Analysis of Variance: What Is Your Statistical Software Actually Doing?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Li, Jian; Lomax, Richard G.

2011-01-01

Users assume statistical software packages produce accurate results. In this article, the authors systematically examined Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and Statistical Analysis System (SAS) for 3 analysis of variance (ANOVA) designs, mixed-effects ANOVA, fixed-effects analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), and nested ANOVA. For each…

Offline software for the DAMPE experiment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Chi; Liu, Dong; Wei, Yifeng; Zhang, Zhiyong; Zhang, Yunlong; Wang, Xiaolian; Xu, Zizong; Huang, Guangshun; Tykhonov, Andrii; Wu, Xin; Zang, Jingjing; Liu, Yang; Jiang, Wei; Wen, Sicheng; Wu, Jian; Chang, Jin

2017-10-01

A software system has been developed for the DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) mission, a satellite-based experiment. The DAMPE software is mainly written in C++ and steered using a Python script. This article presents an overview of the DAMPE offline software, including the major architecture design and specific implementation for simulation, calibration and reconstruction. The whole system has been successfully applied to DAMPE data analysis. Some results obtained using the system, from simulation and beam test experiments, are presented. Supported by Chinese 973 Program (2010CB833002), the Strategic Priority Research Program on Space Science of the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) (XDA04040202-4), the Joint Research Fund in Astronomy under cooperative agreement between the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and CAS (U1531126) and 100 Talents Program of the Chinese Academy of Science

A User's Guide to the Meta-Analysis of Research Studies. Meta-Stat: Software To Aid in the Meta-Analysis of Research Findings.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rudner, Lawrence M.; Glass Gene V.; Evartt, David L.; Emery, Patrick J.

This manual and the accompanying software are intended to provide a step-by-step guide to conducting a meta-analytic study along with references for further reading and free high-quality software, "Meta-Stat.""Meta-Stat" is a comprehensive package designed to help in the meta-analysis of research studies in the social and behavioral sciences.…

Preparing for LISA Data: The Testbed for LISA Analysis Project

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Finn, Lee Samuel; Benacquista, Matthew J.; Larson, Shane L.; Rubbo, Louis J.

2006-11-01

The Testbed for LISA Analysis (TLA) Project aims to facilitate the development, validation, and comparison of different methods for LISA science data analysis by the broad LISA Science Community to meet the special challenges that LISA poses. It includes a well-defined Simulated LISA Data Product (SLDP), which provides a clean interface between the modeling of LISA, the preparation of LISA data, and the analysis of the LISA science data stream; a web-based clearinghouse (at ) providing SLDP software libraries, relevant software, papers and other documentation, and a repository for SLDP data sets; a set of mailing lists for communication between and among LISA simulator developers and LISA science analysts; a problem tracking system for SLDP support; and a program of workshops to allow the burgeoning LISA science community to further refine the SLDP definition, define specific LISA science analysis challenges, and report their results. This proceedings paper describes the TLA Project, the resources it provides immediately, its future plans, and invites the participation of the broader community in the furtherance of its goals.

NASA Tech Briefs, December 1996. Volume 20, No. 12

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1996-01-01

Topics: Design and Analysis Software; Electronic Components and Circuits; Electronic Systems; Physical Sciences; Materials; Computer Programs; Mechanics; Machinery/Automation; Manufacturing/Fabrication; Mathematics and Information Sciences; Life Sciences; Books and Reports

One-Click Data Analysis Software for Science Operations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Navarro, Vicente

2015-12-01

One of the important activities of ESA Science Operations Centre is to provide Data Analysis Software (DAS) to enable users and scientists to process data further to higher levels. During operations and post-operations, Data Analysis Software (DAS) is fully maintained and updated for new OS and library releases. Nonetheless, once a Mission goes into the "legacy" phase, there are very limited funds and long-term preservation becomes more and more difficult. Building on Virtual Machine (VM), Cloud computing and Software as a Service (SaaS) technologies, this project has aimed at providing long-term preservation of Data Analysis Software for the following missions: - PIA for ISO (1995) - SAS for XMM-Newton (1999) - Hipe for Herschel (2009) - EXIA for EXOSAT (1983) Following goals have guided the architecture: - Support for all operations, post-operations and archive/legacy phases. - Support for local (user's computer) and cloud environments (ESAC-Cloud, Amazon - AWS). - Support for expert users, requiring full capabilities. - Provision of a simple web-based interface. This talk describes the architecture, challenges, results and lessons learnt gathered in this project.

Study of application of space telescope science operations software for SIRTF use

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Dignam, F.; Stetson, E.; Allendoerfer, W.

1985-01-01

The design and development of the Space Telescope Science Operations Ground System (ST SOGS) was evaluated to compile a history of lessons learned that would benefit NASA's Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF). Forty-nine specific recommendations resulted and were categorized as follows: (1) requirements: a discussion of the content, timeliness and proper allocation of the system and segment requirements and the resulting impact on SOGS development; (2) science instruments: a consideration of the impact of the Science Instrument design and data streams on SOGS software; and (3) contract phasing: an analysis of the impact of beginning the various ST program segments at different times. Approximately half of the software design and source code might be useable for SIRTF. Transportability of this software requires, at minimum, a compatible DEC VAX-based architecture and VMS operating system, system support software similar to that developed for SOGS, and continued evolution of the SIRTF operations concept and requirements such that they remain compatible with ST SOGS operation.

Computer Sciences and Data Systems, volume 1

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1987-01-01

Topics addressed include: software engineering; university grants; institutes; concurrent processing; sparse distributed memory; distributed operating systems; intelligent data management processes; expert system for image analysis; fault tolerant software; and architecture research.

Data synthesis and display programs for wave distribution function analysis

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Storey, L. R. O.; Yeh, K. J.

1992-01-01

At the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) software was written to synthesize and display artificial data for use in developing the methodology of wave distribution analysis. The software comprises two separate interactive programs, one for data synthesis and the other for data display.

Guidance and Control Software,

DTIC Science & Technology

1980-05-01

commitments of function, cost, and schedule . The phrase "software engineering" was intended to contrast with the phrase "computer science" the latter aims...the software problems of cost, delivery schedule , and quality were gradually being recognized at the highest management levels. Thus, in a project... schedule dates. Although the analysis of software problems indicated that the entire software development process (figure 1) needed new methods, only

Development of Data Processing Software for NBI Spectroscopic Analysis System

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Xiaodan; Hu, Chundong; Sheng, Peng; Zhao, Yuanzhe; Wu, Deyun; Cui, Qinglong

2015-04-01

A set of data processing software is presented in this paper for processing NBI spectroscopic data. For better and more scientific managment and querying these data, they are managed uniformly by the NBI data server. The data processing software offers the functions of uploading beam spectral original and analytic data to the data server manually and automatically, querying and downloading all the NBI data, as well as dealing with local LZO data. The set software is composed of a server program and a client program. The server software is programmed in C/C++ under a CentOS development environment. The client software is developed under a VC 6.0 platform, which offers convenient operational human interfaces. The network communications between the server and the client are based on TCP. With the help of this set software, the NBI spectroscopic analysis system realizes the unattended automatic operation, and the clear interface also makes it much more convenient to offer beam intensity distribution data and beam power data to operators for operation decision-making. supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 11075183), the Chinese Academy of Sciences Knowledge Innovation

Research in applied mathematics, numerical analysis, and computer science

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1984-01-01

Research conducted at the Institute for Computer Applications in Science and Engineering (ICASE) in applied mathematics, numerical analysis, and computer science is summarized and abstracts of published reports are presented. The major categories of the ICASE research program are: (1) numerical methods, with particular emphasis on the development and analysis of basic numerical algorithms; (2) control and parameter identification; (3) computational problems in engineering and the physical sciences, particularly fluid dynamics, acoustics, and structural analysis; and (4) computer systems and software, especially vector and parallel computers.

Towards understanding software: 15 years in the SEL

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mcgarry, Frank; Pajerski, Rose

1990-01-01

For 15 years, the Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL) at GSFC has been carrying out studies and experiments for the purpose of understanding, assessing, and improving software, and software processes within a production software environment. The SEL comprises three major organizations: (1) the GSFC Flight Dynamics Division; (2) the University of Maryland Computer Science Department; and (3) the Computer Sciences Corporation Flight Dynamics Technology Group. These organizations have jointly carried out several hundred software studies, producing hundreds of reports, papers, and documents: all describing some aspect of the software engineering technology that has undergone analysis in the flight dynamics environment. The studies range from small controlled experiments (such as analyzing the effectiveness of code reading versus functional testing) to large, multiple-project studies (such as assessing the impacts of Ada on a production environment). The key findings that NASA feels have laid the foundation for ongoing and future software development and research activities are summarized.

Scientific Software: How to Find What You Need and Get What You Pay for.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gabaldon, Diana J.

1984-01-01

Provides examples of software for the sciences, including: packages for pathology/toxicology laboratories (costing over $15,000), DNA sequencing, and data acquisition/analysis; general-purpose software for scientific uses; and "custom" packages, including a program to maintain a listing of "Escherichia coli" strains and a…

A Requirements Analysis Model for Selection of Personal Computer (PC) software in Air Force Organizations

DTIC Science & Technology

1988-09-01

Institute of Technology Air University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Systems Management Dexter R... management system software Diag/Prob Diagnosis and problem solving or problem finding GR Graphics software Int/Transp Interoperability and...language software Plan/D.S. Planning and decision support or decision making PM Program management software SC Systems for Command, Control, Communications

NASA Tech Briefs, September 1997. Volume 21, No. 9

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1997-01-01

Topics include: Data Acquisition and Analysis; Electronic Components and Circuits; Electronic Systems; Physical Sciences; Materials; Computer Software; Mechanics; Machinery/Automation; Manufacturing/Fabrication; Mathematics and Information Sciences.

Analysis of XMM-Newton Data from Extended Sources and the Diffuse X-Ray Background

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Snowden, Steven

2011-01-01

Reduction of X-ray data from extended objects and the diffuse background is a complicated process that requires attention to the details of the instrumental response as well as an understanding of the multiple background components. We present methods and software that we have developed to reduce data from XMM-Newton EPIC imaging observations for both the MOS and PN instruments. The software has now been included in the Science Analysis System (SAS) package available through the XMM-Newton Science Operations Center (SOC).

Gesture Analysis for Astronomy Presentation Software

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Robinson, Marc A.

Astronomy presentation software in a planetarium setting provides a visually stimulating way to introduce varied scientific concepts, including computer science concepts, to a wide audience. However, the underlying computational complexity and opportunities for discussion are often overshadowed by the brilliance of the presentation itself. To bring this discussion back out into the open, a method needs to be developed to make the computer science applications more visible. This thesis introduces the GAAPS system, which endeavors to implement free-hand gesture-based control of astronomy presentation software, with the goal of providing that talking point to begin the discussion of computer science concepts in a planetarium setting. The GAAPS system incorporates gesture capture and analysis in a unique environment presenting unique challenges, and introduces a novel algorithm called a Bounding Box Tree to create and select features for this particular gesture data. This thesis also analyzes several different machine learning techniques to determine a well-suited technique for the classification of this particular data set, with an artificial neural network being chosen as the implemented algorithm. The results of this work will allow for the desired introduction of computer science discussion into the specific setting used, as well as provide for future work pertaining to gesture recognition with astronomy presentation software.

Computer Lab Tools for Science: An Analysis of Commercially Available Science Interfacing Software for Microcomputers. A Quarterly Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Weaver, Dave

Science interfacing packages (also known as microcomputer-based laboratories or probeware) generally consist of a set of programs on disks, a user's manual, and hardware which includes one or more sensory devices. Together with a microcomputer they combine to make a powerful data acquisition and analysis tool. Packages are available for accurately…

DataHub knowledge based assistance for science visualization and analysis using large distributed databases

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Handley, Thomas H., Jr.; Collins, Donald J.; Doyle, Richard J.; Jacobson, Allan S.

1991-01-01

Viewgraphs on DataHub knowledge based assistance for science visualization and analysis using large distributed databases. Topics covered include: DataHub functional architecture; data representation; logical access methods; preliminary software architecture; LinkWinds; data knowledge issues; expert systems; and data management.

Scientific Software - the role of best practices and recommendations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fritzsch, Bernadette; Bernstein, Erik; Castell, Wolfgang zu; Diesmann, Markus; Haas, Holger; Hammitzsch, Martin; Konrad, Uwe; Lähnemann, David; McHardy, Alice; Pampel, Heinz; Scheliga, Kaja; Schreiber, Andreas; Steglich, Dirk

2017-04-01

In Geosciences - like in most other communities - scientific work strongly depends on software. For big data analysis, existing (closed or open source) program packages are often mixed with newly developed codes. Different versions of software components and varying configurations can influence the result of data analysis. This often makes reproducibility of results and reuse of codes very difficult. Policies for publication and documentation of used and newly developed software, along with best practices, can help tackle this problem. Within the Helmholtz Association a Task Group "Access to and Re-use of scientific software" was implemented by the Open Science Working Group in 2016. The aim of the Task Group is to foster the discussion about scientific software in the Open Science context and to formulate recommendations for the production and publication of scientific software, ensuring open access to it. As a first step, a workshop gathered interested scientists from institutions across Germany. The workshop brought together various existing initiatives from different scientific communities to analyse current problems, share established best practices and come up with possible solutions. The subjects in the working groups covered a broad range of themes, including technical infrastructures, standards and quality assurance, citation of software and reproducibility. Initial recommendations are presented and discussed in the talk. They are the foundation for further discussions in the Helmholtz Association and the Priority Initiative "Digital Information" of the Alliance of Science Organisations in Germany. The talk aims to inform about the activities and to link with other initiatives on the national or international level.

Final Report Scalable Analysis Methods and In Situ Infrastructure for Extreme Scale Knowledge Discovery

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

O'Leary, Patrick

The primary challenge motivating this project is the widening gap between the ability to compute information and to store it for subsequent analysis. This gap adversely impacts science code teams, who can perform analysis only on a small fraction of the data they calculate, resulting in the substantial likelihood of lost or missed science, when results are computed but not analyzed. Our approach is to perform as much analysis or visualization processing on data while it is still resident in memory, which is known as in situ processing. The idea in situ processing was not new at the time ofmore » the start of this effort in 2014, but efforts in that space were largely ad hoc, and there was no concerted effort within the research community that aimed to foster production-quality software tools suitable for use by Department of Energy (DOE) science projects. Our objective was to produce and enable the use of production-quality in situ methods and infrastructure, at scale, on DOE high-performance computing (HPC) facilities, though we expected to have an impact beyond DOE due to the widespread nature of the challenges, which affect virtually all large-scale computational science efforts. To achieve this objective, we engaged in software technology research and development (R&D), in close partnerships with DOE science code teams, to produce software technologies that were shown to run efficiently at scale on DOE HPC platforms.« less

Long-term Preservation of Data Analysis Capabilities

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gabriel, C.; Arviset, C.; Ibarra, A.; Pollock, A.

2015-09-01

While the long-term preservation of scientific data obtained by large astrophysics missions is ensured through science archives, the issue of data analysis software preservation has hardly been addressed. Efforts by large data centres have contributed so far to maintain some instrument or mission-specific data reduction packages on top of high-level general purpose data analysis software. However, it is always difficult to keep software alive without support and maintenance once the active phase of a mission is over. This is especially difficult in the budgetary model followed by space agencies. We discuss the importance of extending the lifetime of dedicated data analysis packages and review diverse strategies under development at ESA using new paradigms such as Virtual Machines, Cloud Computing, and Software as a Service for making possible full availability of data analysis and calibration software for decades at minimal cost.

Challenges in Mentoring Software Development Projects in the High School: Analysis According to Shulman's Teacher Knowledge Base Model

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Meerbaum-Salant, Orni; Hazzan, Orit

2009-01-01

This paper focuses on challenges in mentoring software development projects in the high school and analyzes difficulties encountered by Computer Science teachers in the mentoring process according to Shulman's Teacher Knowledge Base Model. The main difficulties that emerged from the data analysis belong to the following knowledge sources of…

Kepler Science Operations Center Architecture

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Middour, Christopher; Klaus, Todd; Jenkins, Jon; Pletcher, David; Cote, Miles; Chandrasekaran, Hema; Wohler, Bill; Girouard, Forrest; Gunter, Jay P.; Uddin, Kamal;

Fiji: an open-source platform for biological-image analysis.

PubMed

Schindelin, Johannes; Arganda-Carreras, Ignacio; Frise, Erwin; Kaynig, Verena; Longair, Mark; Pietzsch, Tobias; Preibisch, Stephan; Rueden, Curtis; Saalfeld, Stephan; Schmid, Benjamin; Tinevez, Jean-Yves; White, Daniel James; Hartenstein, Volker; Eliceiri, Kevin; Tomancak, Pavel; Cardona, Albert

2012-06-28

Fiji is a distribution of the popular open-source software ImageJ focused on biological-image analysis. Fiji uses modern software engineering practices to combine powerful software libraries with a broad range of scripting languages to enable rapid prototyping of image-processing algorithms. Fiji facilitates the transformation of new algorithms into ImageJ plugins that can be shared with end users through an integrated update system. We propose Fiji as a platform for productive collaboration between computer science and biology research communities.

3D Visualization for Phoenix Mars Lander Science Operations

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Edwards, Laurence; Keely, Leslie; Lees, David; Stoker, Carol

2012-01-01

Planetary surface exploration missions present considerable operational challenges in the form of substantial communication delays, limited communication windows, and limited communication bandwidth. A 3D visualization software was developed and delivered to the 2008 Phoenix Mars Lander (PML) mission. The components of the system include an interactive 3D visualization environment called Mercator, terrain reconstruction software called the Ames Stereo Pipeline, and a server providing distributed access to terrain models. The software was successfully utilized during the mission for science analysis, site understanding, and science operations activity planning. A terrain server was implemented that provided distribution of terrain models from a central repository to clients running the Mercator software. The Ames Stereo Pipeline generates accurate, high-resolution, texture-mapped, 3D terrain models from stereo image pairs. These terrain models can then be visualized within the Mercator environment. The central cross-cutting goal for these tools is to provide an easy-to-use, high-quality, full-featured visualization environment that enhances the mission science team s ability to develop low-risk productive science activity plans. In addition, for the Mercator and Viz visualization environments, extensibility and adaptability to different missions and application areas are key design goals.

The State of Software for Evolutionary Biology.

PubMed

Darriba, Diego; Flouri, Tomáš; Stamatakis, Alexandros

2018-05-01

With Next Generation Sequencing data being routinely used, evolutionary biology is transforming into a computational science. Thus, researchers have to rely on a growing number of increasingly complex software. All widely used core tools in the field have grown considerably, in terms of the number of features as well as lines of code and consequently, also with respect to software complexity. A topic that has received little attention is the software engineering quality of widely used core analysis tools. Software developers appear to rarely assess the quality of their code, and this can have potential negative consequences for end-users. To this end, we assessed the code quality of 16 highly cited and compute-intensive tools mainly written in C/C++ (e.g., MrBayes, MAFFT, SweepFinder, etc.) and JAVA (BEAST) from the broader area of evolutionary biology that are being routinely used in current data analysis pipelines. Because, the software engineering quality of the tools we analyzed is rather unsatisfying, we provide a list of best practices for improving the quality of existing tools and list techniques that can be deployed for developing reliable, high quality scientific software from scratch. Finally, we also discuss journal as well as science policy and, more importantly, funding issues that need to be addressed for improving software engineering quality as well as ensuring support for developing new and maintaining existing software. Our intention is to raise the awareness of the community regarding software engineering quality issues and to emphasize the substantial lack of funding for scientific software development.

Standards guide for space and earth sciences computer software

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mason, G.; Chapman, R.; Klinglesmith, D.; Linnekin, J.; Putney, W.; Shaffer, F.; Dapice, R.

1972-01-01

Guidelines for the preparation of systems analysis and programming work statements are presented. The data is geared toward the efficient administration of available monetary and equipment resources. Language standards and the application of good management techniques to software development are emphasized.

The ERG Science Center

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Miyoshi, Yoshizumi; Hori, Tomoaki; Shoji, Masafumi; Teramoto, Mariko; Chang, T. F.; Segawa, Tomonori; Umemura, Norio; Matsuda, Shoya; Kurita, Satoshi; Keika, Kunihiro; Miyashita, Yukinaga; Seki, Kanako; Tanaka, Yoshimasa; Nishitani, Nozomu; Kasahara, Satoshi; Yokota, Shoichiro; Matsuoka, Ayako; Kasahara, Yoshiya; Asamura, Kazushi; Takashima, Takeshi; Shinohara, Iku

2018-06-01

The Exploration of energization and Radiation in Geospace (ERG) Science Center serves as a hub of the ERG project, providing data files in a common format and developing the space physics environment data analysis software and plug-ins for data analysis. The Science Center also develops observation plans for the ERG (Arase) satellite according to the science strategy of the project. Conjugate observations with other satellites and ground-based observations are also planned. These tasks contribute to the ERG project by achieving quick analysis and well-organized conjugate ERG satellite and ground-based observations.

Summary of research in applied mathematics, numerical analysis, and computer sciences

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1986-01-01

The major categories of current ICASE research programs addressed include: numerical methods, with particular emphasis on the development and analysis of basic numerical algorithms; control and parameter identification problems, with emphasis on effective numerical methods; computational problems in engineering and physical sciences, particularly fluid dynamics, acoustics, and structural analysis; and computer systems and software, especially vector and parallel computers.

The Autonomous Sciencecraft and applications to future science missions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chien, S.

2006-05-01

The Autonomous Sciencecraft Software has operated the Earth Observing One (EO-1) Mission for over 5000 science observations [Chien et al. 2005a]. This software enables onboard analysis of data to drive: 1. production of rapid alerts summary products, 2. data editing, and 3. to inform subsequent observations. This methodology has been applied to more effectively study Volcano, Flooding, and Cryosphere processes on Earth. In this talk we discuss how this software enables new paradigms for science missions and discuss the types of science phenomena that can now be more readily studied (e.g. dynamic investigations, large scale searches for specific events). We also describe a range of Earth, Solar, and Space science applications under concept study for onboard autonomy. Finally, we describe ongoing work to link EO-1 with other spacecraft and in-situ sensor networks to enable a sensorweb for monitoring dynamic science events [Chien et al. 2005b]. S. Chien, R. Sherwood, D. Tran, B. Cichy, G. Rabideau, R. Castano, A. Davies, D. Mandl, S. Frye, B. Trout, S. Shulman, D. Boyer, "Using Autonomy Flight Software to Improve Science Return on Earth Observing One, Journal of Aerospace Computing, Information, & Communication, April 2005, AIAA. S. Chien, B. Cichy, A. Davies, D. Tran, G. Rabideau, R. Castano, R. Sherwood, D. Mandl, S. Frye, S. Shulman, J. Jones, S. Grosvenor, "An Autonomous Earth Observing Sensorweb," IEEE Intelligent Systems, May-June 2005, pp. 16- 24.

The ImageJ ecosystem: an open platform for biomedical image analysis

PubMed Central

Schindelin, Johannes; Rueden, Curtis T.; Hiner, Mark C.; Eliceiri, Kevin W.

2015-01-01

Technology in microscopy advances rapidly, enabling increasingly affordable, faster, and more precise quantitative biomedical imaging, which necessitates correspondingly more-advanced image processing and analysis techniques. A wide range of software is available – from commercial to academic, special-purpose to Swiss army knife, small to large–but a key characteristic of software that is suitable for scientific inquiry is its accessibility. Open-source software is ideal for scientific endeavors because it can be freely inspected, modified, and redistributed; in particular, the open-software platform ImageJ has had a huge impact on life sciences, and continues to do so. From its inception, ImageJ has grown significantly due largely to being freely available and its vibrant and helpful user community. Scientists as diverse as interested hobbyists, technical assistants, students, scientific staff, and advanced biology researchers use ImageJ on a daily basis, and exchange knowledge via its dedicated mailing list. Uses of ImageJ range from data visualization and teaching to advanced image processing and statistical analysis. The software's extensibility continues to attract biologists at all career stages as well as computer scientists who wish to effectively implement specific image-processing algorithms. In this review, we use the ImageJ project as a case study of how open-source software fosters its suites of software tools, making multitudes of image-analysis technology easily accessible to the scientific community. We specifically explore what makes ImageJ so popular, how it impacts life science, how it inspires other projects, and how it is self-influenced by coevolving projects within the ImageJ ecosystem. PMID:26153368

The ImageJ ecosystem: An open platform for biomedical image analysis.

PubMed

Schindelin, Johannes; Rueden, Curtis T; Hiner, Mark C; Eliceiri, Kevin W

2015-01-01

Technology in microscopy advances rapidly, enabling increasingly affordable, faster, and more precise quantitative biomedical imaging, which necessitates correspondingly more-advanced image processing and analysis techniques. A wide range of software is available-from commercial to academic, special-purpose to Swiss army knife, small to large-but a key characteristic of software that is suitable for scientific inquiry is its accessibility. Open-source software is ideal for scientific endeavors because it can be freely inspected, modified, and redistributed; in particular, the open-software platform ImageJ has had a huge impact on the life sciences, and continues to do so. From its inception, ImageJ has grown significantly due largely to being freely available and its vibrant and helpful user community. Scientists as diverse as interested hobbyists, technical assistants, students, scientific staff, and advanced biology researchers use ImageJ on a daily basis, and exchange knowledge via its dedicated mailing list. Uses of ImageJ range from data visualization and teaching to advanced image processing and statistical analysis. The software's extensibility continues to attract biologists at all career stages as well as computer scientists who wish to effectively implement specific image-processing algorithms. In this review, we use the ImageJ project as a case study of how open-source software fosters its suites of software tools, making multitudes of image-analysis technology easily accessible to the scientific community. We specifically explore what makes ImageJ so popular, how it impacts the life sciences, how it inspires other projects, and how it is self-influenced by coevolving projects within the ImageJ ecosystem. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Scalable Analysis Methods and In Situ Infrastructure for Extreme Scale Knowledge Discovery

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Bethel, Wes

2016-07-24

The primary challenge motivating this team’s work is the widening gap between the ability to compute information and to store it for subsequent analysis. This gap adversely impacts science code teams, who are able to perform analysis only on a small fraction of the data they compute, resulting in the very real likelihood of lost or missed science, when results are computed but not analyzed. Our approach is to perform as much analysis or visualization processing on data while it is still resident in memory, an approach that is known as in situ processing. The idea in situ processing wasmore » not new at the time of the start of this effort in 2014, but efforts in that space were largely ad hoc, and there was no concerted effort within the research community that aimed to foster production-quality software tools suitable for use by DOE science projects. In large, our objective was produce and enable use of production-quality in situ methods and infrastructure, at scale, on DOE HPC facilities, though we expected to have impact beyond DOE due to the widespread nature of the challenges, which affect virtually all large-scale computational science efforts. To achieve that objective, we assembled a unique team of researchers consisting of representatives from DOE national laboratories, academia, and industry, and engaged in software technology R&D, as well as engaged in close partnerships with DOE science code teams, to produce software technologies that were shown to run effectively at scale on DOE HPC platforms.« less

The IUE Science Operations Ground System

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Pitts, Ronald E.; Arquilla, Richard

1994-01-01

The International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) Science Operations System provides full realtime operations capabilities and support to the operations staff and astronomer users. The components of this very diverse and extremely flexible hardware and software system have played a major role in maintaining the scientific efficiency and productivity of the IUE. The software provides the staff and user with all the tools necessary for pre-visit and real-time planning and operations analysis for any day of the year. Examples of such tools include the effects of spacecraft constraints on target availability, maneuver times between targets, availability of guide stars, target identification, coordinate transforms, e-mail transfer of Observatory forms and messages, and quick-look analysis of image data. Most of this extensive software package can also be accessed remotely by individual users for information, scheduling of shifts, pre-visit planning, and actual observing program execution. Astronomers, with a modest investment in hardware and software, may establish remote observing sites. We currently have over 20 such sites in our remote observers' network.

The Astrophysics Source Code Library: Supporting software publication and citation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Allen, Alice; Teuben, Peter

2018-01-01

The Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL, ascl.net), established in 1999, is a free online registry for source codes used in research that has appeared in, or been submitted to, peer-reviewed publications. The ASCL is indexed by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) and Web of Science and is citable by using the unique ascl ID assigned to each code. In addition to registering codes, the ASCL can house archive files for download and assign them DOIs. The ASCL advocations for software citation on par with article citation, participates in multidiscipinary events such as Force11, OpenCon, and the annual Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science, works with journal publishers, and organizes Special Sessions and Birds of a Feather meetings at national and international conferences such as Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems (ADASS), European Week of Astronomy and Space Science, and AAS meetings. In this presentation, I will discuss some of the challenges of gathering credit for publishing software and ideas and efforts from other disciplines that may be useful to astronomy.

The multi-modal Australian ScienceS Imaging and Visualization Environment (MASSIVE) high performance computing infrastructure: applications in neuroscience and neuroinformatics research

PubMed Central

Goscinski, Wojtek J.; McIntosh, Paul; Felzmann, Ulrich; Maksimenko, Anton; Hall, Christopher J.; Gureyev, Timur; Thompson, Darren; Janke, Andrew; Galloway, Graham; Killeen, Neil E. B.; Raniga, Parnesh; Kaluza, Owen; Ng, Amanda; Poudel, Govinda; Barnes, David G.; Nguyen, Toan; Bonnington, Paul; Egan, Gary F.

2014-01-01

The Multi-modal Australian ScienceS Imaging and Visualization Environment (MASSIVE) is a national imaging and visualization facility established by Monash University, the Australian Synchrotron, the Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), and the Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing (VPAC), with funding from the National Computational Infrastructure and the Victorian Government. The MASSIVE facility provides hardware, software, and expertise to drive research in the biomedical sciences, particularly advanced brain imaging research using synchrotron x-ray and infrared imaging, functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), x-ray computer tomography (CT), electron microscopy and optical microscopy. The development of MASSIVE has been based on best practice in system integration methodologies, frameworks, and architectures. The facility has: (i) integrated multiple different neuroimaging analysis software components, (ii) enabled cross-platform and cross-modality integration of neuroinformatics tools, and (iii) brought together neuroimaging databases and analysis workflows. MASSIVE is now operational as a nationally distributed and integrated facility for neuroinfomatics and brain imaging research. PMID:24734019

Training Plan. Central Archive for Reusable Defense Software (CARDS)

DTIC Science & Technology

1994-01-29

Modeling Software Reuse Technology: Feature Oriented Domain Analysis ( FODA ). SEI, Carnegie Mellon University, May 1992. 8. Component Provider’s...events to the services of the domain. 4. Feature Oriented Domain Analysis ( FODA ) [COHEN92] The FODA method produces feature models. Feature models provide...Architecture FODA Feature-Oriented Domain Analysis GOTS Government-Off-The-Shelf Pap A-49 STARS-VC-B003/001/00 29 imaty 1994 MS Master of Science NEC

Lessons Learned From Developing A Streaming Data Framework for Scientific Analysis

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wheeler. Kevin R.; Allan, Mark; Curry, Charles

2003-01-01

We describe the development and usage of a streaming data analysis software framework. The framework is used for three different applications: Earth science hyper-spectral imaging analysis, Electromyograph pattern detection, and Electroencephalogram state determination. In each application the framework was used to answer a series of science questions which evolved with each subsequent answer. This evolution is summarized in the form of lessons learned.

Computational science: shifting the focus from tools to models

PubMed Central

Hinsen, Konrad

2014-01-01

Computational techniques have revolutionized many aspects of scientific research over the last few decades. Experimentalists use computation for data analysis, processing ever bigger data sets. Theoreticians compute predictions from ever more complex models. However, traditional articles do not permit the publication of big data sets or complex models. As a consequence, these crucial pieces of information no longer enter the scientific record. Moreover, they have become prisoners of scientific software: many models exist only as software implementations, and the data are often stored in proprietary formats defined by the software. In this article, I argue that this emphasis on software tools over models and data is detrimental to science in the long term, and I propose a means by which this can be reversed. PMID:25309728

The State of Software for Evolutionary Biology

PubMed Central

Darriba, Diego; Flouri, Tomáš; Stamatakis, Alexandros

2018-01-01

Abstract With Next Generation Sequencing data being routinely used, evolutionary biology is transforming into a computational science. Thus, researchers have to rely on a growing number of increasingly complex software. All widely used core tools in the field have grown considerably, in terms of the number of features as well as lines of code and consequently, also with respect to software complexity. A topic that has received little attention is the software engineering quality of widely used core analysis tools. Software developers appear to rarely assess the quality of their code, and this can have potential negative consequences for end-users. To this end, we assessed the code quality of 16 highly cited and compute-intensive tools mainly written in C/C++ (e.g., MrBayes, MAFFT, SweepFinder, etc.) and JAVA (BEAST) from the broader area of evolutionary biology that are being routinely used in current data analysis pipelines. Because, the software engineering quality of the tools we analyzed is rather unsatisfying, we provide a list of best practices for improving the quality of existing tools and list techniques that can be deployed for developing reliable, high quality scientific software from scratch. Finally, we also discuss journal as well as science policy and, more importantly, funding issues that need to be addressed for improving software engineering quality as well as ensuring support for developing new and maintaining existing software. Our intention is to raise the awareness of the community regarding software engineering quality issues and to emphasize the substantial lack of funding for scientific software development. PMID:29385525

Laptop Use, Interactive Science Software, and Science Learning Among At-Risk Students

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zheng, Binbin; Warschauer, Mark; Hwang, Jin Kyoung; Collins, Penelope

2014-08-01

This year-long, quasi-experimental study investigated the impact of the use of netbook computers and interactive science software on fifth-grade students' science learning processes, academic achievement, and interest in further science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) study within a linguistically diverse school district in California. Analysis of students' state standardized science test scores indicated that the program helped close gaps in scientific achievement between at-risk learners (i.e., English learners, Hispanics, and free/reduced-lunch recipients) and their counterparts. Teacher and student interviews and classroom observations suggested that computer-supported visual representations and interactions supported diverse learners' scientific understanding and inquiry and enabled more individualized and differentiated instruction. Finally, interviews revealed that the program had a positive impact on students' motivation in science and on their interest in pursuing science-related careers. This study suggests that technology-facilitated science instruction is beneficial for improving at-risk students' science achievement, scaffolding students' scientific understanding, and strengthening students' motivation to pursue STEM-related careers.

NASA Tech Briefs, December 1998. Volume 22, No. 12

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1998-01-01

Topics include: special coverage section on design and analysis software, and sections on electronic components and circuits, electronic systems, software, materials, mechanics, machinery/automation, manufacturing/fabrication, physical sciences, and special sections of Photonics Tech Briefs, Motion Control Tech briefs and a Hot Technology File 1999 Resource Guide.

The Software Ontology (SWO): a resource for reproducibility in biomedical data analysis, curation and digital preservation.

PubMed

Malone, James; Brown, Andy; Lister, Allyson L; Ison, Jon; Hull, Duncan; Parkinson, Helen; Stevens, Robert

2014-01-01

Biomedical ontologists to date have concentrated on ontological descriptions of biomedical entities such as gene products and their attributes, phenotypes and so on. Recently, effort has diversified to descriptions of the laboratory investigations by which these entities were produced. However, much biological insight is gained from the analysis of the data produced from these investigations, and there is a lack of adequate descriptions of the wide range of software that are central to bioinformatics. We need to describe how data are analyzed for discovery, audit trails, provenance and reproducibility. The Software Ontology (SWO) is a description of software used to store, manage and analyze data. Input to the SWO has come from beyond the life sciences, but its main focus is the life sciences. We used agile techniques to gather input for the SWO and keep engagement with our users. The result is an ontology that meets the needs of a broad range of users by describing software, its information processing tasks, data inputs and outputs, data formats versions and so on. Recently, the SWO has incorporated EDAM, a vocabulary for describing data and related concepts in bioinformatics. The SWO is currently being used to describe software used in multiple biomedical applications. The SWO is another element of the biomedical ontology landscape that is necessary for the description of biomedical entities and how they were discovered. An ontology of software used to analyze data produced by investigations in the life sciences can be made in such a way that it covers the important features requested and prioritized by its users. The SWO thus fits into the landscape of biomedical ontologies and is produced using techniques designed to keep it in line with user's needs. The Software Ontology is available under an Apache 2.0 license at http://theswo.sourceforge.net/; the Software Ontology blog can be read at http://softwareontology.wordpress.com.

The Software Ontology (SWO): a resource for reproducibility in biomedical data analysis, curation and digital preservation

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

Motivation Biomedical ontologists to date have concentrated on ontological descriptions of biomedical entities such as gene products and their attributes, phenotypes and so on. Recently, effort has diversified to descriptions of the laboratory investigations by which these entities were produced. However, much biological insight is gained from the analysis of the data produced from these investigations, and there is a lack of adequate descriptions of the wide range of software that are central to bioinformatics. We need to describe how data are analyzed for discovery, audit trails, provenance and reproducibility. Results The Software Ontology (SWO) is a description of software used to store, manage and analyze data. Input to the SWO has come from beyond the life sciences, but its main focus is the life sciences. We used agile techniques to gather input for the SWO and keep engagement with our users. The result is an ontology that meets the needs of a broad range of users by describing software, its information processing tasks, data inputs and outputs, data formats versions and so on. Recently, the SWO has incorporated EDAM, a vocabulary for describing data and related concepts in bioinformatics. The SWO is currently being used to describe software used in multiple biomedical applications. Conclusion The SWO is another element of the biomedical ontology landscape that is necessary for the description of biomedical entities and how they were discovered. An ontology of software used to analyze data produced by investigations in the life sciences can be made in such a way that it covers the important features requested and prioritized by its users. The SWO thus fits into the landscape of biomedical ontologies and is produced using techniques designed to keep it in line with user’s needs. Availability The Software Ontology is available under an Apache 2.0 license at http://theswo.sourceforge.net/; the Software Ontology blog can be read at http://softwareontology.wordpress.com. PMID:25068035

Better the Martian you know? Trust in the crowd vs. trust in the machine when using a Martian Citizen Science platform

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sprinks, James Christopher; Wardlaw, Jessica; Houghton, Robert; Bamford, Steven; Marsh, Stuart

2016-10-01

Citizen science platforms allow untrained volunteers to take part in scientific research across a range of disciplines, and often involve the analysis of remotely sensed imagery. The data collected by increasingly advanced and automated instruments has made planetary science a prime candidate for, and user of, citizen science online platforms. In order to process this large volume of information, such systems are increasingly performed in conjunction with data-mining analysis software, with varying configurations of computer and volunteer contribution. Despite citizen science being a relatively new approach, there has been a growing field of research considering the practice in its own right beyond the scientific problems they address, with studies involving interface HCI, platform functionality, and motivation particularly adding to a growing body of citizen science scholarship.Through iterations of the FP7 iMars project's 'Mars in Motion' platform, the work presented studied the effect that guidance information had on volunteers' accuracy and trust. Whilst analysing imagery for change, volunteers were told whether automated change detection software or the consensus of other citizen scientists had found change, with this information varying in terms of accuracy. Results showed that volunteers' ability to both identify change and the type of feature undergoing change was improved when both the software result and crowd opinion guidance information provided had a greater accuracy. However, when guidance information was less accurate volunteers' level of trust fell at a sharper rate when it came from the crowd than when it came from the algorithm, and participants reported more frustration - a counter-intuitive result compared to existing research. Citizen science practitioners need to consider the information they provide to volunteers and how they present it; the results of software analysis or the consensus of a crowd need to be conclusive and above all accurate in order to improve both the performance and engagement of their volunteer community.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under iMars grant agreement 607379.

OASIS: a data and software distribution service for Open Science Grid

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bockelman, B.; Caballero Bejar, J.; De Stefano, J.; Hover, J.; Quick, R.; Teige, S.

2014-06-01

The Open Science Grid encourages the concept of software portability: a user's scientific application should be able to run at as many sites as possible. It is necessary to provide a mechanism for OSG Virtual Organizations to install software at sites. Since its initial release, the OSG Compute Element has provided an application software installation directory to Virtual Organizations, where they can create their own sub-directory, install software into that sub-directory, and have the directory shared on the worker nodes at that site. The current model has shortcomings with regard to permissions, policies, versioning, and the lack of a unified, collective procedure or toolset for deploying software across all sites. Therefore, a new mechanism for data and software distributing is desirable. The architecture for the OSG Application Software Installation Service (OASIS) is a server-client model: the software and data are installed only once in a single place, and are automatically distributed to all client sites simultaneously. Central file distribution offers other advantages, including server-side authentication and authorization, activity records, quota management, data validation and inspection, and well-defined versioning and deletion policies. The architecture, as well as a complete analysis of the current implementation, will be described in this paper.

Data, Analysis, and Visualization | Computational Science | NREL

Science.gov Websites

Data, Analysis, and Visualization Data, Analysis, and Visualization Data management, data analysis . At NREL, our data management, data analysis, and scientific visualization capabilities help move the approaches to image analysis and computer vision. Data Management and Big Data Systems, software, and tools

Development and case study of a science-based software platform to support policy making on air quality.

PubMed

Zhu, Yun; Lao, Yanwen; Jang, Carey; Lin, Chen-Jen; Xing, Jia; Wang, Shuxiao; Fu, Joshua S; Deng, Shuang; Xie, Junping; Long, Shicheng

2015-01-01

This article describes the development and implementations of a novel software platform that supports real-time, science-based policy making on air quality through a user-friendly interface. The software, RSM-VAT, uses a response surface modeling (RSM) methodology and serves as a visualization and analysis tool (VAT) for three-dimensional air quality data obtained by atmospheric models. The software features a number of powerful and intuitive data visualization functions for illustrating the complex nonlinear relationship between emission reductions and air quality benefits. The case study of contiguous U.S. demonstrates that the enhanced RSM-VAT is capable of reproducing the air quality model results with Normalized Mean Bias <2% and assisting in air quality policy making in near real time. Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Enabling Autonomous Rover Science through Dynamic Planning and Scheduling

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Estlin, Tara A.; Gaines, Daniel; Chouinard, Caroline; Fisher, Forest; Castano, Rebecca; Judd, Michele; Nesnas, Issa

2005-01-01

This paper describes how dynamic planning and scheduling techniques can be used onboard a rover to autonomously adjust rover activities in support of science goals. These goals could be identified by scientists on the ground or could be identified by onboard data-analysis software. Several different types of dynamic decisions are described, including the handling of opportunistic science goals identified during rover traverses, preserving high priority science targets when resources, such as power, are unexpectedly over-subscribed, and dynamically adding additional, ground-specified science targets when rover actions are executed more quickly than expected. After describing our specific system approach, we discuss some of the particular challenges we have examined to support autonomous rover decision-making. These include interaction with rover navigation and path-planning software and handling large amounts of uncertainty in state and resource estimations.

Supporting Weather Data

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

2004-01-01

Since its founding in 1992, Global Science & Technology, Inc. (GST), of Greenbelt, Maryland, has been developing technologies and providing services in support of NASA scientific research. GST specialties include scientific analysis, science data and information systems, data visualization, communications, networking and Web technologies, computer science, and software system engineering. As a longtime contractor to Goddard Space Flight Center s Earth Science Directorate, GST scientific, engineering, and information technology staff have extensive qualifications with the synthesis of satellite, in situ, and Earth science data for weather- and climate-related projects. GST s experience in this arena is end-to-end, from building satellite ground receiving systems and science data systems, to product generation and research and analysis.

The effect of applying principles of reformed teaching and learning to an asynchronous online environment on student cognition of physics concepts in kinematics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Turner, Michael Lloyd

Research on student difficulties in learning physics concepts has been coincident with a general reform movement in science education with the aim of increasing the level of inquiry in the teaching and learning of science. Coincident with these efforts has been a dramatic increase in the offering of online courses. Generally, this movement toward online course offerings has taken place without the inclusion of laboratory science offerings. The Learn Anytime Anywhere Physics (LAAPhysics) program for asynchronous online introductory physics learning is a notable exception. LAAPhysics software attempts to implement the principles of reformed science teaching and learning in an online environment. The purpose of this study was to measure how student cognition of physics concepts in kinematics was effected through use of LAAPhysics online kinematics tutorials. The normalized gains between pre-instruction and post-instruction scores on the Test of Understanding Graphs in Kinematics (TUG-K) for a treatment group of LAAPhysics testers was calculated. This normalized gain was compared to normalized gains typically found for students taking face-to-face physics courses. The normalized gain scores for LAAPhysics testers were also tested for correlation against time on task variables as measured by connectivity to the online software. Finally, a content analysis of student responses recorded in the LAAPhysics software was conducted. Normalized gain scores for LAAPhysics testers were not found to be greater than gain scores typically found in face-to-face courses. The number of student connections to the software and their total time working in the software were found to be significantly related to normalized gain on the TUG-K. The content analysis of student responses in the LAAPhysics software revealed variation in initial understanding of physics concepts in kinematics as well as variation in change in understanding across students.

Geneious Basic: An integrated and extendable desktop software platform for the organization and analysis of sequence data

PubMed Central

Kearse, Matthew; Moir, Richard; Wilson, Amy; Stones-Havas, Steven; Cheung, Matthew; Sturrock, Shane; Buxton, Simon; Cooper, Alex; Markowitz, Sidney; Duran, Chris; Thierer, Tobias; Ashton, Bruce; Meintjes, Peter; Drummond, Alexei

2012-01-01

Summary: The two main functions of bioinformatics are the organization and analysis of biological data using computational resources. Geneious Basic has been designed to be an easy-to-use and flexible desktop software application framework for the organization and analysis of biological data, with a focus on molecular sequences and related data types. It integrates numerous industry-standard discovery analysis tools, with interactive visualizations to generate publication-ready images. One key contribution to researchers in the life sciences is the Geneious public application programming interface (API) that affords the ability to leverage the existing framework of the Geneious Basic software platform for virtually unlimited extension and customization. The result is an increase in the speed and quality of development of computation tools for the life sciences, due to the functionality and graphical user interface available to the developer through the public API. Geneious Basic represents an ideal platform for the bioinformatics community to leverage existing components and to integrate their own specific requirements for the discovery, analysis and visualization of biological data. Availability and implementation: Binaries and public API freely available for download at http://www.geneious.com/basic, implemented in Java and supported on Linux, Apple OSX and MS Windows. The software is also available from the Bio-Linux package repository at http://nebc.nerc.ac.uk/news/geneiousonbl. Contact: peter@biomatters.com PMID:22543367

Geneious Basic: an integrated and extendable desktop software platform for the organization and analysis of sequence data.

PubMed

Kearse, Matthew; Moir, Richard; Wilson, Amy; Stones-Havas, Steven; Cheung, Matthew; Sturrock, Shane; Buxton, Simon; Cooper, Alex; Markowitz, Sidney; Duran, Chris; Thierer, Tobias; Ashton, Bruce; Meintjes, Peter; Drummond, Alexei

2012-06-15

The two main functions of bioinformatics are the organization and analysis of biological data using computational resources. Geneious Basic has been designed to be an easy-to-use and flexible desktop software application framework for the organization and analysis of biological data, with a focus on molecular sequences and related data types. It integrates numerous industry-standard discovery analysis tools, with interactive visualizations to generate publication-ready images. One key contribution to researchers in the life sciences is the Geneious public application programming interface (API) that affords the ability to leverage the existing framework of the Geneious Basic software platform for virtually unlimited extension and customization. The result is an increase in the speed and quality of development of computation tools for the life sciences, due to the functionality and graphical user interface available to the developer through the public API. Geneious Basic represents an ideal platform for the bioinformatics community to leverage existing components and to integrate their own specific requirements for the discovery, analysis and visualization of biological data. Binaries and public API freely available for download at http://www.geneious.com/basic, implemented in Java and supported on Linux, Apple OSX and MS Windows. The software is also available from the Bio-Linux package repository at http://nebc.nerc.ac.uk/news/geneiousonbl.

Tethys: A Platform for Water Resources Modeling and Decision Support Apps

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Swain, N. R.; Christensen, S. D.; Jones, N.; Nelson, E. J.

2014-12-01

Cloud-based applications or apps are a promising medium through which water resources models and data can be conveyed in a user-friendly environment—making them more accessible to decision-makers and stakeholders. In the context of this work, a water resources web app is a web application that exposes limited modeling functionality for a scenario exploration activity in a structured workflow (e.g.: land use change runoff analysis, snowmelt runoff prediction, and flood potential analysis). The technical expertise required to develop water resources web apps can be a barrier to many potential developers of water resources apps. One challenge that developers face is in providing spatial storage, analysis, and visualization for the spatial data that is inherent to water resources models. The software projects that provide this functionality are non-standard to web development and there are a large number of free and open source software (FOSS) projects to choose from. In addition, it is often required to synthesize several software projects to provide all of the needed functionality. Another challenge for the developer will be orchestrating the use of several software components. Consequently, the initial software development investment required to deploy an effective water resources cloud-based application can be substantial. The Tethys Platform has been developed to lower the technical barrier and minimize the initial development investment that prohibits many scientists and engineers from making use of the web app medium. Tethys synthesizes several software projects including PostGIS for spatial storage, 52°North WPS for spatial analysis, GeoServer for spatial publishing, Google Earth™, Google Maps™ and OpenLayers for spatial visualization, and Highcharts for plotting tabular data. The software selection came after a literature review of software projects being used to create existing earth sciences web apps. All of the software is linked via a Python-powered software development kit (SDK). Tethys developers use the SDK to build their apps and incorporate the needed functionality from the software suite. The presentation will include several apps that have been developed using Tethys to demonstrate its capabilities. Based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1135483.

Reference Management Software: A Comparative Analysis of Four Products

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gilmour, Ron; Cobus-Kuo, Laura

2011-01-01

Reference management (RM) software is widely used by researchers in the health and natural sciences. Librarians are often called upon to provide support for these products. The present study compares four prominent RMs: CiteULike, RefWorks, Mendeley, and Zotero, in terms of features offered and the accuracy of the bibliographies that they…

Proposing a Mathematical Software Tool in Physics Secondary Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baltzis, Konstantinos B.

2009-01-01

MathCad® is a very popular software tool for mathematical and statistical analysis in science and engineering. Its low cost, ease of use, extensive function library, and worksheet-like user interface distinguish it among other commercial packages. Its features are also well suited to educational process. The use of natural mathematical notation…

The Chandra X-ray Center data system: supporting the mission of the Chandra X-ray Observatory

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Evans, Janet D.; Cresitello-Dittmar, Mark; Doe, Stephen; Evans, Ian; Fabbiano, Giuseppina; Germain, Gregg; Glotfelty, Kenny; Hall, Diane; Plummer, David; Zografou, Panagoula

2006-06-01

The Chandra X-ray Center Data System provides end-to-end scientific software support for Chandra X-ray Observatory mission operations. The data system includes the following components: (1) observers' science proposal planning tools; (2) science mission planning tools; (3) science data processing, monitoring, and trending pipelines and tools; and (4) data archive and database management. A subset of the science data processing component is ported to multiple platforms and distributed to end-users as a portable data analysis package. Web-based user tools are also available for data archive search and retrieval. We describe the overall architecture of the data system and its component pieces, and consider the design choices and their impacts on maintainability. We discuss the many challenges involved in maintaining a large, mission-critical software system with limited resources. These challenges include managing continually changing software requirements and ensuring the integrity of the data system and resulting data products while being highly responsive to the needs of the project. We describe our use of COTS and OTS software at the subsystem and component levels, our methods for managing multiple release builds, and adapting a large code base to new hardware and software platforms. We review our experiences during the life of the mission so-far, and our approaches for keeping a small, but highly talented, development team engaged during the maintenance phase of a mission.

Ground Data System Analysis Tools to Track Flight System State Parameters for the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) and Beyond

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Allard, Dan; Deforrest, Lloyd

2014-01-01

Flight software parameters enable space mission operators fine-tuned control over flight system configurations, enabling rapid and dynamic changes to ongoing science activities in a much more flexible manner than can be accomplished with (otherwise broadly used) configuration file based approaches. The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), Curiosity, makes extensive use of parameters to support complex, daily activities via commanded changes to said parameters in memory. However, as the loss of Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) in 2006 demonstrated, flight system management by parameters brings with it risks, including the possibility of losing track of the flight system configuration and the threat of invalid command executions. To mitigate this risk a growing number of missions have funded efforts to implement parameter tracking parameter state software tools and services including MSL and the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission. This paper will discuss the engineering challenges and resulting software architecture of MSL's onboard parameter state tracking software and discuss the road forward to make parameter management tools suitable for use on multiple missions.

Using Selection Pressure as an Asset to Develop Reusable, Adaptable Software Systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Berrick, Stephen; Lynnes, Christopher

2007-01-01

The Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) at NASA has over the years developed and honed several reusable architectural components for supporting large-scale data centers with a large customer base. These include a processing system (S4PM) and an archive system (S4PA) based upon a workflow engine called the Simple Scalable Script based Science Processor (S4P) and an online data visualization and analysis system (Giovanni). These subsystems are currently reused internally in a variety of combinations to implement customized data management on behalf of instrument science teams and other science investigators. Some of these subsystems (S4P and S4PM) have also been reused by other data centers for operational science processing. Our experience has been that development and utilization of robust interoperable and reusable software systems can actually flourish in environments defined by heterogeneous commodity hardware systems the emphasis on value-added customer service and the continual goal for achieving higher cost efficiencies. The repeated internal reuse that is fostered by such an environment encourages and even forces changes to the software that make it more reusable and adaptable. Allowing and even encouraging such selective pressures to software development has been a key factor In the success of S4P and S4PM which are now available to the open source community under the NASA Open source Agreement

Reuse of Software Assets for the NASA Earth Science Decadal Survey Missions

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mattmann, Chris A.; Downs, Robert R.; Marshall, James J.; Most, Neal F.; Samadi, Shahin

2010-01-01

Software assets from existing Earth science missions can be reused for the new decadal survey missions that are being planned by NASA in response to the 2007 Earth Science National Research Council (NRC) Study. The new missions will require the development of software to curate, process, and disseminate the data to science users of interest and to the broader NASA mission community. In this paper, we discuss new tools and a blossoming community that are being developed by the Earth Science Data System (ESDS) Software Reuse Working Group (SRWG) to improve capabilities for reusing NASA software assets.

MS Data Miner: a web-based software tool to analyze, compare, and share mass spectrometry protein identifications.

PubMed

Dyrlund, Thomas F; Poulsen, Ebbe T; Scavenius, Carsten; Sanggaard, Kristian W; Enghild, Jan J

2012-09-01

Data processing and analysis of proteomics data are challenging and time consuming. In this paper, we present MS Data Miner (MDM) (http://sourceforge.net/p/msdataminer), a freely available web-based software solution aimed at minimizing the time required for the analysis, validation, data comparison, and presentation of data files generated in MS software, including Mascot (Matrix Science), Mascot Distiller (Matrix Science), and ProteinPilot (AB Sciex). The program was developed to significantly decrease the time required to process large proteomic data sets for publication. This open sourced system includes a spectra validation system and an automatic screenshot generation tool for Mascot-assigned spectra. In addition, a Gene Ontology term analysis function and a tool for generating comparative Excel data reports are included. We illustrate the benefits of MDM during a proteomics study comprised of more than 200 LC-MS/MS analyses recorded on an AB Sciex TripleTOF 5600, identifying more than 3000 unique proteins and 3.5 million peptides. © 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Clean Air Act Second Prospective Report Study Science Advisory Board Review Teleconference, August 11, 2010

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

This technical memorandum provides a description of the Adjustment to the Primary Particulate Matter Emissions Estimates and the Modeled Attainment Test Software Analysis (MATS) Procedure for the 812 Second Prospective Analysis

Onboard Science Data Analysis: Opportunities, Benefits, and Effects on Mission Design

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Stolorz, P.; Cheeseman, P.

