WWW Pages of Other Collaboratory Projects

Table of Contents

Collaboratory Tools
Collaboratory Infrastructure
Remote Access to Experiments
Education
Medical
Other
Other Lists of Collaboratories

Collaboratory Tools

Conference Controller for MBone Videoconferencing

As part of the Spectro-Microscopy Collaboratory project (LabWeb), we have developed confcntlr. Confcntlr is a new mbone tool that allows easier access to the video and audio portions of a videoconference. It is meant to be run with vic and vat. The videoconference tools can be launched from the confcntlr and then controlled remotely. A remote user can access the current settings and change those settings. The confcntlr is currently used to allow control over an unattended videoconference transmission and to help inexperienced users.

Shared Screen Televiewers

Virtual Network Computing (VNC) from ORL - VNC is, in essence, a remote display system which allows you to view a computing 'desktop' environment not only on the machine where it is running, but from anywhere on the Internet and from a wide variety of machine architectures. Many of us at ORL, for example, use a VNC viewer running on a PC on our desks to display our Unix environments which are running on a large server in the machine room downstairs.

Electronic Notebooks for Collaboratories

The Electronic Notebook replaces a multiplicity of manual and automated procedures currently used for storage/retrieval of data associated with experiments at the ALS_BL7. In addition, the Electronic Notebook offers new and powerful capabilities, while providing users with a homogeneous user interface. The Electronic Notebook integrates database management and various collaborative tools. Database management is accomplished by using the Object-Protocol Model (OPM) and the OPM tools.

Electronic Laboratory Notebooks for Collaborative Research at PNNL.

The laboratory notebook is a vital tool in scientific research. It is the central repository of information about the reasoning and preparation behind experiments, about the analyses done to obtain results, and about plans for future research. The notebook captures the scientific process that gives meaning to a scientist's observations. Sharing a notebook can help collaborating researchers to build a common understanding of their work. Unfortunately, at modern research facilities, where collaborations may span the globe, providing remote researchers with access to a laboratory notebook becomes a difficult task.

Collaboratory Infrastructure (Enabling Technologies)

The IP Multicast Backbone (MBone)

IP Multicast-based routing facilitates distributed applications to achieve time-critical "real-time" communications over wide area IP networks through a lightweight, highly threaded model of communication. The IP Multicast routers (referred to as "mrouters") take the responsility of distributing and replicating the multicast data stream to their destinations as opposed to individual IP hosts. The MBone topology of mrouters is designed in such a manner that it facilitates "efficient" distribution of packets without congesting any node inappropriately. In addition, several shareware and commercial videoconferencing tools are now available for use on the MBone.

The JAVA Platform

Java is a simple, robust, object-oriented, platform-independent multi-threaded, dynamic general-purpose programming environment. It's best for creating applets and applications for the Internet, intranets and any other complex, distributed network. A Java(tm) applet is a Java program that can be included in an HTML page, much like an image can be included. When you use a Java-compatible browser to view a page that contains a Java applet, the applet's code is transferred to your system and executed by the browser.

Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA)

CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) is a standard for distributed objects being developed by the Object Management Group (OMG). The OMG is a consortium of software vendors and end users. Many OMG member companies are then developing commercial products that support these standards and/or are developing software that use this standard.

CORBA provides the mechanisms by which objects transparently make requests and receive responses, as defined by OMG's ORB. The CORBA ORB provides interoperability between applications built in (possibly) different languages, running on (possibly) different machines in heterogeneous distributed environments.

The Totem System

The Totem system is a set of communication protocols to aid the construction of fault-tolerant distributed systems. The message ordering mechanisms provided by Totem allow an application to maintain the consistency of distributed and replicated information in the presence of faults. The Totem system provides reliable totally ordered delivery of messages to processes within process groups on a single local-area network, or over multiple local-area networks interconnected by gateways.

Reliable Multicast Protocol (RMP)

RMP is a protocol based on the "Reliable Broadcast Protocol" proposed by Chang and Maxemchuk. RMP provides an atomic, totally ordered, reliable multicast service on top of IP Multicasting. Brian Whetten of USC Berkeley originally developed Version 1 of this protocol as his Master's Thesis at UIUC. Since then the protocol has been enhanced and streamlined by Brian and Todd Montgomery into Version 2. The source code has been rewritten from scratch in C++ by Todd Montgomery and is currently being tested and used by various people. RMP is a testbed for verification efforts involving highly complex distributed applications.

The Horus Project

Horus provides a framework for the development of distributed applications based on group communications, a style of computing that can arise in fault-tolerant systems, managed distributed systems, applications that exploit data replication or coherent caching, and groupware. Within the overall Horus framework a large collection of system and application protocols have been developed that allow the application designer to construct a communication module that exactly meets the application requirements at minimal cost.

ISIS Distributed Systems

Isis Distributed Systems' goal is to deliver unparalleled fault tolerance through a standards-based software architecture. The company seeks to enable companies to build reliable distributed applications on which they can run their business with the assurance of availability, scalability, and performance.

Remote Access to Experiments

DOE 2000

The vision of DOE2000 is to accelerate the ability of the Department of Energy to accomplish its mission through advanced computing and collaboration technologies. DOE2000 ushers in a new era of scientific collaboration that transcends geographic, discipline, and organizational boundaries.

