NEWSLETTER
Issue 23, September 2004
Back issues available on website:
www.nesc.ac.uk
Report: All Hands Meeting 2004
The meeting provided an excellent overview of the various UK e-Science
projects, their capabilities and future research directions. Its relaxed atmosphere
led to various interesting and productive discussions in the exhibition area as
well as the surrounding corridors. The western theme evening was a great
success; many people dressed up in their chosen Western outfits.
Susan Andrews’ work, supporting the AHM organisation and web site, was very
much appreciated; explicit thanks were given by the overall chair, Ron Perrott,
and from Tony Hey.
NeSC coverage of the meeting, as well as the proceedings of the meeting, can
be found at the following web sites:
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/events/ahm2004/
http://www.allhands.org.uk/
Forthcoming Events
September 2004
Thu 16 Sep - Sat 18 Sep
HPC Europa Annual Meeting
Thu 23 Sep - Fri 24 Sep
e-Olympics event
Tue 28 Sep
Visit from Jim Wallace, Deputy First
Minister of Scotland
October 2004
Wed 6 Oct
SWITCH study visit
Mon 11 Oct
NeSC Review
Mon 11 Oct - Fri 15 Oct
Condor week
Mon 25 Oct - Wed 27 Oct
Autumn ILDG Middleware Meeting
Thu 28 Oct - Fri 29 Oct
European Network Policy Group
Meeting
November 2004
Wed 24 Nov - Thu 25 Nov
BBSRC Bioinformatics and e-Science
SBRN funding to aids
fight against disease
The Scottish Bioinformatics Research
Network (SBRN), a consortium of
Scottish universities and research
institutes, has been awarded £2.4
million to help tackle the problems
of human and agricultural disease.
Modern biological research generates
large amounts of data. This data
needs to be analysed to enable
treatments for common diseases, such
as diabetes and cancer as well as crop
and animal diseases, to be developed.
Bioinformatics brings together skills
in computing, mathematics, statistics
and biology to allow this analysis to
happen. SBRN will act as a hub,
combining bioinformatics groups at
Scotland’s universities and research
institutes, to advance the development
of bioinformatics research and the
biological research that it supports.
Jim Wallace, Deputy First Minister and
Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong
Learning concluded: “This is an exciting
project in which we are investing a
significant amount of money. This
work could have far-reaching benefits
for human health and agriculture in the
years ahead. By working together, I
am sure that Scotland’s universities
and research institutes can lead the
world in this field.”
For further information, please contact
Paul Geoghan, Chief Press Officer,
NeSC will be closed for the university Scottish Executive Enterprise and
holiday on Monday 20th September; Lifelong Learning Department on 0131
244 5222, or email:
more information is available at:
paul.geoghan@scotland.gsi.gov.uk
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/events
Tony Hey with Sarah Pearce of GridPP, winner
of the All Hands Meeting 2004 Gold Prize for
Best Website. Photo: NeSC
Staff News
There are many changes this month
as NeSC bids farewell to John Murison
from the Training Team after all his
hard work, BRIDGES researcher
Magnus Ferrier and finance assistant
Jennifer Chan who have both been
with us since 2003. The Edikt project
loses software developer Aileen
Campbell, who has been part of the
team for two years. All will be missed,
and we wish them the best of luck in
the future. The NeSC team would also
like to welcome Laurette Young to the
NeSC admin team as the e-Science
Institute receptionist.
Finally, congratulations are due to Dr.
Anna Kenway for her well-deserved
promotion. More information on eScience vacancies across the UK at:
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/career
Glasgow Access Grid
If you would like to book time on the
AG, please contact Susan Andrews on
0141 330 8648
andrewsm@dcs.gla.ac.uk
NeSC Contact Details
If you would like to hold an e-Science
event at the e-Science Institute, please
contact the Conference Manager at:
National e-Science Centre,
15 South College Street, Edinburgh,
EH8 9AA United Kingdom
Tel: 0131 650 9833
Fax: 0131 650 9819
Email:events@nesc.ac.uk
NEWS EXTRA
Issue 23, September 2004
Condor Week
Following on from the success of the
2003 Condor User and Administrator
Tutorials, we are pleased to announce
the inaugural UK Condor Week, to
be held at NeSC on the 11th to 15th
October 2004, supported by Professor
Miron Livny and the Condor Team from
the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
This event is jointly sponsored by the
National Institute for Environmental
e-Science (NIEeS) and the National
e-Science Centre (NeSC).
Back issues available on website:
OGSA-DAI Users’
Meeting
The Second OGSA-DAI Users’ Group
Meeting will take place on the 20th of
September in Brussels, Belgium to
coincide with GGF12. The purpose
of this meeting will be to inform the
community about planned changes
to OGSA-DAI, to solicit requirements
from the community and obtain
feedback from OGSA-DAI users.
If you think that you would like to
attend then please send an email to:
info@ogsadai.org.uk
Condor is a job submission system
that will help you get lots of computing
jobs run and that will make good use More information can be found at:
http://www.ogsadai.org.uk/
of spare compute cycles. One or more
news/ug2.php
machines can be grouped together in
a Condor pool. You can form a pool
from your group’s machines, from
OGSA Data Design
your department’s training laboratory
workstations or across your whole
Team at GGF12
university.
The goal of the Condor Project is
to develop, implement, deploy, and
evaluate mechanisms and policies
that
support
High
Throughput
Computing (HTC) on large collections
of distributively owned computing
resources.
Please note that you must apply to
attend this workshop. More information
can be found at:
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/
438/index.cfm
Further details of the Condor project
can be found at:
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/condor/
Dave Berry, Research Manager of
NeSC, is convenor of the OGSA
working group’s Data Design Team.
This team is designing the aspects of
the Open Grid Services Architecture
that handle data.
They consider
issues of data access, data movement,
caching and replication, federation and
similar activities. The team will have
their second face-to-face meeting at
GGF12 and will be meeting with other
working groups involved in the data
area. For more information about the
Data Design Team, please see:
http://www.ogsadai.org.uk/
For more information about GGF12,
please see:
http://www.ggf.org/default.htm
www.nesc.ac.uk
NeSC Services
Jobs
Our jobs page shows e-Science
vacancies across the UK. To add
a position to this page, please mail
Susan Andrews:
andrewsm@dcs.gla.ac.uk
Technical Report series
The UK e-Science Technical Report
series is available for publishing
reports from any UK source. We
organise the review of candidate
reports, and welcome offers of reports
and of help with reviewing.
e-Science Projects
NeSCForge
NeSCForge is a SourceForgelike facility for supporting project
development.
Projects Database
The
Projects
database
stores
information about e-Science projects.
Please help us keep this up to date by
sending additions and corrections
to Susan Andrews.
eSI Visitor Programme
eSI runs a programme for visiting researchers. Their visit must be based at
eSI, but we encourage visitors to help organise workshops and to visit other
e-Science Centres. Please talk to our Research Manager Dave Berry, or the
Director Malcolm Atkinson if you would like to suggest potential visitors. You
can also email visitors@nesc.ac.uk with any suggestions.
Further Information
For more information about any NeSC services, please check the NeSC web
site, or send an e–mail to: adminteam@nesc.ac.uk