Effective integration of scientific instruments in the Grid

2006

Grid technologies offer unlimited computational power and storage capacity for scientific research and business activities in heterogeneous areas over the world.

2012

Research institutions across the country continue to perform their experiments in isolation often using classic and static experimental methodologies to achieve their respective goals. Despite the recent advancements in the IT industries, the nations' universities and research laboratories have failed to adequately utilize these IT resources mainly due to lack of funds and human expertise. However, the current advances in the IT field can be applied to properly support certain complex requirements in these domains. In other words, researchers should be assisted with conducting their complex scientific experimentation and supporting their collaboration with other scientists irrespective of their domain and geographical locations. The major requirements identified with all the research laboratories include, the management of large data sets, distributed collaboration support, and high-performance issues. This paper presents an architectural model of a virtual laboratory framework for collaborative research. The model is open source driven, flexible and based on modern tools and technologies. This in effect will allow geographically remote researchers with limited internal resources, access to a wealth of experimental datasets, computing facilities, and federated processed experimental results. The key issues to be discussed are Web-based Grid technologies, Web Service Technology, and the proposed virtual laboratory architectural model. This architectural framework, besides theoretical modelling, will also provide a road map for future research and open questions.

2008

This paper presents invocation of grid operations within the ViroLab Virtual Laboratory. Virtual laboratory enables users to develop and execute experiments that access computational resources on the Grid exposed via various middleware technologies. An abstraction over the Grid environment is introduced which is based on the concept of grid objects accessible from the experiment script based on Ruby. We describe the Grid Operation Invoker library which is the core of virtual laboratory engine and provides access to heterogeneous computational resources in a uniform manner using pluggable adapters. Sample applications include a script, which implements a data mining scenario using the Weka library and combines Web services with MOCCA technologies.

Future Generation Computer Systems, 2001

Recent advances in the IT can be applied to properly support certain complex requirements in the scientific and engineering domains. In experimental sciences, for instance, researchers should be assisted with conducting their complex scientific experimentation and supporting their collaboration with other scientists. The main requirements identified in such domains include the management of large data sets, distributed collaboration support, and high-performance issues, among others. The virtual laboratory project initiated at the University of Amsterdam aims at the development of a hardware and software reference architecture, and an open, flexible, and configurable laboratory framework to enable scientists and engineers with working on their experimentation problems, while making optimum use of modern information technology approaches. This paper describes the current stage of design of a reference architecture for this scientific virtual laboratory, and focuses further on the cooperative information management component of this architecture, and exemplifying its application to experimentation domain of biology.

2013

The paper presents a generic reference architecture framework for collaboratory experiment virtual laboratory. The model presented is open source driven, flexible and based on modern tools and technologies. This in effect will allow geographically remote scientists with limited internal laboratory resources, access to wealth of experimental datasets, computing facilities, and distributed hard-to-duplicate laboratory devices. The key issues discussed are architectural design and choice of technology used for creating virtual laboratory. This architecture offers great levels of flexibility, simplicity, and interoperability that are needed to allow integration between heterogeneous distributed grid resources and its clients and executors. The framework, besides theoretical modelling, will provide a road map for future research and open questions.

2009 IEEE International Workshop on Intelligent Data Acquisition and Advanced Computing Systems: Technology and Applications, 2009

MolDynGrid virtual laboratory has been established for collaborative research in computational biology and bioinformatics that requires high processing power and huge storage space. This research involves molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of biological macromolecules, such as proteins, nucleic acids and their complexes. Also, a comparison of MD simulation results with experimental NMR spectroscopy data is proposed.

1995

This paper describes two pilot projects which provide testbeds for the tools. The first is a virtual laboratory project providing remote access to LBNL's Advanced Light Source. The second is the Multidimensional Applications and Gigabit Internetwork Consortium (MAGIC) testbed which has been established to develop a very high-speed, wide-area network to deliver realtime data at gigabit-per-second rates. 1 Motivation A collection of emerging technologies, ranging from distributed data handling and distributed computing to the underlying multicast network infrastructure, have the potential to make it possible to create distributed scientific and industrial laboratory environments that provide complete location independent access to instruments, data handling and analysis resources, and enable remote human collaboration. These technologies will produce not so much an incremental change of today's routine use of PCs and LANs in laboratory environments, but rather the introducti...

2006 Second IEEE International Conference on e-Science and Grid Computing (e-Science'06), 2006

Instruments and sensors are the primary sources of data driving science and the development and refinement of theory. A critical component of eresearch yet to be clarified is the role of instruments in cyberinfrastructure. Are instruments, sensors and other real-time data sources to be mediated by file systems, or can they be fully integrated into computing and storage grids with appropriate protocol standards? Our position is that they can and must become regular grid resources and that standards for doing so represent an important research topic. Our approach, the Common Instrument Middleware Architecture, and a model application, X-ray crystallography, are described here in order to stimulate a broader discussion of requirements for grid-enabling instruments and sensors.