3TU.Datacentrum

Data sets in the 3TU.Datacentrum now accessible via NARCIS

Tue, 15 May 2012 11:31:00 +0200

All the data sets stored in the 3TU.Datacentrum are now accessible also via the NARCIS repository. NARCIS is the gateway to scholarly information in The Netherlands. Due to the link between NARCIS and 3TU.Datacentrum the research data sets can now be found even easier. In the 3TU.Datacentrum all data sets have a DOI (digital object identifier) that provides a unique and persistent link to current information about that digital object, including location where the object can be found on the Internet. While information about an object, such as URL, can change over time, its DOI will remain the same thus ensuring that the object can be found. This enables secure retrieval and citation of the data sets. Data citation, in return, creates a scholarly structure that recognises and rewards data producers. The access to the descriptions of the data sets via NARCIS is as follows. At the home page of NARCIS click on ‘DATASETS’. Subsequently select ‘3TU.Datacentrum’ from the menu bar on the left. This will list all datasets archived in the 3TU.Datacentrum and provide direct linking.

Nanoscientists find long-sought Majorana particle

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 15:01:00 +0200

In the 1930s, the brilliant Italian physicist Ettore Majorana deduced from quantum theory the possibility of the existence of a very special particle, a particle that is its own anti-particle: the Majorana fermion. That ‘Majorana’ would be right on the border between matter and anti-matter.
Nanoscientist Leo Kouwenhoven already caused great excitement among scientists in February by presenting the preliminary results at a scientific congress. On 12 April, the scientists will publish their research in Science. The research was financed by the FOM Foundation and Microsoft. Quantum computer and dark matter
Majorana fermions are very interesting – not only because their discovery opens up a new and uncharted chapter of fundamental physics; they may also play a role in cosmology. A proposed theory assumes that the mysterious ‘dark matter, which forms the greatest part of the universe, is composed of Majorana fermions. Furthermore, scientists view the particles as fundamental building blocks for the quantum computer. Such a computer is far more powerful than the best supercomputer, but only exists in theory so far. Contrary to an ‘ordinary’ quantum computer, a quantum computer based on Majorana fermions is exceptionally stable and barely sensitive to external influences. Nanowire
For the first time, scientists in Leo Kouwenhoven’s research group managed to create a nanoscale electronic device in which a pair of Majorana fermions ‘appear’ at either end of a nanowire. They did this by combining an extremely small nanowire, made by colleagues from Eindhoven University of Technology, with a superconducting material and a strong magnetic field. ‘The measurements of the particle at the ends of the nanowire cannot otherwise be explained than through the presence of a pair of Majorana fermions’, says Leo Kouwenhoven.. _{The device is made of an Indium Antemonide nanowire, covered with a Gold contact and partially covered with a Superconducting Niobium contact. The Majorana fermions are created at the end of the Nanowire.} Particle accelerators
It is theoretically possible to detect a Majorana fermion with a particle accelerator such as the one at CERN. The current Large Hadron Collider appears to be insufficiently sensitive for that purpose but, according to physicists, there is another possibility: Majorana fermions can also appear in properly designed nanostructures. ‘What’s magical about quantum mechanics is that a Majorana particle created in this way is similar to the ones that may be observed in a particle accelerator, although that is very difficult to comprehend’, explains Kouwenhoven. ‘In 2010, two different groups of theorists came up with a solution using nanowires, superconductors and a strong magnetic field. We happened to be very familiar with those ingredients here at TU Delft through earlier research.’ Microsoft approached Leo Kouwenhoven to help them lead a special FOM programme in search of Majorana fermions, resulting in a successful outcome.. ^{Prof.dr.ir. Leo Kouwenhoven and his team in the lab. Photo: Sam Rentmeester.} Ettore Majorana
The Italian physicist Ettore Majorana was a brilliant theorist who showed great insight into physics at a young age. He discovered a hitherto unknown solution to the equations from which quantum scientists deduce elementary particles: the Majorana fermion. Practically all theoretic particles that are predicted by quantum theory have been found in the last decades, with just a few exceptions, including the enigmatic Majorana particle and the well-known Higgs boson. But Ettore Majorana the person is every bit as mysterious as the particle. In 1938 he withdrew all his money and disappeared during a boat trip from Palermo to Naples. Whether he killed himself, was murdered or lived on under a different identity is still not known. No trace of Majorana was ever found. References
The article is published in Science Express on 12 April: Signatures of Majorana fermions in hybrid superconductor-semiconductor nanowire devices, V. Mourik1†, K. Zuo1†, S.M. Frolov1, S.R. Plissard2, E.P.A.M. Bakkers1,2, L.P. Kouwenhoven1* 1Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, TU Delft, 2600 GA Delft.
2Department of Applied Physics, TU Eindhoven, 5600 MB Eindhoven.
†These authors contributed equally.
*E-mail: l.p.kouwenhoven@tudelft.nl Data: Majorana fermions More information More information is available via http://kouwenhovenlab.tudelft.nl/press-release.
See also http://www.fom.nl/live/english/home.pag © 2012, Webredactie M&C, TU Delft

