1. e-Science and Technology Infrastructure
for Biodiversity Research
by
R.VINOTHKUMAR, MCA.,
Department of Computer Science
Periyar Arts College,
Cuddalore- 1
2. What is eScience?
• The term was created by John Taylor, the Director General of the
United Kingdom's Office of Science and Technology in 1999.
• ‘e-Science is a global collaboration in key areas of science, and the
next generation of infrastructure that will enable it computational
research of Science.’
• E-Science (or eScience) is computationally intensive science that is
carried out in highly distributed network environments, or science
that uses immense data sets that require grid computing; the term
sometimes includes technologies that enable distributed
collaboration, such as the Access Grid.
• To promote the Internet as a functional instrument for a global
scientific knowledge base and for human reflection.
3. e-Science revolves around developing new methods
to support scientists in conducting scientific research with
the aim of making new scientific discoveries by analyzing
vast amounts of data accessible over the internet using vast
amounts of computational resources.
However, discoveries of value cannot be made
simply by providing computational tools, a cyber
infrastructure or by performing a pre-defined set of steps to
produce a result. Rather, there needs to be an original,
creative aspect to the activity that by its nature cannot be
automated.
4. Why eScience?
• E-science has been more broadly interpreted since
then, as "the application of computer technology to
the undertaking of
modern scientific investigation
Preparation of Scientific resources
Experimentation
data collection
results dissemination
long-term storage
and accessibility of all materials generated through
the scientific process.
5. Defines open access contributions as including:
original scientific research results,
raw data and metadata,
source materials,
digital representations of pictorial and
graphical materials
multimedia material
6. What is Grid Computing
Although "the Grid" is still just a dream... grid computing is already
reality.
• Imagine several million computers from all over the world, and
owned by thousands of different people. Imagine they include
desktops, laptops, supercomputers, data vaults, and instruments
like mobile phones, meteorological sensors and telescopes...
• Now imagine that all of these computers can be connected to form
a single, huge and super-powerful computer! This huge, sprawling,
global computer is what many people dream "The Grid" will be.
• "The Grid" takes its name from an analogy with the electrical
"power grid". The idea was that accessing computer power from a
computer grid would be as simple as accessing electrical power
from an electrical grid".
7. eScience Research Areas
• Astronomy & Space
• Biology & Nature
• Earth & Climate
• Health & Medicine
• Mathematics & Economics
• Paleontology & Archaeology
• Physics & Chemistry
• Psychology & Sociology
8. e-Infrastructure
a new global infrastructure
• information on demand - like power from a socket
• the Grid is an emergent infrastructure to deliver dependable,
pervasive and uniform access to globally distributed, dynamic
and heterogeneous resources
• Most of the research activities into e-Science have focused on
the development of new computational tools and
infrastructures to support scientific discovery.
• Due to the complexity of the software and the backend
infrastructural requirements, e-Science projects usually
involve large teams managed and developed by research
laboratories, large universities or governments.
10. eInfrastructure Features & Benefits
• Single portal for researchers, policy makers,
industries and public at large.
• Find data and model to analyse statistical
relationships; create and integrate geographic
information, produce maps and layers.
• Structure the scientific community with new
opportunities for large-scale projects
• Accelerate data capture with new technologies.
12. Lifewatch: eInfrasturcture
• LifeWatch is the European e-Science
infrastructure for biodiversity and ecosystem
research meant to provide advanced capabilities
for research on the complex biodiversity system.
The term ‘research infrastructure' refers strategic
installation at european/international level
supplying facilities, resources and related services
to the scientific and other user's communities to
conduct top-level activities in their respective
field of science.
13. Fig 2: Life watch: Building blocks of the research infrastructure
eScience : Lifewatch
14. On the top of that, e-Science
infrastructures capitalize existing resources and
data from physical infrastructures, distributed
centers and single research groups. The
capabilities offered by the Life Watch, as a e-
Science infrastructure, allow users to tackle the
big basic questions in biodiversity, as well to
address the urgent societal challenges
concerning biodiversity, ecosystems and other
crosscutting issues.
16. Preserving digital data future of
eScience
•Libraries and other archives of physical culture have
been struggling for to preserve diverse media for
future generation.
For ex: from paper to eBooks.
•Scientist are falling behind the curve in protecting
digital data, threatening the ability to mine new
findings from existing data or validate research
analysis.
•we can put digital data onto a protected system and
then interconnect it via computer networks to a space
in which user can operate remotely from anywhere in
the world.
17. Science 2.0
• Other views include Science 2.0 where e-Science is considered
to be a shift from the publication of final results by well-
defined collaborative groups towards a more open approach,
which includes the public sharing of raw data, preliminary
experimental results, and related information.
• To facilitate this shift, the Science 2.0 view is on providing
tools that simplify communication, cooperation and
collaboration between interested parties. Such an approach
has the potential to: speed up the process of scientific
discovery; overcome problems associated with academic
publishing and peer review; and remove time and cost
barriers limiting the process of generating new knowledge
18. eScience Labs?
eScience Labs delivers:
• Academically sound and thought provoking experiments
• Flexibility
• Real life examples
• Supplementary online content
• Online, email and telephone support
• provide online video demonstrations to clearly and
safely convey these concepts.
,
19. Conclusion
In many fields, data are growing so fast that there is
no time to push them into some central repository.
Increasingly, then, data will be distributed in a pretty
revolutionary system.
Scientific data approximately double every year, due
to availability of successive new generations of inexpensive
sensors and exponentially faster computing. It is essentially
an “industrial revolution” in the collecting of digital data.
20. The principle of open access to publicly funded scientific
data is widely supported internationally .
The individual Research Councils have data sharing
policies in different stages of maturity.
e-Science has the potential to transform the way
universities and industry pursue research .