Content about Networks

To improve understanding of cosmic radiation, high-speed research networks are enabling astrophysicists to send terabytes of data across continents, between China and Italy.

Seamless global connectivity is important as it allows virtual communities of researchers to work together across continents as if they were on the same campus.

Written by a group of independent experts and released last week, ‘Knowledge without Borders: GÉANT 2020’ outlines a vision for European research and education networks in 2020.

Read about how the EpiCollect application can help field researchers gather data.

Announcement - Last chance, Data Center Infrastructure Management, Nov. 16-18, MERIT network

Photo courtesy Merit

The three-day "Data Center Infrastructure Management" online learning class will be available November 16-18 through Merit's Professional Learning program. Merit is a nonprofit corporation, owned and governed by Michigan's public universities, providing high-performance networking solutions to public universities, colleges, K-12 organizations, libraries, state government, healthcare, and other non-profit organizations.
Instruction will be entirely online — you can attend from anywhere where there is an Internet connection. You can also attend at Merit's offices if you need a space away from your daily demands. The course will provide knowledge about the professional management of data facilities, which is increasingly important for organizations of all types and sizes. It is of interest to individuals who manage data centers or server rooms, IT staff with hardw

  Link of the Week: Coming to an i-Phone near you Image courtesy Flickr under Creative Commons licence Since the story in iSGTW last year about Cinefilia, the grid-enabled film recommendation service, it creator and sole webmaster, Leandro Ciuffo, says his user base has increased by 27% — without any direct promotion or advertising. Once a user has signed up for a Cinefilia account they can review whether they like or dislike one of hundreds of films on the database. The system then ‘learns’ that user’s preferences and generates personalized recommendations accordingly. (But in order for the results to be accurate a minimum of 20 films must be rated by a user.)   Ciuffo aims to increase the amount of Brazilian films on the database because 95% of users on his site are Brazilian, possibly because there are currently no recommendation systems for Brazilian films. Ciuffo is looking for partners to help him improve the recommendation software algo

Feature - Ultra-fast networks: The Final Frontier A network researcher in awe of the billions of dark matter particles simulated on 15 ultra-high definition monitors. Image courtesy Freek Dijkstra Researchers from Holland have demonstrated a network infrastructure that could potentially help scientists save time and even transform the movie business. This could be done without the need for large computer clusters or grids, just off-the-shelf hardware components combined with human ingenuity and one of the world’s fastest research networks. The team were from SARA, a Dutch supercomputing and e-science support center. Threshold The SARA researchers wanted to show the practicalities of streaming video between two institutions (from SARA, Amsterdam to CERN, Geneva) at 40Gb/second (5GB/s). This link, if successful, would be 16 times faster than the TEIN3 network, which streamed Malaysian dancers over 9,000 kilometers away to a live orchestra performance in Stockholm at 2.5 Gb/s. Th

Announcement - New European Petaflop supercomputer available in 2011

Photo courtesy PRACE

In 2011, the 1.6 Petaflop French supercomputer, Curie, will be installed and available for use. Powered by more than 90,000 processor cores, it will be exclusively dedicated to European research and available for all fields of science, including high-energy and plasma physics, climatology and much more.
“It is crucial to have high computing power to simulate, with the most possible realism, the past of our climate, the current conditions and its future evolution according to various scenarios,” said Jean Jouzel, vice-president of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).
Scientists and engineers will also be able to use Curie’s simulations to explore the properties of various materials, improve aircraft and car construction, design better drugs, understand the intricate molecular functions of the human body and conduct simulations that are impractical in reality.
Cur

Feature - New physics in space

A C5 Supergalaxy, one of the world’s largest planes, loading the AMS-02 experiment at Geneva Airport. Image courtesy CERN Bulletin

New life was breathed into the International Space Station (ISS) this year after NASA announced it will extend the ISS from 2015 to at least 2020.The new deadline extends opportunities for science experimentation in the largest space research laboratory ever constructed. One of these experiments is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02), a detector that may help scientists understand why our universe exists and why there is more matter than anti-matter.Most space-grade electronics are about ten years old, so the AMS-02 represents the newest and most advanced physics experiment in outer space to date. Currently, it is being tested and due to launch in February 2011. AMS-02 was shipped via Geneva airport to NASA this August in one of the largest planes in the world, a US Air Force C5 Super Galaxy.Once aboard the ISS, A

Profile – Domenico Vicinanza, master of fusion Musicians play ancient instruments live in Stockholm while dancers in Kuala Lumpur about 10,000 kilometers away simultaneously perform on the display above the stage. (Click on image above to see video of entire performance.) All images courtesy Domenico Vicinanza Domenico Vicinanza combines the worlds of science and music by using his talents as an engineer and a musician to bring ancient musical instruments back to life. In December 2009 Vicinanza and the 'Lost Sounds Orchestra' gave a unique performance. While playing ancient Greek music live in Stockholm on a virtual instrument, an ultra-fast, high-quality video-feed of dancers from Kuala Lumpur was displayed — simultaneously bringing two distant cultures and locations into one place. iSGTW caught up with Vicinanza for an interview.   iSGTW: What’s your job? Vicinanza: At DANTE I support international projects that use the GÉANT network, the pa

Feature - A lasting ocean observatory

A map indicates the location of the four major ocean arrays, as well as the two minor ones. Click for a larger version. Image courtesy of OOI - CEV at University of Washington.

Agile architecture is essential if a large-scale infrastructure like the Ocean Observatories Initiative is to last three decades, as mandated.
“The Ocean Observatory has been in planning for fifteen years and more,” said Matthew Arrott, OOI’s project manager for cyberinfrastructure. “It is our anticipation, over a 30 year lifespan, that we need to account for user needs and the technology that we are using all changing.”
That’s why they’ve focused their attention on creating an infrastructure that can interface with a wide variety of software packages and computational resource providers.
“The observatory supports a broad range of analysis with the expectation that the majority of the analysis capability will be provided a

Announcement - HD videoconference, Internet2 Meeting, DUSEL

Inspecting the neutrino detector under construction in the Homestake gold mine in 1965. Image courtesy Sanford Underground Laboratory at Homestake

WHAT: Internet2’s 2010 Spring Member Meeting will transport participants nearly a mile underground to explore America’s newest networking frontier. The live high-definition videoconference will show how the former Homestake gold mine in South Dakota — once the deepest mine in North America — is being transformed into a high-tech national Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL).
The HD videoconference will connect the meeting’s hotel ballroom audience to the so-called “4850 Level” — the construction site 4,850 feet deep inside the Sanford Underground Laboratory at Homestake — and to Pierre, South Dakota, where the state’s governor will offer his perspectives on the unique history and scientific import