HPC Happenings
SDSC Receives Honors in 2012 HPCwire Readers' and Editors' Choice Awards
The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, has been recognized by HPCwire, a top online publication covering high-performance computing and related technologies, for the Center’s innovative Data Oasis parallel file storage system. SDSC was presented with ‘Editor’s Choice: Best HPC Storage Product or Technology, for the Data Oasis Storage File System on Gordon’ as part of the publication’s annual HPCwire Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Awards. The awards were announced at the 2012 International Conference for High-Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC12) in Salt Lake City, Utah. The complete list of winners is available here. To read further, please visit http://www.sdsc.edu/News%20Items/PR111412_hpcwire_award.html.
XSEDE13 Spouse and Children Attendee Poll Results
XSEDE is excited to be bringing XSEDE13 to San Diego in July 2013. To help with the planning for your stay in sunny San Diego, a poll was created to assess childcare needs and the results are in! For those of you responding that childcare was of interest to you, the breakdown is as follows:
Onsite childcare for younger children: 10 yes
Onsite Robotics workshop for grades 5-8: 9 yes
San Diego Zoo: 16 yes
Balboa Park Summer Camps: 13 yes
San Diego Children's Museum: 16 yes If you did not get a chance to respond to this poll, it’s not too late. Please send your interest to Ange Mason at amason@ucsd.edu.
Save the Date - GlobusWORLD Conference
April 16-18, 2013 – Argonne National Laboratory
A call for participation will be issued soon. If you are interested in presenting please contact outreach@globusonline.org. For more information, please visit http://www.globusworld.org/.
HPC Call for Participation
Internatioal Conference in Computational Science - Call for Participation
June 5-7, 2013 – Barcelona, Spain
WEAIB 2013 Submission Deadline - January 15, 2013
This year the International Conference on Computational Science (ICCS 2013) will be held in beautiful Barcelona, Spain, June 5 - June 7, 2013 and two workshops will focus on education: “The Workshop on Teaching Computational Science” (WTCS 2013; http://webs.wofford.edu/shifletab/iccs) and “The Workshop on Educational Approaches for Integrating Bioinformatics into Computer and Life Science” (WEAIB 2013; http://ccli.ist.unomaha.edu/iccs2013). Please let us know if you have any questions. For more information, please visit http://www.iccs-meeting.org/iccs2013/ <http://www.iccs-meeting.org/.
Upcoming Conferences and Workshops
2013 Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference
February 7-9, 2013 – Washington, DC
The 2013 Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference has issued a call for participation, inviting submissions for panel discussions, student research posters, birds-of-a-feather sessions and workshops. Additionally, applications are now being accepted for the Doctoral Consortium and student scholarships to attend the conference. Confirmed speakers include Vint Cerf (Google VP and ACM President), Armando Fox (UC Berkeley), Anita Jones (University of Virginia), Jeanine Cook (New Mexico State University), Annie Anton (Georgia Tech), and Hakim Weatherspoon, (Cornell University), among others. For more information, please visit the http://tapiaconference.org/2013/.
Emerging Researchers National Conference in STEM
February 28- March 2, 2013 – Washington, DC
The Emerging Researchers National (ERN) Conference in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) is hosted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Education and Human Resources Programs (EHR) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Human Resource Development (HRD), within the Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR). The conference is aimed at college and university undergraduate and graduate students who participate in programs funded by the NSF HRD Unit, including underrepresented minorities and persons with disabilities. The objectives of the conference are to help undergraduate and graduate students to enhance their science communication skills and to better understand how to prepare for science careers in a global workforce For more information, please visit http://www.emerging-researchers.org/.
7th International Technology, Education and Development Conference
March 4-6, 2013 – Valencia, Spain
The 7th International Technology, Education and Development Conference is an international forum to present and share your experiences in the fields of Education, Technology and Development. The attendance of more than 600 delegates from more than 70 countries is expected, being an annual meeting point for lecturers, researchers, academics, educational scientists and technologists from all disciplines and cultures. For more information, please visit http://www.iated.org/concrete2/login.php?event_id=15.
Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students
November 13-16, 2013 – Nashville, Tennessee
Now in its 12th year, ABRCMS is the largest, professional conference for biomedical and behavioral students, including mathematics, attracting approximately 3,300 individuals, including 1,700 undergraduate students, 400 graduate students and postdoctoral scientists and 1200 faculty, program directors and administrators. Students come from over 350 U.S. colleges and universities. All are pursuing advanced training in the biomedical and behavioral sciences, including mathematics, and many have conducted independent research. The conference is designed to encourage underrepresented minority students to pursue advanced training in the biomedical and behavioral sciences, including mathematics and provide faculty mentors and advisors with resources for facilitating students’ success. More than 500 representatives from graduate programs at US colleges and universities as well as scientists from government agencies, foundations, and professional scientific societies join ABRCMS in the exhibitors program to share information about graduate school and summer internship opportunities. These representatives present research opportunities, funding sources, and professional networks. For more information, please visit http://www.abrcms.org/page01a.html.
Research Features
Cloud Computing for Developing World Economies
As the world prepares to convene for the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT 2012), the role of cloud computing in creating economic opportunity and enabling the rapid flow of information in the developing world continues to gain momentum. This according to a new report, "Unlocking the Benefits of Cloud Computing for Emerging Economies—A Policy Overview" by Peter F. Cowhey and Michael Kleeman of the University of California San Diego, which examines the critical benefits to lower and middle-income economies, in particular those of India, Mexico and South Africa, from international and domestic adoption of cloud computing. "Cloud computing is a scalable technology ripe for developing world adoption, helping lower costs, improve speed of service and expand operation flexibility," said Cowhey, Dean the University of California, San Diego's School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS). "By 2014, 60 percent of the world's server workloads will be done in the cloud and the scalability of this new technology will help the developing world sustain the rapid growth of the Internet economy." To read further, please visit http://www.calit2.net/newsroom/release.php?id=2073.
NSF Highlights MIT Computer Scientist Turned Artist
Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Erik Demaine is a computer scientist turned artist with expertise in computational origami, the mathematical study of bending and folding. Together with his father Martin, Demaine has created artworks that explore how science and art inspire each other. Demaine uses computational algorithms to perform his folding research, and he frequently employs a computer drawing program that can draw lines and circles and pinpoint the intersections, so he can print it out and fold it. Demaine notes that although mathematical tools for creating straight crease origami exist, curved creases have been the real challenge. "The mathematical goal is to be able to automatically design, with a computational tool, any [three dimensional] form you want with these curved creases," he says. To read further, please visit http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=125878&org=MPS.
Purdue University Researchers Focus On Humanoid Robots
Purdue University is involved in an international initiative to develop humanoid robots capable of responding to disasters. Purdue's focus is the creation of algorithms for the robot to climb an industrial ladder and traverse an industrial walkway, says Purdue professor C.S. George Lee. The algorithms are being used to program a HUBO II robot, and Lee says the project combines research in computer vision, locomotion and balance control, and machine learning. The effort is part of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Robotics Challenge. The researchers are using wireless technology to communicate with the robot. "There are numerous other potential applications for humanoid robots of the future, including space exploration, assisting the elderly, and working side-by-side with people in various environments," Lee notes. To read further, please visit http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2012/Q4/humanoid-robots-are-focus-of-research-at-purdue.html.
Carnegie Mellon University, LANL and NSF Join Forces in Repurposing Supercomputers
Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), the U.S. National Science Foundation, New Mexico Consortium, and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) recently launched the Parallel Reconfigurable Observational Environment (PRObE) program; a supercomputer research center using a cluster of 2,048 recently retired supercomputers from LANL. "They decommission them every three or four years because the new computers make so much better results," says CMU professor Garth Gibson. PRObE partners successfully decommissioned and saved the computer clusters for reuse. Although the main facility will stay in Los Alamos, CMU's Parallel Data Lab in Pittsburgh will house two similar but smaller centers. The Pittsburgh facilities will enable researchers to perform small experiments and demonstrate to the PRObE committee that they are ready to request time on the facility in Los Alamos. PRObE's launch means that researchers will have the opportunity to experiment with supercomputers. "We are taking a resource, handing it to scientists and saying, 'Do your research on a dedicated facility,'" Gibson notes. To read further, please visit http://triblive.com/news/allegheny/2818020-74/computer-probe-research-alamos-facility-gibson-los-science-supercomputer-supercomputers#axzz2APhyFqK3.
