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Link of the week - ORBIT Open Access Radio Grid Testbed The Rutgers University Wireless Information Networking Laboratory hosts the ORBIT facility, including this indoor lab with 400 programmable radio transceivers laid out in a rectangular pattern. It is used to test new mobile computing and communications technologies.Image courtesy of Carl Blesch, Rutgers University A unique facility for testing new mobile computing and communications technologies, known as the ORBIT Open Access Radio Grid Testbed, has scooped the Alexander Schwarzkopf Prize for Technological Innovation, recognizing a research team at the Rutgers University Wireless Information Networking Laboratory (WINLAB).The winning facility features a 400-node programmable radio transceiver emulation laboratory and an outdoor field trial system of short- and long-range radios on the university’s New Brunswick Campus.The ORBIT facility is the world’s largest open, programmable wireless network facility for use by academic and industry researchers worldwide.

Link of the week - GridRepublic performs at 700-plus teraflops GridRepublic makes it easy for anyone to volunteer their computer's spare time to distributed computing projects that contribute to scientific research on disease, climate change, gravitational waves and much more... Together these projects have 700-plus teraflops of power available.Screenshot courtesy of GridRepublic Want to be part of the world’s most powerful supercomputer? Try 700-plus teraflops of power on for size: that’s the aggregate power available from the 18 volunteer computing projects supported by GridRepublic.Powered by BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing), GridRepublic is a user-friendly portal that allows anybody with an Internet connection and a few minutes of idle computer time to start crunching real data.Making the impossible possibleGridRepublic volunteers exchange their ordinary, inconsequential screensaver for a downloaded screensaver that could save lives, change history or discover new life on other plane

Link of the week - Sharkrunners Your ship is virtual, but the sharks are real. Real-world data gathered from a network of sensors offers gamers the chance to track actual great whites.Screenshot courtesy of Sharkrunners Sharkrunners, designed for Discovery Channel’s 20th Anniversary Shark Week, is a persistent game of oceanic exploration and high stakes shark research. Players take on the role of marine biologists who must outfit their boat, map its path and then ply the oceans in the search for great white sharks, all while keeping an eye on their fuel capacity and monitoring the skill, stamina and compatibility of their crew members.The game uses real-world telemetry data collected from actual sharks, using sensors and GPS units to provide the position and movement of the sharks in the game.  Boat movement is in realtime, and if you aren’t logged in when you encounter a shark, you’ll be buzzed with an email or text message that gives you three hours to log on, then three minutes to select your approa

Link of the week - Online learning: the International Winter School on Grid Computing The online International Winter School on Grid Computing requires 80 hours of commitment and is open to up to 30 participants. Applications are open now. This image comes from the summer school equivalent.Image courtesy of ICEAGE Can’t make it to the 2008 ICEAGE International Summer School on Grid Computing in Hungary in July? Why not study online instead? Enrolling in the summer school’s winter incarnation: the online International Winter School on Grid Computing, which kicks off 6 February 2008 and runs until 5 March. The International Summer Schools on Grid Computing—run by the ICEAGE project—were established in 2003 and have proven to be a great success, both for teaching staff and students. Introducing numerous grid technologies through lectures and practical exercises, the summer schools are a unique gathering place for globally recognised grid computing figures from all over the world. “[This sum

Resources - Women in information technology Help turn traditional stereotypes on their head.Sticker image and design © Jinx, Inc The percentage of women in IT has declined from 41 percent in 1996 to 32 percent in 2004,1 with women comprising only 3 to 5 percent of senior management positions.2 What's going on? Find out more, access new resources and be inspired:GHC Women in Computing conferenceFocused on the research and career interests of women in computing, the 2007 conference was held last month and attracted 1400 women and men from 22 countries. The 8th GHC Women in Computing conference will be held 1-4 October 2008 in Denver, Colorado, U.S. Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology“Writing women into technical history,” the Anita Borg Institute coordinates a number of activities including the TechLeaders program, the Women of Vision Awards and the Systers email community, which comprises 2700 members in at least 54 countries. Also on offer are some great mentoring resources and inform

Link of the week - reCAPTCHA: stop spam, read books, beat the bots About 60 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every day. In each case, roughly ten seconds of human time are being spent, which means more than 150,000 hours are spent every day on this task. Images courtesy of reCAPTCHAreCAPTCHA is free program that protects you from spam while furthering the fine goal of digitizing physical libraries, one word at a time.CAPTCHAs (for Completely Automated Public Turing tests to tell Computers and Humans Apart) are used on many Web sites to distinguish between legitimate human users and automated “bots” that trawl the web to generate spam. Using the ability of human users to decipher distorted text, CAPTCHAs prevent bots from navigating to protected Web sites. Turning anti-spam in to a force for goodAbout 60 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every day. In each case, roughly ten seconds of human time are being spent, which means more than 150,000 hours are spent every day on this tas