Verslag "Datamanagement: hoe ondersteun ik onderzoekers, 29-30 maart 2012"

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 11:36:00 +0200

De tweedaagse workshop Data management: Hoe ondersteun ik onderzoekers? van het Onderzoeksdata Forum op 29 en 30 maart 2012 bij NIOZ op Texel was een groot succes volgens de deelnemers.
Dertig deelnemers waren op Texel bijeen om hun visies, kennis en ervaringen op het gebied van datamanagement met elkaar te delen.
Na een warm ontvangst door Herman Ridderinkhof, de directeur van het NIOZ, waren de deelnemers onder indruk van het werk en het belang van het onderzoek dat daar wordt gedaan. En hoe belangrijk het is om deze oceanografische data goed op te slaan en beschikbaar te maken voor (internationaal) hergebruik.
Rob Grim, al jaren lang bezig met data management binnen Tilburg University deelde zijn ervaringen. Hij besprak de laatste ontwikkelingen over datamanagement en deelde verschillende informatiebronnen die voor het beheer van data beschikbaar zijn (websites, social media, instituten, personen).
Daarna was het de beurt aan Ana van Meegen van de VU, die vertelde over het SURF-project CARDS waarin zeven pilots bij diverse universiteiten veel ervaring heeft opgeleverd over hoe je onderzoekers kunt ondersteunen bij datamanagement. Het project heeft ook hulp bij het opzetten van een Data Management Plan opgeleverd.
Geïnspireerd met bovenstaande praktijkervaringen gingen de deelnemers CURATE, het digitale curation game, spelen. Dit leverde informatieve gesprekken op.
Na het middagprogramma konden de deelnemers in informele setting (duinen, strand, hotelbar en tijdens het diner) nog beter kennis maken met elkaar en elkaars werkervaringen.
Dag twee begon met een film over het NIOZ.
Daarna werden drie good practices gepresenteerd:
• NIOZ en haar data: hoe gaat NIOZ om met haar data? Taco de Bruijn, Physical Oceanography, Data Management Group geeft een toelichting over de wijze waarop NIOZ data verkrijgt en het beheer geregeld heeft.
• RIVM en haar data; Rutger Nugteren vertelt over de acquisitie van dat bij het RIVM en de verschillende elementen die spelen bij deze organisatie.
• 3TU Datacentrum: stromen van data; Jeroen Rombouts van 3TU Datacentrum vertelt over zijn ervaringen bij het verkrijgen van data van wetenschappers.
In groepjes werd naar aanleiding van deze drie presentaties over acquisitie van data verder gesproken over het verkrijgen van data en het ondersteunen van onderzoekers bij het beheer van hun data. Hierbij werd ook het door Ana van Meegen in CARDS ontwikkelde checklist gebruikt.
Een concreet resultaat van de workshop is de Data Management Source Kit. Deze is bij de afronding van het programma gepresenteerd. Het is een wiki waar experts en betrokkenen in Nederland nuttige bronnen en referenties met elkaar kunnen delen.
Uit de afsluitende evaluatie bleek dat de deelnemers zeer tevreden waren over de workshop. Inspirerend en nuttig werd vaak genoemd. De ruime gelegenheid om te netwerken werd gewaardeerd en met name de deelnemers van de hogescholen hadden elkaar gevonden en zijn van plan snel de koppen bij elkaar te steken. Velen zijn zich nu nog bewuster van de breedte van het onderwerp en hoewel het daarmee als nog complexer wordt ervaren, staan velen te popelen om aan de slag te gaan om data management bij hun instelling meer handen en voeten te geven. Met de aangereikte aanknopingspunten en handreikingen kunnen ze zeker verder. En ze kijken uit naar vervolg bijeenkomst op het gebied van data management.
Foto’s gemaakt door Driek Heesakkers en Annemiek van der Kuil zijn te zien op flickr.

