Eric Yen

Scalable Social Simulation: Investigating Population-Scale Phenomena Using Commodity Computing

Agent-based simulation models provide a way to investigate social phenomena that complement existing social science methods. Recent advances in computing hardware such as the wide availability of multi-core CPUs and increased main memory capacities make it possible to investigate population-scale phenomena using commodity compute resources. This paper describes experiences made in the development of an example model that utilises multiple CPU cores and an investigation of the scalability of the resulting code. We argue that commodity compute resources and commoditised simulation frameworks can now be used to simulate real-world populations and to use these simulations to investigate social phenomena such as migration.

Integration of Biodiversity Databases in Taiwan and Linkage to Global Databases

The biodiversity databases in Taiwan were dispersed to various institutions and colleges with limited amount of data by 2001. The Natural Resources and Ecology GIS Database sponsored by the Council of Agriculture, which is part of the National Geographic Information System planned by the Ministry of Interior, was the most well established biodiversity database in Taiwan. But thisThis database was, however, mainly collectingcollected the distribution data of terrestrial animals and plants within the Taiwan area. In 2001, GBIF was formed, and Taiwan joined as one of the an Associate Participant and started, starting the establishment and integration of animal and plant species databases; therefore, TaiBIF was able to co-operate with GBIF. The information of Catalog of Life, specimens, and alien species were integrated by the Darwin core. The standard. These metadata standards allowed the biodiversity information of Taiwan to connect with global databases.

Earthquake School in the Cloud: Citizen Seismologists in Taiwan

It is hoped that through the cultivation of a crew of volunteer citizen seismologists, public involvement could be encouraged and the discovery and inquiry into earthquake knowledge could be promoted. These volunteers can contribute to data collection, analysis, and reporting, and have the potential to greatly improve the emergency response to earthquakes. The Citizen Seismologists in Taiwan Project (CSTaiwan) is designed to elevate the quality of earthquake science education by incorporating earthquake and tsunami stories and educational earthquake games into traditional school curricula. The project aims to build a cloud-based computing service incorporating an earthquake school (i.e., a website for online learning) where teachers can easily teach their students about earthquakes and children can learn about earthquakes in a fun environment. Here we demonstrate how students perform P -a ndS-wave picking and measure seismic intensity through an interactive learning platform, how scientists and school teachers work together, and how we create a near-realtime earthquake games competition to facilitate continuous learning while making earthquake science fun. We also develop 49 questions associated with participants’ preknowledge, attitude, and skills in earthquake sciences, called Citizen Seismological Literacy (CSL). The CSL model may serve as an example to quantify citizen’s background in earthquake sciences and could be applied as a framework for seismologists around the world who wish to approach the public for educational purposes, while considering promoting the public’s seismologic literacy.

Challenges of Gig Data Analytics

The current computer science and industry approach to the Big Data Analytics emphasizes on the importance of Graph processing, how to scale up the capability to process big graph and many algorithms are developed in this line of thinking. However, the more fundamental issue to deal with huge amount of Data objects with many attributes cannot be avoided. Huge amount of datasets from various complex systems are flourishing in the last few years, thus, the exploration of these datasets are supposed to lead the discovery of the unexpected new Data Laws. This paper will examine the challenges of big data, the solution of handling big data and the work has been done in the ASGC.

An introduction to Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Program (TELDAP)

Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Program (TELDAP) is a long-term, multi-generational, cross-divisional programme that will enhance the cultural, academic, socio-economic and educational values of Taiwan Digital Archives. Among the nine National Projects, TELDAP is the only one focusing on the Arts and Humanities. Unique for its combination of humanities with information technology, TELDAP aims to promote and coordinate content digitisation and preservation at leading museums, archives, universities, research institutes, and other content holders in Taiwan. This paper presents an overview of the history, achievements and challenges of the TELDAP.

Asia Federation Report on International Symposium on Grids and Clouds (ISGC) 2011

This report provides an overview of e-Science developments in the Asia-Pacific region, based on country reports made at the International Symposium on Grids and Clouds 2011 (ISGC 2011) [1], held on 21-25 March at Academia Sinica, Taipei. The document includes a brief overview of 12 Asian countries presented at ISGC 2011. They are: Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

Uptakes of e-Science in Asia

e-Science refers to either computationally intensive science or data intensive science that is carried out in highly distributed computing environments [1, 2]. Intuitively, incentives of the new paradigm of science are mainly due to the relentless pursuit of new science and building capacity to digest unprecedented scale of scientific data for more knowledge. Originating from the requirements of LHC collaboration, a LHC Computing Grid (LCG) system is constructed to fulfill worldwide data sharing and resource integration from early 2002 [3]. Based on LCG, the global grid-based e-Infrastructure was established very quickly in Europe, America and Asia, to support wider scientific disciplines of e-Science. Many international e-Science joint efforts on astronomy, life science, earth science, environmental changes, and humanities and social sciences are now taking advantage of the same e-Infrastructure to achieve synergy greater than sum of individuals.

A Grid Application on Climate Change in EUAsiaGrid

The most general definition of climate change is a change in the statistical properties of the climate system when considered over periods of decades or longer, regardless of cause. However this change could be very different from one region to another. Glaciers are considered among the most sensitive indicators of climate change, advancing when climate cools and retreating when climate warms.

Catch-All Virtual Organizations - Solution for Heterogeneous and Disperse Grid Users Communities

The virtual organizations form a key concept for seamless utilization of all advanced features of available worldwide grid environments, the EGEE Grid in particular. However, apart from large, well organized user communities there is a substantial, non-trivial activation barrier in adopting grid concept and creating a new VO for small research groups. To minimize this barrier, a so-called “catch-all” virtual organization approach has been implemented. Here we present two successful use cases of catch-all virtual organizations (Virtual Organization for Central Europe and for EUAsia), demonstrating the strengths of this approach, discussing their setups, encountered challenges and suggesting corresponding solutions.

Asia Federation Report International Symposium on Grid Computing 2008

The focus of this report is to capture to provide a summary of developments in Asia-Pacific region from the International Symposium on Grid Computing 2008. This document contains three sections. The first section provides a status update of EGEE activities in the region. This is followed by ideas for further extending EGEE III into Asia-Pacific. The third section contains a short description of networking, Grid and EGEE involvement for each country.