XSDEDE Happenings
Call for Presentations - Extreme Scaling Workshop from Blue Waters and XSEDE
July 15-16, 2012 - Chicago, Illinois
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications' Blue Waters and eXtreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) projects are hosting the sixth in a series of Extreme Scaling workshops. The workshop will address algorithmic and applications challenges and solutions in large-scale computing systems with limited memory and I/O bandwith. The presentations and discussion are intended to assist the computational science and engineering community in making effective use of petascale through extreme-scale systems across the spectrum from local campus-scale to national systems. For more information and submission guidelines, please visit https://www.xsede.org/web/xscale.
XSEDE Student Engagement Program Seeks Undergraduate Students for Summer Internship Opportunities
The XSEDE Student Engagement Program is seeking undergraduate and graduate students for a 10-week project experience for this summer. Working with XSEDE researchers and staff, students will make meaningful contributions to research, development and systems projects that benefit the national scientific and computational community. In exchange, students will be provided with travel support for project orientation and to attend the XSEDE’12 conference in Chicago, IL in July, and a small stipend. Available projects are listed at https://www.xsede.org/student-engagement-projects. To apply, complete the form online at https://www.xsede.org/student-intern-form and email your current resume and current academic transcripts to outreach-stueng@xsede.org. Your application will not be considered until all material has been received. Questions can be sent to outreach-stueng@xsede.org.
Upcoming Conferences and Workshops
7th Annual Computer Science for High School Teachers Summer Workshop
August 1-3, 2012 – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
The School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University is running their 7th annual CS4HS summer workshop. The workshop includes activities that help high school teachers understand the breadth of computer science beyond Java programming. We provide hands-on activities that teachers can use in their classrooms to show their students how to use computational thinking principles to solve problems, explore the use of robots and other software to solve real-world problems, and learn more about the various fields of study within computer science including machine learning and human computer interaction. Teachers will visit the local Google office in Pittsburgh to speak with Google engineers about how to help prepare their students for jobs in the computing industry, and there will be an open forum to discuss ways to improve the perception and relevance of computing in K-12. For more information and to register, please visit
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/cs4hs/summer12
Research Features Across the XSEDE Partnership
Rice University Researchers Develop Transparent Memory Chips Are Coming
Rice University researchers have developed transparent, flexible memories using silicon oxide as the active component. Rice's James Tour says the new type of memory developed by his lab could be combined with transparent electrodes developed at the university for flexible touchscreens and transparent integrated circuits and batteries developed at other labs in recent years. Tour suggests the Rice breakthrough could lead to the development of a see-through cell phone. "Generally, you can't see a bit of memory, because it's too small," he says. Tour notes that silicon itself is not transparent. "If the density of the circuits is high enough, you're going to see it," he points out. The discovery is based on 2010 memory research that was reported on the front page of The New York Times, but Tour's lab has since developed a working two-terminal memory device that can be stacked in a three-dimensional configuration and attached to a flexible substrate. To read further, please visit http://news.rice.edu/2012/03/27/transparent-memory-chips-are-coming-2/.
University of Illinois at Chicago Computer Scientist Drives for Comprehensive Traffic Model
University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) professor Jakob Eriksson is developing a traffic model that gathers and assembles data from smartphones, online maps, radio, and TV. "The long-range ambition is to build something like a roadmap, but annotated with everything that's going on at the moment," Eriksson says. He says mathematical calculations that could predict alternate routes on side streets and secondary routes could help motorists bypass traffic jams. A more dynamic, real-time traffic picture also could help commuters decide when it would be more practical to use mass transit. "This project asks, how do we combine it all into one coherent model showing the current status of the transportation network?" Eriksson notes. Initially, UIC researchers will use Chicago-area data for the project, but they plan to branch out into other cities in the future. "There may be 10,000 road segments we want to simulate in some detail with perhaps a million cars on the road during rush hour," Eriksson says. To read further, please visit http://tigger.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/newsbureau/cgi-bin/index.cgi?from=Releases&to=Release&id=3456&start=1325347568&end=1333123568&topic=0&dept=0.
NCSA Researchers Contain Multitudes
Dmitri Williams, a University of Southern California researcher, is working with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), including XSEDE advanced support staff member Dora Cai, to learn more about human behavior by examining huge amounts of data from online role-playing games. The graph shown here represents each time two players chat with one another in a game. By examining the gamers' strategies and interactions, researchers are hoping to answer behavioral questions and perhaps correlate online activities with behavior in the real world. To read further, please visit http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/News/Stories/bigdata/.
