Content about Technology

Announcement - NVIDIA to host CUDA tutorial at SC08 Image courtesy of NVIDIA  What: Full Day Tutorial: High Performance Computing with CUDA  CUDA is a C language environment that enables programmers to write software for GPUs, graphics rendering devices whose highly parallel structure makes them quite effective for many complex algorithms. Where: SC08 @ Austin Convention Center, Austin, TXWhen: Monday, Nov. 17, 2008, 8:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.Last year′s CUDA tutorial at SC07 was a standing-room only event. NVIDIA is pleased to announce that members of its CUDA engineering team are back this year and will be holding another full day tutorial, designed to give attendees a thorough introduction to the CUDA programming model. NVIDIA engineers will partner with academic and industrial researchers to present CUDA and discuss its advanced use for science and engineering domains. The morning session will introduce CUDA programming and the execution and memory models, and explore the uses of CUDA with many brief examples from

Announcement - Second European summit on interoperability in iGovernment Consiliazione Auditorium in Rome. Image courtesy of ESIIG 2.   ESIIG 2, the Second European Summit on Interoperability in the iGovernment, represents an unprecedented occasion to develop new synergies and create contacts with representatives of the European Commission, of the national and regional governments of Europe, of the research field, the Academia and experts of the ICT sector.Dates: 20-22 October 2008Location: Conciliazione Auditorium, Rome, ItalyOrganized by: LAit S.p.A. ESIIG 2 Web siteRegistration Goals:Promote interoperability as the key enabler for the development of iGovernment among European regionsAnalyze the state of the art of interoperability in Europe and regional best practicesInvolve international, national and European stakeholders active in the field interoperability in defining new priorities and more innovative and efficient eServices.  The event is organized under the patronage of  Mme Viviane Reding, member of

  Image of the week - One view of the LHC (Click on this link or the photo above to get the rotating, 360-degree, panoramic view, with natural sound.)One view of the Large Hadron Collider To give an idea of the enormity of the project at CERN, Peter McCready took a series of panoramic views of each of the  experiments. Last week, we showed ALICE, here's a view of one portion of the LHC. McCready creates these images using digital cameras mounted atop a customized tripod apparatus that allows him to take wrap-around images of up to a complete 360 rotation. Each image requires more than one hundred separate, individual photoraphs to be shot, which are then stitched together to form one seamless spherical image. The completed photo takes up 40MP. Image courtesy of Peter McCready    

Feature - (Almost) starting up the LHC: a view from the front lines A welder works on the interconnection between two of the LHC's superconducting magnet systems, in the LHC tunnel, earlier this year. Image courtesy of CERN On Thursday, 8 August, CERN announced that it would make the first attempt to circulate a beam in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on 10 September, with the first test scheduled for the weekend of 9 August.To find out what it is like from the point of view of those actually building the LHC and installing the equipment, iSGTW caught up with Mike Lamont of LHC Machine Operations for a few minutes, just  before workers were about to start the initial steps of a preliminary, low-energy, “pre-startup.” iSGTW: What are your feelings, after all this time and effort?Lamont: “At the moment, my general feeling is an overwhelming one of relief, actually. We’ve pulled all the bits together; we’ve got the ring more or less cooled now; we’re underway.”“We’re up t

Announcement - Call for Papers: 2008 Microsoft eScience Workshop, 7-9 Dec, Indianapolis Image courtesy of Microsoft  Accelerating Time to Scientific DiscoveryThe use of computers in scientific research creates challenges even as it expands the realm of the possible. Many of these challenges are common across research disciplines and areas of endeavor. Insights gained in one area of science can act as a catalyst for change and accelerate discovery in many others.This cross-disciplinary workshop will bring together scientists from diverse research disciplines and give them the opportunity to share their experiences of how computing is shaping their work. The goal is to discover new insights into facilitating scientific discovery. The focus will be on discussion of the computing technologies that enable scalable solutions that address scientific grand challenges. The event is being held in conjunction with the Fourth Annual IEEE eScience Conference.Important DatesPaper submission opens: July 1st, 2008Paper submission closes: Aug

Feature - Electron tomography without the headaches Image courtesy of Belin Czechowicz, sxc.hu Seeing is understanding For biologists, seeing a structure's shape is the all-important step to understanding how it works. Just as in the architecture of a well-designed building, form follows function. So, when a 17th century Dutch draper who enjoyed grinding lenses as a hobby invented the microscope, Anton van Leeuwenhoek revolutionized biology. Microbiologists today may find their next tool coming from a source just as unlikely—academic computing.By using the grid and a number of super-slim electron scans of an object taken at a variety of angles, researchers can create 3-D views up to 2 million times real size. In spite of its usefulness for the field of microbiology, this process, known as electron tomography, has long remained unpractical for many researchers, as it is too computationally expensive.But a project called EGEETomo, centered at University of Almería, in Spain, is building a tool to make

