As a founding member of the Internet2 Consortium, Penn has always been at the forefront of participation in the research and education networking global community. Faculty, staff, and students at the University of Pennsylvania leverage the power of MAGPI and Internet2 in new and exciting ways in the lab and in the classroom.

Asian Studies Collaborative (ASC)

About the Asian Studies Collaborative

The Asian Studies Collaborative is designed to establish a comprehensive framework to support Asian language and cultural education for K-12 and beyond educators. An advisory board has been created to support this work. The Advisory Board provides expertise and resources in Mandarin Chinese language and culture for the following: program design, professional development, standards-based curriculum, instruction, and assessment. The Advisory Board also provides guidance in the development of regional and global collaboration.

The Asian Studies Collaborative is designed to establish a comprehensive framework to support Asian language and cultural education for K-12 and beyond educators. An advisory board has been created to support this work. The Advisory Board provides expertise and resources in Mandarin Chinese language and culture for the following: program design, professional development, standards-based curriculum, instruction, and assessment. The Advisory Board also provides guidance in the development of regional and global collaboration.

The Asian Studies Collaborative will host its Spring Conference on May 6, 2011 from 8:00 am - 3:30pm. The keynote speaker is Dr. Yong Zhao, internationally renowned speaker, author, and distinguished professor of education from Michigan State University and most recently University of Oregon. Additional conference strands will include Sister Schools through the Chinese Exchange Initiative, Asian culture in curriculum, ACTFL Teacher of the Year, MAGPI global resources and the ZON virtual world.

The registration cost is $75 for Berks County Schools and $100 for out of county schools. To receive a reduced fee of $25 for university students call for assistance to Beth Kozloski at 610-987-8489 or email betkoz@berksiu.org or Sue Calvin at 610-987-8639 suecal@berksiu.org. For more information and to register please visit the Asian Studies Collaborative website.

Digital Corinth

Expanding access to antiquity

The ancient city of Corinth, Greece has been excavated since 1895, creating a vast accumulation of information that is being digitized. The Digital Corinth Project teams at the University of Pennsylvania and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens are designing a unique system for tagging of digital components and the creation of tools and lesson plans that draw on the data to present learning opportunities on the architecture, city planning, social and religious life of the city of Corinth during the Roman occupation in 44 BC. Students and teachers from around the world will be able to utilize these learning resources and opportunities without ever leaving their classrooms.

DYNES

Development of Dynamic Network System (DYNES)

This NSF-funded project (grant number 0958998) will develop and deploy the Dynamic Network System (DYNES), a nationwide cyber-instrument spanning about 40 US universities and 11 Internet2 connectors. A collaborative team including Internet2, Caltech, University of Michigan, and Vanderbilt University will work with regional networks and campuses to support large, long-distance scientific data flows in the LHC, other leading programs in data intensive science (such as LIGO, Virtual Observatory, and other large scale sky surveys), and the broader scientific community.

By integrating existing and emerging protocols and software for dynamic circuit provisioning and scheduling, in-depth end-to-end network path and end-system monitoring, and higher level services for management on a national scale, DYNES will allocate and schedule channels with bandwidth guarantees to several classes of prioritized data flows with known bandwidth requirements, and to the largest high priority data flows, enabling scientists to utilize and share network resources effectively. DYNES is dimensioned to support many data transfers which require aggregate network throughputs between sites of 1-20 Gbps, rising to the 40-100 Gbps range. This capacity will enhance researchers' ability to distribute, process, access, and collaboratively analyze 1 to 100 TB datasets at university-based Tier2 and Tier3 centers now, and PB-scale datasets once the LHC begins operation.

DYNES is based on a "hybrid" packet and circuit architecture composed of Internet2's ION service and extensions over regional and state networks to US campuses. It will connect with transoceanic (IRNC, USLHCNet), European (GÉANT), Asian (SINET3) and Latin American (RNP and ANSP) R&E networks. It will build on existing key open source software components that have already been individually field-tested and hardened in part by the PIs: DCN Software Suite (OSCARS/DRAGON), perfSONAR, UltraLight Linux kernel, FDT, FDT/dCache, FDT/Hadoop, and PLaNeTs.

TeleImmersion

Tele-immersion is a communication medium trying to create the illusion that users at geographically dispersed places share the same physical space possibly augmented by virtual components. Tele-immersion is the ultimate synthesis of computer vision, networking, and graphics. It requires the real-time scanning of a scene, its transmission with minimal latency, and its immersive rendering at a remote site. The focus of research at the University of Pennsylvania is the study and development of systems that can scan wide-area dynamic scenes and create 3D view-independent representations. Tele-Immersion will enable users at geographically distributed sites to collaborate in real time in a shared, simulated environment as if they were in the same physical room. It is the ultimate synthesis of networking and media technologies to enhance collaborative environments.

The Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image at The University of Pennsylvania

Re-envisioning scholarly research through digitization

The University of Pennsylvania Libraries have made over 12,000 images from various collections of rare books, manuscripts, papyri, photographs and sheet music are available over the network through the Schoenberg  Center for Electronic Text and Image (SCETI). Since 1996, SCETI has been enhancing the research and scholarly use of rare books, manuscripts and other primary source materials by making them easily accessible to the worldwide community. They create archive-quality digital facsimiles and make them available online through web sites tailored to the each individual collection. Several of their projects are collaborations between the University of Pennsylvania Library and other libraries, museums and private collections.