Virtual Facilities
The Virtual Facility Concept
Virtual Facilities are a type of Collaboratory centered around a specific scientific resource. They give users of the facility remote desktop access, from their home institution, to the facility's researchers, data management systems, computers, and scientific instruments. Virtual Facilities use Internet and Web technologies to provide secure, direct acquisition control of instruments combined with means to consult local staff, retrieve and process data, and share notes.
Users can effectively collaborate with facility staff and conduct entire experiments without ever setting foot in the physical facility. They can connect to the facility for training before the experiment, to setup and optimize the experiment, and at any time during analysis or other activities. Virtual facilities can be used to shorten or eliminate trips to the facility, make trips more effective, and to involve additional researchers in experiments. A growing number of virtual facilities are in operation around the world in a wide variety of disciplines, including several facilities at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL).
Capabilities Of The VNMRF
The EMSL Virtual NMR Facility (VNMRF) makes EMSL's unique high-field NMR capabilities available via the Internet. The VNMRF relies on EMSL's advanced computing and network infrastructure and methods created by the Collaboratory Team and EMSL Operations to let researchers work with local staff to run experiments. The remote researcher can directly perform almost every step of the experiment except for final sample preparation and insertion. The VNMRF provides integrated capabilities in three main areas:
Secure Remote Spectrometer Control
To access spectrometers remotely, VNMRF users simply request an account on the EMSL network by filling out the standard Computer Account Request Form (CARF). Users are then sent account information and a SecurID token which allows them to login to EMSL computers over the Internet via ssh and passcode without exposing their password to the world. Once users are logged in, they use the commercial spectrometer software via VNC, just as they would if they were in the laboratory. Ssh applies strong encryption to user input and to the spectrometer display before sending the information over the Internet to keep all communications private and to prevent hackers from gaining control of the spectrometer.
Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN)
To share notes, sketches, data, and other material traditionally recorded in a paper notebook, VNMRF users can open a web browser and access an Electronic Laboratory Notebook. The VNMRF's Spectroscopists' Notebook allows organization of group notes, drawings, proposed molecular structures, chromatography gels, etc. The notebooks are password protected and support encryption, certificate based authentication, and digital signatures.
Historical Example: The First Experiment At The EMSL VNMRF
The first group to use the EMSL VNMRF, who have also helped to define and develop its capabilities, is a collaboration between researchers at EMSL and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). The members of this group, who did not meet in person for the first several months of their experiments, are using the full suite of VNMRF capabilities to support their NMR protein structure determination studies. They used the CORE2000 real-time environment to get acquainted and used an ELN to share initial documents such as literature references, views of a related molecular structures, and scanned gels of the purified protein. Other than sample preparation at LBNL, sample insertion into the spectrometer, and probe tuning at EMSL, all aspects of the NMR experiments were done collaboratively over the Internet.
Getting Started
- Users of EMSL's NMR spectrometers who would like to have access via the VNMRF are encouraged to talk with their NMR collaborators or contact EMSL Collaboratory Support directly.
- Potential users submitting proposals to the EMSL NMR facility should mention their interest in having access through the VNMRF in their proposals.
- For instructions on running the Virtual NMR software on your platform see Virtual NMR Instruction Page
Hardware and Network Requirements
The basic hardware needed to use the VNMRF is a modern computer running Unix,Windows or MacOSX and a connection to the Internet. Although we do not make public hardware recommendations, we can assist EMSL users in selecting appropriate components.