A collaborative citizen science platform for real-time volunteer computing and games

Volunteer computing (VC) or distributed computing projects are common in the citizen cyberscience (CCS) community and present extensive opportunities for scientists to make use of computing power donated by volunteers to undertake large-scale scientific computing tasks. Volunteer computing is generally a non-interactive process for those contributing computing resources to a project whereas volunteer thinking (VT) or distributed thinking, which allows volunteers to participate interactively in citizen cyberscience projects to solve human computation tasks. In this paper we describe the integration of three tools, the Virtual Atom Smasher (VAS) game developed by CERN, LiveQ, a job distribution middleware, and CitizenGrid, an online platform for hosting and providing computation to CCS projects. This integration demonstrates the combining of volunteer computing and volunteer thinking to help address the scientific and educational goals of games like VAS. The paper introduces the three tools and provides details of the integration process along with further potential usage scenarios for the resulting platform.Comment: 12 pages, 13 figure

Prepare for Citizen Science Challenges at CERN

Abstract: To inspire more people to contribute to science, and educate the public about science, two Citizen Science "challenges" were prepared during summer 2013: the CERN Summer Webfest 2013 and the Virtual LHC Challenge. The first part of this report summarizes how to organize a Webfest at CERN and the outcome of the CERN Summer Webfest 2013.The second part gives an introduction to the current state of the Virtual LHC Challenge: a development of the LHC@Home Test4Theory project planned to attract many unskilled volunteers. This work was supported by a grant from the EU Citizen Cyberlab project, with assistance from the Citizen Cyberscience Centre (CCC)

Ultraclean Si/Si interface formation by surface preparation and direct bonding in ultrahigh vacuum

Silicon surfaces have been cleaned and bonded in ultra-high vacuum at a pressure in the 10-10 torr range. The bonded interfaces show extremely low contamination levels as measured by secondary ion mass spectroscopy. Nevertheless, a potential barrier could be detected at the interface spreading resistance and current vs. temperature measurements. This suggests that the barrier is caused by inevitable dislocation networks due to wafer misorientation, as well as residual oxygen at the interfac