The monthly newsletter from the National e-Science Centre
NeSC News
Issue 58 March 2008 www.nesc.ac.uk
Geography in Motion
By Iain Coleman
IN THE heart of Turkey, on the high
Anatolian Plateau, lie the remains
of the Neolithic settlement known
as Catalhoyuk. Clambering down
into the ancient ruins, painstakingly
excavated by archaeologists, you see
a long cluster of rectangles carved
into one dusty stone wall. This is the
earliest map in existence. It’s almost
shockingly modern, this abstracted,
birds-eye view of the town: the stoneage map-maker would have had no
trouble grasping the principles of a
modern street plan.
Over time we’ve refined and codified
the principles of map making, but
the basic idea is the same for us
as it was for the good people of
Catalhoyuk. The map, as they say, is
not the territory. It is an abstraction,
an attempt to represent the important
spatial features and relationships of
some region without the clutter of
irrelevant detail.
and similarly we only want to capture
temporal changes that are significant.
But how do you go about defining
that?
The answer, according to Worboys,
is to be found in the field of topology.
This branch of mathematics deals
with the fundamental features of
geometric objects. Two shapes are
topologically identical if they can be
Rendering of the Catalhoyuk map by project artist John Swogger. Reproduced under Creative
Commons license.
In the e-Science Institute Public
Lecture “Geography in Motion”, held
at eSI on 11 February, Prof Michael
Worboys (University of Maine)
described a way of doing this, based
on his work in the eSI theme on
Spatial Semantics.
transformed into one another by a
process of continual deformation,
as if they were made of rubber that
could be squeezed and stretched
indefinitely. So a sphere and a cube
are identical in this sense, as one
shape can be deformed into another.
If you wanted to turn the sphere
into a doughnut shape, however,
you would have to puncture a hole
in it – squeezing and stretching
alone wouldn’t be sufficient. This
means spheres and doughnuts
are topologically different, and the
moment you create the hole is the
moment when the topology changes.
The first thing to establish is what
sort of abstraction you want to use
to describe things that change in
time. That comes down to defining
the features of whatever it is you are
describing that you consider to be
essential, and discarding the rest.
Street maps don’t bother to tell you
about every little bump in the road,
This, then, can give you the definition
of an interesting change: something
that changes the topology. Whether
this is the opening or closing of a
hole, a shape splitting apart or two
shapes merging together, or any
of the other possible topological
changes, the series of these
events forms a temporal map – an
But now, after eight thousand years,
these spatial representations are
no longer good enough. With a
vast range of sensors generating
ubiquitous data on everything from
global climate to traffic flow, we need
a way to capture in a map things that
change in the course of time.
abstracted description that gives only
the essential information. And just as
traditional Geographic Information
Systems (GIS) build up shapes from
primitive units of points, lines and
polygons, so complex changes can
be composed from a complete set
of basic building blocks that can
describe all two-dimensional changes
of topology.
There’s already a practical
application for this, in having sensor
networks respond to dynamically
changing fields. Sensor nets are
made up of large numbers of sensors
that are individually small, and limited
in range and duration. In particular,
the major constraint on sensors is
their power supply: they hibernate
for much of the time, and have to
be woken up to detect something
interesting. As an event – a pollution
plume, say – passes over the
network, we would like the sensors
to activate in time to capture the
data, and then go back to standby
when they are not needed, resulting
in a wave of activation that sweeps
across the network in concert with
the event they are measuring.
The topological approach is being
used to develop algorithms that will
Continued on P2
Issue 58, March 2008
Geography in
Motion
By Iain Coleman
(continued)
do just that. Changes of topology,
such as the formation of a hole or
a splitting moment, define what
we consider to be an interesting
event, and sensor capacity can then
be concentrated automatically on
gathering the most important data.
It’s a far cry from a street map
carved in stone, but the approach
is fundamentally the same. Finding
the right abstractions, capturing the
crucial features in a compact and
usable form, and allowing knowledge
to be communicated and exploited
ever more effectively. The work of
eight millennia continues.
Slides and a webcast of this event
can be accessed from http://www.
nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/855/
New member of SINAPSE team
David Rodriguez Gonzalez has
joined the team at NeSC for a three
year secondment, working on the
SINAPSE project.
