"Cientistas podem contar uma história sem perder a acurácia"

Abstract

Agência FAPESP -Dan Fay, an engineer at Microsoft for more than 20 years, is a member of a select group of professionals in search of partnerships between the software giant and scientists heading projects related to energy, earth, and environmental sciences.They are projects such as the World Wide Telescope software, developed with the help of researchers from John Hopkins University. The software allows scientists from around the globe to access, manipulate, and share images of celestial objects collected by space telescopes, observatories, and research institutions."Our challenge is finding researchers to whose research we can add not only hardware, but also more value", says Fay. Besides being director of the Earth, Energy, and Environment effort at Microsoft Research Connections, a division of the Microsoft Research organization, Fay also serves as a member of the Purdue University Computer and Information Technology Industrial advisory board in the state of Indiana.He was in São Paulo to take part in the Latin American eScience Workshop, sponsored jointly by FAPESP and Microsoft from May 13 to 15, 2013. Fay gave two presentations to researchers and students from different countries about how advances in the handling of massive amounts of information have led to improvements in a variety of areas. The first one was about how to integrate science and cloud computing; the other, "how to achieve international visibility". After the event, he sat down with Agência FAPESP for an interview, parts of which are reproduced below.Agência FAPESP -What are your expectations for the future of eScience, the use of technology and computational tools in doing science?Fay -What is interesting about eScience is its ability to mix computational data and new techniques in a number of areas. We're seeing an increase in the use of computing, but the next step is the merger of different areas and the combined use of information generated by them, like, for instance, a cross-sectional analysis of data from the biological and environmental domains. Both of them speak different languages. The transition between areas will be one of the future challenges. You can't take for granted that a piece of information means something. You have to be sure. Agência FAPESP -How can researchers use cloud computing in their studies?Fay -Cloud computing offers a paradigm shift in the way data analysis and computational challenges are met by numerous areas of scientific study. Unlike supercomputers which are isolated and centralized, cloud computing is everywhere and it can support different computing styles suitable for data analysis and collaboration. We've been working with academic researchers for the past three years, exploiting the full potential of this new platform. There are more than 90 research projects using Windows Azure [Microsoft's cloud platform] and we've learned a lot from them. As with any new technology, some people start using it before, others later on. Several researchers have started using it to understand how it can change t...

O Uso de Ambientes Computacionais Modelados em 3D Como Mecanismo Preparatório Para a OBA na Educação Básica

“…• Stellarium: Planetário de código aberto que mostra um céu realista em 3D, bastante usado em projetores de planetários, seu funcionamento está nos moldes de um planetário, com excelente qualidade técnica e gráficaé capaz de simular o céu diurno, noturno e o crepúsculo de forma muito realista [Beserra-dw et al 2012]. • World Wide Telescope: Software desenvolvido em parceria com pesquisadores da Universidade Johns Hopkins, permite que cientistas de diversas regiões do mundo acessem imagens de objetos celestes coletadas por telescópios espaciais, com elé e possível a exploração do universo conhecido através de ambientes modelados em 3D [Jones 2013]. • Google Earth: Aplicativo que reúne diversas imagens permitindo a visualização do globo terrestre em 3D a partir de imagens obtidas por satélites de empresas como a AirPhotoUSA, Digital Globe, ESpatial, GeoEye, dentre outras [Almeida 2011].…”