Friday 31 July 2009

5th IEEE e-Science conference - paper deadline extension!

The 5th International Conference on e-Science has extended their paper deadline until the 7th of August (next Friday) so if you were thinking about submitting a paper and didn’t quite get round to it then there is still time!

The conference will be held in the same week as the UK e-science All Hands Meeting so Oxford will be a great place to be from the 7th – 11th of December.

Papers are invited on a wide range of e-science topics including Arts, Humanities and e-Social Science; Bioinformatics and Health; Physical Sciences and Engineering; Climate and Earth Sciences; Research Tools, Workflow and Systems; Digital Repositories and Data Management and e-Science Practice and Education. Anything goes really!

The proceedings are also expected to be published by the IEEE CS Press, USA and will be made available online through the IEEE Digital Library.

See the conference website for more info.

Wednesday 29 July 2009

The NGS helps to forecast crime rates!

NGS user Nick Malleson at the University of Leeds recently had his research featured in Scientific Computing World which has a readership of over 96,000 worldwide!

Nick is using the NGS to forecast crime rates in the city of Leeds by carrying out sophisticated modelling of possible crime scenarios that would be impossible to perform on a desk top PC.

Nick explained “This is where the NGS was essential for the project to be feasible. Without access to NGS resources, the project would not have been able to continue. I can now achieve hundreds of results in a few days where I would have previously only produced one”.

If you would like to read the article on Nick’s research and how the NGS was able to help, follow this link to the article on the Scientific Computing World website.

The NGS Liaison Officer, Gillian Sinclair, often receives enquiries from editors looking for interesting and accessible researcher using grid computing and it's great publicity for the researcher and the NGS when we can match them up!

If you'd like to make sure your research stands out then make sure your use case in your NGS application is up to date and accurate with lots of keywords as this is the main source of our information when looking for specific research.

Monday 27 July 2009

New GridSAM tutorial from OMII-UK

Our colleagues at OMII-UK have released a new tutorial which shows how to run a command-line-based client: from generating results locally, through to running the same command line in a controlled manner on GridSAM.

The tutorial is aimed at researchers who would like to learn more about deploying a custom GridSAM application in a grid environment but systems administrators and technical managers may also be interested in the tutorial. It can be found here on the OMII-UK website.

Monday 20 July 2009

A new way to access the NGS

The NGS member site RAL, is trialling a new system that allows users to login to grid resources using any SSH client. They are currently inviting users to come along and have a play!

In a nutshell, all you need to do is to create a MyProxy credential (easily done, with the MyProxy Upload Tool) and then use virtually any SSH client (such as Putty, WinSCP or Nautilus) to login to ngs.rl.ac.uk with the username and password to your MyProxy credential. It's a very simple way to get connected to a grid resource.

Further details available here are available on the NGS wiki.

Thursday 16 July 2009

New Wizardry at the NGS

We are pleased to annouce that an updated version of the MyProxy Upload Tool has now been released for your comments and feedback. The tool is available from this page of the NGS website.

The general layout has been overhauled and we'd like to have some feedback on this. The main new feature is the capability of generating proxies with VOMS attribute certificates for those that need them.

Please note that this tool is still in development and should be considered a Beta rather than a production release! The tool also depends on Java 1.6 (although we may be able to extend support to 1.5 shortly).

If you have any comments or feedback on the tool then please let us know! Comments should be sent to David Meredith (david.meredith(at)stfc.ac.uk) and Will Rogers (will.rogers(at)stfc.ac.uk).

Monday 13 July 2009

e-Science demos wanted!

As previously announced on this blog, the next EGEE conference will take place in Barcelona on the 21st – 25th September. The NGS is organising the UKI Federation exhibition stand where we will be exhibiting alongside OMII-UK, NeSC, GridPP and Grid-Ireland.

In a change to the previous EGEE meetings there won’t be a dedicated demo booth section, instead all demos will now take place on the exhibition stands. If you would like to give a demonstration of your e-science application on the UKI stand then please let us know! Contact Gillian (gillian.sinclair(at)manchester.ac.uk) at the NGS to discuss your demo etc.

Friday 10 July 2009

Training announcement - SAGA: Tutorial and training

A tutorial on the use of SAGA will be held at the e-Science Institute in Edinburgh on the 3 - 4th September.

This first half of the 2 day event will cover the basic concepts underlying SAGA, provide an in-depth review of the API and its design. The second half will provide hands-on training and an opportunity to understand how SAGA can help your application development and requirements.

More information and registration can be found on the event website.

Thursday 9 July 2009

Reminder - UK e-science conference deadline extended

Just a quick reminder that the deadline for submissions to the UK e-Science All Hands Meeting 2009 (AHM) has been extended. The event will take place in Oxford from the 7th – 9th of December.

This event is the UK’s premier e-science conference and a place for people who are developing these new technologies to meet the people who are actually using them as well as discussing future advances in the field. We would strongly encourage NGS users to attend and to present their work to demonstrate the wide variety of research being carried out using NGS resources.

The deadline for abstracts is tomorrow (10th July 2009) and further details can be found on the event website.

Monday 6 July 2009

Quick catch up from the NGS

Although it may have been quiet on the NGS blog, it's been a rather busy time here at the NGS. Last week was spent exhibiting at the Higher Education Academy Conference. We were located by many of the JISC services exhibition stands and a "treasure trail" with a prize of a laptop ensured there was a steady stream of visitors to the NGS stand. Many people we talked to were not familiar with the NGS so it was good to reach out to a whole new audience.

A quick reminder that you can still register for the Advanced Distributed Services Summer School which will be held on the 7-11th of September. The course is aimed at developing the skills of those providing computational support for researchers from a wide range of disciplines. More information about the course can be found on the website.

The NGS is looking for user / research conferences to attend in the UK. If you are attending or organising a UK conference then please let us know! We are interested in sponsorship opportunities where we can give a presentation and / or have an exhibition stand. Please either leave a comment or email the NGS liaison officer (gillian.sinclair (at) manchester.ac.uk).