1998-01-01

Much of the initial focus for spacecraft autonomy has been on developing new software and systems concepts to automate engineering functions of the spacecraft: guidance, navigation and control, fault protection, and resources management. However, the ultimate objectives of NASA missions are science objectives, which implies that we need a new framework for perfoming science data evaluation and observation planning autonomously onboard spacecraft.

ICESat (GLAS) Science Processing Software Document Series. Volume 1; Science Software Management Plan; 3.0

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hancock, David W., III

1999-01-01

This document provides the Software Management Plan for the GLAS Standard Data Software (SDS) supporting the GLAS instrument of the EOS ICESat Spacecraft. The SDS encompasses the ICESat Science Investigator-led Processing System (I-SIPS) Software and the Instrument Support Terminal (IST) Software. For the I-SIPS Software, the SDS will produce Level 0, Level 1, and Level 2 data products as well as the associated product quality assessments and descriptive information. For the IST Software, the SDS will accommodate the GLAS instrument support areas of engineering status, command, performance assessment, and instrument health status.

Software process improvement in the NASA software engineering laboratory

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mcgarry, Frank; Pajerski, Rose; Page, Gerald; Waligora, Sharon; Basili, Victor; Zelkowitz, Marvin

1994-01-01

The Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL) was established in 1976 for the purpose of studying and measuring software processes with the intent of identifying improvements that could be applied to the production of ground support software within the Flight Dynamics Division (FDD) at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)/Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). The SEL has three member organizations: NASA/GSFC, the University of Maryland, and Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC). The concept of process improvement within the SEL focuses on the continual understanding of both process and product as well as goal-driven experimentation and analysis of process change within a production environment.

NCI's High Performance Computing (HPC) and High Performance Data (HPD) Computing Platform for Environmental and Earth System Data Science

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Evans, Ben; Allen, Chris; Antony, Joseph; Bastrakova, Irina; Gohar, Kashif; Porter, David; Pugh, Tim; Santana, Fabiana; Smillie, Jon; Trenham, Claire; Wang, Jingbo; Wyborn, Lesley

2015-04-01

The National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) has established a powerful and flexible in-situ petascale computational environment to enable both high performance computing and Data-intensive Science across a wide spectrum of national environmental and earth science data collections - in particular climate, observational data and geoscientific assets. This paper examines 1) the computational environments that supports the modelling and data processing pipelines, 2) the analysis environments and methods to support data analysis, and 3) the progress so far to harmonise the underlying data collections for future interdisciplinary research across these large volume data collections. NCI has established 10+ PBytes of major national and international data collections from both the government and research sectors based on six themes: 1) weather, climate, and earth system science model simulations, 2) marine and earth observations, 3) geosciences, 4) terrestrial ecosystems, 5) water and hydrology, and 6) astronomy, social and biosciences. Collectively they span the lithosphere, crust, biosphere, hydrosphere, troposphere, and stratosphere. The data is largely sourced from NCI's partners (which include the custodians of many of the major Australian national-scale scientific collections), leading research communities, and collaborating overseas organisations. New infrastructures created at NCI mean the data collections are now accessible within an integrated High Performance Computing and Data (HPC-HPD) environment - a 1.2 PFlop supercomputer (Raijin), a HPC class 3000 core OpenStack cloud system and several highly connected large-scale high-bandwidth Lustre filesystems. The hardware was designed at inception to ensure that it would allow the layered software environment to flexibly accommodate the advancement of future data science. New approaches to software technology and data models have also had to be developed to enable access to these large and exponentially increasing data volumes at NCI. Traditional HPC and data environments are still made available in a way that flexibly provides the tools, services and supporting software systems on these new petascale infrastructures. But to enable the research to take place at this scale, the data, metadata and software now need to evolve together - creating a new integrated high performance infrastructure. The new infrastructure at NCI currently supports a catalogue of integrated, reusable software and workflows from earth system and ecosystem modelling, weather research, satellite and other observed data processing and analysis. One of the challenges for NCI has been to support existing techniques and methods, while carefully preparing the underlying infrastructure for the transition needed for the next class of Data-intensive Science. In doing so, a flexible range of techniques and software can be made available for application across the corpus of data collections available, and to provide a new infrastructure for future interdisciplinary research.

Developing a user-friendly photometric software for exoplanets to increase participation in Citizen Science

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kokori, A.; Tsiaras, A.

2017-09-01

Previous research on Citizen Science projects agree that Citizen Science (CS) would serve as a way of both increasing levels of public understanding of science and public participation in scientific research. Historically, the concept of CS is not new, it dates back to the 20th century when citizens where making skilled observations, particularly in archaeology, ecology, and astronomy. Recently, the idea of CS has been improved due to technological progress and the arrival of Internet. The phrase "astronomy from the chair" that is being used in the literature highlights the extent of the convenience for analysing observational data. Citizen science benefits a variety of communities, such as scientific researchers, volunteers and STEM educators. Participating in CS projects is not only engaging the volunteers with the research goals of a science team, but is also helping them learning more about specialised scientific topics. In the case of astronomy, typical examples of CS projects are gathering observational data or/and analysing them. The Holomon Photometric Software (HOPS) is a user-friendly photometric software for exoplanets, with graphical representations, statistics, models, options are brought together into a single package. It was originally developed to analyse observations of transiting exoplanets obtained from the Holomon Astronomical Station of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Here, we make the case that this software can be used as part of a CS project in analysing transiting exoplanets and producing light-curves. HOPS could contribute to the scientific data analysis but it could be used also as an educational tool for learning and visualizing photometry analyses of transiting exoplanets. Such a tool could be proven very efficient in the context of public participation in the research. In recent successful representative examples such as Galaxy Zoo professional astronomers cooperating with CS discovered a group of rare galaxies by using online software. Also the project "planet hunters" asked people to discover planets in other solar systems using data from large telescopes. HOPS, being in the same direction, could be an effective way of participating in research whether as an amateur astronomer or as a person of the general public that wants to engage with exoplanetary research and data analysis. The software is free of charge under the scope of astronomical research and education. We plan to create an online platform, inspired by HOPS, in the near future. In this platform, everyone will have access by creating an account as a user. Amateur astronomers, who have obtained their own exoplanet observations, will be able to upload and analyse their data. For people who are not familiar with photometric analysis - amateurs or general public users - data, as well as educational video and audio material will be provided.

Navigating freely-available software tools for metabolomics analysis.

PubMed

Spicer, Rachel; Salek, Reza M; Moreno, Pablo; Cañueto, Daniel; Steinbeck, Christoph

2017-01-01

The field of metabolomics has expanded greatly over the past two decades, both as an experimental science with applications in many areas, as well as in regards to data standards and bioinformatics software tools. The diversity of experimental designs and instrumental technologies used for metabolomics has led to the need for distinct data analysis methods and the development of many software tools. To compile a comprehensive list of the most widely used freely available software and tools that are used primarily in metabolomics. The most widely used tools were selected for inclusion in the review by either ≥ 50 citations on Web of Science (as of 08/09/16) or the use of the tool being reported in the recent Metabolomics Society survey. Tools were then categorised by the type of instrumental data (i.e. LC-MS, GC-MS or NMR) and the functionality (i.e. pre- and post-processing, statistical analysis, workflow and other functions) they are designed for. A comprehensive list of the most used tools was compiled. Each tool is discussed within the context of its application domain and in relation to comparable tools of the same domain. An extended list including additional tools is available at https://github.com/RASpicer/MetabolomicsTools which is classified and searchable via a simple controlled vocabulary. This review presents the most widely used tools for metabolomics analysis, categorised based on their main functionality. As future work, we suggest a direct comparison of tools' abilities to perform specific data analysis tasks e.g. peak picking.

Publishing Platform for Scientific Software - Lessons Learned

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hammitzsch, Martin; Fritzsch, Bernadette; Reusser, Dominik; Brembs, Björn; Deinzer, Gernot; Loewe, Peter; Fenner, Martin; van Edig, Xenia; Bertelmann, Roland; Pampel, Heinz; Klump, Jens; Wächter, Joachim

2015-04-01

Scientific software has become an indispensable commodity for the production, processing and analysis of empirical data but also for modelling and simulation of complex processes. Software has a significant influence on the quality of research results. For strengthening the recognition of the academic performance of scientific software development, for increasing its visibility and for promoting the reproducibility of research results, concepts for the publication of scientific software have to be developed, tested, evaluated, and then transferred into operations. For this, the publication and citability of scientific software have to fulfil scientific criteria by means of defined processes and the use of persistent identifiers, similar to data publications. The SciForge project is addressing these challenges. Based on interviews a blueprint for a scientific software publishing platform and a systematic implementation plan has been designed. In addition, the potential of journals, software repositories and persistent identifiers have been evaluated to improve the publication and dissemination of reusable software solutions. It is important that procedures for publishing software as well as methods and tools for software engineering are reflected in the architecture of the platform, in order to improve the quality of the software and the results of research. In addition, it is necessary to work continuously on improving specific conditions that promote the adoption and sustainable utilization of scientific software publications. Among others, this would include policies for the development and publication of scientific software in the institutions but also policies for establishing the necessary competencies and skills of scientists and IT personnel. To implement the concepts developed in SciForge a combined bottom-up / top-down approach is considered that will be implemented in parallel in different scientific domains, e.g. in earth sciences, climate research and the life sciences. Based on the developed blueprints a scientific software publishing platform will be iteratively implemented, tested, and evaluated. Thus the platform should be developed continuously on the basis of gained experiences and results. The platform services will be extended one by one corresponding to the requirements of the communities. Thus the implemented platform for the publication of scientific software can be improved and stabilized incrementally as a tool with software, science, publishing, and user oriented features.

MDTraj: A Modern Open Library for the Analysis of Molecular Dynamics Trajectories.

PubMed

McGibbon, Robert T; Beauchamp, Kyle A; Harrigan, Matthew P; Klein, Christoph; Swails, Jason M; Hernández, Carlos X; Schwantes, Christian R; Wang, Lee-Ping; Lane, Thomas J; Pande, Vijay S

2015-10-20

As molecular dynamics (MD) simulations continue to evolve into powerful computational tools for studying complex biomolecular systems, the necessity of flexible and easy-to-use software tools for the analysis of these simulations is growing. We have developed MDTraj, a modern, lightweight, and fast software package for analyzing MD simulations. MDTraj reads and writes trajectory data in a wide variety of commonly used formats. It provides a large number of trajectory analysis capabilities including minimal root-mean-square-deviation calculations, secondary structure assignment, and the extraction of common order parameters. The package has a strong focus on interoperability with the wider scientific Python ecosystem, bridging the gap between MD data and the rapidly growing collection of industry-standard statistical analysis and visualization tools in Python. MDTraj is a powerful and user-friendly software package that simplifies the analysis of MD data and connects these datasets with the modern interactive data science software ecosystem in Python. Copyright © 2015 Biophysical Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

MDTraj: A Modern Open Library for the Analysis of Molecular Dynamics Trajectories

PubMed Central

McGibbon, Robert T.; Beauchamp, Kyle A.; Harrigan, Matthew P.; Klein, Christoph; Swails, Jason M.; Hernández, Carlos X.; Schwantes, Christian R.; Wang, Lee-Ping; Lane, Thomas J.; Pande, Vijay S.

2015-01-01

As molecular dynamics (MD) simulations continue to evolve into powerful computational tools for studying complex biomolecular systems, the necessity of flexible and easy-to-use software tools for the analysis of these simulations is growing. We have developed MDTraj, a modern, lightweight, and fast software package for analyzing MD simulations. MDTraj reads and writes trajectory data in a wide variety of commonly used formats. It provides a large number of trajectory analysis capabilities including minimal root-mean-square-deviation calculations, secondary structure assignment, and the extraction of common order parameters. The package has a strong focus on interoperability with the wider scientific Python ecosystem, bridging the gap between MD data and the rapidly growing collection of industry-standard statistical analysis and visualization tools in Python. MDTraj is a powerful and user-friendly software package that simplifies the analysis of MD data and connects these datasets with the modern interactive data science software ecosystem in Python. PMID:26488642

Software for the Integration of Multiomics Experiments in Bioconductor.

PubMed

Ramos, Marcel; Schiffer, Lucas; Re, Angela; Azhar, Rimsha; Basunia, Azfar; Rodriguez, Carmen; Chan, Tiffany; Chapman, Phil; Davis, Sean R; Gomez-Cabrero, David; Culhane, Aedin C; Haibe-Kains, Benjamin; Hansen, Kasper D; Kodali, Hanish; Louis, Marie S; Mer, Arvind S; Riester, Markus; Morgan, Martin; Carey, Vince; Waldron, Levi

2017-11-01

Multiomics experiments are increasingly commonplace in biomedical research and add layers of complexity to experimental design, data integration, and analysis. R and Bioconductor provide a generic framework for statistical analysis and visualization, as well as specialized data classes for a variety of high-throughput data types, but methods are lacking for integrative analysis of multiomics experiments. The MultiAssayExperiment software package, implemented in R and leveraging Bioconductor software and design principles, provides for the coordinated representation of, storage of, and operation on multiple diverse genomics data. We provide the unrestricted multiple 'omics data for each cancer tissue in The Cancer Genome Atlas as ready-to-analyze MultiAssayExperiment objects and demonstrate in these and other datasets how the software simplifies data representation, statistical analysis, and visualization. The MultiAssayExperiment Bioconductor package reduces major obstacles to efficient, scalable, and reproducible statistical analysis of multiomics data and enhances data science applications of multiple omics datasets. Cancer Res; 77(21); e39-42. ©2017 AACR . ©2017 American Association for Cancer Research.

Teaching sustainability science from a systems analysis perspective: MSc course at Utrecht University

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Santos, Maria J.; de Boer, Hugo; Dekker, Stefan

2017-04-01

Sustainability science has emerged as a key discipline that embraces both disciplinary depth and interdisciplinary breadth. The challenge is to design University courses that convey both properties without sacrificing either of them. Here we present the design of such course at Utrecht University (the Netherlands) for the MSC program 'Sustainable Development' and discuss the perceived learning and student evaluations. Our course (Sustainability Modelling and Indicators (SMI)) follows an introductory course on Sustainability Perspectives. SMI philosophy is that system thinking and system analysis is central to sustainability science. To convey this philosophy, we focus on four themes: the Anthropocene, Food security, Energy security and Agency and decision making. We developed four hands-on assignments with increasing complexity and make use of different software (Stella, Excel, IMAGE and Netlogo). The assignments aimed at: (1) teaching students the system components by using a pre-existing model in Stella, (2) challenge students to build their own coupled system in Excel, (3) assess outputs from the fully-coupled and dynamic model integrated assessment model IMAGE, and (4) understand emergent properties using an agent-based model in Netlogo. Based on detailed student evaluations (n = 95) we found that the mathematics presented a manageable challenge to a part of the students. The student pool identified a priori having higher experience with Excel in comparison with other software. Netlogo was the highest ranked software in the student evaluations and this was linked to its user-interface with moving agents. The Excel assignment received the highest and lowest scores, and students found it challenging, time consuming but also indicated that they learned the most from this assignment. Students graded what we considered 'easy' assignments with the highest grades. These results suggest that a systems analytical approach to sustainability science can be operationalized in diverse ways that relate to students background and making use of of-the-shelf software. The key challenge is to teach students all the concepts of systems analysis and the applied mathematics behind it. If the goal is to demonstrate process, this portfolio approach with of-the-shelf software can be very successful. This course can be complemented with programming that provides skills to modify and customize software to student needs.

Interactive system for geomagnetic data analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Solovev, Igor

2017-10-01

The paper suggests the methods for analyzing geomagnetic field variations, which are implemented in "Aurora" software system for complex analysis of geophysical parameters. The software system allows one to perform a detailed magnetic data analysis. The methods allow one to estimate the intensity of geomagnetic perturbations and to allocate increased geomagnetic activity periods. The software system is publicly available (http://aurorasa.ikir.ru:8580, http://www.ikir.ru:8280/lsaserver/MagneticPage.jsp). This research was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (Project No. 14-11-00194).

Science and Software

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zelt, C. A.

2017-12-01

Earth science attempts to understand how the earth works. This research often depends on software for modeling, processing, inverting or imaging. Freely sharing open-source software is essential to prevent reinventing the wheel and allows software to be improved and applied in ways the original author may never have envisioned. For young scientists, releasing software can increase their name ID when applying for jobs and funding, and create opportunities for collaborations when scientists who collect data want the software's creator to be involved in their project. However, we frequently hear scientists say software is a tool, it's not science. Creating software that implements a new or better way of earth modeling or geophysical processing, inverting or imaging should be viewed as earth science. Creating software for things like data visualization, format conversion, storage, or transmission, or programming to enhance computational performance, may be viewed as computer science. The former, ideally with an application to real data, can be published in earth science journals, the latter possibly in computer science journals. Citations in either case should accurately reflect the impact of the software on the community. Funding agencies need to support more software development and open-source releasing, and the community should give more high-profile awards for developing impactful open-source software. Funding support and community recognition for software development can have far reaching benefits when the software is used in foreseen and unforeseen ways, potentially for years after the original investment in the software development. For funding, an open-source release that is well documented should be required, with example input and output files. Appropriate funding will provide the incentive and time to release user-friendly software, and minimize the need for others to duplicate the effort. All funded software should be available through a single web site, ideally maintained by someone in a funded position. Perhaps the biggest challenge is the reality that researches who use software, as opposed to develop software, are more attractive university hires because they are more likely to be "big picture" scientists that publish in the highest profile journals, although sometimes the two go together.

Neutron imaging data processing using the Mantid framework

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pouzols, Federico M.; Draper, Nicholas; Nagella, Sri; Yang, Erica; Sajid, Ahmed; Ross, Derek; Ritchie, Brian; Hill, John; Burca, Genoveva; Minniti, Triestino; Moreton-Smith, Christopher; Kockelmann, Winfried

2016-09-01

Several imaging instruments are currently being constructed at neutron sources around the world. The Mantid software project provides an extensible framework that supports high-performance computing for data manipulation, analysis and visualisation of scientific data. At ISIS, IMAT (Imaging and Materials Science & Engineering) will offer unique time-of-flight neutron imaging techniques which impose several software requirements to control the data reduction and analysis. Here we outline the extensions currently being added to Mantid to provide specific support for neutron imaging requirements.

A Quantitative Model for Assessing Visual Simulation Software Architecture

DTIC Science & Technology

2011-09-01

Software Engineering Arnold Buss Research Associate Professor of MOVES LtCol Jeff Boleng, PhD Associate Professor of Computer Science U.S. Air Force Academy... science (operating and programming systems series). New York, NY, USA: Elsevier Science Ltd. Henry, S., & Kafura, D. (1984). The evaluation of software...Rudy Darken Professor of Computer Science Dissertation Supervisor Ted Lewis Professor of Computer Science Richard Riehle Professor of Practice

Using Selection Pressure as an Asset to Develop Reusable, Adaptable Software Systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Berrick, S. W.; Lynnes, C.

2007-12-01

The Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) at NASA has over the years developed and honed a number of reusable architectural components for supporting large-scale data centers with a large customer base. These include a processing system (S4PM) and an archive system (S4PA) based upon a workflow engine called the Simple, Scalable, Script-based Science Processor (S4P); an online data visualization and analysis system (Giovanni); and the radically simple and fast data search tool, Mirador. These subsystems are currently reused internally in a variety of combinations to implement customized data management on behalf of instrument science teams and other science investigators. Some of these subsystems (S4P and S4PM) have also been reused by other data centers for operational science processing. Our experience has been that development and utilization of robust, interoperable, and reusable software systems can actually flourish in environments defined by heterogeneous commodity hardware systems, the emphasis on value-added customer service, and continual cost reduction pressures. The repeated internal reuse that is fostered by such an environment encourages and even forces changes to the software that make it more reusable and adaptable. Allowing and even encouraging such selective pressures to software development has been a key factor in the success of S4P and S4PM, which are now available to the open source community under the NASA Open Source Agreement.

Software Reviews.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Science and Children, 1990

1990-01-01

Reviewed are seven computer software packages for IBM and/or Apple Computers. Included are "Windows on Science: Volume 1--Physical Science"; "Science Probe--Physical Science"; "Wildlife Adventures--Grizzly Bears"; "Science Skills--Development Programs"; "The Clean Machine"; "Rock Doctor";…

Semiannual report, 1 April - 30 September 1991

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1991-01-01

The major categories of the current Institute for Computer Applications in Science and Engineering (ICASE) research program are: (1) numerical methods, with particular emphasis on the development and analysis of basic numerical algorithms; (2) control and parameter identification problems, with emphasis on effective numerical methods; (3) computational problems in engineering and the physical sciences, particularly fluid dynamics, acoustics, and structural analysis; and (4) computer systems and software for parallel computers. Research in these areas is discussed.

Ten years of science news: A longitudinal analysis of scientific culture in the Spanish digital press.

PubMed

Groves, Tamar; Figuerola, Carlos G; Quintanilla, Miguel Á

2016-08-01

This article presents our study of science coverage in the digital Spanish press over the last decade. We employed automated information retrieval procedures to create a corpus of 50,763 text units dealing with science and technology, and used automated text-analysis procedures in order to provide a general picture of the structure, characteristics and evolution of science news in Spain. We found between 6% and 7% of science coverage, a clear high proportion of biomedicine and predominance of science over technology, although we also detected an increase in technological content during the second half of the decade. Analysing the extrinsic and intrinsic features of science culture, we found a predominance of intrinsic features that still need further analysis. Our attempt to use specialised software to examine big data was effective, and allowed us to reach these preliminary conclusions. © The Author(s) 2015.

Wildlife software: procedures for publication of computer software

USGS Publications Warehouse

Samuel, M.D.

1990-01-01

Computers and computer software have become an integral part of the practice of wildlife science. Computers now play an important role in teaching, research, and management applications. Because of the specialized nature of wildlife problems, specific computer software is usually required to address a given problem (e.g., home range analysis). This type of software is not usually available from commercial vendors and therefore must be developed by those wildlife professionals with particular skill in computer programming. Current journal publication practices generally prevent a detailed description of computer software associated with new techniques. In addition, peer review of journal articles does not usually include a review of associated computer software. Thus, many wildlife professionals are usually unaware of computer software that would meet their needs or of major improvements in software they commonly use. Indeed most users of wildlife software learn of new programs or important changes only by word of mouth.

Planning for the V&V of infused software technologies for the Mars Science Laboratory Mission

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Feather, Martin S.; Fesq, Lorraine M.; Ingham, Michel D.; Klein, Suzanne L.; Nelson, Stacy D.

2004-01-01

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover mission is planning to make use of advanced software technologies in order to support fulfillment of its ambitious science objectives. The mission plans to adopt the Mission Data System (MDS) as the mission software architecture, and plans to make significant use of on-board autonomous capabilities for the rover software.

Analysis of Software Development Methodologies to Build Safety Software Applications for the SATEX-II: A Mexican Experimental Satellite

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Aguilar Cisneros, Jorge; Vargas Martinez, Hector; Pedroza Melendez, Alejandro; Alonso Arevalo, Miguel

2013-09-01

Mexico is a country where the experience to build software for satellite applications is beginning. This is a delicate situation because in the near future we will need to develop software for the SATEX-II (Mexican Experimental Satellite). SATEX- II is a SOMECyTA's project (the Mexican Society of Aerospace Science and Technology). We have experienced applying software development methodologies, like TSP (Team Software Process) and SCRUM in other areas. Then, we analyzed these methodologies and we concluded: these can be applied to develop software for the SATEX-II, also, we supported these methodologies with SSP-05-0 Standard in particular with ESA PSS-05-11. Our analysis was focusing on main characteristics of each methodology and how these methodologies could be used with the ESA PSS 05-0 Standards. Our outcomes, in general, may be used by teams who need to build small satellites, but, in particular, these are going to be used when we will build the on board software applications for the SATEX-II.

Nimbus/TOMS Science Data Operations Support

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Childs, Jeff

1998-01-01

1. Participate in and provide analysis of laboratory and in-flight calibration of UV sensors used for space observations of backscattered UV radiation. 2. Provide support to the TOMS Science Operations Center, including generating instrument command lists and analysis of TOMS health and safety data. 3. Develop and maintain software and algorithms designed to capture and process raw spacecraft and instrument data, convert the instrument output into measured radiance and irradiances, and produce scientifically valid products. 4. Process the TOMS data into Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 data products. 5. Provide analysis of the science data products in support of NASA GSFC Code 916's research.

Nimbus/TOMS Science Data Operations Support

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1998-01-01

Projected goals include the following: (1) Participate in and provide analysis of laboratory and in-flight calibration of LTV sensors used for space observations of backscattered LTV radiation; (2) Provide support to the TOMS Science Operations Center, including generating instrument command lists and analysis of TOMS health and safety data; (3) Develop and maintain software and algorithms designed to capture and process raw spacecraft and instrument data, convert the instrument output into measured radiance and irradiances, and produce scientifically valid products; (4) Process the TOMS data into Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 data products; (5) Provide analysis of the science data products in support of NASA GSFC Code 916's research.

Requirements Engineering in Building Climate Science Software

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Batcheller, Archer L.

2011-01-01

Software has an important role in supporting scientific work. This dissertation studies teams that build scientific software, focusing on the way that they determine what the software should do. These requirements engineering processes are investigated through three case studies of climate science software projects. The Earth System Modeling…

Software Development in the Water Sciences: a view from the divide (Invited)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Miles, B.; Band, L. E.

2013-12-01

While training in statistical methods is an important part of many earth scientists' training, these scientists often learn the bulk of their software development skills in an ad hoc, just-in-time manner. Yet to carry out contemporary research scientists are spending more and more time developing software. Here I present perspectives - as an earth sciences graduate student with professional software engineering experience - on the challenges scientists face adopting software engineering practices, with an emphasis on areas of the science software development lifecycle that could benefit most from improved engineering. This work builds on experience gained as part of the NSF-funded Water Science Software Institute (WSSI) conceptualization award (NSF Award # 1216817). Throughout 2013, the WSSI team held a series of software scoping and development sprints with the goals of: (1) adding features to better model green infrastructure within the Regional Hydro-Ecological Simulation System (RHESSys); and (2) infusing test-driven agile software development practices into the processes employed by the RHESSys team. The goal of efforts such as the WSSI is to ensure that investments by current and future scientists in software engineering training will enable transformative science by improving both scientific reproducibility and researcher productivity. Experience with the WSSI indicates: (1) the potential for achieving this goal; and (2) while scientists are willing to adopt some software engineering practices, transformative science will require continued collaboration between domain scientists and cyberinfrastructure experts for the foreseeable future.

Photo-realistic Terrain Modeling and Visualization for Mars Exploration Rover Science Operations

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Edwards, Laurence; Sims, Michael; Kunz, Clayton; Lees, David; Bowman, Judd

2005-01-01

Modern NASA planetary exploration missions employ complex systems of hardware and software managed by large teams of. engineers and scientists in order to study remote environments. The most complex and successful of these recent projects is the Mars Exploration Rover mission. The Computational Sciences Division at NASA Ames Research Center delivered a 30 visualization program, Viz, to the MER mission that provides an immersive, interactive environment for science analysis of the remote planetary surface. In addition, Ames provided the Athena Science Team with high-quality terrain reconstructions generated with the Ames Stereo-pipeline. The on-site support team for these software systems responded to unanticipated opportunities to generate 30 terrain models during the primary MER mission. This paper describes Viz, the Stereo-pipeline, and the experiences of the on-site team supporting the scientists at JPL during the primary MER mission.

Behavioral Science Design for Audio-Visual Software Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Foster, Dennis L.

1974-01-01

A discussion of the basic structure of the behavioral audio-visual production which consists of objectives analysis, approach determination, technical production, fulfillment evaluation, program refinement, implementation, and follow-up. (Author)

Easier Analysis With Rocket Science

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

2003-01-01

Analyzing rocket engines is one of Marshall Space Flight Center's specialties. When Marshall engineers lacked a software program flexible enough to meet their needs for analyzing rocket engine fluid flow, they overcame the challenge by inventing the Generalized Fluid System Simulation Program (GFSSP), which was named the co-winner of the NASA Software of the Year award in 2001. This paper describes the GFSSP in a wide variety of applications

Making Sure What You See Is What You Get: Digital Video Technology and the Preparation of Teachers of Elementary Science

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bueno de Mesquita, Paul; Dean, Ross F.; Young, Betty J.

2010-01-01

Advances in digital video technology create opportunities for more detailed qualitative analyses of actual teaching practice in science and other subject areas. User-friendly digital cameras and highly developed, flexible video-analysis software programs have made the tasks of video capture, editing, transcription, and subsequent data analysis…

MAVEN Data Analysis and Visualization Toolkits

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Harter, B., Jr.; DeWolfe, A. W.; Brain, D.; Chaffin, M.

2017-12-01

The Mars Atmospheric and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission has been collecting data at Mars since September 2014. The MAVEN Science Data Center has developed software toolkits for analyzing and visualizing the science data. Our Data Intercomparison and Visualization Development Effort (DIVIDE) toolkit is written in IDL, and utilizes the widely used "tplot" IDL libraries. Recently, we have converted DIVIDE into Python in an effort to increase the accessibility of the MAVEN data. This conversion also necessitated the development of a Python version of the tplot libraries, which we have dubbed "PyTplot". PyTplot is generalized to work with missions beyond MAVEN, and our software is available on Github.

From data to knowledge: The future of multi-omics data analysis for the rhizosphere

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Allen White, Richard; Borkum, Mark I.; Rivas-Ubach, Albert

The rhizosphere is the interface between a plant's roots and its surrounding soil. The rhizosphere microbiome, a complex microbial ecosystem, nourishes the terrestrial biosphere. Integrated multi-omics is a modern approach to systems biology that analyzes and interprets the datasets of multiple -omes of both individual organisms and multi-organism communities and consortia. The successful usage and application of integrated multi-omics to rhizospheric science is predicated upon the availability of rhizosphere-specific data, metadata and software. This review analyzes the availability of multi-omics data, metadata and software for rhizospheric science, identifying potential issues, challenges and opportunities.

Scout: high-performance heterogeneous computing made simple

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Jablin, James; Mc Cormick, Patrick; Herlihy, Maurice

2011-01-26

Researchers must often write their own simulation and analysis software. During this process they simultaneously confront both computational and scientific problems. Current strategies for aiding the generation of performance-oriented programs do not abstract the software development from the science. Furthermore, the problem is becoming increasingly complex and pressing with the continued development of many-core and heterogeneous (CPU-GPU) architectures. To acbieve high performance, scientists must expertly navigate both software and hardware. Co-design between computer scientists and research scientists can alleviate but not solve this problem. The science community requires better tools for developing, optimizing, and future-proofing codes, allowing scientists to focusmore » on their research while still achieving high computational performance. Scout is a parallel programming language and extensible compiler framework targeting heterogeneous architectures. It provides the abstraction required to buffer scientists from the constantly-shifting details of hardware while still realizing higb-performance by encapsulating software and hardware optimization within a compiler framework.« less

Software Reuse Within the Earth Science Community

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Marshall, James J.; Olding, Steve; Wolfe, Robert E.; Delnore, Victor E.

2006-01-01

Scientific missions in the Earth sciences frequently require cost-effective, highly reliable, and easy-to-use software, which can be a challenge for software developers to provide. The NASA Earth Science Enterprise (ESE) spends a significant amount of resources developing software components and other software development artifacts that may also be of value if reused in other projects requiring similar functionality. In general, software reuse is often defined as utilizing existing software artifacts. Software reuse can improve productivity and quality while decreasing the cost of software development, as documented by case studies in the literature. Since large software systems are often the results of the integration of many smaller and sometimes reusable components, ensuring reusability of such software components becomes a necessity. Indeed, designing software components with reusability as a requirement can increase the software reuse potential within a community such as the NASA ESE community. The NASA Earth Science Data Systems (ESDS) Software Reuse Working Group is chartered to oversee the development of a process that will maximize the reuse potential of existing software components while recommending strategies for maximizing the reusability potential of yet-to-be-designed components. As part of this work, two surveys of the Earth science community were conducted. The first was performed in 2004 and distributed among government employees and contractors. A follow-up survey was performed in 2005 and distributed among a wider community, to include members of industry and academia. The surveys were designed to collect information on subjects such as the current software reuse practices of Earth science software developers, why they choose to reuse software, and what perceived barriers prevent them from reusing software. In this paper, we compare the results of these surveys, summarize the observed trends, and discuss the findings. The results are very similar, with the second, larger survey confirming the basic results of the first, smaller survey. The results suggest that reuse of ESE software can drive down the cost and time of system development, increase flexibility and responsiveness of these systems to new technologies and requirements, and increase effective and accountable community participation.

A comparison of InVivoStat with other statistical software packages for analysis of data generated from animal experiments.

PubMed

Clark, Robin A; Shoaib, Mohammed; Hewitt, Katherine N; Stanford, S Clare; Bate, Simon T

2012-08-01

InVivoStat is a free-to-use statistical software package for analysis of data generated from animal experiments. The package is designed specifically for researchers in the behavioural sciences, where exploiting the experimental design is crucial for reliable statistical analyses. This paper compares the analysis of three experiments conducted using InVivoStat with other widely used statistical packages: SPSS (V19), PRISM (V5), UniStat (V5.6) and Statistica (V9). We show that InVivoStat provides results that are similar to those from the other packages and, in some cases, are more advanced. This investigation provides evidence of further validation of InVivoStat and should strengthen users' confidence in this new software package.

Validation and Verification of LADEE Models and Software

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Gundy-Burlet, Karen

2013-01-01

The Lunar Atmosphere Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission will orbit the moon in order to measure the density, composition and time variability of the lunar dust environment. The ground-side and onboard flight software for the mission is being developed using a Model-Based Software methodology. In this technique, models of the spacecraft and flight software are developed in a graphical dynamics modeling package. Flight Software requirements are prototyped and refined using the simulated models. After the model is shown to work as desired in this simulation framework, C-code software is automatically generated from the models. The generated software is then tested in real time Processor-in-the-Loop and Hardware-in-the-Loop test beds. Travelling Road Show test beds were used for early integration tests with payloads and other subsystems. Traditional techniques for verifying computational sciences models are used to characterize the spacecraft simulation. A lightweight set of formal methods analysis, static analysis, formal inspection and code coverage analyses are utilized to further reduce defects in the onboard flight software artifacts. These techniques are applied early and often in the development process, iteratively increasing the capabilities of the software and the fidelity of the vehicle models and test beds.

Science for the Home: New Products Tackle Such Weighty Subjects as Immunology, Chemistry.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mace, Scott

1984-01-01

Discusses trends in science software for home and educational use. Examples of software on various science topics are provided, including packages which revolve around such television shows as "Nova" and "Voyage of the Mimi" and those produced by the Human Engineering Software. (JN)

IRACproc: IRAC Post-BCD Processing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schuster, Mike; Marengo, Massimo; Patten, Brian

2012-09-01

IRACproc is a software suite that facilitates the co-addition of dithered or mapped Spitzer/IRAC data to make them ready for further analysis with application to a wide variety of IRAC observing programs. The software runs within PDL, a numeric extension for Perl available from pdl.perl.org, and as stand alone perl scripts. In acting as a wrapper for the Spitzer Science Center's MOPEX software, IRACproc improves the rejection of cosmic rays and other transients in the co-added data. In addition, IRACproc performs (optional) Point Spread Function (PSF) fitting, subtraction, and masking of saturated stars.

Judicious use of custom development in an open source component architecture

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bristol, S.; Latysh, N.; Long, D.; Tekell, S.; Allen, J.

2014-12-01

Modern software engineering is not as much programming from scratch as innovative assembly of existing components. Seamlessly integrating disparate components into scalable, performant architecture requires sound engineering craftsmanship and can often result in increased cost efficiency and accelerated capabilities if software teams focus their creativity on the edges of the problem space. ScienceBase is part of the U.S. Geological Survey scientific cyberinfrastructure, providing data and information management, distribution services, and analysis capabilities in a way that strives to follow this pattern. ScienceBase leverages open source NoSQL and relational databases, search indexing technology, spatial service engines, numerous libraries, and one proprietary but necessary software component in its architecture. The primary engineering focus is cohesive component interaction, including construction of a seamless Application Programming Interface (API) across all elements. The API allows researchers and software developers alike to leverage the infrastructure in unique, creative ways. Scaling the ScienceBase architecture and core API with increasing data volume (more databases) and complexity (integrated science problems) is a primary challenge addressed by judicious use of custom development in the component architecture. Other data management and informatics activities in the earth sciences have independently resolved to a similar design of reusing and building upon established technology and are working through similar issues for managing and developing information (e.g., U.S. Geoscience Information Network; NASA's Earth Observing System Clearing House; GSToRE at the University of New Mexico). Recent discussions facilitated through the Earth Science Information Partners are exploring potential avenues to exploit the implicit relationships between similar projects for explicit gains in our ability to more rapidly advance global scientific cyberinfrastructure.

Operation of the Institute for Computer Applications in Science and Engineering

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1975-01-01

The ICASE research program is described in detail; it consists of four major categories: (1) efficient use of vector and parallel computers, with particular emphasis on the CDC STAR-100; (2) numerical analysis, with particular emphasis on the development and analysis of basic numerical algorithms; (3) analysis and planning of large-scale software systems; and (4) computational research in engineering and the natural sciences, with particular emphasis on fluid dynamics. The work in each of these areas is described in detail; other activities are discussed, a prognosis of future activities are included.

A Novel Coupling Pattern in Computational Science and Engineering Software

EPA Science Inventory

Computational science and engineering (CSE) software is written by experts of certain area(s). Due to the specialization, existing CSE software may need to integrate other CSE software systems developed by different groups of experts. The coupling problem is one of the challenges...

A Novel Coupling Pattern in Computational Science and Engineering Software

EPA Science Inventory

Computational science and engineering (CSE) software is written by experts of certain area(s). Due to the specialization,existing CSE software may need to integrate other CSE software systems developed by different groups of experts. Thecoupling problem is one of the challenges f...

ICESat (GLAS) Science Processing Software Document Series. Volume 2; Science Data Management Plan; 4.0

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Jester, Peggy L.; Hancock, David W., III

1999-01-01

This document provides the Data Management Plan for the GLAS Standard Data Software (SDS) supporting the GLAS instrument of the EOS ICESat Spacecraft. The SDS encompasses the ICESat Science Investigator-led Processing System (I-SIPS) Software and the Instrument Support Facility (ISF) Software. This Plan addresses the identification, authority, and description of the interface nodes associated with the GLAS Standard Data Products and the GLAS Ancillary Data.

Software for pest-management science: computer models and databases from the United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service.

PubMed

Wauchope, R Don; Ahuja, Lajpat R; Arnold, Jeffrey G; Bingner, Ron; Lowrance, Richard; van Genuchten, Martinus T; Adams, Larry D

2003-01-01

We present an overview of USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) computer models and databases related to pest-management science, emphasizing current developments in environmental risk assessment and management simulation models. The ARS has a unique national interdisciplinary team of researchers in surface and sub-surface hydrology, soil and plant science, systems analysis and pesticide science, who have networked to develop empirical and mechanistic computer models describing the behavior of pests, pest responses to controls and the environmental impact of pest-control methods. Historically, much of this work has been in support of production agriculture and in support of the conservation programs of our 'action agency' sister, the Natural Resources Conservation Service (formerly the Soil Conservation Service). Because we are a public agency, our software/database products are generally offered without cost, unless they are developed in cooperation with a private-sector cooperator. Because ARS is a basic and applied research organization, with development of new science as our highest priority, these products tend to be offered on an 'as-is' basis with limited user support except for cooperating R&D relationship with other scientists. However, rapid changes in the technology for information analysis and communication continually challenge our way of doing business.

CPE--A New Perspective: The Impact of the Technology Revolution. Proceedings of the Computer Performance Evaluation Users Group Meeting (19th, San Francisco, California, October 25-28, 1983). Final Report. Reports on Computer Science and Technology.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mobray, Deborah, Ed.

Papers on local area networks (LANs), modelling techniques, software improvement, capacity planning, software engineering, microcomputers and end user computing, cost accounting and chargeback, configuration and performance management, and benchmarking presented at this conference include: (1) "Theoretical Performance Analysis of Virtual…

Research and Technology Report. Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Soffen, Gerald (Editor); Truszkowski, Walter (Editor); Ottenstein, Howard (Editor); Frost, Kenneth (Editor); Maran, Stephen (Editor); Walter, Lou (Editor); Brown, Mitch (Editor)

1996-01-01

This issue of Goddard Space Flight Center's annual report highlights the importance of mission operations and data systems covering mission planning and operations; TDRSS, positioning systems, and orbit determination; ground system and networks, hardware and software; data processing and analysis; and World Wide Web use. The report also includes flight projects, space sciences, Earth system science, and engineering and materials.

Assessing Understanding of Complex Learning Outcomes and Real-World Skills Using an Authentic Software Tool: A Study from Biomedical Sciences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dermo, John; Boyne, James

2014-01-01

We describe a study conducted during 2009-12 into innovative assessment practice, evaluating an assessed coursework task on a final year Medical Genetics module for Biomedical Science undergraduates. An authentic e-assessment coursework task was developed, integrating objectively marked online questions with an online DNA sequence analysis tool…

ICASE semiannual report, April 1 - September 30, 1989

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1990-01-01

The Institute conducts unclassified basic research in applied mathematics, numerical analysis, and computer science in order to extend and improve problem-solving capabilities in science and engineering, particularly in aeronautics and space. The major categories of the current Institute for Computer Applications in Science and Engineering (ICASE) research program are: (1) numerical methods, with particular emphasis on the development and analysis of basic numerical algorithms; (2) control and parameter identification problems, with emphasis on effective numerical methods; (3) computational problems in engineering and the physical sciences, particularly fluid dynamics, acoustics, and structural analysis; and (4) computer systems and software, especially vector and parallel computers. ICASE reports are considered to be primarily preprints of manuscripts that have been submitted to appropriate research journals or that are to appear in conference proceedings.

Software Reviews.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wulfson, Stephen, Ed.

1988-01-01

Reviews seven instructional software packages covering a variety of topics. Includes: "Science Square-Off"; "The Desert"; "Science Courseware: Physical Science"; "Odell Lake"; "Safety First"; "An Experience in Artificial Intelligence"; and "Master Mapper." (TW)

Spitzer Telemetry Processing System

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Stanboli, Alice; Martinez, Elmain M.; McAuley, James M.

2013-01-01

The Spitzer Telemetry Processing System (SirtfTlmProc) was designed to address objectives of JPL's Multi-mission Image Processing Lab (MIPL) in processing spacecraft telemetry and distributing the resulting data to the science community. To minimize costs and maximize operability, the software design focused on automated error recovery, performance, and information management. The system processes telemetry from the Spitzer spacecraft and delivers Level 0 products to the Spitzer Science Center. SirtfTlmProc is a unique system with automated error notification and recovery, with a real-time continuous service that can go quiescent after periods of inactivity. The software can process 2 GB of telemetry and deliver Level 0 science products to the end user in four hours. It provides analysis tools so the operator can manage the system and troubleshoot problems. It automates telemetry processing in order to reduce staffing costs.

"Library Quarterly," 1956-2004: An Exploratory Bibliometric Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Young, Arthur P.

2006-01-01

"Library Quarterly's" seventy-fifth anniversary invites an analysis of the journal's bibliometric dimension, including contributor attributes, various author rankings, and citation impact. Eugene Garfield's HistCite software, linked to Thomson Scientific's Web of Science, as made available by Garfield, for the period 1956-2004, was used as the…

Promoting Science Software Best Practices: A Scientist's Perspective (Invited)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Blanton, B. O.

2013-12-01

Software is at the core of most modern scientific activities, and as societal awareness of, and impacts from, extreme weather, disasters, and climate and global change continue to increase, the roles that scientific software play in analyses and decision-making are brought more to the forefront. Reproducibility of research results (particularly those that enter into the decision-making arena) and open access to the software is essential for scientific and scientists' credibility. This has been highlighted in a recent article by Joppa et al (Troubling Trends in Scientific Software Use, Science Magazine, May 2013) that describes reasons for particular software being chosen by scientists, including that the "developer is well-respected" and on "recommendation from a close colleague". This reliance on recommendation, Joppa et al conclude, is fraught with risks to both sciences and scientists. Scientists must frequently take software for granted, assuming that it performs as expected and advertised and that the software itself has been validated and results verified. This is largely due to the manner in which much software is written and developed; in an ad hoc manner, with an inconsistent funding stream, and with little application of core software engineering best practices. Insufficient documentation, limited test cases, and code unavailability are significant barriers to informed and intelligent science software usage. This situation is exacerbated when the scientist becomes the software developer out of necessity due to resource constraints. Adoption of, and adherence to, best practices in scientific software development will substantially increase intelligent software usage and promote a sustainable evolution of the science as encoded in the software. We describe a typical scientist's perspective on using and developing scientific software in the context of storm surge research and forecasting applications that have real-time objectives and regulatory constraints. This include perspectives on what scientists/users of software can contribute back to the software development process and examples of successful scientist/developer interactions, and the competition between "getting it done" and "getting it done right".

Propulsive Reaction Control System Model

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Brugarolas, Paul; Phan, Linh H.; Serricchio, Frederick; San Martin, Alejandro M.

2011-01-01

This software models a propulsive reaction control system (RCS) for guidance, navigation, and control simulation purposes. The model includes the drive electronics, the electromechanical valve dynamics, the combustion dynamics, and thrust. This innovation follows the Mars Science Laboratory entry reaction control system design, and has been created to meet the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) entry, descent, and landing simulation needs. It has been built to be plug-and-play on multiple MSL testbeds [analysis, Monte Carlo, flight software development, hardware-in-the-loop, and ATLO (assembly, test and launch operations) testbeds]. This RCS model is a C language program. It contains two main functions: the RCS electronics model function that models the RCS FPGA (field-programmable-gate-array) processing and commanding of the RCS valve, and the RCS dynamic model function that models the valve and combustion dynamics. In addition, this software provides support functions to initialize the model states, set parameters, access model telemetry, and access calculated thruster forces.

Talkoot Portals: Discover, Tag, Share, and Reuse Collaborative Science Workflows

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wilson, B. D.; Ramachandran, R.; Lynnes, C.

2009-05-01

A small but growing number of scientists are beginning to harness Web 2.0 technologies, such as wikis, blogs, and social tagging, as a transformative way of doing science. These technologies provide researchers easy mechanisms to critique, suggest and share ideas, data and algorithms. At the same time, large suites of algorithms for science analysis are being made available as remotely-invokable Web Services, which can be chained together to create analysis workflows. This provides the research community an unprecedented opportunity to collaborate by sharing their workflows with one another, reproducing and analyzing research results, and leveraging colleagues' expertise to expedite the process of scientific discovery. However, wikis and similar technologies are limited to text, static images and hyperlinks, providing little support for collaborative data analysis. A team of information technology and Earth science researchers from multiple institutions have come together to improve community collaboration in science analysis by developing a customizable "software appliance" to build collaborative portals for Earth Science services and analysis workflows. The critical requirement is that researchers (not just information technologists) be able to build collaborative sites around service workflows within a few hours. We envision online communities coming together, much like Finnish "talkoot" (a barn raising), to build a shared research space. Talkoot extends a freely available, open source content management framework with a series of modules specific to Earth Science for registering, creating, managing, discovering, tagging and sharing Earth Science web services and workflows for science data processing, analysis and visualization. Users will be able to author a "science story" in shareable web notebooks, including plots or animations, backed up by an executable workflow that directly reproduces the science analysis. New services and workflows of interest will be discoverable using tag search, and advertised using "service casts" and "interest casts" (Atom feeds). Multiple science workflow systems will be plugged into the system, with initial support for UAH's Mining Workflow Composer and the open-source Active BPEL engine, and JPL's SciFlo engine and the VizFlow visual programming interface. With the ability to share and execute analysis workflows, Talkoot portals can be used to do collaborative science in addition to communicate ideas and results. It will be useful for different science domains, mission teams, research projects and organizations. Thus, it will help to solve the "sociological" problem of bringing together disparate groups of researchers, and the technical problem of advertising, discovering, developing, documenting, and maintaining inter-agency science workflows. The presentation will discuss the goals of and barriers to Science 2.0, the social web technologies employed in the Talkoot software appliance (e.g. CMS, social tagging, personal presence, advertising by feeds, etc.), illustrate the resulting collaborative capabilities, and show early prototypes of the web interfaces (e.g. embedded workflows).

Using Statistical Analysis Software to Advance Nitro Plasticizer Wettability

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Shear, Trevor Allan

Statistical analysis in science is an extremely powerful tool that is often underutilized. Additionally, it is frequently the case that data is misinterpreted or not used to its fullest extent. Utilizing the advanced software JMP®, many aspects of experimental design and data analysis can be evaluated and improved. This overview will detail the features of JMP® and how they were used to advance a project, resulting in time and cost savings, as well as the collection of scientifically sound data. The project analyzed in this report addresses the inability of a nitro plasticizer to coat a gold coated quartz crystalmore » sensor used in a quartz crystal microbalance. Through the use of the JMP® software, the wettability of the nitro plasticizer was increased by over 200% using an atmospheric plasma pen, ensuring good sample preparation and reliable results.« less

Open source tools and toolkits for bioinformatics: significance, and where are we?

PubMed

Stajich, Jason E; Lapp, Hilmar

2006-09-01

This review summarizes important work in open-source bioinformatics software that has occurred over the past couple of years. The survey is intended to illustrate how programs and toolkits whose source code has been developed or released under an Open Source license have changed informatics-heavy areas of life science research. Rather than creating a comprehensive list of all tools developed over the last 2-3 years, we use a few selected projects encompassing toolkit libraries, analysis tools, data analysis environments and interoperability standards to show how freely available and modifiable open-source software can serve as the foundation for building important applications, analysis workflows and resources.

Laptop Use, Interactive Science Software, and Science Learning among At-Risk Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zheng, Binbin; Warschauer, Mark; Hwang, Jin Kyoung; Collins, Penelope

2014-01-01

This year-long, quasi-experimental study investigated the impact of the use of netbook computers and interactive science software on fifth-grade students' science learning processes, academic achievement, and interest in further science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) study within a linguistically diverse school district in…

Strategies for a Creative Future with Computer Science, Quality Design and Communicability

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cipolla Ficarra, Francisco V.; Villarreal, Maria

In the current work is presented the importance of the two-way triad between computer science, design and communicability. It is demonstrated how the principles of quality of software engineering are not universal since they are disappearing inside university training. Besides, a short analysis of the term "creativity" males apparent the existence of plagiarism as a human factor that damages the future of communicability applied to the on-line and off-line contents of the open software. A set of measures and guidelines are presented so that the triad works again correctly in the next years to foster the qualitative design of the interactive systems on-line and/or off-line.

An interactive environment for the analysis of large Earth observation and model data sets

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bowman, Kenneth P.; Walsh, John E.; Wilhelmson, Robert B.

1993-01-01

We propose to develop an interactive environment for the analysis of large Earth science observation and model data sets. We will use a standard scientific data storage format and a large capacity (greater than 20 GB) optical disk system for data management; develop libraries for coordinate transformation and regridding of data sets; modify the NCSA X Image and X DataSlice software for typical Earth observation data sets by including map transformations and missing data handling; develop analysis tools for common mathematical and statistical operations; integrate the components described above into a system for the analysis and comparison of observations and model results; and distribute software and documentation to the scientific community.

An interactive environment for the analysis of large Earth observation and model data sets

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bowman, Kenneth P.; Walsh, John E.; Wilhelmson, Robert B.

1992-01-01

We propose to develop an interactive environment for the analysis of large Earth science observation and model data sets. We will use a standard scientific data storage format and a large capacity (greater than 20 GB) optical disk system for data management; develop libraries for coordinate transformation and regridding of data sets; modify the NCSA X Image and X Data Slice software for typical Earth observation data sets by including map transformations and missing data handling; develop analysis tools for common mathematical and statistical operations; integrate the components described above into a system for the analysis and comparison of observations and model results; and distribute software and documentation to the scientific community.

Virtual test: A student-centered software to measure student's critical thinking on human disease

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rusyati, Lilit; Firman, Harry

2016-02-01

The study "Virtual Test: A Student-Centered Software to Measure Student's Critical Thinking on Human Disease" is descriptive research. The background is importance of computer-based test that use element and sub element of critical thinking. Aim of this study is development of multiple choices to measure critical thinking that made by student-centered software. Instruments to collect data are (1) construct validity sheet by expert judge (lecturer and medical doctor) and professional judge (science teacher); and (2) test legibility sheet by science teacher and junior high school student. Participants consisted of science teacher, lecturer, and medical doctor as validator; and the students as respondent. Result of this study are describe about characteristic of virtual test that use to measure student's critical thinking on human disease, analyze result of legibility test by students and science teachers, analyze result of expert judgment by science teachers and medical doctor, and analyze result of trial test of virtual test at junior high school. Generally, result analysis shown characteristic of multiple choices to measure critical thinking was made by eight elements and 26 sub elements that developed by Inch et al.; complete by relevant information; and have validity and reliability more than "enough". Furthermore, specific characteristic of multiple choices to measure critical thinking are information in form science comic, table, figure, article, and video; correct structure of language; add source of citation; and question can guide student to critical thinking logically.

Preparing systems engineering and computing science students in disciplined methods, quantitative, and advanced statistical techniques to improve process performance

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

McCray, Wilmon Wil L., Jr.

The research was prompted by a need to conduct a study that assesses process improvement, quality management and analytical techniques taught to students in U.S. colleges and universities undergraduate and graduate systems engineering and the computing science discipline (e.g., software engineering, computer science, and information technology) degree programs during their academic training that can be applied to quantitatively manage processes for performance. Everyone involved in executing repeatable processes in the software and systems development lifecycle processes needs to become familiar with the concepts of quantitative management, statistical thinking, process improvement methods and how they relate to process-performance. Organizations are starting to embrace the de facto Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI RTM) Models as process improvement frameworks to improve business processes performance. High maturity process areas in the CMMI model imply the use of analytical, statistical, quantitative management techniques, and process performance modeling to identify and eliminate sources of variation, continually improve process-performance; reduce cost and predict future outcomes. The research study identifies and provides a detail discussion of the gap analysis findings of process improvement and quantitative analysis techniques taught in U.S. universities systems engineering and computing science degree programs, gaps that exist in the literature, and a comparison analysis which identifies the gaps that exist between the SEI's "healthy ingredients " of a process performance model and courses taught in U.S. universities degree program. The research also heightens awareness that academicians have conducted little research on applicable statistics and quantitative techniques that can be used to demonstrate high maturity as implied in the CMMI models. The research also includes a Monte Carlo simulation optimization model and dashboard that demonstrates the use of statistical methods, statistical process control, sensitivity analysis, quantitative and optimization techniques to establish a baseline and predict future customer satisfaction index scores (outcomes). The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) model and industry benchmarks were used as a framework for the simulation model.

Research on Visualization Design Method in the Field of New Media Software Engineering

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Deqiang, Hu

2018-03-01

In the new period of increasingly developed science and technology, with the increasingly fierce competition in the market and the increasing demand of the masses, new design and application methods have emerged in the field of new media software engineering, that is, the visualization design method. Applying the visualization design method to the field of new media software engineering can not only improve the actual operation efficiency of new media software engineering but more importantly the quality of software development can be enhanced by means of certain media of communication and transformation; on this basis, the progress and development of new media software engineering in China are also continuously promoted. Therefore, the application of visualization design method in the field of new media software engineering is analysed concretely in this article from the perspective of the overview of visualization design methods and on the basis of systematic analysis of the basic technology.

