The monthly newsletter from the National e-Science Centre
NeSC News
Issue 65 December 2008 www.nesc.ac.uk
How not to combat global warming
By Iain Coleman
“We can’t solve global warming because I ****ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of
something collective.” – President-Elect Barack Obama, quoted in Newsweek, November 5 2008
Global warming is not a scientific, or
even a technological problem. It’s a
social and political one.
We can predict changes in
temperature and precipitation over
the next few decades, but how does
that translate into new standards
for planning and building? We can
identify ways to reduce carbon
dioxide emissions while saving
money through energy efficiency, but
will these be adopted widely enough
to make a difference?
These questions are at the heart of
the new e-Science Institute theme,
“Communicating the e-Science of
Climate Change”. In the inaugural
public lecture of the theme, held
at eSI on 14 November, Theme
Leader Andrew Kerr spoke about
the communications gap between
the scientists who are working on
climate change research, and the
policymakers who are trying to
address the consequences.
Over the last decade, climate
predictions have become more
detailed and rigorous, with finer
spatial resolution and quantitative
estimates of the probabilities of
various outcomes. It is now becoming
clear that ever-improving scientific
descriptions are not providing the
answers to policymakers’ questions.
When it comes to practical decision
making about, say, changing
regulations on bridge-building, or
how much money to allocate to flood
defences, the outputs of scientific
models are not generally framed in a
useful way.
That’s one area this theme will
study over the coming year. Another
is the question of how our society
can transform itself into one that
consumes and emits much less
carbon. Traditionally, there is
a trade-off between the cost of
environmental damage and the cost
of the measures that might mitigate
it, and the question for political
economists is how to identify the
optimum expenditure. But it turns out
that many environmentally-friendly
measures, like improved insulation
for greater fuel efficiency, have a
negative cost – they save money and
the environment at the same time. It’s
a win-win. So why don’t we just do it?
It’s a question of politics, persuasion
and psychology. We are, by and
large, creatures of habit, more
concerned with what we might lose
than with what we might gain. We’re
pretty bad at computation, and
when we do try to calculate the best
course of action we put too much
weight on recent events, and too
little on far-off consequences. All of
this means that the immediate cost
and hassle of making changes to
our homes or lifestyles tends to loom
disproportionately large in our minds,
compared to the long-term benefits
for ourselves and for the planet.
So when academics produce more
accurate probabilities and net
present value calculations, they are
only providing more refined versions
of tools that most people are very
poor at using anyway. This is the
communication gap, and it isn’t
caused by a lack of scientific skill
or a lack of effort from scientists in
explaining their work. It’s because
scientists are presenting the wrong
sorts of information.
Would we do better by moving away
from the usual approach of grinding
numbers out of massive simulations
and producing attractive pictures,
and looking instead at how decision
makers will actually use information?
That’s what this theme is going
to investigate over the next year.
Hopefully the world won’t have got
too much hotter by then.
Slides and a webcast of this event
can be downloaded from http://www.
nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/921/
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
from the National e-Science Centre
Tending the garden
By Iain Coleman
When it comes to developing the
infrastructure of e-Science, the
vocabulary is all about design,
engineering, building. It’s the
language of architects. But is
this the wrong way to look at it?
Should we instead be talking about
growing, nourishing, pruning?
Should e-Infrastructure creators see
themselves, not as architects, but as
gardeners?
That’s the question that arises from
the e-Science Institute’s “Adoption
of e-Research Technologies” theme
that concluded with a public lecture
from Theme Leader Alex Voss at
eSI on 27 October. The aim of the
theme was to study the factors that
inhibit people from using the tools
of e-Research, and to find ways of
tackling them. A few early adopters
in a research community are not
enough: this theme looked at ways of
spreading the uptake of e-Research
beyond a minority of enthusiasts and
into the mainstream of research.
