e-Science and e-Social Science News Archive
Complete our short user survey and enter a draw to win an iPod.
In order for us to improve the ReDReSS site and provide the best possible service to our users we are carrying out a user survey. This should take no longer than 5 minutes to complete and will be a chance for you to tell us what you like about our site, which features you use most often and what improvements you would like to see. This survey also gives us a chance to learn a bit more about the thousands of users we get each month.
Once you have completed the survey you can chose to enter our prize draw for an 80Gb iPod. Any data gathered will be anonymised when reported and any personal information will be kept confidential. You will be asked to leave your e-mail address to enter the draw but we will not give this to 3rd parties. The draw date for the iPod has now been extended to 31st July 2008.
Date News Article Published: 01 March 2008.
Are Current Statistical Packages Moving Towards Parallel Programming ?
"The following is a reply that we obtained from some statistical software companies. Further investigation on other statistical packages is currently being done and the website will be updated when more information is obtained.
STATA:
There are some plans to investigate the extent to which it is possible to produce a commercially viable version of STATA for SMP. Some initial work has been done and small test parallel version of STATA for SMP machines has been created. However, even if the SMP project were to become very active, it will take some time before even a full test version is complete.
STATA are not working at the moment to create a version of STATA for Cluster computing.
SPSS:
There is no plan of SPSS being developed for use as a parallel processing language or as cluster programming yet. We believe that we wont see it in the next couple of years at least.
SAS
Beginning in SAS9, selected functionalities in the SAS/STAT procedures GLM, LOESS, REG, and ROBUSTREG have been multithreaded to exploit hardware with multiple CPUs. See http://www2.sas.com/proceedings/sugi27/p246-27.pdf for more details.
Security and Confidentiality (for the social sciences) Workshop 15 March 2006 (Lancaster UK)
This workshop aims to provides an overview of the techniques used in computer systems and applications to ensure that even in a multi-institution Grid computing environment data, communication and applications are guaranteed to meet a specific quality of reliable security and confidentiality. This includes issues of usability, such as confidentiality and validation. The risk of intrusion and tampering cannot be completely eliminated, thereby putting an emphasis on early detection, correction and damage limitation to handle hacking attempts.
More information on the Security and Confidentiality Workshop.
NCeSS TRAINING SCHOOL 27 February - 2 March 2006 (Manchester UK)
This training event has been designed in response to the technical skills questionnaire that was distributed to you several months ago. We have endeavoured to cover all the areas that you requested and the training will be suitable for everyone from beginners to those who already have knowledge of the Grid. We are encouraging anyone from the nodes to attend this course if it will be of interest and help in their research. This includes PhD students, RAs, PIs, etc.
This is a joint event developed by a training consortium composed of the High Performance Computing Service ( University of Sheffield ), National e-Science Centre ( University of Edinburgh ), ReDReSS ( University of Lancaster ) and the National Centre for e-Social Science.
The aim of the course is to give participants a solid grounding in core grid middleware and related technologies using the National Grid Service (NGS).
The training programme consists of a mixture of theory and practical sessions using each of the technologies introduced. While it is not essential, the practical sessions of this course will require a basic knowledge level of UNIX.
Further details are available on the NCeSS website (please note this page is not publicly accessible) - NCeSS Training School.
Knowledge Management and Sematic Services 25 January 2006 (Lancaster UK)
A free one day workshop. The need for research/educational communities to effectively manage the information and services they use has long been recognised. It is possible that a well-managed information flow can contribute to improving the ultimate efficiency and productivity of a research/educational community. Knowledge Management is about making the best use of intellectual capital and is critical to a research/educational communities' sustained success. To some groups one of the key features of Knowledge Management is that it seeks to enhance their success and efficiency by preserving the intellectual capital, transferring knowledge and experience, and encouraging continual learning. The nurturing and sharing of intellectual capital is crucial in stimulating innovative new ideas and approaches and for the competitive sustainability of a research/educational community.
Grid-Enabled Information Workshop, 5 October 2005 (Lancaster UK, or access grid)
The aim of the workshop is to establish the relevance of Information Management for e-social scientists throughout the research process, from data acquisition, data management, data analysis, leading to the transformation of data into information which can be used to shape social science knowledge. The benefits of developing e-science based tools to support and enhance this process will be explored.
http://www.ncess.ac.uk/events/#gridenabledAll Hands Meeting, 20 - 22nd September 2005 (Nottingham UK)
The fourth UK e-Science Programme All Hands Meeting (AHM 2005) will be held at the East Midlands Conference Centre ( EMCC ), Nottingham, from 20 - 22nd September 2005.