DNS-embedded service endpoint registry for distributed e-Infrastructures

Distributed e-Infrastructure is a key component of modern BIG Science. Service discovery in e-Science environments, such as Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG), is a crucial functionality that relies on service registry. In this paper we re-formulate the requirements for the service endpoint registry based on our more than 10 years experience with many systems designed or used within the WLCG e-Infrastructure. To satisfy those requirements the paper proposes a novel idea to use the existing well-established Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure together with a suitable data model as a service endpoint registry. The presented ARC Hierarchical Endpoints Registry (ARCHERY) system consists of a minimalistic data model representing services and their endpoints within e-Infrastructures, a rendering of the data model embedded into DNS-records, a lightweight software layer for DNS-record management and client-side data discovery. Our approach for the ARCHERY registry required minimal software development and inherits all the benefits of one of the most reliable distributed information discovery source of the internet, the DNS infrastructure. In particular, deployment, management and operation of ARCHERY is fully relying on DNS. Results of ARCHERY deployment use-cases are provided together with performance analysis.

The LabTogo-Project

A joint project between West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL), the University of Lomé and the German Biomass Research Center (Deutsches Biomasseforschungszentrum; DBFZ) was initiated in 2020. The project aims at evaluating alternative and regenerative energy sources for rural areas and creating the basis for successful implementation. In three different work packages, therefore, biomass potentials should be quantified, technologies should be examined with regard to their suitability and - in the case of biogas application - a research structure, pilot biogas laboratory, should be created that is necessary to enable the sustainable implementation of technologies.

Teaching Forensic Science to the American Police and Public: The Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory, 1929-1938

Established in 1929, Northwestern University’s Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (SCDL), America’s first independent forensic crime laboratory, undertook a wide range of scientific case work during the 1930s, including toxicology, firearms identification, polygraph testing, the analysis of questioned documents and bacteriology; its mission being to provide Chicago with a world-class forensic science service. Alongside this mission, however, a key ambition of the SCDL’s founders was to forensically educate police officers, legal professionals, and the general public. Convinced that American police were largely ignorant of scientific aids to crime detection and that the public’s lack of forensic awareness led to the destruction and contamination of crime scenes, the SCDL attempted to fashion itself as a “school for manhunters.” But, while the laboratory’s ambitious program of public talks, scientific demonstrations, detective schools, expositions, and radio programs were intended to foster the creation of both a scientifically savvy public and policemen on par with those to be found in Europe, the SCDL encountered a number of significant hurdles to achieving these goals, including the hostility of some high-ranking police officials.