Starting with this issue, the SIENews have been replaced by the ITNews, a newsletter that includes updates and information both from the Servicios Informáticos (SI) and the Servicios Informáticos Específicos (SIE), thus offering a more complete account of the Information Technology activities carried out at the IAC.
The Deep Learning group of the IAC has recently started an exciting opportunity with the Pathology division of the Hospital Universitario de Canarias (HUC) through its head Prof. Eduardo Salido. The idea is to join efforts in advancing the detection of several types of cancers, starting with the large physical database of colorectal tomography scans that the various hospitals in the Canary Island are routinely undertaking, as the incidence of this illness is especially high in the Canaries.
The many slides taken every day have to be manually inspected by seasoned specialists and, as we know, the availability of these is currently very limited. The huge size of the scanned whole slide images (each over 1GB!) is a challenge, as is being able to prioritise certain scans over others by an automatic system that has to be trained on very few labelled samples.
The advance in semi-supervised or self-supervised learning will be interesting by itself, and can also be extrapolated to other areas of astrophysical interest. Carlos Allende leads this collaboration as head of the SI, participating are Andrés Asensio (Deep Learning group), Carlos Luque (Supercomputing, SIE), Carlos Westendorp (Deep learning, SIE) and Carlos Allende (head of the SI).
Some time ago one of our users discovered, to her dismay, that IDL stopped working after upgrading her MacBook Pro to the latest macOS version, Monterey. Basically, any attempt to use a graphics window gave the cryptic error: "Error: Unresolved inheritance operation". This error had already been reported on the IDL thread hosted in the L3Harris Geospatial (the company that develops IDL) website. At that time, the only viable solutions was to reinstall Big Sur from scratch.
More recently, a simple solution has been found, described in the ENVI 5.6 and IDL 8.8 are not compatible with MacOS 12 Monterey, but here's a work-around official post by the IDL developers.
Last December Maximiliano Hernández Gil has joined the SIE, where he will help in a number of projects, in particular the migration of the existing (internal and external) websites to new, updated servers, the development of the new CAT application, and other miscellaneous tasks as need arises. You may be already familiar with him, as he worked for two years in the SI as part of the team who implemented the new website. Before that, he worked for the local government of the El Rosario, and for the Fujitsu Technology Solutions multinational company. His expertise covers a number of areas, from system administration to web development.
The IAC continues to work decisively in its digital transformation process. The latest news on this project can be found in the post in the IAC's Intranet (login required).
RedIRIS NOVA, the high capacity optical network deployed by RedIRIS for providing access to educational and research national centers, has multiplied by 10 the speed of its current links after having successfully completed the renewal of optical equipment during the year 2021. Read the full text in the IAC's intranet post (login required).
This is a reminder about the need to secure our equipment against threats. You can see why and how to achieve by reading the full text in the IAC's intranet (login required).