Evaluation of RDBMS packages for use in astronomy

Tabular data sets arise in many areas of astronomical data analysis, from raw data (such as photon event lists) to final results (such as source catalogs). The Starlink catalog access and reporting package, SCAR, was originally developed to handle IRAS data and it has been the principal relational DBMS in the Starlink software collection for several years. But SCAR has many limitations and is VMS-specific, while Starlink is in transition from VMS to Unix. Rather than attempt a major re-write of SCAR for Unix, it seemed more sensible to see whether any existing database packages are suitable for general astronomical use. The authors first drew up a list of desirable properties for such a system and then used these criteria to evaluate a number of packages, both free ones and those commercially available. It is already clear that most commercial DBMS packages are not very well suited to the requirements; for example, most cannot carry out efficiently even fairly basic operations such as joining two catalogs on an approximate match of celestial positions. This paper reports the results of the evaluation exercise and notes the problems in using a standard DBMS package to process scientific data. In parallel with this the authors have started to develop a simple database engine that can handle tabular data in a range of common formats including simple direct-access files (such as SCAR and Exosat DBMS tables) and FITS tables (both ASCII and binary)

The assessment of practical skills in student nurses.

RATIONALE: During the last decade assessment of clinicalskills in student nurses preparing for state registration has undergone a number of developments. According to contemporary literature, written examinations, which represent one feature of assessment for state registration, often bear little relationship to the level of nursing skills demonstrated by a student in the clinical setting. Having observed contemporary methods of clinical assessment, the researcher here explores the theoretical and practical considerations underlying these methods; their reliability and validity; and the related question of what could constitute useful and appropriate instruments for assessment of clinical nursing skills.NATURE, SCOPE AND METHOD: Two methods of clinical assess-ment in general use were explored, employing guided interviews with a sample of senior nursing staff regularly involved in clinical assessment (N = 44). This was a sample of ward sisters located in four centres: Centre A, an est-ablished teaching hospital (N = 14.); Centre B, a busy district general hospital (N = 8); Centre C, a new postgraduate medical school hospital (N = 12); and Centre D, a small suburban general hospital (N = 10). Following a review of the literature, a guided interview schedule was developed by means of preliminary unstructured discussion with assessors in order to establish general categories; followed by a small pilot study. Interview data were stored on audiotape and comparisons made between responses from assessors in the four centres. The researcher wished to collect accurate information in respect of specific issues involved in the current procedures. Interviews were wide-ranging, covering numerous aspects of assessment as these affect student, assessor and patient; and the instruments currently used. Numerical data is supported by anecdotal material illustrative of typical responses. Additionally to the interviews, a retrospective analysis of specimen assessments carried out for a specific group of third-year students was undertaken in order to. obtain data on reliability and validity of such assessments.FINDINGS: These illustrate a variety of strengths andweaknesses in current assessment procedures as perceived by senior clinical nurses: and serve to emphasise issuesrequiring further study. Of greatest interest are implications for preparation, training and continued development of clinical assessors. Respondents viewed both current assessment systems critically; and a specimen analysis illustrated the shortcomings of progress assessments. Inferences were drawn from the data regarding potential future ways of improving organisational, assessmental and educational aspects of clinical nurse assessment

Data management of nanometre­ scale CMOS device simulations

In this paper we discuss the problems arising in managing and curating the data generated by simulations of nanometre scale CMOS (Complementary Metal–Oxide Semiconductor) transistors, circuits and systems and describe the software and operational techniques we have adopted to address them. Such simulations pose a number of challenges including, inter alia, multi­TByte data volumes, complex datasets with complex inter-relations between datasets, multi­-institutional collaborations including multiple specialisms and a mixture of academic and industrial partners, and demanding security requirements driven by commercial imperatives. This work was undertaken as part of the NanoCMOS project. However, the problems, solutions and experience seem likely to be of wider relevance, both within the CMOS design community and more generally in other disciplines

Secure, performance-oriented data management for nanoCMOS electronics

The EPSRC pilot project Meeting the Design Challenges of nanoCMOS Electronics (nanoCMOS) is focused upon delivering a production level e-Infrastructure to meet the challenges facing the semiconductor industry in dealing with the next generation of ‘atomic-scale’ transistor devices. This scale means that previous assumptions on the uniformity of transistor devices in electronics circuit and systems design are no longer valid, and the industry as a whole must deal with variability throughout the design process. Infrastructures to tackle this problem must provide seamless access to very large HPC resources for computationally expensive simulation of statistic ensembles of microscopically varying physical devices, and manage the many hundreds of thousands of files and meta-data associated with these simulations. A key challenge in undertaking this is in protecting the intellectual property associated with the data, simulations and design process as a whole. In this paper we present the nanoCMOS infrastructure and outline an evaluation undertaken on the Storage Resource Broker (SRB) and the Andrew File System (AFS) considering in particular the extent that they meet the performance and security requirements of the nanoCMOS domain. We also describe how metadata management is supported and linked to simulations and results in a scalable and secure manner

IVOA Recommendation: VOTable Format Definition Version 1.3

This document describes the structures making up the VOTable standard. The main part of this document describes the adopted part of the VOTable standard; it is followed by appendices presenting extensions which have been proposed and/or discussed, but which are not part of the standard

