2,463 research outputs found
An Innovative Workspace for The Cherenkov Telescope Array
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is an initiative to build the next
generation, ground-based gamma-ray observatories. We present a prototype
workspace developed at INAF that aims at providing innovative solutions for the
CTA community. The workspace leverages open source technologies providing web
access to a set of tools widely used by the CTA community. Two different user
interaction models, connected to an authentication and authorization
infrastructure, have been implemented in this workspace. The first one is a
workflow management system accessed via a science gateway (based on the Liferay
platform) and the second one is an interactive virtual desktop environment. The
integrated workflow system allows to run applications used in astronomy and
physics researches into distributed computing infrastructures (ranging from
clusters to grids and clouds). The interactive desktop environment allows to
use many software packages without any installation on local desktops
exploiting their native graphical user interfaces. The science gateway and the
interactive desktop environment are connected to the authentication and
authorization infrastructure composed by a Shibboleth identity provider and a
Grouper authorization solution. The Grouper released attributes are consumed by
the science gateway to authorize the access to specific web resources and the
role management mechanism in Liferay provides the attribute-role mapping
Management of e-Resources in R amp; D Centers: A Case Study of the Information Center at NAL13;
The developments in information technology and their applications to library and information services have given new dimension to the entire spectrum of information management. The information generated is usually stored in four physical media: paper, film, optical, and magnetic disks. The e-document be it a book, journal, technical report, conference proceedings is portable; has random access to its contents; and the document can also be a multimedia object, in that it may contain not only text, but also graphics, drawings, photographs or video. Now we have the emergence of publications over the electronic networks and the activity took off in a big way following the invention of the World Wide Web. The Open Access movement is becoming the order of the day. More than 3000 journals are free on net for anybody to access. A number of Institutional repositories and e-Prints archives have thrown challenge to the publishing industry. Consortium approach through different pricing, management and licensing models is enabling the libraries to provide access to thousands of e- journals, e-books and other kinds of e-documents. The Information center at NAL with its state-of-the-art library has progressed a good deal in this direction by acquiring different kind of documents especially e-form, cataloguing amp; processing them appropriately, storing and giving access to its patrons not only in library premises, but on to the desk tops spread in three different campuses through laboratory LAN and also extending selected services through Internet for the benefit of any body from any part of the world. 13; Created and maintained by ICAST the Portal x2018;AeroInfox2019; (www.aeroinfo.org.in) serves as one window information search facility for Web sources in aerospace science and technology. This virtual library facilitates multiple approach to information seekers as the web sources are indexed and organised using different schemes of classification including NASA subject categories. Care is taken to cover Indian aerospace sources exhaustively. The ICAST site (www.icast.org.in), apart from giving detailed information about library sources including books, journals, E-journals, databases and technical reports makes available different search tools for its users. Other details like working hours, library rules, staff details, contact persons, etc are provided. One can submit an online query and suggest documents for acquisition using online forms provided. The Library Database (OPAC) is probably is single largest in the country with more than 3.25 lakh bibliographic records of books, technical reports, patents, standards, journals, etc. ICAST users can search International databases like Aerospace Database, NTIS, J-Gate, Medline, etc through campus LAN. Users can access more than 2500 full text journals covering titles published by Elsevier (ScienceDirect), ASME, AIAA, Springer, John Wiley, OUP, CUP, AMS, World Scientific, few Annual Series, etc. Created by ICAST an e-journals gateway with browse and search (alphabetical and subject wise) facility for titles provides access to more than 700 journals available free on the net. The Centre provides a number of web/e-mail based innovative information services including Journal Contents Service, News Clipping Service, Monthly Documents Additions Lists covering both Books and Technical Reports, Web Alert Service and Union Catalogue of Journals -CSIR and Aerospace Libraries, etc
Telescience testbed pilot program
The Universities Space Research Association (USRA), under sponsorship from the NASA Office of Space Science and Applications, is conducting a Telescience Testbed Pilot Program. Fifteen universities, under subcontract to USRA, are conducting a variety of scientific experiments using advanced technology to determine the requirements and evaluate the tradeoffs for the information system of the Space Station era. An interim set of recommendations based on the experiences of the first six months of the pilot program is presented
Exploring the Use of Virtual Worlds as a Scientific Research Platform: The Meta-Institute for Computational Astrophysics (MICA)
We describe the Meta-Institute for Computational Astrophysics (MICA), the
first professional scientific organization based exclusively in virtual worlds
(VWs). The goals of MICA are to explore the utility of the emerging VR and VWs
technologies for scientific and scholarly work in general, and to facilitate
and accelerate their adoption by the scientific research community. MICA itself
is an experiment in academic and scientific practices enabled by the immersive
VR technologies. We describe the current and planned activities and research
directions of MICA, and offer some thoughts as to what the future developments
in this arena may be.Comment: 15 pages, to appear in the refereed proceedings of "Facets of Virtual
Environments" (FaVE 2009), eds. F. Lehmann-Grube, J. Sablating, et al., ICST
Lecture Notes Ser., Berlin: Springer Verlag (2009); version with full
resolution color figures is available at
http://www.mica-vw.org/wiki/index.php/Publication
AMP: A Science-driven Web-based Application for the TeraGrid
The Asteroseismic Modeling Portal (AMP) provides a web-based interface for
astronomers to run and view simulations that derive the properties of Sun-like
stars from observations of their pulsation frequencies. In this paper, we
describe the architecture and implementation of AMP, highlighting the
lightweight design principles and tools used to produce a functional
fully-custom web-based science application in less than a year. Targeted as a
TeraGrid science gateway, AMP's architecture and implementation are intended to
simplify its orchestration of TeraGrid computational resources. AMP's web-based
interface was developed as a traditional standalone database-backed web
application using the Python-based Django web development framework, allowing
us to leverage the Django framework's capabilities while cleanly separating the
user interface development from the grid interface development. We have found
this combination of tools flexible and effective for rapid gateway development
and deployment.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, in Proceedings of the 5th Grid Computing
Environments Worksho
- …