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Research IT News

Azure Skies Ahead for MDS Testing

image of a hand showing a mobile phone displaying a variety of apps
image of a hand showing a mobile phone displaying a variety of apps
Patricia Barnby,

Testing mobile apps is challenging. When released via the app stores an app can potentially be downloaded onto numerous different sizes, makes and models of phones which run either Android or iOS with different operating system versions. Automated testing on the cloud provides affordable access to a large subset of these devices. Read about how our Mobile Development Service (MDS) makes use of Microsoft’s mobile testing platform on Azure, to ensure quality apps are released to the stores.

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Subcellular Visualisation on the Web with Shiny

David Mawdsley, Jo Watson, Gillian Sinclair,

Our pilot Shiny app hosting service is allowing University researchers to showcase their research in exciting and interactive new ways. In this blog post, we show how Jo Watson, from the School of Biological Sciences, used it to publish an app accompanying her recent paper on subcellular visualisation.

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Aiding Breast Cancer Prevention in Under-supported Groups

Adrian Harwood,

Research Software Engineers Patricia Barnby and Adrian Harwood, of our Mobile Development Service, have developed a new app in partnership with The Nightingale Centre, Wythenshawe Hospital and the Manchester NHS Foundation Trust. It targets women under the age of 35 with a family history of breast cancer – a group for whom there is little support available at present.

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Launch of Julia Users Group

Cyrus Wyett, Gillian Sinclair,

Are you interested in using the Julia programming language for your project? Would you like to discuss this with other users? A new group has just been launched to bring interested parties together.

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Sharing Computational and Data Expertise at UoM

Dave Topping, Robert Haines, Gillian Sinclair,

The University of Manchester is one of the largest UK universities with over 6000 PGRs and researchers. There is a great deal of expertise and knowledge within the University but how do we share that knowledge? A new central hub for special interest groups (SIGs) and user groups centred around computational research and data analytics hopes to help.

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Bringing The Metaverse to Fusion Research

Oliver Woolland,

The Metaverse, virtual environments which users can explore and interact with, is beginning to be applied to engineering challenges. Can the Nvidia Omniverse help accelerate Fusion Energy research? Oliver Woolland, Research Software Engineer (RSE), has supported a team leading an investigation, bringing advanced scientific and engineering tools to the Metaverse.


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HPC Pool Survey Results

Chris Graves, Pen Richardson,

Thank you to everyone who completed our HPC Pool survey late last year. In this blog post we recap on some of the results from the survey and our future plans.


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Highly Restricted Data Service Engagement Sessions

image of a padlock
image of a padlock
Caroline Martin, Danielle Owen,

During February and March, the Research Lifecycle Programme’s Highly Restricted Data Service (HRDS) project (Project S) held two engagement sessions for researchers and University staff interested in the development of our Data Safe Haven (DSH) service and our newly installed SafePod.


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Planned Research Data Storage Essential Work

Image of sign reading "Temporarily Closed For Construction"
Image of sign reading "Temporarily Closed For Construction"
Simon Hood,

As part of the ongoing development of the Research Data Storage (RDS) platform (Isilon), essential work will be taking place on Saturday 5th March.

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Enabling Access to UK Environmental Data

Gillian Sinclair,

Research IT is to a play a major role in a £7 million project, led by The University of Manchester, to provide easy access to an extensive range of the UK’s environmental data.


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Who Is Responsible for Twitter Data?

Joseph Allen,

A guest blog post from Joe Allen from UKDS who, as part of a five-part mini series, gets us thinking about the challenges and ethical implications of using Twitter data.

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A Spectacle of Lens Research

Patricia Barnby,

Dr Michael Read, New Technologies Manager at Eurolens, commissioned our Mobile Development Service (MDS) to produce a showcase to demonstrate how the use of a mobile app for data collection can be user friendly and enable more frequent and timely data collection as opposed to conventional paper-based surveys.

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