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