In this issue:
- Visualization Challenge -- $5,000 prize;
- Radio astronomers harness national ICT services to generate trans-continental data torrents and lead the world;
- UNE joins Intersect;
- ANDS releases first issue of Share: the newsletter of the Australian National Data Service;
- About this newsletter
Visualization Challenge -- $5,000 prize
The eResearch Australasia conference is proud to introduce the annual eResearch Visualization Challenge. The challenge invites researchers, students, practitioners, and educators from diverse disciplines to submit visualizations on a given theme. This year's theme is financial markets; the challenge is sponsored by SIRCA with a data set provided by Thompson Reuters. Entries will be displayed at the conference, and a prize of A$5,000 will be awarded for the winning entry.
The eResearch Visualization Challenge aims to harvest the best examples of meaningful (as opposed to purely artistic) visualizations around an annual theme, to raise the bar for the documentation and communication of the process applied to generate those visualizations, and to sensitize people to the importance of visualization for formal and informal education and the communication of information.
Please see www.eresearch.edu.au/vischallenge for more information. Entries are due by 6 October 2009.
Mike Briers, CEO SIRCA and
Patricia McMillan, eResearch Australasia conference
Radio astronomers harness national ICT services to generate trans-continental data torrents and lead the world
Radio astronomers who collect data from telescopes across Australia have joined a national service that can turn the data into streaming torrents that pour into a central processing centre.
The radio astronomers use telescopes in NSW, Tasmania, the ACT and South Australia that belong to the CSIRO, NASA and the University of Tasmania. Over a typical week, 100s of terabytes of data are generated. This data must be transported to a petabyte-scale storage facility in Perth Technology Park hosted by iVEC, then processed by a supercomputer at Curtin University before distribution to scientists around Australia and internationally.
Previously, the data has been transported on large numbers of hard disks that required shipping.
The radio astronomers have teamed with the Australian Research Collaboration Service (ARCS: http://www.arcs.org.au), a national organisation that offers services that transport volumes of data around Australia using high speed optical fibre networks. ARCS staff convert the data into a series of high speed data torrents that are now streamed to Perth.
“Moving to data transport facilitated by ARCS has streamlined our astronomical facilities, decreased our processing time and saved us money due to drastically reduced shipping costs”, says Prof. Steven Tingay, leader of the radio astronomy team at Curtin University of Technology.
Dr Anastasios Tzioumis, leader of a radio astronomy team at the CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility says “the use of high speed networking is the way of the future in radio astronomy and science in general. Australian scientists are leading the way and we benefit greatly from effective national frameworks provided by organisations such as ARCS”.
Further information from:
Prof. Steven Tingay, Curtin University of Technology, s.tingay@curtin.edu.au (08 9266 3514)
Prof. Anthony Williams, ARCS, anthony.williams@arcs.org.au (08 8303 3546)
Dr. Anastasios Tzioumis, CSIRO ATNF, tasso.tzioumis@csiro.au (02 9372 4350)
UNE joins Intersect
The University of New England (UNE) has voted to join Intersect as a subscribing member for three years.
UNE's A/g PVCR, Prof Ray Cooksey says, "UNE, the first regional Australian university, is very keen to move forward and start working in collaboration with Intersect to pursue mutually advantageous strategic priorities. UNE is particularly interested in working with Intersect to evolve projects that address the needs of rural and regional researchers in a larger collaborative context".
"This is a significant event as UNE is the first university to sign since the foundation members started Intersect last year", says Intersect CEO Ian Gibson. "We welcome UNE as our seventh university member and look forward to working together in the coming years".
“UNE’s membership strengthens the NSW case and helps us represent research needs. Intersect can bring these needs together, and ensure that NSW universities requirements are met”, said Gibson.
Leonie Hellmers
Communications, Intersect
ANDS releases first issue of Share: the newsletter of the Australian National Data Service
The Australian National Data Service (ANDS) is pleased to announce the release of the first issue of Share: the newsletter of the Australian National Data Service.
This quarterly newsletter will feature stories about ANDS engagements, project updates, latest findings, conference reports and forthcoming events.
ANDS hopes that members of the research community will find the newsletter both interesting and informative.
An electronic version (pdf) of each issue is available from the ANDS website http://ands.org.au/newsletters/index.html
To be notified about our forthcoming newsletters, please use the ANDS Newsletter RSS feed, or, subscribe to the ANDS General Google Group
http://groups.google.com.au/group/ands-general/subscribe
David Groenewegen
Deputy Director, Australian National Data Service
About this newsletter
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