Distributed, Collaboratory Experiment Environments

Five projects, beginning in early calendar 1995 and running for about two years, will build and operate testbeds for "collaboratories." The testbeds will provide remote access to the kinds of expensive, hard-to-duplicate facilities, ranging from electron microscopes to a tokamak fusion reactor, to which scientists have to physically travel. By building these testbeds and using them for real-world experiments, we will be able to study both the technical and the social aspects of controlling apparatus, taking data, and interacting with colleagues by wire.

Computer Vision and Robotics Home Page

Visual Servoing for Micro Manipulation, a framework for automated micromanipulation of microscopic objects using visual information is developed and applied to diverse problems in biology and material science. Telepresence for In-Situ Microscopy, an approach for remote operation of instruments in the Internet environment.

National Challenge Project: Collaboratory for Microscopic Digital Anatomy

Gridbrowser is the remote interface to the Collaboratory for Microscopic Digital Anatomy (CMDA). CMDA is a system under development to provide remote acquisition, analysis, and visualization of data from a sophisticated Intermediate High Voltage Electron Microscope (HVEM) located in the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research at the University of California, San Diego.
Upper Atmospheric Research Collaboratory

The Upper Atmospheric Research Collaboratory (UARC) is a joint venture of researchers in upper atmospheric and space physics, computer science, and behavioral science. The UARC project has developed an international networked collaboration laboratory (a "collaboratory") in which computing and communication technology are combined to allow geographically distributed scientists to work together. This distributed community of domain scientists has network access to a remote instrument site in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. In addition to the scientific research, communication and collaboration patterns will be studied.
Bradford Robotic Telescope

The University of Bradford has been working for a number of years on the development of low-cost robotic and remote telescopes. A fully robotic telescope can decide when conditions are good enough and make observations of the sky by itself: an astronomer does not need to be present and waste time waiting for clear weather. Robotic telescopes are also useful in education where students can send observations to the telescope from their classroom and pick up the results the next day.
Automated Telescopes

Links to Automated telescopes on the Internet. Some allow you to use the telescopes, others let you find out about them.

Education

CoVis: Learning Through Collaborative Visualization

This is the web site of the Learning Through Collaborative Visualization Project (CoVis). Today, CoVis is comprised of thousands of students, over one hundred teachers, and dozens of researchers all working together to find new ways to think about and practice science in the classroom.
The Collaboratory Notebook Project at Northwestern

The Collaboratory Notebook is a structured collaboration environment. It is implemented as a shared database that can be accessed from any location on the Internet. It enables students to record their work, share it with others, and view and comment upon the work of others. Similarly, it is designed to allow one or more instructors to monitor and guide their student's work.

Medical

The InterMed Collaboratory Project

Harvard Intermed Site, Stanford Intermed Site, Columbia Intermed Site InterMed is a joint project of researchers at Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia, with funding from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) High Performance Computing and Communication (HPCC) initiative, as well as additional support from the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of DoD. Principal goals are to: further the development of health care information systems as a collaborative activity, develop a robust framework for collaboration, use the Internet as a primary vehicle for such collaboration.
UAB Center for Telecommunications Education & Research

TelePath: Remotely controllable microscope and imaging system for viewing anatomic pathology specimens.
An Internet-Based Collaboratory

Through HPCC and ARPA co-funding, we are working with Stanford and Columbia on a new project involving development of a set of distributed, object-oriented tools and resources that can be shared by all participants and can be incorporated into various applications each of us is already implementing. Examples of tools and resources include vocabulary management, clinical data access, image access and manipulation, expert system consultation, guideline access, and form-based data collection. This project will utilize the Arachne architecture we are developing.

Other

Semiconductor Collaboratory

The purpose of this task is to investigate uses of computing and communication technology to facilitate close collaboration between researchers at geographically separated sites. This task differs from the Technical Repository in that the emphasis is on scenarios requiring "real-time" interaction between researchers. Wherever possible, existing hardware and software will be utilized and this research will focus on how it can be used productively.
CREW, The Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work

CREW, The Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work at the University of Michigan, focuses on the design of new organizations and the technologies of voice, data, and video communication that make them possible.
Concurrent Engineering Research Center (CERC)

CERC was founded in 1988 under a grant from the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as the cornerstone of the DARPA Initiative in Concurrent Engineering (DICE), a university/industry consortium formed to develop innovative computer technologies and information management methods to support concurrent engineering teams. Our research focus has remained on collaboration technologies and applications through which we improve the ability of team members to work together.

Other Lists of Collaboratories

WWW Collaboration Projects

This is a list of resources about collaboration technologies and WWW projects that support collaboration by participants.
Collaboration, Knowledge Representation and Automatability

The W3C has held a workshop and is sponsoring working groups in some areas, while tracking or pointing to research in other areas. These resources should point you to where you need to go for more specific information on your area of interest, and put you in contact with those working on these areas. They should also give you an idea of the scope of these issues, and spark discussion and development of collaboration technology.
Technologies

A suite of technologies that are relevent for this project. Needs more work on selection, grouping and overall organization - right now just a bag space to randomly collect and group some useful technology links. Pages on interactive Web technologies under development at NPAC are also included and offer links to local activities.
Telemedicine sources

More Telepathology sites

Other Teleradiology sites

More Telemedicine Sites

Please also visit the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Home Page. Advanced Computing for Science Department Home Page.

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