When you talk about e-Infrastructure,
you’re not just talking about
computers and cables, or even
portals and protocols. You’re referring
to a complex ensemble of technical
and social arrangements. It is this
that leads to the idea of “fostering”
rather than “building”
e-Infrastructure. To create an
effective system, you have to look at
how particular research disciplines
work, at what motivates researchers
to share data – or not – and what
sorts of collective activities the
various research communities are
involved in. And when you’ve done
all that, it’s time to do it again.
Communities and accepted practices
change and, like gardening, doing
the job this year doesn’t get you out
of doing it again next year.
So we need to invest in social
infrastructure: that’s the main
recommendation to come out of this
theme. Technical problems are not
usually the main barriers to uptake of
e-Infrastructure. What is vital is that
technical people should understand
the needs of particular disciplines
and the social environment in which
the technology will be used.
Work in this area is continuing,
even now that the theme has come
to an end. Under the auspices of
the JISC Community Engagement
initiative, several projects have
funding through to next year to work
on engaging potential users and
encouraging uptake of e-Research
tools and methods. As some barriers
are overcome, and others emerge,
these projects and others will have to
monitor how the situation develops
over time and respond to a changing
social and technical environment.
Changing people’s underlying
attitudes takes time, and the results
of this effort will only gradually
become visible. The soil has been
tilled, the seeds planted and the
undergrowth cut back. With patience,
fair weather, and attentive cultivation,
the garden is beginning to flourish.
Slides and a webcast of this event
can be downloaded from http://www.
nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/916/
UK teams win medals at iGEM
SIX UK teams entered the
International Genetically Engineered
Machine competition, and came
home with three gold medals and two
bronze.
iGEM is an undergraduate Synthetic
Biology competition run by MIT.
Teams are issued with a kit of
biological parts at the start of the
summer, and work within their
schools to build biological systems
and operate them in living cells.
This year, the competition was held
on November 8-9. The UK failed
to win the overall prize, losing
out to a team from Slovenia, but
came home with a haul of medals:
Edinburgh, Newcastle and Imperial
College, London, won gold, while
Cambridge and Bristol got bronze. In
addition, Imperial College won Best
Manufacturing Project and Best New
Biobrick part, while Bristol won Best
Model.
More information is available at
http://2008.igem.org/
Issue 65, December 2008
Renewing the Edinburgh e-Science MSc
By Bob Mann
The University of Edinburgh MSc
in e-Science is now in its fourth
year. It has been a great success
academically – popular with its
students, repeatedly praised by its
External Examiner for its innovative
curriculum, and proven capable of
preparing students from differing
backgrounds for a range of career
paths – but recruitment has fallen
short of expectations, so we have
been thinking how we can better
reach the large pool of potential
applicants who would benefit
from the unique, multi-disciplinary
training that it offers. At the same
time we have been reviewing the
content of the MSc’s core courses,
to ensure that they continue to meet
the requirements of our students
(and their future employers) in a
technological environment which
differs significantly from that we
envisaged when we starting planning
the MSc, back in early 2004.
As a result of this review, the title of
the MSc will be changing from “eScience” to “Distributed Scientific
Computing” from 2009/10. Market
research shows that “e-Science”
as a term remains opaque to
undergraduates: when its meaning
is described to them, they can
appreciate its importance, to both
academia and commerce, and they
can see the benefit they themselves
would obtain from studying it, but it
is not a term that they would Google
for while researching their career
options. In addition to the new name,
the 2009/10 session will see us
launch three new mandatory courses
– Web Programming, Computing with
Distributed Resources and Internet
Computing – which will extend the
material currently covered in the
mandatory core of the programme
in a manner which reflects recent
technology trends and which should
also better meet the needs of
potential applicants coming from, and
intending to return to, the commercial
IT sector who want to increase their
knowledge of distributed computing
technologies.
We will provide more details of these
new courses in the February issue
of the NeSC Newsletter, but, in
the meantime, potential applicants
are welcome to email me with
any questions about Edinburgh’s
new MSc in Distributed Scientific
Computing, which is now recruiting
students for entry in September
2009.
Bob Mann, MSc Programme Director
(rgm@roe.ac.uk).
