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| CommuniteE-Letter | Volume 1, Number 3, June 2004 |
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Contents
IntroductionA library area and demo area that will provide augmented opportunity for collaboration among staff and visitors to Unidata are part of a recently-completed office space re-configuration. The change is welcome after years of staff's being somewhat liberally sprinkled throughout Foothills 4. Come visit us on the first floor of the south wing of the building. Regional Workshop at MillersvilleThe hands-down committee news highlight for June is the successful Regional Workshop held at Millersville University 6-8 June 2004. An ice-breaker on Sunday evening, the 6th, provided an excellent time and setting for participants to meet and greet one another while enjoying music provided by a Celtic/folk music duo. With Monday morning's arrival, the group settled down to the serious business of learning the IDV. Developers Don Murray and Jeff McWhirter led participants through a session demonstrating installation and basic use of the software. Monday afternoon's session featured community members presenting classroom use of the IDV. Elen Cutrim (University of Western Michigan), Chris Herbster (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University), and Bill Fingerhut (Lyndon State College) were the presenters. Elen presented examples that featured using the IDV in large-enrollment introductory courses for non-science majors. Chris demonstrated a set of IDV bundles he developed whose application is demonstrating how the IDV can be used to create 3-D visualizations of relative humidity isosurfaces colored by temperature to identify atmospheric volumes with the potential for creating aircraft icing. Bill led a hands-on session showing how to construct a vertical cross section of temperature anomaly using the IDV. On Tuesday participants delved more deeply into advanced topics of IDV use which included using the software for collaboration. While the workshop officially ended at noon on Tuesday participants were encouraged to stay, and many did, for an additional half-day of advanced training in the IDV. Exit survey comments were uniformly positive. One participant expressed pleasant surprise in learning that some "smaller" universities were taking the lead on integrating the IDV into their curricula. Other take-aways included new tips and ideas for using the software, excitement over the possibilities for its use in undergraduate education, and a renewed appreciation for the excellent work that the developers, Jeff McWhirter and Don, have done. In many ways regional workshops embody important Unidata core values. Specifically: free and open sharing of software [and data]; state-of-the-art well-documented software tools; and adaptability to changes in technology, data availability, and user needs To view more workshop photographs click here. Editor's note: Thanks to Rich Clark for providing much of the detail contained in the above. Developer, May Yuan, visits UCAR
May's visit, sponsored by Unidata, NCAR/ESIG, and NCAR/RAP was the first of several planned for the summer in a "mini-sabbatical" format. Future visits will explore possibilities for collaboration. Merging netCDF and HDF5: a status reportCollaborators working to extend netCDF and HDF5 to provide an HDF5 storage layer for the netCDF data model and library are on schedule for a July 2005 production release. The project was funded by a NASA Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST) Program proposal in the summer of 2003. Work to date on the Unidata side has shown that a netCDF-4 prototype shows read/write times and file sizes are satisfactory when HDF5 is used as a storage layer. Another goal: backward compatibility for current netCDF programs and You will find more detail in the referenced document. Software and Support Update Snapshots
Contact: support@unidata.ucar.edu for assistance with your software questions or subscribe an e-mail list to learn more about software packages that you use or would like to learn more about. |
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Please send comments to info@unidata.ucar.edu The CommuniteE-letter is produced by editor, Jo Hansen, and production manager, Emily Doremire |
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The Unidata Users Committee sponsored the workshop which was organized by Millersville's Rich Clark (former Users Committee chair) and his colleague Dave Fitzgerald with assistance from Millersville and Program Center staff. Its purpose was presenting use cases for the Integrated Data Viewer (the IDV) the latest addition to the Unidata suite of analysis and visualization tools.
Dr. May Yuan, Associate Professor of Geography, University of Oklahoma (pictured left with UPC staff members Jeff Weber and Yuan Ho) visited in the Program Center for three days this month. During the visit she presented a seminar at NCAR's Foothills Lab. The presentation entitled "Temporal GIS: current trends and a vision for meteorological applications" discussed trends in temporal GIS research and a vision for meteorological applications. An overview of temporal GIS research with highlights on the conceptual and technological difficulties in the development opened the presentation. Next, May presented thoughts on temporal GIS for meteorological applications: the current state and future opportunities.