Research News from Decemebr 2011 - January 2012
Down to the Wire for Silicon: Purdue University Researchers Create a Wire 4 Atoms Wide, 1 Atom Tall
Researchers at Purdue University, the University of New South Wales, and Melbourne University have created wires a single atom tall by inserting a string of phosphorus atoms into a silicon crystal. Experiments and atom-by-atom supercomputer models of the wires showed that they maintain a low capacity for resistance despite being more than 20 times thinner than conventional copper wires in microprocessors. The researchers say the discovery could provide a roadmap for developing future nanoscale-sized computational devices. They say the discovery also moves donor-atom based silicon quantum computing closer to reality. The results show that Ohm's Law applies all the way down to an atomic-scale wire. The research's overall goal is to develop future quantum computers in which single atoms are used for computation, says New South Wales researcher Michelle Simmons. To read further, please visit http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2012/120105KlimeckPhosphorus.html.
Indiana University Researchers Making Personal Health Records More Usable
Indiana University researchers recently conducted a human-computer interaction study to determine the user experience for several functions of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA's) My HealtheVet system, the U.S.'s most widely used personal health record system. "Understanding how first-time users interact with their personal health records will enable us to design and implement future-generation systems that will serve the needs of patients and those with whom they wish to share health information, including doctors and other trusted parties," says Regenstrief Institute investigator David A. Haggstrom. The researchers studied four functional areas of My HealtheVet, including registration and login, prescription refills, tracking of self-reported health information, and searches for health information about specific topics. To read further, please visit http://communications.medicine.iu.edu/newsroom/stories/2012/making-personal-health-records-more-usable/.
Argonne and LBL Researchers Push Limits of Cloud Computing
Excerpt from InformationWeek
Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory recently completed the Magellan project, which determined that although cloud computing offers many advantages for scientific researchers, there are several hurdles to overcome, including a steep learning curve, performance and scalability shortcomings, and missing pieces in the cloud software stack. The report also found that commercial cloud services could be several times more expensive than the high-performance computing (HPC) environments they currently operate. In general, "the cloud is seven to 13 times more expensive," according to the report. However, the report also provides insights into some of the ways cloud computing could be used for leading-edge research. Magellan researchers concluded that the cloud model is well suited to certain types of scientific applications, specifically those with minimal communications, but it cannot outperform HPC systems for most national lab requirements. To read further, please visit http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/cloud-saas/232500025.
Map Making, Made Easy
Harvard University researchers have developed WorldMap, a cloud-based open source Web map-making platform that facilitates the use of large, detailed datasets and supports a number of formats. The researchers say WorldMap will make it easier for scholars to share maps and other geospatial data, and increase the amount of high-quality spatial data in the public sphere. Scholars will be able to integrate data from various sources by overlaying data in their own computers with materials on the Web, as well as incorporate paper maps, perform online digitizing, and link locations to other media. WorldMap is a collaborative tool, and all participants in groups will have editorial rights to interactive publications for large audiences, and users will be able to keep information private before making it available to larger groups for refinement and releasing it to the public. To read further, please visit http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/01/map-making-made-easy/.
Microsoft to Launch Real-Time Threat Intelligence Feed
Microsoft announced plans to launch a real-time threat intelligence feed at the recent International Conference on Cyber Security. The project’s goal is to stream the company's security information on dangerous and high profile threats to organizations running the gamut from business partners and private corporations to domestic and foreign governments. If the beta test is successful, Microsoft may make the feed publicly available. Microsoft's T.J. Campana says the feed will serve as a Hadoop-based cluster merged with Windows Server, streaming information from a database that now contains data on the Kelihos botnet Microsoft first reported on in September. "I don't see a decrease in threats, but I do see this [feed] limiting the possible damage from a given threat as the community will be able to respond faster," says Lumension analyst Paul Henry. Microsoft will need to allay the concerns of privacy skeptics, particularly since the feed will circulate Internet Protocol addresses of systems that are discovered to be elements in large botnets. However, Henry says that security threat information can be exchanged without causing privacy infringement, noting that the Microsoft feed will bear a similarity to practices at the SANS Internet Storm Center. To read further, please visit http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/011212-microsoft-intelligence-254846.html. (The article will appear after the car advertisement disappears.)
DOE Awards Supercomputing Time to UC San Diego, SDSC Researchers
Scientists from the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and other areas of the University of California, San Diego, conducting research in physics, computer science, earth science, and engineering, together were awarded an all-time high of more than a quarter billion hours in supercomputing processor time by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as part of the agency’s 2012 Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program. For more information, please visit http://www.sdsc.edu/News%20Items/PR011312_incite.html.
