Category Archives: presentations

AAS 227 Poster 348.01: Making your code citable with the Astrophysics Source Code Library

Image of poster on ASCL showing how it can be used to cite software and get currently untrackable DOIs tracked in ADS

The Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL, ascl.net) is a free online registry of codes used in astronomy research. With nearly 1,200 codes, it is the largest indexed resource for astronomy codes in existence. Established in 1999, it offers software authors a path to citation of their research codes even without publication of a paper describing the software, and offers scientists a way to find codes used in refereed publications, thus improving the transparency of the research. Citations using ASCL IDs are accepted by major astronomy journals and if formatted properly are tracked by ADS and other indexing services. The number of citations to ASCL entries increased sharply from 110 citations in January 2014 to 456 citations in September 2015. The percentage of code entries in ASCL that were cited at least once rose from 7.5% in January 2014 to 17.4% in September 2015. The ASCL’s mid-2014 infrastructure upgrade added an easy entry submission form, more flexible browsing, search capabilities, and an RSS feeder for updates. A Changes/Additions form added this past fall lets authors submit links for papers that use their codes for addition to the ASCL entry even if those papers don’t formally cite the codes, thus increasing the transparency of that research and capturing the value of their software to the community.

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AAS 227 Poster 247.07: Astronomy Education and the Astrophysics Source Code Library

Image of ASCL education poster

The Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL) is an online registry of source codes used in refereed astrophysics research. It currently lists nearly 1,200 codes and covers all aspects of computational astrophysics. How can this resource be of use to educators and to the graduate students they mentor? The ASCL serves as a discovery tool for codes that can be used for one’s own research. Graduate students can also investigate existing codes to see how common astronomical problems are approached numerically in practice, and use these codes as benchmarks for their own solutions to these problems. Further, they can deepen their knowledge of software practices and techniques through examination of others’ codes.

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ASCL at AAS 227

Posters! Sessions! Meetings! The upcoming AAS meeting in Kissimmee, Florida is shaping up to be the busiest ever! Here are the formal meeting activities the ASCL is participating in.

Special Session: Tools and Tips for Better Software (aka Pain Reduction for Code Authors)
Tuesday, January 05, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM; Sanibel
Organizers: Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL)/Moore-Sloan Data Science Environment at NYU

Research in astronomy is increasingly dependent on software methods and astronomers are increasingly called upon to write, collaborate on, release, and archive research quality software, but how can these be more easily accomplished? Building on comments and questions from previous AAS special sessions, this session, organized by the Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL) and the Moore-Sloan Data Science Environment at NYU, explores methods for improving software by using available tools and best practices to ease the burden and increase the reward of doing so. With version control software such as git and svn and companion online sites such as GitHub and Bitbucket, documentation generators such as Doxygen and Sphinx, and Travis CI, Intern, and Jenkins available to aid in testing software, it is now far easier to write, document and test code. Presentations cover best practices, tools, and tips for managing the life cycle of software, testing software and creating documentation, managing releases, and easing software production and sharing. After the presentations, the floor will be open for discussion and questions.

The topics and panelists are:

Source code management with version control software, Kenza S. Arraki
Software testing, Adrian M. Price-Whelan
The importance of documenting code, and how you might make yourself do it, Erik J. Tollerud
Best practices for code release, G. Bruce Berriman
Community building and its impact on sustainable scientific software, Matthew Turk
What to do with a dead research code, Robert J. Nemiroff

Poster 247.07: Astronomy education and the Astrophysics Source Code Library
Wednesday, January 06, Exhibit Hall A

The Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL) is an online registry of source codes used in refereed astrophysics research. It currently lists nearly 1,200 codes and covers all aspects of computational astrophysics. How can this resource be of use to educators and to the graduate students they mentor? The ASCL serves as a discovery tool for codes that can be used for one’s own research. Graduate students can also investigate existing codes to see how common astronomical problems are approached numerically in practice, and use these codes as benchmarks for their own solutions to these problems. Further, they can deepen their knowledge of software practices and techniques through examination of others’ codes.

Poster 348.01: Making your code citable with the Astrophysics Source Code Library
Thursday, January 07, Exhibit Hall A

The Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL, ascl.net) is a free online registry of codes used in astronomy research. With nearly 1,200 codes, it is the largest indexed resource for astronomy codes in existence. Established in 1999, it offers software authors a path to citation of their research codes even without publication of a paper describing the software, and offers scientists a way to find codes used in refereed publications, thus improving the transparency of the research. Citations using ASCL IDs are accepted by major astronomy journals and if formatted properly are tracked by ADS and other indexing services. The number of citations to ASCL entries increased sharply from 110 citations in January 2014 to 456 citations in September 2015. The percentage of code entries in ASCL that were cited at least once rose from 7.5% in January 2014 to 17.4% in September 2015. The ASCL’s mid-2014 infrastructure upgrade added an easy entry submission form, more flexible browsing, search capabilities, and an RSS feeder for updates. A Changes/Additions form added this past fall lets authors submit links for papers that use their codes for addition to the ASCL entry even if those papers don’t formally cite the codes, thus increasing the transparency of that research and capturing the value of their software to the community.

