MS eScience group offers database advice to scientists
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Microsoft Research&#39;s eScience group is helping scientific researchers use database and online sharing tools in ways they might not have imagined, and sharing those experiences with Microsoft product groups that can tweak their software for easier use by the scientific community.Microsoft researchers showed off some of their projects at the American Geophysical Union annual conference in San Francisco this week, said Catherine van Ingen, partner architect with Microsoft Research&#39;s eScience group.One example of the eScience group&#39;s work is a project with climate scientists. Many researchers in the field are independent scientists who might be doing research into local climates for the sake of their crops or other specific interests, van Ingen said. Other scientists are looking at climate change from a more global perspective. Now, the two types of researchers are combining their data.&quot;It becomes possible to effectively mash up scientific data from different sources and mix that with locally acquired sensor data to do fantastic science,&quot; she said.But that presents a problem. &quot;Most scientists I deal with aren&#39;t used to this kind of quantity of data,&quot; she said. &quot;An awful lot of scientists, if it gets much bigger than an Excel file, it&#39;s more data than they know what to do with.&quot;Microsoft has helped the climate scientists create a database that includes around 800 million data points, she said. Her group is helping the scientists learn how to use the database to do the kind of analysis that will help their research, she said.The global climate scientists are particularly interested in learning exactly how efficient plants are at absorbing carbon dioxide (CO2). Scientists have discovered that there isn&#39;t as much CO2 in the atmosphere as they think there should be based on carbon emissions. It&#39;s going somewhere: either in the ocean or absorbed by plants, she said. Combining a massive amount of data that is already being collected around the globe about forests and trees and analyzing it might help them figure it out, she said.One of the projects the eScience group presented at the conference aims to learn why salmon aren&#39;t spawning like they used to in the Russian River in California. The eScience group is helping to combine data collected by a number of agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, marine fisheries groups, the U.S. Geological Survey and other local groups that are interested in the subject. By combining all of that data, the researchers can investigate factors like water temperature and the clarity of the water, both of which affect spawning salmon, she said.&quot;We&#39;re stretching tools in different ways,&quot; van Ingen said of the work of the eScience group. Typically, scientists want to find data that points to the extremes, a need that corporate users often don&#39;t have. For example, a big retailer probably wouldn&#39;t use database software to look for sales of an odd product. That&#39;s precisely what many scientists are trying to do--look for extreme cases. The unique requirements of the scientific community that the eScience group discovers are fed back into Microsoft product groups, which can then decide to introduce new capabilities that might better serve scientists, she said.
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Scientists are planning to take the pulse of the planet -- and more -- in an effort to improve weather forecasts, predict energy needs months in advance, anticipate disease outbreaks and even tell fishermen where the catch will be abundant.
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The company ships its first database update in more than four years. Was it worth the wait?
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Research work could mean data gets in and out of computer chips at speed of light.
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Scientists said Tuesday they have  developed a computer program that can predict whether women  have a high risk of developing breast or ovarian cancer.
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Science & environment: Scientists develop technique which improves the success rate of computer face-recognition systems
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Go directly to the back-end database to optimize query processing. Bill Pearson leads a hands-on introduction to implementing Pass-Through queries to MSSQL Server 2000 from an MS Access client.
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The American Geophysical Union got a peek at techniques and tools from Microsoft Research's eScience group.
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Science & environment: Scientists will this week launch a recruitment campaign aimed at five million members of the British public. Volunteers will be asked to give blood and DNA samples to the UK Biobank, a controversial new national gene database.
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Masala, an add-on to IBM's DB2 database, queries far-flung info sources on company networks.
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The database and mobile software company is set to reveal details on updates to its flagship products and outline RFID plans.
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AUGUST 30, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - A new company thinks it has the answer for scientists and engineers looking for high-performance computing on the desktop.
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Now with centralized management of their more than 1000 Mac, PC and UNIX computers, scientists at the University of Maryland&#146;s College of Life Sciences have more freedom than ever to focus on their research. For many of them, the Mac platform is all they need. [Dec 16]
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Those in the New York area might want to check out a new post Daniel Krook has concerning his talk he'll be giving on native XML databases at next week's New York PHP User Group meeting.   The presentation follows a mailing list thread and resulting blog post that generated a lot of interest and discussion on the topic. It should be a great talk for database administrators, application developers and content producers alike.   According to the summary of the talk, he'll be discussing what XML databases are good for and why you might choose them over a normal database. For more information on attending, check out the NYPHP User Group website.
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Scientists at the American Museum of Natural Historyâs Science Bulletins program use data from satellites to generate HD visualizations. Harnessing the advanced graphics and processing power of the Mac, they render 3D animations from their scientific observations to bring the evidence of global change directly to the general public. Join them at an Apple Store, San Francisco, and Apple Store, North Michigan Avenue.
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A new submission was sent in from Filip de Waard today about an article on his site that talks about creating SQLite in-memory databases.
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GeneTree grows a database of ancestry resources by inviting researchers to share information.