The monthly newsletter from the National e-Science Centre
NeSC News
Issue 49, April 2007 www.nesc.ac.uk
The 20th Open Grid
Forum (OGF20)
The 20th Open Grid Forum
takes place from the 7 - 11
May 2007, at Manchester
International Convention
Centre, Manchester, UK.
OGF20 is the premier Grid
technologies event of 2007. This
event is being hosted by UK
e-Science and the University of
Manchester. OGF20 is co-located
with the EGEE User Forum, which
will run from 9-11 May. Most OGF
community events will take place
on 7-9 May, with the overlap on
the 9th allowing joint meetings
between the OGF and EGEE
communities.
At OGF20, more than 800 grid
enthusiasts from around the globe
will gather for one week to further
grid standards development and
discuss best practices in
e-Science.
http://www.ogf.org/
EGEE User Forum
9-11 May 2007
http://www.eu-egee.org/uf2
The EGEE User Forum provides
opportunities for discussions
between users and Grid service
providers, as well as the chance
to interactively demonstrate the
status of prototypes and of the
applications already in production.
Participants will be able to
establish contact with EGEE
and with its user communities,
to explore possible cooperation
between academic users and
business partners, to contribute to
plans for the future usage of the
EGEE Grid infrastructure, and to
discuss the evolution of gLite, the
EGEE Grid middleware.
Grids Mean Business Industry Program
8-9 May 2007
Manchester Central, UK hosted by
OGF20 and Grid Computing Now!
Attend “Grid Means Business”,
a two-day event hosted by Open
Grid Forum and Grid Computing
Now!, to find out how your company
can benefit from adopting Grid
Computing.
With seven sessions on offer, listen
and learn from companies across
many sectors talk openly and
honestly about their experiences
deploying Grid. Discover which
Grid applications could work for
your business and learn how you
can improve business agility and
server utilization by re-architecting
your IT provision. Learn about the
social issues of change that come
with a new IT architecture and how
to make a good business case for
grid computing. Find out about
the latest security and licensing
challenges you might face when
implementing grid technologies.
UK e-Scientist
Awarded
Prestigious PhD
Award
Nick Cook formerly a Research
Associate on the UK e-Science
Gold Project (http://www.
goldproject.ac.uk/) has won the
EuroSys Roger Needham PhD
Award 2007 .
This is awarded annually to a PhD
student from a European University
whose thesis is regarded to be an
exceptional, innovative contribution
to knowledge in the systems area. It
is sponsored by Microsoft Research
Cambridge.
Nick’s thesis was on “Middleware
Support for Non-repudiable
Business-to-Business Interactions.”
The full thesis is available at:
http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/nick.
cook/papers/cook-thesis.pdf
A 5 page extended abstract is
available at:
http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/
nick.cook/papers/cook-thesisextabstract.pdf
Nick is now a Lecturer at the
University of Newcastle.
IT Managers, Business Leaders,
Systems Architects, Consultants
and Business Intermediaries.
For more information and how to
register visit www.ogf.org/gmb-registration
The Grid Computing Now!
Knowledge Transfer Network is a
UK government funded initiative to
stimulate the market adoption of
grid computing to increase the UK
competitiveness of UK plc.
Image: Interceptor-mediated
information sharing
Issue 49 April 2007
Edinburgh e-Science MSc in full swing
Funded places still available for 2007/2008 e-Science MSc at Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh’s MSc/
Diploma programme in
e-Science is now well established,
with its second cohort of students
nearing its exam period and offers
being made to students wanting
to start the degree programme in
September 2007. Funded places
are still available for admission to
the e-Science MSc/Diploma at the
University of Edinburgh in 2007/08.
The students who have taken
the MSc to date have come from
diverse academic backgrounds and
the first graduating class have gone
on to a range of jobs, reflecting the
multidisciplinary nature of e-Science
and its applications in many
domains in both academia and the
commercial IT sector.
The degree programme centres on
a core of eight mandatory courses,
which students supplement with
four options, taken from a pool of
over 100 courses offered by the
Schools of Physics, Informatics and
GeoSciences.
MSc students complete their yearlong studies with a three-month
individual research project, while
a Diploma may be awarded on the
basis of the two semesters of taught
courses alone. Both degrees may
be taken on a part-time basis, over
the course of two or three academic
years, by those wishing to develop
expertise in e-Science and Grid
technologies while remaining in
work.
The mandatory courses taken
by all students give them a solid
grounding in basic technologies
- Java programming, XML,
databases, web and Grid services
- and present them with an overview
of e-Science, through seminars
from leading researchers, and an
opportunity to develop transferable
skills, as well as developing handson experience of using e-Science
and Grid middleware. The large
number of options on offer enables
students to tailor an individual
curriculum suited to their particular
Image Copyright Peter Tuffy, University of Edinburgh
aid the study of cystic fibrosis”
The degree programme receives
studentship support from EPSRC
and (subject to confirmation for
2007/08) from the Student Awards
Agency for Scotland.
interests and future career plans,
while the students can choose the
topic of their individual research
project from a wide range offered
by supervisors in several Schools
in the University, as well as
researchers from its Associated
Institutions, such as the MRC
Human Genetics Unit.
“Our students come from a broad
spectrum of academic backgrounds,
across science and computer
science, and we offer them a
correspondingly wide range of
opportunities”, says Dr Bob Mann,
the Programme Director. “The
students learn a lot from each
other, and it is good to see different
students contributing their prior
expertise across the course of the
year.
Funded places are still available
for entry in September 2007, and
applications are encouraged from
students with, or expecting, a
good honours degree, and with a
proven competence in computer
programming.
