub_qanda. For hard copies, please e-mail judy.redfearn@jisc.ac.uk. NeSC Edinburgh will close at 5pm on Friday 23 December for the Christmas period and re-open on Thursday 5 January 2006. If you would like to hold an e-Science event at the e-Science Institute, please contact: Conference Administrator, National e-Science Centre, 15 South College Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AA Tel: 0131 650 9833 / Fax: 0131 650 9819 / Email: events@nesc.ac.uk NeSC News 4 www.nesc.ac.uk