David comes here from IFCA,
a joint research centre between
the Spanish Council for Scientific
Research (CSIC) and the University
of Cantabria. “I hope I can contribute
well to the SINAPSE project, and
also learn more about grid computing
and e-Science from the people at
NeSC,” he said.
The SINAPSE project (The Scottish
Imaging Network: A Platform for
Scientific Excellence) brings together
experts from the Universities of
Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen,
Dundee, Stirling and St Andrews to
form the world’s first virtual clinical
imaging laboratory. The £40 million
initiative will focus primarily on
imaging of the brain, using state
of the art technology that includes
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
David Rodriguez Gonzalez
and positron emission tomography
(PET).
Born in Santander, 33-year old David
has also lived in Guadalajara and
Guarnizo, and has worked at CERN
in Geneva. He has hopes to do a
bit of travelling while he is here, to
London and the north of Scotland in
the summer.
The Marriage of Mercury and Philology:
Problems and Outcomes in Digital Philology
25 - 27 March 2008
e-Science Institute, 15 South College Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AA
In late Antiquity, at the beginning of a new era, Martianus Cappella wrote his “De nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae”
in which he proposed a then revolutionary synthesis of technique (Mercury) and culture (Philology). Inspired by
Cappella, this conference will explore the interaction between Information and Communication Technology systems
and the philological analysis of both ancient and modern manuscripts and printed texts: in other words Digital
Philology.
The discussions at this conference focus on both the theoretical and practical issues encountered in the creation
of digital texts and both critical and genetic editions. The implications for research and teaching will be examined
and current projects in the field will be presented. The aim of the conference is to approach these issues from
an international perspective, in order to establish collaboration in research and teaching, and to provide new
contributions to the field as a result. Workshops will provide a forum for discussing experiences, ideas, issues and
new tools related to Digital Philology with students.
Further information can be found on the wiki at: http://wiki.esi.ac.uk/International_Seminar_of_Digital_Philology
The conference welcomes both leading scholars and young researchers working on the problems of textual criticism
and editorial scholarship in the electronic medium, as well as students, teachers, librarians, archivists, and computing
professionals who are interested in representation, access, exchange, management and conservation of texts.
For registration and more details see http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/854/.
NeSC News
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 58, March 2008
JANET launches fibre network for photonics and
optical systems research
JANET(UK) has launched JANET
Aurora, a high quality fibre network
that will provide a platform for
Photonics and Optical Systems
research���������������������������
. With approximately 350km
of dedicated fibre, this is amongst
the largest test-beds for optical
networking research in Europe and
will enable a wide range of projects
that hitherto have been impossible
on existing research network
infrastructures.
The network will interconnect
research groups at the universities
of Cambridge, Essex and UCL, with
access to intermediate locations
along each fibre path where
additional equipment can be sited.
The JANET Lightpath service, ��
a
centrally managed service developed
to support large research projects
on the JANET network by providing
end-to-end connectivity,��������������
will provide
additional access to the network for
other research groups wanting to use
this facility, including international
sites for collaborative projects.
JANET Aurora will enable research
groups to pursue their research with
minimal constraints, and in a way that
would be impossible on a production
network carrying real traffic. This
network will allow researchers to
trial prototype equipment and test
advanced network architectures and
technologies under real operational
conditions.
“JANET Aurora has enabled us to
connect three internationally leading
photonic laboratories in the UK with
the scope to share experimental
facilities and test prototype photonic
technologies and ultra high speed
transmission techniques in a real
field environment,” says Dimitra
Simeonidou, Professor at Essex
University����������������������������
. The fibre network will
further provide an open experimental
testbed for network researchers
NeSC News
across the UK that can reach the
infrastructure with JANET Lightpaths.
JANET Aurora also connects with
research network infrastructures in
Europe and North America through
connectivity to the European
GÉANT2 network. The high speed
fibre network is already creating
many opportunities for UK based and
international research collaborations.
The network is scheduled to support
several nationally and EU funded
research projects that ���������
lead the
academic effort.” �
Approval for the development of a
small-scale fibre network to support
photonics research projects was
given in 2006 by JANET’s funding
body, JISC, to cover a 2 year period
following deployment. ntl:Telewest
Business (part of Virgin Media)
was selected as the supplier for the
project. “JANET Aurora is at the
leading edge of research networking
and will help to develop and test
innovative new optical technology
that will directly benefit businesses
and consumers in the future,”
said John Cunningham, Director,
Business Markets, ntl:Telewest
Business.
