The monthly newsletter from the National e-Science Centre
NeSC News
Issue 48, March 2007 www.nesc.ac.uk
University of Edinburgh
signs contract for
supercomputer
A multi-million pound contract
for a huge computer system was
signed by staff from the University
of Edinburgh in February. The
computer system is expected to
benefit academic research across
the whole of the UK.
HECToR (High End Computing
Terascale Resources) is a vast
Allan Digance, Assistant Director of Finance,
computing facility worth £113m
University of Edinburgh; Tim O’Shea, the Principal of
over six years. The computer
University of Edinburgh; Alan Simpson, a Director of
will be made by the American
HPCX UoE Ltd
supercomputer company, Cray Inc.
EPCC’s Director, Professor Arthur
Trew, said:
The UK Research Councils
provided the funds for the computer
which will be installed at the
University’s Advanced Computing
Facility (ACF) on the Edinburgh
Technopole estate in Midlothian. It
will start work in October this year
and is planned to last for six years.
EPCC (Edinburgh Parallel
Computing Centre) at the University
of Edinburgh will direct and operate
the facility. UoE HPCX Ltd is a
wholly-owned subsidiary of the
University of Edinburgh. With the
signing of the HECToR agreement it
holds the contracts to provide both
the UK’s national supercomputer
services for academia. Its
success is based on that of EPCC
(Edinburgh Parallel Computing
Centre) – a computational science
research and technology transfer
institute within the University.
Founded in 1990, EPCC’s mission
is to accelerate the effective
exploitation of novel computing
solutions throughout academia,
industry and commerce. Today,
EPCC is the leading computational
science technology transfer centre
in Europe.
“Traditionally progress in science
has been made through theory
and experiment, but an increasing
range of problems now require
to be simulated computationally.
Examples range from climate
modelling to design of new
materials; from understanding subnuclear particles to the evolution of
the Universe.
“HECToR is critical for UK scientists
to compete internationally. We are
delighted that EPCC has again
been chosen to manage this
facility. The choice of Edinburgh
demonstrates the University’s
leadership in the field.”
The Edinburgh-based super
computer will provide UK scientists
with the means to undertake
increasingly complex research
across a wide variety of projects.
HECToR website: www.hector.ac.uk
Source EPCC News Release: Full
Release at http://www.epcc.ed.ac.
uk/news/announcements/universitysigns-hector-contract
Report published:
Developing the UK’s
e-infrastructure
A major report published in February
sets out the requirements for a
national e-infrastructure to help
ensure the UK maintains and
indeed enhances its global standing
in science and innovation in an
increasingly competitive world.
Produced by the Office of Science
and Innovation (OSI) e-Infrastructure
Working Group, the report Developing the UK’s e-infrastructure
for science and innovation - calls for
greater coordination between the
key agencies in the field, greater
investment in e-infrastructure and a
‘step-change’ in ‘national provision
and concerted action towards
e-infrastructure development.’
Without such a ‘step-change’, the
report warns, the UK risks being
overtaken by rapidly industrialising
countries such as China, India and
South Korea.
The Working Group was formed
in response to the Science and
Innovation Investment Framework
2004-2014, published by the
Treasury, the DTI and the DfES in
2004, to explore the current provision
of the UK’s e-infrastructure and
help define its future development.
While the current e-infrastructure
has, the report finds, helped secure
the current standing of UK research,
supporting vital developments in
many fields, such a position is not
sustainable, it continues, without
high-level coordination, political will
and significant further investment.
To access the report, please go to:
www.nesc.ac.uk/documents/OSI/
index.html
Issue 48 March 2007
e-Science identifies new
weapons in battle against
hospital superbugs
Techniques developed under the
UK e-Science Programme led to
the identification of the anti-MRSA
drugs that received widespread
publicity in the UK national media.
E-Therapeutics, a spin-out company
from Newcastle University,
announced the discovery of three
drugs that are effective against
antibiotic-resistant superbugs,
such as that scourge of hospitals,
methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus
aureus (MRSA)*.
The three discovered drugs enter
clinical trials in February and should
be available for use within 2-3
years. They’re the first antibiotics
employing a truly novel mode of
action to be discovered for decades.
Pharmaceutical companies and
others have put a lot of effort into
the search for drugs to beat the
superbugs. e-Therapeutics has
succeeded where others have failed
by using grid computing and escience techniques to trawl through
the portfolio of existing, licensed
drugs for any that showed action
against the superbugs.
“With these techniques we can
search through all the data, warts
and all, very rapidly and identify
candidates within a fraction
of the time it would take using
conventional drug discovery
methods,” says Professor Malcolm
Young, chairman of e-Therapeutics
and pro-vice chancellor at
Newcastle University. Research
funded by EPSRC and the DTI
under the e-Science Programme
demonstrated the reliability of the
new method by showing that it
could predict accurately the action
and side effects of all 103 previously
known antibiotics and many other
drugs.
