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CERN and the Wigner Research Centre for Physics last week inaugurated the Hungarian data center in Budapest, marking the completion of the facility hosting the extension for CERN computing resources. About 500 servers, 20,000 computing cores, and 5.5 petabytes of storage are already operational at the site. The capacity at Wigner will be remotely managed from CERN, substantially extending the capabilities of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid Tier-0 activities.

What level of connectivity, types of networks, data infrastructures, e-tools, and projects, etc.are currently available for researchers  in Sub-Saharan Africa?  iMentors, a project funded under the European FP-7 scheme, is starting to map this knowledge in a virtual observatory.

Last week, the results of a survey were published in the journal Scienceshowing that many non-scientific factors often come into play when researchers select software for modeling and other purposes. Could researchers' inability to weigh up the relative pros and cons of the software alternatives available to them based on their scientific merits be undermining the scientific method?

One of the highlights of the recent TedxCERN conference was a talk given by Ian Foster, widely known as one of the founders of grid computing. He also spoke to an audience of CERN IT department staff about Globus Online and the challenges of big data.

At TedxCERN, 18-year-old Florida high school student and Google Science Fair Winner, Brittany Wenger, explained how she built a neural network to help tackle breast cancer.

With preparations for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 5th Assessment Report now entering their final stages, find out how climate models have evolved in the last 40 years and how grid computing is helping to project future climate.

Eleni Katragkou, a climate scientist from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece, discussed many of these issues during an exciting plenary session at the recent EGI Community Forum 2013.

Warp drives aren’t just the stuff of science fiction. Researchers inspired by Star Trek are currently working to make the dream of interstellar travel for human civilization a reality – one day. While the kinks are being worked out, distributed computing may help address the multi-dimensional issues of warp travel.

Behind the excellent results from CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) lies the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid – a giant that never sleeps. Find out more in this article from the CERN Courier...

City lights, sand dunes, and glaciers –oh my! Take a look at NASA’s eye-catching images of Earth from orbit, including true-color satellite images, Earth science visualizations, and time lapses from the International Space Station.

Last week, iSGTW was at the European Grid Infrastructure Community Forum 2013. Find out what Nancy Rothwell, Peter Coveney, Kostas Glinos, and Steven Newhouse had to say during the opening plenary session. The quartet touch on a range of topics, from the importance of human capital and uniting e-infrastructures, to open access and future funding mechanisms.