“JANET Aurora is a substantial new
infrastructure to support Photonics
and Optical Systems Research,”
says David Salmon, JANET(UK)’s
Research Support Unit Manager.
“It will support a variety of projects
and enable collaboration between
optical networking specialists and
their colleagues researching ways in
which future optical networks might
be used by very demanding projects
and application groups.”
ntl:Telewest Business has completed
fibre characterisation tests and
JANET(UK) has accepted the
infrastructure as meeting the
challenging requirements set by the
research groups, some parameters
being particularly critical for the
support of future transmission
standards at bit-rates up to 100Gbit/s
and beyond.
The research groups using the
network have a broad range of
interests from device to system levels
and work is planned to investigate
new photonic components such as
lasers, modulators and amplifiers,
as well as dynamic ’capacity on
demand’ and high end grid and eResearch applications.
There are some exciting
developments likely to come out
of this new network facility and
the photonics/optical world will be
watching the outcomes with interest.
GCN! Webinar –
Software Licensing
Grid Computing Now! will host the
latest in a series of Webinars on
April 10.
Focusing on software licensing,
the webinar ���������������������
will feature a panel
of speakers from Capgemeni UK,
the Federation Against Software
Licensing and contributions from the
software publishing industry. The
presentations will be followed by a
Question and Answer session led
by facilitator Ian Osborne who will
also set the scene prior to the panel
speakers’ presentations.
Speakers will include����������������
David Gittins,
Capgemini and Mark Cresswell,
Scalable Software
More details will shortly be available
at: http://tinyurl.com/29qjgv
Previous Grid Computing Now!
webinars can be viewed here: http://
tinyurl.com/27hrtg
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 58, March 2008
e-Science
Institute
Where is it all going to go? –
The problem of data storage
Data storage is becoming a major problem in UK research. Experiments
are producing vast amounts of data but along with the problems of trying to
analyse so much data come the other problems of curating and storing that
data for long term use. Also with many research groups being distributed
across different countries how do you ensure that everyone has access to the
data wherever they may be located? Where do you put all this data and who
looks after it? This is where the NGS may be able to help.
Did you know that the NGS has a dedicated database team who can
host databases for UK researchers? Free of charge, the team offers a
professionally run full service avoiding the problems of local institutions
having to employ and train database administrators, pay for licences or
indeed know anything about databases such as Oracle. Any research group
or individual who has or requires a database and could benefit from the
services offered by the NGS is encouraged to get in touch via the helpdesk
(support@grid-support.ac.uk). Gordon Brown, Database Services Group
Leader at RAL said “We’re here to help people, whether it’s a couple of
database tables or a terabyte of data, it’s our job to run this as a production
database service”.
One example of where the NGS is assisting with large data sets is the Sloan
Digital Sky Project (SDSS; www.sdss.org). It already uses the NGS in order
to simultaneously access two large databases containing images of nearly
300 million celestial objects. The relational data bases in the UK and US
hold over 100 parameters for each object therefore difficulties with storage
and access were inevitable. Helen Xiang at the University of Portsmouth has
been using the Oracle databases hosted on the NGS to store the data and
recently succeeded in transferring almost 2 Terabytes of SDSS data to the
NGS Oracle database in Manchester. A separate Microsoft SQL database at
Portsmouth holds another 2 Terabytes of similar data and joint queries on the
two databases have been successfully run. Not only did the SDSS solve the
problems of data storage but they also solved the problem of a large number
of users being able to access the data from wherever they were based.
The NGS is keen to hear what users would find useful from the NGS in terms
of data storage and data management. If you have any comments on this
topic please contact Gillian Sinclair (Gillian.sinclair@manchester.ac.uk).
New Technical
Director Appointed
at the NGS
David Wallom
Following the departure of Dr
Stephen Pickles (University of
Manchester) as Technical Director
of the NGS, we are pleased to
announce that Dr David Wallom
has recently been appointed to the
position. Dr Wallom said “I am very
pleased to have been appointed as
the Technical Director of the NGS
and look forward to engaging with the
many research communities within
the UK, both improving links that we
already have and forging new ones”.
