This is the December 2002 newsletter of the ITC Research Computing Support Group. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the information presented here, please contact the ITC Research Computing Support Group via e-mail to res-consult@virginia.edu, or at the Research Computing Support Center (RCSC), 244 Wilson Hall, 243-8800. The RCSC is open 9 AM to 5 PM, Monday through Friday.
The Research Computing Support Center schedule for the Winter Break will be:
Monday, December 16-Friday, December 20 • Normal hours - 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
We will have limited e-mail support when we are closed from December 23 through January 1.Monday, December 23 - Wednesday, January 1 • Closed
Thursday, January 2-Friday, January 3 • Normal hours - 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
The Research Computing Support Center is located in Room 244 Wilson Hall. It can be reached by telephoning 243-8800 or e-mailing res-consult@virginia.edu.
Happy Holidays from the Research Computing Support Group!
Do you sometimes feel like you're alone on an island, trying to survive the challenges of teaching or doing research while struggling with the management and technology tasks that come along with it?
If the answer is "yes," come out to Tools for Survival on the Academic Island, hosted by ITC Training Services on January 14, 2003, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Wilson Hall. All faculty, researchers and instructors are encouraged to attend!
ITC's technology professionals will deliver the tips and tricks you need to harness -
Teaching and Technology Initiative (TTI) and faculty projects will be on display as well as other ITC and Library resources. You could even walk away with a snappy new Dell Axim X5 Handheld Computer.
For more information about the Open House, contact the Open House Coordinator at ITC Training Services or visit the Open House Web site at http://www.itc.virginia.edu/training/conferences/faculty_technology_openhouse/.
Highlights include:
A detailed description of the new features of IDL 5.6 can be found at
http://www.rsinc.com/idl/whatsnew.asp.
Users who have IDL 5.5 installed locally on their computer and who wish to
maintain the older version may have to download the new license.dat file
from the licensing database as described at
http://www.itc.virginia.edu/research/idl/#Windows.
Further information on how to access IDL 5.6 from either a UNIX workstation
or a PC, as well as help using IDL, can be found on the Research Computing Services
Web page at
http://www.itc.virginia.edu/research/idl.
Specific questions about the upgrade as well general questions concerning
as the use of IDL should be directed to res-consult@virginia.edu.
ITC purchased 10 floating network licenses for the Curve Fitting Toolbox and
three of those will be restricted to researchers who requested and contributed
to the purchase of this Toolbox. The other seven licenses will be available
for use by U.Va. faculty, staff, and students.
The Curve Fitting Toolbox is a new Matlab product and provides a central access
point for the functions you need to perform applications that involve curve
fitting. The Toolbox provides routines for preprocessing data, as well as creating,
comparing, analyzing, and managing models. A detailed description of this toolbox
can be accessed from the Web page at
http://www.mathworks.com/products/curvefitting/.
Further information on how to access Matlab 6.5 and the Curve Fitting Toolbox
from either a UNIX workstation, PC or Macintosh computer, can be found on the
Research Computing Services Web page at
http://www.itc.virginia.edu/research/matlab/.
Specific questions about this upgrade as well general questions concerning
as the use of Matlab should be directed to res-consult@virginia.edu.
Ggobi is a data visualization system for viewing high-dimensional data and is the
next edition of xgobi.
It provides a new interface to many of the features of xgobi, built using
the GIMP toolkit,
Gtk. Among other things, it provides a
new, simpler, and more modern interface, better portability to Microsoft Windows,
and direct access from the programming languages R,
Perl, and Python.
GGobi may be run standalone or embedded
in other software while still providing the same functionality. That functionality
includes 2-D displays of projections of points and edges in high-dimensional
spaces, as well as scatterplot matrices, parallel coordinate, time series plots
and bar charts. GGobi's projection tools include average shifted histograms
of single variables, plots of pairs of variables, and grand tours of multiple
variables. Views of the data can be reshaped, points can be labeled and brushed
with glyphs and colors. Several displays can be open simultaneously and linked
for labeling and brushing. Missing data are accommodated and their patterns
can be examined. Ggobi is available at http://www.ggobi.org
and is provided as:
The GGobi library allows the functionality of GGobi to be coupled with other applications
and data, avoiding the need for users to manage the transfer of data to and
from R/SPlus, etc. to GGobi and back. The different pieces of GGobi-related
software are available in a variety of different forms. For details about and
links to downloading GGobi and its installation instructions, go to
http://www.ggobi.org/Download.html.
