SDS@hd – Scientific Data Storage

SDS@hd (Scientific Data Storage) is a central storage service for hot large-scale scientific data that can be used by researchers from all universities in Baden-Württemberg. It offers fast and secure file system storage capabilities to individuals or groups, e.g. in the context of cooperative projects. Fast data accesses are possible even in case of a high number of small files. User authentication and authorization are implemented in terms of the federated identity management in Baden-Württemberg allowing researchers to use their existing ID of their home institution transparently for this service. Data protection requirements can be fulfilled by data encryption and secure data transfer protocols. The service is operated by the computing center of Heidelberg University

HST/WFPC2 and VLT/ISAAC observations of PROPLYDS in the giant HII region NGC 3603

We report the discovery of three proplyd-like structures in the giant HII region NGC 3603. The emission nebulae are clearly resolved in narrow-band and broad-band HST/WFPC2 observations in the optical and broad-band VLT/ISAAC observations in the near-infrared. All three nebulae are tadpole shaped, with the bright ionization front at the head facing the central cluster and a fainter ionization front around the tail pointing away from the cluster. Typical sizes are 6,000 A.U. x 20,000 A.U. The nebulae share the overall morphology of the proplyds (``PROto PLanetarY DiskS'') in Orion, but are 20 to 30 times larger in size. Additional faint filaments located between the nebulae and the central ionizing cluster can be interpreted as bow shocks resulting from the interaction of the fast winds from the high-mass stars in the cluster with the evaporation flow from the proplyds. The striking similarity of the tadpole shaped emission nebulae in NGC 3603 to the proplyds in Orion suggests that the physical structure of both types of objects might be the same. We present 2D radiation hydrodynamical simulations of an externally illuminated star-disk-envelope system, which was still in its main accretion phase when first exposed to ionizing radiation from the central cluster. The simulations reproduce the overall morphology of the proplyds in NGC 3603 very well, but also indicate that mass-loss rates of up to 10^-5 Mo/yr are required in order to explain the size of the proplyds. (abbreviated)Comment: 10 pages, 4 Postscript figures, uses emulateapj.sty and psfig.tex. Astronomical Journal, in press (January 2000 issue

SDS@hd – Scientific Data Storage

SDS@hd (Scientific Data Storage) is a central storage service for hot large-scale scientific data that can be used by researchers from all universities in Baden-Württemberg. It offers fast and secure file system storage capabilities to individuals or groups, e.g. in the context of cooperative projects. Fast access is possible from data generating facilities like microscopes as well as from data analysis systems llke HPC systems. User authentication and authorization are implemented in terms of the federated identity management in Baden-Württemberg allowing researchers to use their existing ID of their home institution transparently for this service. Data protection requirements can be fulfilled by data encryption and secure data transfer protocols. The service is operated by the computing center of Heidelberg University

Proceedings of the 4th bwHPC Symposium

The bwHPC Symposium 2017 took place on October 4th, 2017, Alte Aula, Tübingen. It focused on the presentation of scientific computing projects as well as on the progress and the success stories of the bwHPC realization concept. The event offered a unique opportunity to engage in an active dialogue between scientific users, operators of bwHPC sites, and the bwHPC support team

Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences

The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on 18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016