Indiana University

 

Indiana University Cyberinfrastructure News

  1. Indiana University researchers have introduced Laboratree, a web-
    based solution to the complex problems of scientific collaboration.
    Designed to enhance collaborative social networking for the science
    community, Laboratree will enable scientists to securely manage
    research papers and data, organize groups and projects, send group
    messages, author blogs, and customize personal and group profiles.

    Scientists create groups for their labs and manage individual
    projects, each with their own unique profile, and every colleague
    has an individual profile to access any part of his or her network.
    Colleagues will have access to all versions of a document. An
    intuitive check-in, check-out system eliminates conflicting changes.

    Sean Mooney, assistant professor of medical and molecular genetics,
    developed Laboratree with colleagues at the Center for Computational
    Biology and Bioinformatics. Mooney notes that the system is still in
    development, and people interested in learning about and testing the
    system are encouraged to learn more and register at

    http://laboratree.org/

    See also

    http://www.medicine.indiana.edu/
    news_releases/viewRelease.php4?art=928

  2. The first attempt to circulate a beam in the Large Hadron Collider
    (LHC) will be made on 10 September. At the IU Grid Operations Center
    preparation for the LHC means being ready to handle the huge amounts
    of data that will be produced. A 2-3 times increase in use of the
    Grid Operations Center's services is expected during the data-taking
    phases of the LHC.

    Information, status, notification, maintenance, and trouble ticket
    services are all getting their final review for any problems that
    might occur during data-taking by two of the four detectors at CERN,
    ATLAS (http://atlas.ch/) and CMS (http://cms.cern.ch). IU has been
    working with CERN/LHC on this project for approximately 15 years.

    More information is available at

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080807130915.htm

  3. OpenAFS is the software that powers the Research File System. While
    the Research File System is accessible via many protocols - HTTP,
    SFTP, and Samba - the OpenAFS client offers the most functionality.

    On August 17, 2008 UITS moved some of the Research File System file
    servers to a different network to improve performance and prepare
    for the new data center scheduled for completion early in 2009.
    This move was performed without impacting users. However, for those
    RFS users using OpenAFS clients a small configuration change is
    recommended. Under most situations the old configuration will not
    impact OpenAFS clients, but in certain situations OpenAFS will not
    perform optimally with the old configuration. The instructions are
    at

    http://storage.iu.edu/rfs_update.shtml

    If you encounter any difficulties, please send about the problem,
    including any error messages, to store-admin@indiana.edu .

  4. Lunch time SysAdmins - Talk to the experts!

    You're invited to stop by and visit with the system administrators
    who run IU's supercomputers, Big Red and Quarry, two of the most
    powerful supercomputers in the world. Ask questions, share ideas,
    or just chat in an informal setting. This is an opportunity for
    you to learn how these centralized research computing resources
    can help support your work.

    * Wednesday, September 17th, 11:00am-1:00pm
    * Simon Hall, Linda & Jack Gill Conference Center, IUB

    --------

    Research Technologies Round Table - Updates

    Whether you're new to IU or returning, the Research Technologies
    division of UITS welcomes you. We maintain some of the most powerful
    supercomputers in the world, as part of a comprehensive strategy
    which includes computers, data storage systems, data collections,
    instruments and sensor networks, and technical support.

    As we head into fall, we'll take an updated look at Research
    Technologies' research systems, including the Big Red and Quarry
    supercomputers, High Performance Storage Services, the Data
    Capacitor, and the TeraGrid.

    * When: Thursday, September 25th, 12:30-2:30pm
    * Where: IUB Radio-TV building, room 180, and IUPUI ICTC room 497

    * Live URL: mms://wms.indiana.edu/rt_round_table
    * Archive: mms://wms.indiana.edu/ip/vic/rt_round_table_20080925.wmv

  5. The ACM/IEEE Computer Society High Performance Computing (HPC) Ph.D.
    Fellowship Program is accepting nominations for its second annual
    competition until Friday, September 8, 2008.

