Theme Issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A:
Crossing Boundaries: Computational Science, E-Science and Global E-Infrastructure
Proceedings of the UK e-Science All Hands Meeting 2008
Edited by P V Coveney and M P Atkinson

Early online access to the published proceedings is expected in April/ May 2009; the full online and printed versions are scheduled to appear within Volume 367, issue nos 1897 & 1898, in June/July 2009.

Volume I

1. Sector and Sphere: The Design and Implementation of a High Performance Data Cloud
   Gu, Yunhong; Grossman, Robert
   [View Abstract]

   Cloud computing has demonstrated that processing very large datasets over commodity clusters can be done simply given the right programming model and infrastructure. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of the Sector storage cloud and the Sphere compute cloud. In contrast to existing storage and compute clouds, Sector can manage data not only within a data center, but also across geographically distributed data centers. Similarly, the Sphere compute cloud supports User Defined Functions (UDF) over data both within a data center and across data centers. As a special case, MapReduce style programming can be implemented in Sphere by using a Map UDF followed by a Reduce UDF. We describe some experimental studies comparing Sector/Sphere and Hadoop using the Terasort Benchmark. In these studies, Sector is about twice as fast as Hadoop. Sector/Sphere is open source.

2. GridPP - The UK Grid for Particle Physics
   Britton, David; Cass, Anthony; Clarke, Peter; Coles, Jeremy; Colling, David; Doyle, Anthony; Geddes, Neil; Gordon, John; Jones, Roger; Kelsey, David; Lloyd, Steve; Middleton, Patrick, Glenn; Robin; Sansum, Andrew; Pearce, Sarah
   [View Abstract]

   The startup of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Geneva presents a hugechallenge in processing and analysing the vast amounts of scientific data that will be produced. The architecture of the worldwide Grid that will handle 15PB of particle physics data annually from this machine is based on a hierarchical tiered structure. We describe the development of the UK component (GridPP) of this Grid from a prototype system to a full exploitation Grid for real data analysis. This includes the physical infrastructure, the deployment of middleware, operational experience and the initial exploitation by the major LHC experiments.

3. Louisiana : A Model for Advancing Regional e-Research through Cyberinfrastructure
   Katz, Daniel; Allen, Gabrielle; Cortez, Ricardo; Cruz-Neira, Carolina; Gottumukkala, Raju; Greenwood, Zeno; Guice, Les; Jha, Shantenu; Kolluru, Ramesh; Kosar, Tevfik; Leger, Lonnie; Liu, Honggao; McMahon, Charlie; Nabrzyski, Jarek; Rodriguez-Milla, Bety; Seidel, Ed; Speyrer, Greg; Stubblefield, Michael; Voss, Brian; Whittenburg, Scott
   [View Abstract]

   Louisiana researchers and universities are leading a concentrated, collaborative effort to advance statewide e-Research through a new cyberinfrastructure: computing systems, data storage systems, advanced instruments and data repositories, visualization environments, and people, all linked together by software and high performance networks. This effort has led to a set of interlinked projects that have started making a significant difference to the state and has created an environment that encourages increased collaboration, leading to new e-Research. This paper describes the overall effort, the new projects and environment, and the results to-date.

4. Building a scientific data grid with DiGS
   Beckett, Mark; Allton, Chris; Davies, Christine; Davis, Ilan; Flynn, Jonathan; Grant, Eilidh; Hamilton, Russell; Irving, Alan; Kenway, Richard; Ostrowski, Radosław; Perry, James; Trew, Arthur
   [View Abstract]

   We provide an insight into the challenge of building and supporting a scientific data infrastructure, with reference to our experience working with scientists from computational particle physics and molecular biology. We illustrate how, with modern high performance computing resources, even small scientific groups can generate huge volumes (Petabytes) of valuable scientific data, and explain how grid technology can be used to manage, publish, share and curate these data. We describe the DiGS software application, which we have developed to meet the needs of smaller communities, and we highlight the key elements of its functionality.

