Collaborative Scientific Visualization and Real-time Monitoring of Protein Structure Data (Submission ID: papers_0375)

We present a fully networked system for visually monitoring and editing scientific data across a wide variety of platforms and graphics environments. The software that we introduce provides a cross-platform, collaborative environment to view and modify data. Our solution allows for an immersive display of structures in a CAVE virtual reality environment, as well as full support for traditional desktop graphics environments. Via an auto-refresh capable file-based database, the software system also provides a real-time monitor for applications so that a geographically distributed set of personnel can monitor the progress of an application(s). The system was designed with an object-oriented approach in order to allow for an easy extension of the API. In this paper, we demonstrate proof-of-concept by using a critical, complex, and computationally intensive application from structural biology (Shake-and-Bake) that was recently listed on the IEEE poster of "Top Algorithms of the 20th Century".