Brochure 3TU.Datacentrum

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:50:00 +0100

The new brochure of 3TU.Datacentrum was released on February 1st, 2012. This brochure tells about all the services van 3TU.Datacentrum can offer.
One of our frequent users reports on his experiences with 3TU.Datacentrum.

Are you the winner of the Dutch Data Prize 2012?

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 10:43:00 +0100

Dutch Data Prize 2012

Are you or do you know of a researcher or research group that makes a unique contribution to science, through hard graft in the area of data archiving? Nominate him or her for the Dutch Data Prize! The prize
The Dutch Data Prize is a mark of appreciation for researchers who gather and document data, and make it accessible. 3TU.Datacentrum and DANS award a prize for the humanities and social sciences and a prize for the exact and technical sciences. The winners receive: a sculpture, €7,500 to make the dataset accessible/improve access to the data (for example, by organising a symposium or making the data accessible online) and an all-expenses paid dinner for the group of researchers involved in producing the relevant data set and making it accessible. Save the date
Nominations can be made until 1 July 2012. The jury will select a shortlist of three nominees for each prize in September, from which the winners will be chosen in October. In the period between publication of the nominations and presentation of the awards, attention will be devoted to the candidates and their achievements, amongst others on the websites of DANS and 3TU.Datacentrum and in the magazine e-data&research. What are the nomination criteria?
Candidates may be nominated on the basis of a special data set or their work in the area of data archiving in general. The link to the criteria that the archived data must meet is in the left margin. Questions?
Would you like to know more about the Dutch Data Prize? Please contact Heiko Tjalsma MA (DANS) for questions about the humanities and social sciences prize and Jeroen Rombouts MSc (3TU.Datacentrum) for questions about the exact and technical sciences prize.

Minisymposium "Beyond the scientific paper", 26 October 2011, TU/e

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 11:05:00 +0200

Enhanced publications are becoming ever more popular in many fields of science and technology. Enhanced publications are publications – usually textual – that have been enhanced with additional (supplementary) material. The supplementary material may consist, for example, of research data, illustrative images or video, metadata sets, or post-publication data such as comments or rankings. Adding underlying data and models to a paper makes it easier to verify and reproduce, and to re-use results of research while the option of changing post-publication data allows an enhanced publication to develop over the course of time. Program
* Jeroen Sondervan, publisher Humanities and Online Projects at Amsterdam University Press;
* Pieter van Gorp, TU/e, assistant professor at the School of Industrial Engineering, developer of Share, a platform for supporting executable papers;
* Paul de Bra, TU/e, professor at the department of Mathematics and Computer Science, head of the Database and Hypermedia Research Group;
* Sjoerd Miesen, TU/e, repository manager at Information Expertise Centre / Library

Together the four speakers will present an overview of new and exciting ways of academic publishing. The presentations will be followed by a discussion.

After the minisymposium, a simple lunch will be served.

You can read the latest news and find out more about this minisymposium here.

