In this issue:
There is still time to register for eResearch Australasia 2010: 21st Century Research – Where Computing Meets Data. The conference will be held 8-12 November at RACV Royal Pines on Queensland’s Gold Coast. In addition to the General eResearch Track, the conference has two specialised tracks this year: Computation & Visualisation; and Data. See the website for the rich program of featured speakers, presentations, workshops, BoFs, posters, meetings, and networking events planned for the week.
This year also introduces SIN Sessions: Spontaneous In situ Networking. These are open, informal networking sessions on a particular topic during the lunch breaks. You can organise a SIN session or a closed meeting by contacting Jackie Lack at ConferenceIT on +61 7 3878 2974 or by emailing eresearch2010@eresearch.edu.au. They can also be arranged while you are at the conference through the registration desk. Room availability is limited.
We hope you’ll be able to join us at the conference.
http://www.eresearch.edu.au
Patricia McMillan
Program Director, eResearch Australasia 2010
The National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources (NeCTAR) project has been established to develop national eResearch collaboration infrastructure. A NeCTAR Consultation Paper was released on 8 October to seek sector input to the shape of the Final Project Plan and to elicit views on the implementation of the project components that have been identified.
Written responses to the paper are being called for by Friday 5 November. To download a copy of the paper, please visit www.nectar.org.au.
A vacancy also currently exists for a NeCTAR Business Manager. To view the position description, please visit http://jobs.unimelb.edu.au/ and search for ‘NeCTAR’. Applications close 14 November.
Dr Karah Hogarth
Interim Business Manager, NeCTAR
CloudStor, AARNet’s large file transfer platform, has been federated with the Australian Access Federation. This means that CloudStor can now make use of your home institute’s native login systems. You or your colleagues no longer need to apply for a beta account.
The federated version of CloudStor lives at a new address: https://cloudstor.aarnet.edu.au/
Click the login button, find your institute in the drop-down list, and away you go.
It may be that your institute isn’t a participant in the AAF yet. You can check for yourself here: http://www.aaf.edu.au/index.php/join/member-institutes/
If you hold a CloudStor beta account, but your institute isn’t an AAF participant (yet), take heart: the FEIDE OpenID login method will be retained for a six month grace period. Please use that time wisely: convince your institute to join the AAF scheme.
For more information: http://www.aarnet.edu.au/Projects/2010/09/22/AARNet-Cloudstor.aspx
Guido Aben
Director eResearch, AARNet
The “AARNet Mirror” (http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/) is probably familiar to most people for being the domestic high-speed repository of valuable overseas software distributions.
We’ve taken it a step further – as of a week ago, we have begun the mirroring (which includes keeping-up-to-date) of large datasets deemed of high collective value by their respective scientific communities.
Greatly assisted though scientific expertise delivered by ARCS, we are now mirroring two large data sets of value to the biomedical research community. Both NCBI’s “non-redundant protein sequence” and “nucleotide sequence” databases are replicated. We are also providing compute cycles close to the Mirror, in order to reprocess the data to suit the formats used by the Australian biomedical research community.
The resulting data collections are made available as an AARNet on-net resource, at 10Gbps line speed.
We encourage others to work with us to identify other datasets worthy of mirroring; if you are interested, please get in touch with us at eresearch@aarnet.edu.au
David Jericho
Lead systems administrator, AARNet
ARCS been working on several exciting new initiatives as part of our overall strategy to enhance and harden our services.
We’re delighted to announce that we’ve launched “Live Help” for EVO customer service. Anyone having difficulty using EVO during a meeting can contact one of our EVO experts on the spot to receive instant assistance by simply inviting them to join their EVO meeting.
Sharing data also just became a lot easier! ARCS has released QuickShare, a sensational new feature on our Data Fabric national file storage system. Clicking on the QuickShare button allows Data Fabric users to easily share a file with anyone – even if the recipient hasn’t registered for the Data Fabric.
For each shared file, QuickShare generates a unique URL. Anyone receiving this URL can directly download the file. You can share the URL with as many or as few people as you wish. When you’re done sharing, simply terminate the link by clicking the “Unshare” button in the Data Fabric and the unique URL ceases to work.
Susan Roth
Marketing and Outreach Manager
Australian Research Collaboration Service (ARCS)
Information sharing networks are increasingly being funded as part of either specific government initiatives (e.g. Improving Water Information Program, National Plan for Environment Information, Australian Oceans Data Network) or the broader National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (e.g. TERN Eco-informatics, Atlas of Living Australia, AuScope Grid, e-Marine Information Infrastructure). These networks reflect a growing trend towards using Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 technologies to enable sharing of information and services from nationally if not globally distributed resources. Most of these networks are now progressing beyond the initial set up phase and are starting to show tremendous progress.
This workshop will be a heads up on the current status of major information sharing networks in Australia. The keynote paper will be presented by Dr Bryan Lawrence on the European experience in building information networks for climate and environmental research. Workshop details and program are on http://www.osdm.gov.au/Events/271.aspx
Lesley Wyborn
Geoscience Australia
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and International Organization for Standardization Technical Committee on Geographic information/Geomatics (ISO/TC211) will meet in Sydney and Canberra respectively, 29 November – 3 December and 6 – 10 December 2010. http://www.osdm.gov.au/News/263.aspx
Lesley Wyborn
Geoscience Australia
Join us at the AAF booth at the eResearch Australasia 2010 Conference to be held on the Gold Coast from 8 November. AAF staff will be there Monday to Thursday and are available to answer your questions and show you some examples of services accessed via the AAF that are available to researchers in Australia. We look forward to seeing many of you there.
Glenys Kranz
AAF Change and Communication Manager
Organisers: Dr Joseph Young, Queensland University of Technology
Prof. Bernard Pailthorpe, University of Queensland
Scalable high-resolution tiled display walls are becoming increasingly important to decision makers and researchers because high pixel counts in combination with large screen areas facilitate content rich, simultaneous display of computer-generated visualization information and high-definition video data from multiple sources. This tutorial is designed to cater for new users as well as researchers who are currently operating tiled display walls or ‘OptiPortals’. We will discuss the current and future applications of display wall technology and explore opportunities for participants to collaborate and contribute in a growing community. Multiple tutorial streams will cover both hands-on practical development, as well as policy and method design for embedding these technologies into the research process. A feature presentation for this tutorial will be given by Jurgen Schulze from Calit2 at the University of California, San Diego. Jurgen is an expert in scientific visualization in virtual environments, human-computer interaction, real-time volume rendering, and graphics algorithms on programmable graphics hardware.
Bernard Pailthorpe
bap@uq.edu.au
David Warne,
david.warne@qut.edu.au
The inaugural NZ eResearch Symposium was held on 26 & 27 October at the University of Auckland, with planning underway for next year’s event. Keynotes included Dr. Nicole Cloonan on the future of genomics in human health, Prof. Bill Michener on the US DataONE programme supporting all Environmental Sciences data, Dr. Andrew Treloar on the past, present, and future of Research Data, and a fascinating look at the impact science could have if eResearch were able to connect New Zealand’s researchers into A City of Four Million People, from Dr. Shaun Hendy.
Recordings of keynote and plenary sessions will be placed online in the next week, at http://www.eresearch.org.nz/.
Nick Jones
Director, BeSTGRID
Co-Director, Centre for eResearch
The University of Auckland
An electronic version (pdf) of the latest issue of Share: the newsletter of the Australian National Data Service is now available from the ANDS website at: http://ands.org.au/newsletters/index.html
Issue 06 includes:
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Rosemary Vo
Project Officer
Australian National Data Service (ANDS)
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