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Content about information science

August 12, 2015
Is XSEDE a wise use of public money?

Is the $26 million invested in the XSEDE organization and its services a cost-effective way to deliver cyberinfrastructure services to the US open research community? Researchers took on this question at the recent XSEDE15 conference. 

July 15, 2015
The #beautyofcomputing campaign

July 2, 2015
XSEDE15 Conference

 XSEDE15, the fourth annual conference, will showcase the discoveries, innovations, challenges and achievements of those who utilize and support XSEDE resources and services, as well as other digital resources and services throughout the world.

This year's theme is "Scientific advancements enabled by enhanced cyberinfrastructure."

XSEDE15 takes place July 26-30 at the Renaissance St. Louis Grand Hotel in the heart of downtown St. Louis, Missouri.

July 1, 2015
Historypin: Connecting communities through the power of digital maps

Historypin sits at the intersection of data visualization and crowdsourcing. Take your standard Google map. Add in a dash of grandma’s old photo album. Stir in some memories from the library archives. Season with a pinch of museum curation, and you’ve got a digital history book.

July 1, 2015
HPC for your visual library: How algorithms and supercomputers assess video quality

The volume of video content has exploded in recent years, and museums and libraries face the daunting task of evaluating the condition of their collections to make preservation and access decisions. To meet this challenge, data curators, video engineers, supercomputing experts, and neuroscientists are testing and implementing quality assessment algorithms in supercomputers to rapidly identify levels of video quality in large collections.

June 10, 2015
Making music across the miles: LoLa broadens access and breaks down barriers

Musical collaboration over the internet has been perennially plagued by delay and bad audio; co-performances have been largely a product of smoke and mirrors.

Overcoming the problems of distance, Internet2 and LoLa technology have set a new standard in video conferencing, allowing broader access to high-level musical and educational opportunities.

June 3, 2015
Mining shared photos to make time-lapse videos

A wheeling Milky Way or dancing aurora borealis inspires awe and broadens perspective when viewed across the chronological scales time-lapse videos afford. The trouble is it takes a lot of time to construct these videos. But in the smartphone age, the power of collected photographs enables a more collaborative method.

May 20, 2015
AI points to better decision-making despite poker match loss

Carnegie Mellon University computer scientists looked to Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center supercomputer Blacklight in their construction of Claudico, a poker-playing artificial intelligence. Claudico came up short against the world's best poker players, but what the scientists have learned spells good news for medical decision-making.

May 20, 2015
How the NIH facilitates biomedical research: A conversation with George Komatsoulis

At the recent Internet2 Global Summit iSGTW sat down with George Komatsoulis to talk about the state of distributed research and the NIH Commons, a scalable virtual environment to provide high-performance computing and data storage for bio-medical research. When implemented, the Commons will create a marketplace for digital bio-medical resources, driving down costs and democratizing access.

May 6, 2015
XSEDE: More than just supercomputers — it’s how to use them, too!

You may think XSEDE is nothing more than access to high-performance computing resources. But did you know XSEDE offers a full range of training opportunities to teach your scientists and engineers how to work with supercomputers?  

April 15, 2015
HPC is good for university business

Buying a supercomputer can be a tough sell for administrators to make. A study by Clemson University researchers may change the argument.

March 25, 2015
Bioconductor: harmonizing distributed genomic analysis

 

Big data opens doors previously closed to researchers, yet the volume of data sends scientists looking for analytical tools to bring order from the informational cacophony. Prior to tools like Bioconductor, there were few options for working with quantitative data types; a discordant score for deciphering the human genetic code was the result.

Today, genomic analysis machines create a common language for users, and build a worldwide community to foster developers from among subject matter experts. These instruments make beautiful music from a mass of genomic information.

January 28, 2015
Supercomputers expose the telltale signs of human traffickers

Criminals use technology to exploit their victims, but law enforcement lacks the time and expertise to develop the technology to respond. A student-led project recently won a $3.6 million DARPA grant to change that dynamic by devising cyber tools that identify online human trafficking activity.

January 28, 2015
TACC directs traffic

Austin is a booming city experiencing traffic woes commensurate with its expansion. To model and visualize solutions, city planners look to TACC to help corral the stampede of visitors.

August 13, 2014
Large eddy simulation shows limits of downstream wind turbines

For comparison, scientists considered the cases of aligned and staggered wind turbine arrays in a neutral atmospheric boundary layer, as well as a reference case without wind turbines. Simulation courtesy David Bock, National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US.
August 13, 2014
SoyKB and iPlant streamline complex bioinformatics analysis

Next-generation sequencing (NGS), in which millions or billions of DNA nucleotides are sequenced in parallel, is the backbone of novel discoveries in life sciences, anthropology, social sciences, biomedical sciences and plant sciences. Read about the SoyKB and iPlant collaboration that is taking plant sciences to the next level.

June 18, 2014
The future of 'the information society'

Last week, over 1,600 delegates from across the globe gathered in Geneva, Switzerland, for 'the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) +10 High-Level Event'. A major report published at the event indicates that significant progress has been made over the last decade in increasing mobile cellular coverage, with all rural communities in the world likely to be covered by 2G mobile cellular signals by 2015. However, internet connectivity remains a challenge and access to broadband continues to be unequal.

January 15, 2014
Storing data as DNA – as easy as ACTG?

iSGTW recently interviewed Ewan Birney, associate director of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), regarding his keynote talk at the EUDAT 2nd Conference. In this interview, Birney raised the exciting prospect of using DNA as an organic data storage device. But could DNA storage really replace tapes and hard disks for long-term preservation of data? Charles Harvey investigates… 

October 30, 2013
All data leads to Rome

This week, iSGTW has been at the EUDAT Second Conference in Rome, Italy. EUDAT seeks to support a collaborative data infrastructure which will allow researchers to share data within and between communities and enable them to carry out their research effectively. Read our exclusive interviews with two of the events' most exciting speakers.

May 22, 2013
Science is a voyage — but we need to travel faster, says Ian Foster

One of the highlights of the recent TedxCERN conference was a talk given by Ian Foster, widely known as one of the founders of grid computing. He also spoke to an audience of CERN IT department staff about Globus Online and the challenges of big data.

April 17, 2013
A historic drought yields a harvest of data

In 2012, the United States suffered its worst drought in 24 years, which led to the worst harvest yields in nearly two decades. Read how scientists are using this data to validate crop yield and climate impact models that simulate the effects of climate on agriculture.

April 10, 2013
A Stampede for science

The University of Texas at Austin and TACC competed against the top supercomputing centers and universities to claim one of the most advanced systems in the world — and won. The prize, an estimated $50 million-plus investment over a four-year period.

March 20, 2013
Playing mind games

Calling all citizen scientists. With the exploding availability of data, the need for analysis is steadily becoming a bottleneck in many scientific pursuits. Read about a project aimed at bringing neuroscience to the masses in a way that may surprise and inspire you to take part.

March 13, 2013
Faster than a speeding… supercomputer!

How do scientists use supercomputers to predict complex things like weather, climate, earthquakes, and the formation of galaxies? Watch this video to see how supercomputers handle mathematical modeling.

March 6, 2013
The eyes have it

There is a very real and growing disparity between the ability to capture data and the ability to analyze and visualize it, and turn it into usable intelligence. Read about efforts to aid organizations and agencies in making sense of what they see.