A warm welcome to Edinburgh
MALAYSIAN PhD student Chee Sun Liew has begun a threeyear PhD project on optimising workflow in distributed computing
at NeSC. A lecturer in computer science at the University of
Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur, he has been given a scholarship by
the Malaysian government to come to Edinburgh for his PhD.
“My work is tied into the ADMIRE (Advanced Data Mining and
Integration Research for Europe) project. I will look at the use
cases for ADMIRE, and workflows and management systems,
and at different approaches to measuring performance.”
Liew says he arrived in Edinburgh in the middle of October, and
immediately caught a cold.
“It was so cold! In Malaysia it’s usually around 30 degrees – so
I got here and my nose ran for a whole week, from the minute I
stepped off the plane!”
But Liew says he and his wife have acclimatised quickly, and
even November’s chillier temperatures are no problem.
Liew is working with Jano van Hemert and Malcolm Atkinson at
NeSC.
Chee Sun Liew
NeSC News
www.nesc.ac.uk
SCRIPTed
conference
SCRIPTed - A Journal of Law,
technology & Society, is pleased
to announce its upcoming
international, interdisciplinary
conference, “Governance of New
Technologies: Transformations in
Medicine, Information Technology
and Intellectual Property”, to be
held in Edinburgh on 29-31 March
2009. The conference will focus on
evolving and emerging technologies
and new-technology-driven
practices and their impact on the
overlapping fields of (1) healthcare,
(2) information technology and (3)
intellectual property, each of which
are increasingly important in the
post-genomic and post-AI world,
with its heavy reliance on new
technologies and their distribution.
Attendance is £25 for students
and £50 for non-students. For
more about the conference, and to
register online, see
http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/
conference09/index.asp.
VizNET Showcase
2009
Entries are invited for the 3rd
annual vizNET Uses of Visualisation
Showcase.
Selected entries will be featured
on the vizNET web site, and the
winning entries will be shown at the
annual TP.CG (Theory & Practice in
Computer Graphics) conference.
Traffic flow and ecosystem
entries win GCN competition
Grid Computing Now! announced the
winners of its annual competition on
December 1, at an event in London.
The first prize for the nonprofessional track went to Christos
Melissidis, an MSc student from
Cranfield University, who wants to
create a virtual ecosystem in order
to solve environmental problems.
The idea is to feed real time data
derived from various data sources,
such as the weather channel, into the
virtual ecosystem while measuring its
response.
The professional track was won
by Nick Pringle, and IT consultant
and part-time PhD student, for his
predictive traffic flow model. His
solution would involve enhancing
existing GPS information by
submitting individual route
information to a grid computing
system, which would calculate a
journey time based on how many
other people would be choosing to
take the same route at the same
time. This has the potential to reduce,
and potentially avoid, time spent in
traffic jams and carbon emissions.
Both entrants have been appointed
an industry mentor, Dr David Wallom,
Technical Manager University of
Oxford, to help them progress their
ideas.
Ian Osborne, Grid Computing Now!
Director said, “Over the past year we
have seen tremendous growth in the
number and scope of grid computing
solutions available. The winners of
this competition have demonstrated
the immense potential for grid
computing to help solve, or monitor
environmental issues.”
Nick Pringle has won a free one year
BCS membership; an industry mentor
who will enable them to take their
idea from the competition forward; a
week long apprenticeship/internship
at the National e-Science Centre
at the University of Edinburgh,
a Sony Vaio laptop; a one year
limited subscription to 451 Group’s
EcoEfficient and Grid Services
publication.
Christos Melissidis has won a free
one year BCS membership; an
industry mentor who will enable
them to take their idea from the
competition forward; a week long
apprenticeship/internship at the
National e-Science Centre at the
University of Edinburgh, where he
will be introduced to key academics
working on grid computing; an Xbox
360; a one year limited subscription
to the 4ww51 Group’s EcoEfficient
and Grid Services Publication. The competition will focus on the
usefulness and novelty of the entries.
Applications are invited from all
domains, and from around the world.