NeSC News
Working with large amounts of
data on proteins and drugs held in
different databases, gaining access
to and integrating this data requires
e-science techniques. Without
e-science and grid computing, this
would have been an enormously
long task, but e-Therapeutics has
identified some candidate drugs for
clinical trials in less than two weeks.
As well as the three antibiotics,
the company has identified more
than 60 “lead” compounds in many
different medical areas.
The techniques are also being
taken up in the search for new
drugs elsewhere. Last year, eTherapeutics formed relationships
with pharmaceutical companies in
north-east Brazil to test substances
extracted from rain forest plants
for their efficacy against a range
of diseases. The techniques
reduce the time taken to analyse a
substance from, typically, two years
to two months.
“Drug discovery is a search
problem. Conventional drug
discovery is running out of steam
because the search methods
employed to date are so inefficient.
What we’re trying to do is
industrialise drug discovery by
implementing all these processes in
computers, powered by e-science,”
says Young.
Source; RCUK release
For full release see: http://www.
rcuk.ac.uk/escience/news/mrsa
This diagram shows the topological
organisation of the interactome
of Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
Each of the points represents one
of the proteins expressed in this
bacterium, while each of the lines
represents known interactions
between these proteins. (Courtesy
of e-Therapeutics Ltd)
Smaller European
countries to share
science grid
infrastructures
Twelve of Europe’s smaller
countries have signed a
Memorandum of Understanding
(MoU) to develop an interoperable
scientific grid infrastructure
together.
The SIRENE (Sharing
Infrastructure and REsources iN
Europe) agreement, was signed
in January in Brussels by Austria,
Belgium, Denmark, Estonia,
Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania,
the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden
and Switzerland.
http://www.eugrid.eu/
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 48 March 2007
E-Science – Consistent Science
by Malcolm Atkinson, e-Science Envoy
E-Science is a systematic
approach to improving the way
we research, design and make
decisions, taking full advantage of
advances in computing and digital
communications. It frequently
provokes advances in informatics
and demands cultural changes. A
prevalent requirement for change
is to invest more effort in being
consistent. Far from inhibiting
innovation, consistency accelerates
research and innovation; it enables
mobility and collaboration, and
supports diversity.
The last editorial drew attention
to the importance of workflows as
an accurate and re-usable record
of research methods. Workflows
depend on services presenting their
operations in consistent ways, for
example as web services using
standards developed by W3C. But
these standards are not enough
- the semantic content of services
must be sufficiently consistent.
Multiple sources must use the
same terms when they mean
the same concept or value. It is
always helpful to encode those
terms consistently, though format
translation is usually less of a hurdle
than semantic mapping.
With such consistency it is much
easier to move the workflows,
extend their scope or transfer
them to a new application just by
changing a few parameters. Not
only do we need different services
to ‘speak the same language’, we
also need stability through time,
otherwise the methods cannot be
validated or re-used later. Progress
requires new versions, but these
would be introduced at suitable
intervals and old versions, explicitly
identified, would be supported for
substantial periods.
As an example, in the GEON
project (www.geongrid.org), the
semantic consistency for rock
description was a simple derivative
NeSC News
of the British Geological Survey’s
rock classification ontology (a set
of agreed terms with well defined
relationships) to denote the rock
types. But reaching agreement
isn’t always easy. The GEON team
needed to agree how to denote
time, from geological time to today’s
instrument records. They thought
that the definition from the SWEET
(sweet.jpl.nasa.gov) definitions, that
are a NASA led effort in defining
Earth Environment Terms, would
provide the answer. It took over
a year and much intellectual effort
to develop an agreed set of terms.
One of the major achievements
of the International Virtual
Observatory Alliance (www.ivoa.net)
is their agreement on interchange
representations. Jessie Kennedy in
the lecture closing the eSI theme
“Exploiting Diverse Sources of
Scientific Data” drew attention to
the requirements for consistency in
biodiversity research and illustrated
how difficult this is in an active
domain.
At the DIALOGUE workshop
in Vienna we recognised the
enormous challenge in keeping
pace with the growth in volumes
and diversity of data. We cannot
improve our ability to discover the
latent information in research data
without dramatic advances in data
access and integration methods.
Advances in consistency, in the
ways in which we describe and
catalogue data, define data in and
common transfer representations
would be a substantial step forward.
Perhaps other aspects of
consistency are easier? Languages
like Java have shown that
abstracting over the computational
environment and defining a simple
Application Programming Interface
(API) offers the advantages of code
portability. Once code runs in one
context it delivers exactly the same
computations in other contexts. This
provides significant economies:
code takes much less effort to port
to other systems, it can be mobile
and dynamically installed and
skills developed by developers are
reusable in new work contexts.
