First NSC-NSF Joint Workshop on NGI Applications

On June 25, 1999, the NCHC held another important workshop on NGI applications. This was a joint event borne out of the long-standing cooperation between the National Science Council of Taiwan and the National Science Foundation of the United States. It was held while a delegation of NSF officials and scientists were here for the annual review of the Bilateral Cooperative Program. At the Opening, both Dr. Jin-Fu Chang, Vice Chairman of the NSC and Dr. Bruce P. Hayden, Division Director for Environmental Biology of the NSF, made encouraging remarks about the future of the Next Generation Internet.

Four subject areas, with two each held concurrently, were broadly represented in this workshop. Since scientific applications are the true focus of the high-speed link, the Organizing Committee invited two university presidents, who are esteemed scholars themselves, to serve as planners and Chairmen as well. Hence, Dr. Chung-Laung Liu, President of National Tsing-Hua University chaired a session on Advanced Computing Technologies while Dr. Chao-Han Liu of National Central University led another session on Physics and Astronomy. The Committee also elicited the services of two prominent scientists from National Taiwan University. Dr. Chin-Lien Yen chaired the session on Environmental Science while Dr. I-Ping Lin chaired the session on Medical Science.

Presenters in most sessions are partners who paired up to report on the status of their transnational collaborations. Some are mature projects whereas others are new associations. Below is a brief account of the highlights for each session:

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In this well-attended session is the crowd-pleaser -- cluster computing. Dr. Andrew A. Chien of UC San Diego gave a very impressive talk on the "Design and Experience with Supercomputing Clusters of PCs." His experience with large-scale clusters and high-performance, multicomputer networks is very instructive to the staff at the NCHC where a prototype cluster is being tested. Many academic institutions are also very excited about building their own PC clusters. Dr. Chung-Ta King, consultant to NCHC's cluster project, and a professor at National Tsing-Hua University, also joined the group in a separate session for in-depth discussions. The group also received invaluable input from Dr. G. P. Yeh, who is in charge of a scalable, sizable PC Farm at Fermi Lab.

Tele-immersion Visualization and Virtual Environment are two other areas that attracted much attention and the NCHC has the facility to support cooperative research. With the installation of the vBNS, an added dimension for international cooperation becomes possible. Dr. Jun Ni of the University of Iowa spoke of his collaborative research with the NCSA and the NCHC. Dr. Chung-Ming Wang of National Chung Hsing University then presented an infrastructure, InCov, for supporting cooperative visualization on the World Wide Web. Dr. Jonathan C. L. Liu from Washington State University gave a talk on "Designing A Virtual-Reality On-Demand System." Dr. Shihming Sidney Yen and Mr. Adler D. L. Way, both of the Computer and Communications Research Lab at nearby ITRI, also presented their work on Internet-based multi-participants virtual community and on an Image-based CAVE-like system.

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The team of astrophysicists involved in the TAOS collaboration presented the promising, inexpensive project at searching the outer space for small comets. It is expected that when fully operational, nightly data volume of 50 GB will be collected and analyzed. This is one of the projects that will challenge the quality of the vBNS currently in place because data acquisition takes place in remote area at the mountaintop and data analysis will be performed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, U. S. A. and National Central University, Taiwan. Dr. Charles Alcock of LLNL and Dr. Wean-Shun Tsay of NCU both gave their account of the progress made in this multi-national collaboration. A more detailed description of the project appeared in the last issue of the NewsBriefs.

High-energy physics presents another challenge for petabytes of data will be generated. Multi-national involvement is common. Dr. G. P. Yeh of Fermi, Dr. Keh-Fe Liu of University of Kentucky and Dr. Pauchy W-Y Hwang of the National Taiwan University all emphasized the global nature of its networking requirement. Dr. Hwang is an early proponent of high-speed networking in Taiwan, at a time when HEPnet was the de facto infrastructure most high-energy physicists in US laboratories were accustomed to.