Further information is available
from the MSc website: http://www.
ph.ed.ac.uk/postgraduate/degrees/
msc_escience.html, while informal
enquiries may be made to the
Programme Director, Dr Bob Mann,
by email (rgm@roe.ac.uk).
Some students view the
MSc as a chance to develop
experience in e-Science
technologies in preparation
for a PhD, while others want
to broaden their skills, and all
learn a lot that is new to them for example, this year we have
a former astrophysics student
about to start a project applying
e-Science technologies to
Image Previous MSc students
NeSC News
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 49 April 2007
Apply Now for the
International Summer School
on Grid Computing
www.issgc.org
The next International
Summer School in Grid
Computing will take
place from 8 to 20 July
2007. The school will be
held in Sweden, in the
Gripsholmsviken Hotell
& Konferens (http://www.
redcross.se/gripsholm/),
in the beautiful town of
Mariefred situated in
Södermanland, about
an hour away from
Stockholm. Students
from all over the world
are invited to apply for the wellestablished School, now in its fifth
year.
The School will provide an in-depth
introduction to Grid technologies
that underpin e-Infrastructure and
Cyberinfrastructure. It will present a
conceptual framework to enhance
each student’s ability to work in this
rapidly advancing field.
Applications are invited 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 e-Infrastructure.
For further information and
enquiries please email: issgc07@
lists.nesc.ac.uk
http://www.issgc.org
₤30m for
GridPP
PPARC recently announced ₤30m
further funding for GridPP, the UK’s
largest scientific Grid. The funding
announced this week enables
GridPP to continue into its third
phase until 2011, covering the
period when CERN’s Large Hadron
Collider starts taking data.
The UK particle physics Grid
currently has almost ten thousand
processors at 17 sites across the
country; with the new funding, this
will increase to 20 thousand by
2011.
GridPP is also integrated with
other grids in the Worldwide LHC
Computing Grid project, including
more than 35 thousand CPU in 50
countries. This Grid will be used to
analyse the petabytes (millions of
Gigabytes) of data produced by the
LHC each year in its search for the
basic building blocks of matter.
Science and
Technology
Facilities
Council
established
The merger of the Council for the
Central Laboratory of the Research
Councils [CCLRC] and the Particle
Physics and Astronomy Research
Council [PPARC] on 1st April 2007,
aims to “bring greater strategic
leadership and an integrated
approach to UK investments in
large national and international
research facilities and infrastructure
whilst delivering world-class
science, technologies and people
for the UK.” (PPARC press release)
The Council’s remit will cover all the
programmes, activities and facilities
previously operated by CCLRC
and PPARC, plus responsibility for
research in nuclear physics which
has been transferred from EPSRC.
The Council operates three
internationally renowned
laboratories: The Rutherford
Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire;
The Daresbury Laboratory in
Cheshire; and the UK Astronomy
Technology Centre in Edinburgh
and overall has in excess of 2000
staff across seven sites.
For the full release go to: http://
www.scitech.ac.uk/PMC/PRel/
STFC/newdawn.aspx
Science and Technology Facilities
Council website:
http://www.scitech.ac.uk/
For the full release go to:
http://www.gridpp.ac.uk/news/1175090558.247099.wlg
NeSC News
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 49 April 2007
Reminder Call For Papers
The Sixth UK e-Science All Hands
Meeting (AHM 2007) will be held
from 10-13th September 2007 at
the East Midlands Conference
Centre in Nottingham.
An excellent set of invited Keynote
speakers involved in leading Grid
and e-Science activities within the
UK and across the globe, have now
been confirmed for the meeting:
- Tim Foresman, University of
Maryland, USA - key figure in the
Digital Earth Project
- Derek Hill, University College
London, UK - Medical Image
Computing
- Tom Kirkwood, University of
Newcastle, UK, 2001 Reith Lecturer
on Ageing
- Satoshi Sekiguchi, National
Institute of Advanced Industrial
Science and Technology, Japan
- a leader of Japanese e-Science
activities
- John Wood, Chief Executive
Officer, CCLRC, and Chair of JISC
Support of Research committee, UK
- Anders Ynnerman, Linkoping
University, Sweden - Medical
Visualization
Sponsorship has also been secured
from the Premier Sponsor JISC,
GridComputingNow! and BCS has
again confirmed their support of the
event.
There are several options for
participation (please note that to
reflect the increasing quality of the
submissions we are asking for full
papers to be submitted for review,
rather than abstracts):
* Presentation in a mini-workshop.
The mini-workshops are sessions
organised by individuals to bring
together a number of presenters
for a particular theme. Please
check http://www.allhands.org.
uk/programme/workshops.cfm
for updates and information on
workshops
* Poster Presentation. There
will be a poster session where
colleagues will have the opportunity
to explain projects to the conference
delegates. Each poster paper can
be up to 8 pages in length and must
be submitted for review by 16th
April 2007.
* Birds-of-a-Feather/Tutorial. Up
to five, two-hour sessions will be
organised. Birds-of-a-Feather
are sessions that do not have the
normal session format; for example
discussions, panels, tutorials on key
aspects of e-Science, etc. If you
wish to organise one of these then
please submit a 2 page summary to
the PC Chair describing the aims,
schedule and intended audience by
16th April 2007.
A full review process will be
managed by the AHM Programme
Committee.
Details of the format required for
the papers, and how to submit is
available at
http://www.allhands.org.uk/
* Regular paper. Each paper can be
up to 8 pages in length. Full papers
(not abstracts) should be submitted.
Papers not accepted as full papers
can be reconsidered as poster
submissions. The submission
deadline is the 16th April 2007.
