Addressing and Presenting Quality of Satellite Data via Web-Based Services

With the recent attention to climate change and proliferation of remote-sensing data utilization, climate model and various environmental monitoring and protection applications have begun to increasingly rely on satellite measurements. Research application users seek good quality satellite data, with uncertainties and biases provided for each data point. However, different communities address remote sensing quality issues rather inconsistently and differently. We describe our attempt to systematically characterize, capture, and provision quality and uncertainty information as it applies to the NASA MODIS Aerosol Optical Depth data product. In particular, we note the semantic differences in quality/bias/uncertainty at the pixel, granule, product, and record levels. We outline various factors contributing to uncertainty or error budget; errors. Web-based science analysis and processing tools allow users to access, analyze, and generate visualizations of data while alleviating users from having directly managing complex data processing operations. These tools provide value by streamlining the data analysis process, but usually shield users from details of the data processing steps, algorithm assumptions, caveats, etc. Correct interpretation of the final analysis requires user understanding of how data has been generated and processed and what potential biases, anomalies, or errors may have been introduced. By providing services that leverage data lineage provenance and domain-expertise, expert systems can be built to aid the user in understanding data sources, processing, and the suitability for use of products generated by the tools. We describe our experiences developing a semantic, provenance-aware, expert-knowledge advisory system applied to NASA Giovanni web-based Earth science data analysis tool as part of the ESTO AIST-funded Multi-sensor Data Synergy Advisor project

Illuminating the Darkness: Exploiting Untapped Data and Information Resources in Earth Science

No abstract availabl

Entrainment and motor emulation approaches to joint action: alternatives or complementary approaches?

Joint actions, such as music and dance, rely crucially on the ability of two, or more, agents to align their actions with great temporal precision. Within the literature that seeks to explain how this action alignment is possible, two broad approaches have appeared. The first, what we term the entrainment approach, has sought to explain these alignment phenomena in terms of the behavioral dynamics of the system of two agents. The second, what we term the emulator approach, has sought to explain these alignment phenomena in terms of mechanisms, such as forward and inverse models, that are implemented in the brain. They have often been pitched as alternative explanations of the same phenomena; however, we argue that this view is mistaken, because, as we show, these two approaches are engaged in distinct, and not mutually exclusive, explanatory tasks. While the entrainment approach seeks to uncover the general laws that govern behavior the emulator approach seeks to uncover mechanisms. We argue that is possible to do both and that the entrainment approach must pay greater attention to the mechanisms that support the behavioral dynamics of interest. In short, the entrainment approach must be transformed into a neuroentrainment approach by adopting a mechanistic view of explanation and by seeking mechanisms that are implemented in the brain

Mating dances and the evolution of language: What’s the next step?

The Darwinian protolanguage hypothesis is one of the most popular theories of the evolution of human language. According to this hypothesis, language evolved through a three stage process involving general increases in intelligence, the emergence of grammatical structure as a result of sexual selection on protomusical songs, and finally the attachment of meaning to the components of those songs. The strongest evidence for the second stage of this process has been considered to be birdsong, and as a result researchers have investigated the existence of various forms of grammar in the production and comprehension of songs by birds. Here, we argue that mating dances are another relevant source of sexually-selected complexity that has until now been largely overlooked by proponents of Darwinian protolanguage, focusing especially on the dances of long-tailed manakins. We end by sketching several lines of research that should be pursued to determine the relevance of mating dances to the evolution of language

Semantic Specification of Data Types for a World of Open Data

Data interoperability is an ongoing challenge for global open data initiatives. The machine-readable specification of data types for datasets will help address interoperability issues. Data types have typically been at the syntactical level such as integer, float and string, etc. in programming languages. The work presented in this paper is a model design for the semantic specification of data types, such as a topographic map. The work was conducted in the context of the Semantic Web. The model differentiates the semantic data type from the basic data type. The former are instances (e.g., topographic map) of a specific data type class that is defined in the developed model. The latter are classes (e.g., Image) of resource types in existing ontologies. A data resource is an instance of a basic data type and is tagged with one or more specific data types. The implementation of the model is given within an existing production data portal that enables one to register specific data types and use them to annotate data resources. Data users can obtain explicating assumptions or information inherent in a dataset through the specific data types of that dataset. The machine-readable information of specific data types also paves the way for further studies, such as dataset recommendation

SciDAC's Earth System Grid Center for Enabling Technologies Semi-Annual Progress Report for the Period October 1, 2009 through March 31, 2010

This report summarizes work carried out by the ESG-CET during the period October 1, 2009 through March 31, 2009. It includes discussion of highlights, overall progress, period goals, collaborations, papers, and presentations. To learn more about our project, and to find previous reports, please visit the Earth System Grid Center for Enabling Technologies (ESG-CET) website. This report will be forwarded to the DOE SciDAC program management, the Office of Biological and Environmental Research (OBER) program management, national and international collaborators and stakeholders (e.g., the Community Climate System Model (CCSM), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 5th Assessment Report (AR5), the Climate Science Computational End Station (CCES), the SciDAC II: A Scalable and Extensible Earth System Model for Climate Change Science, the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP), and other wide-ranging climate model evaluation activities)