The judges will take into account
the usefulness, novelty and the
impact that the visualisation has had
in the application domain, in other
words the fitness for purpose of the
submission. A successful submission
will show a significant understanding
of the needs and motivations of the
users.
The closing date is March 13, 2009.
More information is available here:
http://www.viznet.ac.uk/node/146
L-R: Rahul Tangri, second prize, professional track; Nick Pringle, first prize,
professional track; Christos Melissidis, first prize non-professional track; Ivan
Rodriguez Sastre, second prize, non-professional track
Issue 65, December 2008
NGS Innovation Forum ‘08
Last month saw the inaugural
National Grid Service Innovation
Forum take place at Manchester
Museum of Science and Industry
(MoSI). As MoSI is home to the only
working replica of “Baby” the world’s
first stored-program computer, it was
an ideal place to discuss the future of
grid computing in the UK.
The event was held over two days
with the first day having a more user
orientated focus and the second day
aimed more at existing and potential
member sites. Over 120 delegates
were in attendance from a wide
variety of backgrounds including PhD
students, researchers, academics,
service providers, university IT
services and many more.
The first day kicked off with an
introduction to the event from Neil
Geddes, Director of the NGS followed by Michael Wilson from STFC RAL who discussed EGIs and NGIs and how
they may affect the UK in the future. The remaining presentations on day one included user experiences of the NGS
which were discussed by Dr Sarah Harris, a substantial user of the NGS, from the University of Leeds and Dr Pamela
Greenwell from the University of Westminster, both of whom use the NGS for biomolecular research.
The key note presentation was given by Daniel Katz from Lousiana State University (LSU) who was recently
appointed Grid Infrastructure Group (GIG), Director of Science for the TeraGrid. Katz gave an introduction to TeraGrid
and discussed current research such as the GENIUS project (http://wiki.realitygrid.org/wiki/GENIUS) which utilises
both NGS and TeraGrid resources. The day ended with a drinks reception in the Manchester Science exhibition room
at MoSI where delegates could mingle and continue the day’s debate and discussion.
The second day had more of a technical theme and featured contributions from several NGS partners and affiliates as
well as the four core sites. Damian Bamforth from the University of Sheffield talked about their recent experience of
joining the NGS while Steve Thorn from NeSC talked about their experiences of being a NGS member. External view
points of the NGS were also represented as Hugh Beedie from Cardiff University gave a presentation on “external
resource expectations of the future NGS”. Further presentations focused on the NGS database services and the
development of easier access to NGS resources through the SARoNGS project. The event was wrapped up by
Andrew Richards, Executive Director of the NGS, who recapped the main findings from the two days and encouraged
the participants to continue to contribute to the future of the NGS.
The feedback from the event was overwhelmingly positive and the NGS is already investigating potential dates for the
next NGS Innovation Forum in 2009. Photos from the event can be found on the NGS Facebook group and the NGS
Flickr group (http://www.flickr.com/groups/uk_ngs/). Most of the presentations are online on the NGS website and the
videos of the presentations should be forthcoming soon!
NeSC News
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 65, December 2008
e-Science
Institute
The LSST and the data management challenge
By Elena Breitmoser
The Large Synoptic Survey
Telescope (LSST) [1] is a US
project that is both publicly and
privately funded (the private funders
include Google and Bill Gates). The
telescope will operate in the visible
band and be based in Northern
Chile. It is expected to see first light
sometime between 2013 and 2015
and to start work for ten years from
about 2016 onwards. It is to cover
the entire visible sky, where the same
parts of the sky will be re-visited
several times each night (if you
wondered what synoptic means).
This project will cover a huge
variety of scientific goals, including
constraining dark matter and dark
energy, mapping the Milky Way
(about 10^9 stars), exploring the
transient sky and inventorying the
Solar System.
The exploration of the transient sky,
for example, will allow the detection
of objects that change on a small
time scale, such as Potentially
Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs), and
rapidly changing objects, such as
exploding supernovae. Alerts for
events such as gamma ray bursts
are to be launched within 60 seconds
to allow astronomers to follow them
up by studying them with more
specialised telescopes.