5. Flexible Selection of Heterogeneous and Unreliable Services in Large Scale Grids
   Stein, Sebastian; Payne, Terry; Jennings , Nicholas
   [View Abstract]

   As Grids become larger and more interconnected in nature, scientists can benefit from a growing number of distributed services that may be invoked on demand to complete complex computational workflows. However, it also means that these scientists become dependent on the cooperation of third-party service providers, whose behaviour may be uncertain, failure-prone and highly heterogeneous. To address this, we have developed a novel decision-theoretic algorithm that automatically selects appropriate services for the tasks of an abstract workflow and deals with failures through redundancy and dynamic re-invocation of functionally equivalent services. In this article, we summarise our approach, describe in detail how it can be applied to a real-world bioinformatics workflow and show that it offers a significant improvement over current service selection techniques.

6. Standards Based Network Monitoring for the Grid
   Nowell, Jeremy; Kavoussanakis, Kostas; Palansuriya, Charaka; Piotrowski, Michal; Scharinger, Florian; Graham, Paul; Dobrzelecki, Bartosz; Trew, Arthur
   [View Abstract]

   As large grid infrastructures such as EGEE mature, they are being used by scientists around the world in their daily work, running thousands of concurrent computational jobs and transferring large amounts of data. The successful and sustainable operation of such grid infrastructures is only possible through the use of monitoring tools. The underlying networks upon which grid infrastructures are built are critical to their operation, therefore network monitoring becomes an important part of the overall grid monitoring strategy.
   
   In this paper the design and implementation of a set of tools for providing access to federated network monitoring data is presented, based on standards developed within the Open Grid Forum (OGF) Network Measurement Working Group (NM-WG). These tools give access to data collected by heterogeneous, NM-WG compliant, network monitoring tools.

7. The Archaeotools project: faceted classification and natural language processing in an archaeological context
   Jeffrey, Stuart; Richards, Julian; Ciravegna, Fabio; Waller, Stewart; Chapman, Sam; Zhang, Ziqi
   [View Abstract]

   This paper describes ’Archaeotools‘, a major e-Science project in archaeology. The aim of the project is to use faceted classification and natural language processing to create an advanced infrastructure for archaeological research. The project aims to integrate over one million structured database records referring to archaeological sites and monuments in the United Kingdom, with information extracted from semi-structured grey literature reports, and unstructured antiquarian journal accounts, in a single faceted browse interface. The project has illuminated the variable level of vocabulary control and standardisation that currently exists within national and local monument inventories. Nonetheless it has demonstrated that the relatively well-defined ontologies and thesauri that exist in archaeology mean that a high level of success can be achieved using information extraction techniques. This has great potential for unlocking and making accessible the information held in grey literature and antiquarian accounts, and has lessons for allied disciplines.

8. Integrating OGSA-DAI with computational Grid workflows
   Kukla, Tamas; Kiss, Tamas; Kacsuk, Peter; Terstyanszky, Gabor
   [View Abstract]

   Although many scientific applications rely on data stored in databases, most workflow management systems are not capable of establishing database connections during workflow execution. For this reason, eScientists have to use different tools before workflow submission to access their data-sets and gather the required data on which they want to carry out computational experiments. OGSA-DAI is a good candidate to use as a middleware providing access to several structured and semistructured database products through web/grid services. The integration technique and its reference implementation described in this paper enables eScientists to reach databases via OGSA-DAI within their scientific workflows at runtime and gives a general solution which can be adopted by any workflow management system.

9. Improved Performance Control on the Grid
   Tellier, Matthew; Riley, Graham; Freeman, Len
   [View Abstract]

   In Mayes et al. (2005) a threshold-based Performance Control System (PerCo) is described and an initial experimental evaluation is presented. The objective of the current paper is to investigate the role of the threshold value in PerCo and to place the threshold-based rescheduling heuristic on a more principled footing. Simulation enables us to identify the ‘optimal’ threshold value for a particular application scenario and we show that this optimal value results in a 10% improvement in performance for the application considered by Mayes et al. (2005). Further we find that the execution time of this optimal threshold-based schedule is very close (within 0.5%) to the execution time that results from an LP-optimal schedule.