Open cyberGIS software for geospatial research and education in the big data era

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Shaowen; Liu, Yan; Padmanabhan, Anand

CyberGIS represents an interdisciplinary field combining advanced cyberinfrastructure, geographic information science and systems (GIS), spatial analysis and modeling, and a number of geospatial domains to improve research productivity and enable scientific breakthroughs. It has emerged as new-generation GIS that enable unprecedented advances in data-driven knowledge discovery, visualization and visual analytics, and collaborative problem solving and decision-making. This paper describes three open software strategies-open access, source, and integration-to serve various research and education purposes of diverse geospatial communities. These strategies have been implemented in a leading-edge cyberGIS software environment through three corresponding software modalities: CyberGIS Gateway, Toolkit, and Middleware, and achieved broad and significant impacts.

Solving the Software Legacy Problem with RISA

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ibarra, A.; Gabriel, C.

2012-09-01

Nowadays hardware and system infrastructure evolve on time scales much shorter than the typical duration of space astronomy missions. Data processing software capabilities have to evolve to preserve the scientific return during the entire experiment life time. Software preservation is a key issue that has to be tackled before the end of the project to keep the data usable over many years. We present RISA (Remote Interface to Science Analysis) as a solution to decouple data processing software and infrastructure life-cycles, using JAVA applications and web-services wrappers to existing software. This architecture employs embedded SAS in virtual machines assuring a homogeneous job execution environment. We will also present the first studies to reactivate the data processing software of the EXOSAT mission, the first ESA X-ray astronomy mission launched in 1983, using the generic RISA approach.

The community-driven BiG CZ software system for integration and analysis of bio- and geoscience data in the critical zone

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Aufdenkampe, A. K.; Mayorga, E.; Horsburgh, J. S.; Lehnert, K. A.; Zaslavsky, I.; Valentine, D. W., Jr.; Richard, S. M.; Cheetham, R.; Meyer, F.; Henry, C.; Berg-Cross, G.; Packman, A. I.; Aronson, E. L.

2014-12-01

Here we present the prototypes of a new scientific software system designed around the new Observations Data Model version 2.0 (ODM2, https://github.com/UCHIC/ODM2) to substantially enhance integration of biological and Geological (BiG) data for Critical Zone (CZ) science. The CZ science community takes as its charge the effort to integrate theory, models and data from the multitude of disciplines collectively studying processes on the Earth's surface. The central scientific challenge of the CZ science community is to develop a "grand unifying theory" of the critical zone through a theory-model-data fusion approach, for which the key missing need is a cyberinfrastructure for seamless 4D visual exploration of the integrated knowledge (data, model outputs and interpolations) from all the bio and geoscience disciplines relevant to critical zone structure and function, similar to today's ability to easily explore historical satellite imagery and photographs of the earth's surface using Google Earth. This project takes the first "BiG" steps toward answering that need. The overall goal of this project is to co-develop with the CZ science and broader community, including natural resource managers and stakeholders, a web-based integration and visualization environment for joint analysis of cross-scale bio and geoscience processes in the critical zone (BiG CZ), spanning experimental and observational designs. We will: (1) Engage the CZ and broader community to co-develop and deploy the BiG CZ software stack; (2) Develop the BiG CZ Portal web application for intuitive, high-performance map-based discovery, visualization, access and publication of data by scientists, resource managers, educators and the general public; (3) Develop the BiG CZ Toolbox to enable cyber-savvy CZ scientists to access BiG CZ Application Programming Interfaces (APIs); and (4) Develop the BiG CZ Central software stack to bridge data systems developed for multiple critical zone domains into a single metadata catalog. The entire BiG CZ Software system is being developed on public repositories as a modular suite of open source software projects. It will be built around a new Observations Data Model Version 2.0 (ODM2) that has been developed by members of the BiG CZ project team, with community input, under separate funding.

Goddard high resolution spectrograph science verification and data analysis

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1992-01-01

The data analysis performed was to support the Orbital Verification (OV) and Science Verification (SV) of the GHRS was in the areas of the Digicon detector's performance and stability, wavelength calibration, and geomagnetic induced image motion. The results of the analyses are briefly described. Detailed results are given in the form of attachments. Specialized software was developed for the analyses. Calibration files were formatted according to the specifications in a Space Telescope Science report. IRAS images were restored of the Large Magellanic Cloud using a blocked iterative algorithm. The algorithm works with the raw data scans without regridding or interpolating the data on an equally spaced image grid.

Software Development Standard Processes (SDSP)

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lavin, Milton L.; Wang, James J.; Morillo, Ronald; Mayer, John T.; Jamshidian, Barzia; Shimizu, Kenneth J.; Wilkinson, Belinda M.; Hihn, Jairus M.; Borgen, Rosana B.; Meyer, Kenneth N.;

Technical Writing for Software Engineers

DTIC Science & Technology

1990-05-01

Writing models 3. Analogies: Software Development and Composing 3.1 Art / Science /Design 3.2 General Correspondence Between the Disciplines 3.3...The first subsection describes a dialogue common to both fields, one that considers these disciplines as art , science , and design. The second notes...find additional similarities between software development and composing in these and other sources. 3.1 Art / Science /Design Ongoing discussions about

Technical Writing for Software Engineers

DTIC Science & Technology

1991-11-01

3 Analogies: Software Development and Composing 3.1 Art / Science /Design 3.2 General Correspondences Between the Disciplines 3.3 Specific Analogies...domains. The first subsection describes a dialogue common to both fields, one that considers these disciplines as art , science , and design. The second...will find additional similarities between software development and composing in these and other sources. 3.1 Art / Science /Design Ongoing discussions

MNE Scan: Software for real-time processing of electrophysiological data.

PubMed

Esch, Lorenz; Sun, Limin; Klüber, Viktor; Lew, Seok; Baumgarten, Daniel; Grant, P Ellen; Okada, Yoshio; Haueisen, Jens; Hämäläinen, Matti S; Dinh, Christoph

2018-06-01

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) and Electroencephalography (EEG) are noninvasive techniques to study the electrophysiological activity of the human brain. Thus, they are well suited for real-time monitoring and analysis of neuronal activity. Real-time MEG/EEG data processing allows adjustment of the stimuli to the subject's responses for optimizing the acquired information especially by providing dynamically changing displays to enable neurofeedback. We introduce MNE Scan, an acquisition and real-time analysis software based on the multipurpose software library MNE-CPP. MNE Scan allows the development and application of acquisition and novel real-time processing methods in both research and clinical studies. The MNE Scan development follows a strict software engineering process to enable approvals required for clinical software. We tested the performance of MNE Scan in several device-independent use cases, including, a clinical epilepsy study, real-time source estimation, and Brain Computer Interface (BCI) application. Compared to existing tools we propose a modular software considering clinical software requirements expected by certification authorities. At the same time the software is extendable and freely accessible. We conclude that MNE Scan is the first step in creating a device-independent open-source software to facilitate the transition from basic neuroscience research to both applied sciences and clinical applications. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Accuracy of 3D Imaging Software in Cephalometric Analysis

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-06-21

submitted to the Faculty of the Comprehensive Dentistry Graduate Program Naval Postgraduate Dental School Uniformed Services University of the Health...Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Science in Oral Biology June 2013 Naval Postgraduate Dental ...Master’s thesis of Bracken Robert Godfrey Lieutenant Commander, Dental Corps, U.S. Navy has been approved by the Examining Committee for the

Metric analysis and data validation across FORTRAN projects

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Basili, Victor R.; Selby, Richard W., Jr.; Phillips, Tsai-Yun

1983-01-01

The desire to predict the effort in developing or explaining the quality of software has led to the proposal of several metrics. As a step toward validating these metrics, the Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL) has analyzed the software science metrics, cyclomatic complexity, and various standard program measures for their relation to effort (including design through acceptance testing), development errors (both discrete and weighted according to the amount of time to locate and fix), and one another. The data investigated are collected from a project FORTRAN environment and examined across several projects at once, within individual projects and by reporting accuracy checks demonstrating the need to validate a database. When the data comes from individual programmers or certain validated projects, the metrics' correlations with actual effort seem to be strongest. For modules developed entirely by individual programmers, the validity ratios induce a statistically significant ordering of several of the metrics' correlations. When comparing the strongest correlations, neither software science's E metric cyclomatic complexity not source lines of code appears to relate convincingly better with effort than the others.

Wake Cycle Robustness of the Mars Science Laboratory Flight Software

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Whitehill, Robert

2011-01-01

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is a spacecraft being developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for the purpose of in-situ exploration on the surface of Mars. The objective of MSL is to explore and quantitatively assess a local region on the Martian surface as a habitat for microbial life, past or present. This objective will be accomplished through the assessment of the biological potential of at least one target environment, the characterization of the geology and geochemistry of the landing region, an investigation of the planetary process relevant to past habitability, and a characterization of surface radiation. For this purpose, MSL incorporates a total of ten scientific instruments for which functions are to include, among others, atmospheric and descent imaging, chemical composition analysis, and radiation measurement. The Flight Software (FSW) system is responsible for all mission phases, including launch, cruise, entry-descent-landing, and surface operation of the rover. Because of the essential nature of flight software to project success, each of the software modules is undergoing extensive testing to identify and correct errors.

Astro-H Data Analysis, Processing and Archive

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Angelini, Lorella; Terada, Yukikatsu; Loewenstein, Michael; Miller, Eric D.; Yamaguchi, Hiroya; Yaqoob, Tahir; Krimm, Hans; Harrus, Ilana; Takahashi, Hiromitsu; Nobukawa, Masayoshi;

REVEAL: Software Documentation and Platform Migration

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wilson, Michael A.; Veibell, Victoir T.

2011-01-01

The Research Environment for Vehicle Embedded Analysis on Linux (REVEAL) is reconfigurable data acquisition software designed for network-distributed test and measurement applications. In development since 2001, it has been successfully demonstrated in support of a number of actual missions within NASA's Suborbital Science Program. Improvements to software configuration control were needed to properly support both an ongoing transition to operational status and continued evolution of REVEAL capabilities. For this reason the project described in this report targets REVEAL software source documentation and deployment of the software on a small set of hardware platforms different from what is currently used in the baseline system implementation. This presentation specifically describes the actions taken over a ten week period by two undergraduate student interns and serves as an overview of the content of the final report for that internship.

Analysis of the coupling efficiency of a tapered space receiver with a calculus mathematical model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hu, Qinggui; Mu, Yining

2018-03-01

We establish a calculus mathematical model to study the coupling characteristics of tapered optical fibers in a space communications system, and obtained the coupling efficiency equation. Then, using MATLAB software, the solution was calculated. After this, the sample was produced by the mature flame-brush technique. The experiment was then performed, and the results were in accordance with the theoretical analysis. This shows that the theoretical analysis was correct and indicates that a tapered structure could improve its tolerance with misalignment. Project supported by The National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 61275080); 2017 Jilin Province Science and Technology Development Plan-Science and Technology Innovation Fund for Small and Medium Enterprises (20170308029HJ); ‘thirteen five’ science and technology research project of the Department of Education of Jilin 2016 (16JK009).

Model Uncertainty and Robustness: A Computational Framework for Multimodel Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Young, Cristobal; Holsteen, Katherine

2017-01-01

Model uncertainty is pervasive in social science. A key question is how robust empirical results are to sensible changes in model specification. We present a new approach and applied statistical software for computational multimodel analysis. Our approach proceeds in two steps: First, we estimate the modeling distribution of estimates across all…

Looking to 2050: The USGS Integrated Software for Imagers and Spectrometers (ISIS)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Becker, T. L.; Edmundson, K. L.; Sides, S.; Hare, T. M.; Laura, J. R.

2017-02-01

Astrogeology Science Center develops and maintains software (ISIS) in support of planetary data for a diverse set of missions. We plan to provide support through the future while adapting to changes in hardware, software, and science requirements.

Uses of software in digital image analysis: a forensic report

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sharma, Mukesh; Jha, Shailendra

2010-02-01

Forensic image analysis is required an expertise to interpret the content of an image or the image itself in legal matters. Major sub-disciplines of forensic image analysis with law enforcement applications include photo-grammetry, photographic comparison, content analysis and image authentication. It has wide applications in forensic science range from documenting crime scenes to enhancing faint or indistinct patterns such as partial fingerprints. The process of forensic image analysis can involve several different tasks, regardless of the type of image analysis performed. Through this paper authors have tried to explain these tasks, which are described in to three categories: Image Compression, Image Enhancement & Restoration and Measurement Extraction. With the help of examples like signature comparison, counterfeit currency comparison and foot-wear sole impression using the software Canvas and Corel Draw.

OpenMS: a flexible open-source software platform for mass spectrometry data analysis.

PubMed

Röst, Hannes L; Sachsenberg, Timo; Aiche, Stephan; Bielow, Chris; Weisser, Hendrik; Aicheler, Fabian; Andreotti, Sandro; Ehrlich, Hans-Christian; Gutenbrunner, Petra; Kenar, Erhan; Liang, Xiao; Nahnsen, Sven; Nilse, Lars; Pfeuffer, Julianus; Rosenberger, George; Rurik, Marc; Schmitt, Uwe; Veit, Johannes; Walzer, Mathias; Wojnar, David; Wolski, Witold E; Schilling, Oliver; Choudhary, Jyoti S; Malmström, Lars; Aebersold, Ruedi; Reinert, Knut; Kohlbacher, Oliver

2016-08-30

High-resolution mass spectrometry (MS) has become an important tool in the life sciences, contributing to the diagnosis and understanding of human diseases, elucidating biomolecular structural information and characterizing cellular signaling networks. However, the rapid growth in the volume and complexity of MS data makes transparent, accurate and reproducible analysis difficult. We present OpenMS 2.0 (http://www.openms.de), a robust, open-source, cross-platform software specifically designed for the flexible and reproducible analysis of high-throughput MS data. The extensible OpenMS software implements common mass spectrometric data processing tasks through a well-defined application programming interface in C++ and Python and through standardized open data formats. OpenMS additionally provides a set of 185 tools and ready-made workflows for common mass spectrometric data processing tasks, which enable users to perform complex quantitative mass spectrometric analyses with ease.

Software Reviews.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Science and Children, 1988

1988-01-01

Reviews five software packages for use with school age children. Includes "Science Toolkit Module 2: Earthquake Lab"; "Adaptations and Identification"; "Geoworld"; "Body Systems II Series: The Blood System: A Liquid of Life," all for Apple II, and "Science Courseware: Life Science/Biology" for…

Nuclear Fuel Depletion Analysis Using Matlab Software

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Faghihi, F.; Nematollahi, M. R.

Coupled first order IVPs are frequently used in many parts of engineering and sciences. In this article, we presented a code including three computer programs which are joint with the Matlab software to solve and plot the solutions of the first order coupled stiff or non-stiff IVPs. Some engineering and scientific problems related to IVPs are given and fuel depletion (production of the 239Pu isotope) in a Pressurized Water Nuclear Reactor (PWR) are computed by the present code.

A research program in empirical computer science

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Knight, J. C.

1991-01-01

During the grant reporting period our primary activities have been to begin preparation for the establishment of a research program in experimental computer science. The focus of research in this program will be safety-critical systems. Many questions that arise in the effort to improve software dependability can only be addressed empirically. For example, there is no way to predict the performance of the various proposed approaches to building fault-tolerant software. Performance models, though valuable, are parameterized and cannot be used to make quantitative predictions without experimental determination of underlying distributions. In the past, experimentation has been able to shed some light on the practical benefits and limitations of software fault tolerance. It is common, also, for experimentation to reveal new questions or new aspects of problems that were previously unknown. A good example is the Consistent Comparison Problem that was revealed by experimentation and subsequently studied in depth. The result was a clear understanding of a previously unknown problem with software fault tolerance. The purpose of a research program in empirical computer science is to perform controlled experiments in the area of real-time, embedded control systems. The goal of the various experiments will be to determine better approaches to the construction of the software for computing systems that have to be relied upon. As such it will validate research concepts from other sources, provide new research results, and facilitate the transition of research results from concepts to practical procedures that can be applied with low risk to NASA flight projects. The target of experimentation will be the production software development activities undertaken by any organization prepared to contribute to the research program. Experimental goals, procedures, data analysis and result reporting will be performed for the most part by the University of Virginia.

Harnessing the power of emerging petascale platforms

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mellor-Crummey, John

2007-07-01

As part of the US Department of Energy's Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC-2) program, science teams are tackling problems that require computational simulation and modeling at the petascale. A grand challenge for computer science is to develop software technology that makes it easier to harness the power of these systems to aid scientific discovery. As part of its activities, the SciDAC-2 Center for Scalable Application Development Software (CScADS) is building open source software tools to support efficient scientific computing on the emerging leadership-class platforms. In this paper, we describe two tools for performance analysis and tuning that are being developed as part of CScADS: a tool for analyzing scalability and performance, and a tool for optimizing loop nests for better node performance. We motivate these tools by showing how they apply to S3D, a turbulent combustion code under development at Sandia National Laboratory. For S3D, our node performance analysis tool helped uncover several performance bottlenecks. Using our loop nest optimization tool, we transformed S3D's most costly loop nest to reduce execution time by a factor of 2.94 for a processor working on a 503 domain.

Photometric analysis in the Kepler Science Operations Center pipeline

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Twicken, Joseph D.; Clarke, Bruce D.; Bryson, Stephen T.; Tenenbaum, Peter; Wu, Hayley; Jenkins, Jon M.; Girouard, Forrest; Klaus, Todd C.

2010-07-01

We describe the Photometric Analysis (PA) software component and its context in the Kepler Science Operations Center (SOC) Science Processing Pipeline. The primary tasks of this module are to compute the photometric flux and photocenters (centroids) for over 160,000 long cadence (~thirty minute) and 512 short cadence (~one minute) stellar targets from the calibrated pixels in their respective apertures. We discuss science algorithms for long and short cadence PA: cosmic ray cleaning; background estimation and removal; aperture photometry; and flux-weighted centroiding. We discuss the end-to-end propagation of uncertainties for the science algorithms. Finally, we present examples of photometric apertures, raw flux light curves, and centroid time series from Kepler flight data. PA light curves, centroid time series, and barycentric timestamp corrections are exported to the Multi-mission Archive at Space Telescope [Science Institute] (MAST) and are made available to the general public in accordance with the NASA/Kepler data release policy.

Association between obesity with disease-free survival and overall survival in triple-negative breast cancer: A meta-analysis.

PubMed

Mei, Lin; He, Lin; Song, Yuhua; Lv, Yang; Zhang, Lijiu; Hao, Fengxi; Xu, Mengmeng

2018-05-01

To investigate the relationship between obesity and disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) of triple-negative breast cancer. Citations were searched in PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Web of Science. Random effect model meta-analysis was conducted by using Revman software version 5.0, and publication bias was evaluated by creating Egger regression with STATA software version 12. Nine studies (4412 patients) were included for DFS meta-analysis, 8 studies (4392 patients) include for OS meta-analysis. There were no statistical significances between obesity with DFS (P = .60) and OS (P = .71) in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients. Obesity has no impact on DFS and OS in patients with TNBC.

PREPARING FOR EXASCALE: ORNL Leadership Computing Application Requirements and Strategy

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Joubert, Wayne; Kothe, Douglas B; Nam, Hai Ah

2009-12-01

In 2009 the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS), elicited petascale computational science requirements from leading computational scientists in the international science community. This effort targeted science teams whose projects received large computer allocation awards on OLCF systems. A clear finding of this process was that in order to reach their science goals over the next several years, multiple projects will require computational resources in excess of an order of magnitude more powerful than those currently available. Additionally, for themore » longer term, next-generation science will require computing platforms of exascale capability in order to reach DOE science objectives over the next decade. It is generally recognized that achieving exascale in the proposed time frame will require disruptive changes in computer hardware and software. Processor hardware will become necessarily heterogeneous and will include accelerator technologies. Software must undergo the concomitant changes needed to extract the available performance from this heterogeneous hardware. This disruption portends to be substantial, not unlike the change to the message passing paradigm in the computational science community over 20 years ago. Since technological disruptions take time to assimilate, we must aggressively embark on this course of change now, to insure that science applications and their underlying programming models are mature and ready when exascale computing arrives. This includes initiation of application readiness efforts to adapt existing codes to heterogeneous architectures, support of relevant software tools, and procurement of next-generation hardware testbeds for porting and testing codes. The 2009 OLCF requirements process identified numerous actions necessary to meet this challenge: (1) Hardware capabilities must be advanced on multiple fronts, including peak flops, node memory capacity, interconnect latency, interconnect bandwidth, and memory bandwidth. (2) Effective parallel programming interfaces must be developed to exploit the power of emerging hardware. (3) Science application teams must now begin to adapt and reformulate application codes to the new hardware and software, typified by hierarchical and disparate layers of compute, memory and concurrency. (4) Algorithm research must be realigned to exploit this hierarchy. (5) When possible, mathematical libraries must be used to encapsulate the required operations in an efficient and useful way. (6) Software tools must be developed to make the new hardware more usable. (7) Science application software must be improved to cope with the increasing complexity of computing systems. (8) Data management efforts must be readied for the larger quantities of data generated by larger, more accurate science models. Requirements elicitation, analysis, validation, and management comprise a difficult and inexact process, particularly in periods of technological change. Nonetheless, the OLCF requirements modeling process is becoming increasingly quantitative and actionable, as the process becomes more developed and mature, and the process this year has identified clear and concrete steps to be taken. This report discloses (1) the fundamental science case driving the need for the next generation of computer hardware, (2) application usage trends that illustrate the science need, (3) application performance characteristics that drive the need for increased hardware capabilities, (4) resource and process requirements that make the development and deployment of science applications on next-generation hardware successful, and (5) summary recommendations for the required next steps within the computer and computational science communities.« less

Earth-Science Data Co-Locating Tool

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lee, Seungwon; Pan, Lei; Block, Gary L.

2012-01-01

This software is used to locate Earth-science satellite data and climate-model analysis outputs in space and time. This enables the direct comparison of any set of data with different spatial and temporal resolutions. It is written in three separate modules that are clearly separated for their functionality and interface with other modules. This enables a fast development of supporting any new data set. In this updated version of the tool, several new front ends are developed for new products. This software finds co-locatable data pairs for given sets of data products and creates new data products that share the same spatial and temporal coordinates. This facilitates the direct comparison between the two heterogeneous datasets and the comprehensive and synergistic use of the datasets.

Software Assurance Curriculum Project Volume 2: Undergraduate Course Outlines

DTIC Science & Technology

2010-08-01

Contents Acknowledgments iii Abstract v 1 An Undergraduate Curriculum Focus on Software Assurance 1 2 Computer Science I 7 3 Computer Science II...confidence that can be integrated into traditional software development and acquisition process models . Thus, in addition to a technology focus...testing throughout the software development life cycle ( SDLC ) AP Security and complexity—system development challenges: security failures

Autonomous Science Analysis with the New Millennium Program-Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Doggett, T.; Davies, A. G.; Castano, R. A.; Baker, V. R.; Dohm, J. M.; Greeley, R.; Williams, K. K.; Chien, S.; Sherwood, R.

2002-12-01

The NASA New Millennium Program (NMP) is a testbed for new, high-risk technologies, including new software and hardware. The Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment (ASE) will fly on the Air Force Research Laboratory TechSat-21 mission in 2006 is such a NMP mission, and is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. TechSat-21 consists of three satellites, each equipped with X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) that will occupy a 13-day repeat track Earth orbit. The main science objectives of ASE are to demonstrate that process-related change detection and feature identification can be conducted autonomously during space flight, leading to autonomous onboard retargeting of the spacecraft. This mission will observe transient geological and environmental processes using SAR. Examples of geologic processes that may be observed and investigated include active volcanism, the movement of sand dunes and transient features in desert environments, water flooding, and the formation and break-up of lake ice. Science software onboard the spacecraft will allow autonomous processing and formation of SAR images and extraction of scientific information. The subsequent analyses, performed on images formed onboard from the SAR data, will include feature identification using scalable feature "templates" for each target, change detection through comparison of current and archived images, and science discovery, a search for other features of interest in each image. This approach results in obtaining the same science return for a reduced amount of resource use (such as downlink) when compared to that from a mission operating without ASE technology. Redundant data is discarded. The science-driven goals of ASE will evolve during the ASE mission through onboard replanning software that can re-task satellite operations. If necessary, as a result of a discovery made autonomously by onboard science processing, existing observation sequences will be pre-empted to obtain data of potential high scientific content. Flight validation of this software will enable radically different missions with significant onboard decision-making and novel science concepts (onboard decision making and selective data return). This work has been carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory-California Institute of Technology, under contract to NASA.

Talkoot Portals: Discover, Tag, Share, and Reuse Collaborative Science Workflows (Invited)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wilson, B. D.; Ramachandran, R.; Lynnes, C.

2009-12-01

A small but growing number of scientists are beginning to harness Web 2.0 technologies, such as wikis, blogs, and social tagging, as a transformative way of doing science. These technologies provide researchers easy mechanisms to critique, suggest and share ideas, data and algorithms. At the same time, large suites of algorithms for science analysis are being made available as remotely-invokable Web Services, which can be chained together to create analysis workflows. This provides the research community an unprecedented opportunity to collaborate by sharing their workflows with one another, reproducing and analyzing research results, and leveraging colleagues’ expertise to expedite the process of scientific discovery. However, wikis and similar technologies are limited to text, static images and hyperlinks, providing little support for collaborative data analysis. A team of information technology and Earth science researchers from multiple institutions have come together to improve community collaboration in science analysis by developing a customizable “software appliance” to build collaborative portals for Earth Science services and analysis workflows. The critical requirement is that researchers (not just information technologists) be able to build collaborative sites around service workflows within a few hours. We envision online communities coming together, much like Finnish “talkoot” (a barn raising), to build a shared research space. Talkoot extends a freely available, open source content management framework with a series of modules specific to Earth Science for registering, creating, managing, discovering, tagging and sharing Earth Science web services and workflows for science data processing, analysis and visualization. Users will be able to author a “science story” in shareable web notebooks, including plots or animations, backed up by an executable workflow that directly reproduces the science analysis. New services and workflows of interest will be discoverable using tag search, and advertised using “service casts” and “interest casts” (Atom feeds). Multiple science workflow systems will be plugged into the system, with initial support for UAH’s Mining Workflow Composer and the open-source Active BPEL engine, and JPL’s SciFlo engine and the VizFlow visual programming interface. With the ability to share and execute analysis workflows, Talkoot portals can be used to do collaborative science in addition to communicate ideas and results. It will be useful for different science domains, mission teams, research projects and organizations. Thus, it will help to solve the “sociological” problem of bringing together disparate groups of researchers, and the technical problem of advertising, discovering, developing, documenting, and maintaining inter-agency science workflows. The presentation will discuss the goals of and barriers to Science 2.0, the social web technologies employed in the Talkoot software appliance (e.g. CMS, social tagging, personal presence, advertising by feeds, etc.), illustrate the resulting collaborative capabilities, and show early prototypes of the web interfaces (e.g. embedded workflows).

Autonomous Science on the EO-1 Mission

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Chien, S.; Sherwood, R.; Tran, D.; Castano, R.; Cichy, B.; Davies, A.; Rabideau, G.; Tang, N.; Burl, M.; Mandl, D.;

In the right order of brush strokes: a sketch of a software philosophy retrospective.

PubMed

Pyshkin, Evgeny

2014-01-01

This paper follows a discourse on software recognized as a product of art and human creativity progressing probably for as long as software exists. A retrospective view on computer science and software philosophy development is introduced. In so doing we discover parallels between software and various branches of human creative manifestations. Aesthetic properties and mutual dependency of the form and matter of art works are examined in their application to software programs. While exploring some philosophical and even artistic reflection on software we consider extended comprehension of technical sciences of programming and software engineering within the realm of liberal arts.

Development of Students' Conceptual Thinking by Means of Video Analysis and Interactive Simulations at Technical Universities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hockicko, Peter; Krišták, Luboš; Nemec, Miroslav

2015-01-01

Video analysis, using the program Tracker (Open Source Physics), in the educational process introduces a new creative method of teaching physics and makes natural sciences more interesting for students. This way of exploring the laws of nature can amaze students because this illustrative and interactive educational software inspires them to think…

Conceptualization and application of an approach for designing healthcare software interfaces.

PubMed

Kumar, Ajit; Maskara, Reena; Maskara, Sanjeev; Chiang, I-Jen

2014-06-01

The aim of this study is to conceptualize a novel approach, which facilitates us to design prototype interfaces for healthcare software. Concepts and techniques from various disciplines were used to conceptualize an interface design approach named MORTARS (Map Original Rhetorical To Adapted Rhetorical Situation). The concepts and techniques included in this approach are (1) rhetorical situation - a concept of philosophy provided by Bitzer (1968); (2) move analysis - an applied linguistic technique provided by Swales (1990) and Bhatia (1993); (3) interface design guidelines - a cognitive and computer science concept provided by Johnson (2010); (4) usability evaluation instrument - an interface evaluation questionnaire provided by Lund (2001); (5) user modeling via stereotyping - a cognitive and computer science concept provided by Rich (1979). A prototype interface for outpatient clinic software was designed to introduce the underlying concepts of MORTARS. The prototype interface was evaluated by thirty-two medical informaticians. The medical informaticians found the designed prototype interface to be useful (73.3%), easy to use (71.9%), easy to learn (93.1%), and satisfactory (53.2%). MORTARS approach was found to be effective in designing the prototype user interface for the outpatient clinic software. This approach might be further used to design interfaces for various software pertaining to healthcare and other domains. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Sculpting in cyberspace: Parallel processing the development of new software

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Fisher, Rob

1993-01-01

Stimulating creativity in problem solving, particularly where software development is involved, is applicable to many disciplines. Metaphorical thinking keeps the problem in focus but in a different light, jarring people out of their mental ruts and sparking fresh insights. It forces the mind to stretch to find patterns between dissimilar concepts, in the hope of discovering unusual ideas in odd associations (Technology Review January 1993, p. 37). With a background in Engineering and Visual Design from MIT, I have for the past 30 years pursued a career as a sculptor of interdisciplinary monumental artworks that bridge the fields of science, engineering and art. Since 1979, I have pioneered the application of computer simulation to solve the complex problems associated with these projects. A recent project for the roof of the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh made particular use of the metaphoric creativity technique described above. The problem-solving process led to the creation of hybrid software combining scientific, architectural and engineering visualization techniques. David Steich, a Doctoral Candidate in Electrical Engineering at Penn State, was commissioned to develop special software that enabled me to create innovative free-form sculpture. This paper explores the process of inventing the software through a detailed analysis of the interaction between an artist and a computer programmer.

From proteomics to systems biology: MAPA, MASS WESTERN, PROMEX, and COVAIN as a user-oriented platform.

PubMed

Weckwerth, Wolfram; Wienkoop, Stefanie; Hoehenwarter, Wolfgang; Egelhofer, Volker; Sun, Xiaoliang

2014-01-01

Genome sequencing and systems biology are revolutionizing life sciences. Proteomics emerged as a fundamental technique of this novel research area as it is the basis for gene function analysis and modeling of dynamic protein networks. Here a complete proteomics platform suited for functional genomics and systems biology is presented. The strategy includes MAPA (mass accuracy precursor alignment; http://www.univie.ac.at/mosys/software.html ) as a rapid exploratory analysis step; MASS WESTERN for targeted proteomics; COVAIN ( http://www.univie.ac.at/mosys/software.html ) for multivariate statistical analysis, data integration, and data mining; and PROMEX ( http://www.univie.ac.at/mosys/databases.html ) as a database module for proteogenomics and proteotypic peptides for targeted analysis. Moreover, the presented platform can also be utilized to integrate metabolomics and transcriptomics data for the analysis of metabolite-protein-transcript correlations and time course analysis using COVAIN. Examples for the integration of MAPA and MASS WESTERN data, proteogenomic and metabolic modeling approaches for functional genomics, phosphoproteomics by integration of MOAC (metal-oxide affinity chromatography) with MAPA, and the integration of metabolomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and physiological data using this platform are presented. All software and step-by-step tutorials for data processing and data mining can be downloaded from http://www.univie.ac.at/mosys/software.html.

EarthCube's Assessment Framework: Ensuring Return on Investment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lehnert, K.

2016-12-01

EarthCube is a community-governed, NSF-funded initiative to transform geoscience research by developing cyberinfrastructure that improves access, sharing, visualization, and analysis of all forms of geosciences data and related resources. EarthCube's goal is to enable geoscientists to tackle the challenges of understanding and predicting a complex and evolving solid Earth, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and space environment systems. EarthCube's infrastructure needs capabilities around data, software, and systems. It is essential for EarthCube to determine the value of new capabilities for the community and the progress of the overall effort to demonstrate its value to the science community and Return on Investment for the NSF. EarthCube is therefore developing an assessment framework for research proposals, projects funded by EarthCube, and the overall EarthCube program. As a first step, a software assessment framework has been developed that addresses the EarthCube Strategic Vision by promoting best practices in software development, complete and useful documentation, interoperability, standards adherence, open science, and education and training opportunities for research developers.

Next Generation Cloud-based Science Data Systems and Their Implications on Data and Software Stewardship, Preservation, and Provenance

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hua, H.; Manipon, G.; Starch, M.

2017-12-01

NASA's upcoming missions are expected to be generating data volumes at least an order of magnitude larger than current missions. A significant increase in data processing, data rates, data volumes, and long-term data archive capabilities are needed. Consequently, new challenges are emerging that impact traditional data and software management approaches. At large-scales, next generation science data systems are exploring the move onto cloud computing paradigms to support these increased needs. New implications such as costs, data movement, collocation of data systems & archives, and moving processing closer to the data, may result in changes to the stewardship, preservation, and provenance of science data and software. With more science data systems being on-boarding onto cloud computing facilities, we can expect more Earth science data records to be both generated and kept in the cloud. But at large scales, the cost of processing and storing global data may impact architectural and system designs. Data systems will trade the cost of keeping data in the cloud with the data life-cycle approaches of moving "colder" data back to traditional on-premise facilities. How will this impact data citation and processing software stewardship? What are the impacts of cloud-based on-demand processing and its affect on reproducibility and provenance. Similarly, with more science processing software being moved onto cloud, virtual machines, and container based approaches, more opportunities arise for improved stewardship and preservation. But will the science community trust data reprocessed years or decades later? We will also explore emerging questions of the stewardship of the science data system software that is generating the science data records both during and after the life of mission.

The EOSDIS software challenge

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jaworski, Allan

1993-08-01

The Earth Observing System (EOS) Data and Information System (EOSDIS) will serve as a major resource for the earth science community, supporting both command and control of complex instruments onboard the EOS spacecraft and the archiving, distribution, and analysis of data. The scale of EOSDIS and the volume of multidisciplinary research to be conducted using EOSDIS resources will produce unparalleled needs for technology transparency, data integration, and system interoperability. The scale of this effort far outscopes any previous scientific data system in its breadth or operational and performance needs. Modern hardware technology can meet the EOSDIS technical challenge. Multiprocessing speeds of many giga-flops are being realized by modern computers. Online storage disk, optical disk, and videocassette libraries with storage capacities of many terabytes are now commercially available. Radio frequency and fiber optics communications networks with gigabit rates are demonstrable today. It remains, of course, to perform the system engineering to establish the requirements, architectures, and designs that will implement the EOSDIS systems. Software technology, however, has not enjoyed the price/performance advances of hardware. Although we have learned to engineer hardware systems which have several orders of magnitude greater complexity and performance than those built in the 1960's, we have not made comparable progress in dramatically reducing the cost of software development. This lack of progress may significantly reduce our capabilities to achieve economically the types of highly interoperable, responsive, integraded, and productive environments which are needed by the earth science community. This paper describes some of the EOSDIS software requirements and current activities in the software community which are applicable to meeting the EOSDIS challenge. Some of these areas include intelligent user interfaces, software reuse libraries, and domain engineering. Also included are discussions of applicable standards in the areas of operating systems interfaces, user interfaces, communications interfaces, data transport, and science algorithm support, and their role in supporting the software development process.

Software IV and V Research Priorities and Applied Program Accomplishments Within NASA

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Blazy, Louis J.

2000-01-01

The mission of this research is to be world-class creators and facilitators of innovative, intelligent, high performance, reliable information technologies that enable NASA missions to (1) increase software safety and quality through error avoidance, early detection and resolution of errors, by utilizing and applying empirically based software engineering best practices; (2) ensure customer software risks are identified and/or that requirements are met and/or exceeded; (3) research, develop, apply, verify, and publish software technologies for competitive advantage and the advancement of science; and (4) facilitate the transfer of science and engineering data, methods, and practices to NASA, educational institutions, state agencies, and commercial organizations. The goals are to become a national Center Of Excellence (COE) in software and system independent verification and validation, and to become an international leading force in the field of software engineering for improving the safety, quality, reliability, and cost performance of software systems. This project addresses the following problems: Ensure safety of NASA missions, ensure requirements are met, minimize programmatic and technological risks of software development and operations, improve software quality, reduce costs and time to delivery, and improve the science of software engineering

Are Earth System model software engineering practices fit for purpose? A case study.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Easterbrook, S. M.; Johns, T. C.

2009-04-01

We present some analysis and conclusions from a case study of the culture and practices of scientists at the Met Office and Hadley Centre working on the development of software for climate and Earth System models using the MetUM infrastructure. The study examined how scientists think about software correctness, prioritize their requirements in making changes, and develop a shared understanding of the resulting models. We conclude that highly customized techniques driven strongly by scientific research goals have evolved for verification and validation of such models. In a formal software engineering context these represents costly, but invaluable, software integration tests with considerable benefits. The software engineering practices seen also exhibit recognisable features of both agile and open source software development projects - self-organisation of teams consistent with a meritocracy rather than top-down organisation, extensive use of informal communication channels, and software developers who are generally also users and science domain experts. We draw some general conclusions on whether these practices work well, and what new software engineering challenges may lie ahead as Earth System models become ever more complex and petascale computing becomes the norm.

Mars in Motion: An online Citizen Science platform looking for changes on the surface of Mars

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sprinks, James Christopher; Wardlaw, Jessica; Houghton, Robert; Bamford, Steven; Marsh, Stuart

2016-10-01

The European FP7 iMars project has developed tools and 3D models of the Martian surface through the co-registration of NASA and ESA mission data dating from the Viking missions of the 1970s to the present day, for a much more comprehensive interpretation of the geomorphological and climatic processes that have taken and do take place. We present the Citizen Science component of the project, 'Mars in Motion', created through the Zooniverse's Panoptes framework to allow volunteers to look for and identify changes on the surface of Mars over time. 'Mars in Motion', as with many other current citizen science platforms of a planetary or other disciplinary focus, has been developed to compliment the results of automated data mining analysis software, both by validation through the creation of training data and by adding context - gathering more in-depth data on the type and metrics of change initially detected.Through the analysis of initial volunteer results collected in the second half of 2016, the accuracy and ability of untrained participants to identify geomorphological changes is considered, as well as the impact of their position in the system. Volunteer contribution, either as a filter for poor quality imagery pre-algorithm, validation of algorithmic analysis, or adding context to pre-detected change, and their awareness and interpretation of its importance, can directly influence engagement with the platform and therefore ultimately its success. Understanding the effect of the volunteer and software's role in the system on both the results of and engagement with planetary science citizen science platforms will be an important lesson for the future, especially as the next generation of planetary missions will likely collect data orders of magnitude greater in volume. To deal with the data overload, it is likely that human or software solutions alone will not be sufficient, and that a combination of the two working together in a complimentary system that combines and exploits their strengths could provide a viable solution.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under iMars grant agreement no. 607379.

Tools to Support the Reuse of Software Assets for the NASA Earth Science Decadal Survey Missions

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mattmann, Chris A.; Downs, Robert R.; Marshall, James J.; Most, Neal F.; Samadi, Shahin

2011-01-01

The NASA Earth Science Data Systems (ESDS) Software Reuse Working Group (SRWG) is chartered with the investigation, production, and dissemination of information related to the reuse of NASA Earth science software assets. One major current objective is to engage the NASA decadal missions in areas relevant to software reuse. In this paper we report on the current status of these activities. First, we provide some background on the SRWG in general and then discuss the group s flagship recommendation, the NASA Reuse Readiness Levels (RRLs). We continue by describing areas in which mission software may be reused in the context of NASA decadal missions. We conclude the paper with pointers to future directions.

InterProScan 5: genome-scale protein function classification

PubMed Central

Jones, Philip; Binns, David; Chang, Hsin-Yu; Fraser, Matthew; Li, Weizhong; McAnulla, Craig; McWilliam, Hamish; Maslen, John; Mitchell, Alex; Nuka, Gift; Pesseat, Sebastien; Quinn, Antony F.; Sangrador-Vegas, Amaia; Scheremetjew, Maxim; Yong, Siew-Yit; Lopez, Rodrigo; Hunter, Sarah

2014-01-01

Motivation: Robust large-scale sequence analysis is a major challenge in modern genomic science, where biologists are frequently trying to characterize many millions of sequences. Here, we describe a new Java-based architecture for the widely used protein function prediction software package InterProScan. Developments include improvements and additions to the outputs of the software and the complete reimplementation of the software framework, resulting in a flexible and stable system that is able to use both multiprocessor machines and/or conventional clusters to achieve scalable distributed data analysis. InterProScan is freely available for download from the EMBl-EBI FTP site and the open source code is hosted at Google Code. Availability and implementation: InterProScan is distributed via FTP at ftp://ftp.ebi.ac.uk/pub/software/unix/iprscan/5/ and the source code is available from http://code.google.com/p/interproscan/. Contact: http://www.ebi.ac.uk/support or interhelp@ebi.ac.uk or mitchell@ebi.ac.uk PMID:24451626

Educational process in modern climatology within the web-GIS platform "Climate"

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gordova, Yulia; Gorbatenko, Valentina; Gordov, Evgeny; Martynova, Yulia; Okladnikov, Igor; Titov, Alexander; Shulgina, Tamara

2013-04-01

These days, common to all scientific fields the problem of training of scientists in the environmental sciences is exacerbated by the need to develop new computational and information technology skills in distributed multi-disciplinary teams. To address this and other pressing problems of Earth system sciences, software infrastructure for information support of integrated research in the geosciences was created based on modern information and computational technologies and a software and hardware platform "Climate» (http://climate.scert.ru/) was developed. In addition to the direct analysis of geophysical data archives, the platform is aimed at teaching the basics of the study of changes in regional climate. The educational component of the platform includes a series of lectures on climate, environmental and meteorological modeling and laboratory work cycles on the basics of analysis of current and potential future regional climate change using Siberia territory as an example. The educational process within the Platform is implemented using the distance learning system Moodle (www.moodle.org). This work is partially supported by the Ministry of education and science of the Russian Federation (contract #8345), SB RAS project VIII.80.2.1, RFBR grant #11-05-01190a, and integrated project SB RAS #131.

XMM-Newton Science Analysis Software: How to Bring New Technologies to Long-life Satellite Missions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ibarra, A.; Calle, I.; Gabriel, C.; Salgado, J.; Osuna, P.

2009-09-01

We present here the beta version of the Remote Interface to SAS Analysis (RISA), a web service-based system that allows users the analysis of XMM-Newton data making use of all of the existing SAS functionalities. RISA takes advantage of GRID architecture to run SAS, achieving high performance in resource management. We are also making the SAS remote analysis compatible with present and future VO standards.

Photometric Analysis in the Kepler Science Operations Center Pipeline

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Twicken, Joseph D.; Clarke, Bruce D.; Bryson, Stephen T.; Tenenbaum, Peter; Wu, Hayley; Jenkins, Jon M.; Girouard, Forrest; Klaus, Todd C.

2010-01-01

We describe the Photometric Analysis (PA) software component and its context in the Kepler Science Operations Center (SOC) pipeline. The primary tasks of this module are to compute the photometric flux and photocenters (centroids) for over 160,000 long cadence (thirty minute) and 512 short cadence (one minute) stellar targets from the calibrated pixels in their respective apertures. We discuss the science algorithms for long and short cadence PA: cosmic ray cleaning; background estimation and removal; aperture photometry; and flux-weighted centroiding. We discuss the end-to-end propagation of uncertainties for the science algorithms. Finally, we present examples of photometric apertures, raw flux light curves, and centroid time series from Kepler flight data. PA light curves, centroid time series, and barycentric timestamp corrections are exported to the Multi-mission Archive at Space Telescope [Science Institute] (MAST) and are made available to the general public in accordance with the NASA/Kepler data release policy.

Software Reviews.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dwyer, Donna; And Others

1989-01-01

Reviewed are seven software packages for Apple and IBM computers. Included are: "Toxicology"; "Science Corner: Space Probe"; "Alcohol and Pregnancy"; "Science Tool Kit Plus"; Computer Investigations: Plant Growth"; "Climatrolls"; and "Animal Watch: Whales." (CW)

Product Descriptions: Database Software for Science. A MicroSIFT Quarterly Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Batey, Anne; And Others

Specific programs and software resources are described in this report on database software for science instruction. Materials are reviewed in the categories of: (1) database management (reviewing AppleWorks, Bank Street School Filer, FileVision, Friendly Filer, MECC DataQuest: The Composer, Scholastic PFS:File, PFS:Report); (2) data files…

Mars Science Laboratory CHIMRA/IC/DRT Flight Software for Sample Acquisition and Processing

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kim, Won S.; Leger, Chris; Carsten, Joseph; Helmick, Daniel; Kuhn, Stephen; Redick, Richard; Trujillo, Diana

2013-01-01

The design methodologies of using sequence diagrams, multi-process functional flow diagrams, and hierarchical state machines were successfully applied in designing three MSL (Mars Science Laboratory) flight software modules responsible for handling actuator motions of the CHIMRA (Collection and Handling for In Situ Martian Rock Analysis), IC (Inlet Covers), and DRT (Dust Removal Tool) mechanisms. The methodologies were essential to specify complex interactions with other modules, support concurrent foreground and background motions, and handle various fault protections. Studying task scenarios with multi-process functional flow diagrams yielded great insight to overall design perspectives. Since the three modules require three different levels of background motion support, the methodologies presented in this paper provide an excellent comparison. All three modules are fully operational in flight.

Development of program package for investigation and modeling of carbon nanostructures in diamond like carbon films with the help of Raman scattering and infrared absorption spectra line resolving

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hayrapetyan, David B.; Hovhannisyan, Levon; Mantashyan, Paytsar A.

2013-04-01

The analysis of complex spectra is an actual problem for modern science. The work is devoted to the creation of a software package, which analyzes spectrum in the different formats, possesses by dynamic knowledge database and self-study mechanism, performs automated analysis of the spectra compound based on knowledge database by application of certain algorithms. In the software package as searching systems, hyper-spherical random search algorithms, gradient algorithms and genetic searching algorithms were used. The analysis of Raman and IR spectrum of diamond-like carbon (DLC) samples were performed by elaborated program. After processing the data, the program immediately displays all the calculated parameters of DLC.

Adaptation of XMM-Newton SAS to GRID and VO architectures via web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ibarra, A.; de La Calle, I.; Gabriel, C.; Salgado, J.; Osuna, P.

2008-10-01

The XMM-Newton Scientific Analysis Software (SAS) is a robust software that has allowed users to produce good scientific results since the beginning of the mission. This has been possible given the SAS capability to evolve with the advent of new technologies and adapt to the needs of the scientific community. The prototype of the Remote Interface for Science Analysis (RISA) presented here, is one such example, which provides remote analysis of XMM-Newton data with access to all the existing SAS functionality, while making use of GRID computing technology. This new technology has recently emerged within the astrophysical community to tackle the ever lasting problem of computer power for the reduction of large amounts of data.

The effects of a shared, Intranet science learning environment on the academic behaviors of problem-solving and metacognitive reflection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Parker, Mary Jo

This study investigated the effects of a shared, Intranet science environment on the academic behaviors of problem-solving and metacognitive reflection. Seventy-eight subjects included 9th and 10th grade male and female biology students. A quasi-experimental design with pre- and post-test data collection and randomization occurring through assignment of biology classes to traditional or shared, Intranet learning groups was employed. Pilot, web-based distance education software (CourseInfo) created the Intranet learning environment. A modified ecology curriculum provided contextualization and content for traditional and shared learning environments. The effect of this environment on problem-solving, was measured using the standardized Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal test. Metacognitive reflection, was measured in three ways: (a) number of concepts used, (b) number of concept links noted, and (c) number of concept nodes noted. Visual learning software, Inspiration, generated concept maps. Secondary research questions evaluated the pilot CourseInfo software for (a) tracked user movement, (b) discussion forum findings, and (c) difficulties experienced using CourseInfo software. Analysis of problem-solving group means reached no levels of significance resulting from the shared, Intranet environment. Paired t-Test of individual differences in problem-solving reached levels of significance. Analysis of metacognitive reflection by number of concepts reached levels of significance. Metacognitive reflection by number of concept links noted also reach significance. No significance was found for metacognitive reflection by number of concept nodes. No gender differences in problem-solving ability and metacognitive reflection emerged. Lack of gender differences in the shared, Intranet environment strongly suggests an equalizing effect due to the cooperative, collaborative nature of Intranet environments. Such environments appeal to, and rank high with, the female gender. Tracking learner movements in web-based, science environments has metacognitive and problem-solving learner implications. CourseInfo software offers one method of informing instruction within web-based learning environments focusing on academic behaviors. A shared, technology-supported learning environment may pose one model which science classrooms can use to create equitable scientific study across gender. The lack of significant differences resulting from this environment presents one model for improvement of individual problem-solving ability and metacognitive reflection across gender.

Automating U-Pb IDTIMS data reduction and reporting: Cyberinfrastructure meets geochronology

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bowring, J. F.; McLean, N.; Walker, J. D.; Ash, J. M.

2009-12-01

We demonstrate the efficacy of an interdisciplinary effort between software engineers and geochemists to produce working cyberinfrastructure for geochronology. This collaboration between CIRDLES, EARTHTIME and EarthChem has produced the software programs Tripoli and U-Pb_Redux as the cyber-backbone for the ID-TIMS community. This initiative incorporates shared isotopic tracers, data-reduction algorithms and the archiving and retrieval of data and results. The resulting system facilitates detailed inter-laboratory comparison and a new generation of cooperative science. The resolving power of geochronological data in the earth sciences is dependent on the precision and accuracy of many isotopic measurements and corrections. Recent advances in U-Pb geochronology have reinvigorated its application to problems such as precise timescale calibration, processes of crustal evolution, and early solar system dynamics. This project provides a heretofore missing common data reduction protocol, thus promoting the interpretation of precise geochronology and enabling inter-laboratory comparison. U-Pb_Redux is an open-source software program that provides end-to-end support for the analysis of uranium-lead geochronological data. The system reduces raw mass spectrometer data to U-Pb dates, allows users to interpret ages from these data, and then provides for the seamless federation of the results, coming from many labs, into a community web-accessible database using standard and open techniques. This EarthChem GeoChron database depends also on keyed references to the SESAR sample database. U-Pb_Redux currently provides interactive concordia and weighted mean plots and uncertainty contribution visualizations; it produces publication-quality concordia and weighted mean plots and customizable data tables. This initiative has achieved the goal of standardizing the data elements of a complete reduction and analysis of uranium-lead data, which are expressed using extensible markup language schema definition (XSD) artifacts. U-Pb_Redux leverages the freeware program Tripoli, which imports raw mass spectrometer data files and supports interactive review and archiving of isotopic data. Tripoli facilitates the visualization of temporal trends and scatter during measurement, statistically rigorous filtering of data and supports oxide and fractionation corrections. The Cyber Infrastructure Research and Development Lab for the Earth Sciences (CIRDLES) collaboratively integrates domain-specific software engineering with the efforts EARTHTIME and Earthchem. The EARTHTIME initiative pursues consensus-based approaches to geochemical data reduction, and the EarthChem initiative pursues the creation of data repositories for all geochemical data. CIRDLES develops software and systems for geochronology. This collaboration benefits the earth sciences by enabling geochemists to focus on their specialties using robust software that produces reliable results. This collaboration benefits software engineering by providing research opportunities to improve process methodologies used in the design and implementation of domain-specific solutions.

The CASA Software Package

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Petry, Dirk

2018-03-01

CASA is the standard science data analysis package for ALMA and VLA but it can also be used for the analysis of data from other observatories. In this talk, I will give an overview of the structure and features of CASA, who develops it, and the present status and plans, and then show typical analysis workflows for ALMA data with special emphasis on the handling of single dish data and its combination with interferometric data.

Workflow based framework for life science informatics.

PubMed

Tiwari, Abhishek; Sekhar, Arvind K T

2007-10-01

Workflow technology is a generic mechanism to integrate diverse types of available resources (databases, servers, software applications and different services) which facilitate knowledge exchange within traditionally divergent fields such as molecular biology, clinical research, computational science, physics, chemistry and statistics. Researchers can easily incorporate and access diverse, distributed tools and data to develop their own research protocols for scientific analysis. Application of workflow technology has been reported in areas like drug discovery, genomics, large-scale gene expression analysis, proteomics, and system biology. In this article, we have discussed the existing workflow systems and the trends in applications of workflow based systems.

A Bibliometric Analysis of Picture Book Research between 1993 and 2015

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wu, Jia-Fen

2018-01-01

This study makes an effort to map the development of previous academic studies on picturebooks in order to provide an overview of contemporary picturebook research utilizing the HistCite (ver. 12.03.17) software. The findings are based on an analysis of 9,763 references to 286 articles from 175 journals indexed by the Web of Science (WoS)…

Analysis of worldwide research in the field of cybernetics during 1997-2011.

PubMed

Singh, Virender; Perdigones, Alicia; García, José Luis; Cañas-Guerrero, Ignacio; Mazarrón, Fernando R

2014-12-01

The study provides an overview of the research activity carried out in the field of cybernetics. To do so, all research papers from 1997 to 2011 (16,445 research papers) under the category of "Computer Science, Cybernetics" of Web of Science have been processed using our in-house software which is developed specifically for this purpose. Among its multiple capabilities, this software analyses individual and compound keywords, quantifies productivity taking into account the work distribution, estimates the impact of each article and determines the collaborations established at different scales. Keywords analysis identifies the evolution of the most important research topics in the field of cybernetics and their specificity in biological aspects, as well as the research topics with lesser interest. The analysis of productivity, impact and collaborations provides a framework to assess research activity in a specific and realistic context. The geographical and institutional distribution of publications reveals the leading countries and research centres, analysing their relation to main research journals. Moreover, collaborations analysis reveals great differences in terms of internationalization and complexity of research networks. The results of this study may be very useful for the characterization and the decisions made by research in the field of cybernetics.

Hera: Using NASA Astronomy Data in the Classroom

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lochner, James C.; Mitchell, S.; Pence, W. D.

2006-12-01

Hera is a free internet-based tool that provides students access to both analysis software and data for studying astronomical objects such as black holes, binary star systems, supernovae, and galaxies. Students use a subset of the same software, and experience the same analysis process, that an astronomer follows in analyzing data obtained from an orbiting satellite observatory. Hera is accompanied by a web-based tutorial which steps students through the science background, procedures for accessing the data, and using the Hera software. The web pages include a lesson plan in which students explore data from a binary star system containing a normal star and a black hole. The objective of the lesson is for students to use plotting, estimation, and statistical techniques to determine the orbital period. Students may then apply these techniques to a number of data sets and draw conclusions on the natures of the systems (for example, students discover that one system is an eclipsing binary). The web page tutorial is self-guided and contains a number of exercises; students can work independently or in groups. Hera has been use with high school students and in introductory astronomy classes in community colleges. This poster describes Hera and its web-based tutorial. We outline the underlying software architecture, the development process, and its testing and classroom applications. We also describe the benefits to students in developing skills which extend basic science and math concepts into real applications.

