If you'd like to experience a total Eclipse of the Sun - set WWT to 8/1/2008 at 2:23 and put the Lat/Lon at 65/72.

I decided to wait a bit before blogging about the release of WorldWide Telescope (WWT) to see how everything went and what the initial reaction would be.  After Curtis and Jonathan showed me an earlier version over 18 months ago - I knew they were onto something...I fell in love with the sky once again.  The images I could access were nothing short of beautiful and the experience of zooming in and out of spaces was second nature.  Who needs a user manual?  Of course then when you here the excitement in Benjamin's voice as he talks about the crab nebula you also have to remember what it felt like to be a child...

Anyhow, I so loved it when I ran across this post - this is exactly what WWT is all about - letting individuals find interesting items and letting others know about them...

Skull at mars / Esqueleto en Marte

Yesterday I was using the new Microsoft's WWT (World Wide Telescope) and in it's panorama view, I decided to zoom some rocks, and "surprise" I found a little one, very near to the rover wheels, that looks diferent. Here are some pictures, judge them yourself.

JP-IP: Skull at mars / Esqueleto en Marte

The good folks at NCMIR - National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research have released a port of the Scalable Adaptive Graphical Environment (SAGE) for Windows for download.  This allows you to create large tiled displays - we even had one running at our SC07 booth.

Scalable Adaptive Graphical Environment (SAGE) for Windows 32-bit

SAGE is a graphics streaming architecture, originally developed by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago (http://www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/sage/), for supporting high-resolution, scalable and collaborative scientific visualization environments. It is primarily designed to be run as a thin middleware on a high bandwidth-enabled, cluster-driven tile displays. It allows users to treat the high-resolution distributed displays as one contiguous desktop where users can move/resize application windows. SAGE is network centric and the applications running on these displays need not run locally. The applications can be run on remote machines or clusters, and they can stream their pixel frame buffers to SAGE-enabled tile displays.

NCMIR - SAGE

The The World Wide Telescope: A new view of the night sky article by Ian Harvey (CBC news) on WWT - not only captures the excitement around using WWT - highlighting the tour created by 6-year old Benjamin (which gets to me every time I hear it).  The article also gives a really great overview of the project as a whole and the amazing work that Curtis, Jonathan and the rest of the team have done.  I only wish Jim Gray was around to see it...you can read Jim and Alex Szalay's 2002 paper The World-Wide Telescope, an Archetype for Online Science for the background and vision...

The World-Wide Telescope (WWT) will emerge from the world’s online astronomy data. It will have observations in all the observed spectral bands, from the best instruments back to the beginning of history. The “seeing” will always good – the Sun, the Moon, and the clouds will not create dead-time when you cannot observe. Furthermore, all this data can be cross-indexed with the online literature.

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The World-Wide Telescope will also be an extraordinary tool for teaching Astronomy. It gives students at every grade level access to the world’s best telescope.

I see the WWT model as the prototype for accessing and visualizing data in many scientific domains...

The World Wide Telescope: A new view of the night sky

Microsoft imaging project will change how people see the heavens when the website launches in coming weeks

By Ian Harvey CBC News

Benjamin is only six years old, but he's already checked out a Nebula in deep space.

"I read that the Ring Nebula is 2,300 light years away," the Toronto-area child says matter-of-factly in his tiny voice as he leads the online world on his personal tour of deep space. "I don't know how far that is, but it's a very, very long bike ride."

Benjamin is indeed a lucky lad. He has had a glimpse at the stars as most have never seen them - but will soon be able to - thanks to a new web-based project that will launch in the next few weeks from Microsoft Research Labs.

The World Wide Telescope is about to change the way Ben and all the rest of us see the heavens when it launches this spring.

The World Wide Telescope: A new view of the night sky

Just played the "Kill the Peas" game on the new Popfly Game Creator and it was pretty fun...what type of science game could be created...

Popfly Introduces Game Creator Alpha

Today we’re adding something special to Popfly: an early version of our Popfly Game Creator. That’s right: Popfly is about more than mashups and web pages. It’s about making it fun to build things and share them with your friends. And one of the things we’ve heard loud and clear is that games are the kinds of things that people would like to try to build.

What kinds of games can you create? Just about any kind of two-dimensional game, a category that includes things like the original Super Mario™, Frogger™, Asteroids™, and a host of other old arcade games. To make it easy, Popfly is still focused on getting as much done as possible without having to write any code. The game creator has over 15 pre-built game templates for you to try, hundreds of images, animations, backgrounds, and sounds for you to use in the games you create, and, of course, a way for you to write code if you reach the limits of what the user interface can do for you. Since this is Popfly, you can still save, share, and embed your creations everywhere from your blog to your Facebook page to your Windows Vista Sidebar.