What is the equivalent for eScience? The developer of grid
applications and the deployers
of e-Infrastructure and services
could benefit from consistent
computational contexts. Jobs
could then be scheduled to any
available platform. At present
the applications usually require
substantial developer effort to port
them between platforms or between
different e-Infrastructures. A lack
of consistency that today has high
costs. There are hopeful signs. The
Simple API for Grid Applications
(SAGA) working group at OGF
(forge.gridforum.org/projects/sagarg) is actively developing a standard
for commonly required operations
in a variety of languages. It is good
to see that Shantenu Jha is about
to start a theme at eSI, “Distributed
programming abstractions”. We
hope that it will lead to significant
advances towards a consistent
programming context for e-Science.
For e-Science to develop a
systematic approach its methods
must be repeatable and reusable.
This depends on consistency. In
advancing fields it will never be
sensible to fix or make consistent
every aspect of the information and
computations. But we can certainly
do a great deal more than we do
today. Much more thought should
be devoted to this cause in the next
few years. Research leaders and
their funders must lead the drive for
consistent science.
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 48 March 2007
Reminder Call For Papers: AHM2007
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.
The aim of the meeting is to
provide a forum in which e-Science
projects from all disciplines can be
discussed, and where the results
from projects can be demonstrated.
The conference will therefore
feature presentations by groups
throughout the UK who are active
in e-Science projects, in addition
to poster sessions, mini-workshop
sessions, project demonstrations,
tutorials, and birds-of-a-feather
sessions. The schedule will also
include a number of invited Keynote
speakers involved in leading Grid
and e-Science activities.
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):
* 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.
* 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
the AHM website 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
NeSC News
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/
There will be proceedings for the
conference, which will be provided
in CD format with an ISBN number.
As in previous years we are aiming
to have the best papers published
in special issues of at least one
journal. This year the Programme
Committee will present a best
paper award, and that paper will
be presented in a plenary session.
There will also be a Best Student
Paper award, with 1st, 2nd and
3rd classifications. For a paper to
qualify, it must have a student as
the lead author, and the PC chair
must be informed by e-mail of this
once the paper has been submitted.
This 1st placed paper will also be
presented in a plenary session.
Programme Committee Chair,
Professor Jie Xu, University of
Leeds (jxu@comp.leeds.ac.uk).
JISC is the Premier Sponsor of the
AHM this year, The event is also
supported by the BCS.
If your organisation is interested in
becoming a sponsor of the AHM
event, details can be found online
at:
http://www.allhands.org.uk/about/
sponsorship_opportunities.cfm
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 48 March 2007
How can Science be improved
by e-Science?
As part of the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office’s efforts to
strengthen its work in building up
international links in science and
technology (partly as a tool for
policy making and diplomacy but
more importantly for the benefit
of the UK science community),
a seminar with the above title
was held in Stockholm on 14th
February 2007. The seminar was
a collaborative project between
the Science section at the British
Embassy, the Committee for
Research Infrastructures at the
Swedish Research Council and
relevant stakeholders in the UK.
Participants from the UK included
Malcolm Atkinson (eSI), Paul
Watson (NEReSC), Rob Procter
(NCeSS), David De Roure
(University of Southampton),
Steven Newhouse (OMII-UK), Anne
Trefethen (Oxford e-Research
Centre), Richard Sinnott (NeSC)
and Neil Geddes (CCLRC).
Other participants represented
institutions such as Computer
Sweden, Linköping University,
Vetenskapsjournalisterna, Uppsala
University, Göteborg University,
University College of Borås,
Stockholm University, Umeå
University, Global Biodiversity
Information Facility, Swedish
University of Agricultural Sciences,
Karolinska Institutet, Cloudberry
Communications, Royal Institute
of Technology, Center for Parallel
Computers, Database InfraStructure
Committee, CERN, Dansk Center
for Scientific Computing, Language
Council of Sweden and the Royal
Institute of Technology
The topics which were discussed
came under three main headings:
• The World Wide Grid – How can
e-science technologies improve and
support science and research?
• How can access and usability of
research data be improved by
e-science?
• Organisation of e-science
infrastructures – local, national,
European, global?
The meeting was very productive
and enjoyable. Many new links
were made between projects and it
is hoped that a party from Sweden
will be able to visit some of the UK’s
centres in the future.
http://www.vr.se/mainmenu/
pressandnews/newsarchive/news/
5.315d803911100fdce718000382.
html
For more information, please
contact Malcolm Atkinson (mpa@
nesc.ac.uk).
