eScience @ Microsoft : Education

Project Tuva: Richard Feynman is now available to all.

eScience — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:15:31 GMT

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 control to help augment the example Feynman uses in the gravitational talk. Currently only the first lecture in the series “Law of Gravitation – an Example of Physical Law” utilizes all the annotations/links, but the do all have the transcripts, so you can search on something like “particles” and see where it is mentioned in all the different videos, and then jump directly to the location.

Microsoft Research and Bill Gates Bring Historic Physics Lectures to Web

Lecture series by celebrated physics professor Richard Feynman is now available to all.

REDMOND, Wash. — July 14, 2009 — Microsoft Research, in collaboration with Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates, today launched a Web site that makes an acclaimed lecture series by the iconic physicist Richard Feynman freely available to the general public for the first time. The lectures, which Feynman originally delivered at Cornell University in 1964, have been hugely influential for many people, including Gates. Gates privately purchased the rights to the seven lectures in the series, called “The Character of Physical Law,” to make them widely available to the public for free with the hope that they will help get kids excited about physics and science.

The historic lectures and related content can be seen at http://research.microsoft.com/tuva. The name “Tuva” was chosen because of Feynman’s lifelong fascination with the small Russian republic of Tuva, located in the heart of Asia.

Feynman was one of the most popular scientists of the 20th century, equally regarded for his scientific insights as well as his ability to convey his enthusiasm for science through his lectures and writings. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 and was also known for his quirky sense of humor and eccentric and wide-ranging interests.

“No one was more adept at making science fun and interesting than Richard Feynman,” said Gates. “More than 20 years after first seeing them, these are still some of the best science lectures I’ve heard. Feynman worked hard during his life to popularize science, so I’m sure he’d be thrilled that now anyone, anywhere in the world, can just click a button and experience his lectures.”

Curtis Wong, a principal researcher with Microsoft Research, enhanced the experience of viewing the lectures by integrating the historic video with a Microsoft Silverlight-based video player that allows viewers to search the lectures for references to particular subjects, take notes that are synchronized to the video, and click on hyperlinks to related Web content, among other customized operations.

“There is a lot of public interest in building innovative educational resources online,” Wong said. “This is an opportunity to take some existing educational content and utilize software and the wealth of resources available on the Web to create a richer learning experience. And because people can annotate the lectures with their own comments and links to related resources, I expect this experience to become richer and richer over time.”

Microsoft Research has been exploring video annotation for many years and chose to publish the Feynman “Messenger” lectures with a new enhanced video player. Neither Microsoft nor the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation were involved in the acquisition of the rights to the lectures.

Microsoft Research and Bill Gates Bring Historic Physics Lectures to Web: Lecture series by celebrated physics professor Richard Feynman is now available to all.

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)

WorldWide Telescope – Busy couple of weeks – NASA and SilverLight

eScience — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:53:06 GMT

Yesterday the joint press release went out on the collaboration and Space Act Agreement we’re been working on with NASA for sometime. We’re really excited about working with NASA to process many datasets like the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and make them available in WorldWide Telescope. Having these images available in the TOAST (tesselated octahedral adaptive subdivision transform) projection format will not only benefit WWT but any viewer supporting that format. The benefit of using TOAST as Jonathan Fay one mentioned “It creates a 360-degree wraparound view that’s either a planet surface or the infinite sphere of the sky, and lets you represent it using a 3D graphics accelerator, very rapidly and efficiently. So we can have an image pyramid the way Deep Zoom does, and TerraServer before it, but we don’t have to give up the poles.”

NASA and Microsoft to Make Universe of Data Available to the Public

There is a really good article out talking about some of the background behind Curtis Wong and Jonathan Fay’s labor of love. WorldWide Telescope Puts Wonders of Space on a PC

The other big news is that at Mix09 we put out a alpha release of the worldwide telescope web client built using SilverLight. Now all the folks running Macs can see what all the buzz was behind Scoble’s post What made me cry: Microsoft’s World Wide Telescope from last year.

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)

Accessible Research blog

eScience — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 01:42:59 GMT

Sam Stokes has spun up a blog to make research more accessible to students and though's of us that are learners for life. His latest post is looking at a project Sensor touch: Fun in reaching out using Xbox controllers…sounds like fun – would also be interesting to see if there is a way to use the Xbox Messenger Kit – maybe to text to IM or twitter or even a remote LCD panel.

Sam Stokes on Research in your life and studies

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)

Introduction to Spatial Coordinate Systems: Flat Maps for a Round Planet

eScience — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 02:19:11 GMT

Always looking for interesting papers that educate you on domains - really enjoyed this paper...