Popfly Team Site: Popfly Introduces Game Creator Alpha

On July 18th, Microsoft Research will be hosting the tutorials for the 2008 SciDAC Conference.  SciDAC - Scientific Discovery through Advanced  Computing is part of DOE's Office of Science research program to "support multidisciplinary SciDAC projects aimed at developing future energy sources, studying global climate change, accelerating research in designing new materials,improving environmental cleanup methods, and understanding physics from the tiniest particles to massive supernovae explosions".  It brings together computational scientists, applied mathematicians, and computer scientists from across application domains and from universities and national laboratories across the United States.

Tutorials are open to all, and students and local industry are encouraged to attend - please register to get a spot.  The list of tutorial topics are one the webpage.

SciDAC Tutorials

With the combination of a Vista Tablet PC and these Speech Recognition Macros (thanks Blake) - could that be a basis for a Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN)?  It would be interesting to see if having those different modes of interaction (text, touch, pen, speech, etc) would be enough for scientists...

The Windows Speech Recognition Macros tool (aka WSRMacros) extends the usefulness of the speech recognition capabilities already included in Windows Vista. Users can now create powerful macros that are triggered by spoken commands. These macros can perform a single task, or a series of tasks. Macros can be as simple as inserting your mailing address to as complex as providing a completely different speech interaction utilizing a number of built in capabilities or utilizing custom JScript/VBScript actions.

The Windows Speech Recognition Macros tool (Technical Preview) extends the usefulness of the speech recognition capabilities in Windows Vista. Users can create powerful macros that are triggered by spoken commands which can perform a series of tasks from as simple as inserting your mailing address to as complex as providing a completely different speech interaction with applications. (Thanks Rob)

The Road to Know Where: Microsoft Releases Speech Recognition Macros for Windows Vista

Ran across the release of the Learning Content Development System (LCDS).  Would seem to be a good way to package up some scientific demos/simulations and get it out in short course forms...

What is the LCDS?

The Learning Content Development System (LCDS) is a tool that enables you to create high quality, interactive, online courses. Virtually anyone can publish e-learning courses by completing the easy-to-use LCDS forms that seamlessly generate highly customized content, interactivities, quizzes, games, and assessments—as well as Silverlight-based animations, demos, and other multimedia. Register to download the free LCDS release, then start creating your own e-learning courses today!

Register to download the free LCDS tool

What does the LCDS offer?

With the LCDS, you can:

• Develop and deliver content quickly, while it is timely and relevant.
• Distribute your content via the Web or in a learning management system.
• Deliver Web content that conforms to Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) 1.2, and which can be hosted in a learning management system.
• Upload or attach your existing content. (LCDS supports multiple file formats.)
• Choose from a wide variety of forms for authoring rich e-learning content.
• Develop your course structure and easily rearrange it at any time.

Create Your Own E-Learning

Savas has been coding again :-) - he's updated the FLUXNET Data set visualization to Silverlight  v2. 

Fluxnet move to Silverlight v2.0 Beta 1

It's been a while since I touched the Fluxnet code. Given that the original release was built on Silverlight v1.1, I put some time today in re-implementing it in Silverlight v2.0 Beta 1.

Enjoy.

Fluxnet move to Silverlight v2.0 Beta 1

This year the 5th Microsoft eScience workshop will be co-located with Intl. Conference on e-Science.  The workshop and conference will be Dec 7-12th in Indianapolis at IUPUI.  This will be another great workshop and conference.

Links to previous Microsoft eScience workshops

• Scientific Data Intensive Computing Workshop 2004
• Microsoft Research eScience Workshop 2005
• Microsoft eScience Workshop at John Hopkins University 2006
• 2007 Microsoft eScience Workshop at RENCI

4th IEEE International Conference on e-Science, 2008

The 4th IEEE International Conference on e-Science will be held December 7–12, 2008, in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. You can learn about the latest e-Science research from international experts, develop your technical skills, and make connections with people in other fields.

Paper Submission Important Dates:

• Papers Due: July 20, 2008

Learn more about the conference at escience2008.iu.edu.

4th IEEE International Conference on e-Science, 2008: Indiana University

2008 Microsoft eScience Workshop at IUPUI

December 7-9, 2008

The use of computers creates many challenges as it expands the realm of the possible in scientific research, and many of these challenges are common to researchers in different areas. The insights gained in one area may catalyze change and accelerate discovery in many others.

The goal of this cross-disciplinary workshop is to bring together scientists from different research disciplines to share their research and experiences of how computing is shaping their work and to provide new insights into facilitating scientific discovery. The focus will be on discussion of the computing technologies that enable scalable solutions to scientific grand challenges.

At SC07 I saw a couple of the Container based data centers - it's great to see them in use at the VE Data Center, being 100% wind power.