10. Novel Submission Modes for Tightly Coupled Jobs Across Distributed Resources for Reduced Time-to-Solution
    Chakraborty, Promita; Jha, Shantenu; Katz, Daniel
    [View Abstract]

    The problems of scheduling a single parallel job across a large scale distributed system are well known and surprisingly difficult to solve. In addition, beause of the issues involved with distributed submission like co-reserving resources, managing accounts and certificates simultaneously on multiple machines etc., the vast number of HPC-application users have been happy to remain restricted to submitting jobs to single machines. Meanwhile, the need to simulate larger and more complex physical systems continues to grow, with a concomitant increase in the number of cores required to solve the resulting scientific problems. One might reduce the demand on load per machines, and eventually the wait-time on queue by decomposing the problem to utilise two resources in such circumstances, even though there might be a reduction in the peak performance. This motivates the question: can otherwise monolithic jobs running on single resources be distributed over more than one machine such that there is an overall reduction in the time to solution? In this paper, we briefly discuss the development and performance of a parallel molecular dynamics code and its generalisation to work on multiple distributed machines (using MPICH-G2). We benchmark and validate the performance of our simulations over multiple input-data sets of varying size. The primary aim of this work however, is to show that the time-to-solution can be reduced by sacrificing some peak performance and distributing over multiple machines.

11. Real Science at the Petascale
    Saksena, Radhika; Boghosian, Bruce; Fazendeiro, Luis; Kenway, Owain; Manos, Steven; Mazzeo, Marco; Sadiq, Kashif; Suter, James; Wright, David; Coveney, Peter
    [View Abstract]

    Real Science at the Petascale - We describe computational science research that utilises petascale resources to achieve scientific results at unprecedented scales and resolution. The applications span a wide range of domains from investigation of fundamental problems in turbulence through computational materials science research to biomedical applications at the forefront of HIV/AIDS research and cerebro-vascular haemodynamics. This work was mainly performed on TeraGrid’s ‘petascale’ resource, Ranger, at Texas Advanced Computing Centre (TACC), in the first half of 2008 when it was the largest computing system in the world available for open scientific research. We have sought to optimally utilise this enormous petascale computer across application domains and scales, exploiting the excellent parallel scaling performance found on up to at least 32,768 cores for certain of our codes in the so-called ‘capability computing’ category as well as high throughput intermediate scale jobs for ensemble simulations in the 32 - 512 core range. Furthermore, this activity provides evidence that conventional parallel programming with MPI (Message Passing Interface) should be successful at the petascale in the short to medium term. We also report on the parallel performance of some of our codes on up to 65,636 cores on the IBM Blue Gene/P system at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) which has recently been named the fastest supercomputer in the world for open science.

12. Enabling Cutting-Edge Semiconductor Simulation through Grid Technology
    Reid, Dave; Millar, Campbell; Roy, Scott; Roy, Gareth; Sinnott, Richard; Stewart, Gordon; Stewart, Graeme; Asenov, Asen
    [View Abstract]

    The progressive scaling of Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) transistors drives the success of the global semiconductor industry. Detailed knowledge of transistor behaviour is necessary to overcome the many fundamental challenges faced by chip and systems designers. Grid technology has enabled the unavoidable statistical variations introduced by scaling to be examined in unprecedented detail. Over 200,000 transistors have been simulated; the results of which provide detailed insight into underlying physical processes. This paper outlines recent scientific results of the nanoCMOS project, and describes the way in which the scientific goals have been reflected in the grid-based e-infrastructure.

