tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69963179219807586882024-03-14T08:58:10.848+00:00NGSDavid Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14618673864658094727noreply@blogger.comBlogger320125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-28169114775502387282012-10-02T17:51:00.001+01:002012-10-02T17:52:04.068+01:00SHA2 certificates<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
We have started to issue certificates with the "new" more secure algorithms, SHA2 (or to be precise SHA256) - basically, it means that the hashing algorithm which is a part of the signature is more secure against attacks than the current SHA1 algorithm (which in turn is more secure than the older MD5).<br />
<br />
But only to a lucky few, not to everybody. And even they get to keep their "traditional" SHA1 certificates alongside the SHA2 one if they wish.<br />
<br />
Because the catch is that not everything supports SHA2. The large middleware providers have started worrying about supporting SHA2, but we only really know by testing it.<br />
<br />
So what's the problem? A digital signature is basically a one-way hash of something, which is encrypted with your private key: <i>S=E(H(message))</i>. To verify the signature, you would re-hash the message, <i>H(message)</i>, and also decrypt the signature with the public key (found in the certificate in the signer): <i>D(S)=D(E(H(message)))=H(message) </i>- and also check the validity of the certificate.<br />
<br />
If someone has tampered with the message, the <i>H</i> would fail (with extremely high probability) to yield the same result, hence invalidate the signature, as <i>D(S)</i> would no longer be the same as <i>H(tamper_message)</i>.<br />
<br />
However, if you could attack the hash function and find a <i>tamper_message</i> which has the property that <i>H(tamper_message)=H(message)</i>, then the signature is useless - and this is precisely the kind of problem people are worrying about today, for <i>H</i> being SHA1 signatures (and history repeats itself, since we went through the same stuff for MD5 some years ago.)<br />
<br />
So we're now checking if it works. So far, we have started with PKCS#10 requests of a few lucky individuals; I'll do some SPKACs tomorrow. If you want one to play with, send us a mail via the usual channels (eg email or helpdesk.)<br />
<br />
Eventually, we will start issuing renewals with SHA2, but only once we're sure that they work with all the middleware out there... we also take the opportunity to test a few modernisations of extensions in the certificates.</div>
J Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06262050886023513509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-28448735412367126212012-06-14T12:08:00.001+01:002012-06-14T12:09:00.705+01:00Kick off - it's time for the NGS summer seminar series<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOyQsip7w793e2tIiI98XJwMTxG_kfaDo0VQSnZW90L58P45B5_S1jecPFThU8eK5ht5ZnfYI-8msqdxd4qx5JpCIstaTClASEhkVh9WZfvzFbo5px9otBFf-yjHI3v-3YZcHz28vEehA/s1600/990536_class_room.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOyQsip7w793e2tIiI98XJwMTxG_kfaDo0VQSnZW90L58P45B5_S1jecPFThU8eK5ht5ZnfYI-8msqdxd4qx5JpCIstaTClASEhkVh9WZfvzFbo5px9otBFf-yjHI3v-3YZcHz28vEehA/s200/990536_class_room.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
In the midst of this summer of sport another event is kicking off soon but this time it's the <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/news/ngs-seminar-series-summer-2012" target="_blank">NGS Summer Seminar series.</a><br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/events/ngs-seminar-grid-accounting-and-apel" target="_blank">first seminar</a> will take place next Wednesday (20th June) at 10.30am (BST) and will give an overview of how accounting is done on the grid, and what it is used
for. It will cover the NGS accounting system at a high level and then go into more detail about the implementation of <a href="https://wiki.egi.eu/wiki/APEL" target="_blank">APEL</a>, the
accounting system for EGI, including the particular challenges involved
and the plans for development.<br />
<br />
The speaker will be Will Rogers from STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory who I'm sure would appreciate a good audience ready to ask lots of questions!<br />
<br />
Please help spread the word about this event to any colleagues or organisations you think might be interested. A <a href="http://www.facebook.com/events/314430758633805/" target="_blank">Facebook event page</a> is available so please invite your colleagues and friends!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-36511796890369776782012-05-31T14:23:00.000+01:002012-05-31T14:23:03.125+01:00What does the NGS do for Europe?Quite a lot actually is the answer!<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_S6IMWBbldSHZzTERnPjh3xjEEr7yyQWCbQ72A_DWMjD3bo6s0Bi_CoBo7VpdwOXFVAYAYEnr0PNpTtUVWmep1i5DUej_Z8QuxBhi0grk8YrR1JqOGAyEXsRJ1lU6YZZOQBm7Iidjrl8/s1600/990536_class_room.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_S6IMWBbldSHZzTERnPjh3xjEEr7yyQWCbQ72A_DWMjD3bo6s0Bi_CoBo7VpdwOXFVAYAYEnr0PNpTtUVWmep1i5DUej_Z8QuxBhi0grk8YrR1JqOGAyEXsRJ1lU6YZZOQBm7Iidjrl8/s200/990536_class_room.jpg" width="200" /></a><br />
The NGS will be hosting a second seminar series this summer and the theme of the 3 seminar event focuses on the services that we provide for the <a href="http://www.egi.eu/" target="_blank">European Grid Infrastructure</a> (EGI). As with last time, the seminar series will be held using EVO allowing people from all over the world to participate in the seminar and to quiz the presenters. The details for this series are -<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>20th June - Grid Accounting and APEL</b><br />
This talk will give an overview of how accounting is done on the grid, and what it is used for. It will cover the NGS <a href="https://wiki.egi.eu/wiki/APEL" target="_blank">accounting system</a> at a high level. It will then go into more detail about the implementation of APEL, the accounting system for EGI, including the particular challenges involved and the plans for development. <br /><br /><b>27th June - GOCDB, the NGS and EGI </b><br />
This talk will cover a brief overview of the functionality provided by <a href="http://goc.egi.eu/" target="_blank">GOCDB</a>, the official repository for storing and presenting EGI topology and resources information. The seminar will explain how it is used within the NGS, recent developments, useful features on the future roadmap and a chance to ask questions about the system. There will also be a short overview of how GOCDB is used in the context of the EGI project.<br /><br /><b>4th July - The Training Marketplace</b><br />
The <a href="http://www.egi.eu/services/support/training_marketplace/" target="_blank">Training Marketplace</a> is a one-stop shop for training developed by STFC and the EGI InSPIRE project. Here you will find information about classroom-based training courses and online training materials including a repository containing thousands of resources. You can also search for PhD or MSc courses, or for resources for trainers such as a Training CA. The Training Marketplace equally allows you to advertise and a freely available gadget enables you to customise and embed the Training marketplace in your own website. This seminar will talk you through the Training Marketplace and demonstrate how you can embed a customised version of a training calendar, map or repository in your own website.<br />
<br />
If you are interested in attending any of these online seminars then please see the <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/news/ngs-seminar-series-summer-2012" target="_blank">webpage</a> for further details and how to join in online. There are also <a href="http://www.facebook.com/UKNGI/events" target="_blank">Facebook event pages</a> available for each seminar series to help you inform interested colleagues and to invite them along.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-77877029805940054612012-05-11T12:12:00.000+01:002012-05-11T12:12:47.667+01:00Are you a molecular modeller?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEk1EIe1T7EYtBd-ge3WGj7u3ROxXVju9yKkvTKALA6ccqWaORrC9geWVfvOYn_CV3SeWPNfsy1Bq0YYn_TQ5BMg0xab0JEJeyrl_VQRFNBR9Ki2emGf_QDQjz_W9vxf6m9ctYPSOFAHo/s1600/database.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEk1EIe1T7EYtBd-ge3WGj7u3ROxXVju9yKkvTKALA6ccqWaORrC9geWVfvOYn_CV3SeWPNfsy1Bq0YYn_TQ5BMg0xab0JEJeyrl_VQRFNBR9Ki2emGf_QDQjz_W9vxf6m9ctYPSOFAHo/s200/database.jpg" width="141" /></a></div>
Two free training events announced in the space of 2 weeks? Don't say we're not good to you!<br />
<br />
Incase you missed it, last week I announced that we were accepting applications for our "Using e-infrastructure for Research" summer school which will be held in August. It's completely totally and utterly fully funded so there is absolutely no cost to the participants. More information can be found on our <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/communities/summer-school-2012" target="_blank">website</a>.<br />
<br />
However the latest event I have to tell you about today is being organised by one of our Community Champions who is funded through the same project as the above summer school - <a href="http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/J000698/1" target="_blank">Supporting e-Infrastructure Uptake through Community Champions for Research</a> (SeIUCCR) funded by EPSRC.<br />
<br />
Dr Pamela Greenwell, who is based at the University of Westminster, has organised a 3 day training event entitled "<a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/events/biobytes" target="_blank">Biobytes</a>", a molecular modelling event for bioscientists. It's a 3 day event held at Westminster consisting of breakout groups, seminars, demos and practical workshops.<br />
<br />
For more information and details on how to register, see the <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/events/biobytes" target="_blank">event page</a> on the NGS website. Don't delay as spaces are limited!<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-33227339656875631802012-05-03T14:40:00.001+01:002012-05-03T14:42:27.557+01:00Fully funded e-infrastructure summer school anyone?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE0XQh6CHF-AuUzgCqZikBkMCT0Qu6MJTdOb1Ypz8V0A0TEYoWHQ_2LtuETCV0LwALOeAUgpGlJmAFI2dG5JuLjYuoHDWR5Po9wV1uBLDI7970rnGOwvJwnbeuldt0OGWvvVhSLrxy_1E/s1600/coseners.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE0XQh6CHF-AuUzgCqZikBkMCT0Qu6MJTdOb1Ypz8V0A0TEYoWHQ_2LtuETCV0LwALOeAUgpGlJmAFI2dG5JuLjYuoHDWR5Po9wV1uBLDI7970rnGOwvJwnbeuldt0OGWvvVhSLrxy_1E/s200/coseners.jpg" width="200" /></a>Yes it is that time of year again. I've spent this morning opening registration for the 2012 SeIUCCR e-infrastructure summer school. Why a whole morning you may ask?<br />