NeSC News
The Shintau
Project (ShibGrid Integrated
Authorization).
User Needs
Gathering
The UK JISC and US Internet2
would like to find out user
needs and requirements for
the use of attributes, issued
by multiple authorities, in
federated authorisation. This is
already a significant problem,
for example, when Shibboleth
is used to authenticate to Grid
applications.
The ultimate intention of the
Shintau project is to develop
open source software that
satisfies the user requirements,
and that can be easily
integrated into Globus Toolkit,
OMII-UK, Shibboleth and other
VO facilitating products.
Please take the time to
answer the user requirements
questionnaire by 23 April and
email it to d.w.chadwick@kent.
ac.uk.
The questionnaire is available
from:
http://sec.cs.kent.ac.uk/shintau/
Pictured: JISC
stand at AHM
2006
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 49 April 2007
New partnership
boosts services
to UK research
community
The recent signing of a new
agreement between JISC and
the Research Councils aims to
strengthen cooperation and ensure
that the research community has
access to improved services, such
as increased network bandwidth.
Additionally, thousands of scientists
in Research Council Institutes will
also have the same access to JISC
services as their university-based
counterparts.
This agreement builds on what is
already a close partnership between
JISC and the Research Councils
in the areas of e-infrastructure, eScience, the National Grid Service,
data curation and access to
research outputs. This partnership
has resulted in advances in drug
discovery, new insights into the
distribution of poverty among ethnic
minorities, and experiments with
e-Science techniques to push the
boundaries of artistic performance.
For the full story go to: http://
www.jisc.ac.uk/Home/news/
stories/2007/03/news_rcuk.aspx
JISC Supports
Education and
Research
JISC recently published an
updated strategy, which reaffirmed
its commitment to the support of
institutions in realising their goals
in the digital age while broadening
its focus to include for the first time
the support of institutions’ activities
to engage with business and the
community.
To read the JISC Strategy [200709], please go to: http://www.jisc.
ac.uk/strategy0709
New Projects
Accepted for
Funding
Staff at the Glasgow office of NeSC
are involved in a number of Projects
which have recently been accepted
for funding:
VPMan Project
The University of Kent, the National
E-Science Centre at the University
of Glasgow, the National Grid
Service and OMII-UK are partners
in the VPMan (Integrating VOMS
and PERMIS for Superior Secure
Grid Management) project, funded
by JISC.
The aim is to capture the current
(and future) requirements of both
users and application developers
for managing the security of VOs.
In particular, to interview current
users of VOMS and PERMIS,
and application developers who
are integrating VOMS and/or
PERMIS into their systems, to gain
a full appreciation of how they are
managing the security of their VOs
today, and what additional features
they would like in the future.
e-SciDR
The European Commission’s
Information Society and Media DG
has commissioned an eight-month
study entitled “Towards a European
e-Infrastructure for e-Science Digital
Repositories” (e-SciDR) which looks
at the roadmap for e-Science data
repositories across Europe.
The aim of the study is to provide
the European Commission with
an overview of the situation in
Europe regarding e-Science digital
repositories and to identify an einfrastructure for these repositories
and set out key issues.
This study is being carried out by
the Digital Archiving Consultancy
Limited (DAC), who are leading
a team comprising GridwiseTech
(Poland), University of Glasgow
(UK), Charles Beagrie Limited (UK),
Imperial College Internet Centre
(UK) and Com’tou (France).
For the full story go to:
http://www.e-scidr.eu/
If this applies to you and you would
like to provide the project with your
input, please send an email to Dr
Bassem Nasser <b.nasser@kent.
ac.uk> and he will contact you to
illicit your requirements
http://sec.cs.kent.ac.uk/vpman
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/hub/projects/
vp-authz/
OMII-SP
OMII funded OMII-Security
Portlets (OMII-SP) looking at
developing security portlets
to support the exploitation of
Shibboleth technologies for fine
grained security to portals and
portal content. This is a sole NeSC
Glasgow project.
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/hub/projects/
omii-sp/
NeSC News
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 49 April 2007
E-Science – three-sided science
by Malcolm Atkinson, e-Science Envoy
I have adopted the following
definition of e-Science:
‘E-Science is the systematic
development of methods using
advanced informatics to enable
better research.’
Then recognising its three elements:
1. Research projects applying
e-Science methods;
2. Research advancing e-Science
methods and pioneering new
technology to enable them; and
3. Investment in support that helps
researchers benefit from e-Science.
In March, the EPSRC Projects’ All
Hands Meeting at NeSC illustrated
well the three elements and their
powerful synergy1 .
The day started with talks on three
ambitious science-driven projects:
• CARMEN, presented by Colin
Ingram and Paul Watson, sets out
to establish a repository capable
of supporting all of the information
collected about the brain and all of
the software used to explore and
model it.
• NanoCMOSgrid, presented by
Asen Asenov and Richard Sinnott,
will model atomic scale variability in
the devices on a processor chip in
order to develop circuit design rules
that cope with that variation.
• MESSAGE, presented by John
Polak, will pioneer methods of
collecting accurate data about
traffic pollution by using vehicles
themselves to carry the sensors,
and then establish methods to make
sense of the data collected.
Four talks on research projects
seeking to understand how to
make e-Science technology more
usable and three on the results of
fundamental computing science
for e-Science showed the strength
of the research into e-Science
NeSC News
methods and supporting technology.
Ingenuity was in evidence in every
case, as the researchers balanced
developing new informatics insights
with affecting e-Science. This was
especially well illustrated in Catriona
Macaulay’s talk about the Usable
image project – they had to analyse
usability observations in 24 hours
in order to influence the weekly
prototype cycle. Alan Bundy showed
how quality of service estimates
could be composed using an
approximate calculus and Graham
Kirby presented a design for a large
distributed store that might just have
the capacity and reliability needed
for science data repositories.
