Athena Insider April, 1991 With the plans for the impending Athena reorganization proceding apace, we thought that we would take this opportunity to discuss just how the reorganization would affect you and your classes' use of the system. A team of management staff from Information Systems and Athena met over the course of the fall semester to design the new, merged IS/Athena organization. The team identified three main continuing Athena functions: - Support for faculty wanting to use educational computing in their courses - Support for individuals wanting to use the Athena Computing Environment - Development and support of the Athena Computing Environment The criteria used as a basis for the structure of the merged organization were: - Keep service levels as high as possible, given reduced resources - Minimize disruptions in on-going services - Simplify service access for the user - Achieve synergy and economies of scale by combining overlapping functions - Maintain critical mass in those functions which will continue - Provide a focal point for academic computing - Extend the Athena Computing Environment (ACE) throughout MIT - Continue creative environment - Operate within budget limitations The resulting organization chart is shown on page 2. In addition to the three departments shown here, the existing Administrative Systems Development, Operations and Systems, and Telecommunications departments remain as they are currently structured. The Academic Computing Services department will provide overall coordination of academic computing, support the faculty, and operate the Visitor Center. The Educational Planning and Support group will continue the Faculty Liaison functions, assisting the faculty in planning for, developing and delivering academic computing. We will continue to be your contacts for your academic computing support, be it on Athena or on other systems. The Computing Support Services department will manage all aspects of user consulting, documentation, and user training for Athena and all other currently supported computing environments such as Macintoshes and PC's. The Distributed Computing and Network Services department will assume the functions and activities of system development and support, application development, and the network operation and support. If you have any questions or concerns about the reorganization or how it will affect your classes and use of Athena, please don't hesitate to give Naomi Schmidt or either of the Faculty Liaisons a call. We have enjoyed working with you as part of the Project Athena Educational Initiatives Group, and look forward to continuing to do so in our new roles in IS! Many thanks to Jim Bruce, Vice President for Information Systems, for producing the organization chart used in this article! In This Issue: Spring Statistics page 2 XESS: Athena's New Spreadsheet page 3 MATLAB news: SIMULAB is here! page 4 Techinfo page 5 Shakespeare on Athena page 5 Put your Courseware In ``dash'' page 6 New ``Windows on Athena'' page 6 Michele Berrie Moves On page 6 Maple: Symbolic Math on Athena page 7 Special Maple Pull-Out Centerfold MIT Libraries from Athena page 7 News From IS page 7 Contributors: Catherine Avril, Steve Ellis, Naomi Schmidt Editing & Typesetting Dorothy Bowe, Anne R. LaVin This document was written and typeset completely on Project Athena equipment, and formatted with the LaTeX document preparation system. No scissors or glue were used! (c) 1991 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Project Athena, Athena, Athena MUSE, Discuss, Hesiod, Kerberos, Moira, and Zephyr are trademarks of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). No commercial use of these trademarks may be made without prior written permission of MIT. All other product names are trademarks of their respective companies. XESS, an easy to learn and use spreadsheet designed specifically for science and engineering computing, is now available on Athena. XESS provides a full range of mathematical, statistical, matrix and string functions while handling complex calculations with the ease of a familiar spreadsheet format. Like some popular financial spreadsheets, cells in XESS may contain constant numerical or text values, or formulas for calculating new values. However, XESS provides extensive features and functions for engineering and scientific applications in addition to the standard financial ones. Furthermore, XESS, being an X Windows application, has an intuitive user interface with point-and-click screen displays and pop-up dialog boxes. Because it is an X Windows application, XESS can communicate with other X programs, sending and receiving data, and automatically recalculating spreadsheet values as it does so. XESS is currently available for VAX and DEC stations, and we hope to have an IBM RT version running shortly. Because it is a new package, the consultants are not yet familiar with it and Athena cannot offer full support. However, there are manuals available in the consultant's office and extensive on-line help from within the program, and we encourage you to try it out and experiment with its capabilities. Start XESS by typing the following at the athena% prompt: add xess; xess Please send any problems or questions