[CAnet - news] First International IEEE Conference on eScience and Grid computing

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Internet program web site at http://www.canarie.ca/canet4/library/list.html
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[Excellent upcoming conference in Melbourne Australia on eScience and Grids
Of particular interest is the sensors and instruments track.  Some excerpts
-- BSA]

http://www.gridbus.org/escience/index.html


Title: A Generalized Service-Oriented Architecture for Remote Control of
Scientific Imaging Instruments
Authors: Tomas Molina, George Yang, Abel Lin, Steven Peltier and Mark
Ellisman. Tomas Molina National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research,
University of California at San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive, BSB 1000 La Jolla,
CA 92093-0608.
Abstract. Scientific imaging instruments are used in a variety of
disciplines to gather vital data for research and study. Specifically, in
the biomedical field various types of biological imaging instruments, such
as electron microscopes and light microscopes, are used everyday to acquire
2D and 3D datasets for further understanding of biological structures.
Remote operation or “tele-operation” of instruments has become a popular
solution for research scientists to acquire and share data across research
domains separated by geographical barriers. A generalized software
architecture solution is presented in this paper to use emerging software
technologies to develop a reusable framework to easily integrate instruments
for remote-operation in a safe and secure fashion. Web services have emerged
as a popular technology to provide software applications with a framework to
achieve interoperability and integration with other applications.
This generalized software architecture was developed to take advantage of
web service middleware technology and to provide a solution for easily
plugging in scientific imaging instruments for tele-operation. The
architecture has also incorporated Grid technology to achieve a more
scalable and robust solution for handling the enormous data sets produced
from these instruments. Finally a set of client libraries is presented to
demonstrate a useful API for developers to quickly develop a graphical user
interface to communicate and acquire data from these instruments.

Title: The Common Instrument Middleware Architecture: Overview of Goals and
Implementation
Authors: Tharaka Devadithya, Kenneth Chiu, Donald McMullen and Kia Huffman.
Indiana University and SUNY Binghamton.
Abstract. Instruments and sensors and their accompanying actuators are
essential to the conduct of scientific research. In many cases they provide
observations in
electronic format and can be connected to computer networks with varying
degrees of remote interactivity. These devices vary in their architectures
and type of data they capture and may generate data at various rates. In
this paper we present an overview of the design goals and initial
implementation of the Common Instrument Middleware Architecture (CIMA), a
framework for making instruments and sensors network accessible in a
standards-based, uniform way, and for for interacting remotely with
instruments and the data they produce. Some of the issues CIMA addresses
include: flexibility in network transport, efficient and high throughput
data transport, the availability (or lack of ) computational, storage and
networking resources at the instrument or sensor platform, evolution of
instrument design, and reuse of data acquisition and processing
codes.


Title: The GRIDCC Project
Authors: David Colling and Andrew Stephen McGough.
Department of Computing, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2BZ, UK.
Abstract. The GRIDCC project is integrating into the Grid remote interaction
with instruments, along with distributed control and real time interaction.
The GRIDCC middleware is being designed with use cases from a very diverse
set of applications and so the GRIDCC architecture provides access to the
instruments in as generic a way as possible. The middleware will be
validated on a representative subset of these applications. GRIDCC is also
developing an adaptable user interface and a mechanism for performing
complex workflows in order to increase both the usability and the usefulness
of the system. Wherever possible the GRIDCC middleware builds on top of
other middleware stacks allowing the effort to be concentrated on the more
novel elements of the project. The GRIDCC project is a collaboration between
10 organizations in 4 different countries and is funded by the European
Union.


Title: Sensor Networks and Grid Middleware for Laboratory Monitoring
Authors: Jamie Michael Robinson, Jeremy G Frey, Andy J Stanford-Clark,
Andrew D Reynolds and Bharat V Bedi, School of Chemistry, University of
Southampton, SOUTHAMPTON, SO17 2HJ, England.
Abstract. By combining automatic environment sensing and experimental data
collection with broker based messaging middleware, a system has been
produced for the real-time monitoring of experiments whilst away from the
lab. Changes in the laboratory environment are encapsulated as simple XML
messages, which are published using an MQTT compliant broker. Clients
subscribe to the MQTT stream, and perform a data transform on the messages;
this may be to produce a user display or to change the format of the message
for republishing. For example an MQTT client written for the Java MIDP
platform, can be run on a smart-phone with a GPRS Internet connection,
freeing us from the constraints of the network. We present an overview of
the technologies used, and how these are helping chemists make the best use
of their time.