Anders Ynnerman
(Linköping University
left and Neil Geddes
(CCLRC) on the right.
NeSC & UCL launch
the E-Science
Network: (E-SciNet)
E-SciNet is an EPSRC-funded
network that seeks to embed
e-Science as a standard practice for
research advancement across Higher
Education Institutions (HEIs) and
across disciplines. The members
of the network include experienced
e-science leaders from HEI’s across
the UK.
The network will develop and share
best practice in encouraging takeup of e-Research methods and
technologies and in bridging the gap
between applications and
e-Infrastructure. A particular focus will
be on sharing strategy and experience
regarding outreach within HEIs and
the provision and exploitation of
‘Campus Grids’. The network will
also channel user requirements
back to e-Infrastructure providers so
that the provision and development
of e-Science services can be more
effective at meeting the real needs of
researchers and their applications.
The network will run meetings
on areas of interest, such as
campus grids, use of the NGS,
portal development, and e-science
education. Funded members can
claim 80% of their travel expenses
to attend these and other meetings
relevant to e-science. The network
will maintain on-line resources for
sharing best practice, including a
mailing list, a wiki and a web site.
All funded network members are
required to produce a credible ‘action
plan‘ for increasing takeup of
e-Science methods and technologies
within their institution or related
institutions. These action plans will be
used to evaluate the success of the
network.
The overarching aim is to seed the
resulting policies and practices so
widely that they will continue to
spread, locally and regionally, beyond
the duration of the network.
Photo: Copyright Annette
Andersson
NeSC News
Full information will shortly be
available at http://www.nesc.ac.uk/
escinet/.
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 48 March 2007
e-Science
Institute
Recent Events held at eSI
by Dr Iain Coleman, NeSC Science Writer
Public Lecture by
Jessie Kennedy:
Exploiting Diverse
Sources of
Scientific Data
Are we on the verge of a great
leap forward in scientific capability,
a metadata utopia? That is the
question raised by the eSI Theme
“Exploiting Diverse Sources of
Scientific Data” that Jessie Kennedy
has been running for the past year.
On 23rd January she gave a public
lecture at eSI on the outcomes of
the Theme.
The structure of science is complex
and messy. One discipline overlaps
with many other disciplines, and the
discipline boundaries themselves
are not well-defined: different
scientists will put them in different
places. The world of science is
continually changing. Conclusions
lead to new hypotheses, new
experiments invalidate old theories,
and established knowledge is
reinterpreted. There is a great
wealth and diversity of scientific
data out there: if scientists can get
hold of it, make new connections,
integrate disparate data sets and
perform new kinds of analyses, then
the potential for significant scientific
discovery is greatly enhanced. That
is the aim of this Theme.
The crucial part of making this work
is metadata: data that describes
data. If every scientist were to
annotate their data according to
some universally-agreed scheme,
then they could make it available to
the whole community and everyone
could easily use it in their own
research. But it is rarely so simple.
Often, there is more than one
way to describe something, and
reasonable people can disagree for
ever. Even if you could somehow
force scientists to use an approved
vocabulary, would the cost be
too high? In 1984, George Orwell
developed the simplified, universal
NeSC News
language of Newspeak to illustrate
how constraining our vocabulary
constrains the thoughts we are able
to think: would an imposed scientific
vocabulary result in a uniformity
of ideas that would limit creativity
and innovation? It may be better
to allow descriptive systems to
arise organically, and to gradually
become more formalised.
There are other, more practical
problems with metadata. Generating
it takes time and effort, and is an
essentially altruistic activity: will
scientists, under pressure to get
papers out, really prioritise the
creation of metadata just because it
may be of use at some unspecified
time to other, unspecified scientists?
There is also the danger that some
scientists may attempt to exploit
a metadata system in order to
improve the visibility and citation
rate of their own work. It seems the
incentives of scientific competition
work against the establishment of
an effective metadata system.
It is clear that, for any metadata
scheme to work, it needs to reach a
tipping point: it must be widespread
enough that it will provide the
large-scale benefits that convince
people of its usefulness. This is a
classic chicken and egg problem.
The answer may be to focus on
important, central resources that
are used by many different scientific
disciplines. Making any of this work
will take time and commitment,
and more research is needed. The
real test will be whether there is
a tangible benefit to the scientific
community. This Theme has
identified the major issues, and
taken some steps towards resolving
them, but it is clear that a good
deal more work is needed before
the vision of a meta-utopia can be
realised.
Slides and a recording of the lecture
can be downloaded from http://
www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/752/
SUPER Workshop
Opening a restaurant is a risky
business. Just ask Gordon Ramsay,
whose Glasgow restaurant closed
down after three years despite
winning a prestigious Michelin
star. The food can be sublime,
but without a critical mass of
regular customers to keep the
business afloat, and word-of-mouth
recommendations bringing in new
customers, the restaurant will fail.