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With the new emphasis in biocomplexity by the National Science Foundation, Dr. Tony R. Fountain of San Diego Supercomputer Center extended his collaboration to Taiwan. Dr. Fountain is a liaison in iLTER, an international project in Long-Term Ecological Research that involves 21 sites worldwide. Dr. Hen-Biau King of Taiwan Forestry Research Institute will be representing Taiwan as the collaborator.

Dr. Herb Grote of NOAA Forecast System laboratory at Boulder, Colorado and Dr. Chia-Ping Cheng of Central Weather Bureau, Taiwan are collaborators in the "Development of a distributed and collaborative weather processing System." It is yet another forecast system that demands high-speed network and involves multiple sites.

Hazard mitigation is another area of primary concern in Taiwan. Information systems to inform the public and to carry out mitigation planning and coordination are key components of the National Geographic Information System. Dr. Chin-Hong Sun and Dr. Ming-Hsi Hsu, both of National Taiwan University, have been involved in designing network system for disaster management for many years. High-speed network and the web made GIS more accessible to the public. In this workshop, each and the collaborator, Dr. Michael Lindell, presented the system for hazard management. Dr. Lindell is from the Hazards Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A&M University.

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Biomedical sciences will no longer lag behind high-energy physics and earth sciences in the amount of data they have to handle. As the Human Genome Project is nearing completion, biologists are fast waking up to the onslaught of huge amount of data that are coming at unprecedented rate. Dr. David R. Cox of the Genetic Department at Stanford University Medical School touched upon this fact. He also impressed upon the audience that "Genetic Variation in Human Disease" is very difficult to study. Variation in human genome is but 1%. SAPPHIRe, Stanford-Asian Pacific Program in Hypertension and Insulin Resistance, is a case in point.

Dr. Larry L. T. Ho, the chief investigator of the SAPPHIRe program in Taiwan, then gave an overview of the program. Presently, the collection of genotypic and phenotypic data on 1,700 hypertensive subjects and 1,258 sib-pairs involves five participating sites in Taiwan. Without the high-speed Internet, local investigators could not conveniently exchange data among themselves. Investigators at the two US sites at Stanford and Hawaii, by contrast, stage biweekly teleconferences as data are being updated at both sites. The database is expected to consist of 5,000 subjects and 1.75 million records soon. Human essential hypertension does not follow simple Mendelian inheritance and appears to be affected by environmental factors. Genetic linkage between hypertension and insulin resistance will be determined. In addition, 2,041 ordered polymorphism markers at intervals of less than 3 cM will also be examined.

Telemedicine has been practiced in many countries where remote areas do not receive adequate medical care. This is now extended to transnational telemedicine. Dr. Geoffrey McLennan introduced the concept of Transnational Academics, initiating a Transnational Alliance that involves Iowa and South Australia. Dr. McLennan is a member of the Virtual Hospital, the University of Iowa. In his talk on "The Quantitative Analysis of the Lung in a Telemedicine Environment," he demonstrated and lung parenchymal measurements that are useful following a variety of lung insults in patients with lung diseases. These measurements can be made from data transmitted over a high speed network, and reported and discussed by all interested parties using Java-based real-time visualization. He also indicated that practice of transnational telemedicine may encounter unexpected difficulty. For instance, the country where the collaborator resides may not initially approve software that is used for analysis of medical cases. This needs to be tested.

Dr. Heng-Shuen Chen and Dr. Yeun-Chung Chang of the National Taiwan University are both members of the team that has been collaborating with the University of Iowa. Dr. Chen had recently established a mirror site of the Virtual Hospital. His talk on "Cyber Medical Center -- A Virtual Hospital in Taiwan" included VH as a component of the CMC. In addition, multimedia databases, VOD, palliative medicine, web-based network clinical system, tele-home care via CaTV and continuing medical education are being implemented. Dr. Chang spoke of "Current Development in Teleradiology and Teleconsultation of the NTU Telemedicine Network."

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