Tutor Training in Computer Science: Tutor Opinions and Student Results.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carbone, Angela; Mitchell, Ian

Edproj, a project team of faculty from the departments of computer science, software development and education at Monash University (Australia) investigated the quality of teaching and student learning and understanding in the computer science and software development departments. Edproj's research led to the development of a training program to…

REVEAL: Software Documentation and Platform Migration

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wilson, Michael A.; Veibell, Victoir T.; Freudinger, Lawrence C.

2008-01-01

The Research Environment for Vehicle Embedded Analysis on Linux (REVEAL) is reconfigurable data acquisition software designed for network-distributed test and measurement applications. In development since 2001, it has been successfully demonstrated in support of a number of actual missions within NASA s Suborbital Science Program. Improvements to software configuration control were needed to properly support both an ongoing transition to operational status and continued evolution of REVEAL capabilities. For this reason the project described in this report targets REVEAL software source documentation and deployment of the software on a small set of hardware platforms different from what is currently used in the baseline system implementation. This report specifically describes the actions taken over a ten week period by two undergraduate student interns and serves as a final report for that internship. The topics discussed include: the documentation of REVEAL source code; the migration of REVEAL to other platforms; and an end-to-end field test that successfully validates the efforts.

Design of Scalable and Effective Earth Science Collaboration Tool

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Maskey, M.; Ramachandran, R.; Kuo, K. S.; Lynnes, C.; Niamsuwan, N.; Chidambaram, C.

2014-12-01

Collaborative research is growing rapidly. Many tools including IDEs are now beginning to incorporate new collaborative features. Software engineering research has shown the effectiveness of collaborative programming and analysis. In particular, drastic reduction in software development time resulting in reduced cost has been highlighted. Recently, we have witnessed the rise of applications that allow users to share their content. Most of these applications scale such collaboration using cloud technologies. Earth science research needs to adopt collaboration technologies to reduce redundancy, cut cost, expand knowledgebase, and scale research experiments. To address these needs, we developed the Earth science collaboration workbench (CWB). CWB provides researchers with various collaboration features by augmenting their existing analysis tools to minimize learning curve. During the development of the CWB, we understood that Earth science collaboration tasks are varied and we concluded that it is not possible to design a tool that serves all collaboration purposes. We adopted a mix of synchronous and asynchronous sharing methods that can be used to perform collaboration across time and location dimensions. We have used cloud technology for scaling the collaboration. Cloud has been highly utilized and valuable tool for Earth science researchers. Among other usages, cloud is used for sharing research results, Earth science data, and virtual machine images; allowing CWB to create and maintain research environments and networks to enhance collaboration between researchers. Furthermore, collaborative versioning tool, Git, is integrated into CWB for versioning of science artifacts. In this paper, we present our experience in designing and implementing the CWB. We will also discuss the integration of collaborative code development use cases for data search and discovery using NASA DAAC and simulation of satellite observations using NASA Earth Observing System Simulation Suite (NEOS3).

Large-scale visualization projects for teaching software engineering.

PubMed

Müller, Christoph; Reina, Guido; Burch, Michael; Weiskopf, Daniel

2012-01-01

The University of Stuttgart's software engineering major complements the traditional computer science major with more practice-oriented education. Two-semester software projects in various application areas offered by the university's different computer science institutes are a successful building block in the curriculum. With this realistic, complex project setting, students experience the practice of software engineering, including software development processes, technologies, and soft skills. In particular, visualization-based projects are popular with students. Such projects offer them the opportunity to gain profound knowledge that would hardly be possible with only regular lectures and homework assignments.

ICESat (GLAS) Science Processing Software Document Series. Volume 3; GLAS Science Software Requirements Document; Ver 2.1

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Jester, Peggy L.; Lee, Jeffrey; Zukor, Dorothy J. (Technical Monitor)

2001-01-01

This document addresses the software requirements of the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) Standard Data Software (SDS) supporting the GLAS instrument on the EOS ICESat Spacecraft. This Software Requirements Document represents the initial collection of the technical engineering information for the GLAS SDS. This information is detailed within the second of four main volumes of the Standard documentation, the Product Specification volume. This document is a "roll-out" from the governing volume outline containing the Concept and Requirements sections.

Giovanni - The Bridge Between Data and Science

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Liu, Zhong; Acker, James

2017-01-01

This article describes new features in the Geospatial Interactive Online Visualization ANd aNalysis Infrastructure (Giovanni), a user-friendly online tool that enables visualization, analysis, and assessment of NASA Earth science data sets without downloading data and software. Since the satellite era began, data collected from Earth-observing satellites have been widely used in research and applications; however, using satellite-based data sets can still be a challenge to many. To facilitate data access and evaluation, as well as scientific exploration and discovery, the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center (DISC) has developed Giovanni for a wide range of users around the world. This article describes the latest capabilities of Giovanni with examples, and discusses future plans for this innovative system.

Data visualization and analysis tools for the MAVEN mission

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Harter, B.; De Wolfe, A. W.; Putnam, B.; Brain, D.; Chaffin, M.

2016-12-01

The Mars Atmospheric and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission has been collecting data at Mars since September 2014. We have developed new software tools for exploring and analyzing the science data. Our open-source Python toolkit for working with data from MAVEN and other missions is based on the widely-used "tplot" IDL toolkit. We have replicated all of the basic tplot functionality in Python, and use the bokeh and matplotlib libraries to generate interactive line plots and spectrograms, providing additional functionality beyond the capabilities of IDL graphics. These Python tools are generalized to work with missions beyond MAVEN, and our software is available on Github. We have also been exploring 3D graphics as a way to better visualize the MAVEN science data and models. We have constructed a 3D visualization of MAVEN's orbit using the CesiumJS library, which not only allows viewing of MAVEN's orientation and position, but also allows the display of selected science data sets and their variation over time.

Research in computer science

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ortega, J. M.

1985-01-01

Synopses are given for NASA supported work in computer science at the University of Virginia. Some areas of research include: error seeding as a testing method; knowledge representation for engineering design; analysis of faults in a multi-version software experiment; implementation of a parallel programming environment; two computer graphics systems for visualization of pressure distribution and convective density particles; task decomposition for multiple robot arms; vectorized incomplete conjugate gradient; and iterative methods for solving linear equations on the Flex/32.

A Framework for Corporate Implementation of Object-Oriented Software Development

DTIC Science & Technology

1992-01-01

Research Methods in the Social Sciences (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), 181. [2] Ibid., 182-183. [3] Ibid., 191. CHAPTER VI ANALYSIS and FINDINGS...Understanding, and Support- ing Champions of Technological Innovacions ." Organi- zational Dynamics 19 (Summer 1990): 40-55. Johnson, Ralph E., and Brian...November 1989, 87. Nachmias, David, and Chava Nachmias. Research Methods in the Social Sciences. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981. Norman, Ronald J

RISA: Remote Interface for Science Analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gabriel, C.; Ibarra, A.; de La Calle, I.; Salgado, J.; Osuna, P.; Tapiador, D.

2008-08-01

The Scientific Analysis System (SAS) is the package for interactive and pipeline data reduction of all XMM-Newton data. Freely distributed by ESA to run under many different operating systems, the SAS has been used by almost every one of the 1600 refereed scientific publications obtained so far from the mission. We are developing RISA, the Remote Interface for Science Analysis, which makes it possible to run SAS through fully configurable web service workflows, enabling observers to access and analyse data making use of all of the existing SAS functionalities, without any installation/download of software/data. The workflows run primarily but not exclusively on the ESAC Grid, which offers scalable processing resources, directly connected to the XMM-Newton Science Archive. A first project internal version of RISA was issued in May 2007, a public release is expected already within this year.

National Collegiate Software Clearinghouse Software for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Summer 1989 Catalog.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

National Collegiate Software Clearinghouse, Durham, NC.

Over 250 microcomputer software packages, intended for use on MS-DOS machines by scholars and teachers in the humanities and social sciences, are included in this catalog. The clearinghouse's first Macintosh listing is included, with many more Macintosh programs and data sets being planned and tested for future inclusion. Most programs were…

Success Factors for Using Case Method in Teaching and Learning Software Engineering

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Razali, Rozilawati; Zainal, Dzulaiha Aryanee Putri

2013-01-01

The Case Method (CM) has long been used effectively in Social Science education. Its potential use in Applied Science such as Software Engineering (SE) however has yet to be further explored. SE is an engineering discipline that concerns the principles, methods and tools used throughout the software development lifecycle. In CM, subjects are…

Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle Camera Asset Planning: Imagery Previsualization

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Beaulieu, K.

2014-01-01

Using JSC-developed and other industry-standard off-the-shelf 3D modeling, animation, and rendering software packages, the Image Science Analysis Group (ISAG) supports Orion Project imagery planning efforts through dynamic 3D simulation and realistic previsualization of ground-, vehicle-, and air-based camera output.

Ricardo Oliveira | NREL

Science.gov Websites

the System Modeling & Geospatial Data Science Group in the Strategic Energy Analysis Center. Areas Publications Oliveira, R and Moreno, R. 2016. Harvesting, Integrating and Distributing Large Open Geospatial Datasets Using Free and Open-Source Software. Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci., XLI-B7

AOIPS 3 User's guide. Volume 1: Overview and software utilization

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Schotz, S. S.; Negri, A. J.; Robinson, W.

1989-01-01

This is Volume I of the Atmospheric and Oceanographic Information Processing System (AOIPS) User's Guide. AOIPS 3 is the version of the AOIPS software as of April 1989. The AOIPS software was developed jointly by the Goddard Space Flight Center and General Sciences Corporation. Volume 1 is intended to provide the user with an overall guide to the AOIPS system. It introduces the user to AOIPS system concepts, explains how programs are related and the necessary order of program execution, and provides brief descriptions derived from on-line help for every AOIPS program. It is intended to serve as a reference for information such as: program function, inmput/output variable descriptions, program limitations, etc. AOIPS is an interactive meteorological processing system with capabilities to ingest and analyze the many types of meteorological data. AOIPS includes several applications in areas of relevance to meteorological research. AOIPS is partitioned into four applications components: satellite data analysis, radar data analysis, aircraft data analysis, and utilities.

Online Interactive Data Analysis of Multi-Sensor Data Using Giovanni

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Berrick, S.; Leptoukh, G.; Liu, Z.; Rui, H.; Shen, S.; Teng, W.; Zhu, T.

2005-12-01

The goal of the GES-DISC Interactive Online Visualization and Analysis System (Giovanni) is to provide earth science users a means for performing data analysis on data in the Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) without having to download the data. Through Giovanni, users are able to apply statistical analysis on many individual gridded global data products across multiple instruments and even inter-compare parameters from more than one instrument. Giovanni currently allows users to select a time window and a region of interest to generate many graphical output types including area plots (time-averaged), time-series (area-averaged), Hovmoller (latitude vs. time, longitude vs. time), and animations for area plots. A number of graphical output types are also available for parameter inter-comparisons. ASCII output is also available for those who want to apply their own analysis software. Using the knowledge gained from Giovanni, a user can minimize the amount of data they need to download while maximizing the amount of relevant content in those data. The design challenges of Giovanni are (1) to successfully balance a simple, intuitive Web interface with the complexity and heterogeneity of our data, (2) to have a simple and flexible configuration so that new data sets and parameters can be added and organized for particular user communities, (3) to be agnostic with respect to the analysis software and graphing software and, (4) scalability. In a short time, the original Giovanni (Giovanni 1) has grown from two instances to eight (Giovanni 2), each tailored for a specific user community. The demand, however, for Giovanni and its capabilities continues to increase and in order to meet those demands, a redesign effort of Giovanni, which we call Giovanni 3, is being undertaken.

Software Reviews.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wulfson, Eugene T., Ed.

1988-01-01

Presents reviews by classroom teachers of software for teaching science. Includes material on the work of geologists, genetics, earth science, classification of living things, astronomy, endangered species, skeleton, drugs, and heartbeat. Provides information on availability and equipment needed. (RT)

Software Writing Skills for Your Research - Lessons Learned from Workshops in the Geosciences

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hammitzsch, Martin

2016-04-01

Findings presented in scientific papers are based on data and software. Once in a while they come along with data - but not commonly with software. However, the software used to gain findings plays a crucial role in the scientific work. Nevertheless, software is rarely seen publishable. Thus researchers may not reproduce the findings without the software which is in conflict with the principle of reproducibility in sciences. For both, the writing of publishable software and the reproducibility issue, the quality of software is of utmost importance. For many programming scientists the treatment of source code, e.g. with code design, version control, documentation, and testing is associated with additional work that is not covered in the primary research task. This includes the adoption of processes following the software development life cycle. However, the adoption of software engineering rules and best practices has to be recognized and accepted as part of the scientific performance. Most scientists have little incentive to improve code and do not publish code because software engineering habits are rarely practised by researchers or students. Software engineering skills are not passed on to followers as for paper writing skill. Thus it is often felt that the software or code produced is not publishable. The quality of software and its source code has a decisive influence on the quality of research results obtained and their traceability. So establishing best practices from software engineering to serve scientific needs is crucial for the success of scientific software. Even though scientists use existing software and code, i.e., from open source software repositories, only few contribute their code back into the repositories. So writing and opening code for Open Science means that subsequent users are able to run the code, e.g. by the provision of sufficient documentation, sample data sets, tests and comments which in turn can be proven by adequate and qualified reviews. This assumes that scientist learn to write and release code and software as they learn to write and publish papers. Having this in mind, software could be valued and assessed as a contribution to science. But this requires the relevant skills that can be passed to colleagues and followers. Therefore, the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences performed three workshops in 2015 to address the passing of software writing skills to young scientists, the next generation of researchers in the Earth, planetary and space sciences. Experiences in running these workshops and the lessons learned will be summarized in this presentation. The workshops have received support and funding by Software Carpentry, a volunteer organization whose goal is to make scientists more productive, and their work more reliable, by teaching them basic computing skills, and by FOSTER (Facilitate Open Science Training for European Research), a two-year, EU-Funded (FP7) project, whose goal to produce a European-wide training programme that will help to incorporate Open Access approaches into existing research methodologies and to integrate Open Science principles and practice in the current research workflow by targeting the young researchers and other stakeholders.

Explore Earth Science Datasets for STEM with the NASA GES DISC Online Visualization and Analysis Tool, Giovanni

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Liu, Z.; Acker, J.; Kempler, S.

2016-01-01

The NASA Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center(DISC) is one of twelve NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Data Centers that provide Earth science data, information, and services to users around the world including research and application scientists, students, citizen scientists, etc. The GESDISC is the home (archive) of remote sensing datasets for NASA Precipitation and Hydrology, Atmospheric Composition and Dynamics, etc. To facilitate Earth science data access, the GES DISC has been developing user-friendly data services for users at different levels in different countries. Among them, the Geospatial Interactive Online Visualization ANd aNalysis Infrastructure (Giovanni, http:giovanni.gsfc.nasa.gov) allows users to explore satellite-based datasets using sophisticated analyses and visualization without downloading data and software, which is particularly suitable for novices (such as students) to use NASA datasets in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) activities. In this presentation, we will briefly introduce Giovanni along with examples for STEM activities.

Preliminary design of the HARMONI science software

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Piqueras, Laure; Jarno, Aurelien; Pécontal-Rousset, Arlette; Loupias, Magali; Richard, Johan; Schwartz, Noah; Fusco, Thierry; Sauvage, Jean-François; Neichel, Benoît; Correia, Carlos M.

2016-08-01

This paper introduces the science software of HARMONI. The Instrument Numerical Model simulates the instrument from the optical point of view and provides synthetic exposures simulating detector readouts from data-cubes containing astrophysical scenes. The Data Reduction Software converts raw-data frames into a fully calibrated, scientifically usable data cube. We present the functionalities and the preliminary design of this software, describe some of the methods and algorithms used and highlight the challenges that we will have to face.

Science on TeacherTube: A Mixed Methods Analysis of Teacher Produced Video

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chmiel, Margaret (Marjee)

Increased bandwidth, inexpensive video cameras and easy-to-use video editing software have made social media sites featuring user generated video (UGV) an increasingly popular vehicle for online communication. As such, UGV have come to play a role in education, both formal and informal, but there has been little research on this topic in scholarly literature. In this mixed-methods study, a content and discourse analysis are used to describe the most successful UGV in the science channel of an education-focused site called TeacherTube. The analysis finds that state achievement tests, and their focus on vocabulary and recall-level knowledge, drive much of the content found on TeacherTube.

Teacher's Guide to SERAPHIM Software V. Chemistry: The Central Science.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bogner, Donna J.

Designed to assist chemistry teachers in selecting appropriate software programs, this publication is the fifth in a series of six teacher's guides from Project SERAPHIM, a program sponsored by the National Science Foundation. This guide is keyed to the chapters of the text "Chemistry: The Central Science." Program suggestions are…

Stateless Programming as a Motif for Teaching Computer Science

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cohen, Avi

2004-01-01

With the development of XML Web Services, the Internet could become an integral part of and the basis for teaching computer science and software engineering. The approach has been applied to a university course for students studying introduction to computer science from the point of view of software development in a stateless, Internet…

What Do Computer Science Students Think about Software Piracy?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Konstantakis, Nikos I.; Palaigeorgiou, George E.; Siozos, Panos D.; Tsoukalas, Ioannis A.

2010-01-01

Today, software piracy is an issue of global importance. Computer science students are the future information and communication technologies professionals and it is important to study the way they approach this issue. In this article, we attempt to study attitudes, behaviours and the corresponding reasoning of computer science students in Greece…

Voxel Datacubes for 3D Visualization in Blender

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gárate, Matías

2017-05-01

The growth of computational astrophysics and the complexity of multi-dimensional data sets evidences the need for new versatile visualization tools for both the analysis and presentation of the data. In this work, we show how to use the open-source software Blender as a three-dimensional (3D) visualization tool to study and visualize numerical simulation results, focusing on astrophysical hydrodynamic experiments. With a datacube as input, the software can generate a volume rendering of the 3D data, show the evolution of a simulation in time, and do a fly-around camera animation to highlight the points of interest. We explain the process to import simulation outputs into Blender using the voxel data format, and how to set up a visualization scene in the software interface. This method allows scientists to perform a complementary visual analysis of their data and display their results in an appealing way, both for outreach and science presentations.

Requirements Engineering in Building Climate Science Software

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Batcheller, Archer L.

Software has an important role in supporting scientific work. This dissertation studies teams that build scientific software, focusing on the way that they determine what the software should do. These requirements engineering processes are investigated through three case studies of climate science software projects. The Earth System Modeling Framework assists modeling applications, the Earth System Grid distributes data via a web portal, and the NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) Command Language is used to convert, analyze and visualize data. Document analysis, observation, and interviews were used to investigate the requirements-related work. The first research question is about how and why stakeholders engage in a project, and what they do for the project. Two key findings arise. First, user counts are a vital measure of project success, which makes adoption important and makes counting tricky and political. Second, despite the importance of quantities of users, a few particular "power users" develop a relationship with the software developers and play a special role in providing feedback to the software team and integrating the system into user practice. The second research question focuses on how project objectives are articulated and how they are put into practice. The team seeks to both build a software system according to product requirements but also to conduct their work according to process requirements such as user support. Support provides essential communication between users and developers that assists with refining and identifying requirements for the software. It also helps users to learn and apply the software to their real needs. User support is a vital activity for scientific software teams aspiring to create infrastructure. The third research question is about how change in scientific practice and knowledge leads to changes in the software, and vice versa. The "thickness" of a layer of software infrastructure impacts whether the software team or users have control and responsibility for making changes in response to new scientific ideas. Thick infrastructure provides more functionality for users, but gives them less control of it. The stability of infrastructure trades off against the responsiveness that the infrastructure can have to user needs.

[Analysis on acupuncture related articles published in periodicals in science citation index (SCI) in 2008].

PubMed

Wang, Chao; He, Wen-Ju; Guo, Yi

2010-09-01

Acupuncture related articles published in periodicals in Science Citation Index (SCI) in 2008 were summarized and analyzed. About 583 articles were collected using "acupuncture" and "in 2008" as keywords in the Web of Science data base by information retrieval. These papers were summarized and analyzed from various aspects of country, language, subject category, literature type, publication sources, impact factor, research method, acupoints, disease category and needling methods by using Excel software combined with manual sorting of the literature, the aim is to provide a reference for domestic acupuncture research.

An Internet Protocol-Based Software System for Real-Time, Closed-Loop, Multi-Spacecraft Mission Simulation Applications

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Davis, George; Cary, Everett; Higinbotham, John; Burns, Richard; Hogie, Keith; Hallahan, Francis

2003-01-01

The paper will provide an overview of the web-based distributed simulation software system developed for end-to-end, multi-spacecraft mission design, analysis, and test at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). This software system was developed for an internal research and development (IR&D) activity at GSFC called the Distributed Space Systems (DSS) Distributed Synthesis Environment (DSE). The long-term goal of the DSS-DSE is to integrate existing GSFC stand-alone test beds, models, and simulation systems to create a "hands on", end-to-end simulation environment for mission design, trade studies and simulations. The short-term goal of the DSE was therefore to develop the system architecture, and then to prototype the core software simulation capability based on a distributed computing approach, with demonstrations of some key capabilities by the end of Fiscal Year 2002 (FY02). To achieve the DSS-DSE IR&D objective, the team adopted a reference model and mission upon which FY02 capabilities were developed. The software was prototyped according to the reference model, and demonstrations were conducted for the reference mission to validate interfaces, concepts, etc. The reference model, illustrated in Fig. 1, included both space and ground elements, with functional capabilities such as spacecraft dynamics and control, science data collection, space-to-space and space-to-ground communications, mission operations, science operations, and data processing, archival and distribution addressed.

A Distributed Simulation Software System for Multi-Spacecraft Missions

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Burns, Richard; Davis, George; Cary, Everett

2003-01-01

The paper will provide an overview of the web-based distributed simulation software system developed for end-to-end, multi-spacecraft mission design, analysis, and test at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). This software system was developed for an internal research and development (IR&D) activity at GSFC called the Distributed Space Systems (DSS) Distributed Synthesis Environment (DSE). The long-term goal of the DSS-DSE is to integrate existing GSFC stand-alone test beds, models, and simulation systems to create a "hands on", end-to-end simulation environment for mission design, trade studies and simulations. The short-term goal of the DSE was therefore to develop the system architecture, and then to prototype the core software simulation capability based on a distributed computing approach, with demonstrations of some key capabilities by the end of Fiscal Year 2002 (FY02). To achieve the DSS-DSE IR&D objective, the team adopted a reference model and mission upon which FY02 capabilities were developed. The software was prototyped according to the reference model, and demonstrations were conducted for the reference mission to validate interfaces, concepts, etc. The reference model, illustrated in Fig. 1, included both space and ground elements, with functional capabilities such as spacecraft dynamics and control, science data collection, space-to-space and space-to-ground communications, mission operations, science operations, and data processing, archival and distribution addressed.

Impact of the 3-D model strategy on science learning of the solar system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Alharbi, Mohammed

The purpose of this mixed method study, quantitative and descriptive, was to determine whether the first-middle grade (seventh grade) students at Saudi schools are able to learn and use the Autodesk Maya software to interact and create their own 3-D models and animations and whether their use of the software influences their study habits and their understanding of the school subject matter. The study revealed that there is value to the science students regarding the use of 3-D software to create 3-D models to complete science assignments. Also, this study aimed to address the middle-school students' ability to learn 3-D software in art class, and then ultimately use it in their science class. The success of this study may open the way to consider the impact of 3-D modeling on other school subjects, such as mathematics, art, and geography. When the students start using graphic design, including 3-D software, at a young age, they tend to develop personal creativity and skills. The success of this study, if applied in schools, will provide the community with skillful young designers and increase awareness of graphic design and the new 3-D technology. Experimental method was used to answer the quantitative research question, are there significant differences applying the learning method using 3-D models (no 3-D, premade 3-D, and create 3-D) in a science class being taught about the solar system and its impact on the students' science achievement scores? Descriptive method was used to answer the qualitative research questions that are about the difficulty of learning and using Autodesk Maya software, time that students take to use the basic levels of Polygon and Animation parts of the Autodesk Maya software, and level of students' work quality.

Envision: An interactive system for the management and visualization of large geophysical data sets

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Searight, K. R.; Wojtowicz, D. P.; Walsh, J. E.; Pathi, S.; Bowman, K. P.; Wilhelmson, R. B.

1995-01-01

Envision is a software project at the University of Illinois and Texas A&M, funded by NASA's Applied Information Systems Research Project. It provides researchers in the geophysical sciences convenient ways to manage, browse, and visualize large observed or model data sets. Envision integrates data management, analysis, and visualization of geophysical data in an interactive environment. It employs commonly used standards in data formats, operating systems, networking, and graphics. It also attempts, wherever possible, to integrate with existing scientific visualization and analysis software. Envision has an easy-to-use graphical interface, distributed process components, and an extensible design. It is a public domain package, freely available to the scientific community.

The Grid Analysis and Display System (GrADS)

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kinter, James L., III

1994-01-01

During the period 1 September 1993 - 31 August 1994, further development of the Grid Analysis and Display System (GrADS) was conducted at the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA) of the Institute of Global Environment and Society, Inc. (IGES) under subcontract 5555-31 from the University Space Research Association (USRA) administered by The Center of Excellence in Space Data and Information Sciences (CESDIS). This final report documents progress made under this subcontract and provides directions on how to access the software and documentation developed therein. A short description of GrADS is provided followed by summary of progress completed and a summary of the distribution of the software to date and the establishment of research collaborations.

Internet-Based Software Tools for Analysis and Processing of LIDAR Point Cloud Data via the OpenTopography Portal

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nandigam, V.; Crosby, C. J.; Baru, C.; Arrowsmith, R.

2009-12-01

LIDAR is an excellent example of the new generation of powerful remote sensing data now available to Earth science researchers. Capable of producing digital elevation models (DEMs) more than an order of magnitude higher resolution than those currently available, LIDAR data allows earth scientists to study the processes that contribute to landscape evolution at resolutions not previously possible, yet essential for their appropriate representation. Along with these high-resolution datasets comes an increase in the volume and complexity of data that the user must efficiently manage and process in order for it to be scientifically useful. Although there are expensive commercial LIDAR software applications available, processing and analysis of these datasets are typically computationally inefficient on the conventional hardware and software that is currently available to most of the Earth science community. We have designed and implemented an Internet-based system, the OpenTopography Portal, that provides integrated access to high-resolution LIDAR data as well as web-based tools for processing of these datasets. By using remote data storage and high performance compute resources, the OpenTopography Portal attempts to simplify data access and standard LIDAR processing tasks for the Earth Science community. The OpenTopography Portal allows users to access massive amounts of raw point cloud LIDAR data as well as a suite of DEM generation tools to enable users to generate custom digital elevation models to best fit their science applications. The Cyberinfrastructure software tools for processing the data are freely available via the portal and conveniently integrated with the data selection in a single user-friendly interface. The ability to run these tools on powerful Cyberinfrastructure resources instead of their own labs provides a huge advantage in terms of performance and compute power. The system also encourages users to explore data processing methods and the variations in algorithm parameters since all of the processing is done remotely and numerous jobs can be submitted in sequence. The web-based software also eliminates the need for users to deal with the hassles and costs associated with software installation and licensing while providing adequate disk space for storage and personal job archival capability. Although currently limited to data access and DEM generation tasks, the OpenTopography system is modular in design and can be modified to accommodate new processing tools as they become available. We are currently exploring implementation of higher-level DEM analysis tasks in OpenTopography, since such processing is often computationally intensive and thus lends itself to utilization of cyberinfrastructure. Products derived from OpenTopography processing are available in a variety of formats ranging from simple Google Earth visualizations of LIDAR-derived hillshades to various GIS-compatible grid formats. To serve community users less interested in data processing, OpenTopography also hosts 1 km^2 digital elevation model tiles as well as Google Earth image overlays for a synoptic view of the data.

How to Create a Student-Generated Database, in a Large Nutrition Class, to Illustrate the Analysis of Nutrient and Food Intakes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gurfinkel, Debbie M.; Wolever, Thomas M. S.

2017-01-01

The completion of a 3-d food record, using commonly available nutrient analysis software, is a typical assignment for students in nutrition and food science programs. While these assignments help students evaluate their personal diets, it is insufficient to teach students about surveys of large population cohorts. This paper shows how the Test,…

The business process management software for successful quality management and organization: A case study from the University of Split School of Medicine.

PubMed

Sapunar, Damir; Grković, Ivica; Lukšić, Davor; Marušić, Matko

2016-05-01

Our aim was to describe a comprehensive model of internal quality management (QM) at a medical school founded on the business process analysis (BPA) software tool. BPA software tool was used as the core element for description of all working processes in our medical school, and subsequently the system served as the comprehensive model of internal QM. The quality management system at the University of Split School of Medicine included the documentation and analysis of all business processes within the School. The analysis revealed 80 weak points related to one or several business processes. A precise analysis of medical school business processes allows identification of unfinished, unclear and inadequate points in these processes, and subsequently the respective improvements and increase of the QM level and ultimately a rationalization of the institution's work. Our approach offers a potential reference model for development of common QM framework allowing a continuous quality control, i.e. the adjustments and adaptation to contemporary educational needs of medical students. Copyright © 2016 by Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Rethinking Technology-Enhanced Physics Teacher Education: From Theory to Practice

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Milner-Bolotin, Marina

2016-01-01

This article discusses how modern technology, such as electronic response systems, PeerWise system, data collection and analysis tools, computer simulations, and modeling software can be used in physics methods courses to promote teacher-candidates' professional competencies and their positive attitudes about mathematics and science education. We…

Push for Cheese: A Metaphor for Software Usability

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Radziwill, Nicole; Shelton, Amy

2005-12-01

At the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's (NRAO) Science Center in Green Bank, W. Va., visitors curious about radio astronomy and the observatory's history and operations will discover an educational, entertaining experience. Employees also visit the science center, but their thoughts are more on afternoon snacks rather than distant galaxies. The employees of NRAO's Software Development Division in Green Bank have gained tremendous insight on the topic of software usability from many visits to the Science Center Café by pontificating upon the wisdom inherent in the design and use of the liquid cheese dispenser there.

Matrix evaluation of science objectives

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wessen, Randii R.

1994-01-01

The most fundamental objective of all robotic planetary spacecraft is to return science data. To accomplish this, a spacecraft is fabricated and built, software is planned and coded, and a ground system is designed and implemented. However, the quantitative analysis required to determine how the collection of science data drives ground system capabilities has received very little attention. This paper defines a process by which science objectives can be quantitatively evaluated. By applying it to the Cassini Mission to Saturn, this paper further illustrates the power of this technique. The results show which science objectives drive specific ground system capabilities. In addition, this process can assist system engineers and scientists in the selection of the science payload during pre-project mission planning; ground system designers during ground system development and implementation; and operations personnel during mission operations.

Data Science: History repeated? - The heritage of the Free and Open Source GIS community

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Löwe, Peter; Neteler, Markus

2014-05-01

Data Science is described as the process of knowledge extraction from large data sets by means of scientific methods. The discipline draws heavily from techniques and theories from many fields, which are jointly used to furthermore develop information retrieval on structured or unstructured very large datasets. While the term Data Science was already coined in 1960, the current perception of this field places is still in the first section of the hype cycle according to Gartner, being well en route from the technology trigger stage to the peak of inflated expectations. In our view the future development of Data Science could benefit from the analysis of experiences from related evolutionary processes. One predecessor is the area of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The intrinsic scope of GIS is the integration and storage of spatial information from often heterogeneous sources, data analysis, sharing of reconstructed or aggregated results in visual form or via data transfer. GIS is successfully applied to process and analyse spatially referenced content in a wide and still expanding range of science areas, spanning from human and social sciences like archeology, politics and architecture to environmental and geoscientific applications, even including planetology. This paper presents proven patterns for innovation and organisation derived from the evolution of GIS, which can be ported to Data Science. Within the GIS landscape, three strategic interacting tiers can be denoted: i) Standardisation, ii) applications based on closed-source software, without the option of access to and analysis of the implemented algorithms, and iii) Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) based on freely accessible program code enabling analysis, education and ,improvement by everyone. This paper focuses on patterns gained from the synthesis of three decades of FOSS development. We identified best-practices which evolved from long term FOSS projects, describe the role of community-driven global umbrella organisations such as OSGeo, as well as the standardization of innovative services. The main driver is the acknowledgement of a meritocratic attitude. These patterns follow evolutionary processes of establishing and maintaining a web-based democratic culture spawning new kinds of communication and projects. This culture transcends the established compartmentation and stratification of science by creating mutual benefits for the participants, irrespective of their respective research interest and standing. Adopting these best practices will enable the emerging Data Science communities to avoid pitfalls and to accelerate the progress to stages of productivity.

Intercepted signals for ionospheric science

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lind, F. D.; Erickson, P. J.; Coster, A. J.; Foster, J. C.; Marchese, J. R.; Berkowitz, Z.; Sahr, J. D.

2013-05-01

The ISIS array (Intercepted Signals for Ionospheric Science) is a distributed, coherent software radio array designed for the study of geospace phenomena by observing the scatter of ambient radio frequency (RF) signals. ISIS data acquisition and analysis is performed using the MIDAS-M platform (Millstone Data Acquisition System - Mobile). Observations of RF signals can be performed between HF and L-band using the Array nodes and appropriate antennas. The deployment of the Array focuses on observations of the plasmasphere boundary layer. We discuss the concept of the coherent software radio array, describe the ISIS hardware, and give examples of data from the system for selected applications. In particular, we include the first observations of E region irregularities using the Array. We also present single-site passive radar observations of both meteor trails and E region irregularities using adaptive filtering techniques.

Kepler Planet Detection Metrics: Statistical Bootstrap Test

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Jenkins, Jon M.; Burke, Christopher J.

2016-01-01

This document describes the data produced by the Statistical Bootstrap Test over the final three Threshold Crossing Event (TCE) deliveries to NExScI: SOC 9.1 (Q1Q16)1 (Tenenbaum et al. 2014), SOC 9.2 (Q1Q17) aka DR242 (Seader et al. 2015), and SOC 9.3 (Q1Q17) aka DR253 (Twicken et al. 2016). The last few years have seen significant improvements in the SOC science data processing pipeline, leading to higher quality light curves and more sensitive transit searches. The statistical bootstrap analysis results presented here and the numerical results archived at NASAs Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI) bear witness to these software improvements. This document attempts to introduce and describe the main features and differences between these three data sets as a consequence of the software changes.

Radio-science performance analysis software

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Morabito, D. D.; Asmar, S. W.

1995-02-01

The Radio Science Systems Group (RSSG) provides various support functions for several flight project radio-science teams. Among these support functions are uplink and sequence planning, real-time operations monitoring and support, data validation, archiving and distribution functions, and data processing and analysis. This article describes the support functions that encompass radio-science data performance analysis. The primary tool used by the RSSG to fulfill this support function is the STBLTY program set. STBLTY is used to reconstruct observable frequencies and calculate model frequencies, frequency residuals, frequency stability in terms of Allan deviation, reconstructed phase, frequency and phase power spectral density, and frequency drift rates. In the case of one-way data, using an ultrastable oscillator (USO) as a frequency reference, the program set computes the spacecraft transmitted frequency and maintains a database containing the in-flight history of the USO measurements. The program set also produces graphical displays. Some examples and discussions on operating the program set on Galileo and Ulysses data will be presented.

Radio-Science Performance Analysis Software

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Morabito, D. D.; Asmar, S. W.

1994-10-01

The Radio Science Systems Group (RSSG) provides various support functions for several flight project radio-science teams. Among these support functions are uplink and sequence planning, real-time operations monitoring and support, data validation, archiving and distribution functions, and data processing and analysis. This article describes the support functions that encompass radio science data performance analysis. The primary tool used by the RSSG to fulfill this support function is the STBLTY program set. STBLTY is used to reconstruct observable frequencies and calculate model frequencies, frequency residuals, frequency stability in terms of Allan deviation, reconstructed phase, frequency and phase power spectral density, and frequency drift rates. In the case of one-way data, using an ultrastable oscillator (USO) as a frequency reference, the program set computes the spacecraft transmitted frequency and maintains a database containing the in-flight history of the USO measurements. The program set also produces graphical displays. Some examples and discussion on operating the program set on Galileo and Ulysses data will be presented.

Radio-science performance analysis software

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Morabito, D. D.; Asmar, S. W.

1995-01-01

The Radio Science Systems Group (RSSG) provides various support functions for several flight project radio-science teams. Among these support functions are uplink and sequence planning, real-time operations monitoring and support, data validation, archiving and distribution functions, and data processing and analysis. This article describes the support functions that encompass radio-science data performance analysis. The primary tool used by the RSSG to fulfill this support function is the STBLTY program set. STBLTY is used to reconstruct observable frequencies and calculate model frequencies, frequency residuals, frequency stability in terms of Allan deviation, reconstructed phase, frequency and phase power spectral density, and frequency drift rates. In the case of one-way data, using an ultrastable oscillator (USO) as a frequency reference, the program set computes the spacecraft transmitted frequency and maintains a database containing the in-flight history of the USO measurements. The program set also produces graphical displays. Some examples and discussions on operating the program set on Galileo and Ulysses data will be presented.

Machine learning and data science in soft materials engineering

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ferguson, Andrew L.

2018-01-01

In many branches of materials science it is now routine to generate data sets of such large size and dimensionality that conventional methods of analysis fail. Paradigms and tools from data science and machine learning can provide scalable approaches to identify and extract trends and patterns within voluminous data sets, perform guided traversals of high-dimensional phase spaces, and furnish data-driven strategies for inverse materials design. This topical review provides an accessible introduction to machine learning tools in the context of soft and biological materials by ‘de-jargonizing’ data science terminology, presenting a taxonomy of machine learning techniques, and surveying the mathematical underpinnings and software implementations of popular tools, including principal component analysis, independent component analysis, diffusion maps, support vector machines, and relative entropy. We present illustrative examples of machine learning applications in soft matter, including inverse design of self-assembling materials, nonlinear learning of protein folding landscapes, high-throughput antimicrobial peptide design, and data-driven materials design engines. We close with an outlook on the challenges and opportunities for the field.

Machine learning and data science in soft materials engineering.

PubMed

Ferguson, Andrew L

2018-01-31

In many branches of materials science it is now routine to generate data sets of such large size and dimensionality that conventional methods of analysis fail. Paradigms and tools from data science and machine learning can provide scalable approaches to identify and extract trends and patterns within voluminous data sets, perform guided traversals of high-dimensional phase spaces, and furnish data-driven strategies for inverse materials design. This topical review provides an accessible introduction to machine learning tools in the context of soft and biological materials by 'de-jargonizing' data science terminology, presenting a taxonomy of machine learning techniques, and surveying the mathematical underpinnings and software implementations of popular tools, including principal component analysis, independent component analysis, diffusion maps, support vector machines, and relative entropy. We present illustrative examples of machine learning applications in soft matter, including inverse design of self-assembling materials, nonlinear learning of protein folding landscapes, high-throughput antimicrobial peptide design, and data-driven materials design engines. We close with an outlook on the challenges and opportunities for the field.

Bioinformatics.

PubMed

Moore, Jason H

2007-11-01

Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field that blends computer science and biostatistics with biological and biomedical sciences such as biochemistry, cell biology, developmental biology, genetics, genomics, and physiology. An important goal of bioinformatics is to facilitate the management, analysis, and interpretation of data from biological experiments and observational studies. The goal of this review is to introduce some of the important concepts in bioinformatics that must be considered when planning and executing a modern biological research study. We review database resources as well as data mining software tools.

Increasing Interest, Confidence and Understanding of Ethical Issues in Science through Case-Based Instructional Technology.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lundeberg, Mary A.; Bergland, Mark; Klyczek, Karen; Mogen, Kim; Johnson, Doug; Harmes, Nina

Software designed to promote the use of open-ended investigations in science education was evaluated in a study of whether using case-based simulation enhances students' understanding of ethical issues and data interpretation in science. The software was a DNA gel electrophoresis simulation that enabled students to conduct simulated genetic tests.…

Programming Makes Software; Support Makes Users

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Batcheller, A. L.

2010-12-01

Skilled software engineers may build fantastic software for climate modeling, yet fail to achieve their project’s objectives. Software support and related activities are just as critical as writing software. This study followed three different software projects in the climate sciences, using interviews, observation, and document analysis to examine the value added by support work. Supporting the project and interacting with users was a key task for software developers, who often spent 50% of their time on it. Such support work most often involved replying to questions on an email list, but also included talking to users on teleconference calls and in person. Software support increased adoption by building the software’s reputation and showing individuals how the software can meet their needs. In the process of providing support, developers often learned new of requirements as users reported features they desire and bugs they found. As software matures and gains widespread use, support work often increases. In fact, such increases can be one signal that the software has achieved broad acceptance. Maturing projects also find demand for instructional classes, online tutorials and detailed examples of how to use the software. The importance of support highlights the fact that building software systems involves both social and technical aspects. Yes, we need to build the software, but we also need to “build” the users and practices that can take advantage of it.

A PICKSC Science Gateway for enabling the common plasma physicist to run kinetic software

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hu, Q.; Winjum, B. J.; Zonca, A.; Youn, C.; Tsung, F. S.; Mori, W. B.

2017-10-01

Computer simulations offer tremendous opportunities for studying plasmas, ranging from simulations for students that illuminate fundamental educational concepts to research-level simulations that advance scientific knowledge. Nevertheless, there is a significant hurdle to using simulation tools. Users must navigate codes and software libraries, determine how to wrangle output into meaningful plots, and oftentimes confront a significant cyberinfrastructure with powerful computational resources. Science gateways offer a Web-based environment to run simulations without needing to learn or manage the underlying software and computing cyberinfrastructure. We discuss our progress on creating a Science Gateway for the Particle-in-Cell and Kinetic Simulation Software Center that enables users to easily run and analyze kinetic simulations with our software. We envision that this technology could benefit a wide range of plasma physicists, both in the use of our simulation tools as well as in its adaptation for running other plasma simulation software. Supported by NSF under Grant ACI-1339893 and by the UCLA Institute for Digital Research and Education.

Workstation-Based Avionics Simulator to Support Mars Science Laboratory Flight Software Development

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Henriquez, David; Canham, Timothy; Chang, Johnny T.; McMahon, Elihu

2008-01-01

The Mars Science Laboratory developed the WorkStation TestSet (WSTS) to support flight software development. The WSTS is the non-real-time flight avionics simulator that is designed to be completely software-based and run on a workstation class Linux PC. This provides flight software developers with their own virtual avionics testbed and allows device-level and functional software testing when hardware testbeds are either not yet available or have limited availability. The WSTS has successfully off-loaded many flight software development activities from the project testbeds. At the writing of this paper, the WSTS has averaged an order of magnitude more usage than the project's hardware testbeds.

Using McIDAS-V data analysis and visualization software as an educational tool for understanding the atmosphere

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Achtor, T. H.; Rink, T.

2010-12-01

The University of Wisconsin’s Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) has been at the forefront in developing data analysis and visualization tools for environmental satellites and other geophysical data. The fifth generation of the Man-computer Interactive Data Access System (McIDAS-V) is Java-based, open-source, freely available software that operates on Linux, Macintosh and Windows systems. The software tools provide powerful new data manipulation and visualization capabilities that work with geophysical data in research, operational and educational environments. McIDAS-V provides unique capabilities to support innovative techniques for evaluating research results, teaching and training. McIDAS-V is based on three powerful software elements. VisAD is a Java library for building interactive, collaborative, 4 dimensional visualization and analysis tools. The Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) is a reference application based on the VisAD system and developed by the Unidata program that demonstrates the flexibility that is needed in this evolving environment, using a modern, object-oriented software design approach. The third tool, HYDRA, allows users to build, display and interrogate multi and hyperspectral environmental satellite data in powerful ways. The McIDAS-V software is being used for training and education in several settings. The McIDAS User Group provides training workshops at its annual meeting. Numerous online tutorials with training data sets have been developed to aid users in learning simple and more complex operations in McIDAS-V, all are available online. In a University of Wisconsin-Madison undergraduate course in Radar and Satellite Meteorology, McIDAS-V is used to create and deliver laboratory exercises using case study and real time data. At the high school level, McIDAS-V is used in several exercises in our annual Summer Workshop in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences to provide young scientists the opportunity to examine data with friendly and powerful tools. This presentation will describe the McIDAS-V software and demonstrate some of the capabilities of McIDAS-V to analyze and display many types of global data. The presentation will also focus on describing how McIDAS-V can be used as an educational window to examine global geophysical data. Consecutive polar orbiting passes of NASA MODIS and CALIPSO observations

Generic Space Science Visualization in 2D/3D using SDDAS

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mukherjee, J.; Murphy, Z. B.; Gonzalez, C. A.; Muller, M.; Ybarra, S.

2017-12-01

The Southwest Data Display and Analysis System (SDDAS) is a flexible multi-mission / multi-instrument software system intended to support space physics data analysis, and has been in active development for over 20 years. For the Magnetospheric Multi-Scale (MMS), Juno, Cluster, and Mars Express missions, we have modified these generic tools for visualizing data in two and three dimensions. The SDDAS software is open source and makes use of various other open source packages, including VTK and Qwt. The software offers interactive plotting as well as a Python and Lua module to modify the data before plotting. In theory, by writing a Lua or Python module to read the data, any data could be used. Currently, the software can natively read data in IDFS, CEF, CDF, FITS, SEG-Y, ASCII, and XLS formats. We have integrated the software with other Python packages such as SPICE and SpacePy. Included with the visualization software is a database application and other utilities for managing data that can retrieve data from the Cluster Active Archive and Space Physics Data Facility at Goddard, as well as other local archives. Line plots, spectrograms, geographic, volume plots, strip charts, etc. are just some of the types of plots one can generate with SDDAS. Furthermore, due to the design, output is not limited to strictly visualization as SDDAS can also be used to generate stand-alone IDL or Python visualization code.. Lastly, SDDAS has been successfully used as a backend for several web based analysis systems as well.

Cumulative reports and publications through December 31, 1989

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1990-01-01

A complete list of reports from the Institute for Computer Applications in Science and Engineering (ICASE) is presented. The major categories of the current ICASE research program are: numerical methods, with particular emphasis on the development and analysis of basic numerical algorithms; control and parameter identification problems, with emphasis on effectual numerical methods; computational problems in engineering and the physical sciences, particularly fluid dynamics, acoustics, structural analysis, and chemistry; computer systems and software, especially vector and parallel computers, microcomputers, and data management. Since ICASE reports are intended to be preprints of articles that will appear in journals or conference proceedings, the published reference is included when it is available.

The life sciences mass spectrometry research unit.

PubMed

Hopfgartner, Gérard; Varesio, Emmanuel

2012-01-01

The Life Sciences Mass Spectrometry (LSMS) research unit focuses on the development of novel analytical workflows based on innovative mass spectrometric and software tools for the analysis of low molecular weight compounds, peptides and proteins in complex biological matrices. The present article summarizes some of the recent work of the unit: i) the application of matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) for mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) of drug of abuse in hair, ii) the use of high resolution mass spectrometry for simultaneous qualitative/quantitative analysis in drug metabolism and metabolomics, and iii) the absolute quantitation of proteins by mass spectrometry using the selected reaction monitoring mode.

Obtaining the Greatest Scientific Benefit from Observational Platforms by Consideration of the Relative Benefit of Observations

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Chelberg, David; Drews, Frank; Fleeman, David; Welch, Lonnie; Marquart, Jane; Pfarr, Barbara

2003-01-01

One of the current trends in spacecraft software design is to increase the autonomy of onboard flight and science software. This is especially true when real-time observations may affect the observation schedule of a mission. For many science missions, such as those conducted by the Swift Burst Alert Telescope, the ability of the spacecraft to autonomously respond in real-time to unpredicted science events is crucial for mission success. We apply utility theory within resource management middleware to optimize the real-time performance of application software and achieve maximum system level benefit. We then explore how this methodology can be extended to manage both software and observational resources onboard a spacecraft to achieve the best possible observations.

Forget about data, deliver results

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Walter, Roland

2015-12-01

High-energy astrophysics space missions have pioneered and demonstrated the power of legacy data sets for generating new discoveries, especially when analysed in ways original researchers could not have anticipated. The only way to ensure that the data of present observatories can be effectively used in the future is to allow users to perform on-the-fly data analysis to produce straightforwardly scientific results for any sky position, time and energy intervals without requiring mission specific software or detailed instrumental knowledge. Providing a straightforward interface to complex data and data analysis makes the data and the process of generating science results available to the public and higher education and promotes the visibility of the investment in science to the society. This is a fundamental step to transmit the values of science and to evolve towards a knowledge society.

International Solar-Terrestrial Program Key Parameter Visualization Tool Data: USA_NASA_DDF_ISTP_IM_KP_0161

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ocuna, M. H.; Ogilvie, K. W.; Baker, D. N.; Curtis, S. A.; Fairfield, D. H.; Mish, W. H.

2000-01-01

The Global Geospace Science Program (GGS) is designed to improve greatly the understanding of the flow of energy, mass and momentum in the solar-terrestrial environment with particular emphasis on "Geospace". The Global Geospace Science Program is the US contribution to the International Solar-Terrestrial Physics (ISTP) Science Initiative. This CD-ROM issue describes the WIND and POLAR spacecraft, the scientific experiments carried onboard, the Theoretical and Ground Based investigations which constitute the US Global Geospace Science Program and the ISTP Data Systems which support the data acquisition and analysis effort. The International Solar-Terrestrial Physics Program (ISTP) Key Parameter Visualization Tool (KPVT), provided on the CD-ROM, was developed at the ISTP Science Planning and Operations Facility (SPOF). The KPVT is a generic software package for visualizing the key parameter data produced from all ISTP missions, interactively and simultaneously. The tool is designed to facilitate correlative displays of ISTP data from multiple spacecraft and instruments, and thus the selection of candidate events and data quality control. The software, written in IDL, includes a graphical/widget user interface, and runs on many platforms, including various UNIX workstations, Alpha/Open VMS, Macintosh (680x0 and PowerPC), and PC/Windows NT, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95.

International Solar-Terrestrial Program Key Parameter Visualization Tool Data: USA_NASA_DDF_ISTP_KP_0192

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ocuna, M. H.; Ogilvie, K. W.; Baker, D. N.; Curtis, S. A.; Fairfield, D. H.; Mish, W. H.

2001-01-01

The Global Geospace Science Program (GGS) is designed to improve greatly the understanding of the flow of energy, mass and momentum in the solar-terrestrial environment with particular emphasis on "Geospace". The Global Geospace Science Program is the US contribution to the International Solar-Terrestrial Physics (ISTP) Science Initiative. This CD-ROM issue describes the WIND and POLAR spacecraft, the scientific experiments carried onboard, the Theoretical and Ground Based investigations which constitute the US Global Geospace Science Program and the ISTP Data Systems which support the data acquisition and analysis effort. The International Solar-Terrestrial Physics Program (ISTP) Key Parameter Visualization Tool (KPVT), provided on the CD-ROM, was developed at the ISTP Science Planning and Operations Facility (SPOF). The KPVT is a generic software package for visualizing the key parameter data produced from all ISTP missions, interactively and simultaneously. The tool is designed to facilitate correlative displays of ISTP data from multiple spacecraft and instruments, and thus the selection of candidate events and data quality control. The software, written in IDL, includes a graphical/widget user interface, and runs on many platforms, including various UNIX workstations, Alpha/Open VMS, Macintosh (680x0 and PowerPC), and PC/Windows NT, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95.

International Solar-Terrestrial Program Key Parameter Visualization Tool Data: USA_NASA_DDF_ISTP_KP_0139

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ocuna, M. H.; Ogilvie, K. W.; Baker, D. N.; Curtis, S. A.; Fairfield, D. H.; Mish, W. H.

1999-01-01

The Global Geospace Science Program (GGS) is designed to improve greatly the understanding of the flow of energy, mass and momentum in the solar-terrestrial environment with particular emphasis on "Geospace". The Global Geospace Science Program is the US contribution to the International Solar-Terrestrial Physics (ISTP) Science Initiative. This CD-ROM issue describes the WIND and POLAR spacecraft, the scientific experiments carried onboard, the Theoretical and Ground Based investigations which constitute the US Global Geospace Science Program and the ISTP Data Systems which support the data acquisition and analysis effort. The International Solar-Terrestrial Physics Program (ISTP) Key Parameter Visualization Tool (KPVT), provided on the CD-ROM, was developed at the ISTP Science Planning and Operations Facility (SPOF). The KPVT is a generic software package for visualizing the key parameter data produced from all ISTP missions, interactively and simultaneously. The tool is designed to facilitate correlative displays of ISTP data from multiple spacecraft and instruments, and thus the selection of candidate events and data quality control. The software, written in IDL, includes a graphical/widget user interface, and runs on many platforms, including various UNIX workstations, Alpha/Open VMS, Macintosh (680x0 and PowerPC), and PC/Windows NT, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95.

International Solar-Terrestrial Program Key Parameter Visualization Tool Data: USA_NASA_DDF_ISTP_IM_KP_0185

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ocuna, M. H.; Ogilvie, K. W.; Baker, D. N.; Curtis, S. A.; Fairfield, D. H.; Mish, W. H.

2000-01-01

The Global Geospace Science Program (GGS) is designed to improve greatly the understanding of the flow of energy, mass and momentum in the solar-terrestrial environment with particular emphasis on "Geospace". The Global Geospace Science Program is the US contribution to the International Solar-Terrestrial Physics (ISTP) Science Initiative. This CD-ROM issue describes the WIND and POLAR spacecraft, the scientific experiments carried onboard, the Theoretical and Ground Based investigations which constitute the US Global Geospace Science Program and the ISTP Data Systems which support the data acquisition and analysis effort. The International Solar-Terrestrial Physics Program (ISTP) Key Parameter Visualization Tool (KPVT), provided on the CD-ROM, was developed at the ISTP Science Planning and Operations Facility (SPOF). The KPVT is a generic software package for visualizing the key parameter data produced from all ISTP missions, interactively and simultaneously. The tool is designed to facilitate correlative displays of ISTP data from multiple spacecraft and instruments, and thus the selection of candidate events and data quality control. The software, written in IDL, includes a graphical/widget user interface, and runs on many platforms, including various UNIX workstations, Alpha/Open VMS, Macintosh (680x0 and PowerPC), and PC/Windows NT, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95.

Software Reviews.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wulfson, Stephen, Ed.

1990-01-01

Reviewed are six software packages for Apple and/or IBM computers. Included are "Autograph,""The New Game Show,""Science Probe-Earth Science,""Pollution Patrol,""Investigating Plant Growth," and "AIDS: The Investigation." Discussed are the grade level, function, availability, cost, and hardware requirements of each. (CW)

From cheminformatics to structure-based design: Web services and desktop applications based on the NAOMI library.