David is �����������������������
also Technical Manager
of the Oxford e-Research Centre
(OeRC; www.oerc.ox.ac.uk), where
among other activities he is the
architect of the campus grid. He will
be splitting his time between the
NGS and his role at OeRC.
NGS On the Road – there is such a thing as a free lunch!
The NGS is organising a series of roadshow events at institutions across the UK. The events will consist of
short presentations from NGS staff on topics such as what is the NGS, how to get a NGS account and training
opportunities. Afterwards there will be a drop in session for those that are unavailable to attend the talks and a free
lunch. People will be able to apply for and obtain Grid certificates there and then thus removing the short delay
between applying and receiving your Grid certificate online. If you would like to host a roadshow at your institution
then please contact Katie Weeks (k.m.weeks@rl.ac.uk).
NeSC News
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 58, March 2008
e-Science
Institute
Dynamising Spatial Semantics
By Iain Coleman
All things must pass, and this month
the e-Science Institute theme
“Spatial Semantics for Automating
Geographic Information Processes”
came to an end. A year-long project
to establish common, machineunderstandable ways to represent
complex geographic information,
the theme has encompassed
disaster recovery, environmental
monitoring, and new concepts in the
representation of knowledge. On 8
February, Theme Leader Werner
Kuhn outlined the achievements
of the theme in a public lecture at
eSI, entitled “Dynamising Spatial
Semantics”.
He explained how, at first, the
Theme Leaders had thought their
main task would be about creating
systems of metadata and semantics
specifically for use in sciences that
deal with geographic information
and spatial relations. It would mainly
involve adapting existing semantic
systems to deal with concepts like
distances, distance relations, and
neighbourhoods.
But as the theme progressed,
it became clear that a more
fundamental problem had to be
tackled first. Semantics describes
how different pieces of knowledge
fit together, but before you can
do that you need to know what
the framework is that you are
describing. This led the theme in the
direction of establishing a scientific
knowledge infrastructure for the
geosciences. This means linking
together data, theories, visualisations
and researchers themselves, and
describing the connections and
dependencies that relate them.
Creating a structure like this for the
whole field of geoscience is a big
undertaking, and is not something
that this theme can achieve alone.
There has been substantial progress,
however, and a draft knowledge
infrastructure has been developed
for defining and relating knowledge,
theories and facts in a spatial
context.
Moving on from there to ontologies
NeSC News
– formal descriptions of knowledge –
throws up some additional problems.
Standard ontologies are based
on binary predicates that relate
members of categories, with terms
often thrown in quite freely. Indeed,
the biggest weakness of current
ontological systems is that they allow
you to leave far too many terms
undefined. Modelling of processes
is often rudimentary or
non-existent.
In the geosciences there
is a basic distinction
between things that
continue to exist during
a given period of
time, called endurant,
and things that occur
during that time, called
perdurant. A lake
would be endurant,
for example, while a
lightning bolt would
be perdurant. Nothing
is truly permanent, of
course: lakes dry up,
mountains erode and
valleys fill in. It’s really
a matter of whether the
timescale over which
a thing changes is
long or short in a given
context. There are ontologies which
can handle this distinction, but they
don’t go far enough. Endurant things
may be regarded as unchanging, but
they still participate in processes that
begin and end: current ontological
representations don’t handle this
aspect well.
Another important distinction is
between objects and processes.
Again, what seems like a clear-cut
classification turns out to be more
complex. The definition of an object
can involve a process: vehicles are
things that move, buildings are things
that shelter. Further, the potential
processes that an object might
participate in – what it is used for,
what it was designed for – can also
be important. A case study conducted
during the theme came up with a
series of ontological specifications
suitable for formalising these ideas.
One of the most interesting
developments to emerge from
this theme has been the evolution
of semantics. In the theme’s
first workshop there was much
discussion of tagging, as seen on
community websites such as Flickr
and YouTube. This is a form of usergenerated semantics: individuals can
Werner Kuhn
add whatever descriptive keywords
they like to a particular picture,
movie or other piece of data, and
clusterings of popular tags form an
ad hoc knowledge structure. The
use of the tags, and how it changes
over time, indicates how the meaning
behind the tags is evolving. On
del.icio.us, for example, one person
sees something interesting on
the web and gives it a tag. Others
see this tag and use it in their own
tagging, and as time goes by some
tags emerge as popular. In this way,
people can classify sites in the ways
that are most useful to them, without
regard to any official terminology
or the terms that the site originator
thought were most appropriate. What
is happening here is a language
Cont. P6
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 58, March 2008
e-Science
Institute
Training Outreach & Education
- UK News
Standards for Interoperable Grids: Experience from NextGRID and
OMII-Europe
17 March, 2008 12:45 PM - 05:00 PM http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/869/
This half-day event will give an orientation to Grid interoperability and Grid
standards. It will enable participants to understand the range of standards
available and equip them to investigate ones relevant to their own work in
greater depth.