The same is true of e-science. If
it is to have a long-term future, it
will have to provide a service that
satisfies enough regular users, and
that inspires them to recommend it
to their colleagues. But what do the
users want from e-science? That
was the question SUPER set out to
answer.
The Study of User’s Priorities for
e-infrastructure for Research
involved a small team visiting
around thirty research groups
across the UK, chosen to represent
a cross-section of the research
community. The discussions at
these meetings formed the basis for
a report that sets out the important
requirements that many research
groups have in common. The goal
was to produce a specific, focused
report that would influence the
future development of UK
e-Science. The workshop at eSI on
16th February was an opportunity
for members of the e-Science
community to comment on, revise
and extend the draft report.
The SUPER report sets out the
ambitious goal of improving
e-infrastructure for researchers
across all disciplines, such that
usage will increase by more than
a factor of ten by 2010. This orderof-magnitude increase can only
come about if use of e-infrastructure
expands beyond each community’s
early adopters, who enjoy tinkering
with new and uncertain tools,
and that means improving the
quality of experience for users.
The report sets out the problems
that e-Science users have said
are in need of serious action. It
consciously avoids considering the
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 48 March 2007
best technical solutions to these
problems: the aim is simply to set
out the issues clearly, so that others
can work on solving them.
As well as making the technology
more attractive to use, it is
also important to establish the
infrastructure for the long term,
so that researchers feel it is worth
investing time and effort in
e-research. At the moment, while
big science projects like telescopes
and particle accelerators can
guarantee availability of facilities for
10-20 years, the national
e-infrastructure is only funded for 2
years in a piecemeal fashion. This is
another reason why a critical mass
of users is essential: if the research
community buys in to
e-infrastructure, the research
councils will be more readily
convinced to make long-term
funding commitments.
The workshop concluded on a
positive note. There has been
definite progress over the past two
years. Access to computational
resources has improved greatly,
and the concerns are now about
how the infrastructure operates,
rather than whether it exists at all. A
sustained, long-term outreach effort
is needed if usage is to increase by
a factor of ten by 2010, and it must
include making the economic case
for more efficient computing as a
result of investment in
e-infrastructure.
The draft SUPER report can be
downloaded from http://www.nesc.
ac.uk/esi/events/743/
Agents and
Grids: Toward the
Intelligent Grid
This workshop, held at eSI on
19th-20th February, was about
bringing together two communities
that have been working at opposite
ends of the distributed computing
problem. The grid community has
laid down the infrastructure for
effective sharing of data, software
NeSC News
and resources, while the agents
community has developed decisionmaking software that can be
empowered to negotiate and build
up distributed computing systems
in an unpredictable environment.
Can agents operate on the grid to
handle the intricacies of complex
computing tasks across multiple
organisations behind the scenes,
without the need for users to get
their hands dirty?
It’s an attractive concept, but it has
its share of problems. One of these
is not readily solved by computer
scientists: in any negotiation
between business entities, lawyers
will demand that the end result is a
paper contract signed by a human
being. This isn’t bureaucracy for the
sake of it: without such a document
it’s very hard to make an agreement
stick in court. Such considerations
threaten to limit the use of agents
to very low-level agreements, but
in this case the profit motive may
come to the rescue. As Michael
Wilson of CCLRC pointed out,
many contracts in the computing
realm are already known to be
unenforceable, from shrinkwrap agreements on software to
sign-up pages for popular web
hosting services. The commercial
pressure on companies to
establish themselves quickly in the
marketplace gives them a strong
motivation to press ahead despite
the caution of corporate lawyers.
Even with the legal issues resolved,
or sidelined, there are still serious
technical challenges. If agents
are to form agreements about the
use of grid services, there must
be an established protocol for
them to use. Omer Rana (Cardiff)
strongly advocated the use of the
WS-Agreement formalism, on the
grounds that it makes pragmatic
sense to make an existing
mechanism work than to invent
a whole new one. Many people
in the agents community regard
WS-Agreement as too simplistic,
but there is a more fundamental
problem: there currently exists no
implementation of the full WSAgreement standard. Workshop
delegates agreed to collaborate on
developing a full implementation of
this standard.
e-Science
Institute
On top of that technical problem,
there is a lack of real-world
examples of what agents working
on the grid can do that cannot be
done by agents or grid technology
on their own. The workshop
identified this lack of real-world
scenarios as a major sticking point.
Rana proposed that a use case
document, comprising a wide range
of examples of the benefits of
bringing agents and grids together,
be presented at OGF 21 in October,
and a number of delegates agreed
to contribute.
The workshop ended with a
discussion led by Dave de Roure
(Southampton), which looked at
why agents were not adopted by
the grid community years ago, and
whether that is about to change.