The stores they demonstrated
could address all of the world’s
collected scientific data in a globally
distributed store – an underpinning
for Curating our Digital Scientific
Heritage: a Global Collaborative
Challenge, the focus for the Digital
Curation Centre’s forthcoming
annual conference2 . The great
challenge is how to organise that
collaboration. International access
to a global federation of data would
follow.
role by funding all three elements
of e-Science for the UK’s major
research facilities. As those facilities
will be the greatest sources of data,
their advanced science will depend
on advances in grid infrastructure,
national-scale, shared scientific
data repositories and advances in
modelling and analysis based on
computational innovation.
The UK needs to hold steadfastly
to its lead in all three elements of
e-Science by determinedly keeping
all three working together, whatever
the source of funding.
1. http://www.nesc.ac.uk/action/esi/
contribution.cfm?Title=764
2. http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/dcc2007
3. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/
conference2007
4. http://www.spaceref.com/news/
viewpr.html?pid=22247
A talk on OMII-UK by Steven
Newhouse and one on the National
Grid Service by Neil Geddes
represented strong elements of
support to help researchers start
using e-Science methods. The JISC
conference showed the breadth of
support to HEI on offer3 . Here, Sir
Ron Cooke drew attention to the
OSI Report Developing the UK’s
e-Infrastructure for Science and
Innovation.
It is encouraging to see these
three elements still thriving and
working together. The continued
funding of GridPP and AstroGrid
is very welcome news4 . It is to be
hoped that the brand new Science
and Technology Facilities Council
(STFC), will not only continue that
vital work but also play a leading
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 49 April 2007
e-Science
Institute
Mind Maps
by Iain Coleman, NeSC Science Writer
The map is not the territory. That’s
obvious if you’ve toggled between
the street plan and the satellite
photograph of your home town
in Google Maps. Less obvious is
the deep connection between the
ancient art of mapmaking and the
data integration and knowledge
representation issues at the
forefront of e-Science research.
Maps integrate information about a
region of space, interpreting spatial
observations through theories to
present information of relevance
to a particular application. The
application could be a tourist trip
to Edinburgh, in which an implicit
model of tourists’ interests and
behaviour determines which
geographical features are displayed,
or an oil-drilling operation, with
geological theory used to produce
an estimated configuration of
hydrocarbon reservoirs from rock
observations. This interplay of
data and theory means that many
different maps could be constructed
from the same observations.
Consequently, not only are
observations are worth preserving
for future reuse, but the theoretical
understanding underpinning a
map must also be preserved: if the
theory later changes the map will
also have to change, even if the
observations stay the same.
These points were emphasised
at the European Geoinformatics
Workshop, held at eSI on the 7th
to 9th of March as the first event in
the new Spatial Semantics Theme.
Ian Jackson (BGS) was keen to
stress the importance of capturing
the knowledge and intelligence of
staff before they move on. He also
emphasised the need to preserve
and reuse the vast existing stores
of legacy data – itself a social and
technical challenge if, as Joshua
Lieberman (Traverse Technologies)
claimed, the most common storage
space for geospatial data is the C:
drive.
The advent of e-Science has
allowed researchers to take
knowledge integration to a new
NeSC News
level. Grid computing and other
e-Science technologies allow
maps and models to be combined
like never before, permitting an
unprecedented understanding of
complex geospatial processes.
This is particularly important in
the field of disaster recovery.
There are existing models of many
individual hazards, but in reality
they rarely occur in isolation.
Typically, many hazards arrive all
at once: knowing how, say, a forest
fire affects vegetation, leading
to increased erosion, landslides
and floods can be of tremendous
benefit to emergency response
planners. The grid can also make
information available more quickly
– for earthquakes, the analysis time
has been cut from weeks to hours
– and this is critical in informing
life-or-death decisions. MEDIGRID,
presented by Isabella Bovolo
(Newcastle), is just such a system
for integrating models of natural
hazards in the Mediterranean
region, while the CYCLOPS project
(Paolo Mazzetti, IMAA-CNR)
is working towards a real-time
grid-enabled service to assist in
emergency response.
Combining textual, geographicallyspecific information with maps
is another major challenge.
Existing geographical search
engines are based on business
directories – useful for finding a
local takeaway, but not for tracking
down historical documents relating
to a particular street. Chris Jones
(Cardiff) discussed the challenge
of establishing a more general
geographic search tool, which is
one aspect of the wider problem
of dealing with natural language
in an automated fashion. Place
names can easily be confused
with names of people (like Mr
York) or even common words
(like Over, in Cambridgeshire). A
search tool needs to understand
from context when a place name
is being used. The semantics
of geospatial data also present
challenges in moving to a more
formalised, automated system:
where does a hill start, and when
does a river turn into a lake? The
formal logic of qualitative spatial
descriptions was presented by Tony
Cohn (Leeds), while Katalin Kovacs
and Shen Zhou of the Ordnance
Survey discussed the gritty details
of defining exactly what is meant,
in terms of size, shape and land
use, by a field. In contrast to these
rigorous, top-down approaches,
Marc Wick (geonames.org)
showed the power of the mashup
by combining official sources of
geospatial data with Wikipedia
to produce maps annotated with
descriptions of places of interest.
He also demonstrated the vagaries
of repurposed datasets with a
map of the density of geographical
information across the globe:
the presence in the database of
information originally gathered for
the US Department of Defense led
to an anomalously high information
density in such places as Pakistan,
Afghanistan and Montenegro.
