Content about data management systems

Scientific output is not just about academic papers: datasets, software, and various forms of multimedia may be produced in the course of research. It is vital that these diverse outputs be citable using persistent identifiers, so that the sharing and the reuse of such materials can be tracked. 

Two weeks ago, the ODIN first year conference was held at CERN to discuss the challenges related to increasing the interoperability of persistent author and object identifiers. These efforts are of particular relevance to large research organizations like CERN, where some high-level datasets have recently been made available to other scientists for re-use.  Equally, the large numbers of collaborators working on the experiments on the Large Hadron Collider can make correct attribution of articles and datasets challenging, too.

Ewan Birney, associate director of the European Bioinformatics Institute, says that biology has now transformed to become a 'big-data science'. Ahead of his keynote talk at this month’s EUDAT 2nd conference, he explains that the field faces both what he terms 'blue-' and 'white-collar problems' in handling this data deluge.

Plus, could DNA really be the future of data storage? Birney believes it could be. "DNA is remarkable," he says. "Just one gram of DNA can store about a petabyte’s worth of data… it's estimated that you could put the whole internet into the size of a van!"

Last week, ISC Cloud ’13 was held in Heidelberg, Germany. Delegates at the event agreed on the importance of supporting research with ‘utility computing’ models, whereby cloud-based, on-demand HPC services are used ad hoc to support in-house computing resources at times of heavy demand. Also, example use cases of HPC in the cloud were given and the importance of training was discussed.

iSGTW speaks to CERN openlab’s Sverre Jarp, ahead of this month’s inaugural ISC Big Data conference in Heidelberg, Germany. Jarp, who is the general chair of the event, picks his highlights from the conference program and tells us why big data presents exciting opportunities, but also poses challenges, for enterprise and HPC alike. 

Today, 88% of fish stocks in the European Union are fished beyond their maximum sustainable yield, which has led to a steady decline in average fish size over the past 20 years.

Discover how the iMarine initiative is establishing a vital data infrastructure to help facilitate research in this field and improve fisheries management.

DANTE (Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe) recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. Today, the pan-European network infrastructure (GÉANT) managed by DANTE connects 50 million people at 10,000 institutions across Europe.

Horizon 2020, the European Commission’s next funding cycle, is set to launch in January 2014. With less than a year to go, you may be wondering: what is Horizon 2020? What makes it different to the frameworks that preceded it? And what are the implications, both for the e-infrastructure projects themselves and the researchers who benefit from them? e-Science Briefing’s Stefan Janusz gives an overview of the road ahead...

The EU-funded MyHealthAvatar project is testing the idea of a Europe-wide network of health avatars for each individual citizen. Each avatar will be a web-based data depository containing a full record of that individual’s health status. The project aims to collect and provide access to a combination of data sources, simulations models, data-mining techniques, organ systems, and space-time scales. 

A significant expansion of the CERN Computer Centre was inaugurated last week. The project, for which construction work began in April 2011, has seen the addition of a new computer room housing 90 new racks of servers, enabling critical systems to be decoupled from those deemed non-critical.

Niall Gaffney has managed some of the richest astronomical data ever recorded in terms of scientific and public impact. In his new role at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), Gaffney will oversee the center's big data strategy, and will help TACC address challenges with core techniques and technologies.

- Amber Harmon

Last week, iSGTW was at the European Grid Infrastructure Community Forum 2013. Find out what Nancy Rothwell, Peter Coveney, Kostas Glinos, and Steven Newhouse had to say during the opening plenary session. The quartet touch on a range of topics, from the importance of human capital and uniting e-infrastructures, to open access and future funding mechanisms.