<br />
Well by the time you've double and triple checked the registration form, put the <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/communities/summer-school-2012" target="_blank">web page live</a>, sorted out the <a href="http://www.facebook.com/events/268186413277051/" target="_blank">Facebook event page</a>, written the advertising blurb, put together the news bulletin containing the announcement and tidied up another 101 loose ends, it takes a while!<br />
<br />
The summer school is taking a similar format as last years successful event. It will run from lunchtime Monday to lunchtime Thursday with a mix of presentations, hands on and consultation sessions. It will cover cloud, grid and other e-infrastructures to ensure that attendees gain the widest possible knowledge of e-infrastructure in the UK.<br />
<br />
The summer school is primarily aimed at UK engineering and physical science PhD students and post docs but researchers from other disciplines can also apply. The school is fully funded including meals, accommodation and travel - all you have to do is tell us of a problem or issue in your research that could potentially be tackled by the application of e-infrastructure!<br />
<br />
For more information and to apply for a place visit the <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/communities/summer-school-2012" target="_blank">event webpage</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-21425698139551387322012-04-24T14:04:00.001+01:002012-04-24T14:04:23.153+01:00Renewals available now!<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb5QzHEyuJWVrvQm4auwVz3G9ci_3cdgALian3lMesMHyRbstdqOeZ0Qn49qC3NiWVURB8dU-NjSpr1Je31iZmPYqE3UGaZIKwS8Tf8YEiM5EMAC22FqB6CCiHx0_fySDgFaiCYwj6Gpc/s1600/open.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="122" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb5QzHEyuJWVrvQm4auwVz3G9ci_3cdgALian3lMesMHyRbstdqOeZ0Qn49qC3NiWVURB8dU-NjSpr1Je31iZmPYqE3UGaZIKwS8Tf8YEiM5EMAC22FqB6CCiHx0_fySDgFaiCYwj6Gpc/s200/open.jpg" width="200" /></a>Hopefully you'll have already seen the announcement on one of our many communication channels such as our <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/" target="_blank">website</a>, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/UKNGI" target="_blank">Facebook page</a> or <a href="http://twitter.com/uk_ngs" target="_blank">Twitter</a> feed but if not then read on.<br />
<br />
Many of you will remember the changes we brought in last year in April 2011. Due to funding restrictions, we had to reduce the CPU allocation of all users to a maximum of 2000 free cpu hours in one year. You can read the <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/news/important-changes-to-the-ngs-for-all-users" target="_blank">original announcement</a> on our website. As we are now a year on, all NGS users can apply for another free 2000 cpu hours.<br />
<br />
If you are looking for some proof of concept computing, a "sand pit" area for your PhD students or to test concepts before purcahsing more hours etc then this is an ideal opportunity.<br />
<br />
If you have any queries at all then don't hesitate to contact the NGS <a href="mailto:support@grid-support.ac.uk" target="_blank">helpdesk</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-43344882492892317682012-04-16T11:16:00.000+01:002012-04-16T11:16:37.620+01:00"hello, science\n"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It is worth pondering how scientific programming is different from other programming. Last year I gave an introductory talk on specialised languages used for science (in which I include Fortran but mainly covered R, APlus, and suchlike). How do you do "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hello_world_program">hello, world</a>" in science? It has to be <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS">floating point,</a> so I picked calculating the length of a vector.<br />
<br />
Let's just digress for a second to do that. Say I want to calculate the length of (v<sub>i</sub>); I can then start with s=0 and loop over i, adding v<sub>i</sub><sup>2</sup>, and finally take the square root of the sum:<br />
<br />
<code>my $s=0; foreach (@v) {$s+=$_*$_;} return sqrt($s);</code><br />
<br />
Or we can do it more functionally, creating a new vector of squares ("map"), the elements of which are then added together ("reduce"):<br />
<br />
<code>(sqrt (reduce #'+ (map 'list (lambda (x) (* x x)) v)))</code><br />
<br />
... which is the origin of the MapReduce paradigm, but it has the disadvantage of creating a temporary copy (here a list) of the squares. But. If you are doing them in parallel, with each task squaring its own entry (which you might if v is large), in this case you <i>do</i> need to keep the intermediate results anyway.<br />
<br />
Then there are questions of precision and suchlike, for which David Goldberg's <a href="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1011/FPComp/floatingmath.pdf">paper</a> is still one of the best introductions. This is in contrast to "normal" programming, where one should read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (but see also <a href="http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/2009/02/26/10-papers-every-programmer-should-read-at-least-twice">10 papers</a>).<br />
<br />
We can then ask how science use of * is different from normal use of * (where * is anything). Do scientists use the cloud in a different way from non-scientists?<br />
<br />
With this in mind, <a href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/">JISC</a> and <a href="http://www.stfc.ac.uk/">STFC</a> co-organised a <a href="http://www.ogf.org/SAICG/">workshop</a> on scientific computing in the cloud (and grids.) Funded by <a href="http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/">EPSRC</a>, and with about 75 registered participants and 15 speakers from the UK and beyond, it focused on the science use of cloud (and grid) resources. There were a number of discussions on cost effectiveness, cost models, and the true cost of doing science in clouds compared to your own (university's) resources. How careful should you be about putting your data "in the cloud" - and here we are just talking about analysis of data, not long term storage. How do you convince sceptical users?<br />
<br />
It seems that some of the lessons learned from the grid carry over to the cloud world: the use of gateways and portals is a useful way to get researchers started using the cloud, but then someone needs to build these things for the research communities - and they will in general be domain specific. And building these cannot just be a proof of principle; they have to be production ready and supported.<br />
<br />
Of course e-scientists have scientific <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/applications">applications</a>, specialised <a href="http://www.hsl.rl.ac.uk/">libraries</a>, and <a href="http://www.netlib.org/">repositories</a> of libraries - and every e-science programmer should know their BLAS and LAPACK... on the other hand, the presence of gateways and portals brings hope to the "ordinary" researchers who want to make the most of the brave new world of the <a href="http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/fourthparadigm/default.aspx">fourth paradigm</a> but are not themselves programmers and choose (rightly) to focus on their science.<br />
<br />
Science use of clouds may have learnt from science use of grids, but clouds also introduce new issues. We agreed at the <a href="http://www.ogf.org/SAICG/">workshop</a> that it was worth pursuing the case studies. There was no single "pain point" for everyone, but everyone learnt from each other. Supporting scientific research in the clouds (and grids) is a research topic in its own right, bringing together computing, science, best practices, usability, security, performance, and more - and as long as we continue to share experiences, the researchers who use the infrastructure will benefit.</div>J Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06262050886023513509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-57271423293808633902012-04-11T14:31:00.000+01:002012-04-11T15:40:54.087+01:00NGS at the EGI Community Forum, Munich<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
You can tell it’s been conference season over the past few
weeks – lots of travelling, lack of sleep and notes written in cryptic language
on my laptop from various sessions and presentations.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The <a href="http://cf2012.egi.eu/" target="_blank">EGI Community Forum</a> was held in Munich, Germany at the
end of March and consisted of 4 days of conferencing and various workshops on
the Monday morning. As well as helping to look after the UK NGI exhibition stand, I also attended a wide variety
of interesting sessions including:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.egi.eu/indico/sessionDisplay.py?sessionId=5&confId=679#20120327" target="_blank">Sustaining the EGIInfrastructure</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.egi.eu/indico/sessionDisplay.py?sessionId=68&confId=679#20120329" target="_blank">Impact of e-Infrastructures: Theories and practices ofassessment methodologies</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.egi.eu/indico/sessionDisplay.py?sessionId=2&confId=679#20120328" target="_blank">Community-tailored Services</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.egi.eu/indico/sessionDisplay.py?sessionId=24&confId=679#20120327" target="_blank">Communication: the key to future funding</a></li>
</ul>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx4-u7EgcsuPBv1bibM09iRx4sicCk7nIKtFYiOxeUdia8pXrVhrNMGYryUerkXEflSwr2Cxnz8Y1E5RiuLrJ6r0Spmo2uIpD6EVkJiw7JpzU8lyIlirPbuedkQzD_yQ9ofvvR_5rbARo/s1600/7024018493_b4f0b1b155_b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx4-u7EgcsuPBv1bibM09iRx4sicCk7nIKtFYiOxeUdia8pXrVhrNMGYryUerkXEflSwr2Cxnz8Y1E5RiuLrJ6r0Spmo2uIpD6EVkJiw7JpzU8lyIlirPbuedkQzD_yQ9ofvvR_5rbARo/s400/7024018493_b4f0b1b155_b.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Each session had its highlights – the EGI session looked at
