Models for Sustainability for Robust Cyberinfrastructure Software - Software Sustainability Survey

This report summarizes the responses to the 2012 Software Sustainability Survey, conducted as part of the NSF EAGER grant (NSF:1147606) titled "Best Practices and Models for Sustainability for Robust Cyberinfrastructure Software." The survey aimed to identify best practices and models for developing, deploying, and supporting sustainable software and identify key factors to consider in software adoption.National Science Foundatio

TextRWeb: Large-Scale Text Analytics with R on the Web

As digital data sources grow in number and size, they pose an opportunity for computational investigation by means of text mining, NLP, and other text analysis techniques. R is a popular and powerful text analytics tool; however, it needs to run in parallel and re- quires special handling to protect copyrighted content against full access (consumption). The HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) currently has 11 million volumes (books) where 7 million volumes are copyrighted. In this paper we propose HTRC TextRWeb, an interactive R software environment which employs complexity hiding interfaces and automatic code generation to allow large-scale text analytics in a non-consumptive means. For our principal test case of copyrighted data in HathiTrust Digital Library, TextRWeb permits us to code, edit, and submit text analytics methods empowered by a family of interactive web user interfaces. All these methods combine to reveal a new interactive paradigm for large-scale text analytics on the web

Sustained Software for Cyberinfrastructure - Analyses of Successful Efforts with a Focus on NSF-Funded Software

Reliable software that provides needed functionality is clearly essential for an effective distributed cyberinfrastructure (CI) that supports comprehensive, balanced, and flexible distributed CI that, in turn, supports science and engineering applications. The purpose of this study was to understand what factors lead to software projects being well sustained over the long run, focusing on software created with funding from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and/or used by researchers funded by the NSF. We surveyed NSF-funded researchers and performed in-depth studies of software projects that have been sustained over many years. Successful projects generally used open-source software licenses and employed good software engineering practices and test practices. However, many projects that have not been well sustained over time also meet these criteria. The features that stood out about successful projects included deeply committed leadership and some sort of user forum or conference at least annually. In some cases, software project leaders have employed multiple financial strategies over the course of a decades-old software project. Such well-sustained software is used in major distributed CI projects that support thousands of users, and this software is critical to the operation of major distributed CI facilities in the US. The findings of our study identify some characteristics of software that is relevant to the NSF-supported research community, and that has been sustained over many years

Information technology in support of research, scholarship, and creative activities: A strategic plan for Research Technologies – a division of UITS and a PTI Service and Cyberinfrastructure Center

Stewart, C.A., M.R. Link, E. Wernert, W.K. Barnett, T.M. Miller. 2012. Information technology in support of research, scholarship, and creative activities: A strategic plan for Research Technologies – a division of UITS and a PTI Service and Cyberinfrastructure Center. Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. PTI Technical Report PTI-TR12-007.IU is currently executing its second information technology strategic plan – Empowering People: Indiana University's Strategic Plan for Information Technology 2009 (hereafter referred to as Empowering People). In this document, we set out long-term goals for the Research Technologies (RT) division of UITS, reaffirm specific goals set for RT for 2019, describe Actions within Empowering People for which RT is responsible, and describe the new internal structure of Research Technologies. The mission of the Research Technologies division of UITS is to develop, deliver, and support advanced technology solutions that improve productivity of and enable new possibilities in research, scholarly endeavors, and creative activity at Indiana University and beyond; and to complement this with education and technology translation activities to improve the quality of life of people in Indiana, the nation, and the world

University Information Technology Services' Advanced IT Facilities: The least every researcher needs to know

