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Archive for e-science

Nature: Big Data

September 4, 2008 at 12:04 pm · Filed under e-science

The journal Nature has just come out with its latest issue, which includes a special section on “Big Data” — the flood of scientific data and its implications for science and for scholarly communication. It includes several superb articles, and a brief commentary that I’ve written on data curation issues. Readers interested in cyberinfrastructure, e-science or data curation and management will find much of value here. The special section is available for public access at present (the site says it will be open for two weeks), and can be found at:
http://www.nature.com/news/specials/bigdata/index.html

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Program Coordinator (Virtual School)

August 20, 2008 at 11:31 am · Filed under digital humanities, e-science, humanities computing

NCSA Position Notice — Search #11983

Program Coordinator (Virtual School)

Blue Waters Project Office/Education
Overview:

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign has one Program Coordinator position
available. This position will be the coordinator for Educational
Initiatives for the Virtual School of Computational Science and
Engineering (VSCSE) with the responsibility of working with the VSCSE
Director to develop and launch educational activities for the Virtual
School. The primary responsibility of this individual is to work with
the Virtual School Director to realize the goals of the Virtual School
through the development and implementation of new educational activities
and programs. This program is part of the Blue Waters Education Program
that is managed by the Technical Program Manager for Education.
Required Education and Experience:

* M.S. degree in science, engineering, computer science or related
field required (Ph.D. preferred). Alternative degree fields will be
considered if accompanied by equivalent experience (depending on nature
and depth of experience as it relates to computational science and
engineering research).
* At least 2 years of professional experience beyond (or before)
M.S. or Ph.D. degree required.

This is an academic professional position at NCSA and is a 12-month,
100%-time appointment with regular University benefits. Salary is
commensurate with experience and start date will be as soon as possible
after the close date of the search. Interviews may be conducted before
the closing date, although no hiring decisions will be made until after
the search has closed.

For full consideration, please send letter of application, resume, and
three letters of recommendation, referencing Search #11983 by email
(preferred) to: career@ncsa.uiuc.edu [PDF or Word docs only please] by
August 29, 2008.

Hard copies (with an email address) may be sent to:

NCSA Human Resources, search #11983
1008 NCSA Building
1205 W. Clark St.
Urbana, Illinois 61801
217/265-0618
fax: 217/244-9878
Email: career@ncsa.uiuc.edu
URL: http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/AboutUs/Employment/

The University of Illinois is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity
employer.

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A Workshop on Humanities Applications for the World Community Grid

August 20, 2008 at 10:50 am · Filed under digital humanities, e-science, humanities computing

On October 6, 2008, IBM will be sponsoring a free one-day workshop in Washington, DC on high performance computing for humanities and social science research.
This workshop is aimed at digital humanities scholars, computer scientists working on humanities applications, library information professionals, and others who are involved in humanities and social science research using large digital datasets. The session will be hosted by IBM computer scientists who will conduct a hands-on session describing how high performance computing systems like IBM’s World Community Grid can be used for humanities research.
The workshop is intended to be much more than just a high-level introduction. There will be numerous technical demonstrations and opportunities for participants to discuss potential HPC projects. Topics will include: how to parallelize your code; useful tools and utilities; data storage and access; and a technical overview of the World Community Grid architecture.
Brett Bobley and Peter Losin from the Office of Digital Humanities at the National Endowment for the Humanities have been invited to discuss some of the NEH’s grant opportunities for humanities projects involving high performance computing.


