This internship take place in the Global Lab of Professor Helmut Prendinger. This laboratory focus on new technologies integration in order to improve the scientific collaboration through virtual laboratories. To do so, emphasis is put on the OpenSim technology, an open source version of Second Life server. The main goal of this internship was to develop tools to enhance the collaboration in the Second Life environment. First, the Open Library Framework was developed upon former EML3D pro ject in order to speed up the development of future applications. I implement the Data Manager in the Open Library which an enhance port of the former Twin-Mediator Pro ject of the Global Lab. Then I was charge to integrate the Super-Computing Grid Naregi, using the High Speed Network Sinet 3.

The goals was to made these infrastructure more accessible to scientist that are not IT specialist, and to integrate seamlessly these technologies into our 3D e-laboratories in Second Life. It was then the occasion to think about how integrate and mix new state-of-the-art IT technologies together into the work-flow of the e-scientist, that must evolve with technology.

• Date : 2007-01
• Type : School
• Diploma : Image Multimedia Audiovisual and Communication engineering school
• Establishment : National Institute of Technology
• Team : Helmut Prendinger, Arturo Nakasone, Vincent Dreant, Valentin Castan, Andreas Budde, Tiago Da Silva, Régis Damon
• Environnement : C#, .NET 3.5, SVN (Tortoise), Visual Studio 2008, LaTeX, BBCP, SCP, SSH, Shell Scripting, Second Life, OpenSim, Naregi, Sinet3, MPI code, Scientific Workflow

• rdamon_slides.pdf

From April to June, my job was to implement the Data Manager. This part of the OpenLibrary consist in providing functions to easily link the real world to virtual world. This link is made with two concepts drawn from the Twin-World mediator, Sensors and Actuators. The sensors are networks of sensors that updates values in the metaphorical representation of the real in the virtual world. Values in the virtual world, such as 3D objects properties, are wrapped to a real world sensor. Then, at a specified refresh rate, the 3D object embodies the evolution of real world values provided by sensors.

The actuators are the contrary of sensors. A 3D virtual object in the virtual world is wrapped to a real actuator. Each changes on the virtual world will affect the real world object.

From July to September, my main work was to integrate new Cyber-Science infrastructure into the OpenLibrary Framework, in order to enhance the workflow of e-scientist. The technologies to integrate are: the japanese super computing grid Naregi and the high speed network Sinet 3.

The goals of integrating a super computing grid in the OpenLibrary is to provide our scientific simulation, such as astrophysical simulation and molecular dynamics, the power of calculation of supercomputer. In doing so, the e-scientist can access the power of Naregi from the virtual world and then can watch the result of the computation directly into the virtual world. The integration of supercomputer calculation in the virtual world, allow then the e-scientists community to perform their workflow in the same place, the virtual laboratories of Second Life.

Thanks to the situation of NII, the Global Lab is in the center of the japanese Cyber-Science infrastructure and then could enjoy the High-Speed network Sinet 3. Using this network is particularly relevant in the actual context of data-centric science. As far as the astrophysical research field is concerned the amount of data are very hugh, tens of gigabits. It is then necessary to provide functions in OpenLibrary to download efficiently the very last data from Astrophysical researchers. The network is useful to update data to the last up-to-date values in a quick and efficient way.

In parallels, this work led me to think about new way of using e-science workflows. As for now, the e-science rely on web 2.0 technologies, such as wikis. Recent studies have shown that such tools bring some limitations to the representation, use and sharing of workflows.

Among the research I done, appear the need of representing workflow in a different way that can display in the same time several layers of abstractions, from the job oriented point of view to the more cellular programing view. The 3D representation of workflow could then bring a new way to visualize and then create edit and use workflow.

Moreover working on workflow that remains in a persistent virtual e-labs in Second Life could enhance the collaborations. To conclude this internship has taught a lot of different techniques, dealing with cutting-edge technologies, in the same time I than made me aware of research environment and new perspective of e-labs through the use of virtual world such as Second Life.