Software activities at AAS 227, Kissimmee

As promised in a previous post, here is the list of software activities at the upcoming January AAS meeting in Kissimmee; I hope to add a Software Publishing Special Interest Group meeting to the list, but other than that, the list should be complete. If I missed anything that should be here, please (please!) let me know. Thank you, and see you there!

SUNDAY, JANUARY 03, 2016
Introduction to Software Carpentry 2 Day Workshop (day 1 of 2)
Organizer: Software Carpentry
9:00 AM – 5:30 PM; St. George 106 (Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center)

MONDAY, JANUARY 04, 2016
Introduction to Software Carpentry 2 Day Workshop (day 2 of 2)
Organizer: Software Carpentry
8:00 AM – 5:30 PM; St. George 106 (Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center)

Astrostatistics and R
Organizer: Eric D. Feigelson (Penn State University) and two assistants
9:00 AM – 6:00 PM; Emerald 8 (Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center)

Using Python for Astronomical Data Analysis
Organizer: Perry Greenfield
9:00 AM – 4:30 PM; St. George 114 (Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center)

SciCoder Presents: Developing Larger Software Projects
Organizer: Demitri Muna
10:00 AM – 6:00 PM; Emerald 6 (Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center)

Bayesian Methods in Astronomy: Hands-on Statistics
Organizer: Jake VanderPlas (U. Washington) and two assistants
1:00 PM – 6:00 PM; Emerald 2 (Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center)

TUESDAY, JANUARY 05, 2016
Tools and Tips for Better Software (aka Pain Reduction for Code Authors)
Organizers: Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL)/Moore-Sloan Data Science Environment at NYU
2:00 PM – 3:30 PM; Sanibel (Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center)

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 06, 2016
Lectures in AstroStatistics
10:00 AM – 11:30 AM; Osceola 5 (Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center)

Extrasolar Planet Atmospheres: BART Atmospheric Modelling Code and Applications
10:00 AM – 10:10 AM; 212.01. A Random Walk on WASP-12b with the Bayesian Atmospheric Radiative Transfer (BART) Code
Presenter: Joseph Harrington

10:10 AM – 10:20 AM; 212.02. Bayesian Atmospheric Radiative Transfer (BART) Code and Application to WASP-43b
Presenter: Jasmina Blecic

Topics in Astrostatistics
1:30 PM – 3:30 PM; St. George 106 (Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center)

AGN, QSO, Blazars Poster Session
243.46 Time-dependent Photoionization of Gaseous Nebulae: TD_XSTAR Code
Presenter: Ehab E. Elhoussieny

243.37. Bayesian and Profile Likelihood Approaches to Time Delay Estimation for Stochastic Time Series of Gravitationally Lensed Quasars
Presenter: Hyungsuk Tak

Majors and Graduate Student Education and Professional Development Poster Session
247.07 Astronomy education and the Astrophysics Source Code Library
Presenter: Alice Allen

THURSDAY, JANUARY 07, 2016
Catalogs, Surveys, and Data Viewing
2:00 PM – 2:10 PM; 324.01. Introducing Nightlight: A New, Modern FITS Viewer
Presenter: Demitri Muna
Tampa (Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center)

2:10 PM – 2:20 PM; 324.02. Synthesizing Understanding from Data with yt
Presenter: Matthew Turk
Tampa (Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center)

Cosmological Simulations of Galaxies
3:00 PM – 3:10 PM; 316.05. The Non-parametric Concentration of Dark Matter Halos in Cosmological N-body Simulations
Presenter: Meagan Lang
Sun A (Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center)

3:10 PM – 3:20 PM; 316.06. The Scylla Multi-Code Comparison Project
Presenter: Ariyeh Maller
Sun A (Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center)

348. Computation, Data Handling, Image Analysis Poster Session

Posters in other sections:
338.17. Simulating magnetospheres with numerical relativity: The GiRaFFE code
Presenter: Maria Babiuc-Hamilton

342.05. Machine Learning and Cosmological Simulations
Presenter: Harshil Kamdar

342.07. SurveySim: a new MCMC code to explore the evolution of the IR luminosity function
Presenter: Matteo Bonato

FRIDAY, JANUARY 08, 2016
Beyond the Academy: Showcasing Astronomy Alumni in Non-Academic Careers
413.01. Astronomers as Software Developers
Presenter: Rachel A. Pildis
10:00 AM – 10:25 AM; Osceola 4 (Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center)

Hack Day
Organizer: Kelle Cruz (Hunter College/CUNY and AMNH)
10:00 AM – 5:00 PM; Tallahassee (Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center)
To participate in Hack Day, please register at http://www.astrobetter.com/wiki/AASHackDay.

