DOE at Work on Scientific 'Knowledgebase'

Internet Evolution (08/08/11) Ariella Brown

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently completed the research and development phase of the Systems Biology Knowledgebase (Kbase) project, which aims to make plant and microbial life data more accessible for scientific sharing and integration. Kbase will be useful to those who want to apply the project's data, metadata, and tools for modeling and predictive technologies to help the production of renewable biofuels and a reduce carbon in the environment, according to DOE researchers. The integration of the data, combined with computational models, is expected to greatly accelerate scientific advancements. "There are many different 'silos' of information that have been painstakingly collected; and there are a number of existing tools that bring some strands of data into relation," says Michael Schatz, a quantitative biologist involved in the project. "But there is no overarching tool that can be used across silos." Kbase would enable different labs to submit data and to advance the body of knowledge and spur innovations in predictive biology. DOE hopes Kbase will evolve into a system that can grow as needed and be used by scientists without extensive training in applications.

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NSF's Seidel: 'Software Is the Modern Language of Science'

HPC Wire (08/09/11) Jan Zverina

Software is the core technology behind a dramatic acceleration in all areas of science, and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the science community are faced with the challenge of building a cyberinfrastructure model that integrates advancing technologies, says NSF's Edward Seidel. NSF's Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) program, the successor to the TeraGrid project, is intended to be the most powerful cluster of advanced digital resources and services in the world. "I think XSEDE probably marks the beginning of a national architecture with the capability of actually putting some order into [multiple approaches to observation, experimentation, computation, and data analysis]," says Seidel. Technological innovations are creating a multilevel cybercrisis, including the problem of managing the exponentially increasing data volumes produced by various digital resources, according to Seidel. This flood of data offers opportunities for potentially powerful national and possibly global collaborations. "We need to be thinking about developing cyberinfrastructure, software engineering, and capabilities to mix and match components, as well as data sharing policies, that really enable scenarios such as coupled hurricane and storm surge prediction, as well as the human response to such events," Seidel says.

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Lebanese Mirror of Google AppEngine

Getting Started: Java

This tutorial describes how to develop and deploy a simple Java project with Google App Engine. The example project, a guest book, demonstrates how to use the Java runtime environment, and how to use several App Engine services, including the datastore and Google Accounts.

read more :  http://blog.cofares.net/gappengine/appengine/docs/java/gettingstarted/index.html

12 Things You See Every Day That Wouldn't Exist Without Linux

Linux is everywhere.
Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, told us, "You use Linux every day but you don't know it. It's such a fundamental part of our lives.
"The world without Linux might be a very different place. It's one where computing is kind of crappy and homogeneous. You're still using Windows CE on your crappy Windows cell phone. That world is grim and dark and Linux is a reason why that world doesn't exist.
"It runs air traffic control, it runs your bank, and it runs nuclear submarines. Your life, money, and death is in Linux's hands, so we can keep you alive, clean you out, or kill you. It's incredible how important it is."
We checked around, and it's true. Linux is all over the place. We rounded up some of the less obvious and more offbeat things that depend upon Linux to function.

Click here to see unlikely things that depend on Linux >

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/linux-based-devices-2011-7##ixzz1T6FnCvm4

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Mirorring now the OCW for Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Visit the mirror.

Graduates of MIT's electrical engineering and computer science department work in diverse industries and conduct research in a broad range of areas.

Read more about Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT (OSLM Mirror)