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The cyber archaeometry concerns a new virtual ontology in the environment of cultural heritage and archaeology. The present study concerns a first pivot endeavor of a virtual polarized light microscopy (VPLM) for archaeometric learning, made from digital tools, tackling the theory of mineral identification in archaeological materials, an important aspect in characterization, provenance, and ancient technology. This endeavor introduces the range of IT computational methods and instrumentation techniques available to the study of cultural heritage and archaeology of apprentices, educators, and specialists. Use is made of virtual and immersive reality, 3D, virtual environment, massively multiplayer online processes, and gamification. The VPLM simulation is made with the use of Avatar in the time-space frame of the laboratory with navigation, exploration, control the learning outcomes in connection to the archaeometric multisystem work. The students evidently learned to operate the VPLM following operations made via visual and home-made scripting, gaining experience in synergy, teamwork, and understanding. The resulting meaningful effects of the cyber-archaeometry with virtual operations and virtual hands, texts, and video equip students especially for e-learning with the required basic knowledge of mineralogical examination, which help to understand and evaluate mineral identification from material culture and provides readiness and capacity, which may be refined in a real polarized light microscopy (PLM) environment.

Humanities researchers often need to study heterogeneous digitized archives from different sources. But how can they deal with this heterogeneity, both in terms of structure and semantics? What are the digital tools they can use in order to integrate resources and study them as a whole? And what if they are unfamiliar with the methods and tools available? Towards this end, DARIAH-EU[1] and CLARIN[2] research infrastructures already support researchers in exploiting digital tools. Specific use case research scenarios have also been developed, with the PARTHENOS SSK[3] being a successful example. In this paper we describe our related (ongoing) experience from the development of the Greek research infrastructure APOLLONIS[4], where, among others, we have focused on identifying and supporting the workflows that researchers need to follow to perform specific research studies while jointly accessing disparate archives. Using the decade of 1940s as a use case, a turbulent period in Greek history due to its significant events (WWII, Occupation, Opposition, Liberation, Civil War), we have assembled (digitized) historical archives, coming from different providers and shedding light on different historical aspects of these events. From the acquisition of the resources to the desired outcome, we record the workflows of the whole research study, including the initial curation process of the digitized archives, the ingestion, the joint indexing of the data, the generation of semantic graph representations and, finally, their publication and searching. After the acquisition of the heterogeneous source materials we perform a detailed investigation of their structure and contents, in order to map the different archive metadata onto a common metadata schema, thus enabling joint indexing and establishing semantic relations among the contents of the archives. The next step is data cleaning, where messy records are cleaned and normalized. Natural Language Processing methods are then exploited for the extraction of additional information contained in the archival records or in free text metadata fields, such as persons, places, armed units, dates and topics, which enhance the initial datasets. The outcome is encoded in XML using the common schema and ingested into a repository through an aggregator implemented using the MoRE[5] system. A joint index based on a set of basic criteria is generated and maintained, thus ensuring joint access to all archival records regardless of their source. In addition, an RDF representation is generated from the encoded archival data, enabling their publication in the form of a semantic graph and supporting interesting complex queries. This is based on a specifically designed extension of CIDOC CRM[6] and a compilation of a list of research queries of varying complexity encoded in SPARQL. Preliminary tests of the entire workflows and the tools used in all steps yielded very encouraging results. Our immediate plans include full scale ingestion and indexing of the material from a number of archives, producing the corresponding semantic graph and streamlining the incorporation of new archives. [1]DARIAH-EU, https://www.dariah.eu/ [2]CLARIN, https://www.clarin.eu/ [3]PARTHENOS Standardization Survival Kit (SSK), http://www.parthenos-project.eu/portal/ssk-2 [4]APOLLONIS Greek Infrastructure for Digital Arts, Humanities and Language Research and Innovation, https://apollonis-infrastructure.gr/ [5]MoRE Aggregator, http://more.dcu.gr/ [6]CIDOC CRM, http://www.cidoc-crm.org/

With the increasingly rapid growth of data in life sciences we are witnessing a major transition in the way research is conducted, from hypothesis-driven studies to data-driven simulations of whole systems. Such approaches necessitate the use of large-scale computational resources and e-infrastructures, such as the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI). EGI, one of key the enablers of the digital European Research Area, is a federation of resource providers set up to deliver sustainable, integrated and secure computing services to European researchers and their international partners. Here we aim to provide the state of the art of Grid/Cloud computing in EU research as viewed from within the field of life sciences, focusing on key infrastructures and projects within the life sciences community. Rather than focusing purely on the technical aspects underlying the currently provided solutions, we outline the design aspects and key characteristics that can be identified across major research approaches. Overall, we aim to provide significant insights into the road ahead by establishing ever-strengthening connections between EGI as a whole and the life sciences community. AD was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal (SFRH/BPD/78075/2011 and EXPL/BBBBEP/1356/2013). FP has been supported by the National Grid Infrastructure NGI_GRNET, HellasGRID, as part of the EGI. IFB acknowledges funding from the “National Infrastructures in Biology and Health” call of the French “Investments for the Future” initiative. The WeNMR project has been funded by a European FP7 e-Infrastructure grant, contract no. 261572. AF was supported by a grant from Labex CEBA (Centre d’études de la Biodiversité Amazonienne) from ANR. MC is supported by UK’s BBSRC core funding. CSC was supported by Academy of Finland grant No. 273655 for ELIXIR Finland. The EGI-InSPIRE project (Integrated Sustainable Pan-European Infrastructure for Researchers in Europe) is co-funded by the European Commission (contract number: RI-261323). The BioMedBridges project is funded by the European Commission within Research Infrastructures of the FP7 Capacities Specific Programme, grant agreement number 284209. This is an open-access article.-- et al. Peer Reviewed