Participation in this minisymposium is free, but if you want to attend please send an e-mail to Leon Osinski before 18 October 2011.

Workshop Enhanced Publication

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 15:34:00 +0200

Research is more than publications only. If all research data are connected with each other they offer more possibilities for research. The workshop 'Maken van Verrijkte Publicaties' on Ocktober 19th, 2011 offers you the opportunity to try to make an Enhanced publication by yourself. If possible, you can bring your own materials, like research data, videos, pictures, related reports and so on. This workshop is for researchers and research supporters.

TU/e wins 2nd prize at Elsevier's Executable Paper Grand Challenge

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 15:35:00 +0200

Elsevier conducted the Executable Paper Grand Challenge on June 2 in Singapore, a contest aimed at improving the way scientific information is communicated and used. Second place was awarded to Eindhoven's Pieter van Gorp and Steffen Mazanek for SHARE: a webportal for creating and sharing executable research papers. The SHARE platform is a free web portal to a catalog of virtual machines. By deploying a copy of the required operating system in SHARE as well as relevant software and data, authors can make a conventional paper fully reproducible and interactive. Besides reproducing the literate results of a research paper, readers can also explore the results of the paper by entering different input parameters than the ones reported in the original text. In short SHARE allows to repeat and manipulate a particular experiment.
The SHARE platform has the benefit of making research results reproducible. By doing so SHARE also truly enhances articles with all artifacts of the article, programs as well as data, which can be made immutable afterwards and published that way.
SHARE and its relationship with open access of research data is explained by Pieter van Gorp in this video.

Store-Share-and-Cite: Increase your citations by (re)use of research data

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 16:09:00 +0200

That reusing scientific research data can contribute to reproducing and creating new knowledge, and to increased visibility of the scientific output, was certainly the message that we took home on the 9th of June 2011. About 70 symposium delegates ranging from curious researchers of Dutch technical universities, to national and international data specialists gathered together at the TU Delft Library for the mini-symposium ‘Store-Share-and-Cite: Increase your citations by (re)use of research data’ . During the 3TU mini-symposium, mainly three questions were addressed by a variety of experts: How to manage data? How to (re)produce (new) knowledge? And how does the 3TU.Datacentrum manage data and facilitate the production of new knowledge?

New data management can lead to new forms of science.

There is consensus on the idea that data centres such as World Data Center or the 3TU.Datacentrum, are important to scientists because there is a need for insight in the data that form the basis for scientific analyses. Michael Diepenbroek (geologist and computer scientist, and coordinator of PANGAEA) presented the complexity and architectures behind data centers like PANGAEA®. He stated that good papers become even better when the data behind the analyses are accessible. Also publishers are more than willing to cooperate in new initiatives to make data more accessible. The publishers like Elsevier, represented by Philippe Terheggen, are developing new options for enhanced publications. Patrick Vandewalle shared his experience as a researcher on the subject of Reproducible research. He showed that the storage of data combined with the code makes the research more robust, to yourself and fellow researchers. Improved data sharing is in the interest of science. Jeroen Rombouts, managing director of the project 3TU.Datacentrum presented Scientific Data Services in the Netherlands. The goal of 3TU.Datacentrum is to facilitate long-term archive and permanent access to technical-scientific research data. This datacenter offers the knowledge, experience and the tools for archiving research data in a standardized, secure and well-documented manner.
Vivid discussion
The afternoon hosted four excellent speakers, a vivid discussion with versatile and yet enthusiastic audience about the present and future trends in research data. As Maria Heijne, director of the TU Delft Library stated: “Using data that are already there and looking at them from different angles will produce new knowledge.” We are looking forward to welcoming you at one of our future events. Check out here some photos and the video of the mini-symposium.

3TU.Datacentrum has been added to the DataCite repository list

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 11:23:00 +0200

Find 3TU.Datacentrum among other research data repositories, like British Oceanographic Data Centre, Environmental Information Data Centre, Polar Data Centre and many others. This repository list contains about 100 data centres and aims to capture the growing number of repositories for research data.