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PEGrid gets down to business

This image depicts a simulation of the water saturation changes in a quarter of a homogeneous oil reservoir over time, as water is injected. The water increases the pressure in the reservoir, pushing the oil to the surface. Because the reservoir is symmetrical, researchers were able to save time by simulating only one quarter of the reservoir.
The colors indicates the water saturation, with purple being highly saturated and red being least saturated. Each of the six slices represents a snapshot in time.Image courtesy of Shameem Siddiqui.

Although Petroleum Engineering Grid officially started up in late 2009, it is already a classic example of how research projects can have unexpected benefits.
PEGrid came into existence using techniques and tools created by TIGRE (Texas Internet Grid for Research and Education), a state-funded project based on the use of federally funded middleware such as Open Science Grid’s Virtual Data Toolkit.
When TIGRE ende

Announcement - Last chance to apply for computational time on TeraGrid, (midnight January 15, submitter’s local time)

Scientists, engineers, and other U.S. researchers may apply until January 15, 2010 (12:00 midnight local time) for the next quarterly review of requests for free allocations of high-performance computer time, advanced user support, and storage resources that are available through the National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Cyberinfrastructure’s (OCI) TeraGrid. To apply for an allocation of any size, please visit TeraGrid’s online submission system.
Each quarter, a panel of computational experts known as the TeraGrid Resource Allocations Committee (TRAC) evaluates requests primarily on the appropriateness and technical aspects of using TeraGrid resources. Applications received by the January 15 deadline will be considered at the March 2010 TRAC meeting, and awards will be available for the one-year period from April 1, 2010 through March 31, 2011. TeraGri

Image - Separating the real from the fake

“Return of the Hunters,” an image known to be made by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, a Dutch master active during the region’s ‘golden era’ in the 1500s. Oxford University art historian Martin Kemp described the painting in Nature as “testimony to the scientific observation of light and geographical features.” Original image in Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria

 
Pieter Breugel the Elder was a very popular painter, with a huge body of work that was closely imitated — so, there are a lot of outright forgeries.
Now, however, researchers at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, have found a new way to separate the real from the fake, by mathematically analyzing images that are known to be genuine, such as “Return of the Hunters,” and comparing to images whose authenticity is questionable.
Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Daniel Rockmore describe

Announcement - Call for papers: First ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing

The ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing 2010 is the first in a new series of symposia with the aim of bringing together researchers, developers, users, and practitioners interested in cloud computing. This series is co-sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Groups on Management of Data and on Operating Systems. ACM SOCC will be held in conjunction with ACM SIGMOD and ACM SOSP Conferences in alternate years, starting with ACM SIGMOD in 2010.
The scope of SOCC Symposia will be broad and will encompass diverse systems topics such as software as a service, virtualization, and scalable cloud data services. Many facets of systems and data management issues will need to be revisited in the context of cloud computing. Suggested topics for paper submissions include but are not limited to:

Administration and Manageability
Data Privacy
Data Services Architectures
Distributed and Parallel Query Processing
Energy Management
Geogra

Feature - GRAPPAling with evolutionary history

This figure illustrates how gene order changes among the eight species. Each thin line represents a single gene and its position in the different species. Most genes are conserved on the same chromosomal arm or Muller element, but gene order is shuffled between species. This figure appeared in the July 2008 issue of Genetics. Image courtesy of Arjun Bhutkar, Stephen Schaeffer et. al., with permission from The Genetics Society of America.

We’ve known for several years now that chimpanzees share 96 percent of our DNA. Our technology tells us how closely humans and chimps are related. But it doesn’t tell us how we’re related. We need new technology for that.
Enter GRAPPA – or Genome Rearrangements Analysis under Parsimony and other Phylogenetic Algorithms if you want a mouthful. GRAPPA has already been used to analyze the evolution of organelles such as chloroplasts and mitochondria, running on cluster computers with

Announcement - US eHealth Collaborative seeks board members

Image courtesy NeHC.