Months away, but AAS 227 Kissimmee meeting is already software rich!

Already it’s shaping up to be a software maven’s dream AAS meeting, with workshops and Special Sessions focused on expanding your software skills and a Hack Day to put them to use! We’ll have a comprehensive listing closer to the meeting date, but here are the activities already on the schedule, with more to come!

Introduction to Software Carpentry 2 Day Workshop
Astrostatistics and R
Using Python for Astronomical Data Analysis
SciCoder Presents: Developing Larger Software Projects
Bayesian Methods in Astronomy: Hands-on Statistics
Tools and Tips for Better Software (aka Pain Reduction for Code Authors)
Lectures in AstroStatistics
Hack Day

The 3rd DC/MD/VA Summer Astrophysics Meeting

On Thursday, June 25, I attended part of the 3rd annual DC/MD/VA Summer Astrophysics Meeting; duties elsewhere prevented me from attending the whole event, alas. This meeting, which rotates among the sponsoring universities, was held this year at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, and is intended for senior undergraduates and graduate students to network, present their work, and facilitate interaction among local institutions. At least ten area universities were represented at the event.

25hubbleI arrived in plenty of time to hear keynote speaker Dr. Jennifer Wiseman‘s excellent presentation The Hubble Space Telescope: 25 Years of Science and Discovery; it is always a pleasure to hear her speak.

Next on the agenda were Jeremy Hare from George Washington University, who presented Unveiling the nature of high energy sources using machine learning and Joel Coley from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, with Probing the long-term variability and eclipsing properties of high-mass X-ray binaries. After a short break, the program continued with a presentation on The science of WFIRST: Gravitational microlensing, the galactic bulge, and the transit method, this originally to be presented by Kathryn Waychoff of Dartmouth College and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, but given in her absence instead by three of GSFC undergraduate summer interns whose names I unfortunately did not catch* Nyki Anderson, Emily Kilen, and Sean Terry; they did an amazing job. (I kept thinking, “These are summer interns?!?!” They really knew their stuff!)

posterMy presentation on the ASCL was the last of the day. Only a few people present had heard of the ASCL before this meeting; I was happy for the opportunity to bring the ASCL to this audience. My talk covered what the ASCL is, why it exists, and how it has grown and is used by the community; my PowerPoint presentation (with speaker notes) is available for download.

In addition to Thursday afternoon’s presentations, I got a chance to peruse posters and talk with some of the poster presenters. I’m so pleased I could participate, and wish only that I had been able to attend all of it! The future of astrophysics is in good hands. Kudos to the organizers and participants for such an excellent event.

*My thanks to Sean for filling in the blanks for me!

ASCL visit to NIST

On Thursday, February 12, I visited the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, MD on February 12 to present a seminar titled Restoring reproducibility: Making scientist software discoverable to the research reproducibility users’ group there. Hosted by Chandler Becker and Robert Hanisch, I also had the opportunity to talk with Jim Warren before the presentation; he asked excellent questions during the Q&A, too. Bob and I have often discussed (even argued!) about the amount of metadata the ASCL should maintain, and Jim’s questions were on this point.

After the presentation, I talked with Dan Wheeler, Kimberly Tryka, Andrea Medina-Smith, and Jonathan Guyer. Dan had excellent ideas for the ASCL; as we were standing by the conference room door, I didn’t have the opportunity to write these down but I hope to continue the discussion via email. Kimberly, Andrea, and I talked about metadata, indexing software, and how the ASCL maintains its links to software download sites. We would like to create a way to exchange and share discussion with a larger community and have already started chatting about how to do this in email. Jonathan and I talked generally about the ASCL and how change can occur in a community. After that, Chandler took me to the NIST museum (so cool!) and Bob showed me around a bit before my departure. I had a very interesting and thoroughly enjoyable afternoon!

The abstract and PowerPoint file for my presentation are below; the notes in the slides provide most of the text of my talk, though sometimes simply as bullet points.

Abstract: Source codes are increasingly important for the advancement of science in general and astrophysics in particular. Journal articles meant to detail the general logic behind new results and ideas often do not make the source codes that generated these results available, decreasing the transparency and integrity of the research. The Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL) is a registry of scientist-written software used in astronomy research. The challenges of creating and growing the resource will be covered by its current editor, who will also discuss specific steps the ASCL has taken to improve code discovery in astronomy and the effect this work is having within astronomy and more broadly in other research areas.

NISTpresentationslides_Feb12