to bug-xess@athena.mit.edu SIMULAB SIMULAB, the latest product from the Mathworks, is now available in the matlab locker. SIMULAB is a toolbox for the nonlinear simulation of dynamic systems, using a mouse-driven, block diagram interface. It is an extension to the standard MATLAB, using Motif to create a number of new windows. Users can create and edit block diagram representations of dynamic systems. The model can then be analyzed either using the Menus or from the MATLAB command line. Results from the analysis can also be passed to the MATLAB workspace for further work. Currently SIMULAB is only available on the VAX Athena workstations. To run SIMULAB: add matlab simulab & At this point, an xterm will come up, running MATLAB, but with the name ``SIMULAB.'' At the MATLAB >> prompt, type: >> simulab to start the SIMULAB environment or type: >> simdemo to run some demonstration programs. At present, the only documentation available is the ``SIMULAB User's Guide,'' available from the Mathworks (see Essential MATLAB for ordering details). Regular MATLAB-style help is available for all SIMULAB functions, and the full MATLAB command set is also available from inside SIMULAB. MATLAB News Currently, Athena's MATLAB installation includes following Toolboxes: - Signal Processing: Routines that implement a variety of signal processing algorithms, including filter analysis and design, FFT processing and power spectrum estimation. - Control: Common control system design and analysis tools, including both classical and modern state space formulations. Also allows modelling of continuous and discrete time systems. - Robust Control: Tools for design of ``robust'' multivariable feedback control systems based on the concept of the singular value Bode plot. The algorithms are based on work done at USC by Chiang and Safonov. - System Identification: Routines for building a mathematical system model based on observed data. The routines are designed to be compatible with the Control Toolbox to allow design of control systems for the estimated models. - Spline: Tools for the creation and manipulation of piecewise polynomial functions and curves. This toolbox is a MATLAB implementation of the B-Spline package as described in ``A Practical Guide to Splines'' (Appl. Math. Sciences, Vol. 27, Springer Verlag, New York, 1978). - Optimization: Algorithms for minimization or maximization of general non-linear functions. Also included are routines for ``standard'' problems such as linear programming. - ``Contrib:'' User-written routines, including contributions from the national MATLAB User's Group. There are a few MATLAB functions that are not described in the user's guide because they were added after printing: clabel Contour height labels. fplot Plot function. hex2dec Hexadecimal to decimal conversion. dec2hex Decimal to hexadecimal conversion. pascal Pascal's triangle. subspace Compute subspace. polyder Polynomial derivatives. gradient Numerical gradient (partial derivatives). quiver Angle and magnitude as arrows emanating from grid. feather Angle and magnitude plot as arrows from horizontal axis. compass Angle and magnitude plot as arrows from origin. rose Angle histogram, also known as a Rose plot. interp1 1-D interpolation using the FFT method. interp2 1-D biharmonic data interpolation. interp3 2-D biharmonic data interpolation (gridding). interp4 2-D bilinear interpolation (expansion) of a matrix. There are also some functions that are not described in the user's guide because they were not significant enough to warrant expostulation: blanks Returns a string of n blanks. expm1 Matrix exponential using Pade approximation. expm2 Matrix exponential using Taylor series. expm3 Matrix exponential using eigenvalues. laguer Laguer's root finder (Used by ROOTS1). membrane Generate L-shape membrane surface. mkpp Make piece-wise polynomial (Used by SPLINE). neldstep Take a Nelder-Mead step (Used by FMINS). ppval Evaluate piece-wise polynomial (Used by SPLINE). quadstp Take a quadstep (Used by QUAD). quad8tp Take a quadstep (Used by QUAD8). resi2 Residue of repeated pole. umkpp Un-make piece-wise polynomial (Used by SPLINE). These lists of undocumented functions can be read inside MATLAB with the readme command, and you can use MATLAB help to read the help on them. Techinfo, MIT's public information system, has been available from Athena since June, 1990. It is also available from Macintoshes with MITNet connections, VMS/UNIX systems on MITNet, and terminals or microcomputers with 5ESS or analog telephone connections. Currently, Technifo includes the following top level topics: 1 About TechInfo 2 Around MIT - Offices Services 3 Classified Ads 4 Computing 5 Courses, Schedules(Spring) Calendars 6 Events 7 Information Desk (calendar things to do) 8 Jobs 9 MIT Libraries 10 Ongoing Activities, Notices, Clubs 11 Policies, Rules Procedures 12 Potluck 13 Publications 14 Weather 15 What's new in TechInfo To start Techinfo on Athena, type: techinfo to your athena% prompt. Please send comments to comment-techinfo@mit.edu, and bug reports to bug-techinfo@mit.edu. For help, or more information, you can call the Network Services Help Line, x3-4101. Just about anyone with information they would like to make available to the