Both NextGRID (http://www.nextgrid.org) and OMII-Europe
(http://omii-europe.org/) are projects funded by the EU. OMII-Europe is
providing key software components, based on Grid standards, that can
interoperate across current Grid middleware platforms. The NextGRID project
is about developing ‘next generation Grids’, that is, ones suitable for
commercial as well as academic use.
OGSA-DAI: Grid-enabling data for the Arts, Humanities and Social
Sciences
Dynamising Spatial
Semantics - Continued
evolution, analogous to how a pidgin
language develops. Language,
semantics and grammar are being
generated from the ground up.
This phenomenon can be a great
resource for the geospatial semantic
web. Once users are empowered to
feed back their own view of data into
the system, suddenly non-experts
become producers of geospatial
information. Take travel directions,
for example. Users can inform the
system of where the roads are,
whether a junction is restricted, and
where accidents have occurred.
They can also close the information
loops, so that drivers are not only told
where there is a traffic jam and given
an alternate route, they are also told
promptly when the jam has cleared.
Part 1: a training course on Tuesday 18 March- Thursday 20 March,
Edinburgh.
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/871/
All these systems – knowledge
infrastructure, formal ontologies,
informal semantics – are elements
in a new approach to research. Over
the course of four theme workshops,
researchers drawn from communities
ranging from earth science to
information modelling have
hammered out ideas and shared
their experiences. The result is a
new project to develop knowledge
infrastructures for coastal area
management – one step on the way
to a comprehensive infrastructure
for geoscience – and four papers
covering the work of the theme so
far.
Part 2: a web-based extension of part 1. Some participants will have
attended part 1, and be seeking further consolidation of their learning;
some participants will be using this event as a first introduction to
OGSA-DAI or as a refresher course. Participants will need to register and
will have access to hands-on tutorials with remote support from the TOE
team.
Tuesday 25 March to Tuesday 22 April 2008
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/873/
Scientific knowledge is often buried
in arcane archival systems, a mishmash of journals, models, notebooks
and databases. This puts obstacles
in the way of anyone trying to
discover or use information. The
conclusion of the theme is that we
can, and must, change this.
Part 3: a workshop in which participants seeking to adopt OGSA-DAI will
explore their requirements in depth with the OMII-UK OGSA-DAI team. In
advance of this event participants will be asked to describe their specific
intentions for using OGSA-DAI, to allow appropriate preparation to be made.
Participants will have attended part 1 or 2.
12:00 Wed., April 23 to 15:00 Friday April 25
Slides from this event can be
accessed from http://www.nesc.
ac.uk/esi/events/833/
OGSA-DAI is an extensible toolkit middleware to expose data resources to
grids. These resources may be relational databases, XML-databases, or files
- and extensions can be developed to permit OGSA-DAI to support additional
resources (such as the Open Geospatial Consortium web services used by
the geographical communities). OGSA-DAI executes workflows that access,
transform and deliver data and these can minimise the need for the transfer of
large amounts of data around a Grid.
Three related events are provided under the JISC project “Enabling Uptake of
e-Infrastructure Services” in collaboration with the National Grid Service
and OMII-Europe training teams, Training Outreach and Education at the
National e-Science Centre, and the OGSA-DAI team of the OMII-UK project:
NeSC News
The theme wiki is at http://wiki.
esi.ac.uk/Spatial_Semantics_
for_Automating_Geographic_
Information_Processes
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 58, March 2008
NextGRID winds up
The NextGRID Integrated Project comes to a close at the end of March 2008. NextGRID
was a consortium of 22 partners, coordinated by EPCC and NeSC at the University of
Edinburgh. Starting in September 2004, its goal was to define an architecture for Next
Generation Grids that would overcome the barriers which have prevented the widespread
take-up of Grid technology in business. One of the major outputs of the project is a set
of profiles and schemas that will allow the implementation of Next Generation Grids
compliant with the principles of the NextGRID Architecture.
