Security oriented e-infrastructures supporting neurological research and clinical trials

The neurological and wider clinical domains stand to gain greatly from the vision of the grid in providing seamless yet secure access to distributed, heterogeneous computational resources and data sets. Whilst a wealth of clinical data exists within local, regional and national healthcare boundaries, access to and usage of these data sets demands that fine grained security is supported and subsequently enforced. This paper explores the security challenges of the e-health domain, focusing in particular on authorization. The context of these explorations is the MRC funded VOTES (Virtual Organisations for Trials and Epidemiological Studies) and the JISC funded GLASS (Glasgow early adoption of Shibboleth project) which are developing Grid infrastructures for clinical trials with case studies in the brain trauma domain

An Efficient Transport Protocol for delivery of Multimedia An Efficient Transport Protocol for delivery of Multimedia Content in Wireless Grids

A grid computing system is designed for solving complicated scientific and commercial problems effectively,whereas mobile computing is a traditional distributed system having computing capability with mobility and adopting wireless communications. Media and Entertainment fields can take advantage from both paradigms by applying its usage in gaming applications and multimedia data management. Multimedia data has to be stored and retrieved in an efficient and effective manner to put it in use. In this paper, we proposed an application layer protocol for delivery of multimedia data in wireless girds i.e. multimedia grid protocol (MMGP). To make streaming efficient a new video compression algorithm called dWave is designed and embedded in the proposed protocol. This protocol will provide faster, reliable access and render an imperceptible QoS in delivering multimedia in wireless grid environment and tackles the challenging issues such as i) intermittent connectivity, ii) device heterogeneity, iii) weak security and iv) device mobility.Comment: 20 pages, 15 figures, Peer Reviewed Journa

1st INCF Workshop on Sustainability of Neuroscience Databases

The goal of the workshop was to discuss issues related to the sustainability of neuroscience databases, identify problems and propose solutions, and formulate recommendations to the INCF. The report summarizes the discussions of invited participants from the neuroinformatics community as well as from other disciplines where sustainability issues have already been approached. The recommendations for the INCF involve rating, ranking, and supporting database sustainability

AstroGrid-D: Grid Technology for Astronomical Science

We present status and results of AstroGrid-D, a joint effort of astrophysicists and computer scientists to employ grid technology for scientific applications. AstroGrid-D provides access to a network of distributed machines with a set of commands as well as software interfaces. It allows simple use of computer and storage facilities and to schedule or monitor compute tasks and data management. It is based on the Globus Toolkit middleware (GT4). Chapter 1 describes the context which led to the demand for advanced software solutions in Astrophysics, and we state the goals of the project. We then present characteristic astrophysical applications that have been implemented on AstroGrid-D in chapter 2. We describe simulations of different complexity, compute-intensive calculations running on multiple sites, and advanced applications for specific scientific purposes, such as a connection to robotic telescopes. We can show from these examples how grid execution improves e.g. the scientific workflow. Chapter 3 explains the software tools and services that we adapted or newly developed. Section 3.1 is focused on the administrative aspects of the infrastructure, to manage users and monitor activity. Section 3.2 characterises the central components of our architecture: The AstroGrid-D information service to collect and store metadata, a file management system, the data management system, and a job manager for automatic submission of compute tasks. We summarise the successfully established infrastructure in chapter 4, concluding with our future plans to establish AstroGrid-D as a platform of modern e-Astronomy.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures Subjects: data analysis, image processing, robotic telescopes, simulations, grid. Accepted for publication in New Astronom

From access and integration to mining of secure genomic data sets across the grid

The UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) funded BRIDGES project (Biomedical Research Informatics Delivered by Grid Enabled Services) has developed a Grid infrastructure to support cardiovascular research. This includes the provision of a compute Grid and a data Grid infrastructure with security at its heart. In this paper we focus on the BRIDGES data Grid. A primary aim of the BRIDGES data Grid is to help control the complexity in access to and integration of a myriad of genomic data sets through simple Grid based tools. We outline these tools, how they are delivered to the end user scientists. We also describe how these tools are to be extended in the BBSRC funded Grid Enabled Microarray Expression Profile Search (GEMEPS) to support a richer vocabulary of search capabilities to support mining of microarray data sets. As with BRIDGES, fine grain Grid security underpins GEMEPS