The Technology and Computation Core includes an innovative Lab Technology Unit that will implement a new automated lab control system across Core-Center laboratories, and a complementary Computation Unit that will maintain PC functions, networking, and communications between labs, investigators, and staff. These Units will pursue the following goals. The Lab Technology Unit will implement hardware/software solutions to lab stimulus & behavioral control, data acquisition, and data analysis across the Core-Center. A modular, embedded PC-based architecture will include a standardized set of real-time tools to be interfaced to specific devices within each lab. The overall scheme ensures flexibility and modularity for efficiency, while maintaining the specificity required by individual research goals. We will utilize newly developed commercial products by more engineering firms. We have implemented a prototype in the Paige/Seidman labs, and this Core will generalize and propagate the system across multiple labs. In complement, the Computation Unit will provide common guidelines for hardware and software solutions across the Core-Center, in concert with the Medical Center's extensive network services (centralized storage and backup, firewalls, intranet services, scheduling, and web support). Our labs are highly automated. PCs have in part supplanted analog hardware in our racks and are ubiquitous on desktops. Communications between labs and research personnel are essential. All of us are in routine need of PC hardware and software implementation, maintenance, training and support, through such needs are rarely met effectively. The Computation Unit will correct these shortcomings to the benefit of our research productivity and efficiency. The two Core Units will serve crucial needs of all Core Center members. New faculty and new labs, together with incremental needs of others, creates a prime moment to institute a new state-of-the-art lab control system and support structures. The result will be a set of labs that share key attributes that will in turn allow researchers at any level to rapidly equilibrate to any lab despite different research goals of systems under study. Togther with a web page/newsletter/scheduling system, an updated software library, and PC support, the environment established across the Core-Center will catalyze new interactions and collaborations, and will attract students and faculty to our research areas of interest.
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