Things Learnt From eResearch 2024

Technical
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Just a general area for writing down cool things learnt/found/leads to follow up on after eResearch 2024. Feel free to add to this, everyone :smiley:

Model Release

  • CSCS spack public GitHub to see how they use spack and associated CI/CD
  • Spack benchmarking
  • hpci - CI integrated with HPC jobs
1 Like
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Usual soulless mega-corp disclaimer, but this is quite cool:

There was a demo given where a notebook had a bunch of PDFs added to it and then used as the source for the LLM. Notable features:

  • Domain aware LLM (knows the difference between science and poetry?)
  • Includes referencing in overviews etc
  • Can make an “engaging podcast” summary of material. Seems kinda dystopian, but as a podcast fan I can see the appeal of having an engaging conversation that summarises a bunch of dry material.
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Only mentioned in passing, but looks very interesting and wondering if anyone has used it, or had any opinions

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In Varvara and James’ BoF about data and metadata standards there was a decent amount of time spent talking about the differences and strengths/weaknesses of ROCrate and frictionless.io.

My take-away

Frictionless:

  • simpler
  • lower barrier to entry
  • more human readable/writeable

ROCrate:

  • Relies heavily on linked data approach to existing schema (schema.org)
  • Means higher barrier to entry
  • Also means more interoperability because of common schema
  • Better suited to machine written workflows
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Talk about hpci also mentioned a couple of other similar tools

Might be some interesting queueing related stuff @ben

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Saw a really interesting lightning talk by Alexis Tindall about the importance of keeping a user focus in service provision.

It was informed by attending this course on human centred problem solving:

https://www.adelaide.edu.au/hr/leadership-and-talent/developing-at-adelaide/human-centred-problem-solving

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There was also a great presentation about FileSender

which is a great service from AARNet, Australia’s Research and Educational network provider.

FileSender is accessible to anyone with an Australian institutional university account. It’s free, and there are very few limits on the size of files. It’s like a dropbox download link but better!

You can also issue vouchers to collaborators who can’t access the service, allowing them to transfer files to you.