MIT community can become a Techinfo provider. In particular, now that the MIT course bulletin is on line, a faculty member might be interested in providing a course syllabus for his or her course each semester. Anyone interested in becoming a provider should send email to admin-techinfo@mit.edu. Project Athena has just acquired Shakespeare On Disk, complete versions of the sonnets and thirty seven plays of William Shakespeare. The text is stored as plain text on the Athena filesystem shakespeare. To read any of them, just type: attach shakespeare cd /mit/shakespeare then more README for more information on just how the files and directories are organized. For instance, to read Act II of Hamlet, you would type (after attach'ing and cd'ing): more tragedy/hamlet2.txt The text would then be presented to you (via the UNIX program more) one screenfull at a time; just hit the spacebar to move forward one screen, and ``b'' to move back one screen. You can also view the text in the emacs and ez editors, and use their text-search capabilities to look for occurences of words and phrases. Just start the editor and load up the file you want. For example: emacs tragedy/hamelet3.txt or ez tragedy/hamlet3.txt and then search: - in emacs: type C-s (the ``control'' and ``s'' keys together), followed by the string you are searching for to search forward in the file; similarly, type C-r (``control'' and ``r'') to search backwards. - in ez: bring up the menus (hold down the middle mouse button), choose the ``Special/Spell'' menu, and let the mouse button go with the cursor over either the ``Forward'' or ``Backward'' item. You'll then be prompted to type in the string you want to find. Searching for the string ``To be, or'' in tragedy/hamlet3.txt yields, as one might expect: Enter HAMLET. HAMLET. To be, or not to be,- that is the question:- Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?- To die,- to sleep,- No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd.... Educational copies of the text of the plays and sonnets are permitted, under our license, only for MIT student or performer use. Excerpts of the texts may also be included in papers, class notes, etc. The headline for this article is from Twelfth Night, Act IV, scene ii. We're pleased to note that the ``Athena Dashboard,'' dash, is quickly gaining acceptance in the Athena user community. Informal polls of Athena users in the clusters are showing increasing use of the ``Athena Dashboard,'' dash over the past few months. One under-utilized feature of dash, however, is its ability to deliver course software in the same user-friendly, menu-driven fashion as the other Athena applications available in dash. The system dash menus that Athena users get by default are easily modifiable and we can add or remove software from the menus with a one day turnaround. The sample screen in the above figure is an example of the type of menu heirarchy and pop-up help you can provide through dash. Each arrow represents a sub-menu, and clicking on it brings up the sub menu; each ``?'' represents a help screen, and clicking on it pops up the help window available for that package. To start an application, you just click on its name in the menu, e.g. ``Todor.'' If you would be interested in delivering your course software this way, or would like to find out more about the system, please give us a call. In spring 1989, Project Athena published Volume 1 of ``Windows on Athena.'' The book presented a collection of articles by MIT faculty members and staff about some of the curriculum development projects undertaken through Project Athena. This edition contained an introductory article by Earll Murman and profiled 28 projects. Another volume of 20 articles is coming out this month. It profiles 15 development projects, and also includes articles on the adoption of the Athena Computing Environment on other campuses and platforms, and articles on future directions by Ron Orcutt and Greg Jackson. Each faculty member may request a single, free copy of Volume 2 and a limited number of copies of Volume 1 are also available. If you are interested in receiving your copy, please contact David Hogarth (davidh@athena.mit.edu), x3-1514, before May 17, 1991. We are sad to announce that Athena's Third Party Software Coordinator, Michele Berrie, has left Athena for a new career in Australia. Michele leaves us after just one year in the Educational Initiatives group. She contributed a great deal to Athena's effort to improve our computing environment. Her work has allowed us to offer important new packages such as Maple, Xess, Lucid Common Lisp, S and others. The Faculty Liaisons have taken over the coordination for many of the third party software packages. The new Software Acquisition group in Computing Support Services will eventually take over the licensing and acquisition details, and the Faculty Liaisons, as part of Academic Computing Services, will take over Michele's role as advocate for faculty interested in particular new packages. We'll miss Michele, and wish her the best of luck in her new career ``Down Under!'' Athena has just acquired Maple, a symbolic and numerical mathematics package from Waterloo Maple Software. Due to popular demand, we have installed