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© 2018 [2018 Optical Society of America.]. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modifications of the content of this paper are prohibited. Virtual Data Centre (VDC) solutions provide an environment that is able to quickly scale-up and where virtual machines and network resources can be quickly added on-demand through self-service procedures. VDC providers must support multiple simultaneous tenants with isolated networks on the same physical substrate. The provider must make efficient use of their available physical resources whilst providing high bandwidth and low-latency connections to tenants with a variety of VDC configurations. This paper utilises state of the art optical network elements to provide high bandwidth optical interconnections and develop an VDC architecture to slice the network and the compute resources dynamically, to efficiently divide the physical network between tenants. We present a Data Centre Virtualisation architecture with an SDN-controlled all-optical data plane combining Optical Circuit Switching (OCS) and Time Shared Optical Network (TSON). Developed network orchestration dynamically translates and provisions VDCs requests onto the optical physical layer. The experimental results show the provisioned bandwidth can be varied by adjusting the number of time slots allocated in the TDM network. These results lead to recommendations for provisioning TDM connections with different performance characteristics. Moreover, application level optical switch reconfiguration time is also evaluated to fully understand the impact on application performance in VDC provision. The experimental demonstration confirmed the developed VDC approach introduces negligible delay and complexity on the network side.

This Special Issue, which comprises 18 peer-reviewed papers, is the outcome of the Floods Working Group (FWG) session entitled "Multidisciplinary reconstruction of paleofloods" held at the PAGES OSM Conference (Past Climate Changes - Open Scientific Meeting) from 9-13 May 2017 in Zaragoza, Spain. Sixteen oral contributions and eighteen posters from most continents were presented and lively discussion ensued.

Virtual Data Centre (VDC) allocation requires the provisioning of both computing and network resources. Their joint provisioning allows for an optimal utilization of the physical Data Centre (DC) infrastructure resources. However, traditional DCs can suffer from computing resource underutilization due to the rigid capacity configurations of the server units, resulting in high computing resource fragmentation across the DC servers. To overcome these limitations, the disaggregated DC paradigm has been recently introduced. Thanks to resource disaggregation, it is possible to allocate the exact amount of resources needed to provision a VDC instance. In this paper, we focus on the static planning of a shared optically interconnected disaggregated DC infrastructure to support a known set of VDC instances to be deployed on top. To this end, we provide optimal and sub-optimal techniques to determine the necessary capacity (both in terms of computing and network resources) required to support the expected set of VDC demands. Next, we quantitatively evaluate the benefits yielded by the disaggregated DC paradigm in front of traditional DC architectures, considering various VDC profiles and Data Centre Network (DCN) topologies.

This study examines the use of trusted digital repository tools and standards for self-audit in digital repositories. While there has been increasing attention given to external audit and certification of trusted digital repositories, there has not yet been a cross-institutional study of repository self-audits. Describing a series of semi-structured interviews with six information professionals employed at six university digital repositories, this study examines these repositories’ experiences with self-audit. The study explores the tools that are being used for self-audit, how self-audits are conducted, and the value of self-audit to repositories and their stakeholders. Findings from this study provide some insight into the current state of self-audit in digital repositories, and the paper also suggests areas for improvement and future research in this field.

Many bioinformatics tools use reference data, such as genome assemblies or sequence databanks. Galaxy offers multiple ways to give access to this data through its web interface. However, the process of adding new reference data was customarily manual and time consuming, even more so when this data needed to be indexed in a variety of formats (e.g. Blast, Bowtie, BWA, or 2bit). BioMAJ is a widely used and stable software that is designed to automate the download and transformation of data from various sources. This data can be used directly from the command line, in more complex systems, such as Mobyle, or by using a REST API. To ease the process of giving access to reference data in Galaxy, we have developed the BioMAJ2Galaxy module, which enables the gap between BioMAJ and Galaxy to be bridged. With this module, it is now possible to configure BioMAJ to automatically download some reference data, to then convert and/or index it in various formats, and then make this data available in a Galaxy server using data libraries or data managers. The developments presented in this paper allow us to integrate the reference data in Galaxy in an automatic, reliable, and diskspace-saving way. The code is freely available on the GenOuest GitHub account ( https://github.com/genouest/biomaj2galaxy ).

