129,444 research outputs found
Computers: Equipment and Services
published or submitted for publicatio
Cold Storage Data Archives: More Than Just a Bunch of Tapes
The abundance of available sensor and derived data from large scientific
experiments, such as earth observation programs, radio astronomy sky surveys,
and high-energy physics already exceeds the storage hardware globally
fabricated per year. To that end, cold storage data archives are the---often
overlooked---spearheads of modern big data analytics in scientific,
data-intensive application domains. While high-performance data analytics has
received much attention from the research community, the growing number of
problems in designing and deploying cold storage archives has only received
very little attention.
In this paper, we take the first step towards bridging this gap in knowledge
by presenting an analysis of four real-world cold storage archives from three
different application domains. In doing so, we highlight (i) workload
characteristics that differentiate these archives from traditional,
performance-sensitive data analytics, (ii) design trade-offs involved in
building cold storage systems for these archives, and (iii) deployment
trade-offs with respect to migration to the public cloud. Based on our
analysis, we discuss several other important research challenges that need to
be addressed by the data management community
Development of low cost ablative nozzles for solid propellant rocket motors, volume 1 Final report
Evaluating low cost ablative materials for use in large solid propellant rocket motor
An examination of automatic video retrieval technology on access to the contents of an historical video archive
Purpose ā This paper aims to provide an initial understanding of the constraints that historical video collections pose to video retrieval technology and the potential that online access offers to both archive and users.
Design/methodology/approach ā A small and unique collection of videos on customs and folklore was used as a case study. Multiple methods were employed to investigate the effectiveness of technology and the modality of user access. Automatic keyframe extraction was tested on the visual content while the audio stream was used for automatic classification of speech and music clips. The user access (search vs browse) was assessed in a controlled user evaluation. A focus group and a survey provided insight on the actual use of the analogue archive. The results of these multiple studies were then compared and integrated (triangulation).
Findings ā The amateur material challenged automatic techniques for video and audio indexing, thus suggesting that the technology must be tested against the material before deciding on a digitisation strategy. Two user interaction modalities, browsing vs searching, were tested in a user evaluation. Results show users preferred searching, but browsing becomes essential when the search engine fails in matching query and indexed words. Browsing was also valued for serendipitous discovery; however the organisation of the archive was judged cryptic and therefore of limited use. This indicates that the categorisation of an online archive should be thought of in terms of users who might not understand the current classification. The focus group and the survey showed clearly the advantage of online access even when the quality of the video surrogate is poor. The evidence gathered suggests that the creation of a digital version of a video archive requires a rethinking of the collection in terms of the new medium: a new archive should be specially designed to exploit the potential that the digital medium offers. Similarly, users' needs have to be considered before designing the digital library interface, as needs are likely to be different from those imagined.
Originality/value ā This paper is the first attempt to understand the advantages offered and limitations held by video retrieval technology for small video archives like those often found in special collections
The Semantic Web MIDI Tape: An Interface for Interlinking MIDI and Context Metadata
The Linked Data paradigm has been used to publish a large number of musical datasets and ontologies on the Semantic Web, such as MusicBrainz, AcousticBrainz, and the Music Ontology. Recently, the MIDI Linked Data Cloud has been added to these datasets, representing more than 300,000 pieces in MIDI format as Linked Data, opening up the possibility for linking fine-grained symbolic music representations to existing music metadata databases. Despite the dataset making MIDI resources available in Web data standard formats such as RDF and SPARQL, the important issue of finding meaningful links between these MIDI resources and relevant contextual metadata in other datasets remains. A fundamental barrier for the provision and generation of such links is the difficulty that users have at adding new MIDI performance data and metadata to the platform. In this paper, we propose the Semantic Web MIDI Tape, a set of tools and associated interface for interacting with the MIDI Linked Data Cloud by enabling users to record, enrich, and retrieve MIDI performance data and related metadata in native Web data standards. The goal of such interactions is to find meaningful links between published MIDI resources and their relevant contextual metadata. We evaluate the Semantic Web MIDI Tape in various use cases involving user-contributed content, MIDI similarity querying, and entity recognition methods, and discuss their potential for finding links between MIDI resources and metadata
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