News and Information for the Broad EOT Community
Upcoming Conferences. Workshops and Festivals
OGF34
March 12-15, 2012 – Oxford, England
OGF Event Programs seek to strengthen existing, and engage new, user communities within OGF, provide a forum to foster new relationships and collaborations based on common interests, and develop best practices and technical specifications related to distributed systems, grids and clouds. In addition to OGF's chartered groups and Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions, the Program Committee is soliciting proposals for content that support its mission of accelerating grid and cloud adoption in both research and industry. For more information and to register, please visit http://www.ogf.org/OGF34/registration.php.
2nd Annual USA Science and Engineering Festival
April 28-29, 2012 – Washington, DC
Building on the success of the inaugural Science Festival in 2010, the 2nd USA Science & Engineering Festival will inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers with school programs and nationwide contests throughout the 2011/2012 school year and this event is the finale expo. The Science Festival is the nation’s largest celebration of all things science and engineering and features over 2,000 hands-on activities and over 150 performances. There will be exciting new programs including a Book Fair, Featured Science & Engineering Authors and a Career Pavilion that includes a College Fair, a Job Fair and a Meet the Scientist/Engineer Networking area.. For more information, please visit http://www.usasciencefestival.org/?utm_source=Everyone&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=December+14th+2011+Newsletter.
2012 Broadening Participation in Data Mining Workshop – Call for Participation
April 27-28, 2012 – Anaheim, California
The primary aim of the workshop is to foster mentorship, guidance, and connections of underrepresented groups in Data Mining, while also enriching technical aptitude and exposure. This workshop provides a venue in which to encourage students from such groups to connect with junior and senior research members in industry, academia, and government. The hope is to create and help grow meaningful lasting connections between researchers, thereby strengthening the Data Mining Community. Workshop sponsors include CRA-W, CDC, NSF, and Robert Bosch. For more information and to apply for the workshop, please visit http://dataminingshop.com/application.php.
NSF-SPONSORED INTERDISCIPLINARY WORKSHOP ON COMPUTATIONAL THINKING THROUGH COMPUTING AND MUSIC
June 21-22, 2012 – Lowell, Massachusetts
The University of Massachusetts, Lowell Departments of Music and Computer Science are pleased to offer our first NSF-sponsored interdisciplinary Performamatics workshop on Computational Thinking through Computing and Music. The purpose of this workshop is to share our techniques and materials and to provide an environment in which other pairs of professors can work together to develop interdisciplinary relationships and materials of their own to use in courses at their home institutions. Workshop participants are required to attend in interdisciplinary pairs, preferably from the same institution. This will ensure that the workshop itself models interdisciplinary collaboration and produces outcomes that connect directly to participants' own situations. Professors and instructors from 2- and 4-year colleges are encouraged to attend. For more information and to apply, please visit http://teaching.cs.uml.edu/~heines/TUES/ProjectHome.jsp.
International Workshop on Runtime and Operating Systems for Supercomputers (ROSS 2012) – Call for Participation
June 25-29, 2012 – Vienna, Italy
Submission Deadline – March 30, 2012
The complexity of node architectures in supercomputers increases as we cross petaflop milestones on the way towards Exascale. Increasing levels of parallelism in multi- and many-core chips and emerging heterogeneity of computational resources coupled with energy and memory constraints force a reevaluation of our approaches towards operating systems and runtime environments. The International Workshop on Runtime and Operating Systems for Supercomputers provides a forum for researchers to exchange ideas and discuss research questions that are relevant to upcoming supercomputers. For more information and submission guidelines, please visit http://www.mcs.anl.gov/events/workshops/ross/2012/
XSEDE Happenings
News from XSEDE - the latest issue of XSEDE's public newsletter
News from XSEDE is a monthly newsletter providing information on scientific discoveries made possible by the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment and the people, places and programs involved. Read about the newest members of the XSEDE supercomputer family -- Gordon and Stampede, the HPC award recently presented to PSC, and scientific breakthroughs on a drug-processing protein, aerosols, and natural language processing. For more information, please visit https://www.xsede.org/xsede-newsletter-novdec-2011.
