Research Features From Across the Country and Around the World
Blue Waters: Security at Scale
HPCwire
If there's one mandate that all IT and business professionals can agree on, it's the need for security. For the largest systems in the world, keeping IT assets safe presents a unique set of challenges. Take the NCSA Blue Waters supercomputer as an example. The machine must be open and accessible to a collaborative-leaning scientific community while guarding against malicious activity. The person in charge of this balancing act is Adam Slagell. As Chief Information Security Officer for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, Slagell is part of a team responsible for securing this massive resource. To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2013-05-03/blue_waters:_security_at_scale.html.
PSC, Notre Dame to Supply Computer Infrastructure for Global Malaria Eradication Project
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) and the University of Notre Dame have received up to $1.6 million in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a system of computers and software for the Vector Ecology and Control Network (VECNet), an international consortium to eradicate malaria. The new VECNet Cyber-Infrastructure Project (CI) will support VECNet’s effort to unite research, industrial and public policy efforts to attack one of the worst diseases in the developing world in more effective, economical ways. To read further, please visit http://www.psc.edu/index.php/newscenter/90-2013press/824-psc-notre-dame-to-supply-computer-infrastructure-to-global-malaria-project.
End of the Line for Los Alamos Roadrunner Supercomputer
Associated Press
The Roadrunner supercomputer, housed at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LLNL), will be decommissioned this Sunday because it has been replaced by smaller, faster, more efficient, and less-expensive systems. In 2008, Roadrunner became the first system to break the petaflop barrier by processing just over a quadrillion mathematical calculations per second. The supercomputer has been used over the last five years to model viruses and unseen parts of the universe, to better understand lasers, and for nuclear weapons work. Los Alamos is currently using a supercomputer called Cielo, which is slightly faster than Roadrunner, takes up less space, and costs about $54 million, compared to Roadrunner's $121 million cost. To read further, please visit http://www.rdmag.com/news/2013/04/end-line-roadrunner-supercomputer.
ASERL and SURA Endorse Model Language for Research Data Management Policies
The Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL) and the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) have endorsed language to assist their member institutions in drafting sound policies to govern the uses and management of research data generated by university faculty and staff. “This is an emerging need for research universities, to put into place well-crafted policies to ensure research data are used and managed appropriately for the long term,” commented Judith Russell, ASERL’s President and Dean of Libraries at the University of Florida. To read further, please visit http://sura.org/news/2013/ASERL-SURA-RDM020613.pdf.
Obama to Unveil Initiative to Map the Human Brain
New York Times
President Barack Obama is launching the Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) research initiative, which aims to record and map brain circuits to advance neuroscience and improve treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, and traumatic brain injuries. The Obama administration has designated BRAIN as a grand challenge of the 21st century and committed $100 million in initial funding to the project in 2014. The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the National Science Foundation will work on the project, and an NIH working group led by Rockefeller University's Cori Bargmann and Stanford University's William Newsome will develop a plan, time frame, specific goals, and cost estimates. To read further, please visit http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/science/obama-to-unveil-initiative-to-map-the-human-brain.html?_r=0.
TACC Sprinting Toward Model Solutions
Developing simulation models for crops has been a prolific, international activity for nearly 50 years. Examples exist for all major and many minor crops and even for important weed species. Crop models are proving useful in a great many areas, among them the assessment of global climate change impacts and as a basis for insights to the Genotype-to-Phenotype problem. These crop models have been a long-term interest of iPlant, a community of researchers, educators, and students, supported by the National Science Foundation, working to enrich all plant sciences through the development of cyberinfrastructure - the physical computing resources, collaborative environment, virtual machine resources, and interoperable analysis software and data services– that are essential components of modern biology. To read further, please visit http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/news/feature-stories/2013/sprinting-toward-model-solutions.
Intel’s Big Data to HPC Interconnect
HPCwire
While Intel has yet to invoke a clear spell around the interconnect magic it conjured from Cray and QLogic, the company seems to be getting closer to pushing the role of these acquisitions in its future high performance computing and big data plans. On the heels of some recent revealing of where the almighty interconnect snaps into the future of both big data and HPC, today’s announcement of a new CEO to step to the helm, Brian Krzanich, adds further intrigue. New leadership might signal new attention to the core technologies that are powering big businesses—including Intel’s own processes. To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2013-05-02/intel%E2%80%99s_big_data_to_hpc_interconnect.html?featured=top.