Περιέχει τη περίληψη The process of identifying which records in two or more databases correspond to the same entity is an important aspect of data quality activities such as data pre-processing and data integration. Known as record linkage, data matching or entity resolution, this process has attracted interest from researchers in fields such as databases and data warehousing, data mining, information systems, and machine learning. Record linkage has various challenges, including scalability to large databases, accurate matching and classification, and privacy and confidentiality. The latter challenge arises because commonly personal identifying data, such as names, addresses and dates of birth of individuals, are used in the linkage process. When databases are linked across organizations, the issue of how to protect the privacy and confidentiality of such sensitive information is crucial to successful application of record linkage. In this paper we present an overview of techniques that allow the linking of databases between organizations while at the same time preserving the privacy of these data. Known as ‘privacy-preserving record linkage’ (PPRL), various such techniques have been developed. We present a taxonomy of PPRL techniques to characterize these techniques along 15 dimensions, and conduct a survey of PPRL techniques. We then highlight shortcomings of current techniques and discuss avenues for future research.

El artículo revisa los temas principales en la preservación y reuso de los datos de investigación (beneficios, ciclo de vida, proyectos, normativas, etc.) e identifica la falta de un registro mundial de bancos, repositorios y bibliotecas de datos. Expone la creación de una herramienta web que recoja este tipo de depósitos y los clasifique por áreas disciplinares: ODiSEA, International Registry on Research Data. Ofrece resultados sobre número y tipología temática de este tipo de depósitos a escala mundial. Esta aportación facilita el descubrimiento de nuevos conjuntos de datos cuya recombinación, desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar, fomentará la innovación y la rentabilidad de la inversión en ciencia., [EN] : This paper reviews the main issues in the preservation and reuse of research data (including benefits, life cycle, projects and regulations) and identifies the lack of a world register of data banks, repositories and libraries. It describes the creation of a web tool that lists these kinds of data stores and classifies them by field. This tool is called the International Registry on Research Data (ODiSEA) and it describes the number of data stores worldwide and the topics they cover. The registry makes it easier to discover new data sets, which can be recombined from a multidisciplinary perspective to promote innovation and increase returns on science investments., [CA] : L'article revisa els temes principals en la preservació i reutilització de les dades de recerca (beneficis, cicle de vida, projectes, normatives, etc.) i identifica la falta d'un registre mundial de bancs, repositoris i biblioteques de dades. Exposa la creació d'una eina web que reculli aquest tipus de dipòsits i els classifiqui per àrees disciplinàries: ODiSEA, International Registry on Research Data, que ofereix resultats sobre nombre i tipologia temàtica d'aquest tipus de dipòsits a escala mundial. Aquesta aportació facilita el descobriment de nous conjunts de dades, la recombinació de les quals, des d'una perspectiva multidisciplinària, ha de fomentar la innovació i la rendibilitat de la inversió en ciència.

In this paper, we propose GreenSlot, a parallel batch job scheduler for a datacenter powered by a photovoltaic solar array and the electrical grid (as a backup). GreenSlot predicts the amount of solar energy that will be available in the near future, and schedules the workload to maximize the green energy consumption while meeting the jobs’ deadlines. If brown energy must be used to avoid deadline violations, the scheduler selects times when brown electricity is cheap. Our results for production scientific workloads demonstrate that GreenSlot can increase green energy consumption by up to 117% and decrease energy cost by up to 39%, compared to EASY backfilling. Based on these positive results, we conclude that green datacenters and green-energy-aware scheduling can have a significant role in building a more sustainable IT ecosystem.

This article belongs to the Special Issue Open Data., The preservation and organization of oceanographic research data enables the scientific community to consult and reuse information of different kinds, and this is made possible by the repositories, meaning the services that facilitate data storage and dissemination. This paper reviews the current situation of oceanographic data repositories across different countries and evaluates them according to a series of indicators. The writers propose that although interest in storing and reusing oceanographic data has increased in recent years, the repositories are still in the process of developing their systems for processing, disseminating and reusing data. The repositories also differ in terms of architecture and the organizational level of the content they offer., We acknowledge support by the CSIC Open Access Publication Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI)., This study was carried out under the project “Open Access to Science in Spain” (CSO2014-52830-P) of the Spanish R&D Plan funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.