The range of data integration
challenges presented at this
workshop, and the efforts under way
to overcome them, underscored
the points made a few days earlier
by Theme leader Femke Reitsma
in her e-Science Institute public
lecture “Why on Earth do we need
spatial semantics?” held at eSI on
the 1st of March. She emphasised
the importance of being able to
represent, and reason about, spatial
and temporal relationships, and the
e-Science opportunities that can
arise once the fundamental issues
of integrating diverse, spatially
related data sets are addressed.
From disaster management to
historical research, incorporating
geospatial knowledge into the world
of e-Science could transform a
wide range of social and scientific
activities. The strong start to this
new eSI Theme shows that the
effort is already well under way.
Slides from the European
Geoinformatics Workshop can be
downloaded from http://www.nesc.
ac.uk/esi/events/712/
Slides and streaming video from
Dr Reitsma’s public lecture can be
downloaded from http://www.nesc.
ac.uk/esi/events/759/
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 49 April 2007
Privacy and Progress
by Iain Coleman, NeSC Science
Writer
It’s a sign of how quickly the world
of social technology is changing
that the Microsoft Windows 2003
spellchecker doesn’t recognise the
word “blog”. Here in 2007, even
Charlotte Church has one. The
proliferation of blogs – Technorati
tracks more than 67 million of them
– has led to an explosion of social
data about the bloggers themselves
and the people in their lives. This
runs parallel to the ever-increasing
quantity of more formal data held by
governments and other institutions
regarding many aspects of our lives,
from the state of our health to the
history of our finances. All of this is
looked on by social researchers in
much the same way as a pride of
hungry lions might regard a herd
of particularly plump gazelles, but
they will have to overcome an array
of obstacles before they can get
hold of it. The workshop on “New
Kinds of Social Data: from blogs
to administrative data” held at eSI
on 20th March was intended to
provoke a concentrated effort to
understand these problems and find
a way through them: in doing so, it
revealed some deep and potentially
disquieting changes that are already
occurring in the relationship between
individuals and society.
It’s all about privacy, one way or
another. The presentation by Peter
Elias (ESRC) concentrated on
officially-gathered data, whether this
is gathered for the specific purpose
of sociological study, like household
studies and child cohort studies, or
has been obtained for some other
reason but is of interest to social
researchers nonetheless. The
difficult issues arise with the latter
category. Health data, social security
data, even business data; all are
hedged about with legal and ethical
constraints on how the data should
be used, and by whom, which
only add to the practical problems
of making links between these
different sources. Elias proposed the
establishment of an Administrative
Data Service, a national body
that would address all of these
NeSC News
e-Science
Institute
problems in order to make useful
data available to researchers on the
social sciences.
These problems are challenging,
but fairly well-defined, as they
relate to data which is captured
in a relatively structured way by
well-established official bodies. The
newest source of social data shares
none of these properties. Blogs,
YouTube video diaries, Flickr photo
albums and MySpace profiles are all
instances of informal self-disclosure
of information. Connecting up these
different sorts of data immediately
raises issues of patchiness and data
quality, as well as the sheer volume
of information, and David Zeitlyn
(University of Kent) was keen to
discover if e-Science technologies
could help to make sense of this
chaotic mass of data. He also
wondered if it might be possible to
persuade blog hosting companies
to gather information on their users
for release in 25 or 50 years’ time,
enabling future researchers to make
data linkages that would be difficult
– and perhaps unwelcome – in the
present day.
This raises important questions
of how we manage privacy – our
own and others’ – in a highlyconnected information society.
One the one hand, researchers
(amongst others) may want to use
our personal data, which brings in
issues of ethics and consent. On
the other hand, through blogs and
other online social activities we
give away a lot of information about
ourselves and other people. Can
we do so anonymously? Even if
we take care not to reveal details
about ourselves, will our cover be
blown by off-hand comments from
friends online? Karen McCullagh
(University of Manchester)
presented surveys of bloggers’
attitudes to privacy, with examples
of the steps some bloggers have
taken to protect their identities,
and some of the personal and
professional consequences when
that identity is made public.
The abundance of data in the
modern world multiplies the risk
that confidential information will be
exposed, as Mark Elliot (University
of Manchester) explained. It is no
longer enough to look at a set of
data in isolation and evaluate the
risk that information may be linked
to an individual. Two data sets
that are each apparently safe in
isolation can, if combined, allow
the connections to be made that
reveal private matters. The new
way of thinking about data privacy
is that each data set is sent out into
a vast ecosystem of information,
and it is the risk of disclosure in this
rich data environment that must be
assessed.
The hardest problem of all is what
to do about private information
that a person shares freely, but
later wishes had been kept under
wraps. It is now commonplace for
youthful, or sometimes not-soyouthful, transgressions to end
up on the web for all to see. How
will people cope as these things
come back to embarrass them in
future? This has always been an
issue for very prominent people,
like senior politicians and major
celebrities, but now it could come
to affect us all. Will the glass
houses principle lead to society
developing a more tolerant and
accepting attitude towards other
peoples’ personal lives? Or will the
popular media’s love affair with the
prurient exposé simply escalate
into an industrial-scale shredding
of reputations on all scales? Either
way, the unprecedented volume
and accessibility of personal data is
likely to have a profound effect upon
our society.
And what does privacy really
mean anyway? One proposal is
that we abandon the idea of a firm
wall of privacy and replace it with
safeguards against data abuse.