Link of the week - Pit your wit against the World Checkers Champion Canada’s WestGrid helped crunch 500,995,484,682,338,672,639 checkers positions to produce an unbeatable player: Chinook.Image courtesy of ChinookIn 1994 computer program Chinook won the World Checkers Championship, making it the first program to win a human world championship. Thanks in part to grid computing, Chinook is now officially unbeatable.Using the resources of Canada’s WestGrid, Jonathan Schaeffer and his team at the University of Alberta, have solved the game of checkers, sorting through 500 billion billion checkers positions to prove that if played perfectly, checkers will always end in a draw: Chinook cannot be beaten.Since it’s no fun to play an invincible opponent, Schaeffer has shackled Chinook’s powers and provided an online version of the program that you can play to win. You can also check out the fascinating history of computing’s bid to beat checkers, which began in the 1950s with the efforts of Arthur Samuel.West

Link of the week - Facetooth? Now you can share more than ever before with your friends.Stock image from sxc.huOfficially known as Cityware, although already earning an online reputation as Facetooth, this technology is the brainchild of scientists at Bath University in the UK, who have blended Bluetooth with Facebook to produce a physical map of where your webby pals are at any time.Cityware works by using various nodes that search the local area for Bluetooth devices, grab the IDs for these devices and then match them up with Facebook profiles. Bingo! You know who it is across the street, what they did on Friday night and their favorite flavor of icecream.Nodes have been set up in Bath, University College London and the University of California in San Diego. More nodes are planned for Sweden, Hong Kong and Sydney. If not incredibly useful, Cityware is at least very interesting. It’s part of a multidisciplinary research project into distributed systems, human-computer interactions and pervasive computing in urban spac

Link of the week - FennoGrid: gridding with the people Assembly is billed as a four-day non-stop party for computer enthusiasts. This shot shows participants in the FennoGrid challenge, battling wits in a huge multiplayer game that took place while the animation was rendering.Image courtesy of Antti Hartikainen What happens if you gather 5000 gamers, with almost 3000 personal computers, and ask them to hook together an ad-hoc grid at a massive gaming festival?FennoGrid recently found out.FennoGrid is a Finnish non-profit organization set up to share information about grid and peer-to-peer research.Our most recent event took place at Finnish computer festival Assembly, a great place to raise awareness of grids with computer-savvy future users.Mission: possible? The challenge: to build and operate a huge ad-hoc cluster for 15 minutes, recruiting as many participants as possible to help render a 3D animation, all while playing a big-screen multi-player computer game. The technology: We used Blender software to render the anim

Link of the week - Open Science Grid: a collaborative approach Total jobs per Virtual Organization: Plot showing number of simultaneous jobs running on Open Science Grid computing facilities for a recent six–month period. Each color denotes jobs run by a distinct Virtual Organization.Image courtesy of Open Science Grid Open Science Grid: Building and Sustaining General Cyberinfrastructure Using a Collaborative Approach is a paper discussing the creation and operation of the Open Science Grid. Published in June in First Monday, it covers:An introduction to Open Science GridPractical lessons learned from operating a large cyberinfrastructureScalability, scalability, scalabilityChallenges faced by Open Science Grid“OSG’s experience broadly illustrates the breadth and scale of effort that a diverse, evolving collaboration must undertake in building and sustaining large–scale cyberinfrastructure serving multiple communities,” writes author Paul Avery, a professor at the University of Florida and resource m

Acronym of the week - GridAE Evolutionary robotics problems such as the development of controllers for autonomous robots are being used as a test project for building a grid-based framework for Artificial Evolution application. Image courtesy of Erol Sahin Evolution. Survival of the fittest. It seems like a pretty efficient way to work out which combination of genes offers the best solution to the challenge of life under a certain set of conditions. In fact, evolution is such a clever system that we’re trying to simulate it. And it’s so complex that we need grid computing to power those simulations. Grid-based Artificial Evolution is the result: a relatively new approach to solving complex problems, inspired by the mechanisms of natural evolution.AE solves a given problem by first evaluating the “fitness” of each of a population of candidate solutions. This approach can be used to solve problems in fields ranging from engineering and robotics to social sciences and genetics. Like evolution, AE is inc

Acronym of the week - NEESit The NEES network extends across 15 experimental facilities spanning the entire breadth of the United States. Image courtesy of NEESitGround-shaking computer-powered collaboration is the order of the day at NEESit, otherwise known as the George E. Brown Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation Cyberinfrastructure Center. No wonder it needs an acronym! NEES is the slightly shorter version, standing for the George E. Brown Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation. NEES is a shared national network comprising 15 experimental facilities, collaborative tools, a centralized data repository, and earthquake simulation software, all linked by the ultra-high-speed Internet2 connections used by the NEESgrid. This grid allows earthquake engineers across the United States to share data, collaborate with colleagues, and remotely participate in experiments.NEES research provides engineers with insight into the seismic responses of everything from buildings and bridges to coastal region