it and made it available to the Athena community before support for the package is completely in place. However, a copy of the document, First Leaves: A Tutorial Introduction to Maple is available for reference in the Athena Consultants' Office in 11-113, as are free copies of two short papers on Maple. Maple comes with extensive on-line documentation, and that, together with the centerfold pull-out in this issue, will allow our users to get started with the package while we gear up support. Please send comments and bugs to bug-maple@athena.mit.edu. Access to Barton, the MIT Libraries Card Catalog, is available from Athena as part of an ongoing cooperative project between the MIT Libraries, Project Athena and IS. To start up the connection to Barton, type: add library library You can then choose to connect directly to Barton, or to any of four other libraries on the Internet with the menu: 1 Barton (MIT) 2 BU 3 Hollis (Harvard) 4 Melvyl (Berkeley) 5 Boston Library Consortium (via Colorado) q Quit Enter a choice and press RETURN: You can also start up the library program directly from dash, with the ``Libraries'' menu item on the ``Special'' menu. Once connected to Barton, type the special function key ``F6'' to start, and the ``F5'' key to exit. Please note that the MIT Libraries services available from Athena are under development, and the contents of the menus, and applications that are available will change over time. News From IS MacAdemia '91 This June, representatives from Information Systems will attend MacAdemia '91. The conference, hosted this year by the University of Pennsylvania and Apple Computer, Inc. will take place on June 18 and 19 in Philadelphia. The focus is on enhancing the integration of technology into instruction. Presentations will explore aspects of the acquisition, use, and support of Macintosh computers in higher education. Traditionally, MacAdemia has about 800 attendees representing over 100 schools. Emphasis this year will be on Engineering, Administration, and Medical/Life Sciences. There will be a track highlighting the instructional software that the University of Pennsylvania has developed for the Macintosh. Other tracks include System 7.0, new products, Macintosh vs. Windows, Macintosh in a mixed environment, and Macintosh development environments. This year's MacAdemia will feature a a hands-on area for attendees to experiment with a large variety of educator-developed software now distributed through the commercial company, Intellimation, in conjunction with Apple Computer. There will also be presentations for developers of software and educational materials. For more information on the conference, contact Bob Flaherty, MIT's Apple Representative, (508) 624-6262. Introducing the Brown Bag Theater Each Monday in April, IS will show a computer-related video from noon to 1pm in room 24-307. Bring your lunch and see some of the best videos in the IS collection. (Please note: the first Brown Bag video, ``State of the Art of Computer Animation I'' was held April 8th.) State of the Art of Computer Animation II Monday, April 22 See recent SIGGRAPH award-winning animations, including Red's Dream, Knicknack, and Tin Toy. Includes the first computer generated cartoon to win an Oscar. A ``don't miss'' presentation for anyone interested in computer animation. The Macintosh in the Classroom Monday, April 29 This video is a tape of the first live broadcast in the 1991 Apple Educational TV series. See many good examples of how the Mac is being used in schools across the country. Tell Us How Your Class uses Athena! Most of you who use Athena in courses are familiar by now with the ``Subject Request Form'' we ask you to fill out before classes start each semester. We use the data you provide there to, among other things, keep track of just how Athena is used from semester to semester, and to get a sense of what all the courseware is like. One piece of information we have gathered only informally up to this point is a description of just what your own software does, or, if you use system software like Matlab, just how you use it in your course. Over the rest of the spring semester we will be working on filling in the information for all the courses we know have used the system in the past year. If you would like to see what description we have written of your course's use of the system, please send email to f_l@athena.mit.edu. In addition, if you would like to see a draft of ``Courseware At Athena,'' we would be happy to send you one to look over and comment on. Important Numbers: Faculty Liaison Office: E40-343A Anne LaVin, lavin@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, x3-0115 Dorothy Bowe, dot@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, x3-0170 Faculty Liaison Mailing list: f_l@ATHENA.MIT.EDU Naomi Schmidt, Manager of Educational Initiatives nschmidt@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, E40-353, x3-6884 Ron Orcutt, Project Athena Executive Director orcutt@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, E40-391A, x3-1346 Earll Murman, Project Athena Director murman@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, E40-391B, x3-1327 FROM: Project Athena Faculty Liaison Office E40-343A INTERDEPARTMENTAL