If attendees are already involved in projects that involve heavy computation, they are encouraged to bring sample code, data, and outputs so that they can speak with IBM scientists about potential next steps for taking advantage of high performance computing. While the demonstrations will be using the World Community Grid, our hope is that attendees will learn valuable information that could also be applied to other HPC platforms.
The workshop will be held from 10 AM – 3 PM on October 6, 2008 at the IBM Institute for Electronic Government at 1301 K Street, NW, Washington, DC. To register, please contact Sherry Swick, sherry@us.ibm.com. Available spaces will be filled on a first-come, first served basis.
More about the World Community Grid
World Community Grid, a philanthropic initiative developed by the IBM Corporation, offers researchers a unique opportunity to accelerate the pace of their work while also mobilizing people worldwide around critical social issues.
Launched by IBM in November 2004, World Community Grid uses grid technology to harness the plentiful, underutilized resource of PCs and laptops to support humanitarian research. Today, volunteers around the globe have donated the computational power of close to 1 million PCs; World Community Grid is harnessing their power when the computers are on but not in use to help advance promising research. Results on critical health issues have already been achieved, demonstrating World Community Grid’s potential to make significant inroads on a great range of future projects that can benefit the world.
World Community Grid is available free-of-charge only to public and not-for-profit organizations to use in humanitarian research that might otherwise not be completed due to the high cost of the computer infrastructure required in the absence of a public grid. As part of IBM’s commitment to advancing human welfare, all results must be published in the public domain and made public to the global research community. Current research partners include The Scripps Research Institute, The University of Texas Medical Branch, New York University, University of Washingon, French Muscular Dystrophy Association, the University of Cape Town and The Ontario Cancer Institute.
If you are interested in having your project considered for World Community Grid, please go to:
http://worldcommunitygrid.org/projects_showcase/viewSubmitAProposal.do.

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ACLS Digital Innovation Fellowship Program, 2008-09

August 14, 2008 at 9:36 am · Filed under digital humanities, e-science, humanities computing

Friends,

We have now launched our fourth competition for the ACLS Digital Innovation Fellowship Program.

These fellowships are intended to support an academic year dedicated to work on a major scholarly project which is in the humanities or humanistic social sciences and which best exemplifies the integration of such research with the use of computing, networking, or other information technology-based tools. The online application for the fellowship program is located at http://ofa.acls.org; applications must be completed by October 2, 2008 (decisions to be announced in late March 2009).

Thanks to the generous support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, up to six Digital Innovation Fellowships will be awarded in this competition year, for tenure beginning in 2009-2010. As this program aims to provide the means for pursuing digitally-based scholarly projects, the fellowship include a stipend of up to $60,000 to allow an academic year’s leave from teaching, as well as project funds of up to $25,000 for purposes such as access to tools and personnel for digital production, collaborative work with other scholars and with humanities or computing research centers, and the dissemination and preservation of projects.

The ACLS criteria for judging applications include the project’s intellectual ambitions and technological underpinnings, likely contribution as a digital scholarly work to research in the humanities and related fields, satisfacton of technical requirements for a successful research project, degree and significance of preliminary work; potential for promoting teamwork and collaboration (where appropriate), and articulation with local infrastructure at the applicant’s home institution.

Applicants must be citizens or permanent residents of the United States as of the application deadline date and must hold a Ph.D. degree conferred prior to the application deadline. However, established scholars who can demonstrate the equivalent of the Ph.D. in publications and professional experience may also qualify.

Please distribute this notice widely!

All best wishes,

Saul Fisher

*********************************
Saul Fisher
Director of Fellowship Programs
American Council of Learned Societies
633 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10017-6795
+1 212 697 1505 x124
sfisher@acls.org

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Stanford Humanities Center: 2009-10 Fellowship Opportunities

August 14, 2008 at 9:26 am · Filed under digital humanities, e-science, humanities computing

Announcement of Faculty Fellowships

at the Stanford Humanities Center

We would appreciate if you would share this information with colleagues who may be interested:

The online application for 2009-2010 faculty fellowships at the Stanford Humanities Center is now available. Fellows are in residence at the Center during the regular academic year (September to June) and participate in the Center’s intellectual life, sharing ideas and work in progress with a diverse community of scholars from across the spectrum of academic fields and ranks.

Applicants must have a PhD and will normally be at least three years beyond receipt of the degree by the start of the fellowship term. Fellows are awarded stipends of up to $60,000. In addition, a housing and moving allowance of up to $15,000 is offered, dependent upon need.

Please visit http://shc.stanford.edu/fellowships/about.htm for complete information.

