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ITS Research Support
Research Support in IT Services
Contrast:
- IT Services for Teaching and Learning
- and Uni Business Systems
Research Support in IT Services
IT Services for Research 1/2
- Specialist part of IT Services
- Comprises members of each Faculty IT team. . .
- . . .plus the Research Infrastructure (RI) Team and Research Applications (RAC)
teams in the centre.
- Email contact details:
-
Research Support in IT Services
IT Services for Research 2/2
We support computationally-intensive research:
Offer help with and advice on:
- running complex simulations on a computer (including parallel);
- performing vast parameter searches;
- handling large data sets;
- computer programming, LaTeX. . .
Research Support in IT Services
Research Computing Examples
- High Throughput Computing (HTC)
-
- Large amounts of comp. power over a "long" time:
- Running long jobs!
- Running the same experiment many (1000s) times, with different inputs.
- High Performance Computing (HPC)
-
- Large amounts of comp. power over a "short" time:
- many CPUs simultaneously to run complex models quicker.
- Many compute-nodes' RAM simultaneously to handle very big jobs.
- Data Analysis and Visualization
-
- Getting the information out of the vast quantities of data.
Research Support in IT Services
How can we help you? (1/2)
- Provision of Research Infrastructure:
-
- Computational Shared Facility (CSF, aka Danzek),
- iCSF (aka Incline), Redqueen, Zrek. . .
- Condor pools
- The Research Data Service
- Support and Training:
-
- Documentation — Web and Wiki.
- Courses!
- Usage of HPC/HTC (inc. Condor) clusters,
- application support.
Research Support in IT Services
How can we help you? (2/2)
- Advice and in-depth support:
-
- optimisation of models/code — speed up!
- parallelisation of code, or
- advanced use of HTC (inc. Condor).
Research Support in IT Services
Other Related Courses
- Using computational facilities:
-
- HTC and Condor
- Using the CSF (and Redqueen. . .)
- Linux
- Miscellaneous:
-
- Programming:
-
- Matlab
- Fortran 95
- Parallel programming (e.g., OpenMP and MPI, OpenCL)
Course Overview
- One day
-
A one day course, 10:00 – 16:00:
- four "lectures";
- three practical/hands-on sessions;
- the middle hands-on session will be combined with lunch.
- Linux plus GUI, Linux plus commandline, or laptop
-
- Desktop machines here dual-boot but LaTeX available on only Linux;
- use Kile LaTeX GUI — or favourite editor plus commandline;
- use your own laptop if you wish.
What is TeX?
- A typesetting system — not a word-processor:
-
- a special purpose programming language;
- a very powerful system — superficially more complex than
word-processors.
- Both harder and easier:
-
- Steep learning curve — but LaTeX allows you to ignore the tech details
99% of the time
- Harder to do easy things but easier to do hard things!
Why use LaTeX?
High Quality and Flexibility
- Produces truly high-quality technical manuscripts.
- Almost zero chance of corrupt document.
- LaTeX is stored as ASCII text, not binary.
- Lets you work the way you want to work:
- on your favourite platform/OS;
- with a choice of GUIs —
- or with your favourite editor and the CLI.
More:
Why use LaTeX? Compatibility
The formatting is messed up. . .
- Enforced, costly upgrades (.doc to .docx).
- MS Word and Powerpoint are infamous for compatibility/formatting problems
- different versions; different platforms/OS.
- proprietory format — OpenOffice does its best, but. . .
- Leads to problems:
- Two or three people working on a journal article/paper;
- presentation nightmares!
- LaTeX produces identical results on MS Windowz, Linux and OS-X.
Why use LaTeX? Mathematics
Second to None for Typesetting Mathematics
- MS Word:
- difficult and time-consuming to construction non-trivial
equations and formulae;
- poor quality output — not publication-quality.
- [La]TeX:
True Publication Quality
- Many journals use (La)TeX
- J. Phys. A: Math. Gen., 32, 3255 – 3269:
PDF
(Postscript).
Why use LaTeX? FOSS
LaTeX is Free and Open Source (GPL)
As a consequence:
- free (as in beer) to download and install;
- many extensions: ChemTeX, MusicTeX,
graphics. . .
- available on all platforms/OS:
MS Windows (MiKTeX),
Unix/Linux (TeX Live),
Apple/OS-X (MacTeX),
Solaris. . .
- guaranteed to be available everywhere: home, work, other institutions. . .
Fundamentals
In this module we describe:
- LaTeX source files
- The edit, compile, view cycle
- GUIs
- Commandline LaTeX
- Warnings and Errors
The LaTeX Language
In this module we describe:
- Special characters.
- The structure of a LaTeX document.
- Document classes (stylesheets/templates).
- LaTeX environments (lists, tables. . .).
- Sections, subsectionsAccents and special symbols.
Mathematics
In this module we describe:
- Inline and displayed mathematics
- Equation arrays
- Labelling and Referencing Equations
- Where to find more examples
This is where LaTeX really shines!
Including Graphics in TeX
In this module we describe:
- How to include images (JPEG, PNG, TIFF. . .) in LaTeX documents.
- Where to find out more.
BibTeX
In this module we describe:
- The BibTeX database.
- Using a BibTeX database — citations.
- Compiling with BibTeX.
- BibTeX styles.
- BibTeX and Endnote.
Presentations
In this module we describe:
- Basic document structure;
- revealing things incrementally;
- creating accompanying notes.
Support and Documentation
In this module we describe:
- IT Services;
- Faculty IS teams.
- Freely-downloadable distributions;
- books;
- on-line documentation;
- user-groups;
- UoM email list.