13. UKQCD software for Lattice QCD
    UKQCD Collaboration: Boyle, Peter; Kenway, Richard; Maynard, Christopher
    [View Abstract]

    Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is the quantum field theory of the strong nuclear interaction and it explains how quarks and gluons are bound together to make more familiar objects such as the proton or neutron, which form the nuclei of atoms. UKQCD is a collaboration of eight UK universities which have come together to obtain and pool sufficient resources, both computational and man-power, to perform lattice QCD calculations. This paper details how UKQCD uses and develops this software, how performance critical kernels for diverse architectures such as QCDOC, BlueGene and XT4 are developed and employed and how UKQCD collaborates both internally and externally, with for instance, the US SciDAC Lattice QCD community.

14. Adaptive Distributed Replica-Exchange Simulations
    Luckow, Andre; Jha, Shantenu; Kim, Joohyun; Merzky, Andre; Schnor, Bettina
    [View Abstract]

    Due to the loose-coupling between replicas, the Replica-Exchange class of algorithms should be able to benefit greatly from utilising as many resources as available. However, the ability to effectively utilise multiple distributed resources to reduce the time-to-completion remains a challenge at many levels. Additionally, an implementation of a pleasingly distributed algorithm such as Replica-Exchange, which is independent of infrastructural details does not exist. This paper proposes an extensible and scalable framework based on SAGA that provides a general-purpose, opportunistic mechanism to effectively utilise multiple resources in an infrastructure independent way. By analysing the requirements of the Replica-Exchange algorithm and the challenges of implementing it on real production systems, we propose a new abstraction (BigJob), which forms the basis of the adaptive redistribution and effective scheduling of replicas.

15. High Performance Computing for Monte Carlo Radiotherapy Calculations
    Downes, Patrick; Yaikhom, Gagarine; Giddy, Jonathan; Walker, David; Spezi, Emiliano; Lewis, Geraint
    [View Abstract]

    We report on the RTGrid project, which investigates approaches for using high performance computing infrastructures, such as the Grid, in order to reduce the turnaround time of Monte Carlo simulation-based radiotherapy treatment planning. The main aim of this project is to render accurate dose calculations using Monte Carlo simulations clinically feasible. To this end, we have successfully implemented and deployed the RTGrid distributed simulation framework for Monte Carlo dose calculations. In this paper, we present the main experimental findings.

Volume II

16. Multi-objective Optimization of GENIE Earth System Models
    Price, Andrew; Myerscough, Richard; Voutchkov, Ivan; Marsh, Robert; Cox, Simon
    [View Abstract]

    The tuning of parameters in climate models is essential to provide reliable long-term forecasts of Earth system behaviour. We apply a multi-objective optimization algorithm to the problem of parameter estimation in climate models. This optimization process involves the iterative evaluation of Response Surface Models (RSMs) followed by the execution of multiple Earth system simulations. These computations require an infrastructure that provides high performance computing for building and searching the RSMs and high-throughput computing for the concurrent evaluation of a large number of models. Grid computing technology is therefore essential to make this algorithm practical for members of the GENIE project.

17. Bringing Simulation to Engineers in the Field: A Web 2.0 Approach
    Haines, Robert; Khan, Kashif; Brooke, John
    [View Abstract]

    Field engineers working on Water Distribution Systems (WDSs) have to implement day-to-day operational decisions. Since pipe networks are highly interconnected, the effects of such decisions are correlated with hydraulic and water quality conditions elsewhere in the network. This makes the provision of predictive Decision Support Tools (DSTs) for eld engineers critical to optimizing the engineering work on the network. We describe how we created DSTs to run on lightweight mobile devices by using the Web 2.0 technique known as Software as a Service (SaaS). We designed our system following the architectural style of Representational State Transfer (REST). The system not only displays static GIS (Geographic Information System) information for pipe networks but also dynamic information and prediction of network state, by invoking and displaying the results of simulations running on more powerful remote resources.