How to Apply

For the online application and more information, please see our website:

http://shc.stanford.edu/fellowships/about.htm

email: shc-fellowships@stanford.edu

phone: (650) 723-3054

External Faculty Fellowships

Open to scholars from humanities departments as traditionally defined and to other scholars seriously interested in humanistic issues.

Fellowship term: September 2009 - June 2010

Online application deadline: October 15, 2008

Digital Humanities Fellowship

Open to scholars whose research projects are critically shaped by information technology. Projects should be oriented to producing new research outcomes rather than focusing primarily on the creation of archives or software. Appropriate projects will approach significant questions in humanistic study with the aid of new research tools or methodologies.

Fellowship term: September 2009 - June 2010

Online application deadline: October 15, 2008

Arts Practitioner/Writer Fellowship

The Stanford Humanities Center and the Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts (SiCa) intend to offer one residential fellowship to an arts practitioner who is also a writer, scholar, or critic pursuing a research project in the arts. The recipient will be in residence with other fellows at the Humanities Center and will be affiliated with one of three SiCa centers. Arts inquiries may be addressed sica@stanford.edu.

Fellowship term: September 2008 - June 2009

Online application deadline: December 1, 2008

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NSF Fellowship Funding Avaliable

August 12, 2008 at 12:01 pm · Filed under digital humanities, e-science, education

The United States National Science Foundation (NSF) announced on July 29, 2008, that it is now accepting applications for its Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). The purpose of this program is to ensure the vitality of the scientific and technological workforce in the United States and to reinforce its diversity. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in the relevant science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees.

GRFPs are intended for individuals in the early stages of their graduate study. All applicants are expected to have adequate preparation to begin graduate level study and research by Summer or Fall of 2009. In most cases, this will be demonstrated by a bachelor’s degree earned prior to Fall 2009. Applicants may pursue graduate study at an institution in the United States or affiliate with a foreign institution that grants a graduate degree. Prospective Fellows are responsible for all logistical arrangements required for affiliation with the foreign institution including living arrangements and securing any necessary passports or visas.

NSF expects to award 900-1,600 Graduate Research Fellowships under this program solicitation pending availability of funds. All awards will be for a maximum of three years usable over a 5-year period. The anticipated award date is late March 2009.

To learn more about NSF’s fellowships, including eligibility and how to register, please visit our website, www.oup.org, and select the “NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program” article from our “What’s New” section.

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Adding value to data - Digital Repositories in the e-Science world

June 16, 2008 at 9:49 am · Filed under e-science

Special Session at the 4th IEEE International Conference on e-Science
(http://escience2008.iu.edu/)

December 7-12, 2008, Indianapolis, USA

An Initiative of DReSNet: Digital Repositories in e-Science Network
(http://www.dresnet.net <http://www.dresnet.net/>)

There is a great, untapped potential for synergies between
grid/e-science technologies and a cluster of related systems addressing
the management of digital assets in digital libraries and repositories.
The digital material generated from and used by academic and other
research is to an increasing extent being held in formal data management
systems; these systems are variously categorized as digital
repositories, libraries or archives, although the distinction between
them relates more to the sort of data that they contain and the use to
which the data is put, rather than to any major difference in
functionality. Modern repository systems allow us to move away from the
model of a stand-alone repository, library or archive, where objects are
simply deposited for subsequent access and download. Instead,
researchers are developing more sophisticated models in which these
containers of data are integrated components of a larger e-Science
research infrastructure, incorporating advanced tools and workflows, and
are being used to model complex webs of information and capture
scholarly or scientific processes in their entirety, from raw data
through to final publications. Repositories have been successfully
combined with data grid technologies, and in addition computational
grids seem to offer possible applications in digital preservation and
curation, such as automatic metadata extraction and index creation.
These systems thus could add value to the data-driven research lifecycle
in e-Science.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Project Bamboo

June 5, 2008 at 1:05 pm · Filed under collaboration, digital humanities, e-science, eresearch, humanities computing, internet, web2.0

Bamboo is a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary, and inter-organizational effort that brings together researchers in arts and humanities, computer scientists, information scientists, librarians, and campus information technologists to tackle the question:

How can we advance arts and humanities research through the development of shared technology services? (link)

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Repository Interface for Overlaid Journal Archives

May 19, 2008 at 10:16 am · Filed under collaboration, e-science

This project is in part an attempt to address the issue of data re-use in research (but not the Humanities).