Feature - Multiple middleware The National Institute of Nuclear Physics, or INFN, is dedicated to the study of the fundamental constituents of matter, and conducts theoretical and experimental research in the fields of subnuclear, nuclear and astroparticle physics. Image courtesy of INFN. Coexistence Since the birth of computational and data grids, a variety of middleware has been developed, deployed and used in a multitude of isolated e-infrastructures, and concern over middleware interoperability is growing. Recently, three researchers in Italy—Roberto Barbera of the University of Catania, Marco Fargetta of Consorzio COMETA, and Emidio Giorgio of INFN Catania—found a new approach to grid interoperation, based on “middleware co-existence.” In this approach, different middleware is deployed on the same infrastructure, allowing users to access and share resources within a single, well-defined policy, regardless of the middleware used, and with a common authentication and authorization scheme.Their appro

Link of the week - W3C eGovernment activity to help empower citizens Image courtesy of W3C W3C launched a new forum for governments, citizens, researchers, and other stakeholders to investigate how best to use Web technology for good governance and citizen participation.“I encourage people from government agencies to join this W3C forum to make the Web better serve the people,” says Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director.  “Open Standards, and in particular Semantic Web Standards, can help lower the cost of government, make it easier for independent agencies to work together, and increase flexibility in the face of change. Publishing Linked Data on the Web enables creative re-use of it — citizen mashups, and commercial mashups, which combine the data from many sources to stunning new uses,” Berners-Lee adds. “By joining this forum, you can learn good eGovernance and how to build an Open Standards platform on top of your existing tools and services.” eGovernment refers to the use of the Web or

  Opinion - The role of open source in grid computing: past, present and future Open source software allows individual users to work with an initial shared material, adapt and tailor it to suit their own specific needs, and pass on their improvements to the rest of the community for continued improvement.Image courtesy of Eric Gjerde It is not long now until the first Open Source Grid and Cluster Conference, to be held in Oakland, California from 13-15 May 2008. This upcoming event got me thinking about the role of open source in grid and cluster computing, in the past, present, and future.    My involvement with open source dates to the early days of Globus, in the late 1990s. At that time, I (and my colleagues Carl Kesselman and Steve Tuecke) resolved that, in order to reduce barriers to grid technology adoption, Globus software should be freely available to anyone. To this end, we chose to release Globus software under a variant of the BSD Unix license. (Later we moved to the more modern

Feature - EnVision: from data to discoveries EnVision makes it easier than ever before for scientists to visualize their data. This dynamic webpage shows a catalogue of visualization snapshots.Images courtesy of TACC Visualization allows scientists to transform massive amounts of raw data into a visual format, helping researchers to explore data and fuel discoveries. And now, thanks to EnVision, a grid-enabled visualization tool released late in 2007, creating interactive visualizations has never been easier. Developed by the team at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, EnVision is a web-based software tool that simplifies the tasks of data management, analysis and interpretation involved in visualization.Visualize this  EnVision dramatically simplifies the visualization process by semi-automating data importation and providing powerful, easy-to-use tools. “The goal of EnVision is to make the scientific visualization process so easy that a researcher can pick up the tool without ever having done visualizat

  Feature - Evolving towards the future of science: genetic algorithms and grid computing Computer engineers are mimicking biological genetics to create algorithms able to optimize solutions to computing problems. These “genetic algorithms” are possible thanks to the recent advent of cheap, readily available computing power, such as that available from computing grids. Stock image from sxc.hu Great innovations are not rare—we are surrounded by them. For inspiration, look not at buildings and machinery, but at plants and animals. Some of our best synthetic technologies copy what we see in nature: think of seed-styled Velcro, mollusk-inspired epoxy, air conditioning based on termite mounds and solar panels that imitate insect eyes. Now, a relatively new type of biomimicry is helping researchers find great ideas.Mutating the way to perfection  “Genetic algorithms” are search functions that “evolve” towards the optimum solution to a problem. Imitating life’s genetic evolu

  Technology - Taming the data deluge: the new open source iRODS data grid system The iRODS team is working with a number of partners, including the U.S. National Archives. This image from the National Archives is a self-portrait of political cartoonist Clifford Berryman, who is credited with introducing the teddy bear into American vernacular after President Theodore Roosevelt famously refused to shoot an old, haggard bear during a hunting trip. Images courtesy of the National Archives The digital data we all love is growing explosively. In 2006, humanity produced 161 exabytes of digital data—that’s 161 billion billion bytes. This deluge of data is bringing with it unprecedented challenges in organizing and accessing digital information. To meet these challenges, the Data-Intensive Computing Environments group at the San Diego Supercomputer Center has released version 1.0 of iRODS, the Integrated Rule-Oriented Data System, a powerful new open-source approach to managing digital data. “iRODS is an innovati