UCSD’s Larry Smarr, Stefan Savage Featured in New York Times “The Future of Computing”
The December 6, 2011 edition of The New York Times features articles written by two researchers from the University of California, San Diego division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), — including Calit2 Director Larry Smarr — as part of its special report on “The Future of Computing.” in his essay, “An Evolution Toward a Programmable Universe,” Smarr (who also oversees the UC Irvine division of Calit2) describes how embedded sensors, remote data centers, apps and other computing components will create “a distributed planetary computer of enormous power.” To read further, please visit http://www.calit2.net/newsroom/release.php?id=1936.
Kraken set to deliver 2 billionth CPU hour, sustains 96 percent utilization
Kraken, the world's fastest academic supercomputer, is adding some impressive credentials to its resume. Not only will the Cray XT5 deliver its 2 billionth CPU hour to open science during the week of the SC11 conference, the computer also sustained an astonishing utilization of 96 percent for the month of October, running with no downtime for 36 days consecutively. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and managed by the University of Tennessee's National Institute for Computational Sciences (NICS), Kraken is located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Kraken is one of the integrated digital resources of the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), successor to NSF's TeraGrid project. To read further, please visit https://www.xsede.org/kraken-set-to-deliver-2-billionth-cpu-hour
Ranger supercomputer's lifespan extended one year as part of NSF XD initiative
The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) today announced that operational funding for the Ranger supercomputer, which was expected to end on Feb. 4, 2012, will be extended through Feb. 4, 2013. This extension will allow Ranger to continue supporting world-class science until the next large HPC system, Stampede, is deployed as part of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) eXtreme Digital (XD) program. Approaching its fourth anniversary, Ranger remains one of the top computing platforms in the world, ranked as #17 on the Top500 list. The system has completed more than two million jobs with 97 percent uptime. To read further, please visit http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/news/press-releases/2011/ranger-extended.
After 23 years, Sustainability is a Growing Science That’s Here to Stay, Research from Los Alamos, Indiana University Shows
Sustainability has not only become a science in the past 25 years, but it is one that continues to be fast-growing with widespread international collaboration, broad disciplinary composition and wide geographic distribution, according to new research from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Indiana University. The findings, published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences as the "Evolution and structure of sustainability science," were assembled from a review of 20,000 academic papers written by 37,000 distinct authors representing 174 countries and over 2,200 cities. Authors of the paper, Los Alamos research scientist Luís M. A. Bettencourt, and Jasleen Kaur, a Ph.D. student in Indiana University Bloomington's School of Informatics and Computing, also identified the most productive cities for sustainability publications and estimated the field's growth rate, with the number of distinct authors doubling every 8.3 years. The study covered research generated from 1974 through 2010. To read further, please visit http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/20436.html.
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center Wins High-Performance Computing Award
HPCwire, a leading electronic-news outlet for high-performance computing and communication (HPC), awarded a 2011 Reader’s Choice Award to the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) for Best Use of HPC in an Edge HPC application. The award recognizes PSC for its work with Blacklight, PSC’s SGI® Altix® UV1000 system, the world’s largest shared-memory system, a resource of XSEDE, the National Science Foundation cyberinfrastructure program. Because of Blacklight’s large amount of shared memory, scientists have been able to access up to 16 terabytes at a time, a feature that has enabled ground-breaking work in several fields, including fields of computer science — natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) — that haven’t traditionally made substantial use of HPC. To read further, please visit http://psc.edu/publicinfo/news/2011/112111_HPCAward.php.
With Mounting Evidence from Supercollider, Indiana University Physicists Find Themselves in Thick of New Results
Indiana University physicists who have spent years working with scientists around the world looking for the Higgs boson, that theorized particle thought to give mass to other particles, today learned the experiment they are tied most closely to -- the ATLAS detector -- and a second independent experiment both have seen similar results providing the best proof yet that this particle does exist. To read further, please visit http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/20651.html.
Open Science Grid’s Featured Site: Bellarmine University
ATLAS-Tier3 Supercomputing Center
What is unusual about this site? Kentucky, where it is located, is an EPSCoR state. Through their Tier3 center, which is the only OSG site in the state, OSG is helping to close the “Digital Divide” gap in grid computing. As an EPSCoR state, they face some unusual challenges. They only have a 100 Mbps bandwidth connection dedicated to the cluster. Despite their challenges, they are able to participate in the ATLAS collaboration under the University of Oklahoma. Since they are a primarily undergraduate institution, this opens up new opportunities for undergraduates to gain invaluable research experience. For more information on the Bellarmine University ATLAS-Tier3 Supercomputing Center, please visit http://www.bellarmine.edu/faculty/amahmood/tier3/index.html.