The major component of the $37M
operational cost per year will be due
to data management operations.
The LSST is expected to produce
amounts of data which are huge
compared with today’s standards.
Per night about 30 TB of raw
image data are expected. This will
accumulate to 60 PB over 10 years
and more than 30 PB for the online
query catalogs [2].
There will be a Mountain Summit/
Base Facility at the location of the
telescope, a central archive facility
and multiple Data Access Centres
(DACs). The data will be transported
via existing high-speed optical fibre
links from Chile to the US.
EPCC, the Wide Field Astronomy
Unit (WFAU) at the IfA and NeSC
NeSC News
Proposed design of LSST Telescope dome and local facilities.
are collaborating under eDIKT2
to assess the data management
requirements of the LSST. The
goal of this half-year project is to
build up the necessary expertise so
that Edinburgh (EPCC, WFAU and
NeSC) will be in a front-line position
among European applicants if the
UK is going to buy into the LSST
corporation. This will allow European
astronomers to have faster access to
the data.
EPCC and WFAU are currently
assessing the technical requirements
to host a DAC. There will be several
DACs worldwide, most of which will
be located in the US. The purpose
of the DACs is to receive the raw
data, run analysis code via LSST’s
so-called pipeline software and
make the released data available to
the users: astronomers who want
to use the results for their research.
These users will access the data
through iRODS [3] controlled file
access. The acronym stands for ‘i
Rule Oriented Data Systems’. It is
an adaptive middleware architecture
which extends the functionality
provided by Grid middleware such
as SRB (Storage Resource Broker).
Its purpose is to allow data and
metadata sharing where the data are
distributed across heterogeneous
resources. The adaptiveness of
iRODS allows the middleware to be
adapted to the users’ needs without
having to change the hardwired
coding. All changes are set by rules
instead.
[1] www.lsst.org
[2] Z. Ivezic et al., astroph/0805.2366. version 1.0 of May 15,
2008
[3] www.irods.org
British professor given first Jim Gray
Award
At its eScience Workshop in Indianapolis today, Microsoft gave out the first
Jim Gray eScience Award to Carole Goble, a computer science professor at
the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom.
Gray, who was a manager of Microsoft’s eScience Group, went missing
in early 2007 while sailing off the coast of San Francisco. Gray’s research
focused on eScience -- using computers to make scientists more productive.
Tony Hey, corporate vice president of Microsoft External Research, said
Goble was chosen for the award because of her work to help scientists do
data-intensive science.
“She’s a data person and I think that would have pleased Jim,” Hey said.
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 65, December 2008
DReSNet: Adding value to data
e-Science
Institute
By Tobias Blanke
The recently funded EPSRC eScience network ‘Digital Repositories
in e-Science (DReSNet)’ is motivated
by the great, largely untapped
potential for synergies between eScience technologies and a cluster
of related systems addressing the
management of digital assets in
digital libraries and repositories.
The digital material generated
from and used by academic and
other research is to an increasing
extent being held in formal data
management systems; these
systems are variously categorised
as digital repositories, libraries or
archives, although the distinction
between them relates more to the
sort of data that they contain and
the use to which the data is put,
rather than to any major difference
in functionality. In many cases, these
systems are used currently to hold
relatively simple objects, for example
an institution’s pre-prints and
publications, or e-theses. However,
some institutions are beginning to
use them to manage research data
in a variety of disciplines, including
physical sciences, social sciences,
and the arts and humanities, as well
as the output from various digitisation
programmes.
Modern repository systems allow
us to move away from the model
of a stand-alone repository, library
or archive, where objects are
simply deposited for subsequent
access and download. Instead,
researchers are developing more
sophisticated models in which these
containers of data are integrated
components of a larger e-Science
research infrastructure, incorporating
advanced tools and workflows, and
are being used to model complex
webs of information and capture
scholarly or scientific processes in
their entirety, from raw data through
to final publications. Repositories
have been successfully combined
with data grid technologies, and in
addition computational grids seem to
offer possible applications in digital
preservation and curation, such as
automatic metadata extraction and
NeSC News
Mark Hedges and Tobias Blanke
index creation. These systems thus
could add value to the data-driven
research lifecycle in e-Science.
