Python Course
A couple of months ago the course "Python for Astronomers" took
place in the Aula. Given the large number of participants (more than 30)
and the strong interest they all showed, we believe that it has been one
of the most successful classes organized here at the IAC for IAC researchers
in the last couple of years, possibly second only to the "IAC Gestión"
training sessions. If you missed it, or think you have forgotten part of what was
explained, do not despair, there are many guides and lectures on Python for
scientists. We recommend that you to start with the
Scipy
Lectures, a good introduction
to general use of scientific Python libraries and plotting tools, and then
continue with
Practical
Python for Astronomers, an approach to some powerful
astronomical libraries available for Python. Another option is to follow
the first
Python for
Astronomers course given in 2009, which was webcast
and now is publicly available in the brand new
IAC
Talks website (read below).
If there are enough people interested in a new Python course, we can consider
giving it again next year; so, if you are one of those people, please speak
up by sending en email to sinfin@iac.es.
IACTalks is public!
Since April 2008 the IAC's Seminars Commission, with the help of the SIC
and the SMM, have been webcasting and archiving the weekly seminars and monthly
colloquia held here in the IAC. Now, after some work, IACTalks, a free and
open access video repository, is public. IACTalks has presently more than
340 archived talks (a number which will steadily increase after the summer
break), organized in categories and series (groups of related talks, as the
2012 Winter School on Secular Evolution of Galaxies); keywords and links
to other relevant talks enable you to easily search for the webcasts on the
topic of your interest. A more detailed description of IACTalks is provided
in the astro-ph preprint
http://arxiv.org/abs/1206.6273.
So, visit
http://iactalks.iac.es/,
and don't forget to promote it among your colleagues!
IAC preprints submission easier than ever
The IAC Preprints archive maintained by the Research Division publishes
the papers by IAC researchers. Once a paper is accepted for publication, you
should go to
IAC Preprints
and submit your preprint filling in a simple web
form. As chances are that you already did that for Astro-ph, including your
preprint in IAC Preprints database is now even easier thanks to a new tool.
Just provide the preprint ID (a number like 1207.3260), and the relevant information
as well as the PDF file will be automatically retrieved from the Astro-ph database
(you'll still need to provide some extra information not included in Astro-ph,
such as project code and resources used). There are no excuses now not to use
the IAC preprints submission tool!
Mac OS X support
Having waited less
than four months after submitting the purchase form, the SIE has got its
first 21.5" brand-new iMac (with Lion v10.7.4). The purpose is to convert
this iMac into a reference platform to help users install astronomical software
in their own Mac. The first tries have produced mixed feelings: some packages
install out of the box, others need some tinkering, others simply fail to
compile and install. We will give more details later on, however feel free
to get in touch with us if you wants to know more or need help.
Condor/Diodo/LaPalma Hall of Fame
We have published the statistics for the first semester of 2012. Diodo, our
Beowulf cluster, worked for about 140000 hours, a 40% of the total number
of available hours. Regrettably, one of the nodes failed a couple of months
ago and, since the cluster hardware is already out of maintenance, it could
not be fixed or replaced. This means than now 64 CPUs are available instead
of 80. See the breakdown of usage per user at
http://venus/SIE/forum/viewtopic.php?p=795#p795
Condor has been working steadily, though not as much as in the previous semester.
Unfortunately, due to a problem in the generation of statistics that occurred
in February, there are no data available for that month. Usage data show
that, on average, 170 CPUs (out of a little less than 500) were running Condor-submitted
jobs. For details, see
http://venus/SIE/forum/viewtopic.php?p=796#p796
Finally, local usage at the LaPalma supercomputer (that is by IAC users who
applied through our allocation committee) has been of 185030 hours, about
80% of the available time. Breakdown of usage can be found in
http://venus/SIE/forum/viewtopic.php?p=797#p797