We would move from being data
subjects to being data citizens,
with a social obligation to reveal
certain data to trusted bodies
which themselves have a social
obligation not to misuse it. Such
a change could have far-reaching
consequences. The distinction
between public and private life is
central to liberal philosophy, and
is an essential part of modern
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 49 April 2007
democracy. Politics, in the liberal
model, only concerns itself with
public acts and the public self:
there are aspects of self that
are placed outwith the reach of
political authority. Originally this
meant primarily religious faith: it
has developed to encompass race,
sexuality and other features of a
person that are deemed irrelevant
to their public dealings. Liberalism
began as an essentially urban
movement, and perhaps there is
a good reason for that. In a small
enough community, there is little
that can remain private for long. In a
town or city, our public interactions
are mediated by our public persona
without our private lives needing
to become involved at all. We feel
confident that a shopkeeper is not
ripping us off, not because we know
him to be a decent upstanding
fellow, but because he trades in a
legal environment which includes
legislation to protect the consumer.
The social web puts a new spin on
the old idea of a global village – a
society in which everyone knows
everyone else’s business, gossip is
inescapable, reputation persistent,
and we know something of the
personal lives of the people we
trade with. The reputation system
on eBay is a prime example. The
question is, does the social web
break down the separation of public
and private lives to such an extent
that a tolerant and pluralistic society
becomes unfeasible?
Fittingly for a workshop that raised
so many questions, it ended not
with conclusions but with ideas
for a paper on how researchers
and citizens can relate to our
increasingly information-rich world.
The future work on these issues will
also include an assessment of how
e-Science technologies can assist
researchers as they try to navigate
this vast sea of data, both public
and private. Technology has always
changed society: now it may also
help to understand it.
Slides from this workshop can be
downloaded from http://www.nesc.
ac.uk/esi/events/699/
Events
Call for Papers and
Participation: First
International Workshop
on World Wide Work
Flow Grid
GridAsia@Singapore, Biopolis,
Singapore, June 5-7, 2007
The 1st WWWFG is the first
workshop in the region focused
on the triple convergence of
Grid Computing with Workflow
Integration systems and Semantic
Web technologies. This unique
workshop aims to bring together
key players in these areas and to
provide unique opportunities that
might lay the foundation for the next
wave of killer applications supported
by Grid Technologies.
Oral Presentations in all areas
related to any one, or a combination
of, the three areas are invited.
Highlights of the Workshop:
TRACK 1: Workflow and Grid
Integration Systems: Killer
Applications in the making.
TRACK 2: Knowledge Discovery
and the Semantic Web: Prelude to a
World Wide WorkFlow Grid
Throughout the workshop the
Life Science domain will be used
mainly as an exemplar of the triple
convergence Grid, Semantic Web
and Workflows. Other areas of
deployment and challenge fields are
also welcome.
Panel Discussions: Panel
discussions will be organized to
identify ways in which the triple
convergence of Workflow Systems,
Ontologies and the Semantic Web
with Grid Computing can be we can
accelerated.
Grid Computing
Now! will run the
latest in its series
of Webinars on 19
April, at 2.30pm
The webinar, called Virtualisation
and Service Oriented architecture:
Building a cutting edge IT
infrastructure, will feature
presentations and a panel
discussion with guest speakers
Zafar Chaudry, Liverpool Women’s
NHS Foundation Trust and Mark
Simpson, Griffiths Waite showing
how service oriented technologies
have been deployed in two different
business scenarios.
Server virtualisation is a key
technology that underpins Grid
computing. By abstracting the
details of the underlying hardware,
it allows applications to run where
the resource is available. This can
significantly increase resource
utilisation.
Service-Oriented Architecture
(SOA) is another key technology.
By separating functionality into
largely autonomous components,
it allows these components to be
quickly deployed and assembled
into new applications in response to
changing business objectives.
Registration is available here:
http://mediazone.brighttalk.
com/event/gridcomputingnow/
7eacb53257-419-intro
Exhibitors and sponsors are
welcome.
Tutorials for training in Taverna,
Ontology Web Language (OWL)
and KOOP workflow system will be
conducted. Registration open soon.
Full details: http://www.apbionet.
org/wwwfg/
NeSC News
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue
49 April 2007
Events
International Workshop on Virtual
Research Environments and Collaborative
Work Environments
3rd International
Conference on
e-Social Science
In Association with eSI Thematic
Programme: Adoption of
e-Research Technologies
Ann Arbor, October 7-10,
2007
Call for Submissions
http://ess.si.umich.edu/
23 May - 24 May
e-Science Institute, 15 South
College Street, Edinburgh
The aim of this workshop is
to bring together researchers
working in the areas of virtual
research environments (VREs) and
collaborative work environments
(CWEs). Both concepts are
characterised as providing
consistent and dependable work
environments for particular kinds
of work organisation, emphasising
the dynamic establishment of
collaborative work contexts between
independent partners.
Further aspects such as the mobility
of work activities and requirements
such as security and confidentiality
also play a role in both concepts.
Despite these similarities, it
would seem that the development
of research programmes and
the establishment of research
communities within these fields has
to date progressed independently.
As a consequence, there is a
danger of wasteful duplication of
effort, conceptual divergence and
technical incompatibility.
conceptual papers are welcome
but we would ask authors of either
type of contribution to deal with the
relationship between VREs and
CWEs by considering issues such
as:
• What is the common ground and
what are the differences?
• How can experiences gained in
one field be translated to the other?
Further information can be found on
the workshop wiki at:
http://wiki.esi.ac.uk/VREs_meet_
CWEs_Workshop_Wiki
This workshop is aimed at
researchers working in the areas
of virtual research environments
(VREs) and collaborative work
environments (CWEs).
A dinner is being held in Tempus
Bar, George Hotel on the 23 May at
19:30
To register please go to
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/
events/768/index.cfm.