The NextGRID Architecture has at its core a set of architectural principles which were established after early analysis
of business requirements. The requirements came from analysis of diverse applications used by partners in the project,
together with the views from service providers. The application areas included digital media production, financial risk
analysis and product pricing, supply chain management, and Electronic Data Record processing. The service providers
in the project were BT and T-Systems.
The primary architectural principles behind NextGRID are:
Service Level Agreement Driven Dynamics: Service level agreements (SLAs) are critical building blocks in the NextGRID
infrastructure and their dynamic behaviour is central to the operation of any Grid depending on that infrastructure.
Dynamic Federation: The dynamic federation of resources is a key factor in establishing operational business Grids.
Minimal Grid Infrastructure: Any Grid needs to be simple to ensure ease of maintenance and wideness of applicability.
However it needs to have sufficient features to enable it to support viable business models.
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are central to NextGRID. Use of a service in NextGRID is predicated by a SLA,
dynamically created, and aimed at ensuring that the relationship between provider and consumer is well defined and
understood. Follow up capabilities allow for monitoring, violation management, and audit. The SLA-based approach
to all non-functional (as well as functional) aspects of NextGRID provides a uniform framework for the management
and operation of all quality of service aspects of NextGRID, e.g. performance, security, provenance management and
adherence to privacy regulations.
As a dynamic Grid infrastructure, NextGRID needs to provide extensive capabilities for service construction and
composition, including traditional interface composition, various forms of workflow-enabled orchestration and support
for dynamic extension of the capabilities of services.
All services operating in a NextGRID environment can expect to find, but are not required to exploit, a minimal level of
capabilities either available in the environment or exhibited by peer services. These capabilities are further refined as
communication protocols and languages, behavioural interfaces available on all services, support services from the
environment, and a common infrastructure of underlying schemas.
From these architectural principles, the consortium has developed a component model comprising units which carry
out the essential functions of NextGRID. The interactions between these units are expressed as the set of profiles
and schemas mentioned earlier. The consortium has termed these ‘Generalised Specifications’ and they form the true
definition of NextGRID. The Generalised Specifications have been published via the NextGRID website. The partners
have also written a ‘cookbook’ which is a guide for developers showing how to combine the components of NextGRID
to achieve useful functionality for grid-based business.
The half-day event Standards for Interoperable Grids: Experience from NextGRID and OMII-Europe, which will take
place at the NeSC on Monday 17 March, will discuss some of the recommendations from the Generalised Specifications.
All are welcome to attend.
The consortium is also working towards implementing parts of the functionality of NextGRID in some commonly used
middleware releases. Links: www.nextgrid.org
NextGRID is supported by the EC’s Sixth Framework Programme as part of the Information Society Technologies
thematic priority.
This article expresses the opinions of the authors and not necessarily those of the European Commission. The
European Commission is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained in this article
NeSC News
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 58, March 2008
DEISA Symposium, Edinburgh
EPCC is organising this year’s
international DEISA Symposium at
the end of April 2008 at Our Dynamic
Earth in Edinburgh.
The DEISA, Distributed European
Infrastructure for Supercomputing
Applications, Grid of supercomputers
is unique within Europe. DEISA is
a structured layer on top of the
national supercomputing services
which are tightly coupled by a
dedicated network and supported by
innovative system and grid software.
The Symposium will provide a forum
where scientists from around the
world can discuss High Performance
Supercomputer Grids and where
DEISA users can share their
experiences. The target audience is
both the support teams, providing
and supporting grid-enabled
HPC-facilities, and scientists from
academia, industry and commerce,
with an interest in so-called Extreme
Computing. The Symposium also
offers a great opportunity for new
users to get involved.
