Content about XSEDE

Humanities gateways are the newest arrow in the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) quiver. With friendly interfaces, these gateways make it easy for humanities researchers to stay on target and create the scholarship of the 21st century. Digital humanities specialist Alan Craig speaks with iSGTW about XSEDE's latest offering.

The volume of video content has exploded in recent years, and museums and libraries face the daunting task of evaluating the condition of their collections to make preservation and access decisions. To meet this challenge, data curators, video engineers, supercomputing experts, and neuroscientists are testing and implementing quality assessment algorithms in supercomputers to rapidly identify levels of video quality in large collections.

Renowned computational biologist Klaus Schulten used the supercomputers at the Texas Advance Computing Center and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications to model the binding force of proteins found in cow stomachs. What he discovered may lead us to cheaper biofuel production.

UC San Diego School of Medicine scientists have teamed up with Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center engineers to create 3D models of enzymes that cause inflammation. What they've learned could bring relief to victims of asthma and arthritis.

The financial services and medical insurance industries in the US account for 6-8% (more than a trillion dollars) of the gross domestic product annually, according to the US Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis. Read about XSEDE-supported research that considers unobservable market phenomena and how both industries could be improved.

Next-generation sequencing (NGS), in which millions or billions of DNA nucleotides are sequenced in parallel, is the backbone of novel discoveries in life sciences, anthropology, social sciences, biomedical sciences and plant sciences. Read about the SoyKB and iPlant collaboration that is taking plant sciences to the next level.

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.

Today, biology is a data-driven science, intrinsically linked to computing.  However, dialogue between researchers and computer scientists about the analysis of genomic data is still far from 'organic'. The HPCBio group and the Texas Advanced Computing Center are addressing this issue with a distributed approach to computing resources, new software, and tailored customer services.

During last month's XSEDE’12 conference, Gayatri Buragohain, founder of Feminist Approach to Technology in India, highlighted the importance nurturing women's involvement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics at an early age. 

At the XSEDE’12 conference in mid-July, John Towns, principal investigator for XSEDE discussed the challenges and successes of the US high-performance computing network's first year. XSEDE is building bridges between universities, users, and other cyber-infrastructures including the Open Science Grid for high throughput computing. Towns also mentioned the collaboration between XSEDE and the European computing infrastructure called PRACE and unveiled a new joint call to enable users to use both sets of resources.

During XSEDE'12, the Texas Advanced Computing Center presented their new high-performance computer that will replace both its Ranger system and Kraken at the National Institute for Computational Sciences.