how to <a href="https://www.egi.eu/indico/getFile.py/access?contribId=101&sessionId=5&resId=1&materialId=slides&confId=679" target="_blank">count the number of users that EGI</a> actually has. They attempted to do this through the use of
VOMS (Virtual Organization Membership Service) but there were problems with the
information contained being out of date or indeed missing in some cases, not
all users being registered, expired users still being in the system and many
more. However at the end of the day they
did eventually come up with a definitive figure which was as accurate as
possible on the day it was calculated – 20706.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Also in this session was a presentation from the German
national grid – D-Grid. They presented
on a <a href="https://www.egi.eu/indico/contributionDisplay.py?contribId=38&confId=679" target="_blank">business model for a sustainable Grid infrastructure</a>. The slides from this session are definitely
worth a look for anyone interested in the next stage of national
e-infrastructure.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I also presented on the NGS Campus and Community Champion
initiatives at the NGS in the session on Communication. To save me telling you all about it, I’m
instead going to provide a link to a <a href="http://gridtalk-project.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/us-xsede-ripple-effect-crosses-pond-uk.html" target="_blank">blog post written by Elizabeth Leake</a> who
wrote about her take on the session and my presentation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A big congratulations to the local organisers who did a
fantastic job – great venue and great food as well as inbuilt entertainment in
the conference venue. You may have to
join our <a href="http://www.facebook.com/UKNGI" target="_blank">Facebook page</a> to see evidence of this coming soon!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Munich was another great EGI event and we’re already
planning and looking forward to the next one which is the <a href="http://www.egi.eu/news-and-media/newsfeed/news_0134_Technical_Forum_2012.html" target="_blank">EGI Technical Forumin Prague</a> in September. </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-89915338348692600842012-04-04T12:06:00.002+01:002012-04-04T12:06:51.319+01:00Doing a lot of talking about software<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGrDaofd87xBOStSnL-tWpDREtdh8dMI9jvFxQEjTkQgfBFcrzSX5-PbOuhqygplzk5nhRdEL1NpeHmXBVdrtg2TnbCcjovRI9UEJFRPS-920-_uLN4vGvaiL197N-82NukAU584y7Ha0/s1600/P1030118.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGrDaofd87xBOStSnL-tWpDREtdh8dMI9jvFxQEjTkQgfBFcrzSX5-PbOuhqygplzk5nhRdEL1NpeHmXBVdrtg2TnbCcjovRI9UEJFRPS-920-_uLN4vGvaiL197N-82NukAU584y7Ha0/s200/P1030118.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
Recently I attended the Software Sustainability Institute <a href="http://www.software.ac.uk/cw12" target="_blank">Collaboration Workshop</a> (CW) which was held in a very sunny Oxford for 2 days. It was a busy workshop for me due to being on the steering committee, being part of the events team, chairing a session, giving a lightning talk and scribing for some of the sessions as well!<br />
<br />If you’ve never been to a CW before then the best way to describe it is a conference but not as you know it! In most conferences people sit and listen to one person giving a demo or PowerPoint presentation at the front of a lecture theatre. At a CW people pick the topics they want to discuss and head off into break out rooms to have stimulating and interactive discussions about these topics. Everyone then reconvenes in the main lecture theatre and all the groups report back to inform all delegates of the points and issues raised as well as some possible solutions!<br />
<br />However before the breakout sessions there were some <a href="http://www.software.ac.uk/cw12/cw12-topics-lightning-talks" target="_blank">lightning talks</a> – short presentations done against the clock. Simon Hettrick from SSI makes sure that there are no misunderstandings as a large countdown timer is projected up on the screen along with the one and only slide you are allowed. I have done lightning talks before at SSI events but this time Simon had raised the bar by only giving each delegate a mere 3 mins. As I had to present on both the Campus and Community champs in this time it was a tall order but I made it – just!<br />
<br />After the adrenaline rush of the lightning talks we moved onto the more sedate business of <a href="http://www.software.ac.uk/cw12/cw12-breakout-topics" target="_blank">breakout sessions</a>. During the two days I attended several sessions - <br />
<br />• Building research and communication networks across disciplines<br />• How to blog, and how to run a blog <br />• Bringing together representatives of the research community: Institute's Agents and SSAs, and the SeIUCCR Community and Campus Champions<br />• Using the internet and social media to increase your impact and publicise research to the public and research community <br /><br />From each of these sessions the <a href="http://www.software.ac.uk/cw12/cw12-five-important-things" target="_blank">5 most important points</a> learnt during the session were recorded and reported back along with -<br />
<br />• What are the problems, and are there solutions?<br />• What further work could be done, and who should do it?<br />• Are there any useful resources that people should know about?<br />
<br />All the notes from all the sessions are available through the <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#%21forum/collabw12" target="_blank">Collaborations Workshop 2012 Google Group</a> – you don’t need a Google account to view the information. They make for some very interesting reading particularly if you are a research software engineer or a researcher who uses software!<br />
<br /><a href="http://www.software.ac.uk/gallery/CW12/" target="_blank">Photos from the event</a> are also available which prove just how nice the weather really was before we descended back into winter this week!<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-60118335099450371252012-03-08T16:23:00.000+00:002012-03-08T16:23:29.809+00:00Radio silenceIt's gone a bit quiet over here at the NGS blog lately mainly because I was completely caught up in writing a bid which took over my life for a few weeks. As it was all I did for a couple of weeks I didn't have much to blog about. Hopefully the bid will be successful and we'll have some exciting news for you in the near future!<br />
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Apart from that I have been working with colleagues at SSI in preparation for their <a href="http://www.software.ac.uk/cw12" target="_blank">Collaborations Workshop</a> which will take place on the 21st - 22nd of March. There has been a great response with maximum attendance and a great range of people attending. One of the purposes of the workshop is to get researchers and software engineers working networking to find where they can help each other out. There aren't many conferences out there where the aim is to get everyone talking to each other all day instead of just a few people doing the talking!<br />
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In completely different news I just <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/news/welcome-to-%E2%80%9Cstories-from-the-grid%E2%80%9D" target="_blank">posted an article to the NGS website</a> from EGI. The EGI are showcasing their users research much the same as the NGS user case studies do (wonder where they got the idea from...?). They are doing their case studies in the form of video interviews and the first one focuses on the research of Henry Hocking of the <a href="http://www.conco.eu/" target="_blank">CONCO project</a> who used the grid to analyse naturally occurring molecules in venoms used by marine snails to immobilise their prey. You never would have guessed that one!<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-66977788430937050072012-02-14T09:46:00.000+00:002012-02-14T09:46:12.570+00:00On email addresses in distinguished names<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Those of you who are sysadmins know we have email addresses in host certificates, in their distinguished names (DNs). The origin of this decision is lost in the mists of time - it certainly pre-dates the UK e-Science CA - I seem to remember something about host certificates being used as clients and the email address of the contact appearing in the log file, as a forerunner of "robot" certificates - which can't quite be right because initially we did not give host certificates client extensions. But hosts have been used in this way to implement portals.<div>
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In any case, the practice is now <a href="http://www.ogf.org/documents/GFD.125.pdf">deprecated</a>, mainly because much of our software (strictly speaking incorrectly) depends on the string representation of the DN, and different software stringifies emailaddress in different ways. We have been meaning to get rid of it for a while, waiting only for some code changes and an update to the <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/cpcps">policy</a>.<div>
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In fact the policy needs updating because in a (very small) number of cases we are doing things that are not consistent with the policy - but which are nonetheless wholly consistent with <a href="http://www.igtf.net/">IGTF</a>. Actually the only examples I can think of is that we have permitted two "software robots," a practice which is permitted by IGTF now but wasn't when our policy was written.</div>
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The proposal is now that we remove email addresses from DNs, before the policy rewrite is finished (its about 2/3 done since you ask.) Removing email addresses is clearly consistent with IGTF, but deviates from our historical practice of preserving the end entity DN across all generations of CA certificates. Having an out of date policy is of course not consistent with IGTF...</div>