PubMed

Bietz, Stefan; Inhester, Therese; Lauck, Florian; Sommer, Kai; von Behren, Mathias M; Fährrolfes, Rainer; Flachsenberg, Florian; Meyder, Agnes; Nittinger, Eva; Otto, Thomas; Hilbig, Matthias; Schomburg, Karen T; Volkamer, Andrea; Rarey, Matthias

2017-11-10

Nowadays, computational approaches are an integral part of life science research. Problems related to interpretation of experimental results, data analysis, or visualization tasks highly benefit from the achievements of the digital era. Simulation methods facilitate predictions of physicochemical properties and can assist in understanding macromolecular phenomena. Here, we will give an overview of the methods developed in our group that aim at supporting researchers from all life science areas. Based on state-of-the-art approaches from structural bioinformatics and cheminformatics, we provide software covering a wide range of research questions. Our all-in-one web service platform ProteinsPlus (http://proteins.plus) offers solutions for pocket and druggability prediction, hydrogen placement, structure quality assessment, ensemble generation, protein-protein interaction classification, and 2D-interaction visualization. Additionally, we provide a software package that contains tools targeting cheminformatics problems like file format conversion, molecule data set processing, SMARTS editing, fragment space enumeration, and ligand-based virtual screening. Furthermore, it also includes structural bioinformatics solutions for inverse screening, binding site alignment, and searching interaction patterns across structure libraries. The software package is available at http://software.zbh.uni-hamburg.de. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Software Engineering Workshop

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1988-01-01

Topics covered in the workshop included studies and experiments conducted in the Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL), a cooperative effort of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the University of Maryland, and Computer Sciences Corporation; software models; software products; and software tools.

The HERSCHEL/PACS early Data Products

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wieprecht, E.; Wetzstein, M.; Huygen, R.; Vandenbussche, B.; De Meester, W.

2006-07-01

ESA's Herschel Space Observatory to be launched in 2007, is the first space observatory covering the full far-infrared and submillimeter wavelength range (60 - 670 microns). The Photodetector Array Camera & Spectrometer (PACS) is one of the three science instruments. It contains two Ge:Ga photoconductor arrays and two bolometer arrays to perform imaging line spectroscopy and imaging photometry in the 60 - 210 micron wavelength band. The HERSCHEL ground segment (Herschel Common Science System - HCSS) is implemented using JAVA technology and written in a common effort by the HERSCHEL Science Center and the three instrument teams. The PACS Common Software System (PCSS) is based on the HCSS and used for the online and offline analysis of PACS data. For telemetry bandwidth reasons PACS science data are partially processed on board, compressed, cut into telemetry packets and transmitted to the ground. These steps are instrument mode dependent. We will present the software model which allows to reverse the discrete on board processing steps and evaluate the data. After decompression and reconstruction the detector data and instrument status information are organized in two main PACS Products. The design of these JAVA classes considers the individual sampling rates, data formats, memory and performance optimization aspects and comfortable user interfaces.

NetCDF-CF: Supporting Earth System Science with Data Access, Analysis, and Visualization

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Davis, E.; Zender, C. S.; Arctur, D. K.; O'Brien, K.; Jelenak, A.; Santek, D.; Dixon, M. J.; Whiteaker, T. L.; Yang, K.

2017-12-01

NetCDF-CF is a community-developed convention for storing and describing earth system science data in the netCDF binary data format. It is an OGC recognized standard with numerous existing FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) and commercial software tools can explore, analyze, and visualize data that is stored and described as netCDF-CF data. To better support a larger segment of the earth system science community, a number of efforts are underway to extend the netCDF-CF convention with the goal of increasing the types of data that can be represented as netCDF-CF data. This presentation will provide an overview and update of work to extend the existing netCDF-CF convention. It will detail the types of earth system science data currently supported by netCDF-CF and the types of data targeted for support by current netCDF-CF convention development efforts. It will also describe some of the tools that support the use of netCDF-CF compliant datasets, the types of data they support, and efforts to extend them to handle the new data types that netCDF-CF will support.

Gendermetrics.NET: a novel software for analyzing the gender representation in scientific authoring.

PubMed

Bendels, Michael H K; Brüggmann, Dörthe; Schöffel, Norman; Groneberg, David A

2016-01-01

Imbalances in female career promotion are believed to be strong in the field of academic science. A primary parameter to analyze gender inequalities is the gender authoring in scientific publications. Since the presently available data on gender distribution is largely limited to underpowered studies, we here develop a new approach to analyze authors' genders in large bibliometric databases. A SQL-Server based multiuser software suite was developed that serves as an integrative tool for analyzing bibliometric data with a special emphasis on gender and topographical analysis. The presented system allows seamless integration, inspection, modification, evaluation and visualization of bibliometric data. By providing an adaptive and almost fully automatic integration and analysis process, the inter-individual variability of analysis is kept at a low level. Depending on the scientific question, the system enables the user to perform a scientometric analysis including its visualization within a short period of time. In summary, a new software suite for analyzing gender representations in scientific articles was established. The system is suitable for the comparative analysis of scientific structures on the level of continents, countries, cities, city regions, institutions, research fields and journals.

"Polymeromics": Mass spectrometry based strategies in polymer science toward complete sequencing approaches: a review.

PubMed

Altuntaş, Esra; Schubert, Ulrich S

2014-01-15

Mass spectrometry (MS) is the most versatile and comprehensive method in "OMICS" sciences (i.e. in proteomics, genomics, metabolomics and lipidomics). The applications of MS and tandem MS (MS/MS or MS(n)) provide sequence information of the full complement of biological samples in order to understand the importance of the sequences on their precise and specific functions. Nowadays, the control of polymer sequences and their accurate characterization is one of the significant challenges of current polymer science. Therefore, a similar approach can be very beneficial for characterizing and understanding the complex structures of synthetic macromolecules. MS-based strategies allow a relatively precise examination of polymeric structures (e.g. their molar mass distributions, monomer units, side chain substituents, end-group functionalities, and copolymer compositions). Moreover, tandem MS offer accurate structural information from intricate macromolecular structures; however, it produces vast amount of data to interpret. In "OMICS" sciences, the software application to interpret the obtained data has developed satisfyingly (e.g. in proteomics), because it is not possible to handle the amount of data acquired via (tandem) MS studies on the biological samples manually. It can be expected that special software tools will improve the interpretation of (tandem) MS output from the investigations of synthetic polymers as well. Eventually, the MS/MS field will also open up for polymer scientists who are not MS-specialists. In this review, we dissect the overall framework of the MS and MS/MS analysis of synthetic polymers into its key components. We discuss the fundamentals of polymer analyses as well as recent advances in the areas of tandem mass spectrometry, software developments, and the overall future perspectives on the way to polymer sequencing, one of the last Holy Grail in polymer science. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Explore Earth Science Datasets for STEM with the NASA GES DISC Online Visualization and Analysis Tool, GIOVANNI

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Z.; Acker, J. G.; Kempler, S. J.

2016-12-01

The NASA Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center (DISC) is one of twelve NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Data Centers that provide Earth science data, information, and services to research scientists, applications scientists, applications users, and students around the world. The GES DISC is the home (archive) of NASA Precipitation and Hydrology, as well as Atmospheric Composition and Dynamics remote sensing data and information. To facilitate Earth science data access, the GES DISC has been developing user-friendly data services for users at different levels. Among them, the Geospatial Interactive Online Visualization ANd aNalysis Infrastructure (GIOVANNI, http://giovanni.gsfc.nasa.gov/) allows users to explore satellite-based data using sophisticated analyses and visualizations without downloading data and software, which is particularly suitable for novices to use NASA datasets in STEM activities. In this presentation, we will briefly introduce GIOVANNI and recommend datasets for STEM. Examples of using these datasets in STEM activities will be presented as well.

3rd Annual Earth System Grid Federation and 3rd Annual Earth System Grid Federation and Ultrascale Visualization Climate Data Analysis Tools Face-to-Face Meeting Report December 2013

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Williams, Dean N.

The climate and weather data science community gathered December 3–5, 2013, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in Livermore, California, for the third annual Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) and Ultra-scale Visualization Climate Data Analysis Tools (UV-CDAT) Face-to-Face (F2F) Meeting, which was hosted by the Department of Energy, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the European Infrastructure for the European Network of Earth System Modelling, and the Australian Department of Education. Both ESGF and UV-CDAT are global collaborations designed to develop a new generation of open-source software infrastructure that provides distributed access and analysis to observed andmore » simulated data from the climate and weather communities. The tools and infrastructure developed under these international multi-agency collaborations are critical to understanding extreme weather conditions and long-term climate change, while the F2F meetings help to build a stronger climate and weather data science community and stronger federated software infrastructure. The 2013 F2F meeting determined requirements for existing and impending national and international community projects; enhancements needed for data distribution, analysis, and visualization infrastructure; and standards and resources needed for better collaborations.« less

NEON's eddy-covariance: interoperable flux data products, software and services for you, now

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Metzger, S.; Desai, A. R.; Durden, D.; Hartmann, J.; Li, J.; Luo, H.; Durden, N. P.; Sachs, T.; Serafimovich, A.; Sturtevant, C.; Xu, K.

2017-12-01

Networks of eddy-covariance (EC) towers such as AmeriFlux, ICOS and NEON are vital for providing the necessary distributed observations to address interactions at the soil-vegetation-atmosphere interface. NEON, close to full operation with 47 tower sites, will represent the largest single-provider EC network globally. Its standardized observation and data processing suite is designed specifically for inter-site comparability and analysis of feedbacks across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Furthermore, NEON coordinates EC with rich contextual observations such as airborne remote sensing and in-situ sampling bouts. In January 2018 NEON enters its operational phase, and EC data products, software and services become fully available to the science community at large. These resources strive to incorporate lessons-learned through collaborations with AmeriFlux, ICOS, LTER and others, to suggest novel systemic solutions, and to synergize ongoing research efforts across science communities. Here, we present an overview of the ongoing product release, alongside efforts to integrate and collaborate with existing infrastructures, networks and communities. Near-real-time heat, water and carbon cycle observations in "basic" and "expanded", self-describing HDF5 formats become accessible from the NEON Data Portal, including an Application Program Interface. Subsequently, they are ingested into the AmeriFlux processing pipeline, together with inclusion in FLUXNET globally harmonized data releases. Software for reproducible, extensible and portable data analysis and science operations management also becomes available. This includes the eddy4R family of R-packages underlying the data product generation, together with the ability to directly participate in open development via GitHub version control and DockerHub image hosting. In addition, templates for science operations management include a web-based field maintenance application and a graphical user interface to simplify problem tracking and resolution along the entire data chain. We hope that this presentation can initiate further collaboration and synergies in challenge areas, and would appreciate input and discussion on continued development.

Dexterity: A MATLAB-based analysis software suite for processing and visualizing data from tasks that measure arm or forelimb function.

PubMed

Butensky, Samuel D; Sloan, Andrew P; Meyers, Eric; Carmel, Jason B

2017-07-15

Hand function is critical for independence, and neurological injury often impairs dexterity. To measure hand function in people or forelimb function in animals, sensors are employed to quantify manipulation. These sensors make assessment easier and more quantitative and allow automation of these tasks. While automated tasks improve objectivity and throughput, they also produce large amounts of data that can be burdensome to analyze. We created software called Dexterity that simplifies data analysis of automated reaching tasks. Dexterity is MATLAB software that enables quick analysis of data from forelimb tasks. Through a graphical user interface, files are loaded and data are identified and analyzed. These data can be annotated or graphed directly. Analysis is saved, and the graph and corresponding data can be exported. For additional analysis, Dexterity provides access to custom scripts created by other users. To determine the utility of Dexterity, we performed a study to evaluate the effects of task difficulty on the degree of impairment after injury. Dexterity analyzed two months of data and allowed new users to annotate the experiment, visualize results, and save and export data easily. Previous analysis of tasks was performed with custom data analysis, requiring expertise with analysis software. Dexterity made the tools required to analyze, visualize and annotate data easy to use by investigators without data science experience. Dexterity increases accessibility to automated tasks that measure dexterity by making analysis of large data intuitive, robust, and efficient. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Video Analysis Software and the Investigation of the Conservation of Mechanical Energy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bryan, Joel

2004-01-01

National science and mathematics standards stress the importance of integrating technology use into those fields of study at all levels of education. In order to fulfill these directives, it is necessary to introduce both in-service and preservice teachers to various forms of technology while modeling its appropriate use in investigating…

The Impact of Three-Dimensional Computational Modeling on Student Understanding of Astronomical Concepts: A Quantitative Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hansen, John; Barnett, Michael; MaKinster, James; Keating, Thomas

2004-01-01

The increased availability of computational modeling software has created opportunities for students to engage in scientific inquiry through constructing computer-based models of scientific phenomena. However, despite the growing trend of integrating technology into science curricula, educators need to understand what aspects of these technologies…

A Software Hub for High Assurance Model-Driven Development and Analysis

DTIC Science & Technology

2007-01-23

verification of UML models in TLPVS. In Thomas Baar, Alfred Strohmeier, Ana Moreira, and Stephen J. Mellor, editors, UML 2004 - The Unified Modeling...volume 3785 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 52–65, Manchester, UK, Nov 2005. Springer. [GH04] Günter Graw and Peter Herrmann. Transformation

Effects of Response-Driven Feedback in Computer Science Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fernandez Aleman, J. L.; Palmer-Brown, D.; Jayne, C.

2011-01-01

This paper presents the results of a project on generating diagnostic feedback for guided learning in a first-year course on programming and a Master's course on software quality. An online multiple-choice questions (MCQs) system is integrated with neural network-based data analysis. Findings about how students use the system suggest that the…

User Guidelines and Best Practices for CASL VUQ Analysis Using Dakota.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Adams, Brian M.; Coleman, Kayla; Hooper, Russell

2016-11-01

Sandia's Dakota software (available at http://dakota.sandia.gov) supports science and engineering transformation through advanced exploration of simulations. Specifically it manages and analyzes ensembles of simulations to provide broader and deeper perspective for analysts and decision makers. This enables them to enhance understanding of risk, improve products, and assess simulation credibility.

The software development process at the Chandra X-ray Center

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Evans, Janet D.; Evans, Ian N.; Fabbiano, Giuseppina

2008-08-01

Software development for the Chandra X-ray Center Data System began in the mid 1990's, and the waterfall model of development was mandated by our documents. Although we initially tried this approach, we found that a process with elements of the spiral model worked better in our science-based environment. High-level science requirements are usually established by scientists, and provided to the software development group. We follow with review and refinement of those requirements prior to the design phase. Design reviews are conducted for substantial projects within the development team, and include scientists whenever appropriate. Development follows agreed upon schedules that include several internal releases of the task before completion. Feedback from science testing early in the process helps to identify and resolve misunderstandings present in the detailed requirements, and allows review of intangible requirements. The development process includes specific testing of requirements, developer and user documentation, and support after deployment to operations or to users. We discuss the process we follow at the Chandra X-ray Center (CXC) to develop software and support operations. We review the role of the science and development staff from conception to release of software, and some lessons learned from managing CXC software development for over a decade.

Bayesian Hierarchical Random Effects Models in Forensic Science.

PubMed

Aitken, Colin G G

2018-01-01

Statistical modeling of the evaluation of evidence with the use of the likelihood ratio has a long history. It dates from the Dreyfus case at the end of the nineteenth century through the work at Bletchley Park in the Second World War to the present day. The development received a significant boost in 1977 with a seminal work by Dennis Lindley which introduced a Bayesian hierarchical random effects model for the evaluation of evidence with an example of refractive index measurements on fragments of glass. Many models have been developed since then. The methods have now been sufficiently well-developed and have become so widespread that it is timely to try and provide a software package to assist in their implementation. With that in mind, a project (SAILR: Software for the Analysis and Implementation of Likelihood Ratios) was funded by the European Network of Forensic Science Institutes through their Monopoly programme to develop a software package for use by forensic scientists world-wide that would assist in the statistical analysis and implementation of the approach based on likelihood ratios. It is the purpose of this document to provide a short review of a small part of this history. The review also provides a background, or landscape, for the development of some of the models within the SAILR package and references to SAILR as made as appropriate.

The Challenges of Searching, Finding, Reading, Understanding and Using Mars Mission Datasets for Science Analysis

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Johnson, Jeffrey R.

2006-01-01

This viewgraph presentation reviews the problems that non-mission researchers have in accessing data to use in their analysis of Mars. The increasing complexity of Mars datasets results in custom software development by instrument teams that is often the only means to visualize and analyze the data. The solutions to the problem are to continue efforts toward synergizing data from multiple missions and making the data, s/w, derived products available in standardized, easily-accessible formats, encourage release of "lite" versions of mission-related software prior to end-of-mission, and planetary image data should be systematically processed in a coordinated way and made available in an easily accessed form. The recommendations of Mars Environmental GIS Workshop are reviewed.

Reliability and availability analysis of a 10 kW@20 K helium refrigerator

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, J.; Xiong, L. Y.; Liu, L. Q.; Wang, H. R.; Wang, B. M.

2017-02-01

A 10 kW@20 K helium refrigerator has been established in the Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. To evaluate and improve this refrigerator’s reliability and availability, a reliability and availability analysis is performed. According to the mission profile of this refrigerator, a functional analysis is performed. The failure data of the refrigerator components are collected and failure rate distributions are fitted by software Weibull++ V10.0. A Failure Modes, Effects & Criticality Analysis (FMECA) is performed and the critical components with higher risks are pointed out. Software BlockSim V9.0 is used to calculate the reliability and the availability of this refrigerator. The result indicates that compressors, turbine and vacuum pump are the critical components and the key units of this refrigerator. The mitigation actions with respect to design, testing, maintenance and operation are proposed to decrease those major and medium risks.

Rosetta CONSERT operations and data analysis preparation: simulation software tools.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rogez, Yves; Hérique, Alain; Cardiet, Maël; Zine, Sonia; Westphal, Mathieu; Micallef, Mickael; Berquin, Yann; Kofman, Wlodek

2014-05-01

The CONSERT experiment onboard Rosetta and Philae will perform the tomography of the 67P/CG comet nucleus by measuring radio waves transmission from the Rosetta S/C to the Philae Lander. The accurate analysis of travel time measurements will deliver unique knowledge of the nucleus interior dielectric properties. The challenging complexity of CONSERT operations requirements, combining both Rosetta and Philae, allows only a few set of opportunities to acquire data. Thus, we need a fine analysis of the impact of Rosetta trajectory, Philae position and comet shape on CONSERT measurements, in order to take optimal decisions in a short time. The integration of simulation results and mission parameters provides synthetic information to evaluate performances and risks for each opportunity. The preparation of CONSERT measurements before space operations is a key to achieve the best science return of the experiment. In addition, during Rosetta space operations, these software tools will allow a "real-time" first analysis of the latest measurements to improve the next acquisition sequences. The software tools themselves are built around a 3D electromagnetic radio wave simulation, taking into account the signal polarization. It is based on ray-tracing algorithms specifically designed for quick orbit analysis and radar signal generation. This allows computation on big domains relatively to the wavelength. The extensive use of 3D visualization tools provides comprehensive and synthetic views of the results. The software suite is designed to be extended, after Rosetta operations, to the full 3D measurement data analysis using inversion methods.

Model-Driven Useware Engineering

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Meixner, Gerrit; Seissler, Marc; Breiner, Kai

User-oriented hardware and software development relies on a systematic development process based on a comprehensive analysis focusing on the users' requirements and preferences. Such a development process calls for the integration of numerous disciplines, from psychology and ergonomics to computer sciences and mechanical engineering. Hence, a correspondingly interdisciplinary team must be equipped with suitable software tools to allow it to handle the complexity of a multimodal and multi-device user interface development approach. An abstract, model-based development approach seems to be adequate for handling this complexity. This approach comprises different levels of abstraction requiring adequate tool support. Thus, in this chapter, we present the current state of our model-based software tool chain. We introduce the use model as the core model of our model-based process, transformation processes, and a model-based architecture, and we present different software tools that provide support for creating and maintaining the models or performing the necessary model transformations.

Attitudes of Crohn’s Disease Patients: Infodemiology Case Study and Sentiment Analysis of Facebook and Twitter Posts

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

Background Data concerning patients originates from a variety of sources on social media. Objective The aim of this study was to show how methodologies borrowed from different areas including computer science, econometrics, statistics, data mining, and sociology may be used to analyze Facebook data to investigate the patients’ perspectives on a given medical prescription. Methods To shed light on patients’ behavior and concerns, we focused on Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammatory bowel disease, and the specific therapy with the biological drug Infliximab. To gain information from the basin of big data, we analyzed Facebook posts in the time frame from October 2011 to August 2015. We selected posts from patients affected by Crohn’s disease who were experiencing or had previously been treated with the monoclonal antibody drug Infliximab. The selected posts underwent further characterization and sentiment analysis. Finally, an ethnographic review was carried out by experts from different scientific research fields (eg, computer science vs gastroenterology) and by a software system running a sentiment analysis tool. The patient feeling toward the Infliximab treatment was classified as positive, neutral, or negative, and the results from computer science, gastroenterologist, and software tool were compared using the square weighted Cohen’s kappa coefficient method. Results The first automatic selection process returned 56,000 Facebook posts, 261 of which exhibited a patient opinion concerning Infliximab. The ethnographic analysis of these 261 selected posts gave similar results, with an interrater agreement between the computer science and gastroenterology experts amounting to 87.3% (228/261), a substantial agreement according to the square weighted Cohen’s kappa coefficient method (w2K=0.6470). A positive, neutral, and negative feeling was attributed to 36%, 27%, and 37% of posts by the computer science expert and 38%, 30%, and 32% by the gastroenterologist, respectively. Only a slight agreement was found between the experts’ opinion and the software tool. Conclusions We show how data posted on Facebook by Crohn’s disease patients are a useful dataset to understand the patient’s perspective on the specific treatment with Infliximab. The genuine, nonmedically influenced patients’ opinion obtained from Facebook pages can be easily reviewed by experts from different research backgrounds, with a substantial agreement on the classification of patients’ sentiment. The described method allows a fast collection of big amounts of data, which can be easily analyzed to gain insight into the patients’ perspective on a specific medical therapy. PMID:28793981

Earth Exploration Toolbook Workshops: Helping Teachers and Students Analyze Web-based Scientific Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

McAuliffe, C.; Ledley, T.; Dahlman, L.; Haddad, N.

2007-12-01

One of the challenges faced by Earth science teachers, particularly in K-12 settings, is that of connecting scientific research to classroom experiences. Helping teachers and students analyze Web-based scientific data is one way to bring scientific research to the classroom. The Earth Exploration Toolbook (EET) was developed as an online resource to accomplish precisely that. The EET consists of chapters containing step-by-step instructions for accessing Web-based scientific data and for using a software analysis tool to explore issues or concepts in science, technology, and mathematics. For example, in one EET chapter, users download Earthquake data from the USGS and bring it into a geographic information system (GIS), analyzing factors affecting the distribution of earthquakes. The goal of the EET Workshops project is to provide professional development that enables teachers to incorporate Web-based scientific data and analysis tools in ways that meet their curricular needs. In the EET Workshops project, Earth science teachers participate in a pair of workshops that are conducted in a combined teleconference and Web-conference format. In the first workshop, the EET Data Analysis Workshop, participants are introduced to the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) and the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE). They also walk through an Earth Exploration Toolbook (EET) chapter and discuss ways to use Earth science datasets and tools with their students. In a follow-up second workshop, the EET Implementation Workshop, teachers share how they used these materials in the classroom by describing the projects and activities that they carried out with students. The EET Workshops project offers unique and effective professional development. Participants work at their own Internet-connected computers, and dial into a toll-free group teleconference for step-by-step facilitation and interaction. They also receive support via Elluminate, a Web-conferencing software program. The software allows participants to see the facilitator's computer as the analysis techniques of an EET chapter are demonstrated. If needed, the facilitator can also view individual participant's computers, assisting with technical difficulties. In addition, it enables a large number of end users, often widely distributed, to engage in interactive, real-time instruction. In this presentation, we will describe the elements of an EET Workshop pair, highlighting the capabilities and use of Elluminate. We will share lessons learned through several years of conducting this type of professional development. We will also share findings from survey data gathered from teachers who have participated in our workshops.

Enhancing Environmental HPC Applications: The EnCompAS approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Frank, Anton; Donners, John; Pursula, Antti; Seinstra, Frank; Kranzlmüller, Dieter

2015-04-01

Many HPC applications in geoscience are of very high scientific quality and highly optimized for supercomputers. However, some of these codes lack the uptake by other adjacent scientific communities or industry due to deficiencies in usability, quality, and availability. Since enhancing software by, e.g., adding a graphical user interface, respecting data standards, setting up a support structure, or writing an extensive documentation is not of direct and immediate scientific relevance, most developers are not willing to invest any additional effort in these issues. Furthermore, if scientists, who are not directly involved in the development of some scientific software, could make benefit from additional features or interfaces, respective requests are often turned down due to the lack of time and resources. On the other hand, such enhancements are crucial for the sustainability of the scientific assets as well as the widespread or even worldwide distribution of European environmental software. Closely collaborating with environmental scientists the national supercomputing and eScience centres in Helsinki, Amsterdam, and Munich have identified that an enhancement of HPC and data analysis software must be provided as a service to the scientists developing such software. Therefore, first steps have been taken to establish respective services at these centres. In this talk we will present the already existing and envisioned service portfolio, some first success stories, and the approach to harmonize the current status aiming to turn this local effort into a pan-European service offering for environmental science.

Reusable science tools for analog exploration missions: xGDS Web Tools, VERVE, and Gigapan Voyage

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lee, Susan Y.; Lees, David; Cohen, Tamar; Allan, Mark; Deans, Matthew; Morse, Theodore; Park, Eric; Smith, Trey

2013-10-01

The Exploration Ground Data Systems (xGDS) project led by the Intelligent Robotics Group (IRG) at NASA Ames Research Center creates software tools to support multiple NASA-led planetary analog field experiments. The two primary tools that fall under the xGDS umbrella are the xGDS Web Tools (xGDS-WT) and Visual Environment for Remote Virtual Exploration (VERVE). IRG has also developed a hardware and software system that is closely integrated with our xGDS tools and is used in multiple field experiments called Gigapan Voyage. xGDS-WT, VERVE, and Gigapan Voyage are examples of IRG projects that improve the ratio of science return versus development effort by creating generic and reusable tools that leverage existing technologies in both hardware and software. xGDS Web Tools provides software for gathering and organizing mission data for science and engineering operations, including tools for planning traverses, monitoring autonomous or piloted vehicles, visualization, documentation, analysis, and search. VERVE provides high performance three dimensional (3D) user interfaces used by scientists, robot operators, and mission planners to visualize robot data in real time. Gigapan Voyage is a gigapixel image capturing and processing tool that improves situational awareness and scientific exploration in human and robotic analog missions. All of these technologies emphasize software reuse and leverage open source and/or commercial-off-the-shelf tools to greatly improve the utility and reduce the development and operational cost of future similar technologies. Over the past several years these technologies have been used in many NASA-led robotic field campaigns including the Desert Research and Technology Studies (DRATS), the Pavilion Lake Research Project (PLRP), the K10 Robotic Follow-Up tests, and most recently we have become involved in the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) field experiments. A major objective of these joint robot and crew experiments is to improve NASAs understanding of how to most effectively execute and increase science return from exploration missions. This paper focuses on an integrated suite of xGDS software and compatible hardware tools: xGDS Web Tools, VERVE, and Gigapan Voyage, how they are used, and the design decisions that were made to allow them to be easily developed, integrated, tested, and reused by multiple NASA field experiments and robotic platforms.

The Impact of Computer Science on the Development of Oulu ICT during 1985-1990

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Oinas-Kukkonen, Henry; Similä, Jouni; Pulli, Petri; Oinas-Kukkonen, Harri; Kerola, Pentti

The region of Oulu has been emphasizing the importance of electronics industry for its business growth since the 1960s. After a pitch-dark recession, the region developed in the 1990s into a new, well-established hub of information and communication technology (ICT) in Finland. The city with its 100,000 inhabitants occupied nearly 10,000 ICT professionals in 1995. This article will contribute to the body of research knowledge through analyzing the role of computer science, in particular information systems and software engineering, for the development of the ICT industry in Oulu in the latter half of the 1980s. This analysis is based on a variety of both primary and secondary sources. This article suggests that the system-theoretical and software-oriented research expertise played a key role for the rapid and successful ICT business development of the Oulu region.

Analysis of Photogrammetry Data from ISIM Mockup, June 1, 2007

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Nowak, Maria; Hill, Mike

2007-01-01

During ground testing of the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the ISIM Optics group plans to use a Photogrammetry Measurement System for cryogenic calibration of specific target points on the ISIM composite structure and Science Instrument optical benches and other GSE equipment. This testing will occur in the Space Environmental Systems (SES) chamber at Goddard Space Flight Center. Close range photogrammetry is a 3 dimensional metrology system using triangulation to locate custom targets in 3 coordinates via a collection of digital photographs taken from various locations and orientations. These photos are connected using coded targets, special targets that are recognized by the software and can thus correlate the images to provide a 3 dimensional map of the targets, and scaled via well calibrated scale bars. Photogrammetry solves for the camera location and coordinates of the targets simultaneously through the bundling procedure contained in the V-STARS software.

Progress toward openness, transparency, and reproducibility in cognitive neuroscience.

PubMed

Gilmore, Rick O; Diaz, Michele T; Wyble, Brad A; Yarkoni, Tal

2017-05-01

Accumulating evidence suggests that many findings in psychological science and cognitive neuroscience may prove difficult to reproduce; statistical power in brain imaging studies is low and has not improved recently; software errors in analysis tools are common and can go undetected for many years; and, a few large-scale studies notwithstanding, open sharing of data, code, and materials remain the rare exception. At the same time, there is a renewed focus on reproducibility, transparency, and openness as essential core values in cognitive neuroscience. The emergence and rapid growth of data archives, meta-analytic tools, software pipelines, and research groups devoted to improved methodology reflect this new sensibility. We review evidence that the field has begun to embrace new open research practices and illustrate how these can begin to address problems of reproducibility, statistical power, and transparency in ways that will ultimately accelerate discovery. © 2017 New York Academy of Sciences.

From data to knowledge: The future of multi-omics data analysis for the rhizosphere

DOE PAGES

Allen White III, Richard; Borkum, Mark I.; Rivas-Ubach, Albert; ...

2017-05-04

The rhizosphere is the interface between the root system of a plant and its surrounding soil. The microbiome of the rhizosphere, which is the totality of all microbes present there, represents a complex microbial ecosystem that nourishes the terrestrial biosphere. In order to untangle the complexity of the rhizosphere, and of the rhizospheric microbiome in particular, an integrated multi-omics approach can be applied to reveal the composition of the rhizospheric microbiome (through 16S ribosomal amplicons and metagenomics), the functional properties of the microbiome (through metatranscriptomics and metaproteomics), and the signaling network within the rhizosphere (through metametabolomics). The successful application ofmore » integrated multi-omics to rhizospheric science depends on the availability of rhizosphere-specific data and on the appropriate software used to analyze omics data from the rhizosphere. Here, we analyze the availability of software suites that are normally applied to surrogate disciplines (e.g., soil and plants) but which can be used for rhizospheric science. We also identify potential issues, challenges, and opportunities for rhizosphere science.« less

Forensic microradiology: micro-computed tomography (Micro-CT) and analysis of patterned injuries inside of bone.

PubMed

Thali, Michael J; Taubenreuther, Ulrike; Karolczak, Marek; Braun, Marcel; Brueschweiler, Walter; Kalender, Willi A; Dirnhofer, Richard

2003-11-01

When a knife is stabbed in bone, it leaves an impression in the bone. The characteristics (shape, size, etc.) may indicate the type of tool used to produce the patterned injury in bone. Until now it has been impossible in forensic sciences to document such damage precisely and non-destructively. Micro-computed tomography (Micro-CT) offers an opportunity to analyze patterned injuries of tool marks made in bone. Using high-resolution Micro-CT and computer software, detailed analysis of three-dimensional (3D) architecture has recently become feasible and allows microstructural 3D bone information to be collected. With adequate viewing software, data from 2D slice of an arbitrary plane can be extracted from 3D datasets. Using such software as a "digital virtual knife," the examiner can interactively section and analyze the 3D sample. Analysis of the bone injury revealed that Micro-CT provides an opportunity to correlate a bone injury to an injury-causing instrument. Even broken knife tips can be graphically and non-destructively assigned to a suspect weapon.

Spice Products Available to The Planetary Science Community

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Acton, Charles

1999-01-01

This paper presents the availability of SPICE products to the Planetary Science Community. The topics include: 1) What Are SPICE Data; 2) SPICE File Types; 3) SPICE Software; 4) Examples of What Can Be Computed Using SPICE Data and Software; and 5) SPICE File Avalability.

JPL Earth Science Center Visualization Multitouch Table

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kim, R.; Dodge, K.; Malhotra, S.; Chang, G.

2014-12-01

JPL Earth Science Center Visualization table is a specialized software and hardware to allow multitouch, multiuser, and remote display control to create seamlessly integrated experiences to visualize JPL missions and their remote sensing data. The software is fully GIS capable through time aware OGC WMTS using Lunar Mapping and Modeling Portal as the GIS backend to continuously ingest and retrieve realtime remote sending data and satellite location data. 55 inch and 82 inch unlimited finger count multitouch displays allows multiple users to explore JPL Earth missions and visualize remote sensing data through very intuitive and interactive touch graphical user interface. To improve the integrated experience, Earth Science Center Visualization Table team developed network streaming which allows table software to stream data visualization to near by remote display though computer network. The purpose of this visualization/presentation tool is not only to support earth science operation, but specifically designed for education and public outreach and will significantly contribute to STEM. Our presentation will include overview of our software, hardware, and showcase of our system.

Advanced earth observation spacecraft computer-aided design software: Technical, user and programmer guide

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Farrell, C. E.; Krauze, L. D.

1983-01-01

The IDEAS computer of NASA is a tool for interactive preliminary design and analysis of LSS (Large Space System). Nine analysis modules were either modified or created. These modules include the capabilities of automatic model generation, model mass properties calculation, model area calculation, nonkinematic deployment modeling, rigid-body controls analysis, RF performance prediction, subsystem properties definition, and EOS science sensor selection. For each module, a section is provided that contains technical information, user instructions, and programmer documentation.

Kepler: A Search for Terrestrial Planets - SOC 9.3 DR25 Pipeline Parameter Configuration Reports

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Campbell, Jennifer R.

2017-01-01

This document describes the manner in which the pipeline and algorithm parameters for the Kepler Science Operations Center (SOC) science data processing pipeline were managed. This document is intended for scientists and software developers who wish to better understand the software design for the final Kepler codebase (SOC 9.3) and the effect of the software parameters on the Data Release (DR) 25 archival products.

Telemetry and Science Data Software System

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bates, Lakesha; Hong, Liang

2011-01-01

The Telemetry and Science Data Software System (TSDSS) was designed to validate the operational health of a spacecraft, ease test verification, assist in debugging system anomalies, and provide trending data and advanced science analysis. In doing so, the system parses, processes, and organizes raw data from the Aquarius instrument both on the ground and while in space. In addition, it provides a user-friendly telemetry viewer, and an instant pushbutton test report generator. Existing ground data systems can parse and provide simple data processing, but have limitations in advanced science analysis and instant report generation. The TSDSS functions as an offline data analysis system during I&T (integration and test) and mission operations phases. After raw data are downloaded from an instrument, TSDSS ingests the data files, parses, converts telemetry to engineering units, and applies advanced algorithms to produce science level 0, 1, and 2 data products. Meanwhile, it automatically schedules upload of the raw data to a remote server and archives all intermediate and final values in a MySQL database in time order. All data saved in the system can be straightforwardly retrieved, exported, and migrated. Using TSDSS s interactive data visualization tool, a user can conveniently choose any combination and mathematical computation of interesting telemetry points from a large range of time periods (life cycle of mission ground data and mission operations testing), and display a graphical and statistical view of the data. With this graphical user interface (GUI), the data queried graphs can be exported and saved in multiple formats. This GUI is especially useful in trending data analysis, debugging anomalies, and advanced data analysis. At the request of the user, mission-specific instrument performance assessment reports can be generated with a simple click of a button on the GUI. From instrument level to observatory level, the TSDSS has been operating supporting functional and performance tests and refining system calibration algorithms and coefficients, in sync with the Aquarius/SAC-D spacecraft. At the time of this reporting, it was prepared and set up to perform anomaly investigation for mission operations preceding the Aquarius/SAC-D spacecraft launch on June 10, 2011.

Center for Adaptive Optics | Software

Science.gov Websites

Center for Adaptive Optics A University of California Science and Technology Center home Adaptive Optics Software The Center for Adaptive Optics acts as a clearing house for distributing Software to Institutes it gives specialists in Adaptive Optics a place to distribute their software. All software is

Spacecraft Software Maintenance: An Effective Approach to Reducing Costs and Increasing Science Return

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Shell, Elaine M.; Lue, Yvonne; Chu, Martha I.

1999-01-01

Flight software is a mission critical element of spacecraft functionality and performance. When ground operations personnel interface to a spacecraft, they are typically dealing almost entirely with the capabilities of onboard software. This software, even more than critical ground/flight communications systems, is expected to perform perfectly during all phases of spacecraft life. Due to the fact that it can be reprogrammed on-orbit to accommodate degradations or failures in flight hardware, new insights into spacecraft characteristics, new control options which permit enhanced science options, etc., the on- orbit flight software maintenance team is usually significantly responsible for the long term success of a science mission. Failure of flight software to perform as needed can result in very expensive operations work-around costs and lost science opportunities. There are three basic approaches to maintaining spacecraft software--namely using the original developers, using the mission operations personnel, or assembling a center of excellence for multi-spacecraft software maintenance. Not planning properly for flight software maintenance can lead to unnecessarily high on-orbit costs and/or unacceptably long delays, or errors, in patch installations. A common approach for flight software maintenance is to access the original development staff. The argument for utilizing the development staff is that the people who developed the software will be the best people to modify the software on-orbit. However, it can quickly becomes a challenge to obtain the services of these key people. They may no longer be available to the organization. They may have a more urgent job to perform, quite likely on another project under different project management. If they havn't worked on the software for a long time, they may need precious time for refamiliarization to the software, testbeds and tools. Further, a lack of insight into issues related to flight software in its on-orbit environment, may find the developer unprepared for the challenges. The second approach is to train a member of the flight operations team to maintain the spacecraft software. This can prove to be a costly and inflexible solution. The person assigned to this duty may not have enough work to do during a problem free period and may have too much to do when a problem arises. If the person is a talented software engineer, he/she may not enjoy the limited software opportunities available in this position; and may eventually leave for newer technology computer science opportunities. Training replacement flight software personnel can be a difficult and lengthy process. The third approach is to assemble a center of excellence for on-orbit spacecraft software maintenance. Personnel in this specialty center can be managed to support flight software of multiple missions at once. The variety of challenges among a set of on-orbit missions, can result in a dedicated, talented staff which is fully trained and available to support each mission's needs. Such staff are not software developers but are rather spacecraft software systems engineers. The cost to any one mission is extremely low because the software staff works and charges, minimally on missions with no current operations issues; and their professional insight into on-orbit software troubleshooting and maintenance methods ensures low risk, effective and minimal-cost solutions to on-orbit issues.

Buying in to bioinformatics: an introduction to commercial sequence analysis software

PubMed Central

2015-01-01

Advancements in high-throughput nucleotide sequencing techniques have brought with them state-of-the-art bioinformatics programs and software packages. Given the importance of molecular sequence data in contemporary life science research, these software suites are becoming an essential component of many labs and classrooms, and as such are frequently designed for non-computer specialists and marketed as one-stop bioinformatics toolkits. Although beautifully designed and powerful, user-friendly bioinformatics packages can be expensive and, as more arrive on the market each year, it can be difficult for researchers, teachers and students to choose the right software for their needs, especially if they do not have a bioinformatics background. This review highlights some of the currently available and most popular commercial bioinformatics packages, discussing their prices, usability, features and suitability for teaching. Although several commercial bioinformatics programs are arguably overpriced and overhyped, many are well designed, sophisticated and, in my opinion, worth the investment. If you are just beginning your foray into molecular sequence analysis or an experienced genomicist, I encourage you to explore proprietary software bundles. They have the potential to streamline your research, increase your productivity, energize your classroom and, if anything, add a bit of zest to the often dry detached world of bioinformatics. PMID:25183247

Buying in to bioinformatics: an introduction to commercial sequence analysis software.

PubMed

Smith, David Roy

2015-07-01

Advancements in high-throughput nucleotide sequencing techniques have brought with them state-of-the-art bioinformatics programs and software packages. Given the importance of molecular sequence data in contemporary life science research, these software suites are becoming an essential component of many labs and classrooms, and as such are frequently designed for non-computer specialists and marketed as one-stop bioinformatics toolkits. Although beautifully designed and powerful, user-friendly bioinformatics packages can be expensive and, as more arrive on the market each year, it can be difficult for researchers, teachers and students to choose the right software for their needs, especially if they do not have a bioinformatics background. This review highlights some of the currently available and most popular commercial bioinformatics packages, discussing their prices, usability, features and suitability for teaching. Although several commercial bioinformatics programs are arguably overpriced and overhyped, many are well designed, sophisticated and, in my opinion, worth the investment. If you are just beginning your foray into molecular sequence analysis or an experienced genomicist, I encourage you to explore proprietary software bundles. They have the potential to streamline your research, increase your productivity, energize your classroom and, if anything, add a bit of zest to the often dry detached world of bioinformatics. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press.

Tectonic Storytelling with Open Source and Digital Object Identifiers - a case study about Plate Tectonics and the Geopark Bergstraße-Odenwald

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Löwe, Peter; Barmuta, Jan; Klump, Jens; Neumann, Janna; Plank, Margret

2014-05-01

The communication of advances in research to the common public for both education and decision making is an important aspect of scientific work. An even more crucial task is to gain recognition within the scientific community, which is judged by impact factor and citation counts. Recently, the latter concepts have been extended from textual publications to include data and software publications. This paper presents a case study for science communication and data citation. For this, tectonic models, Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), best practices for data citation and a multimedia online-portal for scientific content are combined. This approach creates mutual benefits for the stakeholders: Target audiences receive information on the latest research results, while the use of Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) increases the recognition and citation of underlying scientific data. This creates favourable conditions for every researcher as DOI names ensure citeability and long term availability of scientific research. In the developed application, the FOSS tool for tectonic modelling GPlates is used to visualise and manipulate plate-tectonic reconstructions and associated data through geological time. These capabilities are augmented by the Science on a Halfsphere project (SoaH) with a robust and intuitive visualisation hardware environment. The tectonic models used for science communication are provided by the AGH University of Science and Technology. They focus on the Silurian to Early Carboniferous evolution of Central Europe (Bohemian Massif) and were interpreted for the area of the Geopark Bergstraße Odenwald based on the GPlates/SoaH hardware- and software stack. As scientific story-telling is volatile by nature, recordings are a natural means of preservation for further use, reference and analysis. For this, the upcoming portal for audiovisual media of the German National Library of Science and Technology TIB is expected to become a critical service infrastructure. It allows complex search queries, including metadata such as DOI and media fragment identifiers (MFI), thereby linking data citation and science communication.

Design software for reuse

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Tracz, Will

1990-01-01

Viewgraphs are presented on the designing of software for reuse. Topics include terminology, software reuse maxims, the science of programming, an interface design example, a modularization example, and reuse and implementation guidelines.

Mars Science Laboratory Workstation Test Set

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Henriquez, David A.; Canham, Timothy K.; Chang, Johnny T.; Villaume, Nathaniel

2009-01-01

The Mars Science Laboratory developed the Workstation TestSet (WSTS) is a computer program that enables flight software development on virtual MSL avionics. The WSTS is the non-real-time flight avionics simulator that is designed to be completely software-based and run on a workstation class Linux PC.

Group Projects and the Computer Science Curriculum

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Joy, Mike

2005-01-01

Group projects in computer science are normally delivered with reference to good software engineering practice. The discipline of software engineering is rapidly evolving, and the application of the latest 'agile techniques' to group projects causes a potential conflict with constraints imposed by regulating bodies on the computer science…

Research & Technology Report Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Soffen, Gerald A. (Editor); Truszkowski, Walter (Editor); Ottenstein, Howard (Editor); Frost, Kenneth (Editor); Maran, Stephen (Editor); Walter, Lou (Editor); Brown, Mitch (Editor)

1995-01-01

The main theme of this edition of the annual Research and Technology Report is Mission Operations and Data Systems. Shifting from centralized to distributed mission operations, and from human interactive operations to highly automated operations is reported. The following aspects are addressed: Mission planning and operations; TDRSS, Positioning Systems, and orbit determination; hardware and software associated with Ground System and Networks; data processing and analysis; and World Wide Web. Flight projects are described along with the achievements in space sciences and earth sciences. Spacecraft subsystems, cryogenic developments, and new tools and capabilities are also discussed.

Computer-assisted learning in medicine. How to create a novel software for immunology.

PubMed

Colsman, Andreas; Sticherling, Michael; Stöpel, Claus; Emmrich, Frank

2006-06-01

Teaching medical issues is increasingly demanding due to the permanent progress in medical sciences. Simultaneously, software applications are rapidly advancing with regard to their availability and easy use. Here a novel teaching program is presented for immunology, which is one of the fastest expanding topics in medical sciences. The requirements of media didactics were transferred to this e-learning tool for German students. After implementation, medical students evaluated the software and the different learning approaches showed acceptance. Altogether this novel software compares favourably to other English e-learning tools available in the Internet.

Storage, retrieval, and analysis of ST data

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Albrecht, R.

1984-01-01

Space Telescope can generate multidimensional image data, very similar in nature to data produced with microdensitometers. An overview is presented of the ST science ground system between carrying out the observations and the interactive analysis of preprocessed data. The ground system elements used in data archival and retrieval are described and operational procedures are discussed. Emphasis is given to aspects of the ground system that are relevant to the science user and to general principles of system software development in a production environment. While the system being developed uses relatively conservative concepts for the launch baseline, concepts were developed to enhance the ground system. This includes networking, remote access, and the utilization of alternate data storage technologies.

Data Understanding Applied to Optimization

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Buntine, Wray; Shilman, Michael

1998-01-01

The goal of this research is to explore and develop software for supporting visualization and data analysis of search and optimization. Optimization is an ever-present problem in science. The theory of NP-completeness implies that the problems can only be resolved by increasingly smarter problem specific knowledge, possibly for use in some general purpose algorithms. Visualization and data analysis offers an opportunity to accelerate our understanding of key computational bottlenecks in optimization and to automatically tune aspects of the computation for specific problems. We will prototype systems to demonstrate how data understanding can be successfully applied to problems characteristic of NASA's key science optimization tasks, such as central tasks for parallel processing, spacecraft scheduling, and data transmission from a remote satellite.

Software Reuse Methods to Improve Technological Infrastructure for e-Science

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Marshall, James J.; Downs, Robert R.; Mattmann, Chris A.

2011-01-01

Social computing has the potential to contribute to scientific research. Ongoing developments in information and communications technology improve capabilities for enabling scientific research, including research fostered by social computing capabilities. The recent emergence of e-Science practices has demonstrated the benefits from improvements in the technological infrastructure, or cyber-infrastructure, that has been developed to support science. Cloud computing is one example of this e-Science trend. Our own work in the area of software reuse offers methods that can be used to improve new technological development, including cloud computing capabilities, to support scientific research practices. In this paper, we focus on software reuse and its potential to contribute to the development and evaluation of information systems and related services designed to support new capabilities for conducting scientific research.

Model Transformation for a System of Systems Dependability Safety Case

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Murphy, Judy; Driskell, Stephen B.

2010-01-01

Software plays an increasingly larger role in all aspects of NASA's science missions. This has been extended to the identification, management and control of faults which affect safety-critical functions and by default, the overall success of the mission. Traditionally, the analysis of fault identification, management and control are hardware based. Due to the increasing complexity of system, there has been a corresponding increase in the complexity in fault management software. The NASA Independent Validation & Verification (IV&V) program is creating processes and procedures to identify, and incorporate safety-critical software requirements along with corresponding software faults so that potential hazards may be mitigated. This Specific to Generic ... A Case for Reuse paper describes the phases of a dependability and safety study which identifies a new, process to create a foundation for reusable assets. These assets support the identification and management of specific software faults and, their transformation from specific to generic software faults. This approach also has applications to other systems outside of the NASA environment. This paper addresses how a mission specific dependability and safety case is being transformed to a generic dependability and safety case which can be reused for any type of space mission with an emphasis on software fault conditions.

Sonification Prototype for Space Physics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Candey, R. M.; Schertenleib, A. M.; Diaz Merced, W. L.

2005-12-01

As an alternative and adjunct to visual displays, auditory exploration of data via sonification (data controlled sound) and audification (audible playback of data samples) is promising for complex or rapidly/temporally changing visualizations, for data exploration of large datasets (particularly multi-dimensional datasets), and for exploring datasets in frequency rather than spatial dimensions (see also International Conferences on Auditory Display ). Besides improving data exploration and analysis for most researchers, the use of sound is especially valuable as an assistive technology for visually-impaired people and can make science and math more exciting for high school and college students. Only recently have the hardware and software come together to make a cross-platform open-source sonification tool feasible. We have developed a prototype sonification data analysis tool using the JavaSound API and NASA GSFC's ViSBARD software . Wanda Diaz Merced, a blind astrophysicist from Puerto Rico, is instrumental in advising on and testing the tool.

A Disciplined Architectural Approach to Scaling Data Analysis for Massive, Scientific Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Crichton, D. J.; Braverman, A. J.; Cinquini, L.; Turmon, M.; Lee, H.; Law, E.

2014-12-01

Data collections across remote sensing and ground-based instruments in astronomy, Earth science, and planetary science are outpacing scientists' ability to analyze them. Furthermore, the distribution, structure, and heterogeneity of the measurements themselves pose challenges that limit the scalability of data analysis using traditional approaches. Methods for developing science data processing pipelines, distribution of scientific datasets, and performing analysis will require innovative approaches that integrate cyber-infrastructure, algorithms, and data into more systematic approaches that can more efficiently compute and reduce data, particularly distributed data. This requires the integration of computer science, machine learning, statistics and domain expertise to identify scalable architectures for data analysis. The size of data returned from Earth Science observing satellites and the magnitude of data from climate model output, is predicted to grow into the tens of petabytes challenging current data analysis paradigms. This same kind of growth is present in astronomy and planetary science data. One of the major challenges in data science and related disciplines defining new approaches to scaling systems and analysis in order to increase scientific productivity and yield. Specific needs include: 1) identification of optimized system architectures for analyzing massive, distributed data sets; 2) algorithms for systematic analysis of massive data sets in distributed environments; and 3) the development of software infrastructures that are capable of performing massive, distributed data analysis across a comprehensive data science framework. NASA/JPL has begun an initiative in data science to address these challenges. Our goal is to evaluate how scientific productivity can be improved through optimized architectural topologies that identify how to deploy and manage the access, distribution, computation, and reduction of massive, distributed data, while managing the uncertainties of scientific conclusions derived from such capabilities. This talk will provide an overview of JPL's efforts in developing a comprehensive architectural approach to data science.

Data to Pictures to Data: Outreach Imaging Software and Metadata

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Levay, Z.

2011-07-01

A convergence between astronomy science and digital photography has enabled a steady stream of visually rich imagery from state-of-the-art data. The accessibility of hardware and software has facilitated an explosion of astronomical images for outreach, from space-based observatories, ground-based professional facilities and among the vibrant amateur astrophotography community. Producing imagery from science data involves a combination of custom software to understand FITS data (FITS Liberator), off-the-shelf, industry-standard software to composite multi-wavelength data and edit digital photographs (Adobe Photoshop), and application of photo/image-processing techniques. Some additional effort is needed to close the loop and enable this imagery to be conveniently available for various purposes beyond web and print publication. The metadata paradigms in digital photography are now complying with FITS and science software to carry information such as keyword tags and world coordinates, enabling these images to be usable in more sophisticated, imaginative ways exemplified by Sky in Google Earth and World Wide Telescope.

MOPEX: a software package for astronomical image processing and visualization

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Makovoz, David; Roby, Trey; Khan, Iffat; Booth, Hartley

2006-06-01

We present MOPEX - a software package for astronomical image processing and display. The package is a combination of command-line driven image processing software written in C/C++ with a Java-based GUI. The main image processing capabilities include creating mosaic images, image registration, background matching, point source extraction, as well as a number of minor image processing tasks. The combination of the image processing and display capabilities allows for much more intuitive and efficient way of performing image processing. The GUI allows for the control over the image processing and display to be closely intertwined. Parameter setting, validation, and specific processing options are entered by the user through a set of intuitive dialog boxes. Visualization feeds back into further processing by providing a prompt feedback of the processing results. The GUI also allows for further analysis by accessing and displaying data from existing image and catalog servers using a virtual observatory approach. Even though originally designed for the Spitzer Space Telescope mission, a lot of functionalities are of general usefulness and can be used for working with existing astronomical data and for new missions. The software used in the package has undergone intensive testing and benefited greatly from effective software reuse. The visualization part has been used for observation planning for both the Spitzer and Herschel Space Telescopes as part the tool Spot. The visualization capabilities of Spot have been enhanced and integrated with the image processing functionality of the command-line driven MOPEX. The image processing software is used in the Spitzer automated pipeline processing, which has been in operation for nearly 3 years. The image processing capabilities have also been tested in off-line processing by numerous astronomers at various institutions around the world. The package is multi-platform and includes automatic update capabilities. The software package has been developed by a small group of software developers and scientists at the Spitzer Science Center. It is available for distribution at the Spitzer Science Center web page.

Building Interactive Visualizations for Geochronological Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zeringue, J.; Bowring, J. F.; McLean, N. M.; Pastor, F.

2014-12-01

Since the early 1990s, Ken Ludwig's Isoplot software has been the tool of choice for visualization and analysis of isotopic data used for geochronology. The software is an add-in to Microsoft Excel that allows users to generate visual representations of data. However, recent changes to Excel have made Isoplot more difficult to use and maintain, and the software is no longer supported. In the last several years, the Cyber Infrastructure Research and Development Lab for the Earth Sciences (CIRDLES), at the College of Charleston, has worked collaboratively with geochronologists to develop U-Pb_Redux, a software product that provides some of Isoplot's functionality for U-Pb geochronology. However, the community needs a full and complete Isoplot replacement that is open source, platform independent, and not dependent on proprietary software. This temporary lapse in tooling also presents a tremendous opportunity for scientific computing in the earth sciences. When Isoplot was written for Excel, it gained much of the platform's flexibility and power but also was burdened with its limitations. For example, Isoplot could not be used outside of Excel, could not be cross-platform (so long as Excel wasn't), could not be embedded in other applications, and only static images could be produced. Nonetheless this software was and still is a powerful tool that has served the community for more than two decades and the trade-offs were more than acceptable. In 2014, we seek to gain flexibility not available with Excel. We propose that the next generation of charting software be reusable, platform-agnostic, and interactive. This new software should allow scientists to easily explore—not just passively view—their data. Beginning in the fall of 2013, researchers at CIRDLES began planning for and prototyping a 21st-century replacement for Isoplot, which we call Topsoil, an anagram of Isoplot. This work is being conducted in the public domain at https://github.com/CIRDLES/topsoil. We welcome and encourage community participation and contributions.

Key ingredients needed when building large data processing systems for scientists

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Miller, K. C.

2002-01-01

Why is building a large science software system so painful? Weren't teams of software engineers supposed to make life easier for scientists? Does it sometimes feel as if it would be easier to write the million lines of code in Fortran 77 yourself? The cause of this dissatisfaction is that many of the needs of the science customer remain hidden in discussions with software engineers until after a system has already been built. In fact, many of the hidden needs of the science customer conflict with stated needs and are therefore very difficult to meet unless they are addressed from the outset in a system's architectural requirements. What's missing is the consideration of a small set of key software properties in initial agreements about the requirements, the design and the cost of the system.

