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Instrument Middleware Project

With this email we would like to bring the attention of this discussion
list to a recently NSF funded project titled Instrument Middleware (IM)
project [1]. The Instrument Middleware project is part of a larger NSF
funded project called "NSF Middleware Initiative" [2].

One of our goals with the IM project is to incorporate scientific
instruments as first class members of a Grid computing environment using
standard Web service interfaces. We have published a white paper, which
upon request can be sent to those interested.

Our group includes X-ray crystallographers with many years of experience
and accustomed to a wide variety of diffractometers equipped with area
detectors (imageplate/CCD) and scintillation detectors.

During our initial research we have become familiar with the wide
variety of formats that instrument manufacturer (e.g. CCD detector
manufacturers) use to describe/record data, such as X-ray diffraction
data. We are also aware of most of the different constraints and
requirements that diffractometer instrument manufacturers have imposed
on their instruments and software.

Encouraged by the efforts of the img-CIF/CBF community, we believe
that a well descriptive meta-data format supported by the scientific
community and the instrument manufacturers will be able to provide a
more unified data format for a wide range of CCD detectors.

We are interested in investigating the possibilities of using
img-CIF/CBF as meta-data format in our project, as a standard meta data
format to access any kind of diffraction CCD detector image.

Therefore, for those interested in any aspect of this project, we would
like to invite you to contact us for further discussions. Initial
contacts can be made to this email address:

imgcif@instrumentmiddleware.org

Regards,

Rick McMullen
John C. Huffman
Randall Bramley
Kenneth Chiu
Kia Huffman

Indiana University
Bloomington, IN
USA

[1] Instrument Middleware http://www.instrumentmiddleware.org
[2] NSF Middleware Initiative http://www.nsf-middleware.org/

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