DReSNet proposes to increase the
interaction and cooperation between
researchers and practitioners in eScience and Digital Repositories
and bring together these two digital
scholarship communities. Members
therefore include those from
traditional repositories communities
as well as e-scientists. Many
UK institutions are represented.
Among them the Centre for eResearch at King’s College, the
Science and Technology Facilities
Council, UKOLN and the Digital
Curation Centre, the National eScience Centre, the Oxford Centre
for e-Research, the University
of Southampton and e-Prints,
the Oxford e-Research Centre,
University of Newcastle, University
of Manchester and others. We also
have international partners from
Europe.
Initial activities of DReSNet include:
- A workshop attended by core
members of the network in November
2008 in Newcastle
- An interactive website: http://www.
dresnet.net. We are talking to the eScience Digital Library to collaborate
on preserving the network’s outputs
- DReSNet collaborates with
OGF-Europe on various events,
e.g. sessions at OGF 23 and 25
on digital repositories and the
workshop ‘Repository Curation
Service Environments (RECURSE)
Workshop’ at DCC 2008 (http://
www.dcc.ac.uk/events/dcc-2008/
programme/)
- A special session on Digital
Repositories at IEEE e-Science 2008
in Indianapolis: http://escience2008.
iu.edu/workshops/digital/index.shtml
- A tutorial on Repositories as
Data Ecosystems at the 3rd IEEE
International Conference on Digital
Ecosystems and Technologies: http://
dest2009.debii.curtin.edu.au/index.
php?option=com_content&task=view
&id=15&Itemid=29
DReSNet welcomes suggestions
for research directions and new
members. If you are interested in
its activities please contact Mark
Hedges (mark.hedges@kcl.ac.uk)
or Tobias Blanke (tobias.blanke@
kcl.ac.uk) from the Centre for eResearch at King’s College London
(http://www.kcl.ac.uk/iss/cerch).
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 65, December 2008
e-Science
Institute
2nd International Winter School applications open
Applications are now being received for the second EGEE International Winter school, to be held from February 16,
2009, until March 30, 2009.
The event is held entirely online, allowing participants to attend the school without travelling.
The school will examine the conceptual and practical underpinnings of today’s grids. Experts will provide exciting
practical exercises, discuss the challenges of building and sustaining e-Infrastructure, report its rapid influence on the
way we research, design and make decisions. They will share their vision of the developments and challenges ahead.
Comparable in commitment and scope with the famous International Summer School in Grid Computing (ISSGC), the
International Winter School in Grid Computing provides a unique online educational opportunity.
Applications are welcome from enthusiastic and ambitious researchers who have recently started or are about to start
working on Grid projects. Students may come from any country.
They may be planning to pioneer or enable new forms of e-Infrastructure, to engage in fundamental distributed
systems research or to develop new methods in any discipline that depends on the emerging capabilities of eInfrastructure.
The organisers expect participants from computer science, computational science and any application discipline. The
School will assume that students have diverse backgrounds and build on that diversity.
Further information is available here: http://www.iceage-eu.org/iwsgc09/index.cfm
Forthcoming Events Timetable
December
10
Knowledge Exchange: Academic
Perspectives
eSI
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/951/
19-21
SAGA: Introduction, Tutorial and Training
NeSC
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/dcc-2008/
programme/
29-30
ATLAS-UK Distributed Analysis Tutorial
eSI
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/953/
SINAPSE Hands-on fMRI course
NeSC
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/946/
January
February
2
This is only a selection of events that are happening in the next few months. For the full listing go to the following
websites:
Events at the e-Science Institute: http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/esi.html
External events: http://www.nesc.ac.uk/events/ww_events.html
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
This NeSC Newsletter was edited by Gillian Law.
Email: glaw@nesc.ac.uk
The deadline for the January/February 2009 issue is January 16, 2009
NeSC News
www.nesc.ac.uk