Scientific Collaboratories: Remote Research and Education Via the Internet

Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory

Scientific Collaboratories: Remote Research and Education Via the Internet

James D. Myers

EMSL Collaboratory Project

Pacific Northwest

National Laboratory


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DOE Restoration Challenges at Hanford• Cost:

– $40 B (FY1989)

– $80 B (FY1992)

• Time– 30+ years

• Complex Problem– 1500+ Sites

– 1.4 billion cubic meters of contaminated soils

– 900,000 cubic meters of radioactive waste

– 70+ megacuries of radioactive waste

– 150 square miles of contaminated aquifer

• Compliance Requirements– EPA

– State


Environmental Molecular Sciences LaboratoryPacific Northwest National Laboratory

... to advance molecular science and support the long-term environmental missions of the U.S. Department of Energy.

... to make unique research resources available to DOE scientists and researchers from academia and industry. ... to provide the opportunities needed to educate and recruit young scientists to meet the demanding challenges of the future.

Mission

Collaborative Research Facility


Scientific Issues: Contaminated Soils and Groundwater


A Collaboratory is a “... ‘center without walls,’ in which the nation’s researchers can perform their research without regard to geographical location

– interacting with colleagues,

– accessing instrumentation,

– sharing data and computational resources, [and]

– accessing information in digital libraries.”

Bill Wulf (1989)

... going beyond text exchange and conference/presentation metaphors; bringing scientific resources into an environment to allow in-depth, collaborative work.

The Collaboratory Concept


Supporting Scientific Collaboration

• Discovery

• Contact / Setup

• Training

• Remote Experiment Monitoring

• Remote Analysis

• Remote Consultation

• Joint Authoring of Papers


Scientific Collaboration:

• Intermittent

• Involves complex, multidimensional data

• No routine data handling

• Discovery/learning

• Archetypes:– Peer-to-Peer

– Mentor-Student

– Inter-disciplinary

– Producer - Consumer


The Collaborative Research Environment (CORE) Design Goals

• Simple - easy to learn, no IP/port numbers

• Ubiquitous - cross-platform

• Integrated - single logon

• Extensible - easily add needed scientific resources

• Flexible - supporting different work processes

• Secure - for safety, intellectual property

• Reliable - guaranteed quality of service

• Transparent - allows natural social interaction


Lab NotebookWhat the User Sees

Colleagues

Session Manager

Shared Computer Display

Whiteboard

Analysis Tools

Scientific Instruments

Information Browsing


Collaboratory Access via the WWW

• WebTour

• File Transfer

• Chat Box

• Televiewer

• Audio/Video

• Whiteboard

• Data Notebook

• On-line Instruments

Start a Session

with one click...

Join a Session


WebTour Mentoring Facility

Linking WWW

Browsers for:

• Discussions

• Lectures

• Slideshows


Cross-Platform Desktop Videoconferencing(audio, video, whiteboard)

• Multicast Backbone (MBONE) Tools for Unix (Xerox PARC, LBL, NASA)

– Audio - vat

– Video - nv, vic

– Whiteboard - wb

• CU-SeeMe Video for Mac, PC (Cornell)– Desktop Video

– Connection to the MBONE

• PNL Reflector Bridge– External Cu-SeeMe Connections


300ps

TeleViewer Collaboration Windows

SGI/IRIX

Solaris

MacOS

300ps

300ps

300ps

• Dynamic Cross Platform Application Viewer

• Monitor Experiments or Analysis Aplications

• Future:– Differencing of Frames

– Annotation

– Record & Playback


EMSL On-Line RF Ion Trap Mass Spectrometer


EMSL Electronic Notebook• WWW based access to EMSL data

and meta-data

• Automation of data/metadata input from instruments and calculations

• Querying/ Searching

• Simple, secure access to full datasets

• Interactive input of results into notebook from the WWW

• Rich media types (text, images, files, 3D structures, voice, animations, video, ...)


The Current Notebook

Table of Contents:• Notebooks• Folders• Pages

Add a new page

Data Access:

•Metadata

•Live Graphs

•File Access

Threaded Annotations: text, local files, images, screen capture, audio, ...

Data and annotation types can easily be added


EMSL Archive

EMSLElectronic Notebook

Secure WWW Access


DOEDOE 22000000 FY’97

• R&D– Shared VR

– Inter-operability Framework*

– Collaboration Management*

– Security Architecture

– Floor Management

– Quality of Service

– Electronic Notebooks*

• Pilots– Diesel Collaboratory

– Materials Micro-Characterization (M2C)


Collaboratory Technology is on the way

Is that it?