The Registration Deadline is the
16th of May.
The aim of the conference
on e-Social Science is to
bring together international
representatives of the social
science and cyberinfrastructure
research communities in order to
create better mutual awareness,
harmonize understanding,
and instigate coordinated
activities to accelerate research,
development, and deployment of
cyberinfrastructure to support the
social science research community.
We invite contributions from
members of the social science
and cyberinfrastructure research
communities with experience
of - or interests in - exploring,
developing, and applying new
methods, practices, and tools that
are facilitated by cyberinfrastructure
in order to further social science
research, and in studying the wider
development of cyberinfrastructureenabled research and its
component technologies.
Details of submission topics and
formats can be found at:
http://ess.si.umich.edu/call.htm
The workshop’s aim is to address
these concerns by soliciting
contributions from the research
community dealing with topics such
as:
• common standards, specifications
and technologies
• architectural styles and
frameworks
• development methodologies and
user-designer relations
• supporting research communities
and eProfessional networks
• computer supported cooperative
work and workplace studies
Deadlines: paper abstracts: May
15th, 2007.
Workshop, tutorial, and panel
outlines: May 31st, 2007.
Poster abstracts: June 30th, 2007.
Both experience reports and
NeSC News
10
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue
49 April 2007
Events
1st International
EchoGRID &
EUChinaGRID
Conference
1st Biomed Grid
School
14 – 19th May 2007 in Varenna,
Italy (near Milan).
24-27 April 2007, Beijing, China
with 2-day free course: ProActive
Tutorial, 26-27 April 2007,
SuperComputing Centre, CAS
Bioinfogrid, EMBRACE, EBI and
ICEAGE are involved in organising
this School.
URL: http://echogrid.ercim.org/
content/view/6/7/
http://www.bioinfogrid.eu/course/
biomedgrid2007
EGEE/EELA/
EuMedGrid Grid
Tutorial
Madrid, 7-11, May 2007
Training activities is one of the
several responsibilities of RedIRIS/
Red.es in the EELA, EuMedGrid
and EGEE-II European Grid
Projects.
As its main objective, this tutorial
will try to introduce the attendees
to the administration and usage
of EGEE Production Grid
Infrastructures. Practical sessions
will be highlighted during the
course.
The registration is open from now
until the 23rd of April and the
number of attendees is limited to
40, so if you are planning to attend
this Grid Tutorial, please, register
asap.
For more information and
registration, please visit:
http://www.irisgrid.es/tutorial2
HPCS 2007
May 13-16 2007
HPCS 2007 is being co-sponsored
by WestGrid this year and is
Canada’s pre-eminent forum for
HPC and HPC technologies.
If you require any more information,
please visit the HPCS 2007 website:
http://www.westgrid.ca/hpcs2007
NeSC News
The 8th IEEE
International
Conference on Grid
Computing
(Grid 2007)
Austin, Texas, September 19-21
Grid 2007 invites authors to submit
original and unpublished work
(also not submitted elsewhere
for review) reporting solid and
innovative results in any aspect of
grid computing and its applications.
Papers should not exceed 8 singlespaced pages of text using 10-point
size type on 8.5 x 11 inch paper.
Detailed instructions are provided
in the LaTeX template and the
Word template. All bibliographical
references, tables, and figures
must be included in these 8 pages.
Submissions that exceed the
8-page limit will not be reviewed.
Authors should submit a PDF file
that will print on a PostScript printer.
Electronic submission is required.
The site for submissions is http://
www.easychair.org/Grid2007/
Papers must be submitted by
April 7, 2007. No extensions will
be given. Submission implies the
willingness of at least one of the
authors to register and present the
paper.
For author instructions see http://
www.computer.org/cspress/instruct.
htm
11
BELIEF-EELA
International eInfrastructures
Conference,
25-28 June 2007, Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil
URL: http://www.beliefproject.
org/events/brazil/2nd-beliefeinfrastructures-conference-rio-dejaneiro/
3rd International
Digital Curation
Conference
The UK Digital Curation Centre
(DCC), the US National Science
Foundation (NSF) and the Coalition
for Networked Information (CNI)
are pleased to jointly announce
the 3rd International Digital
Curation Conference to be held on
Wednesday 12th – Thursday 13th
December 2007 at the Renaissance
Washington Hotel in Washington
DC, USA.
Entitled “Curating our Digital
Scientific Heritage: a Global
Collaborative Challenge” the
conference will focus on emerging
strategy, policy implementation,
leading-edge research and
practitioner experience, and will
comprise a mix of peer-reviewed
papers, invited presentations and
keynote international speakers.
Further details and a Call for Papers
will be published shortly at
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/dcc2007/
The event will follow on from the
Fall 2007 CNI Task Force meeting
which will be held on Monday 10th
– Tuesday 11th December, also at
the Renaissance Washington Hotel,
Washington DC.
More information about the DCC
can be found at http://www.dcc.
ac.uk/
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue
49 April 2007
Events
CALL FOR PAPERS
Fourth International Conference on Life Science Grids
(LSGrid2007)
6-7th September 2007,
National e-Science Centre,
University of Glasgow, Scotland
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/events/lsgrid2007/
The post-genome era holds much
based Life Science e-Research.
promise. In-silico scientific research
Topics of interest include, but are
can allow for identification of new
not limited to:
drugs, personalized e-Health,
multi-scale models of complete
- Experiences applying Grid
organisms through to complete
technologies in the life sciences
population studies. Essential to
- Computational and data Grid
the realization of this vision is the
architectures for the life sciences
infrastructure needed to support
- Security of clinical and life science
inter-disciplinary research, in
data sets including experiences in
particular in overcoming the data
ethics and information governance
deluge associated with the life
- Usability of Grid based life science
sciences. These data sets are
systems
growing exponentially, often have
- Interoperability of Grid systems to
radically different characteristics,
support life science research
are maintained by different groups
- Grid based data access and
and bodies, and are perpetually
integration of life science data sets
evolving. In this context, the
- Applications and case studies on
development of an infrastructure
using the Grid in the life science
that allows to access, use, and
domain
analyze such changing and growing
- Computational workflows to
amounts of data is both technically
support life science research
challenging, offers huge benefits
processes
to the scientific community and
- Grid based drug discovery and
is potentially extremely viable
pharmacogenomics
commercially.