What Are They Thinking? Automated Analysis of Student Writing about Acid-Base Chemistry in Introductory Biology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Haudek, Kevin C.; Prevost, Luanna B.; Moscarella, Rosa A.; Merrill, John; Urban-Lurain, Mark

2012-01-01

Students' writing can provide better insight into their thinking than can multiple-choice questions. However, resource constraints often prevent faculty from using writing assessments in large undergraduate science courses. We investigated the use of computer software to analyze student writing and to uncover student ideas about chemistry in an…

On the map: Nature and Science editorials.

PubMed

Waaijer, Cathelijn J F; van Bochove, Cornelis A; van Eck, Nees Jan

2011-01-01

Bibliometric mapping of scientific articles based on keywords and technical terms in abstracts is now frequently used to chart scientific fields. In contrast, no significant mapping has been applied to the full texts of non-specialist documents. Editorials in Nature and Science are such non-specialist documents, reflecting the views of the two most read scientific journals on science, technology and policy issues. We use the VOSviewer mapping software to chart the topics of these editorials. A term map and a document map are constructed and clusters are distinguished in both of them. The validity of the document clustering is verified by a manual analysis of a sample of the editorials. This analysis confirms the homogeneity of the clusters obtained by mapping and augments the latter with further detail. As a result, the analysis provides reliable information on the distribution of the editorials over topics, and on differences between the journals. The most striking difference is that Nature devotes more attention to internal science policy issues and Science more to the political influence of scientists. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11192-010-0205-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

KNIME for reproducible cross-domain analysis of life science data.

PubMed

Fillbrunn, Alexander; Dietz, Christian; Pfeuffer, Julianus; Rahn, René; Landrum, Gregory A; Berthold, Michael R

2017-11-10

Experiments in the life sciences often involve tools from a variety of domains such as mass spectrometry, next generation sequencing, or image processing. Passing the data between those tools often involves complex scripts for controlling data flow, data transformation, and statistical analysis. Such scripts are not only prone to be platform dependent, they also tend to grow as the experiment progresses and are seldomly well documented, a fact that hinders the reproducibility of the experiment. Workflow systems such as KNIME Analytics Platform aim to solve these problems by providing a platform for connecting tools graphically and guaranteeing the same results on different operating systems. As an open source software, KNIME allows scientists and programmers to provide their own extensions to the scientific community. In this review paper we present selected extensions from the life sciences that simplify data exploration, analysis, and visualization and are interoperable due to KNIME's unified data model. Additionally, we name other workflow systems that are commonly used in the life sciences and highlight their similarities and differences to KNIME. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Engaging New Software.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Allen, Denise

1994-01-01

Reviews three educational computer software products: (1) a compact disc-read only memory (CD-ROM) bundle of five mathematics programs from the Apple Education Series; (2) "Sammy's Science House," with science activities for preschool through second grade (Edmark); and (3) "The Cat Came Back," an interactive CD-ROM game designed to build language…

EPA's science blog: "It All Starts with Science"; Article title: "EPA's Solvent Substitution Software Tool, PARIS III"

EPA Science Inventory

EPA's solvent substitution software tool, PARIS III is provided by the EPA for free, and can be effective and efficiently used to help environmentally-conscious individuals find better and greener solvent mixtures for many different common industrial processes. People can downlo...

Creating an X Window Terminal-Based Information Technology Center.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Klassen, Tim W.

1997-01-01

The creation of an information technology center at the University of Oregon Science Library is described. Goals included providing access to Internet-based resources and multimedia software, platforms for running science-oriented software, and resources so students can create multimedia materials. A mixed-lab platform was created with Unix-based…

I-LLINI Partnerships for 21st Century Teachers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Read, K.; Wong, K.; Charlevoix, D. J.; Tomkin, J.; Hug, B.; Williams, M.; Pianfetti, E.

2008-12-01

I-LLINI Partnerships is two-year State funded program to initiate enhance communication between the faculty at University of Illinois and K-12 teachers in the surrounding communities. The program focuses on math and science with a particular emphasis on the use of technology to teaching math and science to middle-school aged children. The Partnership provides participating teachers with a suite of technology including a computer, digital camera, and software, as well as a small stipend. University partners include representatives from the Departments of Mathematics as well as the Department of Atmospheric Sciences and the Department of Geology. The Atmospheric Sciences and Geology faculty have partnered to provide content using an Earth Systems Science approach to presenting content to the teachers. Additionally, teachers provide feedback to university faculty with relation to how they might better prepare future science teachers. Teacher participants are required to attend a series of workshops during the academic year as well as a summer workshop. The first workshop was held June 2008 on the University of Illinois campus. Our poster will highlight the first workshop providing a discussion and photographs of the activities, an analysis of the benefits and challenges - both to the university representatives as well as the teachers ­ and a summary of future changes planned for the 2009 summer workshop. During the second morning of the workshop, the science teachers participated in an EcoBlitz via a field trip to a collect data from a stream near campus. During the EcoBlitz, math teachers attended tutorial sessions on campus on statistical analysis software. The EcoBliz teachers were provided with instruments and equipment necessary to collect data on the weather conditions and water quality of the stream. Instruments included a temperature probe, turbidity sensor, dissolved oxygen sensor and a hand held weather instrument. Data was recorded with Vernier LabQuest data loggers. The participants also took pictures with the digital cameras provided through the partnership. During the afternoon session, water and air data was analyzed using TinkerPlots. The science teachers helped the math teachers understand the process of data collection, the physical environment where data was collected and the limitations of the instruments. The math teachers helped the science teachers to use the TinkerPlots software and find statistical representations of the data. A group discussion ensued with regard to the meaning of various statistical measures such as average and median and what they really mean when using real data. Feedback from the teachers was overwhelmingly positive, in particular the modeling of using science data to understand mathematical concepts. Several teachers planned to borrow the instruments and conduct similar activities in their science and math classrooms. Future work include conduct workshops for the participating teachers throughout the academic year to solicit from in-service teachers how university level science classes can be better tailored to pre-service teacher needs.

Software Defined Cyberinfrastructure

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Foster, Ian; Blaiszik, Ben; Chard, Kyle

Within and across thousands of science labs, researchers and students struggle to manage data produced in experiments, simulations, and analyses. Largely manual research data lifecycle management processes mean that much time is wasted, research results are often irreproducible, and data sharing and reuse remain rare. In response, we propose a new approach to data lifecycle management in which researchers are empowered to define the actions to be performed at individual storage systems when data are created or modified: actions such as analysis, transformation, copying, and publication. We term this approach software-defined cyberinfrastructure because users can implement powerful data management policiesmore » by deploying rules to local storage systems, much as software-defined networking allows users to configure networks by deploying rules to switches.We argue that this approach can enable a new class of responsive distributed storage infrastructure that will accelerate research innovation by allowing any researcher to associate data workflows with data sources, whether local or remote, for such purposes as data ingest, characterization, indexing, and sharing. We report on early experiments with this approach in the context of experimental science, in which a simple if-trigger-then-action (IFTA) notation is used to define rules.« less

Geoinformatics 2007: data to knowledge

USGS Publications Warehouse

Brady, Shailaja R.; Sinha, A. Krishna; Gundersen, Linda C.

2007-01-01

Geoinformatics is the term used to describe a variety of efforts to promote collaboration between the computer sciences and the geosciences to solve complex scientific questions. It refers to the distributed, integrated digital information system and working environment that provides innovative means for the study of the Earth systems, as well as other planets, through use of advanced information technologies. Geoinformatics activities range from major research and development efforts creating new technologies to provide high-quality, sustained production-level services for data discovery, integration and analysis, to small, discipline-specific efforts that develop earth science data collections and data analysis tools serving the needs of individual communities. The ultimate vision of Geoinformatics is a highly interconnected data system populated with high quality, freely available data, as well as, a robust set of software for analysis, visualization, and modeling.

The HEASARC graphical user interface

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

White, N.; Barrett, P.; Jacobs, P.; Oneel, B.

1992-01-01

An OSF/Motif-based graphical user interface has been developed to facilitate the use of the database and data analysis software packages available from the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC). It can also be used as an interface to other, similar, routines. A small number of tables are constructed to specify the possible commands and command parameters for a given set of analysis routines. These tables can be modified by a designer to affect the appearance of the interface screens. They can also be dynamically changed in response to parameter adjustments made while the underlying program is running. Additionally, a communication protocol has been designed so that the interface can operate locally or across a network. It is intended that this software be able to run on a variety of workstations and X terminals.

Using Video Analysis and Biomechanics to Engage Life Science Majors in Introductory Physics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Stephens, Jeff

There is an interest in Introductory Physics for the Life Sciences (IPLS) as a way to better engage students in what may be their only physical science course. In this talk I will present some low cost and readily available technologies for video analysis and how they have been implemented in classes and in student research projects. The technologies include software like Tracker and LoggerPro for video analysis and low cost high speed cameras for capturing real world events. The focus of the talk will be on content created by students including two biomechanics research projects performed over the summer by pre-physical therapy majors. One project involved assessing medial knee displacement (MKD), a situation where the subject's knee becomes misaligned during a squatting motion and is a contributing factor in ACL and other knee injuries. The other project looks at the difference in landing forces experienced by gymnasts and cheer-leaders while performing on foam mats versus spring floors. The goal of this talk is to demonstrate how easy it can be to engage life science majors through the use of video analysis and topics like biomechanics and encourage others to try it for themselves.

Design of Mariner 9 Science Sequences using Interactive Graphics Software

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Freeman, J. E.; Sturms, F. M, Jr.; Webb, W. A.

1973-01-01

This paper discusses the analyst/computer system used to design the daily science sequences required to carry out the desired Mariner 9 science plan. The Mariner 9 computer environment, the development and capabilities of the science sequence design software, and the techniques followed in the daily mission operations are discussed. Included is a discussion of the overall mission operations organization and the individual components which played an essential role in the sequence design process. A summary of actual sequences processed, a discussion of problems encountered, and recommendations for future applications are given.

Reviews Book: The 4% Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality Book: Quantitative Understanding of Biosystems: An Introduction to Biophysics Book: Edison's Electric Light: The Art of Invention Book: The Edge of Physics: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Cosmology Equipment: Voicebox Equipment: Tracker 4 Books: Hands-On Introduction to NI LabVIEW with Vernier, and Engineering Projects with NI LabVIEW and Vernier Places to Visit: Discovery Museum Book: Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction Web Watch

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

2011-11-01

WE RECOMMEND Quantitative Understanding of Biosystems: An Introduction to Biophysics Text applies physics to biology concepts Edison's Electric Light: The Art of Invention Edison's light still shines brightly The Edge of Physics: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Cosmology Anecdotes explore cosmology Voicebox Voicebox kit discovers the physics and evolution of speech Tracker 4 Free software tracks motion analysis Hands-On Introduction to NI LabVIEW with Vernier, and Engineering Projects with NI LabVIEW and Vernier Books support the LabVIEW software Discovery Museum Newcastle museum offers science enjoyment for all Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction Philosophy opens up science questions WORTH A LOOK The 4% Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality Book researches the universe WEB WATCH Superconductivity websites are popular

xSDK Foundations: Toward an Extreme-scale Scientific Software Development Kit

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Heroux, Michael A.; Bartlett, Roscoe; Demeshko, Irina

Here, extreme-scale computational science increasingly demands multiscale and multiphysics formulations. Combining software developed by independent groups is imperative: no single team has resources for all predictive science and decision support capabilities. Scientific libraries provide high-quality, reusable software components for constructing applications with improved robustness and portability. However, without coordination, many libraries cannot be easily composed. Namespace collisions, inconsistent arguments, lack of third-party software versioning, and additional difficulties make composition costly. The Extreme-scale Scientific Software Development Kit (xSDK) defines community policies to improve code quality and compatibility across independently developed packages (hypre, PETSc, SuperLU, Trilinos, and Alquimia) and provides a foundationmore » for addressing broader issues in software interoperability, performance portability, and sustainability. The xSDK provides turnkey installation of member software and seamless combination of aggregate capabilities, and it marks first steps toward extreme-scale scientific software ecosystems from which future applications can be composed rapidly with assured quality and scalability.« less

xSDK Foundations: Toward an Extreme-scale Scientific Software Development Kit

DOE PAGES

Heroux, Michael A.; Bartlett, Roscoe; Demeshko, Irina; ...

2017-03-01

Here, extreme-scale computational science increasingly demands multiscale and multiphysics formulations. Combining software developed by independent groups is imperative: no single team has resources for all predictive science and decision support capabilities. Scientific libraries provide high-quality, reusable software components for constructing applications with improved robustness and portability. However, without coordination, many libraries cannot be easily composed. Namespace collisions, inconsistent arguments, lack of third-party software versioning, and additional difficulties make composition costly. The Extreme-scale Scientific Software Development Kit (xSDK) defines community policies to improve code quality and compatibility across independently developed packages (hypre, PETSc, SuperLU, Trilinos, and Alquimia) and provides a foundationmore » for addressing broader issues in software interoperability, performance portability, and sustainability. The xSDK provides turnkey installation of member software and seamless combination of aggregate capabilities, and it marks first steps toward extreme-scale scientific software ecosystems from which future applications can be composed rapidly with assured quality and scalability.« less

Software Package Completed for Alloy Design at the Atomic Level

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bozzolo, Guillermo H.; Noebe, Ronald D.; Abel, Phillip B.; Good, Brian S.

2001-01-01

As a result of a multidisciplinary effort involving solid-state physics, quantum mechanics, and materials and surface science, the first version of a software package dedicated to the atomistic analysis of multicomponent systems was recently completed. Based on the BFS (Bozzolo, Ferrante, and Smith) method for the calculation of alloy and surface energetics, this package includes modules devoted to the analysis of many essential features that characterize any given alloy or surface system, including (1) surface structure analysis, (2) surface segregation, (3) surface alloying, (4) bulk crystalline material properties and atomic defect structures, and (5) thermal processes that allow us to perform phase diagram calculations. All the modules of this Alloy Design Workbench 1.0 (ADW 1.0) are designed to run in PC and workstation environments, and their operation and performance are substantially linked to the needs of the user and the specific application.

Symposium on the Interface: Computing Science and Statistics (20th). Theme: Computationally Intensive Methods in Statistics Held in Reston, Virginia on April 20-23, 1988

DTIC Science & Technology

1988-08-20

34 William A. Link, Patuxent Wildlife Research Center "Increasing reliability of multiversion fault-tolerant software design by modulation," Junryo 3... Multiversion lault-Tolerant Software Design by Modularization Junryo Miyashita Department of Computer Science California state University at san Bernardino Fault...They shall beE refered to as " multiversion fault-tolerant software design". Onel problem of developing multi-versions of a program is the high cost

The Computer Literacy Act, H.R. 3750 and The National Educational Software Act, H.R. 4628. Hearing before the Subcommittee on Science, Research and Technology of the Committee on Science and Technology, House of Representatives, Ninety-Eighth Congress, Second Session, June 5, 1984. No. 107.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Congress of the U.S., Washington, DC. House Committee on Science and Technology.

This legislative report offers testimony and related materials concerning two bills that address the issues of the computer in the classroom as an educational tool, access to computers, teacher training, and software development through the establishment of a National Computer Educational Software Corporation. Testimony of the following witnesses…

DES Science Portal: II- Creating Science-Ready Catalogs

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Fausti Neto, Angelo; et al.

We present a novel approach for creating science-ready catalogs through a software infrastructure developed for the Dark Energy Survey (DES). We integrate the data products released by the DES Data Management and additional products created by the DES collaboration in an environment known as DES Science Portal. Each step involved in the creation of a science-ready catalog is recorded in a relational database and can be recovered at any time. We describe how the DES Science Portal automates the creation and characterization of lightweight catalogs for DES Year 1 Annual Release, and show its flexibility in creating multiple catalogs withmore » different inputs and configurations. Finally, we discuss the advantages of this infrastructure for large surveys such as DES and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. The capability of creating science-ready catalogs efficiently and with full control of the inputs and configurations used is an important asset for supporting science analysis using data from large astronomical surveys.« less

Chandra X-ray Center Science Data Systems Regression Testing of CIAO

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lee, N. P.; Karovska, M.; Galle, E. C.; Bonaventura, N. R.

2011-07-01

The Chandra Interactive Analysis of Observations (CIAO) is a software system developed for the analysis of Chandra X-ray Observatory observations. An important component of a successful CIAO release is the repeated testing of the tools across various platforms to ensure consistent and scientifically valid results. We describe the procedures of the scientific regression testing of CIAO and the enhancements made to the testing system to increase the efficiency of run time and result validation.

2014 Earth System Grid Federation and Ultrascale Visualization Climate Data Analysis Tools Conference Report

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Williams, Dean N.

2015-01-27

The climate and weather data science community met December 9–11, 2014, in Livermore, California, for the fourth annual Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) and Ultrascale Visualization Climate Data Analysis Tools (UV-CDAT) Face-to-Face (F2F) Conference, hosted by the Department of Energy, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the European Infrastructure for the European Network of Earth System Modelling, and the Australian Department of Education. Both ESGF and UVCDATremain global collaborations committed to developing a new generation of open-source software infrastructure that provides distributed access and analysis to simulated and observed data from the climate and weather communities.more » The tools and infrastructure created under these international multi-agency collaborations are critical to understanding extreme weather conditions and long-term climate change. In addition, the F2F conference fosters a stronger climate and weather data science community and facilitates a stronger federated software infrastructure. The 2014 F2F conference detailed the progress of ESGF, UV-CDAT, and other community efforts over the year and sets new priorities and requirements for existing and impending national and international community projects, such as the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase Six. Specifically discussed at the conference were project capabilities and enhancements needs for data distribution, analysis, visualization, hardware and network infrastructure, standards, and resources.« less

Software Carpentry In The Hydrological Sciences

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ahmadia, A. J.; Kees, C. E.

2014-12-01

Scientists are spending an increasing amount of time building and using hydrology software. However, most scientists are never taught how to do this efficiently. As a result, many are unaware of tools and practices that would allow them to write more reliable and maintainable code with less effort. As hydrology models increase in capability and enter use by a growing number of scientists and their communities, it is important that the scientific software development practices scale up to meet the challenges posed by increasing software complexity, lengthening software lifecycles, a growing number of stakeholders and contributers, and a broadened developer base that extends from application domains to high performance computing centers. Many of these challenges in complexity, lifecycles, and developer base have been successfully met by the open source community, and there are many lessons to be learned from their experiences and practices. Additionally, there is much wisdom to be found in the results of research studies conducted on software engineering itself. Software Carpentry aims to bridge the gap between the current state of software development and these known best practices for scientific software development, with a focus on hands-on exercises and practical advice. In 2014, Software Carpentry workshops targeting earth/environmental sciences and hydrological modeling have been organized and run at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System Annual Meeting, and the Earth Science Information Partners Summer Meeting. In this presentation, we will share some of the successes in teaching this material, as well as discuss and present instructional material specific to hydrological modeling.

Mining the Geophysical Research Abstracts Corpus: Mapping the impact of Free and Open Source Software on the EGU Divisions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Löwe, Peter; Klump, Jens; Robertson, Jesse

2015-04-01

Text mining is commonly employed as a tool in data science to investigate and chart emergent information from corpora of research abstracts, such as the Geophysical Research Abstracts (GRA) published by Copernicus. In this context current standards, such as persistent identifiers like DOI and ORCID, allow us to trace, cite and map links between journal publications, the underlying research data and scientific software. This network can be expressed as a directed graph which enables us to chart networks of cooperation and innovation, thematic foci and the locations of research communities in time and space. However, this approach of data science, focusing on the research process in a self-referential manner, rather than the topical work, is still in a developing stage. Scientific work presented at the EGU General Assembly is often the first step towards new approaches and innovative ideas to the geospatial community. It represents a rich, deep and heterogeneous source of geoscientific thought. This corpus is a significant data source for data science, which has not been analysed on this scale previously. In this work, the corpus of the Geophysical Research Abstracts is used for the first time as a data base for analyses of topical text mining. For this, we used a sturdy and customizable software framework, based on the work of Schmitt et al. [1]. For the analysis we used the High Performance Computing infrastructure of the German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ in Potsdam, Germany. Here, we report on the first results from the analysis of the continuous spreading the of use of Free and Open Source Software Tools (FOSS) within the EGU communities, mapping the general increase of FOSS-themed GRA articles in the last decade and the developing spatial patterns of involved parties and FOSS topics. References: [1] Schmitt, L. M., Christianson, K.T, Gupta R..: Linguistic Computing with UNIX Tools, in Kao, A., Poteet S.R. (Eds.): Natural Language processing and Text Mining, Springer, 2007. doi:10.1007/978-1-84628-754-1_12.

Effectiveness of an automatic tracking software in underwater motion analysis.

PubMed

Magalhaes, Fabrício A; Sawacha, Zimi; Di Michele, Rocco; Cortesi, Matteo; Gatta, Giorgio; Fantozzi, Silvia

2013-01-01

Tracking of markers placed on anatomical landmarks is a common practice in sports science to perform the kinematic analysis that interests both athletes and coaches. Although different software programs have been developed to automatically track markers and/or features, none of them was specifically designed to analyze underwater motion. Hence, this study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a software developed for automatic tracking of underwater movements (DVP), based on the Kanade-Lucas-Tomasi feature tracker. Twenty-one video recordings of different aquatic exercises (n = 2940 markers' positions) were manually tracked to determine the markers' center coordinates. Then, the videos were automatically tracked using DVP and a commercially available software (COM). Since tracking techniques may produce false targets, an operator was instructed to stop the automatic procedure and to correct the position of the cursor when the distance between the calculated marker's coordinate and the reference one was higher than 4 pixels. The proportion of manual interventions required by the software was used as a measure of the degree of automation. Overall, manual interventions were 10.4% lower for DVP (7.4%) than for COM (17.8%). Moreover, when examining the different exercise modes separately, the percentage of manual interventions was 5.6% to 29.3% lower for DVP than for COM. Similar results were observed when analyzing the type of marker rather than the type of exercise, with 9.9% less manual interventions for DVP than for COM. In conclusion, based on these results, the developed automatic tracking software presented can be used as a valid and useful tool for underwater motion analysis. Key PointsThe availability of effective software for automatic tracking would represent a significant advance for the practical use of kinematic analysis in swimming and other aquatic sports.An important feature of automatic tracking software is to require limited human interventions and supervision, thus allowing short processing time.When tracking underwater movements, the degree of automation of the tracking procedure is influenced by the capability of the algorithm to overcome difficulties linked to the small target size, the low image quality and the presence of background clutters.The newly developed feature-tracking algorithm has shown a good automatic tracking effectiveness in underwater motion analysis with significantly smaller percentage of required manual interventions when compared to a commercial software.

Challenges in Managing Trustworthy Large-scale Digital Science

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Evans, B. J. K.

2017-12-01

The increased use of large-scale international digital science has opened a number of challenges for managing, handling, using and preserving scientific information. The large volumes of information are driven by three main categories - model outputs including coupled models and ensembles, data products that have been processing to a level of usability, and increasingly heuristically driven data analysis. These data products are increasingly the ones that are usable by the broad communities, and far in excess of the raw instruments data outputs. The data, software and workflows are then shared and replicated to allow broad use at an international scale, which places further demands of infrastructure to support how the information is managed reliably across distributed resources. Users necessarily rely on these underlying "black boxes" so that they are productive to produce new scientific outcomes. The software for these systems depend on computational infrastructure, software interconnected systems, and information capture systems. This ranges from the fundamentals of the reliability of the compute hardware, system software stacks and libraries, and the model software. Due to these complexities and capacity of the infrastructure, there is an increased emphasis of transparency of the approach and robustness of the methods over the full reproducibility. Furthermore, with large volume data management, it is increasingly difficult to store the historical versions of all model and derived data. Instead, the emphasis is on the ability to access the updated products and the reliability by which both previous outcomes are still relevant and can be updated for the new information. We will discuss these challenges and some of the approaches underway that are being used to address these issues.

Microsoft Excel Software Usage for Teaching Science and Engineering Curriculum

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Singh, Gurmukh; Siddiqui, Khalid

2009-01-01

In this article, our main objective is to present the use of Microsoft Software Excel 2007/2003 for teaching college and university level curriculum in science and engineering. In particular, we discuss two interesting and fascinating examples of interactive applications of Microsoft Excel targeted for undergraduate students in: 1) computational…

Helping Students Make Sense of Graphs: An Experimental Trial of SmartGraphs Software

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zucker, Andrew; Kay, Rachel; Staudt, Carolyn

2014-01-01

Graphs are commonly used in science, mathematics, and social sciences to convey important concepts; yet students at all ages demonstrate difficulties interpreting graphs. This paper reports on an experimental study of free, Web-based software called SmartGraphs that is specifically designed to help students overcome their misconceptions regarding…

Computers in Life Science Education, 1989-1992.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Modell, Harold, Ed.

1992-01-01

This document consists of four years (40 issues) of a newsletter devoted to computers in life science education. Titles of major articles in this collection include: (1) "Good Versus Bad Software: What Makes the Difference?" (G. Kearsly); (2) "Linkway: Hypermedia for IBM Personal Computers" (L. Kheriaty); (3) "Where's the Software: Parts 1-3" (4)…

SPICE Module for the Satellite Orbit Analysis Program (SOAP)

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Coggi, John; Carnright, Robert; Hildebrand, Claude

2008-01-01

A SPICE module for the Satellite Orbit Analysis Program (SOAP) precisely represents complex motion and maneuvers in an interactive, 3D animated environment with support for user-defined quantitative outputs. (SPICE stands for Spacecraft, Planet, Instrument, Camera-matrix, and Events). This module enables the SOAP software to exploit NASA mission ephemeris represented in the JPL Ancillary Information Facility (NAIF) SPICE formats. Ephemeris types supported include position, velocity, and orientation for spacecraft and planetary bodies including the Sun, planets, natural satellites, comets, and asteroids. Entire missions can now be imported into SOAP for 3D visualization, playback, and analysis. The SOAP analysis and display features can now leverage detailed mission files to offer the analyst both a numerically correct and aesthetically pleasing combination of results that can be varied to study many hypothetical scenarios. The software provides a modeling and simulation environment that can encompass a broad variety of problems using orbital prediction. For example, ground coverage analysis, communications analysis, power and thermal analysis, and 3D visualization that provide the user with insight into complex geometric relations are included. The SOAP SPICE module allows distributed science and engineering teams to share common mission models of known pedigree, which greatly reduces duplication of effort and the potential for error. The use of the software spans all phases of the space system lifecycle, from the study of future concepts to operations and anomaly analysis. It allows SOAP software to correctly position and orient all of the principal bodies of the Solar System within a single simulation session along with multiple spacecraft trajectories and the orientation of mission payloads. In addition to the 3D visualization, the user can define numeric variables and x-y plots to quantitatively assess metrics of interest.

Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS): design and first-year review

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Smith, Arfon M.

2018-01-01

JOSS is a free and open-access journal that publishes articles describing research software across all disciplines. It has the dual goals of improving the quality of the software submitted and providing a mechanism for research software developers to receive credit. While designed to work within the current merit system of science, JOSS addresses the dearth of rewards for key contributions to science made in the form of software. JOSS publishes articles that encapsulate scholarship contained in the software itself, and its rigorous peer review targets the software components: functionality, documentation, tests, continuous integration, and the license. A JOSS article contains an abstract describing the purpose and functionality of the software, references, and a link to the software archive. JOSS published more than 100 articles in its first year, many from the scientific python ecosystem (including a number of articles related to astronomy and astrophysics). JOSS is a sponsored project of the nonprofit organization NumFOCUS and is an affiliate of the Open Source Initiative.In this presentation, I'll describes the motivation, design, and progress of the Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS) and how it compares to other avenues for publishing research software in astronomy.

Software engineering as an engineering discipline

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Berard, Edward V.

1988-01-01

The following topics are discussed in the context of software engineering: early use of the term; the 1968 NATO conference; Barry Boehm's definition; four requirements fo software engineering; and additional criteria for software engineering. Additionally, the four major requirements for software engineering--computer science, mathematics, engineering disciplines, and excellent communication skills--are discussed. The presentation is given in vugraph form.

Ten recommendations for software engineering in research.

PubMed

Hastings, Janna; Haug, Kenneth; Steinbeck, Christoph

2014-01-01

Research in the context of data-driven science requires a backbone of well-written software, but scientific researchers are typically not trained at length in software engineering, the principles for creating better software products. To address this gap, in particular for young researchers new to programming, we give ten recommendations to ensure the usability, sustainability and practicality of research software.

Reusable Rack Interface Controller Common Software for Various Science Research Racks on the International Space Station

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lu, George C.

2003-01-01

The purpose of the EXPRESS (Expedite the PRocessing of Experiments to Space Station) rack project is to provide a set of predefined interfaces for scientific payloads which allow rapid integration into a payload rack on International Space Station (ISS). VxWorks' was selected as the operating system for the rack and payload resource controller, primarily based on the proliferation of VME (Versa Module Eurocard) products. These products provide needed flexibility for future hardware upgrades to meet everchanging science research rack configuration requirements. On the International Space Station, there are multiple science research rack configurations, including: 1) Human Research Facility (HRF); 2) EXPRESS ARIS (Active Rack Isolation System); 3) WORF (Window Observational Research Facility); and 4) HHR (Habitat Holding Rack). The RIC (Rack Interface Controller) connects payloads to the ISS bus architecture for data transfer between the payload and ground control. The RIC is a general purpose embedded computer which supports multiple communication protocols, including fiber optic communication buses, Ethernet buses, EIA-422, Mil-Std-1553 buses, SMPTE (Society Motion Picture Television Engineers)-170M video, and audio interfaces to payloads and the ISS. As a cost saving and software reliability strategy, the Boeing Payload Software Organization developed reusable common software where appropriate. These reusable modules included a set of low-level driver software interfaces to 1553B. RS232, RS422, Ethernet buses, HRDL (High Rate Data Link), video switch functionality, telemetry processing, and executive software hosted on the FUC computer. These drivers formed the basis for software development of the HRF, EXPRESS, EXPRESS ARIS, WORF, and HHR RIC executable modules. The reusable RIC common software has provided extensive benefits, including: 1) Significant reduction in development flow time; 2) Minimal rework and maintenance; 3) Improved reliability; and 4) Overall reduction in software life cycle cost. Due to the limited number of crew hours available on ISS for science research, operational efficiency is a critical customer concern. The current method of upgrading RIC software is a time consuming process; thus, an improved methodology for uploading RIC software is currently under evaluation.

Managing Complexity in the MSL/Curiosity Entry, Descent, and Landing Flight Software and Avionics Verification and Validation Campaign

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Stehura, Aaron; Rozek, Matthew

2013-01-01

The complexity of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission presented the Entry, Descent, and Landing systems engineering team with many challenges in its Verification and Validation (V&V) campaign. This paper describes some of the logistical hurdles related to managing a complex set of requirements, test venues, test objectives, and analysis products in the implementation of a specific portion of the overall V&V program to test the interaction of flight software with the MSL avionics suite. Application-specific solutions to these problems are presented herein, which can be generalized to other space missions and to similar formidable systems engineering problems.

Math and science technology access and use in South Dakota public schools grades three through five

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schwietert, Debra L.

The development of K-12 technology standards, soon to be added to state testing of technology proficiency, and the increasing presence of computers in homes and classrooms reflects the growing importance of technology in current society. This study examined math and science teachers' responses on a survey of technology use in grades three through five in South Dakota. A researcher-developed survey instrument was used to collect data from a random sample of 100 public schools throughout the South Dakota. Forced choice and open-ended responses were recorded. Most teachers have access to computers, but they lack resources to purchase software for their content areas, especially in science areas. Three-fourths of teachers in this study reported multiple computers in their classrooms and 67% reported access to labs in other areas of the school building. These numbers are lower than the national average of 84% of teachers with computers in their classrooms and 95% with access to computers elsewhere in the building (USDOE, 2000). Almost eight out of 10 teachers noted time as a barrier to learning more about educational software. Additional barriers included lack of school funds (38%), access to relevant training (32%), personal funds (30%), and poor quality of training (7%). Teachers most often use math and science software as supplemental, with practice tutorials cited as another common use. The most common interest for software was math for both boys and girls. The second most common choice for boys was science and for girls, language arts. Teachers reported that there was no preference for either individual or group work on computers for girls or boys. Most teachers do not systematically evaluate software for gender preferences, but review software over subjectively.

CosmoQuest: A Glance at Citizen Science Building

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Richardson, Matthew; Grier, Jennifer; Gay, Pamela; Lehan, Cory; Buxner, Sanlyn; CosmoQuest Team

2018-01-01

CosmoQuest is a virtual research facility focused on engaging people - citizen scientists - from across the world in authentic research projects designed to enhance our knowledge of the cosmos around us. Using image data acquired by NASA missions, our citizen scientists are first trained to identify specific features within the data and then requested to identify those features across large datasets. Responses submitted by the citizen scientists are then stored in our database where they await for analysis and eventual publication by CosmoQuest staff and collaborating professional research scientists.While it is clear that the driving power behind our projects are the eyes and minds of our citizen scientists, it is CosmoQuest’s custom software, Citizen Science Builder (CSB), that enables citizen science to be accomplished. On the front end, CosmoQuest’s CSB software allows for the creation of web-interfaces that users can access to perform image annotation through both drawing tools and questions that can accompany images. These tools include: using geometric shapes to identify regions within an image, tracing image attributes using freeform line tools, and flagging features within images. Additionally, checkboxes, dropdowns, and free response boxes may be used to collect information. On the back end, this software is responsible for the proper storage of all data, which allows project staff to perform periodic data quality checks and track the progress of each project. In this poster we present these available tools and resources and seek potential collaborations.

Optical Testing and Verification Methods for the James Webb Space Telescope Integrated Science Instrument Module Element

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Antonille, Scott R.; Miskey, Cherie L.; Ohl, Raymond G.; Rohrbach, Scott O.; Aronstein, David L.; Bartoszyk, Andrew E.; Bowers, Charles W.; Cofie, Emmanuel; Collins, Nicholas R.; Comber, Brian J.;

Optical testing and verification methods for the James Webb Space Telescope Integrated Science Instrument Module element

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Antonille, Scott R.; Miskey, Cherie L.; Ohl, Raymond G.; Rohrbach, Scott O.; Aronstein, David L.; Bartoszyk, Andrew E.; Bowers, Charles W.; Cofie, Emmanuel; Collins, Nicholas R.; Comber, Brian J.; Eichhorn, William L.; Glasse, Alistair C.; Gracey, Renee; Hartig, George F.; Howard, Joseph M.; Kelly, Douglas M.; Kimble, Randy A.; Kirk, Jeffrey R.; Kubalak, David A.; Landsman, Wayne B.; Lindler, Don J.; Malumuth, Eliot M.; Maszkiewicz, Michael; Rieke, Marcia J.; Rowlands, Neil; Sabatke, Derek S.; Smith, Corbett T.; Smith, J. Scott; Sullivan, Joseph F.; Telfer, Randal C.; Te Plate, Maurice; Vila, M. Begoña.; Warner, Gerry D.; Wright, David; Wright, Raymond H.; Zhou, Julia; Zielinski, Thomas P.

2016-09-01

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a 6.5m diameter, segmented, deployable telescope for cryogenic IR space astronomy. The JWST Observatory includes the Optical Telescope Element (OTE) and the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM), that contains four science instruments (SI) and the Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS). The SIs are mounted to a composite metering structure. The SIs and FGS were integrated to the ISIM structure and optically tested at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center using the Optical Telescope Element SIMulator (OSIM). OSIM is a full-field, cryogenic JWST telescope simulator. SI performance, including alignment and wavefront error, was evaluated using OSIM. We describe test and analysis methods for optical performance verification of the ISIM Element, with an emphasis on the processes used to plan and execute the test. The complexity of ISIM and OSIM drove us to develop a software tool for test planning that allows for configuration control of observations, implementation of associated scripts, and management of hardware and software limits and constraints, as well as tools for rapid data evaluation, and flexible re-planning in response to the unexpected. As examples of our test and analysis approach, we discuss how factors such as the ground test thermal environment are compensated in alignment. We describe how these innovative methods for test planning and execution and post-test analysis were instrumental in the verification program for the ISIM element, with enough information to allow the reader to consider these innovations and lessons learned in this successful effort in their future testing for other programs.

ExoData: A Python package to handle large exoplanet catalogue data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Varley, Ryan

2016-10-01

Exoplanet science often involves using the system parameters of real exoplanets for tasks such as simulations, fitting routines, and target selection for proposals. Several exoplanet catalogues are already well established but often lack a version history and code friendly interfaces. Software that bridges the barrier between the catalogues and code enables users to improve the specific repeatability of results by facilitating the retrieval of exact system parameters used in articles results along with unifying the equations and software used. As exoplanet science moves towards large data, gone are the days where researchers can recall the current population from memory. An interface able to query the population now becomes invaluable for target selection and population analysis. ExoData is a Python interface and exploratory analysis tool for the Open Exoplanet Catalogue. It allows the loading of exoplanet systems into Python as objects (Planet, Star, Binary, etc.) from which common orbital and system equations can be calculated and measured parameters retrieved. This allows researchers to use tested code of the common equations they require (with units) and provides a large science input catalogue of planets for easy plotting and use in research. Advanced querying of targets is possible using the database and Python programming language. ExoData is also able to parse spectral types and fill in missing parameters according to programmable specifications and equations. Examples of use cases are integration of equations into data reduction pipelines, selecting planets for observing proposals and as an input catalogue to large scale simulation and analysis of planets. ExoData is a Python package available freely on GitHub.

Global Systems Science and Hands-On Universe Course Materials for High School

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gould, A.

2011-09-01

The University of California Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science has a project called Global Systems Science (GSS). GSS produced a set of course materials for high school science education that includes reading materials, investigations, and software for analyzing satellite images of Earth focusing on Earth systems as well as societal issues that require interdisciplinary science for full understanding. The software has general application in analysis of any digital images for a variety of purposes. NSF and NASA funding have contributed to the development of GSS. The current NASA-funded project of GSS is Lifelines for High School Climate Change Education (LHSCCE), which aims to establish professional learning communities (PLCs) to share curriculum resources and best practices for teaching about climate change in grades 9-12. The project explores ideal ways for teachers to meet either in-person or using simple yet effective distance-communication techniques (tele-meetings), depending on local preferences. Skills promoted include: how to set up a website to share resources; initiating tele-meetings with any available mechanism (webinars, Skype, telecons, moodles, social network tools, etc.); and easy ways of documenting and archiving presentations made at meetings. Twenty teacher leaders are forming the PLCs in their regions or districts. This is a national effort in which teachers share ideas, strategies, and resources aimed at making science education relevant to societal issues, improve students' understanding of climate change issues, and contribute to possible solutions. Although the binding theme is climate change, the application is to a wide variety of courses: Earth science, environmental science, biology, physics, and chemistry. Moreover, the PLCs formed can last as long as the members find it useful and can deal with any topics of interest, even if they are only distantly related to climate change.

Advanced Methodologies for NASA Science Missions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hurlburt, N. E.; Feigelson, E.; Mentzel, C.

2017-12-01

Most of NASA's commitment to computational space science involves the organization and processing of Big Data from space-based satellites, and the calculations of advanced physical models based on these datasets. But considerable thought is also needed on what computations are needed. The science questions addressed by space data are so diverse and complex that traditional analysis procedures are often inadequate. The knowledge and skills of the statistician, applied mathematician, and algorithmic computer scientist must be incorporated into programs that currently emphasize engineering and physical science. NASA's culture and administrative mechanisms take full cognizance that major advances in space science are driven by improvements in instrumentation. But it is less well recognized that new instruments and science questions give rise to new challenges in the treatment of satellite data after it is telemetered to the ground. These issues might be divided into two stages: data reduction through software pipelines developed within NASA mission centers; and science analysis that is performed by hundreds of space scientists dispersed through NASA, U.S. universities, and abroad. Both stages benefit from the latest statistical and computational methods; in some cases, the science result is completely inaccessible using traditional procedures. This paper will review the current state of NASA and present example applications using modern methodologies.

Photochemical Phenomenology Model for the New Millenium

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bishop, James; Evans, J. Scott

2000-01-01

This project tackles the problem of conversion of validated a priori physics-based modeling capabilities, specifically those relevant to the analysis and interpretation of planetary atmosphere observations, to application-oriented software for use in science and science-support activities. The software package under development, named the Photochemical Phenomenology Modeling Tool (PPMT), has particular focus on the atmospheric remote sensing data to be acquired by the CIRS instrument during the CASSINI Jupiter flyby and orbital tour of the Saturnian system. Overall, the project has followed the development outline given in the original proposal, and the Year 1 design and architecture goals have been met. Specific accomplishments and the difficulties encountered are summarized in this report. Most of the effort has gone into complete definition of the PPMT interfaces within the context of today's IT arena: adoption and adherence to the CORBA Component Model (CCM) has yielded a solid architecture basis, and CORBA-related issues (services, specification options, development plans, etc.) have been largely resolved. Implementation goals have been redirected somewhat so as to be more relevant to the upcoming CASSINI flyby of Jupiter, with focus now being more on data analysis and remote sensing retrieval applications.

Recent Advances in Resonance Region Nuclear Data Measurements and Analyses for Supporting Nuclear Energy Applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dunn, Michael

2008-10-01

For over 30 years, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has performed research and development to provide more accurate nuclear cross-section data in the resonance region. The ORNL Nuclear Data (ND) Program consists of four complementary areas of research: (1) cross-section measurements at the Oak Ridge Electron Linear Accelerator; (2) resonance analysis methods development with the SAMMY R-matrix analysis software; (3) cross-section evaluation development; and (4) cross-section processing methods development with the AMPX software system. The ND Program is tightly coupled with nuclear fuel cycle analyses and radiation transport methods development efforts at ORNL. Thus, nuclear data work is performed in concert with nuclear science and technology needs and requirements. Recent advances in each component of the ORNL ND Program have led to improvements in resonance region measurements, R-matrix analyses, cross-section evaluations, and processing capabilities that directly support radiation transport research and development. Of particular importance are the improvements in cross-section covariance data evaluation and processing capabilities. The benefit of these advances to nuclear science and technology research and development will be discussed during the symposium on Nuclear Physics Research Connections to Nuclear Energy.

Software Engineering Frameworks: Textbooks vs. Student Perceptions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McMaster, Kirby; Hadfield, Steven; Wolthuis, Stuart; Sambasivam, Samuel

2012-01-01

This research examines the frameworks used by Computer Science and Information Systems students at the conclusion of their first semester of study of Software Engineering. A questionnaire listing 64 Software Engineering concepts was given to students upon completion of their first Software Engineering course. This survey was given to samples of…

Teaching Agile Software Development: A Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Devedzic, V.; Milenkovic, S. R.

2011-01-01

This paper describes the authors' experience of teaching agile software development to students of computer science, software engineering, and other related disciplines, and comments on the implications of this and the lessons learned. It is based on the authors' eight years of experience in teaching agile software methodologies to various groups…

A comprehensive evaluation of popular proteomics software workflows for label-free proteome quantification and imputation.

PubMed

Välikangas, Tommi; Suomi, Tomi; Elo, Laura L

2017-05-31

Label-free mass spectrometry (MS) has developed into an important tool applied in various fields of biological and life sciences. Several software exist to process the raw MS data into quantified protein abundances, including open source and commercial solutions. Each software includes a set of unique algorithms for different tasks of the MS data processing workflow. While many of these algorithms have been compared separately, a thorough and systematic evaluation of their overall performance is missing. Moreover, systematic information is lacking about the amount of missing values produced by the different proteomics software and the capabilities of different data imputation methods to account for them.In this study, we evaluated the performance of five popular quantitative label-free proteomics software workflows using four different spike-in data sets. Our extensive testing included the number of proteins quantified and the number of missing values produced by each workflow, the accuracy of detecting differential expression and logarithmic fold change and the effect of different imputation and filtering methods on the differential expression results. We found that the Progenesis software performed consistently well in the differential expression analysis and produced few missing values. The missing values produced by the other software decreased their performance, but this difference could be mitigated using proper data filtering or imputation methods. Among the imputation methods, we found that the local least squares (lls) regression imputation consistently increased the performance of the software in the differential expression analysis, and a combination of both data filtering and local least squares imputation increased performance the most in the tested data sets. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press.

Geometric modeling for computer aided design

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Schwing, James L.

1993-01-01

Over the past several years, it has been the primary goal of this grant to design and implement software to be used in the conceptual design of aerospace vehicles. The work carried out under this grant was performed jointly with members of the Vehicle Analysis Branch (VAB) of NASA LaRC, Computer Sciences Corp., and Vigyan Corp. This has resulted in the development of several packages and design studies. Primary among these are the interactive geometric modeling tool, the Solid Modeling Aerospace Research Tool (smart), and the integration and execution tools provided by the Environment for Application Software Integration and Execution (EASIE). In addition, it is the purpose of the personnel of this grant to provide consultation in the areas of structural design, algorithm development, and software development and implementation, particularly in the areas of computer aided design, geometric surface representation, and parallel algorithms.

Oracle Database 10g: a platform for BLAST search and Regular Expression pattern matching in life sciences.

PubMed

Stephens, Susie M; Chen, Jake Y; Davidson, Marcel G; Thomas, Shiby; Trute, Barry M

2005-01-01

As database management systems expand their array of analytical functionality, they become powerful research engines for biomedical data analysis and drug discovery. Databases can hold most of the data types commonly required in life sciences and consequently can be used as flexible platforms for the implementation of knowledgebases. Performing data analysis in the database simplifies data management by minimizing the movement of data from disks to memory, allowing pre-filtering and post-processing of datasets, and enabling data to remain in a secure, highly available environment. This article describes the Oracle Database 10g implementation of BLAST and Regular Expression Searches and provides case studies of their usage in bioinformatics. http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/index.html.

FTOOLS: A FITS Data Processing and Analysis Software Package

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Blackburn, J. K.

FTOOLS, a highly modular collection of over 110 utilities for processing and analyzing data in the FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) format, has been developed in support of the HEASARC (High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Each utility performs a single simple task such as presentation of file contents, extraction of specific rows or columns, appending or merging tables, binning values in a column or selecting subsets of rows based on a boolean expression. Individual utilities can easily be chained together in scripts to achieve more complex operations such as the generation and displaying of spectra or light curves. The collection of utilities provides both generic processing and analysis utilities and utilities specific to high energy astrophysics data sets used for the ASCA, ROSAT, GRO, and XTE missions. A core set of FTOOLS providing support for generic FITS data processing, FITS image analysis and timing analysis can easily be split out of the full software package for users not needing the high energy astrophysics mission utilities. The FTOOLS software package is designed to be both compatible with IRAF and completely stand alone in a UNIX or VMS environment. The user interface is controlled by standard IRAF parameter files. The package is self documenting through the IRAF help facility and a stand alone help task. Software is written in ANSI C and \\fortran to provide portability across most computer systems. The data format dependencies between hardware platforms are isolated through the FITSIO library package.

New Software for Ensemble Creation in the Spitzer-Space-Telescope Operations Database

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Laher, Russ; Rector, John

2004-01-01

Some of the computer pipelines used to process digital astronomical images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope require multiple input images, in order to generate high-level science and calibration products. The images are grouped into ensembles according to well documented ensemble-creation rules by making explicit associations in the operations Informix database at the Spitzer Science Center (SSC). The advantage of this approach is that a simple database query can retrieve the required ensemble of pipeline input images. New and improved software for ensemble creation has been developed. The new software is much faster than the existing software because it uses pre-compiled database stored-procedures written in Informix SPL (SQL programming language). The new software is also more flexible because the ensemble creation rules are now stored in and read from newly defined database tables. This table-driven approach was implemented so that ensemble rules can be inserted, updated, or deleted without modifying software.

Building confidence and credibility amid growing model and computing complexity

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Evans, K. J.; Mahajan, S.; Veneziani, C.; Kennedy, J. H.

2017-12-01

As global Earth system models are developed to answer an ever-wider range of science questions, software products that provide robust verification, validation, and evaluation must evolve in tandem. Measuring the degree to which these new models capture past behavior, predict the future, and provide the certainty of predictions is becoming ever more challenging for reasons that are generally well known, yet are still challenging to address. Two specific and divergent needs for analysis of the Accelerated Climate Model for Energy (ACME) model - but with a similar software philosophy - are presented to show how a model developer-based focus can address analysis needs during expansive model changes to provide greater fidelity and execute on multi-petascale computing facilities. A-PRIME is a python script-based quick-look overview of a fully-coupled global model configuration to determine quickly if it captures specific behavior before significant computer time and expense is invested. EVE is an ensemble-based software framework that focuses on verification of performance-based ACME model development, such as compiler or machine settings, to determine the equivalence of relevant climate statistics. The challenges and solutions for analysis of multi-petabyte output data are highlighted from the aspect of the scientist using the software, with the aim of fostering discussion and further input from the community about improving developer confidence and community credibility.

Statistical analysis of water-quality data containing multiple detection limits II: S-language software for nonparametric distribution modeling and hypothesis testing

USGS Publications Warehouse

Lee, L.; Helsel, D.

2007-01-01

Analysis of low concentrations of trace contaminants in environmental media often results in left-censored data that are below some limit of analytical precision. Interpretation of values becomes complicated when there are multiple detection limits in the data-perhaps as a result of changing analytical precision over time. Parametric and semi-parametric methods, such as maximum likelihood estimation and robust regression on order statistics, can be employed to model distributions of multiply censored data and provide estimates of summary statistics. However, these methods are based on assumptions about the underlying distribution of data. Nonparametric methods provide an alternative that does not require such assumptions. A standard nonparametric method for estimating summary statistics of multiply-censored data is the Kaplan-Meier (K-M) method. This method has seen widespread usage in the medical sciences within a general framework termed "survival analysis" where it is employed with right-censored time-to-failure data. However, K-M methods are equally valid for the left-censored data common in the geosciences. Our S-language software provides an analytical framework based on K-M methods that is tailored to the needs of the earth and environmental sciences community. This includes routines for the generation of empirical cumulative distribution functions, prediction or exceedance probabilities, and related confidence limits computation. Additionally, our software contains K-M-based routines for nonparametric hypothesis testing among an unlimited number of grouping variables. A primary characteristic of K-M methods is that they do not perform extrapolation and interpolation. Thus, these routines cannot be used to model statistics beyond the observed data range or when linear interpolation is desired. For such applications, the aforementioned parametric and semi-parametric methods must be used.

Dynamic online surveys and experiments with the free open-source software dynQuest.

PubMed

Rademacher, Jens D M; Lippke, Sonia

2007-08-01

With computers and the World Wide Web widely available, collecting data through Web browsers is an attractive method utilized by the social sciences. In this article, conducting PC- and Web-based trials with the software package dynQuest is described. The software manages dynamic questionnaire-based trials over the Internet or on single computers, possibly as randomized control trials (RCT), if two or more groups are involved. The choice of follow-up questions can depend on previous responses, as needed for matched interventions. Data are collected in a simple text-based database that can be imported easily into other programs for postprocessing and statistical analysis. The software consists of platform-independent scripts written in the programming language PERL that use the common gateway interface between Web browser and server for submission of data through HTML forms. Advantages of dynQuest are parsimony, simplicity in use and installation, transparency, and reliability. The program is available as open-source freeware from the authors.

Attitudes of Crohn's Disease Patients: Infodemiology Case Study and Sentiment Analysis of Facebook and Twitter Posts.

PubMed

Roccetti, Marco; Marfia, Gustavo; Salomoni, Paola; Prandi, Catia; Zagari, Rocco Maurizio; Gningaye Kengni, Faustine Linda; Bazzoli, Franco; Montagnani, Marco

2017-08-09

Data concerning patients originates from a variety of sources on social media. The aim of this study was to show how methodologies borrowed from different areas including computer science, econometrics, statistics, data mining, and sociology may be used to analyze Facebook data to investigate the patients' perspectives on a given medical prescription. To shed light on patients' behavior and concerns, we focused on Crohn's disease, a chronic inflammatory bowel disease, and the specific therapy with the biological drug Infliximab. To gain information from the basin of big data, we analyzed Facebook posts in the time frame from October 2011 to August 2015. We selected posts from patients affected by Crohn's disease who were experiencing or had previously been treated with the monoclonal antibody drug Infliximab. The selected posts underwent further characterization and sentiment analysis. Finally, an ethnographic review was carried out by experts from different scientific research fields (eg, computer science vs gastroenterology) and by a software system running a sentiment analysis tool. The patient feeling toward the Infliximab treatment was classified as positive, neutral, or negative, and the results from computer science, gastroenterologist, and software tool were compared using the square weighted Cohen's kappa coefficient method. The first automatic selection process returned 56,000 Facebook posts, 261 of which exhibited a patient opinion concerning Infliximab. The ethnographic analysis of these 261 selected posts gave similar results, with an interrater agreement between the computer science and gastroenterology experts amounting to 87.3% (228/261), a substantial agreement according to the square weighted Cohen's kappa coefficient method (w2K=0.6470). A positive, neutral, and negative feeling was attributed to 36%, 27%, and 37% of posts by the computer science expert and 38%, 30%, and 32% by the gastroenterologist, respectively. Only a slight agreement was found between the experts' opinion and the software tool. We show how data posted on Facebook by Crohn's disease patients are a useful dataset to understand the patient's perspective on the specific treatment with Infliximab. The genuine, nonmedically influenced patients' opinion obtained from Facebook pages can be easily reviewed by experts from different research backgrounds, with a substantial agreement on the classification of patients' sentiment. The described method allows a fast collection of big amounts of data, which can be easily analyzed to gain insight into the patients' perspective on a specific medical therapy. ©Marco Roccetti, Gustavo Marfia, Paola Salomoni, Catia Prandi, Rocco Maurizio Zagari, Faustine Linda Gningaye Kengni, Franco Bazzoli, Marco Montagnani. Originally published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance (http://publichealth.jmir.org), 09.08.2017.

The Software Engineering Laboratory: An operational software experience factory

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Basili, Victor R.; Caldiera, Gianluigi; Mcgarry, Frank; Pajerski, Rose; Page, Gerald; Waligora, Sharon

1992-01-01

For 15 years, the Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL) has been carrying out studies and experiments for the purpose of understanding, assessing, and improving software and software processes within a production software development environment at NASA/GSFC. The SEL comprises three major organizations: (1) NASA/GSFC, Flight Dynamics Division; (2) University of Maryland, Department of Computer Science; and (3) Computer Sciences Corporation, Flight Dynamics Technology Group. These organizations have jointly carried out several hundred software studies, producing hundreds of reports, papers, and documents, all of which describe some aspect of the software engineering technology that was analyzed in the flight dynamics environment at NASA. The studies range from small, controlled experiments (such as analyzing the effectiveness of code reading versus that of functional testing) to large, multiple project studies (such as assessing the impacts of Ada on a production environment). The organization's driving goal is to improve the software process continually, so that sustained improvement may be observed in the resulting products. This paper discusses the SEL as a functioning example of an operational software experience factory and summarizes the characteristics of and major lessons learned from 15 years of SEL operations.