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The trouble is, how do we know whether people depend on the email address in the DN? We have no way of knowing how the certificates are being used. Of course we could take the approach that if the certificate is being used for unsupported purposes, then you're on your own. OTOH, we have usually strived not to do that, even if grid software makes that quite difficult (see <a href="http://www.ogf.org/documents/GFD.125.pdf">GFD.125</a> again, or every rollover).</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So we need to leave it to the "owner" of the certificate to decide. The easiest way of doing this is JK's proposal, that we remove email address from new certificates, but keep them on renewal. For host certificates, getting a new certificate is often the same amount of work as a renewal. Existing certificates are not affected but if you want your certificate to be affected you could revoke it and get a new one.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And of course all this applies only to hosts, there is no change for personal certificates.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>J Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06262050886023513509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-50841364645118165742012-02-10T11:03:00.003+00:002012-02-10T11:03:47.032+00:00Bits and pieces<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm47QhJPfWMsclwdGhaeC36DpVF2_I_VbvjycPatzcYaiyvEKM6u8MpRP3s_JpnGcjZIUpW01gTQuI2176haTUaR_LVsx_6pTZrtZokhPIOT8-bIgTgNAZaOqNQ9OLmMlMXYc5ElzYY7I/s1600/rush.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm47QhJPfWMsclwdGhaeC36DpVF2_I_VbvjycPatzcYaiyvEKM6u8MpRP3s_JpnGcjZIUpW01gTQuI2176haTUaR_LVsx_6pTZrtZokhPIOT8-bIgTgNAZaOqNQ9OLmMlMXYc5ElzYY7I/s200/rush.jpg" width="200" /></a>It's been one of those weeks with a lot of bits and pieces going on. Busy and varied is how I'd probably sum it up!<br />
<br />
Tuesday was the <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/collaboration-board" target="_blank">NGS Collaboration Board</a> meeting which was held at the University of Birmingham thanks to the kind hospitality of Paul Hatton. The theme of the meeting was reaching out and engaging with potential new communities and existing user communities. Mike Jones gave a presentation on SaRONGS to show how we are making it easier for people to access grid resources and I gave a presentation on the Campus and Community Champions networks. Following on neatly from my presentation was Rebecca Notman who is one of our Community Champions. Rebecca spoke about her role and how the NGS has played a part in her research. There was also plenty of time for discussion with each of our Collaboration Board members updating us on new and activities from their institutions. It seems to be a busy time in the world of research computing!<br />
<br />
Wednesday was the <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/news/ngs-seminar-series-february-2012" target="_blank">next seminar in our short series</a>. This time it was the turn of John Kewley from STFC Daresbury who is the NGS helpdesk manager. After a few technical issues, John spoke about the <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/tools/certwizard" target="_blank">Certificate Wizard</a> - a tool that the NGS produced to help people manage their grid certificate more easily and it seems to have worked. There have been less helpdesk queries regarding certificates since the introduction of the tool.<br />
<br />
Yesterday morning I took part in the steering group for the forthcoming <a href="http://www.software.ac.uk/cw12" target="_blank">Software Sustainability Institute Collaboration Workshop</a>. This is always a really enjoyable conference as it's 2 days of full interactive discussion and networking. If you go to a conference to get peace and quiet to read your email then this isn't for you! Every session is a group discussion session apart from when the groups report back to the conference as a whole. There are some really interesting topics for discussion this year, all of which have been suggested by the attending delegates. If you would like to attend and you are a software developer then <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/news/are-you-a-software-developer" target="_blank">have a look at this</a> as you may be able to get a free place and a contribution towards your expenses.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-38758675668270765222012-02-02T11:33:00.004+00:002012-02-02T11:33:59.860+00:00One down two to go<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcNJfQzKkLQczTO1f5kqZTGNh4HArHC6zGtoDwzEqN6AzITqD0vi5biggqyEpKPAjJC470R_QLRaMszdOn1k1QecJhdcUIT8tHackWrZ-OTY9MNJPNKHXPmXhBpKklh9wYA-mSeKYN9Vc/s1600/1072657_brainy_people.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcNJfQzKkLQczTO1f5kqZTGNh4HArHC6zGtoDwzEqN6AzITqD0vi5biggqyEpKPAjJC470R_QLRaMszdOn1k1QecJhdcUIT8tHackWrZ-OTY9MNJPNKHXPmXhBpKklh9wYA-mSeKYN9Vc/s200/1072657_brainy_people.jpg" width="200" /></a>Yesterday saw the first presentation in our <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/news/ngs-seminar-series-february-2012" target="_blank">short seminar series</a> concentrating on the recent developments in the UK for accessing and managing grid resources.<br />
<br />
I'm pleased (and relieved!) to say that it went well with Mike Jones from the University of Manchester giving a presentation on "<a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/events/ngs-seminar-shibboleth-access-to-resources-on-the-ngs" target="_blank">Shibboleth Access to Resources on the NGS</a>". We had 28 individuals join us on Evo from all over the world including Russia, Italy, USA and Switzerland. It was good to see that our seminar was of interest to people internationally as well.<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/events/ngs-seminar-certificate-management-in-the-uk" target="_blank">next seminar</a> will take place on Wednesday 8th Feb at 10.30am (GMT) and will be looking at the <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/tools/certwizard" target="_blank">Certificate Wizard</a> which makes it easier for users to manage their certificates. If you would like to take part in the seminar either by Access Grid or Evo then please see the <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/events/ngs-seminar-certificate-management-in-the-uk" target="_blank">event listing </a>on our website. You can also RSVP on our <a href="http://www.facebook.com/UKNGI?sk=events" target="_blank">Facebook event page</a>.<br />
<br />
The seminars have been recorded and it is our aim to have these recordings available on the NGS website at the end of the seminar series.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-58921050968762541132012-01-26T16:00:00.000+00:002012-01-26T16:00:41.006+00:00Interested in accessing and managing grid resources?If so then read on!<br />
<br />
The NGS is hosting a short but sweet <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/news/ngs-seminar-series-february-2012" target="_blank">seminar series</a> starting next Wednesday (1st Feb). There will be 3 seminars over the 3 weeks each lasting approximately 30 minutes and the best thing about them is that you can join in no matter where you are - all you need is the internet!<br />
<br />
We wanted to make the seminars as open to everyone as we possibly could and, after some deliberation, we decided to use the <a href="http://evo.caltech.edu/evoGate/" target="_blank">Evo technology</a>. This is free for everyone to use - all you have to do is to register and I recommend doing this at least the day before. This isn't anything to do with Evo's registration process more that it took several hours for my university email system to allow my confirmation email through...<br />
<br />
So what are the topics that we will be discussing? <br />
<br />
<b>1st February - Shibboleth Access to Resources on the NGS – Mike Jones, NGS, University of Manchester</b><br />This talk will demonstrate how it is possible to access and use NGS resources using institutional login credentials (via the UK Access Management Federation). It will describe how the UK's two main e-Science authentication systems are combined to form an easy to use yet robust identity management environment. It will discuss how this mechanism links together with system, project and Virtual Organisation (VO) registration procedures.<br /><br /><b>8th February - Certificate Management in the UK - John Kewley, NGS, STFC Daresbury</b> <b>Laboratory</b><br />The NGS helpdesk receives many tickets relating to certificates (and certificate renewal in particular): largely due to browser incompatibilities. In order to tackle this problem, the NGS has devised CertWizard which is a browser-independent certificate tool. The presentation will give an introduction to the UK e-Science CA, which has issued over 30,000 certificates, and its associated software and interfaces, including CertWizard. <br />It will show how modernisations are being made at various stages of the certificate lifecycle, making it easier than ever for users to manage their e-Science Certificate.<br /><br /><b>15th February - Moonshot - next generation federated identity - Josh Howlett, JANET</b><br />Federated identity yields significant benefits for users and services by increasing the usability of services, reducing identity management costs and improving regulatory compliance.<br />A number of different technical strategies for federating identity have emerged during the past decade, with differing levels of success. These technologies address different types of use case, resulting in significant complexity for both users, services and trust infrastructure providers.<br />This complexity impedes the adoption of services and increasing operational costs. Moreover, there are many use cases where these technologies do not provide a solution.<br />Project Moonshot is an ambitious Janet-led initiative, building on existing deployed technologies, that aim to develop a single unified and standardised approach that satisfies all of the authentication and authorisation requirements of the education & research community. Much of the technology has now been implemented, and is now being tested within the Janet Moonshot Technology Pilot.<br />This presentation will provide an overview of some of the motivating use cases for Moonshot and an overview of the technology and the implementation.<br />
<br />
Full details of how to join the seminars are available on the <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/news/ngs-seminar-series-february-2012" target="_blank">NGS website event page</a> but if you have any queries then please <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/contact-helpdesk" target="_blank">contact the helpdesk</a> and we will do our utmost to help you join in.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-70334163064865440582012-01-19T16:11:00.002+00:002012-01-19T16:11:13.225+00:00It's that time of year again...My inbox seems to be full of emails regarding conference calls for papers, early bird registrations, conference deadlines etc. Yes it's conference preparation season and its in full swing!<br />