Agents were originally presented
to grid people as yet another set
of standards: the grid community,
already quite busy enough with its
own standards, was understandably
unreceptive. However, it could be
that agents solve problems that
the grid community is just about to
encounter.
But do we need this kind of
technology at all? The discussion
ended by considering the evolution
of the web over the past few years.
The web succeeded because
it was simple: by contrast, grid
infrastructure is all about heavy
engineering. Both have defined
standards, but while web standards
are few in number, effective, and
defined by a small group of experts,
OGF has a “volunteer army”
creating more and more standards
for the grid. Does the latter
approach lead to overengineering
and overcomplication? The web
now plays host to mashups, people
hacking together APIs – Google
Maps, YouTube, Flickr and so on
– without the heavy engineering of
the grid. It’s quick, it’s simple, and
you don’t need a computer science
degree to do it. Has the future
of distributed computing already
arrived?
Slides from this workshop can be
downloaded from http://www.nesc.
ac.uk/esi/events/732/
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 48 March 2007
International
Summer
School on Grid
Computing
http://www.iceage-eu.org/
issgc07/
Registration will open soon
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/) (pictured far right),
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.
The School offers a rare
opportunity to hear about the
latest achievements from Europe,
North America and Asia, and
to experience a variety of Grid
systems and will include lectures
as well as practical exercises and
tutorials.
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
NeSC News
ISSGC06 - Ischia, Italy
ISSGC07 Venue- Sweden
Grid Computing Now! will run its next
Webinar, on Distributed Systems in
e-Health
2.30pm, 8 March 2007
Modern health care makes many
demands on IT, both in researching
new drugs and in clinical practice.
Data such as health records
and medical images need to be
transferred to and accessed from
specialist centres, while maintaining
strict standards of security and
confidentiality. This seminar will
describe two systems that apply
modern IT infrastructure to everyday
problems in healthcare.
Derek Hill, CEO of Ixico will
talk about his medical imaging
company, and how distributed data,
computing, and scientists come
together to answer new questions.
One of the emerging application
areas of this research is the use
of imaging “biomarkers” to assess
efficacy of new drugs.
Hill will be followed by Michael
Rigby, Professor of Health
Information Strategy at University
of Keele, who will talk about
a prototype record broker in
healthcare. The Integration Broker
for Heterogeneous Information
Sources (IBHIS) was a project
undertaken collaboratively by
Keele, Durham, and Manchester
Universities, funded by the EPSRC.
It took the health domain as its
research laboratory, seeking to
tackle the challenges of accessing
disparate health and social care
records within the rule base of those
settings.
Further information and
registration are available at: http://
mediazone.brighttalk.com/comm/
gridcomputingnow/9ecf21a10d2976-335-2773
SURVEY: Is software licensing causing
you trouble?
Grid Computing Now! is increasingly aware that software licensing is a
serious issue for grid users, and is keen to hear from you. Our survey will
only take you a few minutes to complete and will help us to help you. With
the right backing from users, we can talk to suppliers and begin to create
new licensing models that will work for everyone.
Take part in this vital survey at: http://grid.globalwatchonline.com/
epicentric_portal/site/GRID/menuitem.68e167188e4b1080dd0b2f10eb3e8
a0c/
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 48 March 2007
Call for Topics
for the e-Science
Institute Thematic
Programme to be
run in 2008
The e-Science Institute
invites proposals for new
themes run in 2008
The e-Science Institute (eSI),
hosted by the University of
Edinburgh, is the UK’s Centre for
e-Science meetings. Funded by
the e-Science Core Programme, it
has been operating since August
2001, during which time it has run
406 meetings attended by some
12,844 delegates and hosted 50
visitors who have stayed for varying
periods from one day to a year.
As well as hosting meetings,
summer schools and the visitors’
programme, the Institute runs
a thematic programme, which
concentrates on in-depth and
sustained investigation of a topic
by a series of linked talks, visitors,
workshops and conferences over
a period of six months to a year.
Such themes are led by a theme
leader who is a long-term funded
visitor to the Institute.
Our thematic programme is
proving popular and we have just
announced the three successful
proposals that will run in 2007. To
continue our rolling programme we
are now calling for submissions for
topics for themes to start January
2008 or late 2007. These will
be reviewed by the eSI Science
Advisory Board which will meet
in late May 2007, and should be
submitted no later than 9 March
2007 for initial consideration by the
Programme Committee.