18. The OptIPuter Microsopy Demonstrator - enabling science through a transatlantic lightpath
    Ellisman, Mark; Hutton, Tom; Kirkland, Angus; Lin, Abel; Lin, Chao; Molina, Tom; Peltier, Steve; Singh, Raj; Tang, Kang; Trefethen, Anne; Wallom, David; Xiong, Xin
    [View Abstract]

    The Optiputer microscopy demonstrator project has been designed to enable concurrent and remote utilization of world-class electron microscopes located in Oxford and San Diego. The project has constructed a network consisting of microscopes, computational and data resources that are all connected by a dedicated network infrastructure using the UK Lightpath and US Starlight systems. Key science drivers include examples from both materials and biological science. The resulting system is now a permanent link between Oxford and San Diego microscopy centres. This will form the basis of further projects between the sites and expansion of the types of systems that can be remote controlled including optical as well as electron microscopy. Other improvements will include the updating of the MS cluster software to HPC Server 2008, which includes the HPC basic profile implementation that will enable development of interoperable clients.

19. Adaptation and development of software simulation methodologies for cardiovascular engineering: present and future challenges from and end-user perspective
    Diaz-Zuccarini, Vanessa; Narracott, Andrew; Hose, Rod; Zervides, Constantinos; Jones, David; Lawford, Patricia; Rafiroiu, Dan; Burriesci, Gaetano
    [View Abstract]

    This paper, describes the use of diverse software tools in cardiovascular applications. These tools were primarily developed in the field of engineering and the applications presented push the boundaries of the software to address events related to venous and arterial valve closure, exploration of dynamic boundary conditions or the inclusion of multiscale boundary conditions from protein to organ levels. The future of cardiovascular research and the challenges that modellers and clinicians face from validation to clinical uptake are discussed from an end-user perspective.

20. Using high resolution displays for high resolution cardiac data
    Goodyer, Christopher; Hodrien, John; Wood, Jason; Kohl, Peter; Brodlie, Kenneth
    [View Abstract]

    The ability to perform fast, accurate, high resolution visualization is fundamental to improving our understanding of anatomical data. As the volumes of data increase from improvements in scanning technology, the methods applied to rendering and visualization must evolve. In this paper we address the interactive display of data from high resolution MRI scanning of a rabbit heart and subsequent histological imaging. We describe a visualization environment involving a tiled LCD panel display wall and associated software which provide an interactive and intuitive user interface. The oView software is an OpenGL application which is written for the VRJuggler environment. This environment abstracts displays and devices away from the application itself, aiding portability between different systems, from desktop PCs to multi-tiled display walls. Portability between display walls has been demonstrated through its use on walls at both Leeds and Oxford Universities. We discuss important factors to be considered for interactive 2D display of large 3D datasets, including the use of intuitive input devices and level of detail aspects.

21. Federating Distributed Clinical Data for the Prediction of Adverse Hypotensive Events
    Stell, Anthony; Sinnott, Richard; Jiang, Jipu; Donald, Rob; Piper, Ian
    [View Abstract]

    The ability to predict adverse hypotensive events, where a patient’s arterial blood pressure drops to abnormally low (and dangerous) levels, would be of major benefit to the fields of primary and secondary health-care, and especially to the traumatic brain injury domain. A wealth of data exists in healthcare systems providing information on the major health indicators of patients in hospitals (blood pressure, temperature, heart-rate etc). It is believed that if enough of this data could be drawn together and analysed in a systematic way, then a system could be built that will trigger an alarm predicting the onset of a hypotensive event over a useful timescale, e.g. half an hour in advance. In such circumstances avoidance measures can be taken to prevent such events arising. This is the basis for the Avert-IT project (http://www.avert-it.org), a collaborative EU-funded project involving the construction of a hypotension alarm system exploiting Bayesian neural networks using techniques of data federation to bring together the relevant information for study and system development.