<br />
I received confirmation today that I'll be giving a paper at the forthcoming <a href="http://cf2012.egi.eu/" target="_blank">EGI Community Forum</a> on our champions networks. I'll be talking about both our <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/campus-champions" target="_blank">Campus</a> and <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/seiuccr/meetthechampions" target="_blank">Community</a> champion networks and how we work with each other to promote e-infrastructure in the UK. Several other NGS staff have also had papers accepted on topics including "Linking Authenticating and Authorising Infrastructures in the UK NGI (SARoNGS)" (Mike Jones) and "Tweaking the Certificate Lifecycle for the UK eScience CA" (John Kewley).<br />
<br />
Also in my inbox this week was an announcement from the <a href="http://software.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Software Sustainability Institute</a> (SSI) announcing that registration for their <a href="http://software.ac.uk/cw12" target="_blank">Collaboration Workshop 2012</a> (CW) is now open. This is on of my favourite events as, unlike most conferences, you don't sit passively listening. The CW consists of breakout groups where you discuss topics submitted by the attendees and there's always one of interest to me in every session. After the discussion a member of the break out group volunteers to report back to the CW as a whole. This means that you get to hear what all the other break out groups were talking about and you can still feedback on their outcomes as well. <br />
<br />
It's a really lively meeting and you leave after 2 days feeling tired but feeling that you've achieved something worthwhile! It's also a great place for networking with new people as there are researchers from a wide variety of research areas, IT people, community support people and people like myself who represent national initiatives. To see some of the topics already suggested for discussion visit the <a href="http://software.ac.uk/cw12/cw12-breakout-topics" target="_blank">event website</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-59758058254459198802012-01-12T11:10:00.002+00:002012-01-12T11:10:45.515+00:00Just incase you missed it....A new edition of the <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/ngs-news" target="_blank">quarterly NGS newsletter</a> was released in December so if you missed it in the pre-Christmas rush, now is a chance to catch up!<br />
<br />
This edition featured articles on -<br />
<ul>
<li>the adoption of Globus Online by the NGS</li>
<li>NGS involvement in the EGI Federated Cloud Task Force and the benefits for NGS users</li>
<li>NGS user case study - Scalable Road Traffic Monitoring using Grid Computing</li>
<li>...and more!</li>
</ul>
I am always looking for new articles or suggestions for articles for the newsletter so if you have anything you would like to see in the next edition (March) then please <a href="mailto:gillian.sinclair@manchester.ac.uk" target="_blank">let me know</a>. The next edition will coincide with conference season so copies of the newsletter will be distributed at the forthcoming <a href="http://software.ac.uk/cw12" target="_blank">SSI Collaboration Workshop</a> and the <a href="http://cf2012.egi.eu/" target="_blank">EGI Community Forum</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-74527352255498570232012-01-05T11:31:00.001+00:002012-01-05T11:31:19.207+00:00Happy new year!I hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year break.<br />
<br />
It's back to work and planning for the future here at the NGS with several future events on my to do list. <br />
<br />
At the end of last year I finished off the last of our user case studies which highlight how our users have used NGS resources and the advantages it has brought them. The <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/case-studies" target="_blank">full set of case studies </a>numbers 29 with the latest arrivals listed below - <br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/using-the-ngs-to-run-a-computer-tournament-on-social-learning-strategies" target="_blank">Using the NGS to run a computer tournament on social learning strategies</a> - Luke Rendell, University of St Andrews</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/accelerating-the-processing-of-large-corpora-using-grid-computing-technologies-for-lemmatizing-176" target="_blank">Accelerating the Processing of Large Corpora: Using Grid Computing Technologies for Lemmatizing 176 Million Words Arabic Internet Corpus</a> - Majdi Sawalha, University of Leeds</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/computer-simulations-of-biological-molecules-at-the-atomic-level" target="_blank">Computer Simulations of Biological Molecules at the Atomic Level</a> - Sarah Harris, University of Leeds</li>
</ul>
The next set of case studies are at the planning stage but these will take a slightly different direction. The next set of case studies will look at how the NGS is working with large national and international projects to fulfill their objectives. <br />
<br />
Also on the horizon is Easter conference season with several events coming up including the <a href="http://cf2012.egi.eu/" target="_blank">EGI Community Forum</a> which will take place in Munich in March. Several NGS staff have submitted abstracts to this event highlighting work we have carried out in various areas including champion networks, authorisation and authentication.<br />
<br />
The week before Munich is the <a href="http://software.ac.uk/cw12" target="_blank">Software Sustainability Institute Collaboration Workshop</a> which you may remember from previous years. This year the event will be held in Oxford and the NGS is involved in several ways including holding a session for our <a href="http://software.ac.uk/cw12" target="_blank">SeIUCCR Community Champions</a>. Watch this space for more information!<br />
<br />
Apart from attending other organisation's events I have one of our own to organise. Following the success of last years <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/seiuccr/summerschool" target="_blank">SeIUCCR e-infrastructure summer school</a>, we will be holding another summer school this year. After the deluge of applications we had last year, I am planning to advertise earlier this year to give a little more time to go through all the applications! Again keep an eye on the <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/" target="_blank">NGS website</a> and our <a href="http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/NGS-NEWS" target="_blank">mailing list</a> for more information.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-33206632084436570632011-12-20T14:25:00.002+00:002011-12-20T14:25:40.039+00:00The Training Marketplace<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSbVigz8vNmZrO5jDebFnVeGXTXVowoQmgZrej7ki4iQQwxYCHLJa4DMewaioz4ukdQFo04P2AHx8egXfLhvm4KLELsYnyUs7W4qHVrI8X8ggfTvi54WF8FIYHXUlLh6m6v4_Q88ZYCBY/s1600/blackboard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSbVigz8vNmZrO5jDebFnVeGXTXVowoQmgZrej7ki4iQQwxYCHLJa4DMewaioz4ukdQFo04P2AHx8egXfLhvm4KLELsYnyUs7W4qHVrI8X8ggfTvi54WF8FIYHXUlLh6m6v4_Q88ZYCBY/s200/blackboard.jpg" width="195" /></a>Claire Devereux from the NGS introduces the EGI Training Marketplace. <br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.egi.eu/user-support/training_marketplace/" target="_blank">Training Marketplace</a> is a service that allows you to search for or advertise training events and resources throughout the EGI community. These can be events or resources that may be open to absolutely anyone, just those within the EGI community, or they may be specific to a small project or to one country only. The Training Marketplace is the one-stop shop for your training needs as a user and is open and free for both academic and commercial providers to advertise in.<br />
<br />Since May the Training Marketplace has evolved from a simple event and material repository into a interactive site where requirements can be captured, events can be rated, and the tool can be customised and embedded into third-party websites using our gadget generator. <br />
<br />The following types of resources are currently supported:<br />
<ul>
<li>traditional training events, usually classroom based or workshops where people attend in person. They can also include virtual events running at specific times. The difference between training events and online training is that training events have a set start and end time whereas online training is accessible either permanently or over a longer time scale.</li>
</ul>
You can choose to display events as a list, on a calendar or on an interactive map.<br /><ul>
<li>online training, available via the web. This category covers a wealth of resources, from self-study courses that require users to log in and complete exercises at their own pace leading to a qualification, through to online tutorials that users can tap into as they wish.</li>
<li>training resources, physical resources or services available to the community to assist in training. An example of a training resource is the GILDA Certification Authority. GILDA issues temporary (14 day) personal public key certificates (compliant with the X.509 standard) in order to access the GILDA Testbed for user training.</li>
<li>the requirements area is a place for users to describe their training needs and for training providers to see if there is interest in running courses. For example, a provider may post details of potential offerings and ask those interested to visit their website for further details, to check for viability before running a course.</li>
<li>University courses is the place for higher education institutions to advertise their Masters and Doctorate training opportunities.</li>
</ul>
