Demonstration Abstracts ======================================================= AT Environmental Hydrology - John Anderson, anderson@ssec.wisc.edu 608-262-0783 Bob Wilhelmson, bw 217-244-6833 Doug Johnston dmj 217-244-5388 CAVE5D Developed by: Glen Wheless, Cathy Lascara, Bill Hibbard, and Brian Paul http://www.ccpo.odu.edu/~cave5d/homepage.html http://www.ccpo.odu.edu/~cave5d/cave5dGuide.html Cave5D is an application which integrates Vis5D and CAVE Libraries. It provides interactive visualizations of time-varying, 3-dimensional data sets in an virtual environment, runs on projection-based Virtual Reality (VR) devices such as the CAVE and ImmersaDesk, supports the visualization of any Vis5d file, uses simple ascii configuration files to specify graphical objects at runtime, and is fully described by a Users Guide. CAVE6D - A Tool for Collaborative Immersive Visualization of Environmental Data. Jasson Leigh spiff@evl.uic.edu 312-996-3002 Abhinav Kapoor akapoor@evl.uic.edu http://www.evl.uic.edu/akapoor/cave6d CAVE6D is a tool to collaboratively visualize multidimensional, time-varying, environmental data in the CAVE / Immersadesk. It provides users a Tele-Immersive Environment to interact with other users synchronously in a CAVE5D environment. For adding collaboration into the CAVE5D, the CAVERNsoft Architecture was used. Output consists of a 3 dimensional environment which displays the data set used, showing a simulation of time varying data in the Immersadesk. The user has an option of selecting the data parameters to be viewed, and can see the presance of the other networked participants in the form of an CAVE6D is part of the initiatives of the Environmental Hydrology group of the Application Technology team for the Alliance. It is a step towards providing Immersion and Collaboration technologies in Environmental Visualization. Hardware - The distribution package needs 25MB of space, which has in it 2 demonstration data set files. The Chesapeake Bay data set is another 250MB. Would be best viewed on an Idesk driven by SGI Onyx 2 / Octane. Software -CAVE Library, CAVERNSoft Library, pthreads patched IRIX Operating System above Irix 6.3 GeoView Doug Johnston dmj 217-244-5388 Cosmology - Jerry Ostriker, jpo@astro.princeton.edu 609-258-3026 Mike Norman norman 217-244-6099 Visualizing the Formation of the First Star in the Universe Michael Norman (norman@ncsa.uiuc.edu) Stuart Levy (slevy@ncsa.uiuc.edu) John Shalf (jshalf@ncsa.uiuc.edu) Adaptive mesh refinement is used in numerical cosmology to achieve very high resolution in and around forming astrophysics objects such as stars and galaxies. Unfortunately, the data from such simulations cannot be visualized using existing software due to the complex grid hierarchy data structure that AMR relies on. Here we have adapted the EVL/NCSA Virtual Director software to circumvent these problems. For the first time, we can effortlessly navigate space, time, and spatial scale in a virtual environment. Interactive virtual navigation of AMR data sets. Here we view the formation of the first stars in the universe. In this demo we will use the NCSA Virtual Director(TM) software to visualize the results of a numerical simulation of the formation of the first star in the universe. The star forms via gravitational collapse of a density fluctuation present in the young universe (a few million years after the Big Bang). The gas cools and condenses to near stellar densities via infrared line radiation from molecular hydrogen which forms in the gas phase via nonequilibrium chemical kinetic processes. Gravitational collapse generates an enormous range of spatial scales to be resolved in the simulation. This is accomplished using adaptive mesh refinement (AMR). The AMR datasets consist of a logical hierarchy of grid patches 13 levels of refinement deep. All told, nearly 500 grid patches are distributed across the levels. On each grid patch are solved the equations of gas dynamics, multispecies rate equations, gravity and dark matter dynamics. Using the Virtual Director(TM), we are able to navigate space, time and spatial scale with an intuitive interface, and record our journey with a virtual video camera. Adaptive mesh refinement visualization is a frontier area in computational science. Many disciplines are beginning to use AMR to increase resolution. The work is a collaborative effort between the Cosmology Application Team and the NCSA Visualization and Virtual Environments group. Hardware and software requirements: SGI Octane with 512MB RAM minimum. Chemical Engineering - Greg McRae, mcrae@mit.edu 617-253-6564 Jay Alameda jalameda 217-244-4696 Chemical Workbench Richard D. Braatz, Department of Chemical Engineering at UIUC, NCSA (braatz@mozart.scs.uiuc.edu) Jay Alameda, NCSA (jalameda@ncsa.uiuc.edu) Chemical engineers develop processes that turn raw materials into usable products. In many industries, reducing environmental impact is a critical challenge. Traditionally, chemical engineering practice starts with the laboratory-scale chemistry involved in producing a product and builds commercial-scale processes around it. Such processes often use solvents to separate reactants not used in the reaction and unwanted by-products from desired products. The waste streams of reactants, by-products, and solvents often require costly end-of-process treatment strategies to manage the environmental impact. A key to cleaner, more efficient, and profitable manufacturing is to turn around the design process so that the starting chemistry is a design parameter rather than a given. The Application Technologies Chemical Engineering Team is developing computational tools to do this. With these tools, chemical engineers will be able to design plant processes in conjunction with downstream separation techniques, specifying reaction pathways and solvents that minimize environmental consequences. The team is developing an integrated software environment, which includes a large part of chemical engineering practice in an easily usable, mutually compatible set of modeling tools. Molecular Biology - Sangtae Kim, stkim@luther.che.wisc.edu 608-262-5921 George Phillips, georgep@rice.edu 713-527-4910 Eric Jakobsson, jake 217-244-2896 Shankar Subramanium shankar 217-244-4489 Biology Workbench Shankar Subramaniam, Department of Biochemistry, The Biotechnology Center at UIUC, NCSA (shankar@ncsa.uiuc.edu) Eric Jakobsson, Beckman Institute, Department of Physiology at UIUC, NCSA (jake@ncsa.uiuc.edu) Mark Whittsit, NCSA (whittsit@ncsa.uiuc.edu) Harris Lewin, Department of Animal Science, The Biotechnology Center at UIUC (h-lewin@ncsa.uiuc.edu) The Biology Workbench, a Web-based interface integrating massive data repositories with powerful analysis programs, puts the power of bioinformatics at the fingertips of anyone with a Web-enabled computer. The workbench architecture transcends the molecular biology subject matter; it can be applied to any discipline and is the beginning of a twenty-first century approach to distributed knowledge. Researchers and medical doctors who use this new tool are able to access vital information necessary in finding cures for diseases such as Alzheimer's, cancer, and AIDS. Researchers can use this software, which has an efficient and easy to use World Wide Web interface, without any prior training or familiarity with a specific computer platform or database. The Biology Workbench enables any user with a browser to efficiently access, extract and process data from remote databases. http://www.mdli.com/bioinformatics/welcome.html http://biology.ncsa.uiuc.edu Nanomaterials - Robert Dutton, dutton@stanford.edu 415-723-4138 Umberto Ravaioli, uravaiol 217-244-5765 David Ceperley ceperley 217-244-0646 Dr. Craig J. Scott cjscott@eng.morgan.edu 443 885-3298 Computational Electronics Visualization Tools and Techniques Dr. Craig J. Scott, Kofi Nyarko Morgan State University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Baltimore MD We will demonstrate the development of new tools and techniques to create better ways for students and researchers to understand and interact with three-dimensional computational electronics datasets. We apply the latest advancements in scientific visualization, high-performance computing and virtual environments to study electronic material properties, semiconductor device performances, and circuit behaviors. Our use of immersive tools, such as the Immersadesk( allow students and researchers to gain insight through feedback from visual and/or audio cues using a "walk-through" perspective. Presently, this work supports ongoing DoD sponsored studies involving scalable, efficient modeling and simulation of complex electronic structures, circuits and novel materials. We are developing a visualization application that allows one to use AVS Express with the Immersadesk(. AVS express is one of the preeminent commercial scientific/ engineering visualization software programs that runs under both UNIX and Windows operating systems. This program uses an object oriented approach that allows rapid prototyping and testing of complex visualization techniques with minimal programming. By integrating the controlling wand and head tracker from the Immersadesk( virtual environment, one controls an AVS/Express scene with fluid, intuitive controls designed to enhance the illusions of complete three dimensional immersion. To further illustrate the usefulness of this tool, we will show several examples of how to visualize various electronic structures such as metal oxide field effect transistors (MOSFETs), bipolar junction transistors (BJTs), and high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs). These electronic visualizations will show the true behavior and locations of the currents, potentials, and electric fields in the devices as the geometry, material properties, and biasing conditions are changed. Scientific Instrumentation - DAvid Agard, agard@msg.ucsf.edu 415-476-2521 Clint Potter cpotter 217-244-1958 Dick Crutcher crutcher 217-333-9581 Ray Plante rplante 217-244-4208 Astro3Vis: Tools for 3-D Visualization on the Desktop NCSA Radio Astronomy Imaging Group http://monet.astro.uiuc.edu/Astro3Vis Raymond Plante (rplante@ncsa.uiuc.edu) Astro3Vis is a pair of tools that bring 3D visualizations to common desktop environments. The VRML Server is a tool for creating visualizations of 3D astronomical images in VRML format over the Web. Currently implemented as service of the NCSA Astronomy Digital Image Library (ADIL), visitors can use its Java interface to load 3D images from the Library, set visualization parameters, and download the result in VRML format. Astro3D, the other tool in the Astro3Vis team, is a pure-Java VRML browser with a number of features especially useful for scientific applications. Besides the usual navagation features, Astro3D allows users to track data positions, annotate the visualizations with text and simple graphics, and save 2D snapshots. When used with the VRML Server, Astro3D can track sky coordinates associated with data and zoom into subregions. Astro3Vis was developed through a collaboration between the Radio Astronomy Imaging Group (Scientific Instruments AT team), the Visualization and Virtual Environments Group, the Java3D group, and the Habanero group (supporting collaborative features). The VRMLServer is a Web-based version of the CaveVis toolkit. It is currently being run as a service of the NCSA ADIL, and will be incorporated as a tool for the RAI Networked Telescope project. It has been used as in a pilot program for teaching general college-level astronomy. This work has fed the development of similar tools used by the Cosmology AT team and the Visualization Workbench (now under development). ET Parallel computing - Ken Kennedy, Andrew Chien, Charlie Catlett LINUX Cluster Frank Gilfeather gilfeath@arc.unm.edu Clark Roundy croundy@altatech.com Glen Lowry ghl@altatech.com Amy Button ashreve@arc.unm.edu Ernie Herrera eherrera@arc.unm.edu Evans Craig ecraig@arc.unm.edu Roadrunner is a 64-node AltaCluster by Alta Technology Corporation containing 128 IntelÒ 450 MHz PentiumÒ II processors. The supercluster runs the Linux operating system and the processors are interconnected via a Myrinet network for high-speed communications. The supercluster will also be used for computer science projects that compare software performance with other Alliance machines, such as the Windows NT Supercluster and the Silicon Graphics(r) Origin2000(tm) array at NCSA and the IBM RS/6000 SP at MHPCC. UNM, the Alliance, Alta Technology and Intel are working together and with others in the industry to further evolve Linux-based cluster technology. Plans are to grow the Roadrunner Supercluster to 512 processors over the next 12 months, subject to the availability of necessary resources. Distributed computing - Rick Stevens, Charlie Catlett Access Grid Preview Terry Disz disz@mcs.anl.gov Wide area group collaboration via large scale displays and collaboration management software. The Access Grid supports all of these programs where groups of non co-located people need to meet, give presentations or demonstrate software and research. We need to use the large screen and projectors. We will send/bring a multiple head NT machine to drive the projectors on the wall. At the same time, we want to have other people connected via desktops or maybe the Idesk in console mode. Data and collaborative computing - Dan Reed, Jae Allen jallen 217-244-3364 Virtue Eric Shaffer http://www-pablo.cs.uiuc.edu/Project/VR/Virtue/VirtueOverview.htm The demonstration features software tools that support the objectives of all three enabling technology teams to develop effective tools for distributed software development, execution, and collaboration by application groups. Virtue renders complex software and its behavior as tangible entities in virtual space. Its support for collaborative vizualization enables scientists, engineers, and other software developers to interact, as a team, with the elements of their code. When these codes are coupled with embedded Autopilot sensors and actuators, software analysts using Virtue can dynamically attach to remote, distributed computations, obtain real-time performance data and steer software execution, on the fly, toward optimal performance. Together, Virtue and Autopilot highlight the behavior of complex software, making its behavior more intuitive and easily explained. Finally, Virtue's multimedia annotation capability allows one to record an animated "tutorial" about code behavior. PACS Charlie Bender, John Towns EOT Boston University Roscoe Giles Raquell - rr@bu.edu Maryland Virtual H.S. Mary Ellen Verona mverona@mvhs1.mbhs.edu Alabama Edna Gentry egentry@cs.uah.edu Krell Jim Corones corones@krellinst.org SDSU Kris Stewart Stewart@sdsu.edu Computational Science in Undergraduate Curricula: Faculty Fellows program, Sociology Workbench, and other EC/CSE projects. Ilya Zaslavsky Education Center on Computational Science and Engineering, San Diego State University. Zaslavsk@rohan.sdsu.edu http://www.edcenter.sdsu.edu Education Center on Computational Science and Engineering, an EOT-PACI partner at San Diego State University, focuses on enhancing undergraduate curricula with modern computational science technologies. We work with CSU and SDSU faculty, on the one side, and PACI researchers, on the other side, to streamline the incorporation of high performance computing tools in classroom teaching. Our efforts in building comprehensive computational infrastructure for undergraduate teaching have been centered around (1) the Faculty Fellows program supporting faculty who incorporate high-performance computing tools in their teaching; (2) dissemination of curriculum materials and computational science methodologies in education; (3) experimentation with novel learning technologies, including real-time distance teaching from a desktop; (4) development of in-house software systems for Web-based collaborative learning. The Sociology Workbench, a collection of on-line tools and resources for the analysis of qualitative data developed by the Ed Center, will be demonstrated, along with other Ed Center accomplishments in curriculum development