Cornell University Develops Mathematical Model for Educational Software
Cornell University graduate student Tim Novikoff has developed a mathematical model for educational software. "The model is based on what the psychologists have been finding out about the process of learning, and we're hoping it can provide a language for new kinds of educational software," says Cornell professor Jon Kleinberg. In a paper describing the model, the researchers say the goal is infinite perfect learning, in which new items can be added forever and every item is continually reviewed. An alternative is cramming, in which the students aims to learn a finite list of items in a specified period of time. The researchers suggest three ways of scheduling material for infinite perfect learning--the recap method, the slow flashcard method, and the hold-build method. The model is meant to be a framework that defines the spacing constraints of a theoretical student. To read further, please visit http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Jan12/ModelStudent.html
North Carolina State University Researchers Devise New Means for Creating Elastic Conductors
North Carolina State University (NCSU) researchers have developed a method for creating elastic conductors made of carbon nanotubes, which they say could lead to the large-scale production of a new generation of elastic electronic devices. "We’re optimistic that this new approach could lead to large-scale production of stretchable conductors, which would then expedite research and development of elastic electronic devices," says NCSU professor Yong Zhu. He says stretchable electronic devices would be both more resilient and able to conform to various shapes, with applications in clothing, implanted medical devices, and sensors. The researchers' method involves placing aligned carbon nanotubes on an elastic substrate using a transfer printing process. The substrate is then stretched, which separates the nanotubes while maintaining their parallel alignment. When the substrate relaxes, the nanotubes buckle, creating what looks like a collection of parallel lines on a flat surface. To read further, please visit http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/wmszhuconductors/.
Blue Waters "Early Science System" Delivered to NCSA
The first cabinets of the new Blue Waters sustained-petascale supercomputer have arrived at the University of Illinois' National Center for Supercomputing Applications and were powered up over the last few days. A total of 48 Cray XE6 cabinets were installed. These cabinets represent about 15 percent of the final Blue Waters system. They will be operated as a limited access "Early Science System" while the rest of the Blue Waters supercomputer is built over the next several months. In March, select scientific teams from around the country will begin using the Early Science System on research in a range of fields. In parallel, the Cray and NCSA team will use the Early Science System to prepare for the operation of the full Blue Waters supercomputer. To read further, please visit http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/News/Stories/BW_ESS/.
TACC Data Center Heat Meets Its Match in Mineral Oil Submersion System
Christiaan Best was sitting in a field when the initial idea for his company took root. A friend was telling Best about the cooling systems being installed at the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), where he worked, and the plans were so inefficient, so counterintuitive, that it started Best on a search for alternatives. Some months later, enjoying a meal with one of his friends at Magnolia Café in Austin, Texas, he had a eureka moment and sketched an idea for a new data center cooling system on the back of a napkin. The idea involved building a rack that could hold densely packed computer servers in a circulating bath of liquid mineral oil. To read further and to view an explanatory video, please visit http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/news/feature-stories/2012/green-revolution-cooling.
Purdue University Center Awarded $3.5 Million U.S. DOT Grant for Research
The NEXTRANS Center at Purdue University has been awarded a $3.5 million research grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to advance research and education programs that address the nation's critical transportation challenges. Purdue will lead a consortium of eight other Midwest universities in Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin, including the private Martin University in Indianapolis. Research will focus on issues such as technology-enabled solutions; asset management and resource allocation; data-driven analysis; transportation linkage to energy security, environment and climate change; policy and institutions; and economic revitalization and global competitiveness. For more information, please visit http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2012/120120PeetaNEXTRANS.html.
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and Drexel University Establish High-Performance Cross-State Link
The Three Rivers Optical Exchange (3ROX), the high-performance Internet hub operated and managed by the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC), and Drexel University in Philadelphia are now directly connected via high-performance, fiber-optic network. They have connected via the FrameNet service of National LambdaRail (NLR), a non-profit organization that links more than 280 U.S. universities and private and government laboratories. The new link provides a direct connection, with bandwidth of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 billion bits per second), about 100 times faster than current high-end download rates (10-15 megabits per second) for most residential Internet service. To read further, please visit http://psc.edu/publicinfo/news/2012/013112_3rox_drexel.php.