Further information on eSI themes
is available at: http://www.nesc.
ac.uk/esi/themes/index.htm
EPSRC
EGEE gets
e-Science
Grid – wise
GridwiseTech, the independent
Projects All
Grid experts, recently joined the
Grid for E-sciencE (EGEE)
Hands Meeting Enabling
Business Associate programme,
28 March, 2007
e-Science Institute, 15 South
College Street, Edinburgh
This meeting has been arranged to
bring together as many as possible
of those leading and working
on EPSRC e-Science grants.
This should include all currently
active grants, and any that have
finished recently which have useful
experience to pass on or plans to
resume by some means.
The primary purpose of the meeting
is to stimulate the communication of
ideas between EPSRC projects. It is
also intended as an opportunity for
effective communication between
the EPSRC & JISC core programme
(NGS, OMII-UK, DCC, etc) and
the research community. Therefore
anyone wishing to interact with the
EPSRC research community is
welcome.
There will be an opportunity to
set up and test demos during the
afternoon of the 27th.
This meeting is intended for those
leading and working on EPSRC
e-Science research projects and
those who wish to work with the
researchers.
Important Dates
20 Feb - Registration Opens
20 Mar - Registration Deadline
20 Mar - Date we will respond to
your application
http://www.esi.ac.uk
To propose a theme or if you have
any questions, please contact Anna
Kenway by email anna@nesc.ac.uk
or  +44 (0)131 650 9818
NeSC News
building on the longstanding
relationship between GridwiseTech
and EGEE.
Together, GridwiseTech and EGEE
will work on joint promotion to the
business community to highlight the
potential of Grid technology as a
solution for today’s IT problems.
Through the Business Associate
Programme, EGEE will benefit
from GridwiseTech’s advice on
engagement of the business
community and will benefit from
GridwiseTech’s experience in
integrating the proprietary systems
of its customers with EGEE’s Grid.
In return, GridwiseTech will gain
valuable access to the rapidly
growing research community
using Grids, as well as the unique
knowledge base built up by EGEE
in the construction of its large-scale
infrastructure.
The EGEE Business Associate
(EBA) programme is one of the
EGEE platforms designed to
increase industrial involvement in
EGEE and provides opportunities
for companies to engage in
technical work in collaboration
with EGEE, such as coordinated
technical developments, market
surveys, exploitation strategies or
more general transfer of know-how
and services to industry. To date the
programme includes GridwiseTech,
NICE, Platform Computing and
PricewaterhouseCoopers.
For more information or if you are
interested in joining the programme,
please visit http://www.eu-egee.
org/egee-business-associates
http://www.gridwisetech.com
http://www.eu-egee.org/
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 48 March 2007
Events
The 20th Open
Grid Forum
(OGF20)
7 - 11 May 2007, Manchester
International Convention Centre,
Manchester, UK
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. The event also
features a two day enterprise
programme, led by the Grid
Computing Now! KTN, that will
focus on real world case studies
and practical grid solutions.
OGF Student
Scholarships
OGF is offering a limited number
of student scholarships for its
upcoming OGF20 event.
This scholarship is supported by the
European Network of Excellence
CoreGRID and the UK eScience
programme.
Scholarships include the following:
- Travel, hotel (five nights), and food
expenses
- Registration for the event.
You must apply for the OGF20
Student Travel Scholarship by
March 15, 2007
Selected scholars will be notified of
their acceptance on or before March
31, 2007.
For more information go to:http://
www.ogf.org/OGF20/events_
student_ogf20.php
http://www.ogf.org/
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.
For additional questions concerning
the registration and submission
procedure please contact:
grid2007@easychair.org
9-11 May 2007
http://www.eu-egee.org/uf2
NeSC News
Austin, Texas
September 19-21
Electronic submission is required.
The site for submissions is http://
www.easychair.org/Grid2007/
EGEE User
Forum
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.
The 8th IEEE
International
Conference on Grid
Computing
(Grid 2007)
1st Biomed Grid
School
14 – 19th May 2007 in Varenna,
Italy (near Milan).
Bioinfogrid, EMBRACE, EBI and
ICEAGE are involved in organising
this School.
http://www.bioinfogrid.eu/course/
biomedgrid2007
10
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.
Proceedings: All papers selected for
this conference are peer-reviewed
and will be published as a separate
proceedings. After the event, the
papers will also be published in
the IEEE Xplore and the CS digital
library.
For author instructions see http://
www.computer.org/cspress/instruct.
htm
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 48 March 2007
Events
CALL FOR
PAPERS
CoreGRID
Symposium
http://europar2007.irisa.fr/
CoreGRID-symposium.php
August 27th and 28th 2007
IRISA, Rennes, France
In conjunction with Euro-Par 2007
The CoreGRID Symposium aims
at being the premiere European
event on Grid Computing for
the dissemination of the results
from European and member
states initiatives as well as other
international projects in Grid
research and technologies. It is
organized jointly with the Euro-Par
2007 conference. The CoreGRID
Symposium will focus on all aspects
of Grid computing including service
infrastructures and as such will
bring together participants from
Research and Industry.