Introduction to Spatial Coordinate Systems: Flat Maps for a Round Planet

SQL Server Technical Article

Writers: Isaac Kunen

Summary: This paper is an introduction to Earth-oriented coordinate systems, projections, models, and mapping. While not specific to any technology, this information provides valuable background for those who will use spatial data in SQL Server.

Introduction to Spatial Coordinate Systems: Flat Maps for a Round Planet

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)

Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing Program (SciDAC) tutorials on Friday, July 18th

eScience — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 02:08:35 GMT

Microsoft Research is hosting the DOE 2008 Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing Program (SciDAC) tutorials on Friday, July 18^th. If interested in attending, please register at the SciDAC Tutorials Registration.

SciDAC Tutorial Agenda

July 18 – Microsoft Research, Bldg 99.

9:00 - 9:30

Reception, checkin and orientation

9:30 - 12:00

First session

Visualization and Data Analysis with VisTrails

Introduction to Scientific Workflow Management and the Kepler System

Porting and Scaling Applications on BlueGene/P

Advanced CompuTational Software (ACTS) Collection Tutorial

12:00 - 1:00

Lunch in bldg. 99 Atrium
(attendees in bldg. 117 walk to bldg. 99 next door)

1:00 - 3:30

Second session

Advanced Visualization and Data Analysis with the VisIt Visualization System

ADIOS The ADaptible IO System

An Introduction to the Cray XT4 for Application Scientists

Advanced CompuTational Software (ACTS) Collection Tutorial

Tutorial Abstracts

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Title:

Introduction to Scientific Workflow Management and the Kepler System

Contact:

Ilkay Altintas

Partners:

The Scientific Data Management Center (SDM)

Presenters: Ilkay Altintas, Scott Klasky, Norbert Podhorszki, Mladen Vouk

A scientific workflow combines data and processes into a configurable, structured set of steps that implement semi- automated computational solutions of a scientific problem. Scientific workflow systems provide a framework and often graphical user interfaces to combine different technologies along with efficient methods for using them. This reduces overhead and increases the efficiency of the scientists towards a scientific discovery. SciDAC SDM Center's Scientific Process Automation group develops scientific workflow tools (called Kepler) for automation of scientific data management processes in a reusable, robust, tractable, and recoverable fashion to enhance scientific exploration. This tutorial provides an introduction to scientific workflow construction and management using the Kepler system. It is intended for the SciDAC scientists and students with a computational science background. It will cover principles and foundations of scientific workflows, Kepler environment installation, workflow construction out of the available Kepler library components, and workflow execution management that uses Kepler-based facilities to provide process and data monitoring, provenance information, portal access, and high speed data movement solutions. This tutorial includes hands-on sessions and application examples from different scientific disciplines.

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Title:

ADIOS: The ADaptible IO System

Contact:

Chen Jin

Partners:

The Scientific Data Management Center (SDM) and The Center for Plasma Edge Simulation and Oak Ridge National Lab

Presenters: Chen Jin, Scott Klasky, Steve Hodson: ORNL, Hasan Abbasi, Jay Lofstead, and Matthew Wolf: Georgia Tech, and Manish Parashar Rutgers

The ADaptible IO System (Adios) is a componentization of the IO layer for high performance scientific computations. Currently, we have integrated ADIOS into Fusion, Combustion and other pioneering scientific applications and achieved excellent performance results. ADIOS provides a simple to use, common programming interface for different transport layer methods. The design goals are set to allow the application scientist to program a very easy to use IO system, which can choose between different IO implementations at runtime. This allows IO experts to tune their implementations on different systems without changing the IO implementation. We currently support MPI-IO, collective MPI-IO, POSIX, asynchronous MPI-IO, the Georgia Tech DataTap system based on RDMA, and the Rutgers DART implementation also based on RDMA. ADIOS separates out the metadata and methods, by using an external XML file. This allows users to add annotations outside of their F90/C/C++ codes and to change the implementation outside of their code. ADIOS 1.0 will be released before 12/1/2008 and will provide very fast writes of data. In this tutorial, we will first present an introduction of ADIOS, along with the current supported methods, and file converters. We will then provide a hands-on session which will allow users to work with both a F90 and C code, and change the IO to ADIOS, and change this to use both MPI-IO and Posix IO. We will then show them how to read in the data, and convert the output to HDF5, NetCDF, and ASCII.

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Title:

Porting and Scaling Applications on ALCF’s BlueGene/P

Contact:

Kalyan Kumaran, Argonne Leadership Computing Facility

Partners:

The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility

Presenters: Vitali Morozov and Ray Loy

The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility houses a half a petaflop BlueGene/P supercomputer. A number of petascale applications, from a variety of engineering domains, are run every day on this highly scalable architecture via the Department of Energy's INCITE (Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment) program. Nevertheless, porting and scaling applications onto petascale computers remains a challenging task. This tutorial will focus on the BlueGene/P architecture and present an overview of compilers, libraries, performance tools, debuggers available for porting and scaling applications.

