CDS Facilities and Resources

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill provides leased space to the Center for Developmental Science that includes utilities and necessary maintenance.

The CDS occupies an excellent physical environment to provide research services and technical support. The Center is located in approximately 10,000 sq. ft. of office and laboratory space in a modern facility located at the northwest corner of the UNC-Chapel Hill campus. The main offices are within walking distance of the academic campus and the UNC School of Medicine as well as several campus libraries, campus labs, and many of the faculty mentors. The CDS is centrally located with its constituent universities to facilitate its interinstitutional collaborations. Within the Center, there is office space for students, trainees, collaborators, researchers, and faculty, in addition to space that is set aside specifically for data analysis. To fulfill its research and teaching mission, the Center has a large and updated (multimedia lectern, ceiling-mounted LCD projector, etc.) classroom that accommodates 40-60 persons, as well as two conference areas for seminars, training, and meetings.

The Center for Developmental Science operates a mixed network of over 100 PC and Macintosh workstations and notebook computers connected to an Active Directory domain of eight Windows Server 2003 and 2008 R2, redundant-drive-array network servers. These servers are employed to provide for load balancing, ample 100% backed-up user/workgroup work spaces and some service redundancy. One server provides streaming media services for coding DVD quality video over the network providing over 2.5 Terabytes of media storage capacity for access by up to 24 concurrent users. This system operates on a 100% category 5+/6 cable Ethernet network that is currently operating on a 100% switched 1 Gigabit backbone. The site is serviced by a 2.1 Gbps fiber optic connection to the campus network and commodity Internet. The Center also operates its own 802.11a/b/g wireless network with encrypted wireless access available throughout the physical plant.

All computer workstations are Pentium 4 or multi-core machines with 1 GB or more of RAM with most employing 17” or larger flat panel monitors. Approximately one third of workstations employ the Windows 7 Enterprise operating system with the remaining workstations running Windows XP Professional. 100% of the Center's desktop and laptop computers have either been acquired or fully refurbished during 2010. A suite of lab rooms is available to accommodate up to a dozen undergrads for the purpose of performing video coding work, training, etc. More than a dozen high-speed, duplex laser printers are easily accessible as are two high-speed color laser printers and one large format inkjet printer. All Macintosh computers run the OS-X Snow Leopard operating system. Loaner laptop computers are maintained for use in research or training activities and for traveling faculty and staff.

The Center has a large collection of software applications to meet researchers' needs in data processing, statistical analysis, graphical presentation, communication, and administrative support. Software resources include StataSE/MP, Mplus, SPSS, SAS, HLM, AMOS, etc. for statistical analysis; Excel/Access/Oracle for data coding and processing; Word, PowerPoint, and Publisher for graphical presentation and desktop publishing; Adobe CS and ColdFusion for web development work. A number of digital still and video cameras are available for use.

The ability to communicate and collaborate between remote locations is an important priority at the CDS. In order to optimize this level of work with other locations, the following resources are available:

• A mobile, Polycom set-top conference room video conference unit is available to collaborate with remote data collection sites equipped with similar devices or any other location with an ITU H.323 or H.320 compliant device using the latest H.264 codec.

• A video conference studio equipped for small video conferences for four to five people.

• The CDS operates its own Tandberg-Codian equipment to support multi-point video conferences, up to 720p HD resolution, unlimited webcasting and to enable the recording of video conference sessions.

• Most private workstations are capable of remote desktop operation permitting operators to access their office computers from remote locations, even if using a low-speed remote dial-up connection. These computers are configured in a highly secure way to restrict access to the RDP.

• A Virtual Private Network is operated by the CDS for remote users to make secure, high-encryption connections to the CDS network/domain from off-campus locations which enables CDS network server access from virtually any Internet location and enables inter-institutional collaboration as similar UNC resources have restricted affiliation requirements.