Apache Airavata: Design and Directions of a Science Gateway Framework

This paper provides an overview of the Apache Airavata software system for science gateways. Gateways use Airavata to manage application and workflow executions on a range of backend resources (grids, computing clouds, and local clusters). Airavata’s design goal is to provide component abstractions for major tasks required to provide gateway application management. Components are not directly accessed but are instead exposed through a client Application Programming Interface. This design allows gateway developers to take full advantage of Airavata’s capabilities, and Airavata developers (including those interested in middleware research) to modify Airavata’s implementations and behavior. This is particularly important as Airavata evolves to become a scalable, elastic “platform as a service” for science gateways. We illustrate the capabilities of Airavata through the discussion of usage vignettes. As an Apache Software Foundation project, Airavata’s open community governance model is as important as its software base. We discuss how this works within Airavata and how it may be applicable to other distributed computing infrastructure and cyberinfrastructure efforts

On Enabling Hydrodynamics Data Analysis of Analytical Ultracentrifugation Experiments

A new modular approach to enable scientific applications with UNICORE has been designed which employs modern elements of seamless web based access for abstraction and encapsulation. The approach uses the Apache Airavata software framework which is applicable and used by a wide variety of scientific gateways, which represent a community-oriented web based interface to computing and storage resources. Scientific gateways have shown a broad impact in computational science and brought many advances to various scientific communities in the last decade and even more research advances are expected when using them with the everincreasing amounts of large quantities of datasets that are often referred to as ’big data’. This paper provides insights into benefits for the UNICORE community in working with existing scientific gateways and their strong user communities. While this new approach is more general in nature, we offer throughout the paper a concrete example of how initial work with scientific gateway communities enable a hydrodynamics data analysis of analytical ultracentrifugation experiments. The approach improves the ease of use in using UNICORE by performing seamlessly computational science so that more scientists can benefit from the strong UNICORE capabilities and its underlying computational resources. Furthermore the approach allows for creating ’collaborative workspaces’ specifically optimized for specific scientific communities, including data and computing resources and to make existing datasets accessible and useful to the broader scientific communities that use scientific gateways on a daily basis. The design approach has been tested in a real supercomputer deploment which has been used by several researchers of a larger scientific community in the bio-chemistry field. We report first results of the inter-working of UNICORE with a specific scientific gateway while not losing sight of the more general applicability of the approach with other gateways

Advancements of the UltraScan scientific gateway for open standards-based cyberinfrastructures

The UltraScan data analysis application is a software package that is able to take advantage of computational resources in order to support the interpretation of analytical ultracentrifugation experiments. Since 2006, the UltraScan scientific gateway has been used with Web browsers in TeraGrid by scientists studying the solution properties of biological and synthetic molecules. UltraScan supports its users with a scientific gateway in order to leverage the power of supercomputing. In this contribution, we will focus on several advancements of the UltraScan scientific gateway architecture with a standardized job management while retaining its lightweight design and end user interaction experience. This paper also presents insights into a production deployment of UltraScan in Europe. The approach is based on open standards with respect to job management and submissions to the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment in the USA and to similar infrastructures in Europe such as the European Grid Infrastructure or the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE). Our implementation takes advantage of the Apache Airavata framework for scientific gateways that lays the foundation for easy integration into several other scientific gateways

Improvements of the UltraScan scientific gateway to enable computational jobs on large-scale and open-standards based cyberinfrastructures

The UltraScan data analysis application is a software package that is able to take advantage of computational resources in order to support the interpretation of analytical ultracentrifugation (AUC) experiments. Since 2006, the UltraScan scientific gateway has been used with ordinary Web browsers in TeraGrid by scientists studying the solution properties of biological and synthetic molecules. Unlike other applications, UltraScan is implemented on a gateway architecture and leverages the power of supercomputing to extract very high resolution information from the experimental data. In this contribution, we will focus on several improvements of the UltraScan scientific gateway that enable a standardized job submission and management to computational resources while retaining its lightweight design in order to not disturb the established workflows of its end-users. This paper further presents a walkthrough of the architectural design including one real installation deployment of UltraScan in Europe. The aim is to provide evidence for the added value of open standards and resulting interoperability enabling not only UltraScan application submissions to resources offered in the US cyber infrastructure Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), but also submissions to similar infrastructures in Europe and around the world. The use of the Apache Airavata framework for scientific gateways within our approach bears the potential to have an impact on several other scientific gateways too

Science Gateway Use Cases, version 1.1

These use cases describe how research communities use community computing resources to power their "science gateways," supporting the specialized needs of research fields, communities of practice, and joint initiatives. Science gateways are applications—most often web-based—that are used by groups of researchers with similar needs. Each gateway is developed and operated by one or more leaders in the research field who applies for an allocation to serve the community. Gateways can also help researchers who have their own allocations by providing a more customized, user-friendly interface.National Science Foundation, OCI-1053575Ope

Science Gateway Use Cases, version 1.1

These use cases describe how research communities use community computing resources to power their "science gateways," supporting the specialized needs of research fields, communities of practice, and joint initiatives. Science gateways are applications—most often web-based—that are used by groups of researchers with similar needs. Each gateway is developed and operated by one or more leaders in the research field who applies for an allocation to serve the community. Gateways can also help researchers who have their own allocations by providing a more customized, user-friendly interface.National Science Foundation, OCI-1053575Ope

Retrospective study on changes in Dondra lagoon (2006–2017) resulting from tsunami impact and post-tsunami development

Spatio-temporal changes during the last twelve year period (2006–2017) and their impacts on ecological and socio-economic status of Dondra lagoon, southern coast of Sri Lanka were studied as many lagoons in southern Sri Lanka are being seriously affected due to anthropogenic pressure in the recent past. The changes of Dondra lagoon and its immediate surroundings were studied in conjunction with a GIS-coupled ecological survey and a questionnaire survey. The lagoon water surface area has decreased by about 0.92 ha (~8%) and the mangrove cover has increased by about 1.38 ha (~11%) over this period. The salinity of the lagoon has also reduced, forming a ‘low saline’ (3 psu) regime. About 40% of the lost water surface has scarified for a newly formed land mass (~0.4 ha) within the proximal part of the lagoon. The bridge, broken by the tsunami of 2004, has newly been constructed twice during the reporting period. The construction most likely led to impair the inflow and outflow through the lagoon mouth. Several development projects were launched in the immediate periphery of the lagoon stimulated soil erosion causing heavy siltation in the lagoon. The above changes in the morphometry of the lagoon is a cumulative effect of two factors; impaired inflow and outflow through the lagoon mouth, and the increase of the sediment input to the lagoon. If the ongoing processes are sustained, the lagoon will change into a different landscape. Therefore, early intervention to restore the lagoon hydrology is highly recommended if the lagoon ecosystem is to be protected.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe