IHBI Researchers trial QUT's new supercomputer
Dr Scott Stansfield, Cells and Tissue domain and Robert Stuart, IHBI Systems Administrator, along with a number of other QUT researchers, are currently trialling QUT’s new supercomputer. The new system from SGI is capable of performing around two trillion mathematical operations per second (commonly referred to as two teraflops). The system is comprised of two computational engines (a large memory multiprocessor system and a computational cluster) and a large, terabyte data store.
The system has been in trial mode for a number of weeks and has been performing well. It is planned to phase out the old QUT HPC system (sirius) by the end of the year and move researchers to the new system. If there are other researchers who would like to be included in the current trial, please email the HPC group at
qut.itshpc@qut.edu.au.
One of the other advanced facilities included in the new system, is an enhanced computational subsystem that includes twin FPGAs or field programmable gate arrays. This is a leading edge computer chip technology that has the potential to massively speed up research codes in a broad range of areas, including bioinformatics. For instance, run times of the well known bioinformatics application BLAST have been decreased by a factor of 60 times using FPGA technology. Text processing and integer based calculations are good natural targets for the use of FPGAs.
The installation and configuration of this system has been a significant piece of work and many thanks go to a range of people from ITS, particularly Daniel Hili (System Specialist, Central System Services, ITS) and Mark Barry (High Performance Computing, ITS).
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New ARC/NHMRC code for the responsible conduct of research
The NHMRC, in partnership with the Australian Research Council and Universities Australia, and through extensive public consultation, has developed the new Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research. The Code replaces the Joint NHMRC/AVCC Statement and Guidelines on Research Practice (1997).
The Code advocates and describes best practice and promotes integrity in research for researchers and institutions. It also explains what is expected of researchers by the community.
The Code provides advice on:
- how to manage research data and materials
- how to publish and disseminate research findings
- obligations in peer review
- how to collaborate across institutions
- and how to manage conflicts of interest.
An important inclusion in the Code is Section 2 which refers to Management of Research Data and Primary Materials. It addresses data management issues and responsibilities for the institution and the individual researcher, including:
- ownership of data and research materials
- data storage
- data retention
- appropriate access to the data
- depositing data and publications in an appropriate subject and/or institutional repository
These specific data mangement requirements will be drivers for the development of Data Management Plans by research project teams from 2008.
The QUT eResearch Working Party is in the process of analysing and reporting results from the October Survey of Research Data Management Practices at QUT. These survey results and responses from focus groups run in early December, will help advance the QUT research data response.
Download the new Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research.
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New electronic products for 2008
QUT Library is very happy to provide access to the following electronic products from January 2008. Access should be available in early 2008. Stay tuned!
And the following databases,trialled during 2007, have now been converted into ongoing subscriptions from 2008:
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New electronic journals for 2008
QUT Library is able to provide access to the following electronic journals from January 2008. Stay tuned for access in early 2008.
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New adventures in scientific publishing with PLoS
QUT researchers are invited to submit manuscripts to the Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals in 2008 and the author-fee will be automatically allocated by QUT Library (as approved by the Library and the University's Research and Innovation Committee).
QUT has further embraced the open access movement by becoming an institutional member of the Public Library of Science (PLoS), a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a public resource.
As an open access publisher, PLoS works under the model that all PLoS research material published is peer-reviewed, immediately available online and deposited in the the free public archive PubMed Central. There are no charges for access and no restrictions on subsequent redistribution or use, as long as the author(s) and source are cited, as specified by the Creative Commons Attribution License.
To offset the production costs, PLoS authors pay a fee per published article. For 2008, QUT Library has agreed to pay the author fee for QUT authors with accepted manuscripts in any PLoS journal.
Why publish in PLoS :
- wide dissemination: articles will always be freely available online, from PLoS and from PubMed Central. Your work will have the broadest possible audience—the entire world. And recent studies suggest that open access articles get downloaded and cited more frequently.
- pre-submission inquiries: PLoS are happy to look at abstracts prior to submission and will advise you within 48 hours whether they will consider the full paper.
- rapid publication: The time between acceptance and online publication is normally around 6 weeks, and can be expedited under special circumstances.
- your research, put in context: Each research article is accompanied by an Editors’ Summary written by PLoS editors.
- no need to order reprints: The open access license means that anyone can reprint and distribute our content, so long as they credit the author and cite the original source.
- high impact: 2006 impact factors for PLoS journals, as measured by Thomson Scientific, are given below.
- publicity: PLoS send out weekly press releases on papers published.
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