- Experiences accessing and
using clinical data sets within and
The Grid represents one way in
between organisations
which such an infrastructure can
- Grid based clinical trials and
be developed and supported,
epidemiological studies
providing seamless access to
- Grid based longitudinal studies
computational and data resources.
- Development and usage of
This conference builds on several
ontologies for the life sciences
previous international workshops
- Semantic Grid approaches for the
and provides a focus on all aspects
life sciences
related to the application of Grid
technologies to the challenges
Paper Submission
facing the life science community.
Authors are invited to submit
original and unpublished work.
Topics
Papers should not exceed 10
The program committee welcomes
single-spaced pages on A4 paper
the submission of original
size, using at least 1 inch margins
manuscripts addressing the
and 12-point font. Authors should
problem of Grid Systems for Life
submit a PDF or PostScript file that
Sciences. Authors should report
will print on a PostScript printer.
relevant experiences, present novel
Electronic submission through the
approaches to existing problems
symposium website (www.lsgrid.
and describe and raise issues that
org/2007) is strongly encouraged.
must be overcome to facilitate GridSubmission implies the willingness
NeSC News
12
of at least one of the authors to
register and present the paper.
Important Dates
Submission deadline of Abstracts
for posters/demonstration (15th
June 2007) (800 words)
Submission deadline of Papers
(29th June 2007) (up to 10 pages).
Notification of Acceptance (20th
July 2007)
Submission of Camera Ready
Version of Paper (3rd August 2007)
Program Chair
Professor Richard Sinnott
National e-Science Centre,
Glasgow, UK
Note that this conference will
take place the week after the
Braemar Highland Games (http://
www.braemargathering.org/) in
Scotland and the week before the
UK e-Science All Hands Meeting
(http://www.allhands.org.uk/) in
Nottingham, for those wishing to
have more than one reason to be in
the UK at this time!
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue
49 April 2007
Events
Forthcoming Events Timetable
April
18-20
HackLatt 2007
e-Science Institute
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/755/
24-25
Managing Scientific Workflows
with OMII-BPEL
National e-Science
Centre
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/esi.html
7 - 11
The 20th Open Grid Forum OGF20 and EGEE User Forum
Manchester, UK
23 - 24
International Workshop on Virtual e-Science Institute
Research Environments and
Collaborative Work Environments
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/768/
30 - 1 June
Distributed Programming
Abstractions, Models and
Infrastructure
e-Science Institute
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/esi.html
UK e-Science All Hands
Meeting
East Midlands Conference Centre, Nottingham
http://www.allhands.org.uk/
May
http://www.ogf.org/gf/session_
request/commreq.php?event_id=7.
http://www.eu-egee.org/uf2
September
10 - 13
Digital Curation Centre: e-Science Research/Liaison Officer
The Digital Curation Centre (DCC) is a national focus of expertise in digital curation and preservation based at the
University of Edinburgh, providing services to the UK science and research communities.
This post will provide research and support input to the DCC and liaison on data curation issues with the growing
e-Science community in UK Higher Education and research. The post is based at the University of Edinburgh, but
will form part of the Community Development team, managed from UKOLN at the University of Bath. The goal of the
Community Development Team is to strengthen community curation networks and collaborative partnerships.
This post is fixed term until February 2010. Salary scale: £32,795 to £39,160 Closing date: 13 April 2007
For more information go to:
http://www.jobs.ed.ac.uk/vacancies/index.cfm?fuseaction=vacancies.detail&vacancy_ref=3007226
Research Assistant OMII-RAVE
Professor David Walker is presently recruiting for a 12 month RA position to work on the OMII-RAVE project. The
purpose of the post is to integrate the RAVE technology (http://www.wesc.ac.uk/projectsite/rave/index.html) into the
OMII middleware distribution (http://www.omii.ac.uk/ ) Please do not hesitate to contact either David Walker or Alex
Hardisty for an informal chat.
Fixed Term: 12 Months
Deadline for Job Applications: 27 April 2007
For further details and on-line application please click on the link to the University of Cardiff jobs website: http://www.
cardiff.ac.uk/schoolsanddivisions/divisions/humrs/jobs/academicresearchsenior/index.html
Welcome to new staff at NeSC
- Dr. Liangxiu Han started work with us on 1st January as a Research Associate working on the Firegrid &
NanoCMOS projects.
- Mike Baker was promoted to Senior Research Systems Consultant in our Middleware Team.
- Adam Barker has recently been recruited to work on the DGEMap project as Computer Science Research
Associate.
- Jennifer Jamieson from the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council has recently started a sixmonth secondment with the Training Outreach and Education Team, as TOE Support Officer.
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:
NeSC News
The NeSC Newsletter produced by:
Alison McCall and Jennifer Hurst, email alison@nesc.ac.uk,
Telephone 0131 651 4783
The deadline for the May Newsletter is: 23 April 2007
13
www.nesc.ac.uk