A workshop entitled “Asia@Home” held at Academia Sinica on March 20-21 brought together Taiwanese and international experts in earthquake science and in distributed computing to explore the use of ordinary consumer electronics – PCs, laptops and even smartphones – to build earthquake sensor networks in homes, schools and offices that can provide scientists with valuable data about future seismic events in Taiwan and SE Asia.

The recent tragic earthquake in Christchurch is a reminder of the destructive forces that underlie the “Rim of Fire” extending through SE Asia as far as New Zealand. Getting a better understanding of how earthquakes will affect different regions requires more data and more computing power. Both can be provided by volunteers from their homes, thanks to a trend called “volunteer computing”, which Academia Sinica has been pioneering in Taiwan through a series of Asia@Home workshops over the last three years.

At the workshop, Californian researchers David Anderson (UC Berkeley), Carl Christensen (UC Berkeley) and Elizabeth Cochran (UC Riverside), presented results of their QuakeCatcher project that uses built-in or USB motion sensors on ordinary computers to form a new type of sensor network. In future, even school children in Taiwan and neighbouring countries could become part of a “citizen science” network that collects useful earthquake data.

The researchers also discussed with their Taiwanese and SE Asian counterparts how home computers could help to calculate the impact of earthquakes in advance, helping authorities to better plan the use of their territory in many SE Asian countries.

You can find more information about the work shop on the GridCast blog:

http://gridtalk-project.blogspot.com/2011/03/quake-catcher-network-caught-on-video_23.html

http://gridtalk-project.blogspot.com/2011/03/asiahome-hackfest-conclusion.html

http://gridtalk-project.blogspot.com/2011/03/quake-catcher-network-caught-on-video.html

http://gridtalk-project.blogspot.com/2011/03/asiahome-hacks-earthquakes.html

This article is released by e-Science Talk.

(Left) The participants listen attentively to PSciGrid Team's Eman Aldea in the discussion of software and applications installed in ASTI's HPC facility. (Right) The members of the UP-PGC and PSciGrid Team strike a pose for the group.

Change is inevitable in a progressive society, it is a prerequisite on man to find ways to adapt with the dynamism of the world in order to survive. These changes often bring development through scientific endeavors, and in this global age, thrive on collaborations.

The UP Philippine Genome Center (UP-PGC) is driven by the joint effort of all UP campuses to have a concerted initiative in all the related efforts of researchers and scientists to boost the promotion and education of genomics in the country. The establishment of the UP-PGC in the country is given priority by the Congressional Commission on Science & Technology and Engineering (COMSTE) because of the impact it can bring, especially in the health sector. It is through a complete and deeper knowledge and understanding about genomics that problems on energy, food, environment, agriculture, and diseases will be solved more effectively and efficiently. UP-PGC aims to be a world-class leader and driver in genome research.

Genomics and more computing power

Genomics is the study of an organism’s complete set of DNA. It looks at how the entire genes interact with one another and how it influences an organism’s environment and behavior. Genomics contributes various researches and applications in life sciences and biotechnology that is beneficial to the society. In health for example, genomics offers a great deal of assistance by providing better decision-making through enhanced diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment on different diseases.

With the vision to bring improved life to everyone, researchers continue to study genomics. In this pursuit of advancement, data acquired and encountered increases that it becomes complicated and difficult to handle. More storage space than what a simple computer offers is needed to accommodate large data sets. Also, more accurate and faster analyses and results are necessary to be able to present better actions to take. These requirements to handle enormous data can be manage with the use of high performance and grid computing facilities.

UP-PGC and ASTI collaborates

ASTI conducted a one-day training-workshop for member-institutions of the UP-PGC on March 3. Trainers from ASTI and UP-PGC presented the different bioinformatics software and applications installed in the ASTI High Performance Computing (HPC) facility that can help facilitate the work of our local researchers. Speakers Eman Aldea and Marilyn Rey of the PSciGrid Team, and Joe Reyes of UP-PGC provided discussions and demonstrations on these software and applications. Among the software and applications presented, the participants were particularly interested to use Glmmer, GenBank, BLAST, MrBayes, BioRoll, and BioBoost.

In addition, the training-workshop opened the venue for discussion among participants about their field’s various concerns. Some of these concerns included the provision of more storage space for their work’s large data sets and computer parallelization for faster data processing. Dr. Arturo Lluisma, who facilitated the open discussion, was able to get the overview and necessary improvement of each field that can be collectively pursued by PGC.

The training-workshop received positive feedback from the participants. They were keen in pushing the planned initiatives of PGC. They were also interested in the services and use of the applications installed in the HPC facility. Feedback from the participants also provided an opportunity for ASTI to improve on the already existing PSciGrid portal, to integrate the other software mentioned above to the web-based portal.

The following are the participating institutions present in the training-workshop: UP Diliman’s National Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB), Marine Science Institute (MSI), Institute of Chemistry (IC), and Institute of Biology (IB), UP Manila’s National Institute of Health (NIH), and UP Los Baños’ Institute of Biological Sciences (IBS).