Jack Bowling wrote:

Beyond the
fee-for-service, the fact is that there is not much idle time on those
NECs...80% of their uptime is spent number-crunching - lots of numbers.
So, yes, I suppose you could put forward a proposal to the Canadian
Meteorlogical Centre to use their computer to calculate back-
trajectories for migrating shorebirds. But be prepared to be quoted an
astronomical price, and then be prepared for them to say NON anyway


That's interesting. The general feeling at the workshop was that this program would be interesting to plug some numbers into. Supercomputers are always pretty hard to get access to so I suppose the scientists concerned would have to come
up with a pretty stunning data set and a huge bag of gold in order to be able to get some time to produce the trajectory maps - which would still need to be
corrected for powered flight.

The fundamental problem with such glamour science is the lack of field observations to work with. I suppose compared to motivating people consistently to
gather data on arrival and departure times for migrating shorebirds hussling for some time of a supercomputer or two would be a snap :-)

There is the almost realistic alternative of doing the calculations on a
network of workstations. I'm game to write the software if someone wants
to pay me for a few years. Better still I could go out and collects the
data as well.

This is a good example of the scope for amateurs in research topic I was
banging on about. There is a need for a lot of basic data which is difficult
to come by, either as a result of geographical coverage or "an appropriate
use of an expensive item" ie a scientists time, that might be best filled
by birders out in the field.

My brother works for the UK weather service. Perhaps I could talk him into
stealing some time on "The Cray Twins" :-)

Stuart
--
Stuart MacKay, Ravenna Ave NE, Seattle.