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During this years annual Microsoft Research TechFest , where Microsoft Research exposes compelling research projects to employees and guests, there are a couple Science related projects being highlighted.  The Computational Ecology and Environmental Science (CEES) group at our Microsoft Research...

If you’re interested in how carbon impacts the overall climate models – you’ll really be interested in the paper just published by Matthew Smith , et al - our Microsoft Researchers from our Computational Ecology and Environmental Science Group (CEES) in Cambridge England.  Not only can you view...

As part of the WorldWide Telescope Apogee release yesterday we also released TeraPixel – the largest, smoothest image of the sky – a spherical image that we believe is the worlds largest image available for anyone to view.  First thing to understand how large a TeraPixel image is – it’s a Million...

For the past year our small EEE team in Microsoft External Research has been working with some fabulous researchers in Brazil looking at the rainforest ecosystem.  The Brazilian Rainforest Sensor Network project—a joint effort of the University of São Paulo , Johns Hopkins University , the São Paulo...

It’s great to see that the technology behind the SenseCam work out of MSR Cambridge is now available for anyone to utilize.  It’s had some real success as an aid for people with memory loss – check out the papers – but it could also be used as a data collection device, I see it being used in environmental...

The article from HPCwire on  Microsoft Injects More Goodies into Windows HPC highlights some of the new features in beta2.  I’m especially happy to see the support for Win7 desktops as computational nodes – desktop cycle stealing, something that always gets asked about.  The other key...

The Microsoft Research External Research group has started a blog – the initial post is from Tony Hey CVP Welcome to the Microsoft External Research blog The inspiration behind this blog is a strong desire to foster connections that lead to meaningful breakthroughs; to engage in ongoing dialog in an...

Now what computational scientist wouldn’t want one of these under their desk.  I like the tagline, “putting ‘work’ back into workstation” . Cray Brings Windows 7 to HPC by Michael Feldman, HPCwire Editor If you thought Windows 7 was just for mere mortals, think again. Microsoft's latest OS is about...

Today Microsoft Research announced the availability of the book - The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery .  The book focuses on the change of all sciences moving from observational, to theoretical, to computational and now to the 4th Paradigm – Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery...

Now that AWS is supporting SDSS, there is probably useful integration between the Worldwide Telescope and the SDSS datasets that can be leveraged, beyond what is currently supported - such as seeing the all the known galaxies in a 3D view – seeing the lattice structure of the universe.  Search and...

When I first saw and heard details about Project “Gemini” , I was blown away by the technology and innovation created by SQL and Excel teams and that held up when I was able to test it out on my own.  It will be especially useful for scientists that want to not only analyze large amounts of data...

Earlier today the code behind the SciScope site was made available at SciScope.CodePlex.com.  This enables others to make their datasets/repositories available and allow others to discover, download and utilize their data in a simple to use website.     Also the semantic support...

Project Tuva , an enhanced video player showcasing Richard Feynman’s “Messenger” lectures is available for all to try out.  It’s the way I’d like to view talks and related information – check it out.  Not only does it allow for web links, images, but it also integrates with the WorldWide Telescope...

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...

The 2009 eScience Workshop will be held at the Gates Center for Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA,  October 15-17, 2009.  The call for papers closes on July 31, 2009 . Call for Papers We invite contributions from all areas of eScience and e-Research including...

I really enjoyed Dan Reed’s latest posting - HPC: Making a Small Fortune - and the need for real innovation in this space, especially with the rise of new technologies – that’s part of the reason we looked at at combining HPC and Databases via the GrayWulf Project … HPC: Making a Small Fortune N.B. I...

Graywulf is the natural evolution of Beowulf Clusters – it brings together HPC clusters and databases to do efficient processing and data management.  It’s name and design also pays homage to Jim Gray – who helped  champion the use of relational databases in the scientific projects. At it’s...

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...

Today is the first day of the MSR TechFest 2009 – a showcase of MSR technologies – you can see pictures from TechFest.  One of the demos I’m loosely tied to is Interactions with an Omni-Directional Projector – which utilizes WorldWide Telescope projected on a dome with gesture interaction. ...

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...

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...

Now you can have your own musical accompaniment to match your voice without having to worry about artistic differences.  I’ll have to play with Songsmith and see if can help even my voice sound decent :-)  But you won’t see me posting the songs or videos online. Just think – you can add a musical...

Papers from the November 2008 drop Microsoft Research I found quite interesting. Txt-it Notes: Paper Based Text Messaging Stuart Taylor - November 2008 Text messaging or SMS (Short Message Service) has be-come a ubiquitous form of communication, particularly amongst the younger generations. However,...

Congratulations to Alex Szalay and his amazing team at JHU for winning the SC’08 Storage Challenge – with the entry GrayWulf:Scalable Clustered Architecture for Data Intensive Computing . GrayWulf – is implemented with SQL Server 2008 Abstract: Data intensive computing presents a significant challenge...

The latest Top 500 list was released at Supercomputing Conference (SC08) in Austin, Texas today and Windows HPC Server 2008 was part of the #10 placed machine [ Dawning 5000A] from Shanghai Supercomputer Center .  This is the top machine outside of US – amazing job by the Windows HPC team.