TACC Supercomputers Further Study of Chemical Reactions
A study of chemical reactions at the molecular level, facilitated by supercomputers Ranger and Lonestar at TACC is helping further explore the complexities of the subject and add to the body of knowledge. By simulating reactions on the computers, scientists are discovering ways that may allow for more control over reactions in the future, with revolutionary implications for industries such as medicine and manufacturing.
UC San Diego Physicists Find Patterns in New State of Matter
Think March was cold? Try the basement of the Natural Sciences Building. Temperatures near absolute zero in a laboratory there have recently allowed UC San Diego physicists to produce the most detailed images ever seen of a new property of matter called “spontaneous coherence in excitons. To watch the video, please visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPEGlkUM1oM&feature=youtu.be.
Educator Curriculum and Information
English Students Rank in Europe's Top Five for Programming Skills
United Kingdom schoolchildren rank in the top five in Europe when it comes IT prowess, with a quarter of 16- to 24- year-olds having written a computer program. The United Kingdom shared fifth place with Hungary, ahead of Germany, France, and the Netherlands. Finland leads the way, as 37 percent of its youngsters have written a computer program, followed by Sweden, Austria, and Spain, according a report released as part of a European-wide e-skills audit. Moreover, university graduates with computing-related degrees accounted for just 4 percent of all graduates in 2009, down from 6 percent in 2005. Seventy-two percent of Britons have copied or moved a computer file or folder, while 51 percent claimed to be able to use basic arithmetic functions in spreadsheets. The European Commission's Digital Agenda Scorecard 2011, which measures a variety of computer skills across the whole population, comes at a time when there is increasing concern in the United Kingdom about teaching computing skills. The government pledged earlier in the year to overhaul the information technology curriculum in schools and focus more on the skills needed by employers. To read further, please visit http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2163935/uk-youngsters-rank-europes-programming-skills.
Faculty Opportunities
2012 Exploration Space Grant Faculty Workshop
The 2012 Exploration Space Grant Faculty Workshop will be held July 19 & 20 at Kennedy Space Center. The workshop will cover the newly developed and tested senior design course Hybrid Rocket Experiment Station for Capstone Design. The workshop covers topics such as NASA Systems Engineering Process, senior design projects, and incorporating the NASA Systems Engineering Process into senior design projects. Travel expenses may be reimbursed on a first come first serve basis. For more information, please visit http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/centers/kennedy/technology/ESMDWorkshop.htm
Student Engagement and Opportunities
Immune Defense Beta Testing Now thru Summer!
Immune Defense will present white blood cells, their signaling proteins, their receptors, their activities, responses to signals, differentiation... and all of these will be used strategically to beat ever more tricky pathogens. For more information, please visit http://lists.fas.org/listman/display.php?M=369546&C=66d181b52de901d52579f57338146e98&S=1686&L=257&N=1209.
Last but Not Least – Items of Interest
Honeycombs of Magnets Could Lead to New Type of Computer Processing
Imperial College London researchers say they have developed a new material using nano-sized magnets that could lead to unique types of electronic devices with much greater processing capacity than current technologies. The researchers have shown that a honeycomb pattern of nano-sized magnets introduces competition between neighboring magnets and reduces the problems caused by these interactions by 66 percent. The researchers also found that large arrays of these nano-magnets can be used to store computable information. The research suggests that a cluster of many magnetic domains could be able to solve a complex computational problem in a single calculation. "Our philosophy is to harness the magnetic interactions, making them work in our favor," says Imperial College London researcher Will Branford. Previous studies have shown that external magnetic fields can cause the magnetic domain of each bar to ichange state, which affects the interaction between that bar and its two neighboring bars in the honeycomb. To read further, please visit http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_30-3-2012-15-43-46.
Google Launches Go Programming Language 1.0
Google has released version 1.0 of its Go programming language, which was initially introduced as an experimental language in 2009. Google has described Go as an attempt to combine the development speed of working in a dynamic language such as Python with the performance and safety of a compiled language such as C or C++. "We're announcing Go version 1, or Go 1 for short, which defines a language and a set of core libraries to provide a stable foundation for creating reliable products, projects, and publications," says Google's Andrew Gerrand. He notes that Go 1 is the first release of Go that is available in supported binary distribution, identifying Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and Windows. Stability for users was the driving motivation for Go 1, and much of the work needed to bring programs up to the Go 1 standard can be automated with the go fix tool. A complete list of changes to the language and the standard library, documented in the Go 1 release notes, will be an essential reference for programmers who are migrating code from earlier versions of Go. There also is a new release of the Google App Engine SDK.. To read further, please visit http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/Google-Launches-Go-Programming-Language-10-160585/