<br />After attending an event or taking part in online training users can rate the event and leave their feedback, letting others know the value of their experience much in the same way are people do with online shopping nowadays.<br /><br />The latest release is a step towards improving the user's experience and looking towards longer term sustainability. It includes the new online training category, much improved search functionality, notifications to authors once entries are published and an improved calendar view. We are now working improve the functionality and appearance of the <a href="http://egitraining.esc.rl.ac.uk/gadget/%20" target="_blank">Training Marketplace gadget</a>, which allows projects or NGIs to embed the EGI Training Marketplace into their own website, pick and choose which parts to include and even skin some elements with their project colours. If you are an NGI or project we would be interested in hearing about your requirements for the gadget, so <a href="mailto:UCST@egi.eu" target="_blank">please contact us</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-73681401059324159602011-12-15T12:27:00.002+00:002011-12-15T12:27:41.752+00:00CA stuff<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Three almost unrelated things, except that they relate to the CA(s), somewhat technical stuff, so bear with me:<div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>If you have renewed your certificate recently and found that it didn't work with VOMS, this is due to a misdesigned "feature" of VOMRS that it insists on registering not just the user name but also the issuer name as part of the account. In the Real World(tm), we can keep the issuer (ie CA) name the same all the time but this does not work with grid middleware, so we have to change issuer name whenever we roll over. The "feature" adds no extra security for grid CAs because the user name will always be unique. There is a workaround that tells the server to ignore the feature, which we thought everyone had been using for years - but this, as Steve Traylen points out, will still cause problems if your certificate expires before you can resign the AUP (surely a rare case?!) - but should otherwise work fine. The best option otherwise seems to be to get your VOMS admin (not VO admin!) to duplicate the account entries, one with each issuer name, the old and the new one. CERN (Steve) has done this with theirs, and we are checking the other ones to see if they have failed to enable skipcacheck. I am both amazed and sorry that we have not discovered (and resolved) this sooner... but Steve is a Wizard(tm) and will fix it... Incidentally, it is not just us, other CAs roll over too - however, many have chosen to extend the lifetime of the existing certificate instead of renaming it - this will then not cause problems with the VOMRS accounts, but it causes problems with server/client synchronisation for HTTPS instead - if the server and client (browser) are not updated in sync (and they never are), some browsers will print obscure error messages and fail to connect (as we know from past experience).</li>
<li>Oh, and another good thing is that the IGTF rules have changed - we can now make the end entity issuing CAs have longer lifetime, so we no longer have to roll over every four years. Hooray!</li>
<li>On the subject of IGTF 1.43 release which came out recently. We're rebuilding the NGS-specific release except we are going back (or forward?) to individual RPMs instead of a single one for the lot - this means we need a couple of dependency RPMs but we should then be able to not mess with the IGTF stuff much and sites can in principle fine tune what they install. We'll have to think about the dependencies carefully.</li>
<li>Related to this (so, er, not entirely unrelated), there is this problem with the IGTF root signing policy file. We're trialing the Least Elegant Workaround(tm) this time, having discussed it at some length, by <i>testing</i> a self-signed version of the SLCS toplevel. This makes it independent of the root in the technical sense of building a verification path and checking signing policy files, so would slot in next to an unmodified IGTF release directly - but the downside is that we now have another self signed certificate that we'd need to establish trust in, and the fact that the policy of the SLCS branch (ie the SARoNGS CA, the CEDA CA, etc.) were supposed to be covered by the root CP. Depending on how good this looks (we're testing it from today), this <i>may</i> appear in 1.43.</li>
<li>Oh yes, and I know I need to get TACAR corrected and updated. This is not trivial (requires writing forms and pgp signatures) so is awaiting a slot where I have some time...</li>
</ul>
<div>
That was three things, for suitably large values of three. If you have any questions, do get in touch...</div>
</div>
</div>J Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06262050886023513509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-29157121211017187342011-12-14T12:32:00.001+00:002011-12-14T12:35:54.640+00:00Return of the Champions<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrAYztt-cHh6ciA_NLMQI4ckWiDHosSatJP4J-Rl12Cl1akDKGMifdU4PGH_0ySWHNYeXfz4aI1ZaoMBqlO5ZJvv95z5YJyqIaK3Bnz6GjXKcm0sWa9UOpYOX-TCYonw1h6OqGishJ3dQ/s1600/trophies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrAYztt-cHh6ciA_NLMQI4ckWiDHosSatJP4J-Rl12Cl1akDKGMifdU4PGH_0ySWHNYeXfz4aI1ZaoMBqlO5ZJvv95z5YJyqIaK3Bnz6GjXKcm0sWa9UOpYOX-TCYonw1h6OqGishJ3dQ/s1600/trophies.jpg" /></a>I’ve recently taken over the organisation of the <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/campus-champions" target="_blank">NGS Campus Champions programme </a>here at the NGS and last week I chaired the first meeting
of the group.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Our Campus Champions come from a number of universities
across the UK and are mainly representatives from IT Services. As for their role and activities on behalf of
the NGS? Well this was one of the main
things I wanted to discuss at the meeting!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thankfully all our Campus Champions agreed with my list of
proposed benefits for them (and us) of being a Champion. In brief the NGS will provide training in
using NGS resources, tools and e-infrastructure; provide access to online
training materials; produce publicity material to help them publicise the NGS
and their role as Champion; hold Campus Champion events at relevant events;
hold bi-monthly phone calls for dissemination of news and information.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In return the Campus Champions will actively promote the NGS
within their institution offering advice and advising researchers; display NGS
Campus Champions publicity material; pass onto the NGS requirements from their
institution and researchers; liaise between researchers, the institution and
the NGS; attend the bi-monthly Campus Champions meeting.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Currently we have 14 institutions with Campus Champions but
we are always looking for more! If you
are interested in becoming a Champion then <a href="mailto:gillian.sinclair@manchester.ac.uk" target="_blank">please contact me</a>. Your site doesn’t have to be a member of the
NGS for it to have a Champion. The
current list of institutions is:</div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"></span>Canterbury Christchurch </li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"><span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span>University of Huddersfield </li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"><span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span>University of Hull </li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"><span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span>University of Liverpool </li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"><span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span>University of Manchester </li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"><span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span>Queen Mary - University of London </li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"><span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span>University of Oxford </li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"><span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span>University of Reading </li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"></span>STFC - Daresbury Laboratory </li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"></span>STFC - Rutherford Appleton Laboratory </li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"></span>University of Sheffield </li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"></span>University of Surrey </li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"></span>University of Sussex </li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"></span>University of York</li>
</ul>
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The next meeting of the Campus Champions will take place by
phone in February but in the meantime I shall be making some changes to the
existing Campus Champion pages on the NGS website. Watch this space!</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-14883067262240817632011-11-28T10:53:00.001+00:002011-11-28T11:07:20.545+00:00Interact with the NGS<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggilA1_d6DQ3LH1VFlvragDEt30E-gXlqhclArIpyYBtPACyRdoFLLJg3EgFXAnWQYAPlDtpjn7lPqQGrwGAnGYQS5HxKURcqW6oexzT0tXaHMi8D9aQ-Av0PqGZYYd_8IzbrdQwazwt4/s1600/We-Need-You.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggilA1_d6DQ3LH1VFlvragDEt30E-gXlqhclArIpyYBtPACyRdoFLLJg3EgFXAnWQYAPlDtpjn7lPqQGrwGAnGYQS5HxKURcqW6oexzT0tXaHMi8D9aQ-Av0PqGZYYd_8IzbrdQwazwt4/s200/We-Need-You.jpg" width="128" /></a>I recently updated the <a href="http://www.facebook.com/UKNGI" target="_blank">NGS presence on Facebook</a> to a new interactive page. Instead of the old-style group page, the NGS now has a new page under the <a href="http://www.ukngi.ac.uk/" target="_blank">UK NGI</a> banner which reflects our role as the lead in the UK National Grid Initiative along with <a href="http://www.gridpp.ac.uk/" target="_blank">GridPP</a>.<br />
<br />
By “liking” our page you can receive news updates from the NGS all in one place as well as news updates from the <a href="http://www.software.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Software Sustainability Institute</a> (SSI) and GridPP. Please feel free to invite your friends and colleagues to "like" our page and to share articles with your friends list - help spread the word about e-infrastructure! <br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-29433798888186411492011-11-23T10:10:00.001+00:002011-11-23T10:42:14.318+00:00NGS at SC'11 - round upThe UK presence was fairly significant this year at <a href="http://sc11.supercomputing.org/" target="_blank">SC'11</a> with attendance by David Wallom, NGS Technical Director and a significant number of the leaders of research computing centres from around UK universities. This included NGS member sites @ Bristol, Leeds, Oxford, Southampton and EPCC.<br />
<br />