Virtual Earth / Live Maps: Virtual Earth Data Center now powered by Wind

In an era when the cost** of running a data center far outweighs that of building a data center I was glad to see this story in Data Center Knowledge earlier this week featuring mention of the new Virtual Earth Container based data center in Boulder that is 100% wind powered. [more in Boulder's Daily Camera] This cluster of three trailer sized portable data centers is used for offline processing of the imagery you see in Live Maps and Virtual Earth 3D as well as creation of the 3D building models. Jerry  has some amazing stats (5000 cores!) on the VE Public Sector blog, as well as a couple of photos of the containers inside and out. This is a nice step - we have numerous larger datacenters for online serving that hopefully one day soon could also be powered by alternative energy sources.

** Cost as in total cost including energy, cooling and environmental impact

Virtual Earth / Live Maps: Virtual Earth Data Center now powered by Wind

I was pointed to this on CodePlex - interesting to think how it could be used to enable Science Apps to display their data in 3D.  Check out the samples at http://www.markdawson.org/Kit3D

Kit3D - a 3D graphics engine for Microsoft Silverlight - Home

Kit3D is a 3D graphics engine for Microsoft Silverlight. There is a JavaScript version that runs on the 1.0 bits of Silvelright, however moving forward the engine will be maintained in C#. The library has been refactored to match the System.Windows.Media.Media3D namespace so that it closely matches development for WPF3D syntax (saves me creating documentation :-) )
For some examples of the library in action, see http://www.markdawson.org/Kit3D

Kit3D - a 3D graphics engine for Microsoft Silverlight - Home

Here's an interview Jon Udell did w/ Pablo Fernicola about the Word Addin for Scientific publishing.

Word for scientific publishing

Pablo Fernicola is a group manager at Microsoft.  He runs a project focused on delivering tools and services for scientific and technical publishing, with a particular interest on the  transition from print to electronic and web based content, and its implications for collaboration, search, and content discovery in the future.
In this interview, Pablo explains how a new add-in for Word, now available as a technical preview, helps authors and publishers of scientific articles work more effectively with one another, and with online archives like PubMed Central.

Word for scientific publishing | Jon Udell | Perspectives

In a discussion I had today around ways to advance a scientific problem I was reminded of Jim Gray and Gerd Heber's trilogy - Supporting Finite Element Analysis with a Relational Database Backend.  The three papers are really a good resource for understanding how databases can be used in scientific challenges.

Part I: There is Life beyond Files

We show how to use a Relational Database Management System in support of Finite Element Analysis. We believe it is a new way of thinking about data management in well-understood applications to prepare them for two major challenges, - size and integration (globalization). Neither extreme size nor integration (with other applications over the Web) was a design concern 30 years ago when the paradigm for FEA implementation first was formed. On the other hand, database technology has come a long way since its inception and it is past time to highlight its usefulness to the field of scientific computing and computer based engineering. This series aims to widen the list of applications for database designers and for FEA users and application developers to reap some of the benefits of database development.

Part II: Database Design and Access

This is Part II of a three articles on using databases for Finite Element Analysis (FEA). It discusses (1) db design, (2) data loading, (3) typical use cases during grid building, (4) typical use cases during simulation (get and put), (5) typical use cases during analysis (also done in Part III) and some performance measures of these cases. It argues that using a database is simpler to implement than custom data schemas, has better performance because it can use data parallelism, and better supports FEA modularity and tool evolution because database schema evolution, data independence, and self-defining data.

Part III: OpenDX – Where the Numbers Come Alive

In this report, we show a unified visualization and data analysis approach to Finite Element Analysis. The example application is visualization of 3D models of (metallic) polycrystals. Our solution combines a mature, general purpose, rapid-prototyping visualization tool, OpenDX (formerly known as IBM Visualization Data Explorer) [1,2], with an enterprise-class relational database management system, Microsoft SQL Server [3]. Substantial progress can be made with established off-the-shelf technologies. This approach certainly has its limits and we point out some of the shortcomings which require more innovative products for visualization, data-, and knowledge management. But, overall, the approach is a substantial improvement in the FEA lifecycle, and probably will work for other data-intensive sciences wanting to visualize and analyze massive simulation or measurement datasets.

There is a new article on the MSR Cambridge project on Skomer Island -Microsoft scientists unveil new technology to give early warning of sensitive species’ response to changing environments.  Also interesting is the use of the ScatterWeb .NET SDK from the Freie Universität Berlin.

ScatterWeb .NET SDK is a new approach to working with wireless sensor networks. It hides the complexity of embedded programming and makes it easy to handle objects representing wireless sensors.

Autonomous Monitoring of Vulnerable Habitats

In this project, we are developing a number of technologies that we hope will be instrumental in enabling this goal. We are currently using this system on Skomer Island to monitor the behaviour of the Manx Shearwater.

In close collaboration with Oxford University and the Freie Universitat Berlin, we have developed an innovative system that can autonomously monitor animals and their habitats. Using a combination of wireless sensor networks and innovative software we are able to intelligently gather data from remote locations, relaying it back for local storage and processing and allow remote reconfiguration of the network by research scientists.

Autonomous Monitoring of Vulnerable Habitats