XSEDE Training News
Accelerating Applications with OpenACC
April 18-19, 2012 – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
PSC, together with NVIDIA and PGI, is pleased to announce a hands-on workshop on GPGPU programming using OpenACC, an open standard for compiler directives to make accelerators easier to program. Using OpenACC directives in standard C and Fortran, programmers insert compiler hints into their code to automatically execute compute-intensive regions of code on accelerators, simplifying code development and improving performance portability. For more information and to register, please visit http://www.psc.edu/training/OpenACC/.
Research News and Announcements
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.
Campus Champions
What’s New With the XSEDE Campus Champions?
Four new institutions were added to the Campus Champions family in December and an additional four in January bringing the total number of Campus Champions to an impressive 109 institutions and 149 actual Champions. A New Champions Training took place the last week of January. A training plan is in the works and a survey will be sent to Champions in the near future to elicit feedback to aid in planning. Coming in the next few weeks, the Champion Fellow program will be announced and applications will begin to be accepted. Look to this blog in the coming weeks for more information. To learn more about the Campus Champions program, please visit https://www.xsede.org/current-champions.
Educator Programs and Curriculum
2012 Space Exploration Educators Conference
February 2-4, 2012 – Space Center Houston
Make plans to attend the 18th Annual Space Exploration Educators Conference! This conference is for all K-12 educators. Activities presented use space-related themes to teach across the curriculum and can be used for science, language arts, mathematics, history and more. Attend sessions hosted by scientists and engineers working on the International Space Station, Mars exploration and the planets beyond. Hear from astronauts who will be leading the charge in exploration. Attend sessions presented by educators and receive ready-to-implement classroom ideas. Attendees can earn up to 24 hours of continuing professional education credit. For more information, please visit http://spacecenter.org/TeachersSEEC.html.
Sign Up For NSF's New Computer Science Newsletter
In December, The National Science Foundation rolled out CS Bits & Bytes – a bi-weekly newsletter highlighting innovative computer science research. Teachers across the country have been using the newsletter and its activities to show their students real world applications and uses of computer science. The newest issue focuses on Self Driving Cars (think K.I.T.T., the Batmobile, or Lightning McQueen) and was released on Monday! Learn about how these cars are currently driving around the streets of California. For more information, please visit http://www.nsf.gov/cise/csbytes to learn more and to sign up to receive the newsletter.
Faculty Opportunities
Patent Office Expands Outreach for Innovation Honors
Nomination Deadline – March 31, 2012
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is working to build on the diversity of last year's honorees for the U.S.'s highest award for technological achievement. For the 2012 National Medal of Technology and Innovation, USPTO is expanding its nationwide call for nominees. In 2011, honorees were awarded the medal for a wide variety of achievements. "We want to honor this nation's creative geniuses," says USPTO's Richard Maulsby. "This medal goes to innovators whose talent helps guarantee U.S. leadership in technology across the board." The congressionally authorized medal highlights the national importance of technological innovation to inspire people to pursue technical careers and keep the United States at the forefront of global technology and economic leadership. “There are thousands of U.S. inventors who have produced great ideas," Maulsby says. "This is an opportunity to recognize them and showcase their work.” Detailed information on the requirements for submitting a nomination is available for download at www.uspto.gov/about/nmti/guidelines.jsp. For more information, please visit http://www.isa.org/InTechTemplate.cfm?Section=Government_News1&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=88204.