The Compton Observatory Science Workshop

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Shrader, Chris R. (Editor); Gehrels, Neil (Editor); Dennis, Brian (Editor)

1992-01-01

The Compton Observatory Science Workshop was held in Annapolis, Maryland on September 23-25, 1991. The primary purpose of the workshop was to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and information among scientists with interests in various areas of high energy astrophysics, with emphasis on the scientific capabilities of the Compton Observatory. Early scientific results, as well as reports on in-flight instrument performance and calibrations are presented. Guest investigator data products, analysis techniques, and associated software were discussed. Scientific topics covered included active galaxies, cosmic gamma ray bursts, solar physics, pulsars, novae, supernovae, galactic binary sources, and diffuse galactic and extragalactic emission.

Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission Navigation Performance During Apogee-Raising and Beyond

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Farahmand, Mitra; Long, Anne; Hollister, Jacob; Rose, Julie; Godine, Dominic

2017-01-01

The primary objective of the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) Mission is to study the magnetic reconnection phenomena in the Earths magnetosphere. The MMS mission consists of four identical spinning spacecraft with the science objectives requiring a tetrahedral formation in highly elliptical orbits. The MMS spacecraft are equipped with onboard orbit and time determination software, provided by a weak-signal Global Positioning System (GPS) Navigator receiver hosting the Goddard Enhanced Onboard Navigation System (GEONS). This paper presents the results of MMS navigation performance analysis during the Phase 2a apogee-raising campaign and Phase 2b science segment of the mission.

Development of Science Simulations for Mildly Mentally Retarded or Learning Disabled Students. Final Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Macro Systems, Inc., Silver Spring, MD.

This final report describes the development of eight computer based science simulations designed for use with middle school mainstreamed students having learning disabilities or mild mental retardation. The total program includes software, a teacher's manual, 3 videos, and a set of 30 activity worksheets. Special features of the software for…

SSRP: Software for Problem Solving and Inquiry in Grades K-4. Ohio SchoolNet. ENC Focus.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harris, Julia, Ed.

1997-01-01

The number and range of instructional resources in mathematics and science education can be overwhelming to educators. The chief mission of The Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for Mathematics and Science Education (ENC) is to help educators sort through the confusion by identifying relevant resources such as print materials, software, kits, and…

Computers in Life Science Education, Volume 7, Numbers 1-12.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Computers in Life Science Education, 1990

1990-01-01

The 12 digests of Computers in Life Science Education from 1990 are presented. The articles found in chronological sequence are as follows: "The Computer as a Teaching Tool--How Far Have We Come? Where Are We Going?" (Modell); "Where's the Software--Part 1"; "Keeping Abreast of the Literature" (which appears quarterly); "Where's the Software--Part…

Factors Influencing the Behavioural Intention to Use Statistical Software: The Perspective of the Slovenian Students of Social Sciences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brezavšcek, Alenka; Šparl, Petra; Žnidaršic, Anja

2017-01-01

The aim of the paper is to investigate the main factors influencing the adoption and continuous utilization of statistical software among university social sciences students in Slovenia. Based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), a conceptual model was derived where five external variables were taken into account: statistical software…

Long live the Data Scientist, but can he/she persist?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wyborn, L. A.

2011-12-01

In recent years the fourth paradigm of data intensive science has slowly taken hold as the increased capacity of instruments and an increasing number of instruments (in particular sensor networks) have changed how fundamental research is undertaken. Most modern scientific research is about digital capture of data direct from instruments, processing it by computers, storing the results on computers and only publishing a small fraction of data in hard copy publications. At the same time, the rapid increase in capacity of supercomputers, particularly at petascale, means that far larger data sets can be analysed and to greater resolution than previously possible. The new cloud computing paradigm which allows distributed data, software and compute resources to be linked by seamless workflows, is creating new opportunities in processing of high volumes of data to an increasingly larger number of researchers. However, to take full advantage of these compute resources, data sets for analysis have to be aggregated from multiple sources to create high performance data sets. These new technology developments require that scientists must become more skilled in data management and/or have a higher degree of computer literacy. In almost every science discipline there is now an X-informatics branch and a computational X branch (eg, Geoinformatics and Computational Geoscience): both require a new breed of researcher that has skills in both the science fundamentals and also knowledge of some ICT aspects (computer programming, data base design and development, data curation, software engineering). People that can operate in both science and ICT are increasingly known as 'data scientists'. Data scientists are a critical element of many large scale earth and space science informatics projects, particularly those that are tackling current grand challenges at an international level on issues such as climate change, hazard prediction and sustainable development of our natural resources. These projects by their very nature require the integration of multiple digital data sets from multiple sources. Often the preparation of the data for computational analysis can take months and requires painstaking attention to detail to ensure that anomalies identified are real and are not just artefacts of the data preparation and/or the computational analysis. Although data scientists are increasingly vital to successful data intensive earth and space science projects, unless they are recognised for their capabilities in both the science and the computational domains they are likely to migrate to either a science role or an ICT role as their career advances. Most reward and recognition systems do not recognise those with skills in both, hence, getting trained data scientists to persist beyond one or two projects can be challenge. Those data scientists that persist in the profession are characteristically committed and enthusiastic people who have the support of their organisations to take on this role. They also tend to be people who share developments and are critical to the success of the open source software movement. However, the fact remains that survival of the data scientist as a species is being threatened unless something is done to recognise their invaluable contributions to the new fourth paradigm of science.

Design Analysis Kit for Optimization and Terascale Applications 6.0

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

2015-10-19

Sandia's Dakota software (available at http://dakota.sandia.gov) supports science and engineering transformation through advanced exploration of simulations. Specifically it manages and analyzes ensembles of simulations to provide broader and deeper perspective for analysts and decision makers. This enables them to: (1) enhance understanding of risk, (2) improve products, and (3) assess simulation credibility. In its simplest mode, Dakota can automate typical parameter variation studies through a generic interface to a computational model. However, Dakota also delivers advanced parametric analysis techniques enabling design exploration, optimization, model calibration, risk analysis, and quantification of margins and uncertainty with such models. It directly supports verificationmore » and validation activities. The algorithms implemented in Dakota aim to address challenges in performing these analyses with complex science and engineering models from desktop to high performance computers.« less

Computational Environments and Analysis methods available on the NCI High Performance Computing (HPC) and High Performance Data (HPD) Platform

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Evans, B. J. K.; Foster, C.; Minchin, S. A.; Pugh, T.; Lewis, A.; Wyborn, L. A.; Evans, B. J.; Uhlherr, A.

2014-12-01

The National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) has established a powerful in-situ computational environment to enable both high performance computing and data-intensive science across a wide spectrum of national environmental data collections - in particular climate, observational data and geoscientific assets. This paper examines 1) the computational environments that supports the modelling and data processing pipelines, 2) the analysis environments and methods to support data analysis, and 3) the progress in addressing harmonisation of the underlying data collections for future transdisciplinary research that enable accurate climate projections. NCI makes available 10+ PB major data collections from both the government and research sectors based on six themes: 1) weather, climate, and earth system science model simulations, 2) marine and earth observations, 3) geosciences, 4) terrestrial ecosystems, 5) water and hydrology, and 6) astronomy, social and biosciences. Collectively they span the lithosphere, crust, biosphere, hydrosphere, troposphere, and stratosphere. The data is largely sourced from NCI's partners (which include the custodians of many of the national scientific records), major research communities, and collaborating overseas organisations. The data is accessible within an integrated HPC-HPD environment - a 1.2 PFlop supercomputer (Raijin), a HPC class 3000 core OpenStack cloud system and several highly connected large scale and high-bandwidth Lustre filesystems. This computational environment supports a catalogue of integrated reusable software and workflows from earth system and ecosystem modelling, weather research, satellite and other observed data processing and analysis. To enable transdisciplinary research on this scale, data needs to be harmonised so that researchers can readily apply techniques and software across the corpus of data available and not be constrained to work within artificial disciplinary boundaries. Future challenges will involve the further integration and analysis of this data across the social sciences to facilitate the impacts across the societal domain, including timely analysis to more accurately predict and forecast future climate and environmental state.

Comment on "Most computational hydrology is not reproducible, so is it really science?" by Christopher Hutton et al.: Let hydrologists learn the latest computer science by working with Research Software Engineers (RSEs) and not reinvent the waterwheel ourselves

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hut, R. W.; van de Giesen, N. C.; Drost, N.

2017-05-01

The suggestions by Hutton et al. might not be enough to guarantee reproducible computational hydrology. Archiving software code and research data alone will not be enough. We add to the suggestion of Hutton et al. that hydrologists not only document their (computer) work, but that hydrologists use the latest best practices in designing research software, most notably the use of containers and open interfaces. To make sure hydrologists know of these best practices, we urge close collaboration with Research Software Engineers (RSEs).

Software Reviews.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wulfson, Stephen

1988-01-01

Presents reviews of six computer software programs for teaching science. Provides the publisher, grade level, cost, and descriptions of software, including: (1) "Recycling Logic"; (2) "Introduction to Biochemistry"; (3) "Food for Thought"; (4) "Watts in a Home"; (5) "Geology in Action"; and (6)…

OHD/HL - Staff

Science.gov Websites

Laboratory Branches Hydrologic Software Engineering Branch (HSEB) Hydrologic Science and Modeling Branch (HSMB) General Info Publications Documentation Software Standard and Guidelines Contact Us HL Staff resources and services. Staff Directory Chief, Hydrology Laboratory; Chief, Hydrologic Software Engineering

Implications of Aggregated DoD Information Systems for Information Assurance Certification and Accreditation

DTIC Science & Technology

2010-01-01

offshoring, or producing major software components overseas (Defense Science Board, 2009). These trends raise concerns about the level of trust that...7 Software Complexity...7 Increasing Software Vulnerabilities and Malware Population . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Limitations of

The EpiCanvas infectious disease weather map: an interactive visual exploration of temporal and spatial correlations

PubMed Central

Livnat, Yarden; Galli, Nathan; Samore, Matthew H; Gundlapalli, Adi V

2012-01-01

Advances in surveillance science have supported public health agencies in tracking and responding to disease outbreaks. Increasingly, epidemiologists have been tasked with interpreting multiple streams of heterogeneous data arising from varied surveillance systems. As a result public health personnel have experienced an overload of plots and charts as information visualization techniques have not kept pace with the rapid expansion in data availability. This study sought to advance the science of public health surveillance data visualization by conceptualizing a visual paradigm that provides an ‘epidemiological canvas’ for detection, monitoring, exploration and discovery of regional infectious disease activity and developing a software prototype of an ‘infectious disease weather map'. Design objectives were elucidated and the conceptual model was developed using cognitive task analysis with public health epidemiologists. The software prototype was pilot tested using retrospective data from a large, regional pediatric hospital, and gastrointestinal and respiratory disease outbreaks were re-created as a proof of concept. PMID:22358039

A vision for collaborative training infrastructure for bioinformatics.

PubMed

Williams, Jason J; Teal, Tracy K

2017-01-01

In biology, a missing link connecting data generation and data-driven discovery is the training that prepares researchers to effectively manage and analyze data. National and international cyberinfrastructure along with evolving private sector resources place biologists and students within reach of the tools needed for data-intensive biology, but training is still required to make effective use of them. In this concept paper, we review a number of opportunities and challenges that can inform the creation of a national bioinformatics training infrastructure capable of servicing the large number of emerging and existing life scientists. While college curricula are slower to adapt, grassroots startup-spirited organizations, such as Software and Data Carpentry, have made impressive inroads in training on the best practices of software use, development, and data analysis. Given the transformative potential of biology and medicine as full-fledged data sciences, more support is needed to organize, amplify, and assess these efforts and their impacts. © 2016 New York Academy of Sciences.

SpectraFox: A free open-source data management and analysis tool for scanning probe microscopy and spectroscopy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ruby, Michael

In the last decades scanning probe microscopy and spectroscopy have become well-established tools in nanotechnology and surface science. This opened the market for many commercial manufacturers, each with different hardware and software standards. Besides the advantage of a wide variety of available hardware, the diversity may software-wise complicate the data exchange between scientists, and the data analysis for groups working with hardware developed by different manufacturers. Not only the file format differs between manufacturers, but also the data often requires further numerical treatment before publication. SpectraFox is an open-source and independent tool which manages, processes, and evaluates scanning probe spectroscopy and microscopy data. It aims at simplifying the documentation in parallel to measurement, and it provides solid evaluation tools for a large number of data.

Astro-H/Hitomi data analysis, processing, and archive

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Angelini, Lorella; Terada, Yukikatsu; Dutka, Michael; Eggen, Joseph; Harrus, Ilana; Hill, Robert S.; Krimm, Hans; Loewenstein, Michael; Miller, Eric D.; Nobukawa, Masayoshi; Rutkowski, Kristin; Sargent, Andrew; Sawada, Makoto; Takahashi, Hiromitsu; Yamaguchi, Hiroya; Yaqoob, Tahir; Witthoeft, Michael

2018-01-01

Astro-H is the x-ray/gamma-ray mission led by Japan with international participation, launched on February 17, 2016. Soon after launch, Astro-H was renamed Hitomi. The payload consists of four different instruments (SXS, SXI, HXI, and SGD) that operate simultaneously to cover the energy range from 0.3 keV up to 600 keV. On March 27, 2016, JAXA lost contact with the satellite and, on April 28, they announced the cessation of the efforts to restore mission operations. Hitomi collected about one month's worth of data with its instruments. This paper presents the analysis software and the data processing pipeline created to calibrate and analyze the Hitomi science data, along with the plan for the archive. These activities have been a collaborative effort shared between scientists and software engineers working in several institutes in Japan and United States.

Multi-Scale Sizing of Lightweight Multifunctional Spacecraft Structural Components

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bednarcyk, Brett A.

2005-01-01

This document is the final report for the project entitled, "Multi-Scale Sizing of Lightweight Multifunctional Spacecraft Structural Components," funded under the NRA entitled "Cross-Enterprise Technology Development Program" issued by the NASA Office of Space Science in 2000. The project was funded in 2001, and spanned a four year period from March, 2001 to February, 2005. Through enhancements to and synthesis of unique, state of the art structural mechanics and micromechanics analysis software, a new multi-scale tool has been developed that enables design, analysis, and sizing of advance lightweight composite and smart materials and structures from the full vehicle, to the stiffened structure, to the micro (fiber and matrix) scales. The new software tool has broad, cross-cutting value to current and future NASA missions that will rely on advanced composite and smart materials and structures.

Contamination control research activities for space optics in JAXA RANDD

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kimoto, Y.

2017-11-01

Contamination control research activities for space optics projects in JAXA R&D are described. More accurate contamination control techniques are requested because of intensified recent science mission requirements. One approach to control the contamination effects is analysis by software. JAXA has been developing a contamination analytical tool "J-SPICE" (Japanese Spacecraft Induced Contamination analysis software) as well as experiment facilities to improve the J-SPICE. A reflection model in J-SPICE has been experimentally verified and outgassing model data has been acquired by a facility. JAXA has developed a facility which could determine the influence of the contamination at a specific wavelength by combining a vacuum chamber with an I-R spectrometer and performed an experiment to inspect the effect of baking. Space material exposure experiment results reveal the actual thickness of the contamination layer in ISS orbit.

Challenges in Timeseries Analysis from Microlensing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Street, R. A.

2017-06-01

Despite a flood of discoveries over the last ~ 20 years, our knowledge of the exoplanet population is incomplete owing to a gap between the sensitivities of different detection techniques. However, a census of exoplanets at all separations from their host stars is essential to fully understand planet formation mechanisms. Microlensing offers an effective way to bridge the gap around 1-10 AU and is therefore one of the major science goals of the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) mission. WFIRST's survey of the Galactic Bulge is expected to discover ~ 20,000 microlensing events, including ~ 3000 planets, which represents a substantial data analysis challenge with the modeling software currently available. This paper highlights areas where further work is needed. The community is encouraged to join new software development efforts aimed at making the modeling of microlensing events both more accessible and rigorous.

Towards a Controlled Vocabulary on Software Engineering Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pizard, Sebastián; Vallespir, Diego

2017-01-01

Software engineering is the discipline that develops all the aspects of the production of software. Although there are guidelines about what topics to include in a software engineering curricula, it is usually unclear which are the best methods to teach them. In any science discipline the construction of a classification schema is a common…

Closing gaps between open software and public data in a hackathon setting: User-centered software prototyping.

PubMed

Busby, Ben; Lesko, Matthew; Federer, Lisa

2016-01-01

In genomics, bioinformatics and other areas of data science, gaps exist between extant public datasets and the open-source software tools built by the community to analyze similar data types.  The purpose of biological data science hackathons is to assemble groups of genomics or bioinformatics professionals and software developers to rapidly prototype software to address these gaps.  The only two rules for the NCBI-assisted hackathons run so far are that 1) data either must be housed in public data repositories or be deposited to such repositories shortly after the hackathon's conclusion, and 2) all software comprising the final pipeline must be open-source or open-use.  Proposed topics, as well as suggested tools and approaches, are distributed to participants at the beginning of each hackathon and refined during the event.  Software, scripts, and pipelines are developed and published on GitHub, a web service providing publicly available, free-usage tiers for collaborative software development. The code resulting from each hackathon is published at https://github.com/NCBI-Hackathons/ with separate directories or repositories for each team.

Mars Science Laboratory Boot Robustness Testing

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Banazadeh, Payam; Lam, Danny

2011-01-01

Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is one of the most complex spacecrafts in the history of mankind. Due to the nature of its complexity, a large number of flight software (FSW) requirements have been written for implementation. In practice, these requirements necessitate very complex and very precise flight software with no room for error. One of flight software's responsibilities is to be able to boot up and check the state of all devices on the spacecraft after the wake up process. This boot up and initialization is crucial to the mission success since any misbehavior of different devices needs to be handled through the flight software. I have created a test toolkit that allows the FSW team to exhaustively test the flight software under variety of different unexpected scenarios and validate that flight software can handle any situation after booting up. The test includes initializing different devices on spacecraft to different configurations and validate at the end of the flight software boot up that the flight software has initialized those devices to what they are suppose to be in that particular scenario.

Data systems and computer science: Software Engineering Program

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Zygielbaum, Arthur I.

1991-01-01

An external review of the Integrated Technology Plan for the Civil Space Program is presented. This review is specifically concerned with the Software Engineering Program. The goals of the Software Engineering Program are as follows: (1) improve NASA's ability to manage development, operation, and maintenance of complex software systems; (2) decrease NASA's cost and risk in engineering complex software systems; and (3) provide technology to assure safety and reliability of software in mission critical applications.

IRAF: Lessons for Project Longevity

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fitzpatrick, M.

2012-09-01

Although sometimes derided as a product of the 80's (or more generously, as a legacy system), the fact that IRAF remains a productive work environment for many astronomers today is a testament to one of its core design principles, portability. This idea has meaning beyond a survey of platforms in use at the peak of a project's active development; for true longevity, a project must be able to weather completely unimagined OS, hardware, data, staffing and political environments. A lack of attention to the broader issues of portability, or the true lifespan of a software system (e.g. archival science may extend for years beyond a given mission, upgraded or similar instruments may be developed that require the same reduction/analysis techniques, etc) might require costly new software development instead of simple code re-use. Additionally, one under-appreciated benefit to having a long history in the community is the trust that users have established in the science results produced by a particular system. However a software system evolves architecturally, preserving this trust (and by implication, the applications themselves) is the key to continued success. In this paper, we will discuss how the system architecture has allowed IRAF to navigate the many changes in computing since it was first released. It is hoped that the lessons learned can be adopted by software systems being built today so that they too can survive long enough to one day earn the distinction of being called a legacy system.

SQL is Dead; Long-live SQL: Relational Database Technology in Science Contexts

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Howe, B.; Halperin, D.

2014-12-01

Relational databases are often perceived as a poor fit in science contexts: Rigid schemas, poor support for complex analytics, unpredictable performance, significant maintenance and tuning requirements --- these idiosyncrasies often make databases unattractive in science contexts characterized by heterogeneous data sources, complex analysis tasks, rapidly changing requirements, and limited IT budgets. In this talk, I'll argue that although the value proposition of typical relational database systems are weak in science, the core ideas that power relational databases have become incredibly prolific in open source science software, and are emerging as a universal abstraction for both big data and small data. In addition, I'll talk about two open source systems we are building to "jailbreak" the core technology of relational databases and adapt them for use in science. The first is SQLShare, a Database-as-a-Service system supporting collaborative data analysis and exchange by reducing database use to an Upload-Query-Share workflow with no installation, schema design, or configuration required. The second is Myria, a service that supports much larger scale data, complex analytics, and supports multiple back end systems. Finally, I'll describe some of the ways our collaborators in oceanography, astronomy, biology, fisheries science, and more are using these systems to replace script-based workflows for reasons of performance, flexibility, and convenience.

The Educational Software Design and Evaluation for K-8: Oral and Dental Health Software

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kabakci, Isil; Birinci, Gurkay; Izmirli, Serkan

2007-01-01

The aim of this study is to inform about the development of the software "Oral and Dental Health" that will supplement the course of Science and Technology for K8 students in the primary school curriculum and to carry out an evaluation study of the software. This software has been prepared for educational purposes. In relation to the…

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Keyes, D.; McInnes, L. C.; Woodward, C.

This report is an outcome of the workshop Multiphysics Simulations: Challenges and Opportunities, sponsored by the Institute of Computing in Science (ICiS). Additional information about the workshop, including relevant reading and presentations on multiphysics issues in applications, algorithms, and software, is available via https://sites.google.com/site/icismultiphysics2011/. We consider multiphysics applications from algorithmic and architectural perspectives, where 'algorithmic' includes both mathematical analysis and computational complexity and 'architectural' includes both software and hardware environments. Many diverse multiphysics applications can be reduced, en route to their computational simulation, to a common algebraic coupling paradigm. Mathematical analysis of multiphysics coupling in this form is not alwaysmore » practical for realistic applications, but model problems representative of applications discussed herein can provide insight. A variety of software frameworks for multiphysics applications have been constructed and refined within disciplinary communities and executed on leading-edge computer systems. We examine several of these, expose some commonalities among them, and attempt to extrapolate best practices to future systems. From our study, we summarize challenges and forecast opportunities. We also initiate a modest suite of test problems encompassing features present in many applications.« less

Mobile Inquiry Learning in Sweden: Development Insights on Interoperability, Extensibility and Sustainability of the LETS GO Software System

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vogel, Bahtijar; Kurti, Arianit; Milrad, Marcelo; Johansson, Emil; Müller, Maximilian

2014-01-01

This paper presents the overall lifecycle and evolution of a software system we have developed in relation to the "Learning Ecology through Science with Global Outcomes" (LETS GO) research project. One of the aims of the project is to support "open inquiry learning" using mobile science collaboratories that provide open…

The Characteristics of Successful MOOCs in the Fields of Software, Science, and Management, According to Students' Perception

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Holstein, Simona; Cohen, Anat

2016-01-01

The characteristics of successful MOOCs were explored in this study. Thousands of student reviews regarding five xMOOCs (Massive Open Online Course) in the fields of software, science, and management were extracted from the Coursetalk website and analyzed by quantitative and qualitative methods using the Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000)…

What Does CALL Have to Offer Computer Science and What Does Computer Science Have to Offer CALL?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cushion, Steve

2006-01-01

We will argue that CALL can usefully be viewed as a subset of computer software engineering and can profit from adopting some of the recent progress in software development theory. The unified modelling language has become the industry standard modelling technique and the accompanying unified process is rapidly gaining acceptance. The manner in…

Annotated Bibliography on Human Factors in Software Development

DTIC Science & Technology

1979-06-01

Information Sciences, 1976, 5, 123-143. Shneiderman. B., Mayer, R., McKay, D., & Heller, P. Experimental investi- gations of the utility of flowcharts ...REPRESENTATIONS OF PROGRAMS, PRODUCTION SCHEDULIWG, AUTOMATIC FLOWCHARTING , -MAPFSR,- AND CERTIFICATION TECHNIQUES. EXAMPLES OF HOW THSSE AIOS AND METHODS CAN...PROCiSS ARE PRESENTED, AND THE ANALYSIS Of THREE SPECIFIC MODELS IS REVIEWED. (0)SP, 5R. . 65 FLOWCHARTING CHAPIN, N. FLOWCHARTING WITH THE ANSI

Report on the Third Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE3)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Katz, Daniel S.; Choi, Sou-Cheng T.; Niemeyer, Kyle E.; Hetherington, James; Löffler, Frank; Gunter, Dan; Idaszak, Ray; Brandt, Steven R.; Miller, Mark A.; Gesing, Sandra; Jones, Nick D.; Weber, Nic; Marru, Suresh; Allen, Gabrielle; Penzenstadler, Birgit; Venters, Colin C.; Davis, Ethan; Hwang, Lorraine; Todorov, Ilian; Patra, Abani; de Val-Borro, Miguel

2016-02-01

This report records and discusses the Third Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE3). The report includes a description of the keynote presentation of the workshop, which served as an overview of sustainable scientific software. It also summarizes a set of lightning talks in which speakers highlighted to-the-point lessons and challenges pertaining to sustaining scientific software. The final and main contribution of the report is a summary of the discussions, future steps, and future organization for a set of self-organized working groups on topics including developing pathways to funding scientific software; constructing useful common metrics for crediting software stakeholders; identifying principles for sustainable software engineering design; reaching out to research software organizations around the world; and building communities for software sustainability. For each group, we include a point of contact and a landing page that can be used by those who want to join that group's future activities. The main challenge left by the workshop is to see if the groups will execute these activities that they have scheduled, and how the WSSSPE community can encourage this to happen.

Overview of the TriBITS Lifecycle Model: Lean/Agile Software Lifecycle Model for Research-based Computational Science and Engineering Software

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Bartlett, Roscoe A; Heroux, Dr. Michael A; Willenbring, James

2012-01-01

Software lifecycles are becoming an increasingly important issue for computational science & engineering (CSE) software. The process by which a piece of CSE software begins life as a set of research requirements and then matures into a trusted high-quality capability is both commonplace and extremely challenging. Although an implicit lifecycle is obviously being used in any effort, the challenges of this process--respecting the competing needs of research vs. production--cannot be overstated. Here we describe a proposal for a well-defined software lifecycle process based on modern Lean/Agile software engineering principles. What we propose is appropriate for many CSE software projects thatmore » are initially heavily focused on research but also are expected to eventually produce usable high-quality capabilities. The model is related to TriBITS, a build, integration and testing system, which serves as a strong foundation for this lifecycle model, and aspects of this lifecycle model are ingrained in the TriBITS system. Indeed this lifecycle process, if followed, will enable large-scale sustainable integration of many complex CSE software efforts across several institutions.« less

A Longitudinal Examination of Middle School Science Learners' Use of Scaffolding In and Around a Dynamic Modeling Tool

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fretz, Eric Bruce

Scaffolding is a term rooted in multiple research communities over decades of development. Customized, contingent support can be provided to learners to enable performances beyond what they can do alone. This dissertation seeks to examine how effectively scaffolds designed to promote articulation (written expressions of learner understanding) actually work, and if this effectiveness and/or the quality of the resulting models changes over time. It longitudinally examines the use of scaffolds designed into a dynamic modeling tool, as it is used by middle school science learners to create, test, and revise models of complex science phenomena like stream ecosystems. This dissertation also reviews the origins of the scaffolding construct, and summarizes conceptions of scaffolding from various lines of research. Scaffolding can be provided by both human and non-human agents, such as computers, which require specialized interface design to ensure maximum effectiveness. In the study, learners created models in four curriculum units over the seventh and eighth grade school years. Additionally, this dissertation examines the nature of the discussion learners have while using these scaffolds and the frequency and types of interpersonal scaffolds employed during the creation of models. Model quality is also examined using a rubric developed through review of prior research on assessing models and concept maps. Learner pairs' model creation sessions on a computer are captured with screen video and learner audio, and then distilled to transcripts for subsequent coding and analysis, supported by qualitative analysis software. Articulation scaffolds were found to succeed in promoting articulations and the quality of those articulations improved over time. Learner dialog associated with these written articulations is of reasonable quality but did not improve over time. Quality of model artifacts did improve over time. The overall use of scaffolding by each learner pair was contrasted with that pairs model quality, but no relationship was found. Software design and classroom implementation implications of these findings are discussed. The frequency of interpersonal scaffolding provided by teachers highlights the need to consider scaffolding holistically and synergistically, with design decisions for software tools made in light of careful analysis as to what human and non-human agents can and should each provide.

A New Approach to Developing Interactive Software Modules Through Graduate Education

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sanders, Nathan E.; Faesi, Chris; Goodman, Alyssa A.

2014-06-01

Educational technology has attained significant importance as a mechanism for supporting experiential learning of science concepts. However, the growth of this mechanism is limited by the significant time and technical expertise needed to develop such products, particularly in specialized fields of science. We sought to test whether interactive, educational, online software modules can be developed effectively by students as a curriculum component of an advanced science course. We discuss a set of 15 such modules developed by Harvard University graduate students to demonstrate various concepts related to astronomy and physics. Their successful development of these modules demonstrates that online software tools for education and outreach on specialized topics can be produced while simultaneously fulfilling project-based learning objectives. We describe a set of technologies suitable for module development and present in detail four examples of modules developed by the students. We offer recommendations for incorporating educational software development within a graduate curriculum and conclude by discussing the relevance of this novel approach to new online learning environments like edX.

Analysis of scientific papers in the field of radiology and medical imaging included in Science Citation Index expanded and published by Turkish authors.

PubMed

Akpinar, Erhan; Karçaaltincaba, Muşturay

2010-09-01

We aimed to analyze scientific papers published by Turkish authors in "radiology, nuclear medicine and medical imaging" journals included in the Science Citation Index Expanded and compared the number of published scientific papers from Turkey and other countries. We retrospectively searched all papers published by Turkish authors between 1945 and 2008 by using Web of Science software. We performed the analysis by typing "Turkey" in the address section and all radiology and medical imaging journals in the source title section using the general search function of the software. We further analyzed these results by using "analyze" function of the software according to the number of publications per year, journals, institution and type of papers. We also calculated total number of citations to published scientific papers using citation report function. We analyzed the rank of Turkey among other countries in terms of the number of published papers. Overall, 4,532 papers were published between 1945 and 2008. The first paper was published in 1976. Number of publications increased dramatically from 1976 (n = 1) to 2008 (n = 383). The top 5 journals publishing papers from Turkish authors were European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (n = 328), Clinical Nuclear Medicine (n = 296), European Journal of Radiology (n = 289), European Radiology (n = 207) and Journal of Clinical Ultrasound (n = 186). All published papers received 18,419 citations and citation to paper ratio was 4.06. The rank of Turkey among other countries in terms of published papers improved during the last 25 years. Number of papers from Turkey published in radiology and medical imaging journals has increased at the start of the new millennium. Currently, Turkey is among the top 12 countries when the number of scientific papers published in radiology journals is taken into consideration.

Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) for the HyspIRI Spectrometer Mission

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Turmon, Michael J.; Block, Gary L.; Green, Robert O.; Hua, Hook; Jacob, Joseph C.; Sobel, Harold R.; Springer, Paul L.; Zhang, Qingyuan

2010-01-01

The OSSE software provides an integrated end-to-end environment to simulate an Earth observing system by iteratively running a distributed modeling workflow based on the HyspIRI Mission, including atmospheric radiative transfer, surface albedo effects, detection, and retrieval for agile exploration of the mission design space. The software enables an Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) and can be used for design trade space exploration of science return for proposed instruments by modeling the whole ground truth, sensing, and retrieval chain and to assess retrieval accuracy for a particular instrument and algorithm design. The OSSE in fra struc ture is extensible to future National Research Council (NRC) Decadal Survey concept missions where integrated modeling can improve the fidelity of coupled science and engineering analyses for systematic analysis and science return studies. This software has a distributed architecture that gives it a distinct advantage over other similar efforts. The workflow modeling components are typically legacy computer programs implemented in a variety of programming languages, including MATLAB, Excel, and FORTRAN. Integration of these diverse components is difficult and time-consuming. In order to hide this complexity, each modeling component is wrapped as a Web Service, and each component is able to pass analysis parameterizations, such as reflectance or radiance spectra, on to the next component downstream in the service workflow chain. In this way, the interface to each modeling component becomes uniform and the entire end-to-end workflow can be run using any existing or custom workflow processing engine. The architecture lets users extend workflows as new modeling components become available, chain together the components using any existing or custom workflow processing engine, and distribute them across any Internet-accessible Web Service endpoints. The workflow components can be hosted on any Internet-accessible machine. This has the advantages that the computations can be distributed to make best use of the available computing resources, and each workflow component can be hosted and maintained by their respective domain experts.

More flexibility in representing geometric distortion in astronomical images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shupe, David L.; Laher, Russ R.; Storrie-Lombardi, Lisa; Surace, Jason; Grillmair, Carl; Levitan, David; Sesar, Branimir

2012-09-01

A number of popular software tools in the public domain are used by astronomers, professional and amateur alike, but some of the tools that have similar purposes cannot be easily interchanged, owing to the lack of a common standard. For the case of image distortion, SCAMP and SExtractor, available from Astromatic.net, perform astrometric calibration and source-object extraction on image data, and image-data geometric distortion is computed in celestial coordinates with polynomial coefficients stored in the FITS header with the PV i_j keywords. Another widely-used astrometric-calibration service, Astrometry.net, solves for distortion in pixel coordinates using the SIP convention that was introduced by the Spitzer Science Center. Up until now, due to the complexity of these distortion representations, it was very difficult to use the output of one of these packages as input to the other. New Python software, along with faster-computing C-language translations, have been developed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) to convert FITS-image headers from PV to SIP and vice versa. It is now possible to straightforwardly use Astrometry.net for astrometric calibration and then SExtractor for source-object extraction. The new software also enables astrometric calibration by SCAMP followed by image visualization with tools that support SIP distortion, but not PV . The software has been incorporated into the image-processing pipelines of the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF), which generate FITS images with headers containing both distortion representations. The software permits the conversion of archived images, such as from the Spitzer Heritage Archive and NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive, from SIP to PV or vice versa. This new capability renders unnecessary any new representation, such as the proposed TPV distortion convention.

A High School-Collegiate Outreach Program in Chemistry and Biology Delivering Modern Technology in a Mobile Van

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Craney, Chris; Mazzeo, April; Lord, Kaye

1996-07-01

During the past five years the nation's concern for science education has expanded from a discussion about the future supply of Ph.D. scientists and its impact on the nation's scientific competitiveness to the broader consideration of the science education available to all students. Efforts to improve science education have led many authors to suggest greater collaboration between high school science teachers and their college/university colleagues. This article reviews the experience and outcomes of the Teachers + Occidental = Partnership in Science (TOPS) van program operating in the Los Angeles Metropolitan area. The program emphasizes an extensive ongoing staff development, responsiveness to teachers' concerns, technical and on-site support, and sustained interaction between participants and program staff. Access to modern technology, including computer-driven instruments and commercial data analysis software, coupled with increased teacher content knowledge has led to empowerment of teachers and changes in student interest in science. Results of student and teacher questionnaires are reviewed.

Shaping Software Engineering Curricula Using Open Source Communities: A Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bowring, James; Burke, Quinn

2016-01-01

This paper documents four years of a novel approach to teaching a two-course sequence in software engineering as part of the ABET-accredited computer science curriculum at the College of Charleston. This approach is team-based and centers on learning software engineering in the context of open source software projects. In the first course, teams…

Gravity Probe B data system description

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bennett, Norman R.

2015-11-01

The Gravity Probe B data system, developed, integrated, and tested by Lockheed Missiles & Space Company, and later Lockheed Martin Corporation, included flight and ground command, control, and communications software. The development was greatly facilitated, conceptually and by the transfer of key personnel, through Lockheed’s earlier flight and ground test software development for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Key design challenges included the tight mission timeline (17 months, 9 days of on-orbit operation), the need to tune the system once on-orbit, and limited 2 Kbps real-time data rates and ground asset availability. The result was a completely integrated space vehicle and Stanford mission operations center, which successfully collected and archived 97% of the ‘guide star valid’ data to support the science analysis. Lessons learned and incorporated from the HST flight software development and on-orbit support experience, and Lockheed’s independent research and development effort, will be discussed.

CosmoQuest Transient Tracker: Opensource Photometry & Astrometry software

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Myers, Joseph L.; Lehan, Cory; Gay, Pamela; Richardson, Matthew; CosmoQuest Team

2018-01-01

CosmoQuest is moving from online citizen science, to observational astronomy with the creation of Transient Trackers. This open source software is designed to identify asteroids and other transient/variable objects in image sets. Transient Tracker’s features in final form will include: astrometric and photometric solutions, identification of moving/transient objects, identification of variable objects, and lightcurve analysis. In this poster we present our initial, v0.1 release and seek community input.This software builds on the existing NIH funded ImageJ libraries. Creation of this suite of opensource image manipulation routines is lead by Wayne Rasband and is released primarily under the MIT license. In this release, we are building on these libraries to add source identification for point / point-like sources, and to do astrometry. Our materials released under the Apache 2.0 license on github (http://github.com/CosmoQuestTeam) and documentation can be found at http://cosmoquest.org/TransientTracker.

Intelligent software for laboratory automation.

PubMed

Whelan, Ken E; King, Ross D

2004-09-01

The automation of laboratory techniques has greatly increased the number of experiments that can be carried out in the chemical and biological sciences. Until recently, this automation has focused primarily on improving hardware. Here we argue that future advances will concentrate on intelligent software to integrate physical experimentation and results analysis with hypothesis formulation and experiment planning. To illustrate our thesis, we describe the 'Robot Scientist' - the first physically implemented example of such a closed loop system. In the Robot Scientist, experimentation is performed by a laboratory robot, hypotheses concerning the results are generated by machine learning and experiments are allocated and selected by a combination of techniques derived from artificial intelligence research. The performance of the Robot Scientist has been evaluated by a rediscovery task based on yeast functional genomics. The Robot Scientist is proof that the integration of programmable laboratory hardware and intelligent software can be used to develop increasingly automated laboratories.

The Simple Video Coder: A free tool for efficiently coding social video data.

PubMed

Barto, Daniel; Bird, Clark W; Hamilton, Derek A; Fink, Brandi C

2017-08-01

Videotaping of experimental sessions is a common practice across many disciplines of psychology, ranging from clinical therapy, to developmental science, to animal research. Audio-visual data are a rich source of information that can be easily recorded; however, analysis of the recordings presents a major obstacle to project completion. Coding behavior is time-consuming and often requires ad-hoc training of a student coder. In addition, existing software is either prohibitively expensive or cumbersome, which leaves researchers with inadequate tools to quickly process video data. We offer the Simple Video Coder-free, open-source software for behavior coding that is flexible in accommodating different experimental designs, is intuitive for students to use, and produces outcome measures of event timing, frequency, and duration. Finally, the software also offers extraction tools to splice video into coded segments suitable for training future human coders or for use as input for pattern classification algorithms.

Basic to Advanced InSAR Processing: GMTSAR

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sandwell, D. T.; Xu, X.; Baker, S.; Hogrelius, A.; Mellors, R. J.; Tong, X.; Wei, M.; Wessel, P.

2017-12-01

Monitoring crustal deformation using InSAR is becoming a standard technique for the science and application communities. Optimal use of the new data streams from Sentinel-1 and NISAR will require open software tools as well as education on the strengths and limitations of the InSAR methods. Over the past decade we have developed freely available, open-source software for processing InSAR data. The software relies on the Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) for the back-end data analysis and display and is thus called GMTSAR. With startup funding from NSF, we accelerated the development of GMTSAR to include more satellite data sources and provide better integration and distribution with GMT. In addition, with support from UNAVCO we have offered 6 GMTSAR short courses to educate mostly novice InSAR users. Currently, the software is used by hundreds of scientists and engineers around the world to study deformation at more than 4300 different sites. The most challenging aspect of the recent software development was the transition from image alignment using the cross-correlation method to a completely new alignment algorithm that uses only the precise orbital information to geometrically align images to an accuracy of better than 7 cm. This development was needed to process a new data type that is being acquired by the Sentinel-1A/B satellites. This combination of software and open data is transforming radar interferometry from a research tool into a fully operational time series analysis tool. Over the next 5 years we are planning to continue to broaden the user base through: improved software delivery methods; code hardening; better integration with data archives; support for high level products being developed for NISAR; and continued education and outreach.

The public communication of science in public health graduate programs in Brazil: From the coordinators' perspective

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Teixeira, C. A.; Gallo, P. R.

2014-12-01

Introduction - The elaboration process of public policies for science and technology in knowledge societies should include not only experts, but all society members. There are studies on lay people's perception of science and technology. However, what is the scientists' perspective on public communication of science? Objectives - To describe and characterize the concepts that coordinators of Brazilian public health graduate programs have about public communication of science. Methods - This is an analytical and descriptive report of an exploratory research (doctoral study). The answers of fifty-one coordinators to two questionnaires were submitted for content analysis. The categories were transformed into variables that allowed the data processing by the Hiérarchique Classificatoire et Cohésitive (CHIC®) software. Results - Similarity analysis strongly suggested (0,99) that coordinators understand public communication as a communication directed to academic peers and students, also as a form of participation in scientific events and communication by scientific papers. Likewise, the implication analysis suggested a strong implication (0,98) between scientific communication understood as public communication. Conclusion - The notion of public communication of science as a social right and as a commitment and responsibility of researchers and research centers is not explicitly present in the narrative of the coordinators, although in general the coordinators conceive it as a relevant activity. This study thus contributes to a reflection on the role of scientists, researchers and research centers in public communication of science and technology.

Designing Computerized Provider Order Entry Software in Iran: The Nurses' and Physicians' Viewpoints.

PubMed

Khammarnia, Mohammad; Sharifian, Roxana; Zand, Farid; Keshtkaran, Ali; Barati, Omid

2016-09-01

This study aimed to identify the functional requirements of computerized provider order entry software and design this software in Iran. This study was conducted using review documentation, interview, and focus group discussions in Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, as the medical pole in Iran, in 2013-2015. The study sample consisted of physicians (n = 12) and nurses (n = 2) in the largest hospital in the southern part of Iran and information technology experts (n = 5) in Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. Functional requirements of the computerized provider order entry system were examined in three phases. Finally, the functional requirements were distributed in four levels, and accordingly, the computerized provider order entry software was designed. The software had seven main dimensions: (1) data entry, (2) drug interaction management system, (3) warning system, (4) treatment services, (5) ability to write in software, (6) reporting from all sections of the software, and (7) technical capabilities of the software. The nurses and physicians emphasized quick access to the computerized provider order entry software, order prescription section, and applicability of the software. The software had some items that had not been mentioned in other studies. Ultimately, the software was designed by a company specializing in hospital information systems in Iran. This study was the first specific investigation of computerized provider order entry software design in Iran. Based on the results, it is suggested that this software be implemented in hospitals.

Exploiting Software Tool Towards Easier Use And Higher Efficiency

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lin, G. H.; Su, J. T.; Deng, Y. Y.

2006-08-01

In developing countries, using data based on instrument made by themselves in maximum extent is very important. It is not only related to maximizing science returns upon prophase investment -- deep accumulations in every aspects but also science output. Based on the idea, we are exploiting a software (called THDP: Tool of Huairou Data Processing). It is used for processing a series of issues, which is met necessary in processing data. This paper discusses its designed purpose, functions, method and specialities. The primary vehicle for general data interpretation is through various techniques of data visualization, techniques of interactive. In the software, we employed Object Oriented approach. It is appropriate to the vehicle. it is imperative that the approach provide not only function, but do so in as convenient a fashion as possible. As result of the software exploiting, it is not only easier to learn data processing for beginner and more convenienter to need further improvement for senior but also increase greatly efficiency in every phrases include analyse, parameter adjusting, result display. Under frame of virtual observatory, for developing countries, we should study more and newer related technologies, which can advance ability and efficiency in science research, like the software we are developing

Transforming High School Classrooms with Free/Open Source Software: "It's Time for an Open Source Software Revolution"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pfaffman, Jay

2008-01-01

Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) applications meet many of the software needs of high school science classrooms. In spite of the availability and quality of FOSS tools, they remain unknown to many teachers and utilized by fewer still. In a world where most software has restrictions on copying and use, FOSS is an anomaly, free to use and to…

Information-computational platform for collaborative multidisciplinary investigations of regional climatic changes and their impacts

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gordov, Evgeny; Lykosov, Vasily; Krupchatnikov, Vladimir; Okladnikov, Igor; Titov, Alexander; Shulgina, Tamara

2013-04-01

Analysis of growing volume of related to climate change data from sensors and model outputs requires collaborative multidisciplinary efforts of researchers. To do it timely and in reliable way one needs in modern information-computational infrastructure supporting integrated studies in the field of environmental sciences. Recently developed experimental software and hardware platform Climate (http://climate.scert.ru/) provides required environment for regional climate change related investigations. The platform combines modern web 2.0 approach, GIS-functionality and capabilities to run climate and meteorological models, process large geophysical datasets and support relevant analysis. It also supports joint software development by distributed research groups, and organization of thematic education for students and post-graduate students. In particular, platform software developed includes dedicated modules for numerical processing of regional and global modeling results for consequent analysis and visualization. Also run of integrated into the platform WRF and «Planet Simulator» models, modeling results data preprocessing and visualization is provided. All functions of the platform are accessible by a user through a web-portal using common graphical web-browser in the form of an interactive graphical user interface which provides, particularly, capabilities of selection of geographical region of interest (pan and zoom), data layers manipulation (order, enable/disable, features extraction) and visualization of results. Platform developed provides users with capabilities of heterogeneous geophysical data analysis, including high-resolution data, and discovering of tendencies in climatic and ecosystem changes in the framework of different multidisciplinary researches. Using it even unskilled user without specific knowledge can perform reliable computational processing and visualization of large meteorological, climatic and satellite monitoring datasets through unified graphical web-interface. Partial support of RF Ministry of Education and Science grant 8345, SB RAS Program VIII.80.2 and Projects 69, 131, 140 and APN CBA2012-16NSY project is acknowledged.

Oracle Database 10g: a platform for BLAST search and Regular Expression pattern matching in life sciences

PubMed Central

Stephens, Susie M.; Chen, Jake Y.; Davidson, Marcel G.; Thomas, Shiby; Trute, Barry M.

2005-01-01

As database management systems expand their array of analytical functionality, they become powerful research engines for biomedical data analysis and drug discovery. Databases can hold most of the data types commonly required in life sciences and consequently can be used as flexible platforms for the implementation of knowledgebases. Performing data analysis in the database simplifies data management by minimizing the movement of data from disks to memory, allowing pre-filtering and post-processing of datasets, and enabling data to remain in a secure, highly available environment. This article describes the Oracle Database 10g implementation of BLAST and Regular Expression Searches and provides case studies of their usage in bioinformatics. http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/index.html PMID:15608287

Giovanni: The Bridge between Data and Science

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Shen, Suhung; Lynnes, Christopher; Kempler, Steven J.

2012-01-01

NASA Giovanni (Goddard Interactive Online Visualization ANd aNalysis Infrastructure) is a web-based remote sensing and model data visualization and analysis system developed by the Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC). This web-based tool facilitates data discovery, exploration and analysis of large amount of global and regional data sets, covering atmospheric dynamics, atmospheric chemistry, hydrology, oceanographic, and land surface. Data analysis functions include Lat-Lon map, time series, scatter plot, correlation map, difference, cross-section, vertical profile, and animation etc. Visualization options enable comparisons of multiple variables and easier refinement. Recently, new features have been developed, such as interactive scatter plots and maps. The performance is also being improved, in some cases by an order of magnitude for certain analysis functions with optimized software. We are working toward merging current Giovanni portals into a single omnibus portal with all variables in one (virtual) location to help users find a variable easily and enhance the intercomparison capability

Maximizing reuse: Applying common sense and discipline

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Waligora, Sharon; Langston, James

1992-01-01

Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC)/System Sciences Division (SSD) has maintained a long-term relationship with NASA/Goddard, providing satellite mission ground-support software and services for 23 years. As a partner in the Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL) since 1976, CSC has worked closely with NASA/Goddard to improve the software engineering process. This paper examines the evolution of reuse programs in this uniquely stable environment and formulates certain recommendations for developing reuse programs as a business strategy and as an integral part of production. It focuses on the management strategy and philosophy that have helped make reuse successful in this environment.

Constructing the Japanese version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Student Survey: Confirmatory factor analysis.

PubMed

Tsubakita, Takashi; Shimazaki, Kazuyo

2016-01-01

To examine the factorial validity of the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Student Survey, using a sample of 2061 Japanese university students majoring in the medical and natural sciences (67.9% male, 31.8% female; Mage  = 19.6 years, standard deviation = 1.5). The back-translated scale used unreversed items to assess inefficacy. The inventory's descriptive properties and Cronbach's alphas were calculated using SPSS software. The present authors compared fit indices of the null, one factor, and default three factor models via confirmatory factor analysis with maximum-likelihood estimation using AMOS software, version 21.0. Intercorrelations between exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy were relatively higher than in prior studies. Cronbach's alphas were 0.76, 0.85, and 0.78, respectively. Although fit indices of the hypothesized three factor model did not meet the respective criteria, the model demonstrated better fit than did the null and one factor models. The present authors added four paths between error variables within items, but the modified model did not show satisfactory fit. Subsequent analysis revealed that a bi-factor model fit the data better than did the hypothesized or modified three factor models. The Japanese version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Student Survey needs minor changes to improve the fit of its three factor model, but the scale as a whole can be used to adequately assess overall academic burnout in Japanese university students. Although the scale was back-translated, two items measuring exhaustion whose expressions overlapped should be modified, and all items measuring inefficacy should be reversed in order to statistically clarify the factorial difference between the scale's three factors. © 2015 The Authors. Japan Journal of Nursing Science © 2015 Japan Academy of Nursing Science.

Improving Software Sustainability: Lessons Learned from Profiles in Science.

PubMed

Gallagher, Marie E

2013-01-01

The Profiles in Science® digital library features digitized surrogates of historical items selected from the archival collections of the U.S. National Library of Medicine as well as collaborating institutions. In addition, it contains a database of descriptive, technical and administrative metadata. It also contains various software components that allow creation of the metadata, management of the digital items, and access to the items and metadata through the Profiles in Science Web site [1]. The choices made building the digital library were designed to maximize the sustainability and long-term survival of all of the components of the digital library [2]. For example, selecting standard and open digital file formats rather than proprietary formats increases the sustainability of the digital files [3]. Correspondingly, using non-proprietary software may improve the sustainability of the software--either through in-house expertise or through the open source community. Limiting our digital library software exclusively to open source software or to software developed in-house has not been feasible. For example, we have used proprietary operating systems, scanning software, a search engine, and office productivity software. We did this when either lack of essential capabilities or the cost-benefit trade-off favored using proprietary software. We also did so knowing that in the future we would need to replace or upgrade some of our proprietary software, analogous to migrating from an obsolete digital file format to a new format as the technological landscape changes. Since our digital library's start in 1998, all of its software has been upgraded or replaced, but the digitized items have not yet required migration to other formats. Technological changes that compelled us to replace proprietary software included the cost of product licensing, product support, incompatibility with other software, prohibited use due to evolving security policies, and product abandonment. Sometimes these changes happen on short notice, so we continually monitor our library's software for signs of endangerment. We have attempted to replace proprietary software with suitable in-house or open source software. When the replacement involves a standalone piece of software with a nearly equivalent version, such as replacing a commercial HTTP server with an open source HTTP server, the replacement is straightforward. Recently we replaced software that functioned not only as our search engine but also as the backbone of the architecture of our Web site. In this paper, we describe the lessons learned and the pros and cons of replacing this software with open source software.

Modeling the Evolution of a Science Project in Software-Reliant System Acquisition Programs

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-07-24

might: • Limit worker burnout • Perform better regarding schedule 10 Software Technology Conference April 10, 2013 © 2013 Carnegie Mellon...University The Evolution of a Science Project Key Preliminary Findings -3 The tipping point contributes to the “90% Done” Syndrome Percentage...worker burnout - SP User Satisfaction SP increasing satisfaction indicated satisfaction + + B3 Moderating User Satisfaction overage switch demand switch

Applications of multigrid software in the atmospheric sciences

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Adams, J.; Garcia, R.; Gross, B.; Hack, J.; Haidvogel, D.; Pizzo, V.

1992-01-01

Elliptic partial differential equations from different areas in the atmospheric sciences are efficiently and easily solved utilizing the multigrid software package named MUDPACK. It is demonstrated that the multigrid method is more efficient than other commonly employed techniques, such as Gaussian elimination and fixed-grid relaxation. The efficiency relative to other techniques, both in terms of storage requirement and computational time, increases quickly with grid size.

Generic Software for Emulating Multiprocessor Architectures.

DTIC Science & Technology

1985-05-01

RD-A157 662 GENERIC SOFTWARE FOR EMULATING MULTIPROCESSOR 1/2 AlRCHITECTURES(J) MASSACHUSETTS INST OF TECH CAMBRIDGE U LRS LAB FOR COMPUTER SCIENCE R...AREA & WORK UNIT NUMBERS MIT Laboratory for Computer Science 545 Technology Square Cambridge, MA 02139 ____________ I I. CONTROLLING OFFICE NAME AND...aide If neceeasy end Identify by block number) Computer architecture, emulation, simulation, dataf low 20. ABSTRACT (Continue an reverse slde It

Science Gateways, Scientific Workflows and Open Community Software

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pierce, M. E.; Marru, S.

2014-12-01

Science gateways and scientific workflows occupy different ends of the spectrum of user-focused cyberinfrastructure. Gateways, sometimes called science portals, provide a way for enabling large numbers of users to take advantage of advanced computing resources (supercomputers, advanced storage systems, science clouds) by providing Web and desktop interfaces and supporting services. Scientific workflows, at the other end of the spectrum, support advanced usage of cyberinfrastructure that enable "power users" to undertake computational experiments that are not easily done through the usual mechanisms (managing simulations across multiple sites, for example). Despite these different target communities, gateways and workflows share many similarities and can potentially be accommodated by the same software system. For example, pipelines to process InSAR imagery sets or to datamine GPS time series data are workflows. The results and the ability to make downstream products may be made available through a gateway, and power users may want to provide their own custom pipelines. In this abstract, we discuss our efforts to build an open source software system, Apache Airavata, that can accommodate both gateway and workflow use cases. Our approach is general, and we have applied the software to problems in a number of scientific domains. In this talk, we discuss our applications to usage scenarios specific to earth science, focusing on earthquake physics examples drawn from the QuakSim.org and GeoGateway.org efforts. We also examine the role of the Apache Software Foundation's open community model as a way to build up common commmunity codes that do not depend upon a single "owner" to sustain. Pushing beyond open source software, we also see the need to provide gateways and workflow systems as cloud services. These services centralize operations, provide well-defined programming interfaces, scale elastically, and have global-scale fault tolerance. We discuss our work providing Apache Airavata as a hosted service to provide these features.

Numerical bifurcation analysis of immunological models with time delays

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Luzyanina, Tatyana; Roose, Dirk; Bocharov, Gennady

2005-12-01

In recent years, a large number of mathematical models that are described by delay differential equations (DDEs) have appeared in the life sciences. To analyze the models' dynamics, numerical methods are necessary, since analytical studies can only give limited results. In turn, the availability of efficient numerical methods and software packages encourages the use of time delays in mathematical modelling, which may lead to more realistic models. We outline recently developed numerical methods for bifurcation analysis of DDEs and illustrate the use of these methods in the analysis of a mathematical model of human hepatitis B virus infection.

Results of Software and Services Citations Review at ESIP

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hausman, J.; Gallagher, J. H. R.; Stall, S.

