OSG Newsletter, March, 2009

Introducing David Ritchie as the Area Coordinator for Communications

As the new OSG Area Coordinator for Communications, I am looking forward to the challenge of conveying to diverse audiences the value Open Science Grid brings to compute intensive scientific research.

On occasion, I have had the experience of showing a tool to a researcher, getting the researcher to understand its use, having it start to deliver results, and then in the mind of the researcher, having it “go transparent!” Sometimes that experience has been coupled with the researcher pushing me out of the way, not being much interested in learning more about the tool and generally wanting to just get on with their work. I have learned to take that response as a sign of success. It does make it a challenge, however, to get the researchers to communicate the usefulness of the tools, such as those offered by OSG, in addition to their scientific results when they can't even remember how difficult life was before they had the tools to help them.

I 'm therefore asking for your help in counteracting the “go transparent” phenomena.  Should you learn about scientific results attributable to OSG, please let me know so that we can make this information available as research highlights, press releases, or articles in International Science Grid This Week.

~ David Ritchie

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Open Science Grid All-Hands Meeting Report

Of note regarding the OSG All Hands Meeting was the 70 mph (112 kph) tailwind that helped attendees coming from Chicago arrive in New Orleans 30 minutes early. Of further note were the cool temperatures and that a number of the conference participants made it only as far as Atlanta due to the snowstorm. The meeting was hosted by LIGO at its Livingston Louisiana Observatory, a half-hour's drive east of Baton Rouge.

The Monday and Tuesday workshops covered site administration, virtual machine technologies, community grid computing, and VO management and security. Talks on the LIGO project were fascinating, describing LIGO's scientific mission, the LIGO Data Grid, data analysis, and its education and outreach activities. The US ATLAS and US CMS workshops were also good–particularly for people who do not regularly attend talks on these experiments.  The plenary sessions covered OSG status and planning, infrastructure and other activities. The poster sessions gave not only the opportunity to vote for one's favorite poster, but also ample time to learn about the projects in detail.

For additional insights, check out the blogs by OSG attendees, which were kindly hosted by the GridCast site in Catania, Italy, where the EGEE User Forum, OGF25, and OGF Europe's 2nd International Event were simultaneously being held.

~ David Ritchie

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OSG Collaborating with South Africa

As part of the outreach activity to South Africa, the University of Johannesburg has invited OSG to help deliver the UJ Research Cluster Training Workshop on April 9-14, 2009 at the university. Following the workshop, there will be three weeks of additional tutorials and development based on participants' actual research applications in particle physics, astrophysics, and chemistry. A member of the EOT team, Ben Clifford of the University of Chicago, will provide training on behalf of the OSG. In addition, Clifford will document training and lessons learned during this period for possible reuse in OSG's EOT program.

~ Alina Bejan

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reCAPTCHA useful in spam prevention

We've all used challenge-response testing software—those web forms where you have to type a string of distorted numbers or letters in order to submit your information. Carnegie Mellon University offers free challenge-response testing software called reCAPTCHA™, which enables the server to determine that an actual human (not a robot) is submitting the form, thereby preventing attacks on the server with spam, fake registration, unwanted blog or forum posts, and other sinister ventures.

reCAPTCHA works like this: A few lines of javascript in the HTML code on the local web page calls a script on the CMU server which responds by automatically generating a new challenge. In reCAPTCHA's case, the challenge includes two words that must be deciphered and typed by the user, one known to the software and one unknown,.

You can also use reCAPTCHA to protect your email address on a web page by simply pasting code provided from the web site.

~ Marcia Teckenbrock

 

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