In this blog post, David gives us a round up of NGS activities at this major computing event.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsAMZ48tYaAnQV3VEyJqK6I0CM9mwDOrYe-WgtFrdO96Yvmvj7uEqYK8Uloqdygxm9mMG94T7XB9169GcYRTrkoB3X9c6KYTU9t7ymuOcV_66Bu3r5p4y1rkBK_5NwPB2P_UlgliW9sgk/s1600/DSC_3463.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><br />
Having got off of the very long flight from Heathrow<br />
to Seattle we settled onto the metro to get us <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsAMZ48tYaAnQV3VEyJqK6I0CM9mwDOrYe-WgtFrdO96Yvmvj7uEqYK8Uloqdygxm9mMG94T7XB9169GcYRTrkoB3X9c6KYTU9t7ymuOcV_66Bu3r5p4y1rkBK_5NwPB2P_UlgliW9sgk/s1600/DSC_3463.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsAMZ48tYaAnQV3VEyJqK6I0CM9mwDOrYe-WgtFrdO96Yvmvj7uEqYK8Uloqdygxm9mMG94T7XB9169GcYRTrkoB3X9c6KYTU9t7ymuOcV_66Bu3r5p4y1rkBK_5NwPB2P_UlgliW9sgk/s200/DSC_3463.JPG" width="200" /></a>downtown. After passable sleep the following morning we headed over to the SC’11 venue – the Washington Convention Centre to collect our badges and then visit the workshop on HPC in Smart Grid, where there was UK interest from the EC FP7 <a href="http://www.hiperdno.eu/" target="_blank">HiPerDNO project</a> being presented by Dr Stef Salvini, <a href="http://www.oerc.ox.ac.uk/" target="_blank">OeRC</a>. Following a very productive day where we learnt the state of the art in US Smart grids, how they intend to utilize knowledge developed through the national e-infrastructure for research. We then met up with the <a href="http://www.egi.eu/" target="_blank">EGI</a> team who had an exhibition stand at the conference.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsAMZ48tYaAnQV3VEyJqK6I0CM9mwDOrYe-WgtFrdO96Yvmvj7uEqYK8Uloqdygxm9mMG94T7XB9169GcYRTrkoB3X9c6KYTU9t7ymuOcV_66Bu3r5p4y1rkBK_5NwPB2P_UlgliW9sgk/s1600/DSC_3463.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><br />
<br />
The Monday workshop, <a href="http://sc11.supercomputing.org/schedule/event_detail.php?evid=wksp122" target="_blank">Many-Task computing on Grids and Clouds 2011</a>, started off with an interesting keynote from <a href="http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/%7Edavida/" target="_blank">David Abramson</a> (Monash) a long term friend of the NGS through support for their <a href="http://messagelab.monash.edu.au/Nimrod" target="_blank">Nimrod tool</a> which is popular with several of our biosciences users. After this there was a panel session which went slightly off topic to talk about exascale more than Many task but it still attracted several questions around the need for exascale, when we are still struggling to get a significant user base onto smaller HPC systems. Overall a good workshop though having the panel first did mean that a number of people didn’t hang around for the rest of the papers. This workshop was operating in a very competitive market with other sessions on <a href="http://sc11.supercomputing.org/schedule/event_detail.php?evid=wksp119" target="_blank">cloud</a> and <a href="http://sc11.supercomputing.org/schedule/event_detail.php?evid=wksp117" target="_blank">data management</a> which also attracted significant crowds.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFRTE8s9nH4uymx1RgbSgRB9oc-dmDgIX55Nc2dQLWT7TkCv8eLVuhcEEAYrzuNd2afMeqvpFttr0LaPivGDFwQt0HMfW8-cum8YVPknxOmQLLSPyjqL4szvHIuZ9Y66IZ6TGub_ftYYc/s1600/SC1.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFRTE8s9nH4uymx1RgbSgRB9oc-dmDgIX55Nc2dQLWT7TkCv8eLVuhcEEAYrzuNd2afMeqvpFttr0LaPivGDFwQt0HMfW8-cum8YVPknxOmQLLSPyjqL4szvHIuZ9Y66IZ6TGub_ftYYc/s200/SC1.JPG" width="200" /></a>The first full day of the conference allowed for the first good look around the exhibition floor alongside several interesting birds of a feather sessions There was also the first of a number of conversations with different groups and vendors, including Microsoft, Mathworks and Adaptive Computing. To give an idea of scale this picture is down one of the main aisles in one of the 5 rooms that were all about this size!!<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Pretty impressive stands by a number of people<br />
but the <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKKemmxmJLFR92f5fKFSM2FHomLWOz9tC7qbXsyufZ9mE7h46s3otcffft2C_bwrgmfNbpaR_jgzM3e3REyEfnTBKPLAnSxB8O9tjgJmORq6lqj1uthUKLkHUHKyP09m9IaRTKA4LJRtg/s1600/SC2.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKKemmxmJLFR92f5fKFSM2FHomLWOz9tC7qbXsyufZ9mE7h46s3otcffft2C_bwrgmfNbpaR_jgzM3e3REyEfnTBKPLAnSxB8O9tjgJmORq6lqj1uthUKLkHUHKyP09m9IaRTKA4LJRtg/s200/SC2.JPG" width="200" /></a>coolest was the multi projection globe on the<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKKemmxmJLFR92f5fKFSM2FHomLWOz9tC7qbXsyufZ9mE7h46s3otcffft2C_bwrgmfNbpaR_jgzM3e3REyEfnTBKPLAnSxB8O9tjgJmORq6lqj1uthUKLkHUHKyP09m9IaRTKA4LJRtg/s1600/SC2.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a> NOAA stand.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKKemmxmJLFR92f5fKFSM2FHomLWOz9tC7qbXsyufZ9mE7h46s3otcffft2C_bwrgmfNbpaR_jgzM3e3REyEfnTBKPLAnSxB8O9tjgJmORq6lqj1uthUKLkHUHKyP09m9IaRTKA4LJRtg/s1600/SC2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge5lwAhX5LxTzVBAYlaqWYLemKdVe7IRWkwLBZkoinKMY7MC3DEhrRPN28Sd4_c6AG62RtIvTZbIEx-4kQLuBtF9z0WgY8Pb2cKy8T2pMxY1AgVGgnaFO7T-2C84zoUeCM2LtRsKfpuu0/s1600/SC4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge5lwAhX5LxTzVBAYlaqWYLemKdVe7IRWkwLBZkoinKMY7MC3DEhrRPN28Sd4_c6AG62RtIvTZbIEx-4kQLuBtF9z0WgY8Pb2cKy8T2pMxY1AgVGgnaFO7T-2C84zoUeCM2LtRsKfpuu0/s200/SC4.JPG" width="200" /></a>We of course also announced <br />
<a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/news/uk-national-grid-service-ngs-adopts-globus-online" target="_blank">our activity with Globus Online</a> which created a lot of interest and ended with us having a number of interesting conversations with NSF regarding future collaboration between our national e-infrastructures.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
During the meeting the EGI booth was continually visited by a reasonably large number of people, we had the <a href="http://rtm.hep.ph.ic.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Real Time Monitor</a> showing as normal (having seen a lot of 3D screens this needs to be done in 3d now for next year!). They did though give away a pretty large number of t-shirts as did a lot of stands, so I ended up as the <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIHnn7ZCaOtICqAJvCcMUbx7WHQL3MXLVJ2urnN8xHgWoZs-2r3Bx7oNG6ZQowpy-kfuOIiSuenOW_hT90mbzdskrdec1yDbe3X7Ush_xlmoA7kYs8OXxYzS3Glm6KCLZHMztp52Sjho8/s1600/SC3.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIHnn7ZCaOtICqAJvCcMUbx7WHQL3MXLVJ2urnN8xHgWoZs-2r3Bx7oNG6ZQowpy-kfuOIiSuenOW_hT90mbzdskrdec1yDbe3X7Ush_xlmoA7kYs8OXxYzS3Glm6KCLZHMztp52Sjho8/s200/SC3.JPG" width="200" /></a>moving poster board around down town Seattle from 6:30-7am every morning on my morning run!<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-9342698839747404222011-11-18T12:28:00.001+00:002011-11-28T11:08:46.520+00:00Dinosaurs, DNA and nuclear power<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZVuQ1-K93vUk1CTEbhZX2aV12LP6zSdWJe9Sa5Lpo9cHbfc7KtIqfi9lw9Y0_ym-v557Q_oBU7IXXu8VpQlWyhhRUX5bLEFbqgF1nGotmsHF1IZXJv2G7f9QeaWuKuTsZbklJB0sdEBo/s1600/dinosaur.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZVuQ1-K93vUk1CTEbhZX2aV12LP6zSdWJe9Sa5Lpo9cHbfc7KtIqfi9lw9Y0_ym-v557Q_oBU7IXXu8VpQlWyhhRUX5bLEFbqgF1nGotmsHF1IZXJv2G7f9QeaWuKuTsZbklJB0sdEBo/s1600/dinosaur.jpg" /></a>Just a normal month or so in the life of the NGS really but
what do all 3 have in common?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They were all research areas investigated using NGS
resources.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The research of William Sellers, Phil Manning and Karl Bates
on dinosaur locomotion was featured as a “<a href="http://www.egi.eu/results/success_stories/how_fast_could_a_T-rex_run.html" target="_blank">success story</a>” on the EGI
website. They talked about how they used
Grid computing to understand better how dinosaurs moved around and what roles
they played in their ancient world. As
there are no similar animals around today to compare to dinosaurs such as a T. Rex,
the solution is to create a detailed computer simulation of the animal’s
skeleton and muscles.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Not only was their research picked up by EGI but it also
featured in <a href="http://www.isgtw.org/feature/how-fast-could-t-rex-run" target="_blank">iSGTW</a> – fantastic publicity for the researchers and for the NGS!</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve been busy putting together some <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/case-studies" target="_blank">user case studies</a> over
the last few weeks and I’m pleased to say that there are now a few more up on
the website showcasing the large spread of research areas that the NGS facilitates.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
First up is Charlie Laughton from the University of
Nottingham who has been using the NGS for quite some time now. He used the NGS to investigate the <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/finding-new-messages-hidden-in-the-genetic-code-with-the-ngs" target="_blank">flexibility and folding properties of DNA</a> as understanding how the tightly packed DNA in
human cells can still be read can, in turn, help to understand how cells switch
genes on and off. At present there is no clear understanding of how
this works. Being able to influence this
in new ways may ultimately help to find new drugs to treat diseases such as
cancer, develop new biofuels, and crops that can resist climate change.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Charlie said “…without the compute power and high-throughput
provided by the NGS, we would not have been able to deliver our part of the
project in a timely manner. At a more personal level, it led to one of the most
highly cited publications I have ever had.”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
John Allen from the University of Edinburgh explained how
they <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/gridqtl-computational-genetics-via-the-grid" target="_blank">use NGS resources</a> to power the <a href="http://www.gridqtl.org.uk/" target="_blank">GridQTL portal</a> which is used worldwide
to study gene expression in a wide range of organisms.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The team’s use of the NGS has greatly increased the
productivity of their users (currently around 400) in the QTL community. One
example of this is a GridQTL user at the University of Missouri Columbia.