University of Oklahoma Revolutionizing Tornado Prediction
University of Oklahoma associate professor Amy McGovern is working to revolutionize tornado and storm prediction. McGovern's ambitious tornado modeling and simulation project seeks to explain why some storms generate tornadoes while others don't. The research is giving birth to new techniques for identifying the likely path of twisters through both space and time. McGovern's work was recently detailed in an article by Scott Gibson, science writer for the National Institute for Computational Sciences at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2013-04-23/revolutionizing_tornado_prediction.html.
SDSC’s Gordon Supercomputer Assists in Crunching Large Hadron Collider Data
Gordon, the unique supercomputer launched last year by the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, recently completed its most data-intensive task so far: rapidly processing raw data from almost one billion particle collisions as part of a project to help define the future research agenda for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Under a partnership between a team of UC San Diego physicists and the Open Science Grid (OSG), a multi-disciplinary research partnership funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, Gordon has been providing auxiliary computing capacity by processing massive data sets generated by the Compact Muon Solenoid, or CMS, one of two large general-purpose particle detectors at the LHC used by researchers to find the elusive Higgs particle. To read further, please visit http://www.sdsc.edu/News%20Items/PR040413_lhc.html.
Finnish Researchers Welcome New Cray Supercomputer
Finland's national high performance computing (HPC) facility, the next-generation Cray XC30 supercomputer, called Sisu, provides cost-effective supercomputing capacity for the needs of science and research across Finland. Sisu will bring a new level of computational power for researchers engaged in many important science endeavors, from nanotechnology to fusion energy, climate analysis and more.nWhile there are other Cray XC30 systems underway in Europe, Sisu is the first to hit production status. Now in its first phase, Sisu occupies four cabinets with a total of 1,472 Intel Xeon E5-2670 CPUs (2.6 GHz), each containing 8 cores. Altogether, these 11,776 cores produce 244 teraflops peak computing performance. Each node has 2 GB of memory per computing core for a total of 32 GB per node, interconnected by the high-speed Aries interconnect. To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2013-04-29/finnish_researchers_welcome_new_cray_super.html.
University of Arkansas Researchers Study How to Link Visual Identification Technology With RFID
RFID Journal
The University of Arkansas' RFID Research Center and the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST) are collaborating to research the retail applications of emerging visual identification technologies (VIT) and possible uses of VIT systems to complement radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. VIT uses cost-effective 2D and 3D optical-imaging technologies to recognize objects by color, shape, and size without the need for bar codes or product numbers. This could enable VIT-based systems in stores to quickly identify products on shelves, add those goods to inventory lists, ensure that products are correctly placed, and remove products from inventory after checkout. To read further, please visit http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?10554.
University of Pennsylvania Engineers Enable ‘Bulk’ Silicon to Emit Visible Light for the First Time
Penn News
University of Pennsylvania researchers have enabled "bulk" silicon to emit broad-spectrum visible light, a breakthrough they say could lead to devices that have both electronic and photonic components. Silicon is normally a poor emitter of light because it turns added energy into heat, which makes integrating electronic and photonic circuits a challenge. Semiconductors usually must cool down after excitation before heating up again and releasing the remaining energy as light. However, the nanowires developed by the Pennsylvania researchers, combined with plasmonic nanocavities, can eliminate the cool-down period, opening the possibility of producing light from semiconductors.nTo read further, please visit http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/news/penn-engineers-enable-bulk-silicon-emit-visible-light-first-time.
On the Lighter Side
It’s in the Algorithm: Extremely Tight Races in Major League Baseball Chase This Year|
Network World
New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) researchers have used a mathematical analysis to compute the number of regular season games each Major League Baseball team should win in 2013. The model predicts the probability of a team with given hitters, bench, starting pitchers, lineup, relievers, and home field advantage winning a game against another team. "The numbers indicate that only one game might separate the first and second place teams in both the National League's East and West divisions, with the Atlanta Braves (94 wins) edging out the Washington Nationals (93 wins) in the East and the Los Angeles Dodgers (88 wins) coming in just ahead of the San Francisco Giants (87 wins) in the West," says NJIT professor Bruce Bukiet. To read further, please visit http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/it%E2%80%99s-algorithm-extremely-tight-races-major-league-baseball-chase-year.
Swarming Robots Could Be the Servants of the Future
University of Sheffield
The Sheffield Center for Robotics is involved in a robot swarms project that could benefit the medical field, industry, and the military. Researchers are working to program a group of 40 robots. In a demonstration, the swarm carried out simple fetching and carrying tasks by gathering around an object and working together to push it across a surface. The robots also can form a single cluster after being scattered across a room, and organize themselves by order of priority. The key is to limit the amount of information needed to perform tasks, says Roderich Gross from Sheffield's Natural Robotics Lab. To read further, please visit http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/sheffield-centre-robotics-gross-natural-robotics-lab-1.265434.
