Page 170 - 00. Complete Version - Progress Report IPEN 2014-2016

170 Nuclear Science and Technology | Progress Report

e-Science tal measurements or the neutron activation
analysis and its applications in environmen-
At the heart of the scientific development is tal studies, archaeology, forensics, nutrition
the finding of new knowledge; generation, and health, all generating a large volume of
support and knowledge maintenance form data that must be stored, curated, processed
the basis of the scientific challenge. and made available to the scientific commu-
nity as well as to the society.
One of the pillars of science is the ability of re-
production of the results of scientific research The e-Science project at IPEN aims to create a
by independent researchers, making possible technological infrastructure that can embrace
the validation of methods, results and their this new methodology and that would allow
conclusions. new workflows of scientific discovery, solv-
ing what has become an important problem
In order to enable this in the current scenario, for the scientific research - the organization,
where the scientific data production became classification, selection and sharing of the gi-
so intense (“big data”), systematic storing and ant amount of data produced in recent years
curation methods, together with mechanisms by all research areas of IPEN.
for making this data available in a secure way,
must be implemented. The first project, under the scope of the e-Sci-
ence umbrella, is the creation of a Data Ontol-
With this data deluge, the whole scientific pro- ogy for Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) lab-
cess is impacted, giving rise to a new science oratory. A semantic layer is being built atop of
paradigm, the e-Science, known as “The Fourth the traditional data layer to allow more intel-
Paradigm of scientific exploration”; it’s related ligent exploration of all data produced by the
to the data intensive science as distinguished NAA technique.
from the traditional computational science.
Activities at the Nuclear
e-Science is related to finding and sharing Metrology Laboratory
knowledge in the form of experimental data,
rich theoretical vocabularies, papers and reus- For many years, the Nuclear Metrology Labo-
able services, useful to scientific community. ratory (LMN) has been involved in developing
procedures for the standardization of import-
To deal with all challenges of this new scenar- ant radionuclides applied in nuclear medi-
io, a complex and large set of knowledge, sys- cine or reference standards for semiconduc-
tems, methods and technologies is involved. tor detectors. The primary systems used by
Mathematical models, digital repositories and the LMN for this purpose are two 4πδ-δ co-
data management, new hardware, software, incidence systems: one consisting of a pro-
protocols, tools and services are some of the portional counter, coupled to one or two 3”x
necessary items to support the demands of 3” NaI(Tl) crystals, and a triple coincidence
this new science paradigm. system, consisting of a proportional count-
er, coupled to a 2”x 2” NaI(Tl) crystal and to a
IPEN has a large number of different researches, HPGe crystal. An additional coincidence sys-
such as the Lidar applications in environmen- tem has been established, employing a plas-

Instituto de Pesquisas Energéticas e Nucleares