22. HIV Decision Support: From Molecule to Man
    Sloot, Peter; Coveney, Peter; Ertaylan, Gökhan; Müller, Viktor; Boucher, Charles; Bubak, Marian
    [View Abstract]

    Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is recognized to be one of the most destructive pandemics in recorded history. Effective highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) and the availability of genetic screening of patient virus data, has led to sustained viral suppression and higher life expectancy in patients who have been infected with HIV. The sheer complexity of the disease stems from the multi-scale and highly dynamic nature of the system under study. The complete cascade from genome, proteome, metabolome and physiome to health forms a multidimensional system that crosses many orders of magnitude in temporal and spatial scales. Understanding, quantifying and handling this complexity is one of the biggest challenges of our time, which requires a highly multidisciplinary approach. In order to supply researchers with an interactive framework and to provide the medical professional with appropriate tools and information for making a balanced and reliable medication decision, we have developed “ViroLab”, a collaborative decision support system (http://www.virolab.org/). ViroLab contains computational models that cover various spatial and temporal scales from atomic level interactions in nanoseconds up to sociological interactions on the epidemiological level, spanning years of disease progression. ViroLab allows for personalized drug ranking. It is on trial in six hospitals and various virology and epidemiology laboratories across Europe.

23. 2A Computational Grid Framework for Immunological Applications
    Halling-Brown, Mark; Moss, David; Sansom, Clare; Shepherd, Adrian
    [View Abstract]

    We have developed a computational Grid that enables us to exploit through a single interface a range of local, national and international resources. It insulates the user as far as possible from issues concerning administrative boundaries, passwords and different operating system features. This work has been undertaken as part of the European Union ImmunoGrid project whose aim is to develop simulations of the immune system at the molecular, cellular and organ levels. The ImmunoGrid Consortium has members with computational resources on both sides of the Atlantic. By making extensive use of existing Grid middleware, our Grid has enabled us to exploit Consortium and publicly available computers in a unified way, notwithstanding the diverse local software and administrative environments. We took 40000 polypeptide sequences from 4000 avian and mammalian influenza strains and used a neural network for class I T-cell epitope prediction tools for 120 class I alleles and haplotypes, to generate over 14 million high quality protein-peptide binding predictions which we are mapping onto the 3D-structures of the proteins. By contrast, the Grid is also being used for developing new methods for class T-cell epitope predictions where we have running batches of 120 molecular dynamics free energy calculations.

24. Information Security - Where Computer Science, Economics and Psychology Meet
    Anderson, Ross; Moore, Tyler
    [View Abstract]

    Until about 2000, information security was seen as a technological discipline, based on computer science but with mathematics helping in the design of ciphers and protocols. That perspective started to change as researchers and practitioners realised the importance of economics. As distributed systems are increasingly composed of machines that belong to principals with divergent interests, incentives are becoming as important to dependability as technical design. A thriving new field of information security economics provides valuable insights not just into `security' topics such as privacy, bugs, spam, and phishing, but into more general areas of system dependability and policy. This research program has recently started to interact with psychology. One thread is in response to phishing, the most rapidly growing form of online crime, in which fraudsters trick people into giving their credentials to bogus websites; a second is through the increasing importance of security usability; and a third comes through the psychology-and-economics tradition. The promise of this multidisciplinary research program is a novel framework for analysing information security problems - one that is both principled and effective.

25. Data protection in grid-based multicentric clinical trials: killjoy or confidence-building measure?
    Arning, Marian; Forgó, Nikolaus; Krügel,Tina
    [View Abstract]

    In order to protect the privacy of participating patients in multicentric genetic research projects and to improve the working conditions for researchers in such projects a data protection framework needs to be installed. In the first place, all genetic data processed in the project has to be pseudonymised. In addition to that, contracts have to be concluded between the project and each project partner to guarantee that genetic data is only used within the project and that each partner complies with data security standards. Furthermore, a central data protection authority has to be installed in the project to control the partners’ compliance with these contracts and to serve as central contact point for participants. If these conditions are fulfilled, only (de facto) anonymous data are used in the project, so that data protection legislation is not directly applicable. Secondly, each participant has to sign a special consent form for ethical reasons and as a fallback solution, if the pseudonymisation of her genetic data fails. With this safety net it is possible to protect the participants’ privacy and to improve the working conditions for researchers.