    Students must be nominated by a full time faculty member at a Ph.D.
    granting institution .

    For more information about the program, see

    http://sc08.supercomputing.org/?pg=hpcfellowships.html

    or send email to hpc-fellowship-questions@acm.org

  6. The Open Science Grid (OSG) is a major national grid infrastructure,
    which provides scientists with 70+ production sites offering over
    20,000 CPUs and 4 Petabytes of storage to advance their research.
    The OSG invites you to an exciting 3-day course in large-scale and
    high-performance grid computing to take place Sep 17-19, 2008, at
    the University of Chicago.

    The workshop offers hands-on training in the use of OSG and TeraGrid
    cyberinfrastructure to perform large-scale computations and data-
    intensive processing in different application domains. Participants
    will learn how to use grids of thousands of processors, and will be
    able to continue to use these resources for their research after the
    completing the course.

    Undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, educators and
    professionals in engineering, computer science, or any scientific,
    data- or computing-intensive discipline may apply.

    Registration Deadline: Sep 15, 2008

    For more information and to apply, please visit

    http://www.opensciencegrid.org/workshop

    or send email to mwgs08@opensciencegrid.org

  7. Scientific portals and gateways are important components of many
    large-scale scientific computing and Grid projects. They are
    characterized by web-based user interfaces and services that
    securely access Grid resource, data, application, and collaboration
    services for communities of scientists. As a result, they shield
    science application users from the complex involved in running an
    application on the Grid.

    Gateways and cyberinfrastructure are being heavily influenced by
    the so-called Web 2.0 trends in Internet computing. Examining the
    impact of these technologies will be the main focus of the
    workshop, but papers on all aspects of science gateway
    development are encouraged.

    Important Dates:
    * Papers Due: September 15, 2008
    * Acceptance Notification: October 1, 2008
    * Workshop: November 16, 2008

    For more information, see

    http://www.collab-ogce.org/gce08/index.php/Main_Page

  8. Organizing committees for the 2008 IEEE eScience Conference are now
    accepting papers and proposals for tutorials; posters, exhibits, and
    demos; workshops and special sessions on topics related to eScience,
    grid, and cloud computing. The conference is being hosted by Indiana
    University in partnership with Microsoft Research and will take
    place on December 7-12, 2008 at the University Place Conference
    Center in Indianapolis, Indiana.

    Submission Deadlines:
    * Workshops and Special Sessions: June 20, 2008
    * Papers and Tutorials: August 10, 2008 (EXTENDED)
    * Exhibits, Demos, and Posters: September 14, 2008

    For more information please visit the conference Web site at

    http://escience2008.iu.edu/

  9. The maintenance window for Big Red, Libra and Quarry
    is the first Tuesday of each month, 7am - 7pm EDT.

    The maintenance window for the Mass Store and Research File System
    is every Sunday 7-10AM.

    Outage reports are available online at:

    * http://racinfo.indiana.edu/hps/research/bigred/outages.shtml
    * http://racinfo.indiana.edu/hps/research/libra/outages.shtml
    * http://racinfo.indiana.edu/hps/research/quarry/outages.shtml

  10. If you have questions pertaining to IU's cyberinfrastructure, or you
    are encountering some difficulty, there are several ways to obtain
    help.

    The IU Knowledge Base (http://kb.iu.edu) is an excellent source of
    help on how to do things.

    An introduction and overview titled "Indiana University's
    CyberInfrastructure: The least you need to know" is available at

    http://rtinfo.uits.indiana.edu/documentation/

    For more information, go to:

    http://rtinfo.uits.indiana.edu/
    http://racinfo.indiana.edu/hps/


    If you have problems which the KB does not enable you to solve,
    questions about system outages, or if you just have a problem and
    you don't know who to contact, send email to
    researchtechnologies@iu.edu.