RIOJA will create a tool to support automated interactions between journal software and public repositories. The project will also build a pilot “overlay journal”, which will demonstrate interactions between the arXiv subject repository and OJS journal software, facilitated by the RIOJA tool. Additionally, RIOJA will explore some of the social and economic aspects of building certification onto repositories. A large-scale survey of researchers from the field of Astrophysics and Cosmology will be carried out, and a feasibility study on the costs and sustainability of an overlay journal in this field will be published.

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May 1 and Online Academic Labour

May 1, 2008 at 10:35 pm · Filed under collaboration, digital humanities, e-science, humanities computing

Dear Humanist,

This project from a student at MIT (User Labor Markup Language (ULML)is pertinent given that today is May 1. And I find the question of the fair and productive use of labour online, including academic labour, one of the most interesting at the moment. For instance ‘My Experiment, a project from the Science community here is the UK, is a good model of ‘online collaboration’ as it ’saves’ (or efficiently uses) academic labour through the process of sharing academic energies and resources. It doesn’t add unnecessary layers to the research process, but perhaps does what computing has always promised to do, and this is make our tasks more efficient and less labour intensive. http://www.myexperiment.org

We are probably on the verge of some major structural shifts in how universities manage academic labour through their computing networks and indeed this is reflected in broader social and economic arrangements. The city where I live, London, is the archetype of post-industrial city that doesn’t make a damn thing. All London makes are sandwiches for people who work in offices. It is almost impossible to get a decent pair of locally made boots and the idea of an English made car is a foreign to England in the 21st Century as sheep and whale blubber are to modern Australians.

The point is that a lot of universities and large organisations are building systems (cyberinfrastructure or otherwise) that exploit labour of some form, but often without an equal understanding of the labour relationships that occur through these systems. The value of any collaborative system, that are increasingly being used by humanists everywhere, is the value of the small steps taken to reach useful intellectual goals. However, it is how these small steps are managed and exploited that raises some very interesting questions. Are we creating ill-considered ‘Dikensian’ factories of the mind, or are we using our efforts and energies wisely to build useful knowledge about the world where we still critique the tools at our disposal to reach those goals?

Kind regards,

Craig Bellamy

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 07:59:37 -0400
From: Burak Arikan <arikan@media.mit.edu>
Subject: [iDC] User Labor
To: idc@mailman.thing.net
Message-ID: <C1B300AA-927C-4214-94F9-4D324D12D35E@media.mit.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=”us-ascii”

Hi everyone,

Today is May Day, we celebrate the social and economic achievements  of the labor movement ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Labor_movement ). In this important day, we wanted to announce our  project User Labor.

User Labor Markup Language (ULML), is an open data structure to  outline the metrics of user participation in social web services. Our  aim is to construct criteria and context for determining the value of  user labor for distribution. We believe that universality,  transparency, and accessibility of user labor metrics will ultimately  lead to more sustainable service cycles in social web.

Please see the examples on the User Labor website. Your feedback and  contribution is very important to improve this project.

http://userlabor.org/

Thank you,
Burak

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What is the OGSA-DAI project?

April 30, 2008 at 12:33 pm · Filed under collaboration, digital humanities, e-science, humanities computing

The aim of the OGSA-DAI project is to develop middleware to assist with access and integration of data from separate sources via the grid. The project was conceived by the UK Database Task Force and is working closely with the Open Grid Forum DAIS-WG. OGSA-DAI is funded as one of three OMII-UK sites which together aim to provide software and support to enable a sustained future for the UK e-Science community and its international collaborators. The project works closely with the Globus, ADMIRE, OMII-Europe, NextGRID, SIMDAT and BEinGRID teams to ensure the OGSA-DAI software works in a variety of grid environments (link to project).