This is an archived document containing instructions for using IU's advanced IT facilities ca. 2003. A version of this document updated in 2011 is available from http://hdl.handle.net/2022/13620. Further versions are forthcoming.This document is designed to be read as a printed document, and designed to permit anyone at all familiar with computers and the Internet to start at the beginning, get a general overview of UITS' advanced IT facilities and what they offer, and then read the detailed portions of the document that are of interest. In many cases, examples are provided, as well as directions on how to download sample files. And in some cases there is information that one is best off really not learning – for example the process of logging into IU's IBM supercomputer the first time involves setup steps that should be followed, keystroke by keystroke, from the directions presented herein, and then promptly forgotten. This document is intended to be a starting point, not a comprehensive guide. As such it should get any reader off to a good start, but then point the reader in the direction of consulting staff and online resources that will permit the reader to get additional help and information as needed. Most of all, this document is provided for the convenience of researchers, who may peruse this information at their leisure. Our hope and expectation is that consultants in UITS will provide extensive help and programming assistance to IU researchers who wish to make use of these excellent IT facilities.The facilities described in this document were made possible in part through funding from Indiana University, the Indiana University Office of the Vice President for Information Technology, the State of Indiana, Shared University Research Grants from IBM, Inc., the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0116050 and Grant CDA- 9601632, and from the Lilly Endowment through their support of the Indiana Genomics Initiative. The Indiana Genomics Initiative (INGEN) of Indiana University is supported in part by Lilly Endowment Inc

INGEN's advanced IT facilities: The least you need to know

The facilities described in this document were made possible in part through funding from Indiana University, the Indiana University Office of the Vice President for Information Technology, the State of Indiana, Shared University Research Grants from IBM, Inc., and from the Lilly Endowment through their support o f the Indiana Genomics Initiative. The Indiana Genomics Initiative (INGEN) of Indiana University is supported in part by Lilly Endowment Inc

Cyberinfrastructure, Science Gateways, Campus Bridging, and Cloud Computing

Computers accelerate our ability to achieve scientific breakthroughs. As technology evolves and new research needs come to light, the role for cyberinfrastructure as “knowledge” infrastructure continues to expand. This article defines and discusses cyberinfrastructure and the related topics of science gateways and campus bridging; identifies future challenges in cyberinfrastructure; and discusses challenges and opportunities related to the evolution of cyberinfrastructure, “big data” (datacentric, data-enabled, and data-intensive research and data analytics), and cloud computing.This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grants 0504075, 0451237, 0723054, 1062432, 0116050, 0521433, 0503697, and 1053575, and several IBM Shared University Research grants and support provided by Lilly Endowment, Inc. for the Indiana University Pervasive Technology Institute. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the supporting agencies

Evolutionary biology and computational grids

The global high performance computing community has seen two overarching changes in the past five years. One of these changes was the consolidation toward SMP clusters as the predominant HPC system architecture. The other change was the emergence of computing grids as an important architecture in high performance computing. Several major national and international projects are now underway to develop grid technologies. Computational grids will increase the resources available to the most advanced computational scientists and encourage the use of advanced techniques by researchers who have not traditionally employed such technologies. In the latter camp are bioinformaticists in general and evolutionary biologists in particular, although this situation is changing rapidly.This work was greatly facilitated by IBM Shared University Research grants to Indiana University in 1998 and 1999

Indiana University's Advanced Cyberinfrastructure

This is an archived document. The most current version may be found at http://pti.iu.edu/ciThe purpose of this document is to introduce researchers to Indiana University’s cyberinfrastructure – to clarify what these facilities make possible, to discuss how to use them and the professional staff available to work with you. The resources described here are complex and varied, among the most advanced in the world. The intended audience is anyone unfamiliar with IU’s cyberinfrastructure

Services and support for IU School of Medicine and Clinical Affairs Schools by the UITS/PTI Advanced Biomedical Information Technology Core and Research Technologies Division in FY 2013 - Extended Version

The report presents information on services delivered in FY 2013 by ABITC and RT to the IU School of Medicine and the other Clinical Affairs schools that include the Schools of Nursing, Dentistry, Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, and Optometry; the Fairbanks School of Public Health at IUPUI; the School of Public Health at IU Bloomington; and the School of Social Work