Educator Curriculum and Information
Despite Efforts to Close Gender Gaps, Some Disciplines Remain Lopsided Cites Rice University and UC Irvine Studies
Gender inequality in the teaching and engineering fields remains pronounced despite colleges' diversification efforts, with the U.S. Education Department estimating that in 2010 women received the bulk of undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in education, while far fewer women received those degrees in engineering. Women are still a minority in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines after more than 10 years of outreach, and a new Rice University study found that both male and female scientists cite gender discrimination as an underlying factor. University of California at Irvine professor Kristen Renwick Monroe points to "implicit prejudice" against women, especially those with children, when it comes to hiring and promotion in science and engineering fields. Meanwhile, a 2010 report from the American Association of University Women pointed to the prevalence of cultural stereotypes of science and math as fields for men and art and humanities as female-oriented disciplines. Exacerbating the situation is a dearth of mentors and role models in traditionally male fields, while even academics who claim to support women can be biased. Drawing men to the field of education also is a problem, given stereotypes of male teachers as having suspicious motives, and lower salaries for teachers. To read further, please visit http://chronicle.com/article/In-Terms-of-Gender/135304/.
Student Engagement and Information
Announcement: NASA-Sponsored Computing School for EnviSci Students
Application Deadline – March 13, 2013
This summer and for the two following summers, the University of Virginia will be hosting a NASA-sponsored Summer School in programming, basic software engineering, and HPC for students in environmental sciences. Twenty students will be accepted of whom 10 will get to spend the rest of the summer as interns at NASA centers. The Summer School portion will provide room and partial board (with a stipend for other expenses) and the internships will pay the standard NASA stipend. The program is focusing on graduate students who are early in their careers but will also accept senior-level undergraduates who plan to go on to graduate school. This is especially appropriate for students who are interested in large-scale modeling or other computing-intensive areas. Fields might include atmospheric, oceanic, climatological, and geophysical sciences, remote sensing, and possibly even ecology. For more information and to apply, please visit http://www.uvacse.virginia.edu/isscens/ and send an email of interest.
Last But Not Least – Computational News of Interest
China Is Building a 100-Petaflop Supercomputer
The Chinese National University of Defense Technology is developing Tianhe-2, a supercomputer expected to run at 100 petaflops when it is launched in 2015. Tianhe-2 could help keep China competitive with the future supercomputers of other countries, as industry experts estimate computers will start reaching 1,000-petaflop performance by 2018. The Chinese government is aiming for China's supercomputers to reach 100 petaflops in 2015, and then 1 exaflop in 2018, according to Institute of Software Chinese Academy of Sciences professor Zhang Yunquan. Chinese supercomputers previously have relied on U.S.-made chips and software, but the Chinese government wants to develop more homegrown technology in future supercomputer systems. "I think in the future, as China tries to reach for exascale computing, the designs of these new supercomputers could fully rely on domestic processors," Zhang says. The European Union, Japan, and the U.S. have similar goals to create 100-petaflop systems by 2015, according to University of Tennessee professor Jack Dongarra. For more information, please visit https://www.infoworld.com/d/computer-hardware/china-building-100-petaflop-supercomputer-206072.
Apple Shake-Up Could End Real-World Images
Apple may soon move away from many of the visual tricks and design techniques that have previously been staples of the company's products. Many Apple products have gadgets and applications based on skeuomorphism, which means they resemble the appearance and behavior of real-world objects. However, that design strategy, which Steve Jobs championed, may be abandoned as new executives take charge. University of Washington professor Axel Roesler says Apple's software designs have become overloaded with nostalgia and unnecessary visual references to the past, and he expects that to change. "Apple, as a design leader, is not only capable of doing this, they have a responsibility for doing it," Roesler says. "People expect great things from them." Some designers describe certain functions in Apple's software as throwbacks to the past, and the next generation of iOS and OS X will likely have clean edges and flat surfaces, replacing the current natural textures that now define Apple's software. To read further, please visit http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/technology/apple-shake-up-could-mean-end-to-real-world-images-in-software.html?_r=0.