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Title:

Advanced Visualization and Data Analysis with the VisIt Visualization System

Contact:

Hank Childs

Partners:

The Visualization and Analytics Center for Enabling Technology (VACET)

Presenters: Hank Childs and Sean Ahern

Understanding scientific datasets generated at DOE's high-performance computing facilities is becoming increasingly difficult as dataset sizes and complexity grow beyond the scale that is approachable by traditional analysis techniques. VACET is delivering scalable solutions to real-world visualization and analysis problems through the VisIt visualization system. VisIt is a turnkey application for data exploration, visualization, code assessment, and quantitative analysis suitable for use on SciDAC datasets of any size. This tutorial is targeted at all levels of users, from first timers on up to VisIt experts. The tutorial will present the basics of using VisIt on up to advanced visualization techniques.

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Title:

Visualization and Data Analysis with VisTrails

Contact:

Claudio Silva

Partners:

The Visualization and Analytics Center for Enabling Technology (VACET)

Presenters: Claudio Silva and Carlos Scheidegger

The demand for the construction of complex visualizations is growing in many disciplines of science, as scientists are faced with ever increasing volumes of data to analyze. We give an overview of VisTrails, an open-source provenance management system that provides infrastructure for data exploration and visualization. VisTrails transparently records detailed provenance (history) information for exploratory computational tasks, both for the derived data products and for the pipelines used to derive them. Besides enabling the reproducibility of results, this provenance information can be used to simplify the process of data exploration through visualization. We will present several mechanisms and intuitive interfaces provided by VisTrails that allow flexible re-use of pipelines; exploration of large parameter spaces; comparison of visualizations and their respective pipelines; and the creation and refinement of visualizations by analogy.

This tutorial is targeted to users with different levels of expertise, from novice to expert. We will cover a number of specific examples that reflect typical visualization needs of DOE applications.

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Title:

An Introduction to the Cray XT4 for Application Scientists

Contact:

Richard Gerber

Partners:

NERSC and ORNL

Presenters: Richard Gerber and Rebecca Hartman-Baker

This tutorial provides the basics to get up and running on the Cray XT4. Topics covered include compilers, libraries, and job management with a focus on parallel scaling and performance optimization of real world applications. The presenters are HPC consultant staff with hands on experience with the XT4 systems at ORNL and NERSC. This tutorial is targeted at researchers transitioning to the XT4 from serial or other parallel computing environments.

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Title:

Advanced CompuTational Software (ACTS) Collection Tutorial

Contact:

Tony Drummond

Partners:

ACTS and TAU

Presenters: Tony Drummond

This short course will be an introduction to a set of advanced computational software tools to leverage the development of high performance applications. The lectures will focus on the selection, installation and use of scalable and robust software tools. Functionalities implemented in these software tools include; numerical algorithms for the solution of large computational problems, performance monitoring and profiling, and automatic tuning. Participants should expect to learn about techniques used to solve common computational problems and monitor their performance. Participants are encouraged to bring laptop computers and follow live demonstrations through hand-on experiences. The software presented here is freely available and widely used by the computational sciences international community.

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)

NGO - Nonprofit Connection

eScience — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:48:28 GMT

Just ran across the NGO Connection site – this is the place for non-profit orgs in the scientific space to look into….

NGO Connection is an online resource for non-profit groups around the world that provides resources to help advance the causes of the NGOs. See http://www.microsoft.com/ngo for more information about

Getting free and discounted software

Free access to Online software such as Windows Live, Microsoft Office Live and other online applications

Software grants through the Microsoft Software Donation program

Access to low cost personal computers and other hardware products

Refurbished Computers from the Community Microsoft Authorized Refurbisher (MAR) program

donated and discounted hardware from TechSoup for Refurbished computers, networks accessories, switches and routers

learning about software support resources and other grant benefits

Microsoft Support Resources

Software Grant Support

getting training material and information about obtaining certification

NGO Connection

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)

Create Your Own E-Learning

eScience — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:36:57 GMT

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

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)

TechREACH - Middle School program to increase interest in STEM

eScience — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 01:49:35 GMT

It's great to see programs like TechREACH reaching out to middle school students to get them interested in STEM subjects.

TechREACH, a Washington State program, increases middle school students’ interest in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) through hands-on curriculum, mentoring, and teacher professional development. The goal of the program is to increase the number of underrepresented middle school students who pursue science, technology, engineering, and math studies, degrees, and careers. During the 2006-2007 school year, nearly 100 Eastern Washington middle school students benefited from participating in TechREACH clubs.

Academic Resource Center – Content

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)