14 NSFBIO: Seamless Integration of Neuroscience Models and Tools with HPC - Easy Path to Supercomputing for Neuroscience

这是伦敦大学学院、加州圣地亚哥大学和耶鲁大学之间的合作，旨在为计算神经科学社区开发一个科学门户。这个名为NSG-R的网关旨在帮助我们更好地理解大脑是如何工作的，让神经科学家更容易在他们的研究中使用复杂的脑细胞和回路模型。强大的软件已经被开发用于构建和使用神经元模型，并且已经创建了诸如开源大脑（OSB），ModelDB，神经科学信息框架（NIF）等在线资源，以帮助神经科学家找到现有模型，合作开发新模型，并与他人分享他们的工作成果。然而，对于大多数神经科学家可用的计算机硬件来说，许多详细的神经元模型变得过于复杂，从而迫切需要使用高性能计算资源（HPC）。NSG-R建立在NSG项目（“神经科学网关”）的基础上，该项目旨在消除或减少以前限制神经科学家访问HPC的许多技术和管理困难。也就是说，NSG用户仍然必须登录，上传模型，启动模拟和下载结果;这一过程涉及许多耗时且容易出错的步骤。NSG-R通过在NSG服务器和客户端应用程序（如OSB服务器）之间启用按需自动通信，消除了这些步骤。这种对HPC的无缝访问在NSG-R中通过使用代表性状态转移（“REST”，NSG-R中的R）的软件基础设施来实现，通过公开可用的应用程序接口来公开NSG的功能。这将允许OSB、ModelDB和NIF等神经科学资源的用户通过NSG-R从各自的网站轻松访问HPC。因此，它导致更大的研究生产力，并使科学家和学生能够更广泛地使用大规模计算建模。

This is a collaboration between University College London, University of California San Diego and Yale University to develop a science gateway for the computational neuroscience community. The gateway, called NSG-R, is designed to help improve our understanding of how the brain works by making it easier for neuroscientists to use complex models of brain cells and circuits in their research. Powerful software has been developed for building and using neuronal models, and on-line resources such as Open Source Brain (OSB), ModelDB,Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF) have been created to help neuroscientists find existing models, collaborate in developing new ones, and share the results of their work with others. However, many detailed neuronal models are becoming too complex for the computer hardware that is available to most neuroscientists, resulting in a critical need to use high performance computing resources (HPC). NSG-R builds on the NSG project ("Neuroscience Gateway"), which was developed to eliminate or reduce many of the technical and administrative difficulties that previously limited neuroscientists' access to HPC. That said, NSG users must still log in, upload models, launch simulations, and download results; a process that involves many time-consuming, error-prone steps. NSG-R eliminates these steps by enabling on-demand, automated communication between the NSG server and client applications such as the OSB server. This seamless access to HPC is implemented in NSG-R by a software infrastructure that uses REpresentational State Transfer ("REST", the R in NSG-R), exposing the capabilities of NSG via publicly available application programmer interfaces. This will allow users of neuroscience resources such as OSB, ModelDB and NIF to readily access HPC from their respective websites via NSG-R. It therefore results in greater research productivity and enables wider use of large scale computational modelling by scientists and students.