26. Engineering Design Optimisation using Services and Workflows
    Crick, Thomas; Dunning, Peter; Kim, Hyunsun; Padget, Julian
    [View Abstract]

    Multi-disciplinary optimisation (MDO) is the process whereby the often conflicting requirements of the different disciplines to the engineering design process attempt to converge upon a description that represents an acceptable compromise in the design space. We present a simple demonstrator of a flexible workflow framework for engineering design optimisation using an e-Science tool. This paper provides a concise introduction to MDO, complemented by a summary of the related tools and techniques developed under the umbrella of the UK e-Science program that we have explored in support of the engineering process. The main contributions of this paper are: (i) a description of the optimisation workflow that has been developed in the Taverna workbench, (ii) a demonstrator of a structural optimisation process with a range of tool options using common benchmark problems, (iii) some reflections on the experience of software engineering meeting mechanical engineering (iv) an indicative discussion on the feasibility of a “plug-and-play” engineering environment for analysis and design.

27. A User-Orientated Approach to Provenance Capture and Representation for in silico Experiments: Explored within the Atmospheric Chemistry Community
    Martin, Chris; Haji, Mohammed; Dew, Peter; Pilling, Michael; Jimack, Peter
    [View Abstract]

    We present a novel user-orientated approach to provenance capture and representation for in silico experiments, contrasted against the more systems-orientated approaches that have been typical within the e-Science domain. In our approach we seek to capture the scientist’s reasoning in the form of annotations as an experiment evolves, whilst using the scientist’s terminology in the representation of process provenance. Our user-orientated approach is applied in a case study within the atmospheric chemistry domain: where we consider the design, development and evaluation of an Electronic Laboratory Notebook, a provenance capture and storage tool, for iterative model development.

28. AMUC: Associated Motion Capture User Categories
    Norman, Sally Jane; Lawson, Sian E. M.; Olivier, Patrick; Watson, Paul; Chan, Anita M-A.; Dade-Robertson, Martyn; Dunphy, Paul; Green, Dave; Hiden, Hugo; Hook, Jonathan; Jackson, Daniel G.
    [View Abstract]

    The AMUC project consisted of building a prototype sketch retrieval client for exploring motion capture archives. High dimensional datasets reflect the dynamic process of motion capture and comprise high-rate sampled data of a performer's joint angles; in response to multiple query criteria, these data can potentially yield different kinds of information. The AMUC prototype harnesses graphic input via an electronic tablet as a query mechanism, time and position signals obtained from the sketch being mapped to the properties of data streams stored in the motion capture repository. As well as proposing a pragmatic solution for exploring motion capture datasets, the project demonstrates the conceptual value of iterative prototyping in innovative interdisciplinary design. The AMUC team was composed of live performance practitioners and theorists conversant with a variety of movement techniques, bioengineers who recorded and processed motion data for integration into the retrieval tool, and computer scientists who designed and implemented the retrieval system and server architecture, scoped for Grid-based applications. Creative input on information system design and navigation, and digital image processing, underpinned implementation of the prototype which has undergone preliminary trials with diverse users, allowing identification of rich potential development areas.

29. Modelling and simulation for e-Social Science
    Townend, Paul; Xu, Jie; Birkin, Mark; Turner, Andy; Wu, Belinda
    [View Abstract]

    MoSeS (Modelling and Simulation for e-Social Science) is a research node of the National Centre for e-Social Science (NCeSS). MoSeS uses e-Science techniques to execute an eventsdriven model which simulates discrete demographic processes; this allows us to project the UK population 25 years into the future. This paper describes the architecture, simulation methodology, and latest results obtained by the MoSeS.

30. Dancing on the Grid: Using e-Science tools to extend choreographic research
    Bailey, H.; Bachler, M.; Buckingham Shum, S.; Le Blanc, A.; Popat, S.; Rowley, A. ; Turner, M.
    [View Abstract]

    This paper considers the role and impact of new and emerging e-Science tools on practice-led research in dance. Specifically it draws on the findings from the e-Dance project. This two-year project brings together an interdisciplinary team combining research aspects of choreography, next generation of video conferencing, and Human-Computer Interaction analysis incorporating hypermedia and non-linear annotations for recording and documentation.