2017-12-01

Citations for software and services/tools are important as they provide a way to improve reproducibility of science, better provenance and easier to attribute credit to the developers. Software citations are trickier than papers or data as software can be very dynamic so it is a bit of a moving target. It is even more difficult for services/tools as they usually have data as inputs so now a relation between the tool and data is needed. There are suggested citation formats, but they do not always contain enough information that can easily gleaned or obtained from a metrics crawler. At the Summer 2017 Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) meeting a workshop was held to evaluate the effectiveness of a citation. This presentation will summarize those results and put forth adjustments to the format. These adjustments will make it easier to verify that the citation is for a service or software and for information harvesting.

The need for scientific software engineering in the pharmaceutical industry

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Luty, Brock; Rose, Peter W.

2017-03-01

Scientific software engineering is a distinct discipline from both computational chemistry project support and research informatics. A scientific software engineer not only has a deep understanding of the science of drug discovery but also the desire, skills and time to apply good software engineering practices. A good team of scientific software engineers can create a software foundation that is maintainable, validated and robust. If done correctly, this foundation enable the organization to investigate new and novel computational ideas with a very high level of efficiency.

The need for scientific software engineering in the pharmaceutical industry.

PubMed

Luty, Brock; Rose, Peter W

2017-03-01

Scientific software engineering is a distinct discipline from both computational chemistry project support and research informatics. A scientific software engineer not only has a deep understanding of the science of drug discovery but also the desire, skills and time to apply good software engineering practices. A good team of scientific software engineers can create a software foundation that is maintainable, validated and robust. If done correctly, this foundation enable the organization to investigate new and novel computational ideas with a very high level of efficiency.

Software Reviews.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wulfson, Stephen, Ed.

1987-01-01

Provides a review of four science software programs. Includes topics such as plate tectonics, laboratory experiment simulations, the human body, and light and temperature. Contains information on ordering and reviewers' comments. (ML)

PYCHEM: a multivariate analysis package for python.

PubMed

Jarvis, Roger M; Broadhurst, David; Johnson, Helen; O'Boyle, Noel M; Goodacre, Royston

2006-10-15

We have implemented a multivariate statistical analysis toolbox, with an optional standalone graphical user interface (GUI), using the Python scripting language. This is a free and open source project that addresses the need for a multivariate analysis toolbox in Python. Although the functionality provided does not cover the full range of multivariate tools that are available, it has a broad complement of methods that are widely used in the biological sciences. In contrast to tools like MATLAB, PyChem 2.0.0 is easily accessible and free, allows for rapid extension using a range of Python modules and is part of the growing amount of complementary and interoperable scientific software in Python based upon SciPy. One of the attractions of PyChem is that it is an open source project and so there is an opportunity, through collaboration, to increase the scope of the software and to continually evolve a user-friendly platform that has applicability across a wide range of analytical and post-genomic disciplines. http://sourceforge.net/projects/pychem

Scientific Visualization Using the Flow Analysis Software Toolkit (FAST)

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bancroft, Gordon V.; Kelaita, Paul G.; Mccabe, R. Kevin; Merritt, Fergus J.; Plessel, Todd C.; Sandstrom, Timothy A.; West, John T.

1993-01-01

Over the past few years the Flow Analysis Software Toolkit (FAST) has matured into a useful tool for visualizing and analyzing scientific data on high-performance graphics workstations. Originally designed for visualizing the results of fluid dynamics research, FAST has demonstrated its flexibility by being used in several other areas of scientific research. These research areas include earth and space sciences, acid rain and ozone modelling, and automotive design, just to name a few. This paper describes the current status of FAST, including the basic concepts, architecture, existing functionality and features, and some of the known applications for which FAST is being used. A few of the applications, by both NASA and non-NASA agencies, are outlined in more detail. Described in the Outlines are the goals of each visualization project, the techniques or 'tricks' used lo produce the desired results, and custom modifications to FAST, if any, done to further enhance the analysis. Some of the future directions for FAST are also described.

Utility of coupling nonlinear optimization methods with numerical modeling software

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Murphy, M.J.

1996-08-05

Results of using GLO (Global Local Optimizer), a general purpose nonlinear optimization software package for investigating multi-parameter problems in science and engineering is discussed. The package consists of the modular optimization control system (GLO), a graphical user interface (GLO-GUI), a pre-processor (GLO-PUT), a post-processor (GLO-GET), and nonlinear optimization software modules, GLOBAL & LOCAL. GLO is designed for controlling and easy coupling to any scientific software application. GLO runs the optimization module and scientific software application in an iterative loop. At each iteration, the optimization module defines new values for the set of parameters being optimized. GLO-PUT inserts the new parametermore » values into the input file of the scientific application. GLO runs the application with the new parameter values. GLO-GET determines the value of the objective function by extracting the results of the analysis and comparing to the desired result. GLO continues to run the scientific application over and over until it finds the ``best`` set of parameters by minimizing (or maximizing) the objective function. An example problem showing the optimization of material model is presented (Taylor cylinder impact test).« less

Executive Guide to Software Maintenance. Reports on Computer Science and Technology.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Osborne, Wilma M.

This guide is designed for federal executives and managers who have a responsibility for the planning and management of software projects and for federal staff members who are affected by, or involved in, making software changes, and who need to be aware of steps that can reduce both the difficulty and cost of software maintenance. Organized in a…

Closing gaps between open software and public data in a hackathon setting: User-centered software prototyping

PubMed Central

Busby, Ben; Lesko, Matthew; Federer, Lisa

2016-01-01

In genomics, bioinformatics and other areas of data science, gaps exist between extant public datasets and the open-source software tools built by the community to analyze similar data types.  The purpose of biological data science hackathons is to assemble groups of genomics or bioinformatics professionals and software developers to rapidly prototype software to address these gaps.  The only two rules for the NCBI-assisted hackathons run so far are that 1) data either must be housed in public data repositories or be deposited to such repositories shortly after the hackathon’s conclusion, and 2) all software comprising the final pipeline must be open-source or open-use.  Proposed topics, as well as suggested tools and approaches, are distributed to participants at the beginning of each hackathon and refined during the event.  Software, scripts, and pipelines are developed and published on GitHub, a web service providing publicly available, free-usage tiers for collaborative software development. The code resulting from each hackathon is published at https://github.com/NCBI-Hackathons/ with separate directories or repositories for each team. PMID:27134733

Code query by example

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Vaucouleur, Sebastien

2011-02-01

We introduce code query by example for customisation of evolvable software products in general and of enterprise resource planning systems (ERPs) in particular. The concept is based on an initial empirical study on practices around ERP systems. We motivate our design choices based on those empirical results, and we show how the proposed solution helps with respect to the infamous upgrade problem: the conflict between the need for customisation and the need for upgrade of ERP systems. We further show how code query by example can be used as a form of lightweight static analysis, to detect automatically potential defects in large software products. Code query by example as a form of lightweight static analysis is particularly interesting in the context of ERP systems: it is often the case that programmers working in this field are not computer science specialists but more of domain experts. Hence, they require a simple language to express custom rules.

Reviews Book: Extended Project Student Guide Book: My Inventions Book: ASE Guide to Research in Science Education Classroom Video: The Science of Starlight Software: SPARKvue Book: The Geek Manifesto Ebook: A Big Ball of Fire Apps

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

2014-05-01

WE RECOMMEND Level 3 Extended Project Student Guide A non-specialist, generally useful and nicely put together guide to project work ASE Guide to Research in Science Education Few words wasted in this handy introduction and reference The Science of Starlight Slow but steady DVD covers useful ground SPARKvue Impressive software now available as an app WORTH A LOOK My Inventions and Other Writings Science, engineering, autobiography, visions and psychic phenomena mixed in a strange but revealing concoction The Geek Manifesto: Why Science Matters More enthusiasm than science, but a good motivator and interesting A Big Ball of Fire: Your questions about the Sun answered Free iTunes download made by and for students goes down well APPS Collider visualises LHC experiments ... Science Museum app enhances school trips ... useful information for the Cambridge Science Festival

Lunar and Planetary Science XXXV: Image Processing and Earth Observations

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

2004-01-01

The titles in this section include: 1) Expansion in Geographic Information Services for PIGWAD; 2) Modernization of the Integrated Software for Imagers and Spectrometers; 3) Science-based Region-of-Interest Image Compression; 4) Topographic Analysis with a Stereo Matching Tool Kit; 5) Central Avra Valley Storage and Recovery Project (CAVSARP) Site, Tucson, Arizona: Floodwater and Soil Moisture Investigations with Extraterrestrial Applications; 6) ASE Floodwater Classifier Development for EO-1 HYPERION Imagery; 7) Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment (ASE) Operations on EO-1 in 2004; 8) Autonomous Vegetation Cover Scene Classification of EO-1 Hyperion Hyperspectral Data; 9) Long-Term Continental Areal Reduction Produced by Tectonic Processes.

Iterative categorization (IC): a systematic technique for analysing qualitative data

PubMed Central

2016-01-01

Abstract The processes of analysing qualitative data, particularly the stage between coding and publication, are often vague and/or poorly explained within addiction science and research more broadly. A simple but rigorous and transparent technique for analysing qualitative textual data, developed within the field of addiction, is described. The technique, iterative categorization (IC), is suitable for use with inductive and deductive codes and can support a range of common analytical approaches, e.g. thematic analysis, Framework, constant comparison, analytical induction, content analysis, conversational analysis, discourse analysis, interpretative phenomenological analysis and narrative analysis. Once the data have been coded, the only software required is a standard word processing package. Worked examples are provided. PMID:26806155

NASA Tech Briefs, October 1997. Volume 21, No. 10

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1997-01-01

Topics covered include: Sensors/Imaging; Mechanical Components; Electronic Components and Circuits; Electronic Systems; Physical Sciences; Materials; Computer Software; Mechanics; Machinery/Automation; Manufacturing/Fabrication; Mathematics and Information Sciences; Life Sciences; Books and Reports.

The SCEC Community Modeling Environment(SCEC/CME): A Collaboratory for Seismic Hazard Analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Maechling, P. J.; Jordan, T. H.; Minster, J. B.; Moore, R.; Kesselman, C.

2005-12-01

The SCEC Community Modeling Environment (SCEC/CME) Project is an NSF-supported Geosciences/IT partnership that is actively developing an advanced information infrastructure for system-level earthquake science in Southern California. This partnership includes SCEC, USC's Information Sciences Institute (ISI), the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), the Incorporated Institutions for Research in Seismology (IRIS), and the U.S. Geological Survey. The goal of the SCEC/CME is to develop seismological applications and information technology (IT) infrastructure to support the development of Seismic Hazard Analysis (SHA) programs and other geophysical simulations. The SHA application programs developed on the Project include a Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis system called OpenSHA. OpenSHA computational elements that are currently available include a collection of attenuation relationships, and several Earthquake Rupture Forecasts (ERFs). Geophysicists in the collaboration have also developed Anelastic Wave Models (AWMs) using both finite-difference and finite-element approaches. Earthquake simulations using these codes have been run for a variety of earthquake sources. Rupture Dynamic Model (RDM) codes have also been developed that simulate friction-based fault slip. The SCEC/CME collaboration has also developed IT software and hardware infrastructure to support the development, execution, and analysis of these SHA programs. To support computationally expensive simulations, we have constructed a grid-based scientific workflow system. Using the SCEC grid, project collaborators can submit computations from the SCEC/CME servers to High Performance Computers at USC and TeraGrid High Performance Computing Centers. Data generated and archived by the SCEC/CME is stored in a digital library system, the Storage Resource Broker (SRB). This system provides a robust and secure system for maintaining the association between the data seta and their metadata. To provide an easy-to-use system for constructing SHA computations, a browser-based workflow assembly web portal has been developed. Users can compose complex SHA calculations, specifying SCEC/CME data sets as inputs to calculations, and calling SCEC/CME computational programs to process the data and the output. Knowledge-based software tools have been implemented that utilize ontological descriptions of SHA software and data can validate workflows created with this pathway assembly tool. Data visualization software developed by the collaboration supports analysis and validation of data sets. Several programs have been developed to visualize SCEC/CME data including GMT-based map making software for PSHA codes, 4D wavefield propagation visualization software based on OpenGL, and 3D Geowall-based visualization of earthquakes, faults, and seismic wave propagation. The SCEC/CME Project also helps to sponsor the SCEC UseIT Intern program. The UseIT Intern Program provides research opportunities in both Geosciences and Information Technology to undergraduate students in a variety of fields. The UseIT group has developed a 3D data visualization tool, called SCEC-VDO, as a part of this undergraduate research program.

Software Management Metrics

DTIC Science & Technology

1988-05-01

obtained from Dr. Barry Boehm’s Software 5650, Contract No. F19628-86-C-O001, Engineering Economics [1] and from T. J. ESD/MITRE Software Center Acquisition...of References 1. Boehm, Barry W., SoJtware Engineering 3. Halstead, M. H., Elements of SoJhtare Economics, Englewood Cliffs, New Science, New York...1983, pp. 639-648. 35 35 - Bibliography Beizer, B., Software System Testing and Pressman , Roger S., Software Engineering:QualtyO Assurance, New York: Van

Pulsed Neutron Powder Diffraction for Materials Science

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kamiyama, T.

2008-03-01

The accelerator-based neutron diffraction began in the end of 60's at Tohoku University which was succeeded by the four spallation neutron facilities with proton accelerators at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (Japan), Argonne National Laboratory and Los Alamos Laboratory (USA), and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (UK). Since then, the next generation source has been pursued for 20 years, and 1MW-class spallation neutron sources will be appeared in about three years at the three parts of the world: Japan, UK and USA. The joint proton accelerator project (J-PARC), a collaborative project between KEK and JAEA, is one of them. The aim of the talk is to describe about J-PARC and the neutron diffractometers being installed at the materials and life science facility of J-PARC. The materials and life science facility of J-PARC has 23 neutron beam ports and will start delivering the first neutron beam of 25 Hz from 2008 May. Until now, more than 20 proposals have been reviewed by the review committee, and accepted proposal groups have started to get fund. Those proposals include five polycrystalline diffractometers: a super high resolution powder diffractometer (SHRPD), a 0.2%-resolution powder diffractometer of Ibaraki prefecture (IPD), an engineering diffractometers (Takumi), a high intensity S(Q) diffractometer (VSD), and a high-pressure dedicated diffractometer. SHRPD, Takumi and IPD are being designed and constructed by the joint team of KEK, JAEA and Ibaraki University, whose member are originally from the KEK powder group. These three instruments are expected to start in 2008. VSD is a super high intensity diffractometer with the highest resolution of Δd/d = 0.3%. VSD can measure rapid time-dependent phenomena of crystalline materials as well as glass, liquid and amorphous materials. The pair distribution function will be routinely obtained by the Fourier transiformation of S(Q) data. Q range of VSD will be as wide as 0.01 Å-1

Archiving Software Systems: Approaches to Preserve Computational Capabilities

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

King, T. A.

2014-12-01

A great deal of effort is made to preserve scientific data. Not only because data is knowledge, but it is often costly to acquire and is sometimes collected under unique circumstances. Another part of the science enterprise is the development of software to process and analyze the data. Developed software is also a large investment and worthy of preservation. However, the long term preservation of software presents some challenges. Software often requires a specific technology stack to operate. This can include software, operating systems and hardware dependencies. One past approach to preserve computational capabilities is to maintain ancient hardware long past its typical viability. On an archive horizon of 100 years, this is not feasible. Another approach to preserve computational capabilities is to archive source code. While this can preserve details of the implementation and algorithms, it may not be possible to reproduce the technology stack needed to compile and run the resulting applications. This future forward dilemma has a solution. Technology used to create clouds and process big data can also be used to archive and preserve computational capabilities. We explore how basic hardware, virtual machines, containers and appropriate metadata can be used to preserve computational capabilities and to archive functional software systems. In conjunction with data archives, this provides scientist with both the data and capability to reproduce the processing and analysis used to generate past scientific results.

The NCI High Performance Computing (HPC) and High Performance Data (HPD) Platform to Support the Analysis of Petascale Environmental Data Collections

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Evans, B. J. K.; Pugh, T.; Wyborn, L. A.; Porter, D.; Allen, C.; Smillie, J.; Antony, J.; Trenham, C.; Evans, B. J.; Beckett, D.; Erwin, T.; King, E.; Hodge, J.; Woodcock, R.; Fraser, R.; Lescinsky, D. T.

2014-12-01

The National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) has co-located a priority set of national data assets within a HPC research platform. This powerful in-situ computational platform has been created to help serve and analyse the massive amounts of data across the spectrum of environmental collections - in particular the climate, observational data and geoscientific domains. This paper examines the infrastructure, innovation and opportunity for this significant research platform. NCI currently manages nationally significant data collections (10+ PB) categorised as 1) earth system sciences, climate and weather model data assets and products, 2) earth and marine observations and products, 3) geosciences, 4) terrestrial ecosystem, 5) water management and hydrology, and 6) astronomy, social science and biosciences. The data is largely sourced from the NCI partners (who include the custodians of many of the national scientific records), major research communities, and collaborating overseas organisations. By co-locating these large valuable data assets, new opportunities have arisen by harmonising the data collections, making a powerful transdisciplinary research platformThe data is accessible within an integrated HPC-HPD environment - a 1.2 PFlop supercomputer (Raijin), a HPC class 3000 core OpenStack cloud system and several highly connected large scale and high-bandwidth Lustre filesystems. New scientific software, cloud-scale techniques, server-side visualisation and data services have been harnessed and integrated into the platform, so that analysis is performed seamlessly across the traditional boundaries of the underlying data domains. Characterisation of the techniques along with performance profiling ensures scalability of each software component, all of which can either be enhanced or replaced through future improvements. A Development-to-Operations (DevOps) framework has also been implemented to manage the scale of the software complexity alone. This ensures that software is both upgradable and maintainable, and can be readily reused with complexly integrated systems and become part of the growing global trusted community tools for cross-disciplinary research.

Software Reviews.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wulfson, Stephen, Ed.

1990-01-01

Reviewed are six computer software packages including "Lunar Greenhouse,""Dyno-Quest,""How Weather Works,""Animal Trackers,""Personal Science Laboratory," and "The Skeletal and Muscular Systems." Availability, functional, and hardware requirements are discussed. (CW)

Software Reviews.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Classroom Computer Learning, 1988

1988-01-01

Provides reviews of three software packages including "MusicShapes,""For Comment," and "Colortrope," which were developed for music, writing, and science, respectively. Includes information on grade levels, publishers, hardware needed, and cost. (TW)

Incremental Centrality Algorithms for Dynamic Network Analysis

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-08-01

encouragement he gave me to complete my degree. Last but not least, I would like to thank CASOS members for insightful discussions and feedback they gave me at...Systems ( CASOS ) under the Institute for Software Research within the School of Computer Science (SCS) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Financial...discusses several ways of generalizing betweenness 23 centrality including scaling of values with respect to length, inclusion of end-points in the

Detection of genomic rearrangements in cucumber using genomecmp software

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kulawik, Maciej; Pawełkowicz, Magdalena Ewa; Wojcieszek, Michał; PlÄ der, Wojciech; Nowak, Robert M.

2017-08-01

Comparative genomic by increasing information about the genomes sequences available in the databases is a rapidly evolving science. A simple comparison of the general features of genomes such as genome size, number of genes, and chromosome number presents an entry point into comparative genomic analysis. Here we present the utility of the new tool genomecmp for finding rearrangements across the compared sequences and applications in plant comparative genomics.

Center for Center for Technology for Advanced Scientific Component Software (TASCS)

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Kostadin, Damevski

A resounding success of the Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program is that high-performance computational science is now universally recognized as a critical aspect of scientific discovery [71], complementing both theoretical and experimental research. As scientific communities prepare to exploit unprecedented computing capabilities of emerging leadership-class machines for multi-model simulations at the extreme scale [72], it is more important than ever to address the technical and social challenges of geographically distributed teams that combine expertise in domain science, applied mathematics, and computer science to build robust and flexible codes that can incorporate changes over time. The Center for Technologymore » for Advanced Scientific Component Software (TASCS)1 tackles these these issues by exploiting component-based software development to facilitate collaborative high-performance scientific computing.« less

Reducing Time to Science: Unidata and JupyterHub Technology Using the Jetstream Cloud

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chastang, J.; Signell, R. P.; Fischer, J. L.

2017-12-01

Cloud computing can accelerate scientific workflows, discovery, and collaborations by reducing research and data friction. We describe the deployment of Unidata and JupyterHub technologies on the NSF-funded XSEDE Jetstream cloud. With the aid of virtual machines and Docker technology, we deploy a Unidata JupyterHub server co-located with a Local Data Manager (LDM), THREDDS data server (TDS), and RAMADDA geoscience content management system. We provide Jupyter Notebooks and the pre-built Python environments needed to run them. The notebooks can be used for instruction and as templates for scientific experimentation and discovery. We also supply a large quantity of NCEP forecast model results to allow data-proximate analysis and visualization. In addition, users can transfer data using Globus command line tools, and perform their own data-proximate analysis and visualization with Notebook technology. These data can be shared with others via a dedicated TDS server for scientific distribution and collaboration. There are many benefits of this approach. Not only is the cloud computing environment fast, reliable and scalable, but scientists can analyze, visualize, and share data using only their web browser. No local specialized desktop software or a fast internet connection is required. This environment will enable scientists to spend less time managing their software and more time doing science.

ProbCD: enrichment analysis accounting for categorization uncertainty.

PubMed

Vêncio, Ricardo Z N; Shmulevich, Ilya

2007-10-12

As in many other areas of science, systems biology makes extensive use of statistical association and significance estimates in contingency tables, a type of categorical data analysis known in this field as enrichment (also over-representation or enhancement) analysis. In spite of efforts to create probabilistic annotations, especially in the Gene Ontology context, or to deal with uncertainty in high throughput-based datasets, current enrichment methods largely ignore this probabilistic information since they are mainly based on variants of the Fisher Exact Test. We developed an open-source R-based software to deal with probabilistic categorical data analysis, ProbCD, that does not require a static contingency table. The contingency table for the enrichment problem is built using the expectation of a Bernoulli Scheme stochastic process given the categorization probabilities. An on-line interface was created to allow usage by non-programmers and is available at: http://xerad.systemsbiology.net/ProbCD/. We present an analysis framework and software tools to address the issue of uncertainty in categorical data analysis. In particular, concerning the enrichment analysis, ProbCD can accommodate: (i) the stochastic nature of the high-throughput experimental techniques and (ii) probabilistic gene annotation.

BioImg.org: A Catalog of Virtual Machine Images for the Life Sciences

PubMed Central

Dahlö, Martin; Haziza, Frédéric; Kallio, Aleksi; Korpelainen, Eija; Bongcam-Rudloff, Erik; Spjuth, Ola

2015-01-01

Virtualization is becoming increasingly important in bioscience, enabling assembly and provisioning of complete computer setups, including operating system, data, software, and services packaged as virtual machine images (VMIs). We present an open catalog of VMIs for the life sciences, where scientists can share information about images and optionally upload them to a server equipped with a large file system and fast Internet connection. Other scientists can then search for and download images that can be run on the local computer or in a cloud computing environment, providing easy access to bioinformatics environments. We also describe applications where VMIs aid life science research, including distributing tools and data, supporting reproducible analysis, and facilitating education. BioImg.org is freely available at: https://bioimg.org. PMID:26401099

BioImg.org: A Catalog of Virtual Machine Images for the Life Sciences.

PubMed

Dahlö, Martin; Haziza, Frédéric; Kallio, Aleksi; Korpelainen, Eija; Bongcam-Rudloff, Erik; Spjuth, Ola

2015-01-01

Virtualization is becoming increasingly important in bioscience, enabling assembly and provisioning of complete computer setups, including operating system, data, software, and services packaged as virtual machine images (VMIs). We present an open catalog of VMIs for the life sciences, where scientists can share information about images and optionally upload them to a server equipped with a large file system and fast Internet connection. Other scientists can then search for and download images that can be run on the local computer or in a cloud computing environment, providing easy access to bioinformatics environments. We also describe applications where VMIs aid life science research, including distributing tools and data, supporting reproducible analysis, and facilitating education. BioImg.org is freely available at: https://bioimg.org.

GigaDB: promoting data dissemination and reproducibility

PubMed Central

Sneddon, Tam P.; Si Zhe, Xiao; Edmunds, Scott C.; Li, Peter; Goodman, Laurie; Hunter, Christopher I.

2014-01-01

Often papers are published where the underlying data supporting the research are not made available because of the limitations of making such large data sets publicly and permanently accessible. Even if the raw data are deposited in public archives, the essential analysis intermediaries, scripts or software are frequently not made available, meaning the science is not reproducible. The GigaScience journal is attempting to address this issue with the associated data storage and dissemination portal, the GigaScience database (GigaDB). Here we present the current version of GigaDB and reveal plans for the next generation of improvements. However, most importantly, we are soliciting responses from you, the users, to ensure that future developments are focused on the data storage and dissemination issues that still need resolving. Database URL: http://www.gigadb.org PMID:24622612

An Overview of High Performance Computing and Challenges for the Future

ScienceCinema

Google Tech Talks

2017-12-09

In this talk we examine how high performance computing has changed over the last 10-year and look toward the future in terms of trends. These changes have had and will continue to have a major impact on our software. A new generation of software libraries and lgorithms are needed for the effective and reliable use of (wide area) dynamic, distributed and parallel environments. Some of the software and algorithm challenges have already been encountered, such as management of communication and memory hierarchies through a combination of compile--time and run--time techniques, but the increased scale of computation, depth of memory hierarchies, range of latencies, and increased run--time environment variability will make these problems much harder. We will focus on the redesign of software to fit multicore architectures. Speaker: Jack Dongarra University of Tennessee Oak Ridge National Laboratory University of Manchester Jack Dongarra received a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Chicago State University in 1972 and a Master of Science in Computer Science from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1973. He received his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of New Mexico in 1980. He worked at the Argonne National Laboratory until 1989, becoming a senior scientist. He now holds an appointment as University Distinguished Professor of Computer Science in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Tennessee, has the position of a Distinguished Research Staff member in the Computer Science and Mathematics Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Turing Fellow in the Computer Science and Mathematics Schools at the University of Manchester, and an Adjunct Professor in the Computer Science Department at Rice University. He specializes in numerical algorithms in linear algebra, parallel computing, the use of advanced-computer architectures, programming methodology, and tools for parallel computers. His research includes the development, testing and documentation of high quality mathematical software. He has contributed to the design and implementation of the following open source software packages and systems: EISPACK, LINPACK, the BLAS, LAPACK, ScaLAPACK, Netlib, PVM, MPI, NetSolve, Top500, ATLAS, and PAPI. He has published approximately 200 articles, papers, reports and technical memoranda and he is coauthor of several books. He was awarded the IEEE Sid Fernbach Award in 2004 for his contributions in the application of high performance computers using innovative approaches. He is a Fellow of the AAAS, ACM, and the IEEE and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

An Overview of High Performance Computing and Challenges for the Future

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Google Tech Talks

In this talk we examine how high performance computing has changed over the last 10-year and look toward the future in terms of trends. These changes have had and will continue to have a major impact on our software. A new generation of software libraries and lgorithms are needed for the effective and reliable use of (wide area) dynamic, distributed and parallel environments. Some of the software and algorithm challenges have already been encountered, such as management of communication and memory hierarchies through a combination of compile--time and run--time techniques, but the increased scale of computation, depth of memory hierarchies,more » range of latencies, and increased run--time environment variability will make these problems much harder. We will focus on the redesign of software to fit multicore architectures. Speaker: Jack Dongarra University of Tennessee Oak Ridge National Laboratory University of Manchester Jack Dongarra received a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Chicago State University in 1972 and a Master of Science in Computer Science from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1973. He received his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of New Mexico in 1980. He worked at the Argonne National Laboratory until 1989, becoming a senior scientist. He now holds an appointment as University Distinguished Professor of Computer Science in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Tennessee, has the position of a Distinguished Research Staff member in the Computer Science and Mathematics Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Turing Fellow in the Computer Science and Mathematics Schools at the University of Manchester, and an Adjunct Professor in the Computer Science Department at Rice University. He specializes in numerical algorithms in linear algebra, parallel computing, the use of advanced-computer architectures, programming methodology, and tools for parallel computers. His research includes the development, testing and documentation of high quality mathematical software. He has contributed to the design and implementation of the following open source software packages and systems: EISPACK, LINPACK, the BLAS, LAPACK, ScaLAPACK, Netlib, PVM, MPI, NetSolve, Top500, ATLAS, and PAPI. He has published approximately 200 articles, papers, reports and technical memoranda and he is coauthor of several books. He was awarded the IEEE Sid Fernbach Award in 2004 for his contributions in the application of high performance computers using innovative approaches. He is a Fellow of the AAAS, ACM, and the IEEE and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.« less

A survey of geographical information systems applications for the Earth Science and Applications Division, Space Sciences Laboratory, Marshall Space Flight Center

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Rickman, D.; Butler, K. A.; Laymon, C. A.

1994-01-01

The purpose of this document is to introduce Geographical Information System (GIS) terminology and summarize interviews conducted with scientists in the Earth Science and Applications Division (ESAD). There is a growing need in ESAD for GIS technology. With many different data sources available to the scientists comes the need to be able to process and view these data in an efficient manner. Since most of these data are stored in vastly different formats, specialized software and hardware are needed. Several ESAD scientists have been using a GIS, specifically the Man-computer Interactive Data Access System (MCIDAS). MCIDAS can solve many of the research problems that arise, but there are areas of research that need more powerful tools; one such example is the multispectral image analysis which is described in this document. Given the strong need for GIS in ESAD, we recommend that a requirements analysis and implementation plan be developed using this document as a basis for further investigation.

Analyzing the research in Integrative & Complementary Medicine by means of science mapping.

PubMed

Moral-Muñoz, J A; Cobo, M J; Peis, E; Arroyo-Morales, M; Herrera-Viedma, E

2014-04-01

The research in the Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) field is analyzed according to the journals indexed in ISI Web of Science. Science Mapping Analysis (SMA) is used to provide and overview of the conceptual evolution of the CAM field. The software SciMAT is used to detect and visualize the hidden themes and their evolution over a consecutive span of years. It combines SMA and performance analysis. Twenty one journals related to CAM were analyzed, in four consecutive periods from 1974 to 2011. Strategic diagrams and the thematic evolution of CAM, together with performance indicators (h-index), were obtained. The results show that CAM research has focused on seven main thematic areas: MEDICINAL-PLANTS, CHIROPRACTIC-AND-LOW-BACK-PAIN, ACUPUNCTURE-AND-PAIN, CELL-PROCESSES-AND-DISEASES, LIPID-PEROXIDATION and DIABETES-AND-INSULIN. The research output could be used by the scientific community to identify thematic areas on which interest is focused. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

New space sensor and mesoscale data analysis

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hickey, John S.

1987-01-01

The developed Earth Science and Application Division (ESAD) system/software provides the research scientist with the following capabilities: an extensive data base management capibility to convert various experiment data types into a standard format; and interactive analysis and display package (AVE80); an interactive imaging/color graphics capability utilizing the Apple III and IBM PC workstations integrated into the ESAD computer system; and local and remote smart-terminal capability which provides color video, graphics, and Laserjet output. Recommendations for updating and enhancing the performance of the ESAD computer system are listed.

iGlobe Interactive Visualization and Analysis of Spatial Data

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hogan, Patrick

2012-01-01

iGlobe is open-source software built on NASA World Wind virtual globe technology. iGlobe provides a growing set of tools for weather science, climate research, and agricultural analysis. Up until now, these types of sophisticated tools have been developed in isolation by national agencies, academic institutions, and research organizations. By providing an open-source solution to analyze and visualize weather, climate, and agricultural data, the scientific and research communities can more readily advance solutions needed to understand better the dynamics of our home planet, Earth

Guidance on Software Maintenance. Final Report. Reports on Computer Science and Technology.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Martin, Roger J.; Osborne, Wilma M.

Based on informal discussions with personnel at selected federal agencies and private sector organizations and on additional research, this publication addresses issues and problems of software maintenance and suggests actions and procedures which can help software maintenance organizations meet the growing demands of maintaining existing systems.…

Modeling and MBL: Software Tools for Science.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tinker, Robert F.

Recent technological advances and new software packages put unprecedented power for experimenting and theory-building in the hands of students at all levels. Microcomputer-based laboratory (MBL) and model-solving tools illustrate the educational potential of the technology. These tools include modeling software and three MBL packages (which are…

Software-Realized Scaffolding to Facilitate Programming for Science Learning.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Guzdial, Mark

1994-01-01

Discussion of the use of programming as a learning activity focuses on software-realized scaffolding. Emile, software that facilitates programming for modeling and simulation in physics, is described, and results of an evaluation of the use of Emile with high school students are reported. (Contains 95 references.) (LRW)

Company's Unusual Plan to Package Commercial Software with Business Textbooks Produces a Measure of Success.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Watkins, Beverly T.

1992-01-01

Course Technology Inc. has developed 10 products combining textbooks with commercial software for college accounting, business, computer science, and statistics courses. Five of the products use Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet software. The products have been positively received by teachers and students. (DB)

Sustainable Software Decisions for Long-term Projects (Invited)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shepherd, A.; Groman, R. C.; Chandler, C. L.; Gaylord, D.; Sun, M.

2013-12-01

Adopting new, emerging technologies can be difficult for established projects that are positioned to exist for years to come. In some cases the challenge lies in the pre-existing software architecture. In others, the challenge lies in the fluctuation of resources like people, time and funding. The Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO) was created in late 2006 by combining the data management offices for the U.S. GLOBEC and U.S. JGOFS programs to publish data for researchers funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Since its inception, BCO-DMO has been supporting access and discovery of these data through web-accessible software systems, and the office has worked through many of the challenges of incorporating new technologies into its software systems. From migrating human readable, flat file metadata storage into a relational database, and now, into a content management system (Drupal) to incorporating controlled vocabularies, new technologies can radically affect the existing software architecture. However, through the use of science-driven use cases, effective resource management, and loosely coupled software components, BCO-DMO has been able to adapt its existing software architecture to adopt new technologies. One of the latest efforts at BCO-DMO revolves around applying metadata semantics for publishing linked data in support of data discovery. This effort primarily affects the metadata web interface software at http://bco-dmo.org and the geospatial interface software at http://mapservice.bco-dmo.org/. With guidance from science-driven use cases and consideration of our resources, implementation decisions are made using a strategy to loosely couple the existing software systems to the new technologies. The results of this process led to the use of REST web services and a combination of contributed and custom Drupal modules for publishing BCO-DMO's content using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) via an instance of the Virtuoso Open-Source triplestore.

Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial in the field of planetary science

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Frigeri, A.

2012-12-01

Information technology applied to geospatial analyses has spread quickly in the last ten years. The availability of OpenData and data from collaborative mapping projects increased the interest on tools, procedures and methods to handle spatially-related information. Free Open Source Software projects devoted to geospatial data handling are gaining a good success as the use of interoperable formats and protocols allow the user to choose what pipeline of tools and libraries is needed to solve a particular task, adapting the software scene to his specific problem. In particular, the Free Open Source model of development mimics the scientific method very well, and researchers should be naturally encouraged to take part to the development process of these software projects, as this represent a very agile way to interact among several institutions. When it comes to planetary sciences, geospatial Free Open Source Software is gaining a key role in projects that commonly involve different subjects in an international scenario. Very popular software suites for processing scientific mission data (for example, ISIS) and for navigation/planning (SPICE) are being distributed along with the source code and the interaction between user and developer is often very strict, creating a continuum between these two figures. A very widely spread library for handling geospatial data (GDAL) has started to support planetary data from the Planetary Data System, and recent contributions enabled the support to other popular data formats used in planetary science, as the Vicar one. The use of Geographic Information System in planetary science is now diffused, and Free Open Source GIS, open GIS formats and network protocols allow to extend existing tools and methods developed to solve Earth based problems, also to the case of the study of solar system bodies. A day in the working life of a researcher using Free Open Source Software for geospatial will be presented, as well as benefits and solutions to possible detriments coming from the effort required by using, supporting and contributing.

Data Analysis of a Space Experiment: Common Software Tackles Uncommon Task

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wilkinson, R. Allen

1998-01-01

Presented here are the software adaptations developed by laboratory scientists to process the space experiment data products from three experiments on two International Microgravity Laboratory Missions (IML-1 and IML-2). The challenge was to accommodate interacting with many types of hardware and software developed by both European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA aerospace contractors, where data formats were neither commercial nor familiar to scientists. Some of the data had been corrupted by bit shifting of byte boundaries. Least-significant/most-significant byte swapping also occurred as might be expected for the various hardware platforms involved. The data consisted of 20 GBytes per experiment of both numerical and image data. A significant percentage of the bytes were consumed in NASA formatting with extra layers of packetizing structure. It was provided in various pieces to the scientists on magnetic tapes, Syquest cartridges, DAT tapes, CD-ROMS, analog video tapes, and by network FIP. In this paper I will provide some science background and present the software processing used to make the data useful in the months after the missions.

NASA Tech Briefs, August 2010

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

2010-01-01

Topics covered include: Technology Focus: Mechanical Components; Electronics/Computers; Software; Materials; Mechanics/Machinery; Manufacturing; Bio-Medical; Physical Sciences; Information Sciences; and Books and Reports.

Early development of Science Opportunity Analysis tools for the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cardesin Moinelo, Alejandro; Vallat, Claire; Altobelli, Nicolas; Frew, David; Llorente, Rosario; Costa, Marc; Almeida, Miguel; Witasse, Olivier

2016-10-01

JUICE is the first large mission in the framework of ESA's Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program. JUICE will survey the Jovian system with a special focus on three of the Galilean Moons: Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.The mission has recently been adopted and big efforts are being made by the Science Operations Center (SOC) at the European Space and Astronomy Centre (ESAC) in Madrid for the development of tools to provide the necessary support to the Science Working Team (SWT) for science opportunity analysis and early assessment of science operation scenarios. This contribution will outline some of the tools being developed within ESA and in collaboration with the Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility (NAIF) at JPL.The Mission Analysis and Payload Planning Support (MAPPS) is developed by ESA and has been used by most of ESA's planetary missions to generate and validate science observation timelines for the simulation of payload and spacecraft operations. MAPPS has the capability to compute and display all the necessary geometrical information such as the distances, illumination angles and projected field-of-view of an imaging instrument on the surface of the given body and a preliminary setup is already in place for the early assessment of JUICE science operations.NAIF provides valuable SPICE support to the JUICE mission and several tools are being developed to compute and visualize science opportunities. In particular the WebGeoCalc and Cosmographia systems are provided by NAIF to compute time windows and create animations of the observation geometry available via traditional SPICE data files, such as planet orbits, spacecraft trajectory, spacecraft orientation, instrument field-of-view "cones" and instrument footprints. Other software tools are being developed by ESA and other collaborating partners to support the science opportunity analysis for all missions, like the SOLab (Science Operations Laboratory) or new interfaces for observation definitions and opportunity window databases.

An Investigation of Software Scaffolds Supporting Modeling Practices

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fretz, Eric B.; Wu, Hsin-Kai; Zhang, Baohui; Davis, Elizabeth A.; Krajcik, Joseph S.; Soloway, Elliot

2002-08-01

Modeling of complex systems and phenomena is of value in science learning and is increasingly emphasised as an important component of science teaching and learning. Modeling engages learners in desired pedagogical activities. These activities include practices such as planning, building, testing, analysing, and critiquing. Designing realistic models is a difficult task. Computer environments allow the creation of dynamic and even more complex models. One way of bringing the design of models within reach is through the use of scaffolds. Scaffolds are intentional assistance provided to learners from a variety of sources, allowing them to complete tasks that would otherwise be out of reach. Currently, our understanding of how scaffolds in software tools assist learners is incomplete. In this paper the scaffolds designed into a dynamic modeling software tool called Model-It are assessed in terms of their ability to support learners' use of modeling practices. Four pairs of middle school students were video-taped as they used the modeling software for three hours, spread over a two week time frame. Detailed analysis of coded videotape transcripts provided evidence of the importance of scaffolds in supporting the use of modeling practices. Learners used a variety of modeling practices, the majority of which occurred in conjunction with scaffolds. The use of three tool scaffolds was assessed as directly as possible, and these scaffolds were seen to support a variety of modeling practices. An argument is made for the continued empirical validation of types and instances of tool scaffolds, and further investigation of the important role of teacher and peer scaffolding in the use of scaffolded tools.

Assurance Evaluation for OSS Adoption in a Telco Context

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ardagna, Claudio A.; Banzi, Massimo; Damiani, Ernesto; El Ioini, Nabil; Frati, Fulvio

Software Assurance (SwA) is a complex concept that involves different stages of a software development process and may be defined differently depending on its focus, as for instance software quality, security, or dependability. In Computer Science, the term assurance is referred to all activities necessary to provide enough confidence that a software product will satisfy its users’ functional and non-functional requirements.

Canputer Science and Technology: Introduction to Software Packages

DTIC Science & Technology

1984-04-01

Table 5 Sources of Software Packages.20 Table 6 Reference Services Matrix . 33 Table 7 Reference Matrix.40 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 Document...consideration should be given to the acquisition of appropriate software packages to replace or upgrade existing services and to provide services not...Consequently, there are many companies that produce only software packages, and are committed to providing training, service , and support. These vendors

Biology Needs Evolutionary Software Tools: Let’s Build Them Right

PubMed Central

Team, Galaxy; Goecks, Jeremy; Taylor, James

2018-01-01

Abstract Research in population genetics and evolutionary biology has always provided a computational backbone for life sciences as a whole. Today evolutionary and population biology reasoning are essential for interpretation of large complex datasets that are characteristic of all domains of today’s life sciences ranging from cancer biology to microbial ecology. This situation makes algorithms and software tools developed by our community more important than ever before. This means that we, developers of software tool for molecular evolutionary analyses, now have a shared responsibility to make these tools accessible using modern technological developments as well as provide adequate documentation and training. PMID:29688462

Transient loads analysis for space flight applications

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Thampi, S. K.; Vidyasagar, N. S.; Ganesan, N.

1992-01-01

A significant part of the flight readiness verification process involves transient analysis of the coupled Shuttle-payload system to determine the low frequency transient loads. This paper describes a methodology for transient loads analysis and its implementation for the Spacelab Life Sciences Mission. The analysis is carried out using two major software tools - NASTRAN and an external FORTRAN code called EZTRAN. This approach is adopted to overcome some of the limitations of NASTRAN's standard transient analysis capabilities. The method uses Data Recovery Matrices (DRM) to improve computational efficiency. The mode acceleration method is fully implemented in the DRM formulation to recover accurate displacements, stresses, and forces. The advantages of the method are demonstrated through a numerical example.

NASA Tech Briefs, July 1997. Volume 21, No. 7

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1997-01-01

Topics: Mechanical Components; Electronic Components and Circuits; Electronic Systems; Physical Sciences; Materials; Computer Software; Mechanics; Machinery/Automation; Manufacturing/Fabrication; Life Sciences.

Advanced Online Survival Analysis Tool for Predictive Modelling in Clinical Data Science.

PubMed

Montes-Torres, Julio; Subirats, José Luis; Ribelles, Nuria; Urda, Daniel; Franco, Leonardo; Alba, Emilio; Jerez, José Manuel

2016-01-01

One of the prevailing applications of machine learning is the use of predictive modelling in clinical survival analysis. In this work, we present our view of the current situation of computer tools for survival analysis, stressing the need of transferring the latest results in the field of machine learning to biomedical researchers. We propose a web based software for survival analysis called OSA (Online Survival Analysis), which has been developed as an open access and user friendly option to obtain discrete time, predictive survival models at individual level using machine learning techniques, and to perform standard survival analysis. OSA employs an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based method to produce the predictive survival models. Additionally, the software can easily generate survival and hazard curves with multiple options to personalise the plots, obtain contingency tables from the uploaded data to perform different tests, and fit a Cox regression model from a number of predictor variables. In the Materials and Methods section, we depict the general architecture of the application and introduce the mathematical background of each of the implemented methods. The study concludes with examples of use showing the results obtained with public datasets.

Advanced Online Survival Analysis Tool for Predictive Modelling in Clinical Data Science

PubMed Central

Montes-Torres, Julio; Subirats, José Luis; Ribelles, Nuria; Urda, Daniel; Franco, Leonardo; Alba, Emilio; Jerez, José Manuel

2016-01-01

One of the prevailing applications of machine learning is the use of predictive modelling in clinical survival analysis. In this work, we present our view of the current situation of computer tools for survival analysis, stressing the need of transferring the latest results in the field of machine learning to biomedical researchers. We propose a web based software for survival analysis called OSA (Online Survival Analysis), which has been developed as an open access and user friendly option to obtain discrete time, predictive survival models at individual level using machine learning techniques, and to perform standard survival analysis. OSA employs an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based method to produce the predictive survival models. Additionally, the software can easily generate survival and hazard curves with multiple options to personalise the plots, obtain contingency tables from the uploaded data to perform different tests, and fit a Cox regression model from a number of predictor variables. In the Materials and Methods section, we depict the general architecture of the application and introduce the mathematical background of each of the implemented methods. The study concludes with examples of use showing the results obtained with public datasets. PMID:27532883

Software Reviews.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wulfson, Stephen, Ed.

1987-01-01

Reviews seven computer software programs that can be used in science education programs. Describes courseware which deals with muscles and bones, terminology, classifying animals without backbones, molecular structures, drugs, genetics, and shaping the earth's surface. (TW)

Dave Roberts | NREL

Science.gov Websites

Engineer in Colorado. He has expertise in building science, building energy simulation, and software simulation and software development projects, and served as product manager for the REM/Rate(tm) home energy

Software Reviews.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wulfson, Stephen, Ed.

1987-01-01

Provides reviews of six computer software programs designed for use in elementary science education programs. Provides the title, publisher, grade level, and descriptions of courseware on ant farms, drugs, genetics, beachcombing, matter, and test generation. (TW)

Spacecraft Onboard Software Maintenance: An Effective Approach which Reduces Costs and Increases Science Return

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Shell, Elaine M.; Lue, Yvonne; Chu, Martha I.

1999-01-01

Flight software (FSW) is a mission critical element of spacecraft functionality and performance. When ground operations personnel interface to a spacecraft, they are dealing almost entirely with onboard software. This software, even more than ground/flight communications systems, is expected to perform perfectly at all times during all phases of on-orbit mission life. Due to the fact that FSW can be reconfigured and reprogrammed to accommodate new spacecraft conditions, the on-orbit FSW maintenance team is usually significantly responsible for the long-term success of a science mission. Failure of FSW can result in very expensive operations work-around costs and lost science opportunities. There are three basic approaches to staffing on-orbit software maintenance, namely: (1) using the original developers, (2) using mission operations personnel, or (3) assembling a Center of Excellence for multi-spacecraft on-orbit FSW support. This paper explains a National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Goddard Space Flight Center (NASA/GSFC) experience related to the roles of on-orbit FSW maintenance personnel. It identifies the advantages and disadvantages of each of the three approaches to staffing the FSW roles, and demonstrates how a cost efficient on-orbit FSW Maintenance Center of Excellence can be established and maintained with significant return on the investment.

Computational Infrastructure for Geodynamics (CIG)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gurnis, M.; Kellogg, L. H.; Bloxham, J.; Hager, B. H.; Spiegelman, M.; Willett, S.; Wysession, M. E.; Aivazis, M.

2004-12-01

Solid earth geophysicists have a long tradition of writing scientific software to address a wide range of problems. In particular, computer simulations came into wide use in geophysics during the decade after the plate tectonic revolution. Solution schemes and numerical algorithms that developed in other areas of science, most notably engineering, fluid mechanics, and physics, were adapted with considerable success to geophysics. This software has largely been the product of individual efforts and although this approach has proven successful, its strength for solving problems of interest is now starting to show its limitations as we try to share codes and algorithms or when we want to recombine codes in novel ways to produce new science. With funding from the NSF, the US community has embarked on a Computational Infrastructure for Geodynamics (CIG) that will develop, support, and disseminate community-accessible software for the greater geodynamics community from model developers to end-users. The software is being developed for problems involving mantle and core dynamics, crustal and earthquake dynamics, magma migration, seismology, and other related topics. With a high level of community participation, CIG is leveraging state-of-the-art scientific computing into a suite of open-source tools and codes. The infrastructure that we are now starting to develop will consist of: (a) a coordinated effort to develop reusable, well-documented and open-source geodynamics software; (b) the basic building blocks - an infrastructure layer - of software by which state-of-the-art modeling codes can be quickly assembled; (c) extension of existing software frameworks to interlink multiple codes and data through a superstructure layer; (d) strategic partnerships with the larger world of computational science and geoinformatics; and (e) specialized training and workshops for both the geodynamics and broader Earth science communities. The CIG initiative has already started to leverage and develop long-term strategic partnerships with open source development efforts within the larger thrusts of scientific computing and geoinformatics. These strategic partnerships are essential as the frontier has moved into multi-scale and multi-physics problems in which many investigators now want to use simulation software for data interpretation, data assimilation, and hypothesis testing.

The FORTRAN static source code analyzer program (SAP) user's guide, revision 1

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Decker, W.; Taylor, W.; Eslinger, S.

1982-01-01

The FORTRAN Static Source Code Analyzer Program (SAP) User's Guide (Revision 1) is presented. SAP is a software tool designed to assist Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL) personnel in conducting studies of FORTRAN programs. SAP scans FORTRAN source code and produces reports that present statistics and measures of statements and structures that make up a module. This document is a revision of the previous SAP user's guide, Computer Sciences Corporation document CSC/TM-78/6045. SAP Revision 1 is the result of program modifications to provide several new reports, additional complexity analysis, and recognition of all statements described in the FORTRAN 77 standard. This document provides instructions for operating SAP and contains information useful in interpreting SAP output.

GNSS CORS hardware and software enabling new science

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Drummond, P.

2009-12-01

GNSS CORS networks are enabling new opportunities for science and public and private sector business. This paper will explore how the newest geodetic monitoring software and GNSS receiver hardware from Trimble Navigation Ltd are enabling new science. Technology trends and science opportunities will be explored. These trends include the installation of active GNSS control, automation of observations and processing, and the advantages of multi-observable and multi-constellation observations, all performed with the use of off the shelf products and industry standard open-source data formats. Also the possibilities with moving science from an after-the-fact postprocessed model to a real-time epoch-by-epoch solution will be explored. This presentation will also discuss the combination of existing GNSS CORS networks with project specific installations used for monitoring. Experience is showing GNSS is able to provide higher resolution data than previous methods, providing new tools for science, decision makers and financial planners.

Geospatial Education and Research Development: A Laboratory for Remote Sensing and Environmental Analysis (LaRSEA)

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Allen, Thomas R., Jr.

1999-01-01

Old Dominion University has claimed the title "University of the 21st Century," with a bold emphasis on technology innovation and application. In keeping with this claim, the proposed work has implemented a new laboratory equipped for remote sensing as well as curriculum and research innovations afforded for present and future faculty and students. The developments summarized within this report would not have been possible without the support of the NASA grant and significant cost-sharing of several units within the University. The grant effectively spring-boarded the university into major improvements in its approach to remote sensing and geospatial information technologies. The university has now committed to licensing Erdas Imagine software for the laboratory, a campus-wide ESRI geographic information system (GIS) products license, and several smaller software and hardware utilities available to faculty and students through the laboratory. Campus beneficiaries of this grant have included faculty from departments including Ocean, Earth. and Atmospheric Sciences, Political Science and Geography, Ecological Sciences, Environmental Health, and Civil and Environmental Engineering. High student interest is evidenced in students in geology, geography, ecology, urban studies, and planning. Three new courses have been added to the catalog and offered this year. Cross-cutting curriculum changes are in place with growing enrollments in remote sensing, GIS, and a new co-taught seminar in applied coastal remote sensing. The enabling grant has also allowed project participants to attract external funding for research grants, thereby providing additional funds beyond the planned matching, maintenance and growth of software and hardware, and stipends for student assistants. Two undergraduate assistants and two graduate assistants have been employed by full-time assistantships as a result. A new certificate is offered to students completing an interdisciplinary course sequence in remote sensing and coastal environments. Subsequent phases of the project are under planning. including seminars for regional coastal managers and public dissemination of remote sensing science through the local media and university publications.

Modernizing Earth and Space Science Modeling Workflows in the Big Data Era

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kinter, J. L.; Feigelson, E.; Walker, R. J.; Tino, C.

2017-12-01

Modeling is a major aspect of the Earth and space science research. The development of numerical models of the Earth system, planetary systems or astrophysical systems is essential to linking theory with observations. Optimal use of observations that are quite expensive to obtain and maintain typically requires data assimilation that involves numerical models. In the Earth sciences, models of the physical climate system are typically used for data assimilation, climate projection, and inter-disciplinary research, spanning applications from analysis of multi-sensor data sets to decision-making in climate-sensitive sectors with applications to ecosystems, hazards, and various biogeochemical processes. In space physics, most models are from first principles, require considerable expertise to run and are frequently modified significantly for each case study. The volume and variety of model output data from modeling Earth and space systems are rapidly increasing and have reached a scale where human interaction with data is prohibitively inefficient. A major barrier to progress is that modeling workflows isn't deemed by practitioners to be a design problem. Existing workflows have been created by a slow accretion of software, typically based on undocumented, inflexible scripts haphazardly modified by a succession of scientists and students not trained in modern software engineering methods. As a result, existing modeling workflows suffer from an inability to onboard new datasets into models; an inability to keep pace with accelerating data production rates; and irreproducibility, among other problems. These factors are creating an untenable situation for those conducting and supporting Earth system and space science. Improving modeling workflows requires investments in hardware, software and human resources. This paper describes the critical path issues that must be targeted to accelerate modeling workflows, including script modularization, parallelization, and automation in the near term, and longer term investments in virtualized environments for improved scalability, tolerance for lossy data compression, novel data-centric memory and storage technologies, and tools for peer reviewing, preserving and sharing workflows, as well as fundamental statistical and machine learning algorithms.

GeoPad: Innovative Applications of Information Technology in Field Science Education

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Knoop, P. A.; van der Pluijm, B.

2003-12-01

A core requirement for most undergraduate degrees in the Earth sciences is a course in field geology, which provides students with training in field science methodologies, including geologic mapping. The University of Michigan Geological Sciences' curriculum includes a seven-week, summer field course, GS-440, based out of the university's Camp Davis Geologic Field Station, near Jackson, WY. Such field-based courses stand to benefit tremendously from recent innovations in Information Technology \\(IT\\), especially in the form of increasing portability, new haptic interfaces for personal computers, and advancements in Geographic Information System \\(GIS\\) software. Such innovations are enabling in-the-field, real-time access to powerful data collection, analysis, visualization, and interpretation tools. The benefits of these innovations, however, can only be realized on a broad basis when the IT reaches a level of maturity at which users can easily employ it to enhance their learning experience and scientific activities, rather than the IT itself being a primary focus of the curriculum or a constraint on field activities. The GeoPad represents a combination of these novel technologies that achieves that goal. The GeoPad concept integrates a ruggedized Windows XP TabletPC equipped with wireless networking, a portable GPS receiver, digital camera, microphone-headset, voice-recognition software, GIS, and supporting, digital, geo-referenced data-sets. A key advantage of the GeoPad is enabling field-based usage of visualization software and data focusing on \\(3D\\) geospatial relationships \\(developed as part of the complementary GeoWall initiative\\), which provides a powerful new tool for enhancing and facilitating undergraduate field geology education, as demonstrated during the summer 2003 session of GS-440. In addition to an education in field methodologies, students also gain practical experience using IT that they will encounter during their continued educational, research, or professional careers. This approach is immediately applicable to field geology courses elsewhere and indeed to other field-oriented programs \\(e.g., in biology, archeology, ecology\\), given similar needs.