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Content about North America

November 21, 2012
Supercomputers continue to push the boundaries of discovery

Speakers at the SC12 conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, highlight the role of scientific research in continuing to drive and benefit from high performance computing. They argued that a strong voice for the continued advancement of technology is vital in ensuring evolving research and economic leadership.

November 14, 2012
Along ‘Chem’ a Spider

The Jim Gray eScience Award 2012 was presented to ChemSpider founder Antony John Williams at last month’s eScience conference in Chicago. ChemSpider is a free online database, containing chemical information on over 26 million molecules.

November 14, 2012
Atomic-scale simulations unravel evasion of cancer-causing molecules

Researchers have discovered the mechanism of how a dangerous class of carcinogen stabilizes the very DNA it damages. This finding could lead to better preventative medicine and cancer treatment.

November 14, 2012
Computing for Sustainable Water Project comes to an end

The Computing for Sustainable Water Project has run its course following six months of computation on the World Community Grid. The project has focused on the issues surrounding the quality of water in the Chesapeake Bay area, the largest watershed of the Atlantic seaboard of North America. The researchers behind the project hope to apply the lessons learned here to other watersheds around the world.

 

 

 

November 14, 2012
Leaving the theatre of the absurd – is open access publishing a necessity for science to flourish?

Are traditional journal subscriptions just too much? Image courtesy PhD comics.

November 14, 2012
World’s second most powerful supercomputer goes straight for the heart

The Sequoia supercomputer has simulated the human heart at an unprecedented scale, a breakthrough for the use of computational medicine by doctors to prevent sudden cardiac death.

November 7, 2012
Finger-nail-sized hard drives just require some smoothing

Computer hard drive storage 15 times denser than today may be closer, due to discovery that surface-roughness height of 10 atoms is limit at which self-      assembly can successfully occur.

November 7, 2012
Staying ahead of a superstorm with open-data visualizations

Snapshot of North American wind map visualization on 30 October 2012. Hovering your mouse over the map tells you the wind speed of a particular region. Image courtesy wind map.

October 31, 2012
Adding more eyes to track continent-wide dragonfly migrations

I love dragonflies: This video summarizes the Migratory Dragonfly Partnership. A nice example of how the project works can be seen in citizen scientist Greg Lasley's and researcher John Abbott's relationship. They're both friends and colleagues contributing to migratory dragonfly research. Image courtesy TACC.
October 31, 2012
Riding the data deluge on the shoulders of giants

Has big data now superseded the grid… and the cloud? Whether or not this is the case, it is vital that in moving from one paradigm to another we do not discard the experience and technology gained previously, says European Grid Infrastructure director Steven Newhouse.

 

 

 

October 31, 2012
The trillion-dollar contribution of scientific research to the economy

In our tough economic times, some are asking how much value university academic research and e-infrastructures give to the economy. The answer is a lot – especially if you measure the contribution of recent university graduates – according to studies in the US.

October 24, 2012
Latest tech helps unravel garden variety mutants

Researchers are using the latest next-gen sequencing and a supercomputer to analyze unusual Geranium genomes, which are natural mutants, evolving many times faster than their plant peers. This could impact research on genetically-modified foods.

October 24, 2012
Modeling the arteries of the land

River flow in the Mississippi River Basin. Image courtesy Cédric David.

October 24, 2012
The race to net-energy-gain fusion

The latest computer simulations show that nuclear fusion reactions which produce more power than is put in are just around the corner - but recent experiments have called into question the accuracy of these computer models.

 

 

 

October 17, 2012
Keeping an eye on superfast transactions on Wall Street

Today, humans are generally removed from the process of trading on the financial markets; they have been replaced by algorithms and supercomputers. As such, trading speeds have progressed from microseconds to nanoseconds. Now, researchers are keeping up by using a supercomputer to catch a supercomputer.

October 17, 2012
Next-generation electronics could self-heal

October 17, 2012
Sharing science in the ‘collaboratory’

Scientists from across the globe are using the combined power of HUBzero and Pegasus Workflow Management System to create research hubs, where data, models, and ideas can be shared.

October 10, 2012
Mobile healthcare uptake increases

October 10, 2012
Visualizing data as if under a microscope

Artist by trade, Francesca Samsel, uses the highest resolution visualization system in the world, at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, US, to showcase scientific data in a highly accessible, but accurate way.

October 10, 2012
Who or what really inspired Mozart?

An online tool called Peachnote uses a distributed computing approach to enable instant identification of classical music scores. But, its terabytes of data may also redefine what we think we know about the classical greats like Beethoven and Mozart.

 

 

 

 

October 3, 2012
A cheap high-performance computer for everyone?

Imagine an open-access and open-source parallel computer with up to 45 gigahertz of CPU performance that fits onto the size of a credit card. A new Kickstarter project seeks to achieve all that for just $99.

October 3, 2012
Historic observation of rare type 1a supernova

The first-ever direct observation of a Type 1a supernova progenitor system has been made. The team involved used data that traveled over 400 miles and which was analyzed using sophisticated machine-learning algorithms and high-performance computers.

October 3, 2012
Things are moving very fast, says 'father of the grid' Ian Foster

With the IEEE International Conference on eScience 2012 under a week away, iSGTW caught up with Ian Foster, general chair and moderator of the event. We get his opinions on the key areas of focus of the program, the challenges being addressed, and what attendees should watch out for.

September 26, 2012
Globus Online launches new website for European researchers

The popular file-sharing tool comes to Europe with a new site aimed at fulfilling the specific needs of EU-based researchers.

 

September 26, 2012
Picking up the long tail of scientific computations

A new and easy way of accessing a global computing grid and the processing power of tens of thousands of cores are at the fingertips of anyone: researcher, student, or citizen scientist.