New Program to Help Scientists Share Large Data Sets

"The problem is that the collaboration often involves actual flights halfway around the world to load up hard drives filled with data, too much to send over conventional Internet connections. That’s exactly the kind of issue a new $8-million program from the National Science Foundation hopes to solve. The program, the DataNet Federation Consortium, involves six different research centers in an effort to make it easier and faster to access and share large and complex data sets....So the consortium will build an “infrastructure” aimed at reversing that trend. It will allow researchers to access data remotely, which is often impossible now when projects require large amounts of storage space. The new system will also create programs that automatically convert data from different fields of research—which are often in different formats—into a workable form. And it will create a set of rules and procedures for each organization to follow, to make the sharing process smoother. The grant money from the NSF will come in over a span of five years, and it will benefit scientists from hundreds of universities working in biology, hydrology, oceanography, social science, and learning behavior...."