Realising and
Coordinating
e-Research
Endeavours
Workshop
The next Workshop which will be
held in association with the eSI
Thematic Programme: Adoption
of e-Research Technologies is
organised by Alexander Voss on
the 14 March -16 March 2007 at
the e-Science Institute, 15 South
College Street, Edinburgh. The
workshop will be part of an effort
to compile a report on strategies
and guidelines for realising eResearch infrastructures.
Please go to the bookings page
to apply to attend this meeting.
The registration deadline is the
7th of March 2007. Enquiries
should be made directly to our
Conference Administrator
http://www.esi.ac.uk
HPCS 2007
REGISTRATION IS
OPEN
http://www.westgrid.ca/
hpcs2007
May 13 - 16, 2007
University of Saskatchewan
Saskatoon, SK
Canada
HPCS (High Performance
Computing Symposium) is a
multidisciplinary
conference the focuses on new and
existing scientific and technical work
involving High Performance
Computing (HPC).
This conference draws national
and international HPC experts and
researchers
renowned in the sciences,
engineering, mathematics and
applied human sciences.
REGISTER TODAY:
http://www.westgrid.ca/hpcs2007
Early Bird Prices are in effect until
March 31.
http://europar2007.irisa.fr/
submission.php
---------------------This conference is co-hosted by
C3.ca, OSCAR, WestGrid and the
University of Saskatchewan.
Sponsors include HP, IBM, Sun
Microsystems, CANARIE, inSORS,
Allinea Software, Intel and SGI.
Important Dates
Contribution submission: extended
deadline: March 16th
Contribution acceptance: April 20,
2007
Future Grid for Financial
Services
Canary Wharf, London, 24th & 25th April, 2007
This years most advanced Grid and HPC computing conference, led
by the industries most successful financial institutions and grid experts.
You’ve got your grids in place?...now this is your chance to find out how to
push them to the next level of CPU and operational capability and match
your increasing global business demands.
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
For more information about this conference or to register go to
www.iqpc.com/uk/FutureGridFS/ediary
NeSC News
11
www.nesc.ac.uk
Issue 48 March 2007
Events
Forthcoming Events Timetable
March
7-9
European GeoInformatics Workshop e-Science Institute
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/712/
14-16
Realising and Coordinating
e-Research Endeavours
e-Science Institute
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/745/
index.cfm
20
New Kinds of Social Data: from
blogs to administrative data
e-Science Institute
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/699/
26-28
Lighting the Blue Touchpaper for UK
e-Science - Closing Conference of
ESLEA Project
The George Hotel,
19-21 George
Street, Edinburgh
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/748/
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
April
May
7 - 11
The 20th Open Grid Forum - OGF20 Manchester
and EGEE User Forum
International
Convention Centre,
Manchester, UK
http://www.ogf.org/gf/session_
request/commreq.php?event_id=7.
10-12
Distributed Programming
Abstractions, Models and
Infrastructure
e-Science Institute
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/esi.html
28-29
Semantic Integration Workshop
e-Science Instiute
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/756/
UK e-Science All Hands Meeting
East Midlands
Conference Centre,
Nottingham
http://www.eu-egee.org/uf2
September
10 - 13
http://www.allhands.org.uk/
Research Systems Consultant & Trainer
Joining the National e-Science Centre you will deploy and support research computing middleware and portal
systems to support world wide training and education. In addition you will provide consultancy to the NeSC Training,
Outreach and Education team who provide facilities to researchers across Europe. Depending on experience you
may also be involved in developing and presenting training materials.
You will have experience of solving problems arising during the deployment of advanced computing systems. Good
communication skills and the ability to learn new technologies quickly are important. A good degree in a science,
engineering or computing discipline is required.
Fixed Term: To 30th April 2008.
Salary Scale: £26,666 - £31,840
Deadline for Job Applications: 09-Mar-2007
Vacancy Reference: 3007018
For further details and on-line application please click on the link to the University of Edinburgh jobs website:
http://www.jobs.ed.ac.uk/vacancies/index.cfm?fuseaction=vacancies.furtherdetails&vacancy_ref=3007018
If you would like to hold an e-Science event at the
e-Science Institute, please contact:
Conference Administrator, National e-Science Centre, 15
South College Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AA
Tel: 0131 650 9833 / Fax: 0131 650 9819 / Email:
events@nesc.ac.uk
NeSC News
The NeSC Newsletter produced by:
Alison McCall and Jennifer Hurst, email alison@nesc.ac.uk,
Telephone 0131 651 4783
The deadline for the April Newsletter is: 23 March 2007
12
www.nesc.ac.uk