They ran a series of studies on carcass, post-natal growth and reproductive
traits in commercial Angus cattle and found a speed up of from 20 people-weeks,
using their old single server system, to 3 people-weeks to capture and analyse
the data with GridQTL. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Finally we have nuclear power! Paul Martin from the University of
Huddersfield has been using the NGS to <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/using-the-ngs-to-help-determine-the-suitability-of-thoria-for-a-next-generation-nuclear-fuel" target="_blank">investigate the suitability of Thoria asan alternative form of nuclear fuel</a>. Paul’s
research is particularly timely as there is increased interest in the use of
thorium dioxide for nuclear power rods not least because of its comparatively
high abundance in the earth’s crust and low cost. It is for this reason
that, although the main fuel for nuclear power reactors is currently
urania-based, thoria-based fuel is attracting much attention as an alternative
high performance nuclear fuel.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All of our case studies can be found on the <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/case-studies" target="_blank">NGS website</a> and
we now have a collection of 26 covering a wide range of research areas. If you are interested in using the NGS case
studies to promote grid resources then please <a href="mailto:gillian.sinclair@manchester.ac.uk" target="_blank">let us know</a>.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-36824078082969866912011-11-10T12:00:00.003+00:002011-11-10T12:01:33.017+00:00A tangled web we weave<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE0cOhd7BBiT-axObMz6C5-n5RsXl9VBbHEV_Ln4TfwaTCYwH184BZh6y7zqt8UNKJS_hUYxU1oeZqspX6lzxTzavWadHJZjJgIvDjEeE1jLF0u1N6XTF4a_pm80kmZTNNCU9llgz6zzY/s1600/857548_spiderweb_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE0cOhd7BBiT-axObMz6C5-n5RsXl9VBbHEV_Ln4TfwaTCYwH184BZh6y7zqt8UNKJS_hUYxU1oeZqspX6lzxTzavWadHJZjJgIvDjEeE1jLF0u1N6XTF4a_pm80kmZTNNCU9llgz6zzY/s1600/857548_spiderweb_2.jpg" /></a>In the September 2011 edition of <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/sites/default/files/file/newsletters/Sept%202011%20NGS%20news.pdf" target="_blank">NGS News</a>, we published an article by our Technical Director David Wallom which highlighted the networks of champions that exist within the NGS. To compliment this I also received and published <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/news/not-so-secret-agents" target="_blank">an article on our website</a> from Simon Hettrick from the <a href="http://www.software.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Software Sustainability Institute</a> about their network of champions which they have thankfully called <a href="http://www.software.ac.uk/agents" target="_blank">Agents</a>. Too many champions spoil the broth and all that...<br />
<br />
It got me thinking about how these networks all fit together like a spiders web as some people are members of more than one champions network and some institutions have more than one person involved. A tangled web indeed!<br />
<br />
This has probably come to the forefront of my mind as, due to some staff changes at the NGS, I'll be a lot more involved in the organisation of the Campus and Community Champions here at the NGS.<br />
<br />
So what are these Champions and who are they?<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/campus-champions" target="_blank">Campus Champions</a> as suggested by the name, promote the NGS and the services we provide on their university campus or in their institution. They tend to be people involved in research computing or ITS but we also have researchers involved. All NGS member sites are expected to nominate a Campus Champion but we welcome Campus Champions from any UK university or institution. Your site doesn't have to be a member to have a Campus Champion! If you are interested in promoting the NGS at your institution or university (with help and support from the NGS) then please <a href="mailto:gillian.sinclair@manchester.ac.uk" target="_blank">get in touch</a>!<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/seiuccr/meetthechampions" target="_blank">Community Champions</a> are funded by the EPSRC funded <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/seiuccr/home" target="_blank">SeIUCCR</a> project and are researchers who actively use e-infrastructure in their research. They promote to their research community, peers and colleagues from all institutions and universities. We are looking for more Community Champions from all and every research area so if you are interested in promoting your research and your use of the NGS then please <a href="mailto:gillian.sinclair@manchester.ac.uk" target="_blank">get in touch</a>!<br />
<br />
There will be some slight changes to our Champions networks and hopefully you will see a lot more activity from these already active groups. I want to highlight their activities more and demonstrate their contribution to the NGS and e-infrastructure as a whole. I'd also like to link them more closely with the SSI Agents.<br />
<br />
Lots of plans are afoot so watch this space!<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6996317921980758688.post-69201547037139207512011-10-27T11:43:00.000+01:002011-10-27T11:43:10.105+01:00A smattering of updatesOver conference season there was what can only be described as a smattering of small announcements that you may have missed during your travels. The blog seems like an ideal place to gather these together!<br />
<br /><b>NGS News</b><br />The latest edition of our quarterly newsletter was released in time for conference season. Available to <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/ngs-news">download from our website</a>, September’s edition contains articles on -<br />
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<li>A round up of news from Europe including the release of the first Unified Middleware Distribution</li>
<li>An introduction to the new Certificate Wizard</li>
<li>Championing e-Research and e-infrastructure - the Campus and Community Champions</li>
<li>NGS user case study - Using the NGS to model the climate impact of aircraft emissions</li>
<li>...and more!</li>
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<b>Tell us what you think!</b><br />Also on the website we have a new poll on the <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/">home page</a>. This time we are asking people how easy it is to find the information they are looking for on the NGS website. So no matter if you are a frequent or occasional visitor to the NGS website, let us know by voting in our poll. It can be found on the right hand side of the homepage.<br />
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<b>Busy users</b><br />There is a new NGS user case study on the website. Maria Holstensson from the Institute of Cancer Research explains how she is <a href="http://www.ngs.ac.uk/optimisation-of-imaging-during-radionuclide-therapy-using-simulations">using the NGS to optimise cancer treatment for children suffering neuroblastoma</a>. <br />
<br />Children with neuroblastoma who are being treated with targeted radionuclide therapy can have their treatment monitored with gamma camera images. These images are used to calculate the amount of drug taken up by the tumour and to estimate the radiation dose. However the image quality can be poor due to scattering and interference. Maria Holstensson from the Institute of Cancer Research is looking at tackling these problems.<br />
<br />Maria said "<i>We have had absolutely fantastic help from the NGS and as a result of using the Grid we have been able to run multiple parallel simulations that we would not have been able to run otherwise</i>".<br />
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<b>How many?!</b><br />We’re pleased to announce that we now have over 1000 subscribers our fortnightly NGS news bulletin. We have subscribers from all over the UK and much further afield with 21 countries represented amongst our subscribers. <br />
The news bulletin is delivered to your inbox every second Friday (with some exceptions during conference and holiday season!) and contains news from the NGS, updates from our member sites, details of forthcoming relevant conferences, calls for papers for relevant journals and much more. You can subscribe to the mailing list from the <a href="https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=NGS-NEWS">JISCmail site</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0