NSF Call for Proposals :Nanotechnology Undergraduate Education (NUE) in Engineering
Proposal Deadline – April 23, 2012
This solicitation aims at introducing nanoscale science, engineering, and technology through a variety of interdisciplinary approaches into undergraduate engineering education. The focus of the FY 2012 competition is on nanoscale engineering education with relevance to devices and systems and/or on the societal, ethical, economic and/or environmental issues relevant to nanotechnology. Related funding opportunities are posted on the web site for the National Nanotechnology Initiative, http://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/nano/. In addition, research and education projects in nanoscale science and engineering will continue to be supported in the relevant NSF programs and divisions. For more information and proposal guidelines, please visit http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2012/nsf12534/nsf12534.htm?WT.mc_id=USNSF_25&WT.mc_ev=click.
Student Engagement and Opportunities
Contest Aims to Inspire Students to Create Healthcare Apps
Team Registration Deadline – February 10, 2012
App Submission Deadline – March 26, 2012
Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Engineering have launched the Go Viral to Improve Health contest, a competition to spur undergraduate and graduate students to create health-related applications. The contest is the second annual collegiate challenge designed to inspire students to work in interdisciplinary teams and transform health data into mobile apps, online tools or games, or other innovative products that solve health problems. The team that designs the best application will receive a $10,000 prize, and the second and third place teams will receive awards of $5,000 and $3,000, respectively. Entries will be rated on their design, usability, and how well they integrate public health data. Teams must use data from the Health Indicators Warehouse, a large collection of health data and indicator sets made available by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. For more information, including entry guidelines, please visit http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/contest-aims-inspire-students-create-healthcare-apps.
Summer 2012 Paid Summer Research Internships for Underrepresented Students via CRA-W/CDC DREU
Application Deadline – February 15, 2012
The CRA-W/CDC Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates (DREU) Program matches promising undergraduates with a faculty mentor for a summer research experience at the faculty member's home institution. The objective of the DREU is to increase the number of women and students from underrepresented groups, including ethnic minorities and persons with disabilities, entering graduate studies in the fields of computer science and engineering Funding for the student consists of $6000 for the summer (10 weeks), plus relocation travel assistance when appropriate. For more information, including application guidelines for students and faculty, please visit http://parasol.tamu.edu/dreu/
PRACE and XSEDE prepare for HPC summer school
June 24-29, 2012 – Dublin, Ireland
he Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) and XSEDE have collaborated to offer the third European-U.S. Summer School on HPC Challenges in Computational Sciences. The school is intended to help graduate students and postdocs learn more about HPC and foster new partnerships among the presenters and attendees. Details will be posted to https://www.xsede.org/ by mid-February.
Scholarships for American’s Future Scientists and Engineers
The Science, Mathematics And Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship for Service Program is an opportunity for students pursuing an undergraduate or graduate degree in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines to receive a full scholarship and be gainfully employed upon degree completion. The program aims to increase the number of civilian scientists and engineers working at DoD laboratories. For more information, eligibility requirements and to apply, please visit http://smart.asee.org/
Computer Coding: Not for Geeks Only
People in traditionally non-technological careers increasingly are embracing software programming as a way to advance their careers. Programming is becoming "a much more fundamental piece of knowledge, similar to reading or writing," says Union Square Ventures' Andy Weissman. The number of college students pursuing computing science degrees rose 14 percent between 2007 and 2009, according to the Computing Research Association. Meanwhile, non-college students are accessing new resources, such as Codecademy, to develop their software development skills. Codecademy, which was founded in 2001 by former Columbia University students Zach Sims and Ryan Bubinski, offers free interactive tutorials that guide users as they write and test lines of JavaScript code directly in their browser windows. Free online classes from Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also are encouraging people to learn about computer science. "The introductory computing class has, on YouTube alone, over 2 million hits for the videos," notes Stanford professor Mehran Sahami. To read further, please visit http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/computer-coding-not-for-geeks-only-01262012.html.
