Intersect News #47 August 2012

luke
6 Sep 2012

Sweet taste of NeCTAR success

NeCTAR late yesterday announced the nine proposals recommended for funding under NeCTAR Stage 2. Intersect is involved in four of these projects. Three Virtual Laboratory proposals:

  • VL222: Above and Beyond Speech, Language and Music: A Virtual Lab for Human Communication Science, led by UWS
  • VL201: The Industrial Ecology Lab, led by the University of Sydney
  • VL212 Biodiversity Climate Change Adaptation, led by Griffith University

and the Intersect NSW Research Cloud Node.

Congratulations to all those involved in preparing the proposals. See http://nectar.org.au/news

Unearthing Android’s potential for archaeology

The Federated Archaeological Information Management System (FAIMS) Project aims to assemble a comprehensive information system for archaeology. This system will allow data from field and laboratory work to be born digital using mobile devices, processed in local databases and exchanged online through cultural heritage registries and data repositories. Existing standards and components will be used wherever possible; new ones developed where necessary.

Key features will include:

  • applications for android devices to capture data
  • tools for data processing, analysis, and visualisation
  • online repositories for publishing primary archaeological data
  • interoperability protocols allowing search and exchange

The end product will be a suite of compatible tools accessible to archaeologists through a single portal. This system will enhance collaboration, reinterpretation and comparative study by facilitating the production and dissemination of compatible, high-quality archaeological datasets.

The FAIMS Project is a $950k eResearch Tools project, funded by the National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources (NeCTAR) program.  It is led by UNSW in collaboration with participants from 41 organisations.

Development partners include Intersect, La Trobe University, VeRSI and University of Sydney.

HPC updates, upgrades and replacements

The next Resource Allocation Round

Intersect will not run a resource allocation round for Q4 2012. Resources for Q4 will be allocated to researchers at the same levels as their Q3 allocations.

We are streamlining our resource allocation process, and aligning it better with the ARC grant-cycle.  Subsequently we will run a single resource allocation round for 2013. Applications open in October, for resources for all four quarters of 2013, beginning in January. Applications to Orange and NCI’s facilities will be made on the same form, which means that all users who have accounts only on McLaren will need to apply for accounts at NCI, see http://nf.nci.org.au/accounts/

As we move to our new supercomputers, we greatly increase the amount of HPC resource available.  So THINK BIG!

Orange the new NSW supercomputer

It is time to retire our beloved McLaren. Named after another great wine growing region, Orange will replace McLaren and will be commissioned by the end of October 2012 as McLaren is being decommissioned.

The SGI 30+ Tflop distributed memory cluster will provide a greater than 25-fold increase of compute power and a fivefold increase of disk capacity on the existing system.

For more information, see http://www.intersect.org.au/orange

NCI’s new facility

The new NCI peak system is a Fujitsu Primergy high-performance, distributed-memory, cluster. It will be fully commissioned by January 2013. Users can start thinking about up scaling as Intersect’s share dramatically increases from approx. 5m service units to 25m service units.

For more information, see http://www.intersect.org.au/nci_next

eResearch Australasia early bird call

Held in Sydney from 28 Oct – 2 Nov 2012, this conference is a great opportunity for delegates to meet peers, exchange experiences and gain an understanding of eResearch developments.

Early bird discounts close 30 Sept.

See http://conference.eresearch.edu.au

Recruiting now

UWS seeks a Data Manager, HEW Level 8, with postgrad qualifications in information management, IT or like plus an understanding of eResearch, to be based at Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, see https://uws.nga.net.au

Intersect has a couple of junior level Software Engineer positions available.  Details are on our website at http://www.intersect.org.au/job-opportunities

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