Integrating security solutions to support nanoCMOS electronics research

The UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded Meeting the Design Challenges of nanoCMOS Electronics (nanoCMOS) is developing a research infrastructure for collaborative electronics research across multiple institutions in the UK with especially strong industrial and commercial involvement. Unlike other domains, the electronics industry is driven by the necessity of protecting the intellectual property of the data, designs and software associated with next generation electronics devices and therefore requires fine-grained security. Similarly, the project also demands seamless access to large scale high performance compute resources for atomic scale device simulations and the capability to manage the hundreds of thousands of files and the metadata associated with these simulations. Within this context, the project has explored a wide range of authentication and authorization infrastructures facilitating compute resource access and providing fine-grained security over numerous distributed file stores and files. We conclude that no single security solution meets the needs of the project. This paper describes the experiences of applying X.509-based certificates and public key infrastructures, VOMS, PERMIS, Kerberos and the Internet2 Shibboleth technologies for nanoCMOS security. We outline how we are integrating these solutions to provide a complete end-end security framework meeting the demands of the nanoCMOS electronics domain

The SuperCOSMOS Sky Survey. Paper III: Astrometry

In this, the third in a series of three papers concerning the SuperCOSMOS Sky Survey, we describe the astrometric properties of the database. We describe the algorithms employed in the derivation of the astrometric parameters of the data, and demonstrate their accuracies by comparison with external datasets using the first release of data, the South Galactic Cap survey. We show that the celestial coordinates, which are tied to the International Celestial Reference Frame via the Tycho-2 reference catalogue, are accurate to better than +/- 0.2 arcsec at J,R=19,18 rising to +/- 0.3 arcsec at J,R=22,21 with positional dependent systematic effects from bright to faint magnitudes at the +/- 0.1 arcsec level. The proper motion measurements are shown to be accurate to typically +/- 10 mas/yr at J,R=19,18 rising to +/- 50 mas/yr at J,R=22,21 and are tied to zero using the extragalactic reference frame. We show that the zeropoint errors in the proper motions are 17 and are no larger than 10 mas/yr for R < 17 mas/yr.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures; accepted for publication in MNRA

Discovery of Two New Faint Cataclysmic Variables

We report on the discovery of two new faint cataclysmic variables. The objects were selected as candidates from two different imaging surveys aimed at the discovery of such faint systems. One survey used color and variability while the other used color and H$_\alpha$ emission as selection criteria. We present our spectra of the two new variables and discuss their properties. A discussion of the implication of these discoveries on the space density of faint cataclysmic variables is presented.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. Accepted to A&A letter

PAndAS' cubs: discovery of two new dwarf galaxies in the surroundings of the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies

We present the discovery of two new dwarf galaxies, Andromeda XXI and Andromeda XXII, located in the surroundings of the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies (M31 and M33). These discoveries stem from the first year data of the Pan-Andromeda Archaeological Survey (PAndAS), a photometric survey of the M31/M33 group conducted with the Megaprime/MegaCam wide-field camera mounted on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. Both satellites appear as spatial overdensities of stars which, when plotted in a color-magnitude diagram, follow metal-poor, [Fe/H]=-1.8, red giant branches at the distance of M31/M33. Andromeda XXI is a moderately bright dwarf galaxy (M_V=-9.9+/-0.6), albeit with low surface brightness, emphasizing again that many relatively luminous M31 satellites still remain to be discovered. It is also a large satellite, with a half-light radius close to 1 kpc, making it the fourth largest Local Group dwarf spheroidal galaxy after the recently discovered Andromeda XIX, Andromeda II and Sagittarius around the Milky Way, and supports the trend that M31 satellites are larger than their Milky Way counterparts. Andromeda XXII is much fainter (M_V=-6.5+/-0.8) and lies a lot closer in projection to M33 than it does to M31 (42 vs. 224 kpc), suggesting that it could be the first Triangulum satellite to be discovered. Although this is a very exciting possibility in the context of a past interaction of M33 with M31 and the fate of its satellite system, a confirmation will have to await a good distance estimate to confirm its physical proximity to M33. Along with the dwarf galaxies found in previous surveys of the M31 surroundings, these two new satellites bring the number of dwarf spheroidal galaxies in this region to 20.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ; v2: minor typographical correction

A comparison of chilled DI water/ozone and CO{sub 2}-based supercritical fluids as replacements for photoresist-stripping solvents

Part of the Hewlett Packard Components Group`s Product Stewardship program is the ongoing effort to investigate ways to eliminate or reduce as much as possible the use of chemical substances from manufacturing processes. Currently used techniques to remove hard-baked photoresists from semiconductor wafers require the use of inorganic chemicals or organic strippers and associated organic solvents. Environmental, health and safety, as well as cost considerations prompted the search for alternative, more environmentally-benign, and cost-effective solutions. Two promising, emerging technologies were selected for evaluation: the chilled DI water/ozone technique and supercritical fluids based on carbon dioxide (CO{sub 2}). Evaluating chilled DI water/ozone shows this process to be effective for positive photoresist removal, but may not be compatible with all metallization systems. Testing of a closed-loop CO{sub 2}-based supercritical CO{sub 2} Resist Remover, or SCORR, at Los Alamos, on behalf of Hewlett-packard, shows that this treatment process is effective in removing photoresists, and is fully compatible with commonly used metallization systems. In this paper, the authors present details on the testing programs conducted with both the chilled DI H{sub 2}O/ozone and SCORR treatment processes