News at 11 – XSEDE Staff in the Spotlight
New Staff at Open Science Grid
We are pleased to announce the addition of two new OSG staff, Timothy Mortensen and Yaling Zheng. Both Timothy and Yaling will be replacing other staff who are moving into broader contributions across both the core project and our companion satellites. At the University of California, San Diego, Timothy Mortensen is now part of the Overlay Factory operations team. At the University of Nebraska Yaling Zheng is part of the user support and technology investigation areas. Initially, Yaling will be helping with the evaluation of the iRODS technologies - which spans both areas. Yaling and Timothy will both also be helping with the "Any Data Any Where Any Time (AAA)" satellite project. AAA is deploying a federated data system for the CMS experiment, with the long-term goal of eventually making similar technologies available for other communities.
NCSA’s Thomas, Koric receive IDC innovation award
The Continuous Casting Consortium, directed by C.J. Gauthier Professor Brian Thomas from MechSE with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications’ Seid Koric, has received the HPC Innovation Excellence Award from the International Data Corporation. The HPC Innovation Excellence Award distinguishes noteworthy achievements made by projects which make significant use of High Performance Computing (HPC). Recipients of the award are those who have achieved success in applying HPC to improve business, scientific advancement, and/or engineering successes, many of which also directly benefit society as a whole. For more information, please visit http://mechse.illinois.edu/content/news/article.php?article_id=537
Who, What, Where - XSEDE Across the Country
Make your plans for XSEDE12
July 16-20, Chicago – Chicago, Illinois
Bridging from the eXtreme to the campus and beyond
Begin making your plans for the annual conference of XSEDE, which is scheduled for July 16-20, 2012, XSEDE12 promises to bring together staff and users for an engaging, productive five days at the Intercontinental hotel on Michigan Avenue, in the heart of the city's downtown and its prime shopping area, the Magnificent Mile. Please bookmark the following link and check back for updates, which will be posted as they become available: https://www.xsede.org//xsede12
Last But Not Least - Odds and Ends of Interest
Ten Technologies That Will Shake the CE World
Ten technologies showcased at the recent International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) could alter the industry's landscape in 2012. In 2012 mobile device makers will begin integrating complete inertial navigation units with pre-calibrated accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers. Meanwhile, graphics processing unit-based computing will get a boost from system- and software-level support due to the addition of application programming interfaces, as well as parallel-capable programming languages such as CUDA, DirectX compute, and OpenCL. CES also highlighted the importance of Google Android, which likely will be the software platform that enables many of the most interesting and diverse devices to emerge in the next decade. Windows 8, the first version of Microsoft's operating system to support both ARM and X86 processors, also will have a big impact. In addition, companies such as Microsoft, Texas Instruments, and FlashScan3D are developing touch-free human-machine interfaces, building on the success of other interfaces such as the Xbox Kinect. Other promising technologies include talkative intelligent agents, such as Apple's cloud-based Siri, which can answer questions in a naturally conversational way and could make search engines obsolete. To read further, please visit http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4235088/Ten-technologies-that-will-shake-the-CE-World.
Big Victory on Internet Buoys Lobby
Excerpt from The New York Times
The recent successful protest movement by both consumer groups and companies to defeat antipiracy legislation in Congress lends credence to the possibility that the Internet industry and politically active Web users are a force to be reckoned with. It is highly unlikely that corporate lobbying by itself could have influenced political opinion in Washington, D.C. about the antipiracy bills. "It's the first emergence of a broad-based Internet community that brings together not only tech giants and the users, but all the young innovators and investors," notes Center for Democracy and Technology president Leslie Harris. Debate is brewing online over what issues the movement should focus on next. For example, some activists want to block legislation that would force Internet providers to retain data on users' online travels. "No one can predict what will catch on," says Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. "If [the Stop Online Piracy Act] and [the Protect Intellectual Property Act] are any indication, if it's something that threatens the Internet, I believe we can recreate this." New America Foundation fellow Rebecca MacKinnon says the protest movements signaled that the Internet as well as digital rights and liberties are clearly perceived by many people as political freedoms. To read further, please visit http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/technology/victory-on-antipiracy-issue-buoys-internet-lobby.html?_r=1.
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XSEDE News and Information is updated continually. To submit information for inclusion, please send email to amason@ucsd.edu.
