science 2.0

Explorable Explanations is my umbrella project for ideas that enable and encourage truly active reading. The goal is to change people's relationship with text. People currently think of text as information to be consumed. I want text to be used as an environment to think in.

GenMAPP is a free computer application designed to visualize gene expression and other genomic data on maps representing biological pathways and groupings of genes. Integrated with GenMAPP are programs to perform a global analysis of gene expression or genomic data in the context of hundreds of pathway MAPPs and thousands of Gene Ontology Terms (MAPPFinder), import lists of genes/proteins to build new MAPPs (MAPPBuilder), and export archives of MAPPs and expression/genomic data to the web.

Complex coupled multi-physics simulations are playing increasingly important roles in scientific and engineering applications such as fusion plasma and climate modeling. At the same time, extreme scales, high levels of concurrency and the advent of multicore and many core technologies are making the high-end parallel computing systems on which these simulations run, hard to program. While the Partitioned Global Address Space (PGAS) languages is attempting to address the problem, the PGAS model does not easily support the coupling of multiple application codes, which is necessary for the coupled multi-physics simulations. Furthermore, existing frameworks that support coupled simulations have been developed for fragmented programming models such as message passing, and are conceptually mismatched with the shared memory address space abstraction in the PGAS programming model. This paper explores how multi-physics coupled simulations can be supported within the PGAS programming framework. Specifically, in this paper, we present the design and implementation of the XpressSpace programming system, which enables efficient and productive development of coupled simulations across multiple independent PGAS Unified Parallel C (UPC) executables. XpressSpace provides the global-view style programming interface that is consistent with the memory model in UPC, and provides an efficient runtime system that can dynamically capture the data decomposition of global-view arrays and enable fast exchange of parallel data structures between coupled codes. In addition, XpressSpace provides the flexibility to define the coupling process in specification file that is independent of the program source codes. We evaluate the performance and scalability of Xpress Space prototype implementation using different coupling patterns extracted from real world multi-physics simulation scenarios, on the Jaguar Cray XT5 system of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

VORPAL enables researchers to simulate complex physical phenomena in less time and at a much lower cost than empirically testing process changes for plasma and vapor deposition processes. VORPAL offers a unique combination of physical models to cover the entire range of plasma simulation problems. Ionization and neutral gas models enable VORPAL to bridge the gap between plasma and neutral flow physics. VORPAL software runs on a wide range of computing platforms, from desktop machines to massively parallel supercomputers with thousands of processors. The use of standard data formats allows data analysis at various levels of sophistication, including your own preferred data analysis tool. VORPAL is used by scientists and engineers to simulate the physical behavior of devices and processes for many industrial and research applications, including laser wakefield accelerators, plasma thrusters, high-power microwave guides, and plasma processing chambers.

This paper describes the design of OpenFOAM, an object- oriented library for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and struc- tural analysis. Efficient and flexible implementation of complex physi- cal models in Continuum Mechanics is achieved by mimicking the form of partial differential equation in software. The library provides Fi- nite Volume and Finite Element discretisation in operator form and with polyhedral mesh support, with relevant auxiliary tools and sup- port for massively parallel computing. Functionality of OpenFOAM is illustrated on three levels: improvements in linear solver technology with CG-AMG solvers, LES data analysis using Proper Orthogonal Decom- position (POD) and a self-contained fluid-structure interaction solver.

Models of whole-brain connectivity are valuable for understanding neurological function, development and disease. This paper presents a machine learning based approach to classify subjects according to their approximated structural connectivity patterns and to identify features which represent the key differences between groups. Brain networks are extracted from diffusion magnetic resonance images obtained by a clinically viable acquisition protocol. Connections are tracked between 83 regions of interest automatically extracted by label propagation from multiple brain atlases followed by classifier fusion. Tracts between these regions are propagated by probabilistic tracking, and mean anisotropy measurements along these connections provide the feature vectors for combined principal component analysis and maximum uncertainty linear discriminant analysis. The approach is tested on two populations with different age distributions: 20-30 and 60-90 years. We show that subjects can be classified successfully (with 87.46% accuracy) and that the features extracted from the discriminant analysis agree with current consensus on the neurological impact of ageing.

The Ion Proton™ Sequencer, priced at $149,000, is based on the next generation of semiconductor sequencing technology that has made its predecessor, the Ion Personal Genome Machine™ (PGM™), the fastest-selling sequencer in the world. Up to now, it has taken weeks or months to sequence a human genome at a cost of $5,000 to $10,000 using optical-based sequencing technologies. The slow pace and the high instrument cost of $500,000 to $750,000 have limited human genome sequencing to relatively few research labs. Baylor College of Medicine, Yale School of Medicine, and The Broad Institute, have each signed up for multiple Ion Proton™ Sequencers and will be the first customers to adopt this transformative technology.

Vis5D is a system for interactive visualization of large 5-D gridded data sets such as those produced by numerical weather models. One can make isosurfaces, contour line slices, colored slices, volume renderings, etc of data in a 3-D grid, then rotate and animate the images in real time. There's also a feature for wind trajectory tracing, a way to make text anotations for publications, support for interactive data analysis, etc.

Dexy is a tool for writing about code and data, so it's an ideal tool for writing about data science which involves lots of both.

UCount: community-based approach for measuring scientific reputation ICST, in collaboration with EAI is offering its Society the opportunity to define a new way of measuring scientific reputation and effort for the research community. With the UCount approach, both participative/representative measures and bibliometric excellence are combined into a single 'Reputation Metric' that incorporates opinions from the community.