Summary of the First Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE1)

Challenges related to development, deployment, and maintenance of reusable software for science are becoming a growing concern. Many scientists’ research increasingly depends on the quality and availability of software upon which their works are built. To highlight some of these issues and share experiences, the First Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE1) was held in November 2013 in conjunction with the SC13 Conference. The workshop featured keynote presentations and a large number (54) of solicited extended abstracts that were grouped into three themes and presented via panels. A set of collaborative notes of the presentations and discussion was taken during the workshop. Unique perspectives were captured about issues such as comprehensive documentation, development and deployment practices, software licenses and career paths for developers. Attribution systems that account for evidence of software contribution and impact were also discussed. These include mechanisms such as Digital Object Identifiers, publication of “software papers”, and the use of online systems, for example source code repositories like GitHub. This paper summarizes the issues and shared experiences that were discussed, including cross-cutting issues and use cases. It joins a nascent literature seeking to understand what drives software work in science, and how it is impacted by the reward systems of science. These incentives can determine the extent to which developers are motivated to build software for the long-term, for the use of others, and whether to work collaboratively or separately. It also explores community building, leadership, and dynamics in relation to successful scientific software

Will SDN be part of 5G?

For many, this is no longer a valid question and the case is considered settled with SDN/NFV (Software Defined Networking/Network Function Virtualization) providing the inevitable innovation enablers solving many outstanding management issues regarding 5G. However, given the monumental task of softwarization of radio access network (RAN) while 5G is just around the corner and some companies have started unveiling their 5G equipment already, the concern is very realistic that we may only see some point solutions involving SDN technology instead of a fully SDN-enabled RAN. This survey paper identifies all important obstacles in the way and looks at the state of the art of the relevant solutions. This survey is different from the previous surveys on SDN-based RAN as it focuses on the salient problems and discusses solutions proposed within and outside SDN literature. Our main focus is on fronthaul, backward compatibility, supposedly disruptive nature of SDN deployment, business cases and monetization of SDN related upgrades, latency of general purpose processors (GPP), and additional security vulnerabilities, softwarization brings along to the RAN. We have also provided a summary of the architectural developments in SDN-based RAN landscape as not all work can be covered under the focused issues. This paper provides a comprehensive survey on the state of the art of SDN-based RAN and clearly points out the gaps in the technology.Comment: 33 pages, 10 figure

Towards offering more useful data reliably to mobile cloudfrom wireless sensor network

The integration of ubiquitous wireless sensor network (WSN) and powerful mobile cloud computing (MCC) is a research topic that is attracting growing interest in both academia and industry. In this new paradigm, WSN provides data to the cloud, and mobile users request data from the cloud. To support applications involving WSN-MCC integration, which need to reliably offer data that are more useful to the mobile users from WSN to cloud, this paper first identifies the critical issues that affect the usefulness of sensory data and the reliability of WSN, then proposes a novel WSN-MCC integration scheme named TPSS, which consists of two main parts: 1) TPSDT (Time and Priority based Selective Data Transmission) for WSN gateway to selectively transmit sensory data that are more useful to the cloud, considering the time and priority features of the data requested by the mobile user; 2) PSS (Priority-based Sleep Scheduling) algorithm for WSN to save energy consumption so that it can gather and transmit data in a more reliable way. Analytical and experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of TPSS in improving usefulness of sensory data and reliability of WSN for WSN-MCC integration

SensorCloud: Towards the Interdisciplinary Development of a Trustworthy Platform for Globally Interconnected Sensors and Actuators

Although Cloud Computing promises to lower IT costs and increase users' productivity in everyday life, the unattractive aspect of this new technology is that the user no longer owns all the devices which process personal data. To lower scepticism, the project SensorCloud investigates techniques to understand and compensate these adoption barriers in a scenario consisting of cloud applications that utilize sensors and actuators placed in private places. This work provides an interdisciplinary overview of the social and technical core research challenges for the trustworthy integration of sensor and actuator devices with the Cloud Computing paradigm. Most importantly, these challenges include i) ease of development, ii) security and privacy, and iii) social dimensions of a cloud-based system which integrates into private life. When these challenges are tackled in the development of future cloud systems, the attractiveness of new use cases in a sensor-enabled world will considerably be increased for users who currently do not trust the Cloud.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, published as technical report of the Department of Computer Science of RWTH Aachen Universit

Science Gateways: The Long Road to the Birth of an Institute

Nowadays, research in various disciplines is enhanced via computational methods, cutting-edge technologies and diverse resources including computational infrastructures and instruments. Such infrastructures are often complex and researchers need means to conduct their research in an efficient way without getting distracted with information technology nuances. Science gateways address such demands and offer user interfaces tailored to a specific community. Creators of science gateways face a breadth of topics and manifold challenges, which necessitate close collaboration with the domain specialists but also calling in experts for diverse aspects of a science gateway such as project management, licensing, team composition, sustainability, HPC, visualization, and usability specialists. The Science Gateway Community Institute tackles the challenges around science gateways to support domain specialists and developers via connecting them to diverse experts, offering consultancy as well as providing a software collaborative, which contains ready-to-use science gateway frameworks and science gateway components