The ITC Research Computing Support group can provide only very limited support
for GGobi. The package is not available on ITC servers. Please remember that
it is up to you to:
The University Bookstore is conducting its annual Springer Verlag MATHEMATICS
Yellow Sale for Fall 2002. The sale will run through December 31, 2002.
Over 200 selected titles in mathematics and related areas of interest are
available at substantial discounts off of the list prices.
Faculty, Staff, TA, and Departmental discounts apply in addition to Springer's
discounts.
Keep an eye on their Web site (http://www.bookstore.virginia.edu)
where they will soon have links to Springer's COMPUTERS, PHYSICS AND STATISTICS
SALE Catalogs.
Questions: Contact the U.Va. Bookstore at 924-1073 or e-mail bookshop@virginia.edu.
For more information on VASUG or to contact an officer visit the VASUG Web
page at http://www.vasug.org/.
The Third Annual ESRI Education User Conference (EdUC) is scheduled for July
6-9, 2003, in San Diego, California. The deadline for abstract submission has
been extended to January 6, 2003. Tell your friends and colleagues to
submit their abstracts early!
Guidelines for abstract submission include:
July 13-15, 2003 Waterloo Maple announces a call for papers for the Maple Summer Workshop 2003.
Deadline for submissions is February 7, 2003.
The Maple Summer Workshop is an annual international meeting that brings together
members of the Maple community to share techniques and innovative uses of Maple
in education, research, and industry.
The program committee welcomes papers on:
IDL Upgraded to Version 5.6 on December 16, 2003
ITC will upgrade the
data analysis/visualization software IDL to version 5.6 on the server jeeves.itc
for the supported UNIX platforms (RS/6000, Sun, SGI, and Linux) on 12/16/02. IDL
5.6 will become the default version invoked with the command /uva/bin/idl and
IDL 5.5 will be invoked as /uva/bin/idl_old. IDL 5.6 for the Windows (98/NT/2000/XP)
and Macintosh (OS X) platforms will be available on CD-ROM from the Research Computing
Support Center in Wilson Hall room 244.
Matlab Curve Fitting Toolbox Licensed
ITC has licensed and
installed the Curve Fitting Toolbox for the technical computing software package,
Matlab, on the server jeeves.itc for the UNIX platforms it supports (RS/6000,
Sun, SGI, and Linux). The Curve Fitting Toolbox is also available for installation
on the Windows (98/NT/2000/XP) and Macintosh OS X platforms using CDs available
from the Research Computing Support Center in Wilson 244.
GGobi Data Visualization System
Springer Verlag Mathematics Yellow Sale through 12/31/02
Virginia SAS Users Group Meeting on February 19, 2003
The next VASUG meeting
is in the planning stages and scheduled for February 19, 2003. Newcomers are welcome,
and members who would like to present a topic should let one of the other officers
know as soon as possible.
Abstract Submission for the ESRI Education User Conference - Deadline Extended!
To submit an abstract for review or to read more information about paper presentations,
please visit
http://www.esri.com/events/educ/abstract-submissions.html.
Call for Papers for the Maple Summer Workshop 2003
Wilfred Laurier University
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
For more information on submission procedures and the Workshop, please visit http://www.maplesoft.com/msw.
Now is the time to encourage your new colleagues and students to join us and learn
about research computing support at U.Va. We only send out an e-mail once or twice
a month to this maillist. Anyone can subscribe to this "itc-research"
maillist by sending an e-mail to: majordomo@virginia.edu
with these two lines:
subscribe itc-research
end
Please encourage your colleagues to subscribe to our Research Computing maillist
today!