DEISA provides scientific users with
transparent access to a Europe-wide
pool of supercomputing resources. The aim is to make the collection of
Our Dynamic Earth
heterogeneous platforms appear like
a homogeneous supercomputing
system. Currently, the main Grid
middleware employed is UNICORE,
which is used for file and job
management, run securely from
the user’s local workstation. With
its matured workflow capabilities,
UNICORE enables the execution
of multi-site workflows for e.g.
complex simulations running on
several heterogeneous platforms
in the DEISA infrastructure. An
alternative to the UNICORE GUI
is the DESHL (DEISA Services for
Heterogeneousmanagement Layer)
API, which can be invoked within
user codes or run directly from the
command line of the user’s
workstation command line. The
DESHL, unlike UNICORE, also
permits task farming, using the
workstation as the task manager. The DEISA resources can also be
accessed through the DEISA Portals,
such as the Materials Portal and
the Life Sciences Portal. It is also
interoperable with other HPC-Grids,
such as AHE and TeraGrid.
EPCC is one out of eleven principal
partners of this European project
coordinating the use of one of the
UK’s National Services: HPCx UoE
Ltd. From May 2008 onwards
HECToR will become part of the
DEISA HPC platforms. HECToR is
the new UK National Service, located
in Edinburgh and has been widely
publicised recently for its opening.
For a detailed agenda, travel
information and on-line registration,
see: www.deisa.eu/symposium
New NHS CfH Research Capability Programme. Following publication of the UKCRC R&D Advisory Group to CfH report of research simulations in June 2007, the
government gave a commitment to take forward its recommendations. These are being taken forward as part of the
NHS CfH Research Capability Programme, in the form of engagement events in Birmingham, London and Leeds.
The workshops are primarily aimed at clinicians and health researchers and will explore how the NHS Care Records
Service can provide England with unique and unrivalled research opportunities, ultimately delivering huge benefits
for patients. Attendance at these events will give an insight into the new NHS Research Capability Programme. You
will also have an opportunity to investigate, with the project team, how the programme should develop for the benefit
of public health to track diseases over time, to assess the impact, safety and long term effectiveness of different
treatment options.
Examples of those who might be particularly interested to attend include academics interested in using patient records
for public health, healthcare and clinical research, and those working in the pharmacovigilance field.
The workshops will take place on the following dates: 4 March 2008, NEC, Birmingham; 11 March 2008, Mary Ward
House, London; 17 March 2008, Leeds University.
You can book a place at one of these events online at http://etdevents.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/all/?m=3&y=2008
Further information about the NHS CfH Research Capability Programme is available from: http://www.
connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/systemsandservices/research
The report of the UKCRC research simulations is available from http://www.ukcrc.org/activities/infrastructureinthenhs/
nhsitprogrammes/advisorygroup/researchsimulations.aspx
NeSC News
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 58, March 2008
Forthcoming Events Timetable
March
5-6
The Application-Led Security Agenda for
e-Science
e-Science Institute
13-14
Century-of-Information Research (CIR)
Strategy Workshop
National e-Science
Centre
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/859/
17
Standards for Interoperable Grids:
Experience from NextGRID and OMIIEurope
e-Science Institute
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/869/
18-22
Using OGSA-DAI to Grid enable data for
the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
- part 1
TOE
25-27
The Marriage of Mercury and Philology:
Problems and Outcomes in Digital
Philology
e-Science Institute
25 - April 22
Using OGSA-DAI to Grid enable data for
the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
- part 2
TOE
1-3
HackLatt 2008
e-Science Institute
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/863/
9
Edikt2008: Using Computing in your
Research
National e-Science
Centre
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/839/
25
Improving Feedback Using Technology
National e-Science
Centre
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/865/
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/854/
April
Building data grids with iRODS
This four day event, to be held at the e-Science Institute from 17-30 May, 2008, will give an introduction to the uses of
data grids on the first day, followed by three days of hands-on tutorials, brainstorming, troubleshooting and looking to
future developments. The focus will be on the open-source iRODS system, developed at SDSC as a follow-on to their
successful Storage Resource Broker (SRB). The iRODS data grid automates the execution of management policies,
minimising the amount of labour needed to organise and preserve large collections.
Help will be provided in installing and configuring your own iRODS data grid. All participants will be able to leave the
workshop with a working data grid.
The event will be led by Reagan Moore and Arcot Rajasekar from SDSC, in conjunction with users of the system from
the UK and elsewhere.
More information is available here: http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/866/
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 produced by Gillian Law.
From March until August, the newsletter will be produced by Katharine Woods
email kwoods1@nesc.ac.uk
The deadline for the March 2008 Newsletter is: 20th March 2008
NeSC News
www.nesc.ac.uk