Category Archives: AAS

ASCL at AAS 223

The ASCL will be at the AAS meeting in (not quite) Washington, DC next week; I’ll be handing out (non-glowing) pens like crazy at both the ASCL poster (255.25, titled You’ve Written a Cool Astronomy Code! Now What Do You Do with It?) and the Special Session (more information below) on Tuesday, too. I hope you’ll stop by the poster to say hi, talk codes, and grab a pen!

The AAS’s Working Group on Astronomical Software (WGAS) and the ASCL are holding a Special Session on code sharing that includes presentations and an open discussion. Peter Teuben and Robert Hanisch will moderate the session, which will be held on Tuesday, January 7, 2:00 to 3:30 in National Harbor 5, Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center.

The panelists and topics for the session are:

Benjamin J. Weiner, Occupy Hard Drives: Making your work more valuable by giving it away
G. Bruce Berriman, Maintaining a user community for the Montage Image Mosaic Toolkit
Gary J. Ferland, Cloudy – the non-equilibrium microphysics of gas and dust, and its observed spectrum
Daniel S. Katz, NSF policies on software and data sharing and their implementation
Erik J. Tollerud, The Astropy Project’s self-herding cats development model
David W. Hogg, Costs and benefits of developing out in the open

After the presentations, Peter will open the floor for questions and discussion; at the end of the discussion, Bob will summarize the themes and points and will close the Special Session.

We’ll be tweeting, too, especially during the Special Session on Tuesday: @asclnet or #asclnet. See you (in person or online) next week!

Astrophysics Code Sharing II: The Sequel at the January 2014 AAS meeting

The ASCL, along with the AAS’s Working Group on Astronomical Software (WGAS), is coordinating a Special Session at the January 2014 AAS meeting. This session is scheduled for 2:00 PM on January 7, and will feature case studies on code release for AstroPy, Montage, and Cloudy in addition to talks on the state of code sharing and funding agencies’ policies.

The session will be moderated by Peter Teuben and Robert Hanisch; the speakers for this session are:

G. Bruce Berriman, NExScI, PAC, Caltech
Gary J. Ferland, University of Kentucky
David W. Hogg, New York University
Daniel S. Katz, National Science Foundation
Erik J. Tollerud, Yale University
Benjamin J. Weiner, University of Arizona

After the presentations, the floor will be opened for discussion on ways to encourage code sharing to improve the transparency and efficiency of research and mitigate the negative aspects of releasing code.

 

AAS 221 splinter meeting “Astrophysics Code Sharing?”

Yesterday, Peter Teuben (UMd) moderated the splinter meeting “Astrophysics Code Sharing?” at the AAS 221 meeting in Long Beach. Panelists Omar Laurino (CfA), Robert Hanisch (STScI/VAO), Bruce Berriman (IPAC, Caltech), and I (that’d be Alice, editor of the ASCL) made short presentations before the floor was opened for comments. Spirited, even passionate, discussion, ensued, touching on why codes might not be released, sociological changes needed to foster release, the difference between release for transparency and release for reuse, the need to find a way to recognize those who join a collaborative coding project after the initial code paper is written, how to improve software writing skills among astrophysicists, and how nice it would be if the ASCL had a system and funding like the Neuroimaging Informatics Tools and Resources Clearinghouse’s. Okay, that last thing might have just been in my head, but it would, indeed, be nice!

The slides for the splinter meeting are online and will be made available shortly as a downloadable PDF.

Omar Laurino joins panel for AAS splinter meeting “Astrophysics Code Sharing?”

Omar Laurino (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) has joined the panel for the ASCL-sponsored splinter meeting “Astrophysics Code Sharing?” at the upcoming AAS meeting in Long Beach. The topic of his short presentation is What do we want to accomplish?

Session date/time/location:
Wednesday, January 9
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Regency Ballroom D (Downtown Hyatt Long Beach)

Peter Teuben (Astronomy Department, UMD) will discuss the results of sessions on code release and discoverability from earlier conferences; he will also moderate the discussion. Robert Hanisch (STScI/VAO) will talk on Integrity in the publication process and Bruce Berriman (IPAC, Caltech) will cover Code repositories in other disciplines. ASCL editor Alice Allen will share a little information about (surprise!) the ASCL. The floor will be open for discussion and sharing after the five-minute presentations. And we’ll have glow-in-the-dark pencils to give away, too!

ASCL poster at AAS

The ASCL will have a poster at AAS on Tuesday, January 8; it is poster 240.01, one of the Computation, Data Handling, and Image Analysis posters, and is titled Using the Astrophysics Source Code Library. Editor Alice Allen will be at the poster handing out glow in the dark pencils. Please stop by to pick one (or a dozen) up!

Astrophysics Code Sharing?

Astrophysics Code Sharing? is the title of a splinter meeting the ASCL is sponsoring at the upcoming AAS meeting in Long Beach. The session date/time/location are:

Wednesday, January 9
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Regency Ballroom D (Downtown Hyatt Long Beach)

Peter Teuben (Astronomy Department, University of Maryland) will chair the discussion. Some of the subjects to be covered in the presentations highlight recent developments:

    • Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL)
    • Results of recent discussion about code release and discoverability: eScience meeting (Chicago, Oct 2012), ADASS conference (Urbana-Champaign, Nov 2012)
    • Integrity in the publication process
    • Code repositories in other disciplines

We invite participants to suggest other short topics to present by contacting the organizers at editor@ascl.net. The panelists presenting the topics listed above include Bruce Berriman (IPAC, Caltech), Robert J. Hanisch (STScI/VAO), and Alice Allen (ASCL).

After short presentations on the state of astronomical software, the floor will be opened for discussion on issues relating to the discoverability of codes and transparency of numerical and computational research methods.