and dissemination. The demonstration will focus on techniques and infrastructure supporting the incorporation of high-performance computing tools from NCSA and NPACI, into undergraduate education; it will explore the model relationships between AT/ET projects and undergraduate educators. SDSC Ann Redelfs NPACI/SDSC University of California, San Diego, MC 0505 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla, CA 92093-0505 619-534-5032 619-534-5113 fax redelfs@sdsc.edu http://npaci.edu Computing Research Association's (CRA) Committee on the Status of Women in Computer Science and Engineering Research (CRA-W) and Coalition to Diversify Computing (CDC) - CRA-W and CDC are both focusing on increasing the participation of women and minorities in computational science and engineering research, through mentoring and inspirational programs. Most of the CRA-W and CDC projects involve one-on-one contact with mentors; computational methods vary, depending upon research focus. Women and minorities with experience in computational methods, presentations at conferences, participation in research teams, and increased confidence. EOT-PACI is committed to increasing the participation of women, minorities, and persons with disabilities in NCSA and NPACI programs and in computational science and engineering overall. CRA-W and CDC are primary partners in this goal. Trace - Al Gilman asgilman@iamdigex.net Rice Richard Tapia rat@rice.edu Cynthia Lanius lanius@rice.edu GirlTECH addresses pipeline problems of women's underrepresentation in CS through a PC and web browser. CTG Peter Bloniarz pbloniarz@ctg.albany.edu Shrilata Nath snath@ctg.albany.edu Bridging the gap The Center for Technology In Government, University at Albany/SUNY To help bridge the gap between information technology developers and its government users, the Center for Technology in Government hosted a two-day workshop to discuss ways to produce innovative and effective information-based government services. Participants included government officials and managers from the federal, state, and local levels; researchers in the computer, information, and social sciences; and representatives from the private industry. The workshop helped the groups identify each other's needs and capabilities, and also a list of recommendations for further consideration. Some of the recommendations included paying more attention to issues of service integration and environmental complexity, and linking research and practice. New Mexico Frank Gilfeather gilfeath@arc.unm.edu Evans Craig ecraig@arc.unm.edu Shodor Bob Panoff rpanoff@shodor.org The Shodor Computational Science Institute We are solving two problems: how to develop teachers and faculty who can teach computational science with competence and confidence, and how to design and deliver effective curricular materials to support such education and exploration. We will exemplify our efforts with two selections under development: GalaxSee (an n-body simulation running in both local and distributed versions) and Surface (simulated annealing solutions of optimal energy configurations in two-dimensional charged systems). We will also discuss the workshops available for faculty. NCSA Education Division - David Curtis dcurtis@ncsa.uiuc.edu Alaina Kanfer alaina@ncsa.uiuc.edu Eric Jakobsson, jake 217-244-2896 Distributed Learning - Internet Strategy Class Alaina Kanfer, Jennie File (alaina@ncsa.uiuc.edu, jfile@ncsa.uiuc.edu, http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/edu/courses Research staff at NCSA have been offering classes to students on-site as well as online through our emerging distributed learning environment. This environment includes the NCSA developed netLearningPlace, desktop videoconferencing over the Internet, live and archived streamed video, and LAN based Picturetel videoconferencing. All of these technologies will be demonstrated during a live class session. Information about the technology as well as the courses are available to EOT/PACI partners. Online delivery of training is a critical issue to all of our partners, especially in the face of the growing shortage of IT workers. Our UIUC courses are available to our EOT/PACI partners, and we are interested in partnering with our partners for more prototype environments. The demonstration will be during a live class. For this demonstration we plan to set up a H.323 connection between ACCESS and NCSA's PC lab. So we will need that set up in addition to a networked computer. Alaina will make a presentation and talk with ACCESS visitors through the Picturetel connection. IN addition, the computer will be running NetMeeting, Media PLayer and will display the nLP through IE. Alaina will use NetMeeting to share applications during her presentation. Then Jennie will open the nLP and show the visitors they two ways in which they can participate in our classes/workshops. Through the Media Player on their desktop, or through Picturetel at ACCESS. Cable company (Todd Esenwein) and local teacher (Jamie Huff) NLANR "George H. Brett II" ghb@nlanr.net DoD Virtual Tanker kirk@arl.mil kkirk@ncsa.uiuc.edu http://www.arl.hpc.mil/VisSim/ Visual playback of collected data of a water tanker truck doing a lane change test. See http://www.arl.hpc.mil/VisSim/ for more information. DOD program - Technology transfer of high end visualization to the Test & Evaluation community at Aberdeen Proving Ground.