National eHealth Collaborative is now accepting nominations for leaders in the health and healthcare fields to serve on the NeHC Board of Directors.
National eHealth Collaborative is a public-private partnership developed through an open, multi-year, multi-stakeholder process and operates under a cooperative agreement with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). As NeHC turns the corner into its second year, NeHC leaders are looking to their many stakeholders for recommendations on who should be asked to fill vacancies on the NeHC Board of Directors.
“By encouraging the broad adoption and use of health information technologies and electronic health information exchange, we help to create a true patient-centered health system. Public and private sector efforts to expand funding and develop policies and standards are having a significant impact in driving this mo

Feature - Observing oceans online Overview map of the NEPTUNE Canada observatory off the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The network, which extends across the Juan de Fuca plate, will gather live data from a rich constellation of instruments deployed in a broad spectrum of undersea environments. This system will provide free Internet access to an immense wealth of data, both live and archived throughout the life of this planned 25-year project. Image courtesy NEPTUNE Canada. Although the Earth is mostly water, scientists know relatively little about the ocean floor. But with the creation of ocean observatories such as NEPTUNE Canada, all that could change. Until recently, scientists had to use cruise ships, satellites, and temporary probes to study the world’s oceans. This allowed them to take occasional snapshots of the ocean for later study. Ocean observatories are made up of more permanent installations of instruments directly on the ocean floor, along the co

I see crime scenes

IC-CRIME’s laser scanner technology will allow investigators to accurately record room and object dimensions, as well as the placement of every piece of evidence in a crime scene.Image courtesy NCSU

Fighting crime with science isn’t as simple as popular TV shows like CSI would have you believe. But those shows get one thing right: science and technology have a tremendous potential for changing the way crime is investigated.
Today, investigators record crime scenes using sketches and photographs. Bullet trajectories are determined using lasers or even lengths of string. “They take a microsnapshot,” said Mitzi Montoya, a North Carolina State University researcher who specializes in knowledge and virtual team management. “You don’t really know what’s relevant in a crime scene, and you can’t go back and create it, because once it’s cleaned it’s gone forever.”
That could change if the IC-CRIME (Interdiscip

Feature - HSVO connects the dots A screen capture of HSVO's patient simulator user interface. This mock-up of the patient simulator used videos from a training scenario in which students had to save the life of a teenager severely injured during a basketball game. An advanced mannequin stands in for the teenager. During this particular scenario, the students and mannequin were located in Montreal, the mannequin operator and a tutor were in Ottawa, and another tutor was located in Sudbury, Ontario. Image courtesy of McGill University and HSVO. Don’t let the name of Health Services Virtual Organization fool you. If HSVO is a success, it will be proof of concept for generic middleware that enables cloud-based workflows to access any number of services. And that could have implications for any scientific field. Web portals that give researchers access to data, services, applications and computational resources are becoming increasingly common. Researchers can access a variety of servi

Feature - Big science facilities meet the cloud

Dylan Maxwell explains the Science Studio system to a bystander at Summit 2009 in Banff, Alberta. Photo by Miriam Boon.

Lab notebooks are so passé. In the brave new world of cloud computing, the entire experimental process will take place in your web browser.
And if a team of Canadian researchers at the University of Western Ontario and the Canadian Light Source in Saskatchewan has anything to say about it, researchers around the world will be using a web platform called Science Studio.
“One of the aims of Science Studio is to be able to access big science facilities such as the Canadian Light Source,” said Marina Fuller, a chemistry researcher with the project. “It’s a complete experiment management system.”
The test case for Science Studio is the VESPERS beamline at the Canadian Light Source synchrotron. When Science Studio is complete in 2011, researchers will be able to use the platform to apply

Announcement - IPDPS 2010, 19-23 April, Atlanta, USA

For five days in April, Atlanta, Georgia will be host to the 24th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium.
According to the website, “IPDPS is an international forum for engineers and scientists from around the world to present their latest research findings in all aspects of parallel computation. In addition to technical sessions of submitted paper presentations, the meeting offers workshops, tutorials, and commercial presentations and exhibits.”
The event will take place 19-23 April at the Downtown Sheraton Atlanta. Although the call for papers has already closed, a number of workshops will take place at the conference, most of which are accepting abstracts or papers through the end of November. These include:

Heterogeneity in Computing Workshop
Reconfigurable Architectures Workshop
Workshop on High-Level Parallel Programming Models & Supportive Environments
Workshop on Nature Inspired D

Feature - In case of emergency, call SPRUCE

A part of the complete synthetic social contact network of Chicago obtained by integrating diverse data sources and methods based on social theories. This sort of simulation can bring insight into how a virus will transmit through a population. Check out this SciDac Review article for more information about this research. Image courtesy of Madhav Marathe and SDSC.

When disaster strikes, simulations could give authorities the information they need to save lives. But simulations are computationally intensive, and during a crisis, there’s no time to wait in line for access to computer resources. That’s where urgent computing comes in.
“What you really want is to be able to hook together or have access to all the supercomputers that you need, wherever they are,” said Pete Beckman, project lead for TeraGrid’s Special PRiority and Urgent Computing Environment, or SPRUCE. “The purpose of this sort of urgent com