Content about Policy

The next European framework funding program, which begins 2014, was introduced at the EGI Technical Forum in Lyon last week, and will set aside 80 Billion Euros for research and innovation.

Announcement - e-Science Talk is coming to ERIN4Africa, Helsinki, 9-10 December Due to the success of e-Concertation in Geneva this month, e-Science Talk has been invited to become a media partner at the 2010 Euro-Africa Week on ICT Research and e-Infrastructures, to be held in Helsinki, Finland on 7-10  December 7-10, 2010.  We will be blogging live on GridCast from this four-day conference, which is  supported by the European Commission, the African Union Commission and the Finnish government’s ministries for foreign affairs, employment and economy. The agenda is: •    7-8, Dec, 2010 — “3rd Euro-Africa Cooperation Forum on ICT Research” •    9-10, Dec, 2010 — “2010 Euro-Africa e-Infrastructures Conference”  •    10, Dec, 2010 — Lab Visits Registration is free of charge, but pre-registration is required. Registration forms are available at the following l

Image of the Week - e-Science at the Globe

Image courtesy e-Science Talk

Do you want to know what e-science and e-infrastructures can do for your research?
If so, an important event about e-science is happening at the CERN Globe on Thursday 4th November 2010: the 8th e-Infrastructure Concertation Meeting. This event, organized by e-Science Talk, will gather key figures in the e-infrastructures' community and discuss the evolving distributed computing landscape. The aim of the two-day event is to talk about the long-term sustainability of e-infrastructure scientific research in Europe.
Keep your schedules free for Thursday 4th and Friday 5th November 2010: watch the event live on the upcoming webcast and join the online discussions to have your say.
More information to follow shortly so keep your eyes on the web.

Feature - Project profile: ESFRI

Image courtesy GridTalk

So, just what is ESFRI?The European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) is a European Commission initiative whose role is to guide policymaking on Research Infrastructures (RIs) in Europe. ESFRI projects span social and biomedical sciences, earth and physical sciences, energy, infrastructures and analytical facilities.
The ESFRI projects are detailed in the ESFRI Roadmap, which was last updated in 2008. A new version of this document is due to be released in 2010 and will include also input from the e-Infrastructure Reflection Group (e-IRG), a body which defines and recommends best practices for pan-European e-Infrastructure efforts.
But with such wide scope and vision, the ESFRI projects will place large demands on the storage, processing and networking services of Europe’s e-Infrastructures. To address this, the European e-Infrastructure Forum (EEF) has released a report addressing the future requiremen

Feature - The long view: A conversation with John Wood

John Wood, speaking at the EGEE 09 conference in Barcelona. Image courtesy EGEE 09

John Wood is one of the key people behind ESFRI (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures), the organization charged with creating a “roadmap” that identifies the key infrastructure needs of researchers for the next 10- to 20- years. The roughly 44 projects that ESFRI singled out are typically pan-European; they require funding from many countries to build and operate; and require cyberinfrastructure to provide access to their data for their global user communities. The projects cover all types of subject matter, from studies of language use to greenhouse-gas monitoring, and typically require research infrastructures that can handle truly vast amounts of date. (For example, the astronomy project known as the Square Kilometer Array will transport over 5,000 times the total IP traffic of the entire AT&T US backbone.)At EGEE 09

Feature - Standards are the GLUE 2.0 With many projects involved, a truly universal standard can be a challenge. Image courtesy of NorduGrid and Vicky White In a major step forward, the Open Grid Forum, or OGF, announced on Tuesday, March 3 that they endorsed the GLUE 2.0 specification as the international grid standard. The specification delivers the long-awaited common information model of grid entities. This document is a product of the international grid community, with contributions from the largest grid infrastructure projects and their middleware providers, such as EGEE, Open Science Grid, TeraGrid, NorduGrid, NAREGI and practical experiences from the science collaborations around the Large Hadron Collider (WLCG).“During recent years, the grid community has been working very hard to reach convergence on how grid entities are modelled and described. The non-existence of a common information model has always been a major obstacle to interoperability. The release of the GLUE 2.0 specification as an OGF proposed standard

  Image of the week - Dilbert and performance reviews Copyrighted image, courtesy of Dilbert.com. Used with permission. Women are still perceived as 'technically incompetent' and must work harder to prove themselves, says a recent report: Women in ICT, 2008. See also GridBriefing, page 2, bottom of section entitled "The leaky pipeline; the glass ceiling."  

Quotes of the week - “We will wield technology’s wonders . . .” Steven Chu, Energy Secretary Image courtesy of doe.gov As U.S. president Obama was sworn into office on 20 January, he offered encouraging words to the scientific community:"We'll restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost.  We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories." American scientists celebrated both at home and abroad as they listened to their new president highlight the importance of science and technology to our future. "There was applause in the CERN cafeteria," said Elizabeth Clements of Fermilab, at CERN on a visit.Two days later, Steven Chu, the new Energy Secretary, addressed the national laboratories. Chu identified energy as the defining issue of our time, and said that he had accepted the position largely to address environmental issues such as climate change and finding altern

Link of the week - What is the grid, anyway? The computing grid has been likened to the electrical power grid, in which large institutions share resources according to demand. Image courtesy of sxc.hu Our Link of the Week this time is the latest of our GridBriefings, where we attempt to answer a question as old as the grid: Just what is the grid?In "Grid computing in five minutes," you see case studies of the grid in action, running the gamut from nuclear fusion to earth science to agriculture. And you can hear what different people have to say about what it is, how it works, why it matters, and the challenges for its future.For example, Faïrouz Malek, LHC ATLAS experiment physicist and scientific project leader for the LHC Computing Grid in France, says: “As a particle physicist in the 90s, I witnessed the birth of the World WideWeb: I still remember the trouble I causedin my experiment when I suggested wecreate a web page to facilitate interactionbetween international members. I havesince witnessed the b

Grid computing walks the standard line: thinking inside the box With many projects involved, truly seamlesss interoperability can be a challenge.Image courtesy of NorduGrid and Vicky White“Standard” is often equated with “average” or “boring.” How can you innovate or invent when you’re bound by standards and regulations? How can you push the boundaries when you’re stuck inside a box?Yet how can you create something on a grand scale—something that can slot into place with other grand things—unless you create something interoperable. Something . . . standard.In this special feature, former iSGTW editor (and now GridTalk editor) Cristy Burne reports on this easily overlooked aspect of grid computing. Why should we care? Standardizing grids: the current landscape Challenges for the future The way forward A standard in action: GridFTP A “de facto” standard: VOMSBONUS FEATURE: What does the grid community have to say about standards? (See what people from inst

Announcement - OGF-Europe: Europe backs open standards to advance grid adoption Open Grid Forum’s global mission is to encourage pervasive grid adoption through achieving interoperable software standards.Image courtesy of OGFThe Open Grid Forum this week announced the creation of OGF-Europe, funded by the European Commission for Mobilizing and Integrating Communities on Grid Standards & Best Practices Globally. OGF-Europe will capitalize on European Commission investments in grid technologies by driving grid adoption and innovation across Europe in research, government and industry.The OGF-Europe project is aligned with OGF’s global mission of pervasive grid adoption through interoperable software standards. Key deliverables include outreach seminars and workshops, adoption challenges and recommendations reports; community surveys, best practice reports and tutorials. OGF-Europe will also co-ordinate an “Industry Experts” council to better understand how European enterprises are dealing with issues sur