Some new Technology Toys?

We’re all a few % more effective?


Electronic Collaboration:Worse, Better,

• Lack of non-verbal cues

• Lack of presence

• Delays, network outages

• Parallel development:– infrastructure

– applications

– environments

• Remote Access

• Scaling

• Desktop access to people, information and scientific resources

• Automation of recording and routing

• Translation/different views of data

• Media integration

• Anonymity / Equality

or Different?


If travel were free:

Live where you wantBuy clothes in New YorkPick up wine an cheese in ParisDine on a beach in Tahiti

Removing Distance (and Time) from the Equation


Separated by Distance & Time:

• Symbolic Z-matrix:

• Charge = 1 Multiplicity = 1

• Li

• - 1 1.

• O 1 LiO 2 90.

• O 1 LiO 2 90. 3 180. 0

• C 3 CO 1 LiOC 2 0. 0

• C 3 CO 1 LiOC 2 180. 0

• C 4 CO 1 LiOC 2 90. 0

• C 4 CO 1 LiOC 2 270. 0

• H 5 CHa 3 OCHa 1 0. 0

• H 5 CHb 3 OCHb 1 alfa 0

• H 5 CHb 3 OCHb 1 -alfa 0

• H 6 CHa 3 OCHa 1 0. 0



• H 7 CHa 4 OCHa 1 0. 0



• H 8 CHa 4 OCHa 1 0. 0



•

Resource Discovery

Learning/Training

Remote Experiment Monitoring &Analysis

Remote Consultation.(Set-up)

Joint Authoring of Papers

Problem Solving


New opportunities:

• Exposing students to ‘real world’ science and the latest scientific techniques

• Connecting researchers at smaller institutions to their colleagues and expensive instrumentation

• Allowing increased specialization (instrument developer, data analyst, experiment designer)

• Allowing cross-disciplinary projects


U.W. Chem 155 - Live from the EMSLWWW/ Excel Spreadsheet A/V, WebTour LectureRemote Data Acquisition EMSL WWW Data Notebook

John Price


Organzational Options:

• Buying 1/4 of an NMR spectrometer

• Assembling a “Scientific SWAT Team” to address a new problem

• Virtual Institutes - one stop shopping for related techniques


PNNL-LBNL Virtual Research FacilityJames D. Myers, John M. Price, Paul D. Ellis - PNNL

Stu Loken, Bill Johnston, Deb Agarwal - LBNL

A pilot project enabling and supporting productive collaborative chemistry

research between PNNL and LBNL:

Molecular Characterization by NMR and Crystallography


Collaboratory for Undergraduate Research and Education (CURE)Joint DOE / NSF project

• Student classroom experience enhancement

• Faculty skills enhancement

• Student research enhancement

... learning in the context of real-world problemsand interdisciplinary science

... training researchers who become inspired by DOE missions

… understanding how to make collaborative interactions scale

CURE Workshop - PNNL, Oct. 16-19, 1996



And New Questions:

• What’s a paper? How do we evaluate work across institutional boundaries?

• When is research work and when is it education?

• What’s more important - home or virtual istitute affiliation? Who are your peers?

• What good is second best? (What’s software and what’s plumbing?) What is the best division of work (what scales) ?


Collaboratories

• more than new technology

• a new paradigm for scientific Research and Education Borromean Rings -

the synergy of collaboration


Acknowledgments

• Thom Dunning, Ray Bair, Eric Leber, Norm Chonacky

• Debbie Payne, Ken Yates, and many others ... (CORE, TeleViewer)

• John Price (EMSL On-Line)

• Students (Electronic Notebook)

• U.S. Department of Energy– Mathematical, Information and Computational Sciences Division of the Office of Energy Research

» Distributed Collaboratory Experiment Environments (DCEE)

– Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)» Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD)

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is a multiprogram national laboratory operated by Battelle Memorial Institute for the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC06-76RLO 1830.


EMSL Collaboratory Related Research:

EMSL On-line Instrument Projecthttp://130.20.186.137:2080/index.htm

John M. Price et. al.

Rattlesnake Mountain ObservatoryAlliance for the Advancement of Science Through Astronomy (AASTA)

http://www.emsl.pnl.gov:2080/docs/RMO/Eric Leber, Ken Swanson (flyers, Alan Hale talk)

Collaboratory Grouphttp://www.emsl.pnl.gov:2080/docs/collab/CollabHome.html

Jim Myers (Collab Tech Brief)

Scientific Collaboratories: Remote Research and Education Via the Internet

Documents