Search results for 'app:weblogs' matching tag 'Science'

Project Trident: A Scientific Workflow Workbench available for download

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Project Trident CTP is now available for download. Project Trident is a scientific workflow workbench MSR External Research has been working on for the past few years, which allows scientists to analyze large, diverse datasets. It’s built on Windows Workflow and utilizes SQL Server (Express or Server). Download it and try it out…

Project Trident

Built on the Windows Workflow Foundation, this scientific workflow workbench allows users to:

Automate analysis and then visualize and explore data

Compose, run, and catalog experiments as workflows

Capture provenance for each experiment

Create a domain-specific workflow library to extend the functionality of the workflow workbench

Use existing services, such as provenance and fault tolerance, or add new services

Schedule workflows over HPC clusters or cloud computing resources

Project Trident: A Scientific Workflow Workbench - Microsoft Research

WWT at TechFest on NYTimes.com

Anonymous — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 06:00:00 GMT

The NYTimes.com article by Ashlee Vance, included a great picture by Stuart Isett for The New York Times showing the dome that was put together for TechFest to demonstrate the planetarium projection mode of WWT as well as the gesture interaction from Andy Wilson and Hrvoje Benko.

Microsoft Maps Course to a Jetsons-Style Future

Stuart Isett for The New York Times

Hrvoje Benko demonstrating a Microsoft projection system that lets people manipulate large video images with their hands.

Microsoft Maps Course to a Jetsons-Style Future - NYTimes.com

Using Flickr for Astronomy – and viewing in WWT

Anonymous — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 06:00:00 GMT

The use of online services such as Flickr to help scientists is in its infancy and applications utilizing commodity based solutions will continue to pick up momentum. I especially like the integration and the ease of use – science should be about discovery and exploration – not about the technology. Of course the ability to view those analyzed images in WorldWide Telescope completes the circle and allows you to view the image in context.

Check out the Orion Nebula.
After it opens up – click on the thumbnail at the top.

You can also add your own – check out Dinoj’s post on the WWT Data Blog - Sticking images on the sky with WWT. For fun you can see the crown for the Corona Borealis overlaid on the sky

See the article written by Frederic Lardinois on ReadWriteWeb.

The Great Gig in the Sky: Using Flickr for Astronomy

Flickr hosts a wide range of beautiful images, but a new project built on top of Flickr's API only focuses on photos of the night sky from amateur astronomers. The Astrometry.net project constantly scans the Astrometry Flickr group for new images to catalog and to add to its open-source sky survey. At the same time, this project also provides a more direct service to the amateur astronomers, as it also analyzes each image and returns a high-quality description of the photo's contents.

The Astrometry group currently has over 400 members, and as Christoper Stumm, a member of the Astrometry.net team, told the Flickr Code blog, the back-end software uses geometric hashing to exactly pinpoint and describe the objects in the images. When you submit an image to the Flickr pool, the robot will not just respond with a comment that contains an exact description of what you see in the image, but it will also annotate the image automatically.

While a lot of members of the Astrometry group use high-end telescopes and cameras, the Astrometry.net solver can also analyze images from consumer-level digital cameras.

While just being able to automatically analyze and catalog these images is pretty cool already, every description also contains a link that displays the image in Microsoft's WordWide Telescope.

Astronomy is one of those few scientific disciplines where dedicated amateurs can still make major discoveries and this is definitely one of the cooler applications of Flickr's API that we have seen in a long time.

The Great Gig in the Sky: Using Flickr for Astronomy - ReadWriteWeb

New Tools Mobilize Local Data to Study Global Environmental Issues from Berkeley Lab

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Here’s a really good article from the folks at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on the collaboration MSR has ongoing between LBL and the Berkeley Water Center. It highlights the use of databases for scientific information as Catharine mentions…

“One of the greatest challenges of the next century will be developing cyber-architectures that allow scientists to easily navigate their digital assets. Today, the internet has given environmental researchers instant access to a wealth of field data. Now, they need a scientific ‘safety deposit box’ system that will not only store this information, but also organize it so it is searchable and ready for analysis,” says van Ingen.

New Tools Mobilize Local Data to Study Global Environmental Issues

Guarding water supplies, protecting endangered species and curbing greenhouse gases is going high-tech. Environmental scientists are turning to innovative cyber-infrastructures and data-mining tools.

As they strive to develop effective strategies for guarding water supplies, protecting endangered species and curbing greenhouse gases, environmental scientists are turning to innovative cyber-infrastructures and data-mining tools developed by an ongoing collaboration between researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Microsoft Research, and the University of California, Berkeley.

The Microsoft eScience program is the primary funder of this project, which is one of numerous ventures cultivated by the Berkeley Water Center (BWC). Launched approximately three years ago by researchers from the Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley’s Colleges of Engineering and Natural Resources, the BWC marshals expertise from public institutions and the private sector in support of projects that enable science and public policy researchers to more easily access and work with water and environmental datasets.

“The most cost-efficient way to impact issues like global climate change and water management is to develop cyber-architectures that organize data and foster scientific collaboration,” says Susan Hubbard, staff scientist in the Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division and associate director of the BWC.

