{"id":575,"date":"2018-11-26T15:30:59","date_gmt":"2018-11-26T15:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/horizon.peachpuff-wolverine-566518.hostingersite.com\/?p=575"},"modified":"2018-11-26T15:30:59","modified_gmt":"2018-11-26T15:30:59","slug":"digital-coffeehouse-to-spark-new-scientific-ideas-now-ready-for-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/575\/digital-coffeehouse-to-spark-new-scientific-ideas-now-ready-for-use\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital \u2018coffeehouse\u2019 to spark new scientific ideas now ready for use"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Annette Ekin<\/strong><\/p>\n

The\u00a0<\/strong>European Open Science Cloud<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(EOSC)<\/strong>, a virtual one-stop shop for researchers to share, access and reuse data, was officially unveiled at the University of Vienna, Austria, on 23 November, giving scientists, open data advocates, research institutions and policymakers a first glimpse of the portal.<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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It is part of the EU\u2019s vision for an open-border, cross-disciplinary, digital future for science. \u2018Science should have no borders,\u2019 said Carlos Moedas, EU Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, in a video message.<\/p>\n

Moedas likened the EOSC to 16th<\/sup>-century English coffeehouses where the coming together of people of different backgrounds sparked new ideas.<\/p>\n

\u2018Today marks the beginning of Europe\u2019s new architecture for the strength of ideas, of a common platform for research data,\u2019 he said, He added that the portal, which joins up existing infrastructures under one umbrella platform, would free up time for\u00a0more research, crucially link up data across disciplines and change the culture of research and science. \u2018The cloud represents open science at its best,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

The idea of the EOSC, which can be viewed at\u00a0eosc-portal.eu<\/a>, is to\u00a0make publicly funded research data open for anyone to investigate and use. The portal launched in Vienna will now undergo further refinement as scientists begin to use the system before it is fully launched in 2020.<\/p>\n

Jean-Eric Paquet, the EU\u2019s Director-General for Research and Innovation, said at a press conference before the launch that for the 1.7 million active researchers who share and generate data in Europe today, no tool until now has allowed them to share and reuse data across member states, institutions and disciplines. \u2018(EOSC) will make much more efficient science, but also I think much better science,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

The portal, two years in the making, is now ready for scientific communities to take the reins, get scientists involved and develop it, Paquet said.<\/p>\n

\u2018It is a work in progress, and so scientific communities need to help us get it right,\u2019 he said. \u2018We have a very good framework, which is called a FAIR framework (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable), about what type of data we want in the cloud.\u2019<\/p>\n

Silver-cheeked toadfish<\/strong><\/p>\n

Over the last couple of years, various small-scale\u00a0projects<\/a>, known as science demonstrators, have already been using the prototype EOSC with the aim of testing the portal or coming up with tools or services. Dr Gianpaolo Coro, a researcher at the National Research Council of Italy in Pisa, used it to see where the\u00a0silver-cheeked toadfish<\/a>, a toxic, invasive pufferfish wreaking havoc on fisheries in the Mediterranean \u2013 and whose spread is fostered by climate change and the Suez Canal expansion \u2013 would go next.<\/p>\n

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\u2018EOSC should have the WhatsApp effect. What is the WhatsApp effect? That everybody uses it. Nobody asks why I have to use it.\u2019<\/p>\n

Dr Eva M\u00e9ndez, Associate Professor, University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Using about seven tools on EOSC to retrieve and run datasets, including information from the EU\u2019s Copernicus Earth observation programme on climate and observations of the pufferfish in its natural habitat, Dr Coro was able to determine that it will likely enter the Black Sea through the Bosporus in the next five years. He estimates that without these tools it could have taken one year, much of it spent on collecting and preparing data, to get these\u00a0results<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Shaun de Witt from the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, the UK\u2019s national laboratory for fusion research, agrees that speed is a major advantage of EOSC and will revolutionise the way that the next generation of scientists conduct research.<\/p>\n

\u2018They\u00a0will be able to access data and understand data in days as opposed to years. Now, really understanding some of the data takes so long that you’re halfway through your career before you can make a useful contribution.\u2019<\/p>\n

De Witt has been working to determine whether EOSC resources can be used in the\u00a0ITER<\/a>\u00a0project \u2013 the world\u2019s biggest fusion reactor presently being built in the south of France. For fusion researchers, simulations or models that take months or weeks to run on a local supercomputer can take just a matter of days through EOSC.<\/p>\n

His work has included developing\u00a0Prominence<\/a>, a cloud computing software that can handle the huge computation needs of fusion researchers. \u2018(ITER) is going to pose a major data challenge,\u2019 de Witt said.<\/p>\n

His team is now readying their tool for the EOSC\u2019s\u00a0marketplace<\/a>\u00a0section, where researchers can request that their data is processed using particular tools and services and track the status of their order like you would on Amazon. De Witt said the marketplace is currently probably too complex to use but is optimistic that it will evolve to become more user-friendly.<\/p>\n