Title: Monitoring and remote control of scientific instrumentation through
the Grid
Authors: Claudio Vuerli, Giuliano Taffoni, Igor Coretti, Fabio Pasian and
Paolo Santin
Claudio Vuerli, INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, Via Tiepolo 11,
I-34131 Trieste (Italy).
Abstract. Grid infrastructures currently in use for production purposes are
strongly computing-oriented, suitable for scientific communities whose
applications require intensive computation on a relatively small amount of
data. Middleware implementations underlying such infrastructures well
support the sharing and distribution of Grid-embedded computational
resources but problems arise when trying to use such Grids to satisfy the
sharing of data-oriented and services-oriented resources. The Grid
middleware model does not allow the embedding of a meta-computing machine.
Some scientific communities are strongly limited in using such Grid
infrastructures for their applications; they have a wider perception of the
Grid and their applications require not only traditional computation but
also access to complex data repositories and services as well as mixed
distributed computations. The astrophysical community certainly has this
perception of the Grid.
This work concentrates on the interoperability aspects between the Grid and
the scientific instrumentation. The new IE (Instrument Element) Grid Element
has been designed, built and tested for this purpose.

The IE makes possible to monitor and remotely control any scientific
instrumentation. The first implementation of the IE is focused on the
monitoring aspects; astronomers having access to a Grid infrastructure
through a Grid-UI can interface the observing facility where his/her
observing runs are in progress and check the telemetric data as well as
scientific data during their acquisition. Future releases of the IE will be
extended to the remote control so that remote working sessions using remote
astronomical instrumentation shall also be possible.

This work is part of the wider project (including the Query Element) whose
goal is to exploit the Grid technology to build a homogeneous astronomical
working environment where scientific data are acquired, checked, compared
with data coming from other databases, processed and stored.

Title: Elettra Virtual Collaboratory: the evolution of a Virtual Laboratory
Software
Authors: Roberto Pugliese, Alessandro Busato, Alessio Curri, Enrico
Mariotti, Daniele Favretto, Valentina Chenda, Fulvio Billè, Michele
Turcinovich, Roberto Borghes, Lawrence Iviani, Fabio Asnicar and Laura Del
Cano., Sincrotrone Trieste S.C.p.A. di interesse nazionale, Strada Statale
14 - km 163,5 in AREA Science Park, 34012 Basovizza, Trieste ITALY.
Abstract. Elettra Virtual Collaboratory (EVC) is an example of virtual
laboratory, a system which allows a team of researchers distributed anywhere
in the world to perform a complete experiment on the beamlines and
experimental stations of ELETTRA. The creation and introduction of effective
CSCW systems aims at bringing the following main advantages: provide remote
access to expensive and hard-to-duplicate equipment; increase the
effectiveness of the experimental activity, since more experts can
participate to experiments, give useful hints and solve problems; facilitate
multi-institutional consortia collaborations on large-scale projects

Experience and know-how acquired during the development of the first release
of EVC was exploited in the FP6 EU founded projects in which ELETTRA is
currently involved. In the BIOXHIT project which will develop an integrated
platform for high-throughput structure determination ELETTRA is developing
the Virtual Collaboratory System a Virtual Organization (VO) connecting all
the European laboratories doing research in the field of structural
genomics.

In the EURO TeV project the design study of the International Linear
Collider ELETTRA is developing the Multipurpose Virtual Laboratory, the core
tool to implement the Global Accelerator Network, a VO connecting all the
international laboratories doing research in the field of Accelerators.
Remote control of an accelerator facility has the potential of
revolutionizing the mode of operation and the degree of exploitation of
large experimental physics facilities. The first prototype of the system
allowed in May 2005 the remote control of ELETTRA storage ring from DESY.

The GRIDCC project (Grid Enabled Instrumentation with Distributed Control
and Computation) has the goal of extending the by introducing the handling
of real-time constraints and interactive response into the existing Grid
middleware. GRIDCC will introduce the concept of GRID enabled sensor which
is extremely important for industrial applications.

The paper describes the status ofthe Elettra Virtual Collaboratory as
evolved under the pressure of the above mentioned projects and presents the
development plans for the future.

Title: Grid-enabling an existing instrument-based national service
Authors: Simon Coles, Jeremy Frey, Mike Hursthouse, Mark Light, Mike
Surridge, Ken Meacham, Hugo Mills, Dave DeRoure and Ed Zaluska, School of
Chemistry, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom.
Abstract. Recent work by the UK National Crystallography Service (NCS) has
integrated the service environment into a Grid environment. The existing
high-throughput crystallography facility is enhanced by on-line feedback and
the ability to monitor and steer diffraction experiments remotely.
Grid-based security mechanisms are used to determine authorisation
attributes and hence to allow user interaction at appropriate stages,
together with access of a database recording the status of the submitted
samples. The user can see the position of their samples, be alerted to all
stages from submission to experiment and then analysis, visualise raw data
as it is generated, be involved in the key decision-making during the
parameterisation and initialization of the experiment and may then monitor
the data collection to ensure its successful completion. Results data are
staged to a secure area and made available for download (either the raw
diffraction data or as a refined structure generated by NCS staff).




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