Environmental scientists typically collect data on a project-by-project basis, in campaigns targeted at very specific topics. One study may use NASA satellites to track annual rainfall of deserts around the globe, while another project sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) might measure the annual water tables of the Sahara desert with commercial sensors. The data are then typically stored in local archive systems and accessed by researchers associated with that particular project. These sites are scattered across the country, tend to be aligned with specific campaigns, and are funded by a variety of organizations.

Rest of the article at: New Tools Mobilize Local Data to Study Global Environmental Issues « Berkeley Lab News Center

WorldWide Telescope Academic Development Kit Release -Microsoft Research

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 06:00:00 GMT

With this ADK, users can convert their own astronomical images/data to the format that can be read by WWT and share with other WWT users. Can’t wait to see more images/datasets made available.

WorldWide Telescope Academic Development Kit, January 2009 Release

The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) Academic Development Kit, January 2009 release contains two utilities that enable people to convert their astronomical images, panoramas, sky surveys, and planetary textures to a format that can be read by WWT and shared with other WWT users. It produces image pyramids of the photographs, thumbnails, and WTML files. WTML files are XML files in the WWT format that point to the images on the Internet and store details of how they are to be displayed in WWT and metadata such as image title and credits. The WWT SphereToaster Tool enables users to provide images in an equirectangular format that covers all or part of the inside or outside of a sphere. This includes, for example, cylindrical projections of panoramas and all-sky surveys. SphereToaster converts these to a different projection system—the TOAST system, currently unique to WWT—and then stores an image pyramid of the resulting TOAST-projected image. The tool also produces thumbnails and WTML files. The WWT StudyChopper Tool enables users to provide photographs of small parts of the sky, such as a high-resolution image of the Crab Nebula, and enter appropriate coordinate information and metadata. It creates image pyramids of the photographs, thumbnails, and WTML files. Once the output image pyramids and thumbnails are hosted by the user's servers and the WTML files are made available to others, anyone with access to the WTML files will be able to browse the images in WWT.

WorldWide Telescope Academic Development Kit, January 2009 Release - Microsoft Research

Science Images in Photosynth

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Here are a few really good synths of scientific images in Photosynth. You can find others using Microscopes or Biology. And there is even a Dissected Cat if you have a strong stomach.

Obelia, polyps, golangia by ppberk

Micrographs of powder coating material by SynthSets

Frog Kidney by ppberk

NodeXL for viewing and analyzing network graphs is available again (formally .NetMap)

Anonymous — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 06:00:00 GMT

NodeXL – the app formally know as .NetMap is available again on CodePlex. NodeXL is a Excel template and addin for viewing and analyzing network graphs. There are a whole slew of updates and bug fixes. Check it out….

eScience Unconference

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Just finished up the Unconference event – bridging the Microsoft eScience Workshop and the IEEE e-Science Conference. It was great fun :-)

We ended up with Demos and discussions…and I really appreciate all the folks that participated.

Demos on:

Discussions on:

Clouds and/vs Grids
What is Provenance?
Spatio Temporal Sensitive environment applications.
Why do IT deployments fail in healthcare

InfoMesa Project – Whiteboard for your data

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 06:00:00 GMT

One of neatest apps I’ve see lately is InfoMesa – a project by Sam Batterman – the example is InfoMesa allows any kind of data or visualization to be added to the Whiteboard.

The folks at RENCI are using it in their Social Computing Room (SCR) w/ a 360 degree desktop.

You can download the implementation and code and test it out.

Download

What is it?

InfoMesa is a project to allow scientists to do more science and more discovery in a collaborative and data-rich environment. The metaphor that we have elected to use as the underlying fabric of the InfoMesa is a Whiteboard.

InfoMesa allows any kind of data or visualization to be added to the Whiteboard. Far from static, these tools are interactive, allowing data to be absorbed from data sources like Oracle, SQL Server, Excel Spreadsheets, XML or even Cloud-based web services. InfoMesa, when complete will support imagery, video, 2D connected models, 3D models (lit in a photo realistically manner), web searches, results from web service calls, Image Tile Maps, ScatterPlots, Sticky Notes, Ink Notes, Rich Annotations and Associations.

An Example of a typical InfoMesa Whiteboard is shown here:

Welcome to the InfoMesa Project - Official Launch - Windows Live

University of Washington eScience Institute Rollout Event

Anonymous — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure to participate and present at the UW eScience Institute kickoff event. I really enjoyed the event and and the vision laid out by Ed Lazowska. The talks by David Baker, Martin Savage and Andy Connolly really highlighted the need for resources to help in the eScience space. While the effort is still spinning up, it will be a great resource for scientists at UW to utilize in their efficient adoption of computing technologies. I look forward in continuing to work with UW as we’ve been doing with the Dynameomics project and with the Trident Workbench.

University of Washington eScience Institute" href="http://escience.washington.edu/rollout/index.html" mce_href="http://escience.washington.edu/rollout/index.html">University of Washington eScience Institute Rollout Event

Presentations by:

Phyllis Wise, Provost

Ed Lazowska, Computer Science & Engineering
(Interim Director, eScience Institute)

Dan Fay, Microsoft Research

David Baker, Biochemistry

Martin Savage, Physics

Andy Connolly, Astronomy
Rollout Event for the University of Washington eScience Institute