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The Desmond Tutu Digital Archive

April 9, 2008 at 11:14 am · Filed under digital humanities, e-science, eresearch, history

(Another ambitious project from the Centre for Computing in the Humanities here at King’s…see other CCH projects at link)

The purpose of the Desmond Tutu Digital Archive project is to create a multimedia digital archive of the personal papers and recordings of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, which will be made available over the internet free of charge. The Archive will be fully interactive, with tools to facilitate access by people of all cultures, all ages and all levels of learning and experience, not only in South Africa but all over the world. The project is fully endorsed and supported by Archbishop Tutu.

A multi-phase project is envisaged: in the first phases, archive materials held in a number of locations in South Africa will be digitised. These include more than 200,000 pages of documents, over 1,000 hours of live audio recordings, potentially hundreds of hours of video and large collections of photographs (link)

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JISC Conference 2008: Enabling innovation

April 9, 2008 at 11:03 am · Filed under digital humanities, e-science, events, humanities computing, internet

Start date: 15 April 2008 09:00

End date: 15 April 2008 16:00

Venue: International Convention Centre, Birmingham

Follow the conference online

If you’re not attending the conference, you can follow what’s happening on the day (15 April) with:

  • Live video-streaming5 of the opening and closing keynote speeches
  • Conference social networking site6 so you can network online
  • Micro-blogging of the parallel sessions (Twitter) conference tag: jiscconference08
  • Live image sharing of the conference day (Flickr)
  • Podcasts of interviews and recordings of parallel sessions

Plus, after the conference there will be:

  • Screencasts of parallel session presentations (PowerPoint and audio – Slideshare)
  • Videos of some of the more popular parallel sessions

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New MA in Digital Assett Management at King’s College; London

April 4, 2008 at 3:11 pm · Filed under digital humanities, e-science, education, eresearch, humanities computing

This is the new MA offered by the Centre of eResearch and the Centre for Computing in the Humanities here at King’s.

The Centre for e-Research (CeRch) in collaboration with the Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH) is proposing to establish an MA in Digital Asset Management (MADAM). The goal of MADAM is to address what is seen as a major gap in education and training at postgraduate level in an increasingly important area of library, archival and curatorial activity, namely the management of digital resources.

Within the cultural heritage sector, there has been an increasing amount of activity over several years in the creation of digital resources, either by creating digital facsimiles of existing cultural artifacts, or by creating new (‘born digital’) resources. In government, both local and central, and in commerce and industry, more and more of the information created in the normal course of activity is in electronic form, whether as web publications, email, or documents in word-processed, spreadsheet or PDF formats.

There are important considerations of curatorial and technical standards that arise throughout the ‘digital resource life-cycle’, from creation through management and dissemination to long-term preservation. These considerations and this life-cycle are the core subject matter of the proposed new MA programme in Digital Asset Management.

The new programme will be able to take advantage of activities and areas of expertise in which King’s College London has international standing, and will offer imaginative intellectual and practical training in areas that are of major and growing importance in contemporary society. The intention is to develop a programme that is strongly inter-disciplinary. At the outset, the focus will be on resources across the humanities disciplines but over time the course will be expanded to cover the social sciences, medicine and the biomedical sciences.

Further details about the programme and how to register will be available shortly. To express an interest in the course and for an outline of the core module, please email Lydia.horstman@kcl.ac.uk

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Developing the UK’s e-infrastructure for science and innovation

October 12, 2007 at 1:01 am · Filed under collaboration, creative commons, digital humanities, e-science, education, humanities computing, internet, open source, technology, tools, web2.0

Produced by the Office of Science and Innovation (OSI) e-Infrastructure Working Group, the report - Developing the UK’s e-infrastructure for science and innovation - sets out the requirements for a national e-infrastructure to help ensure the UK maintains and indeed enhances its global standing in science and innovation in an increasingly competitive world (link)

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